q Malk' 22
Highlights
This is a stealth & bleed deck using V5 Malkavians, with the disciplines. During the beginning, it uses Govern the Unaligned to get vampires out faster and cheaper. When enough minions are into play, it switches to delivering strong bleed actions using for stealth.
The deck uses Deflection or the occasional bounce to redirect bleeds to its prey and Delaying Tactics to defend against votes. It has virtually no combat defence, focusing solely on raw and brutal bleed power with an unusually high count of Govern the Unaligned and .
Stealth is exceptionnaly high, with a third of the cards being stealth action modifiers or block denials, and a couple of tactical Master cards on top to limit the number of potential blockers: Pentex™ Subversion, Misdirection and Anarch Troublemaker.
The master module provides multiple cycling tools to enhance the card flow and avoid being jammed by the numerous stealth cards: a good number of Dreams of the Sphinx of course, but also The Barrens and Elder Library
Tips & Tricks
Timing is critical when playing this deck: going forward too hard and too soon against the prey can cripple her too badly and ultimately advantage a cross-table opponent too much and give them the game. The whole idea is to clamly get 4 vampires out with Govern the Unaligned, giving time to the opponents to develop and get their game underway, before slamming down the hammer of 4-6 bleeds on the table.
A key difficulty for this deck is to avoid ousting its grand-prey by mistake because of a bounce on a high-stealth strong bleed. Hence the good number of Spying Mission: it can be used at superior to avoid damaging a non-prey opponent. Hide the Mind participates to the same logic by providing a tactical counter against bounces like Telepathic Misdirection.
Wash is a bleed in disguise: its point is to cancel bloat Master cards like Villein, Blood Doll or Liquidation. But it can obviously also be very useful to prevent a permanent intercept location like KRCG News Radio or big threats from the opponent like Haqim's Law: Retribution.
Variants
This build is a variant of the good old Malk' 94 archetype, celebrating the return of Dominate as a clan discipline for Malkavians. The proportion of stealth has to be adapted to the meta, and wether or not to include combat defense like No Trace and Secure Haven really depends on the expected opposition.
A bit more defense can be added to the mix with Carlton Van Wyk and Muddled Vampire Hunter if one bets on Entrancement or Far Mastery being rare inclusions in the opponents decks. Heart of Nizchetus is definitely an option to help with the card flow and Vessel can be considered to better manage the blood-pool repartition. All in all the deck can be more compact and stand comfortably in the 72-82 range. See for example Javier Naranjo's deck for an alternate take on the archetype.