w Reign of Lasombra

Highlights

This is a Lasombra w bleed & vote deck starring Bruce De Guy. The strategy is not so far off from what a Stanislava deck would be doing, hence the name. Martin Weinmeyer has been leading the competitive ladder multiple years in a row with his Reign of Stanislava deck, which was later printed as the 25th Anniversary precon. And this archetype was originally his idea.

The plan is to get Bruce De Guy out, or the highest capacity vampire from the crypt if he's not there, then use Govern the Unaligned at superior Dominate D to influence a couple of helpers cheap and fast. Then, bleed and vote to oust preys successively, using Obtenebration £ modifiers for stealth, and a few Freak Drive to get more actions.

On the defense side, a single unlocked high capacity vampire can hold the fort by blocking and spamming Obedience, while also simply using Deflection against stealthed bleeds. Under Siege and Eternal Vigilance can be used to get the necessary unlocks and intercept.

The Master module provides bloat with Villein and blood regeneration for the vampires to feed the Dominate D cost, as well as a bit of stealth. To help with the card flow, and avoid jamming on stealth if the opponents decide not to block, Dreams of the Sphinx.

Tips & Tricks

The deck is tailored to handle both high stealth bleed predators like Platinum Revelation or Malk' 22, but also bruise & bleed builds like Haqim Royalty or Brujah Resistance. It might struggle to get the vote lock against dedicated vote decks, but in this case, it can simply fall back on bleeding.

Enkil Cog is, of course, desirable. Especially because one can use it to bleed during the prey's turn, which will completely negate the possibility of an Archon Investigation: since it's an out-of-turn Master, it cannot be played by the prey during their own turn. But it can also be used to bleed at the end of one's predator turn, to get the Edge and benefit from it immediately.

Banishment is a key lunge device for this deck. It can be used to remove a troublesome blocker or a potential bouncer, as well as a key voter if there's a window for it. Drwan early, it can simply put off the prey or predator tempo, depending on what seems most beneficial.

Variants

This is an iteration over a prior decklist from Martin Weinmeyer, with only a few additions.

There is a Group 2-3 variant with Montano and Ambrosio, see Gabriel Carnino's deck for an example. Getting a bit of Presence R to be able to play Voter Captivation is very endearing, and Montano's ability is very strong. But Bruce De Guy's ability, to get the vote lock, is hard to match.