Deck Types

Here's a list of types of decks in VTES, taken from thelasombra.com (I think).

Ally: Deck built around allies. It's often clan-based as almost all good allies are clanbound. Small vampires and a lot of allies and ways to get them on the table. It usually also has a lot of non-discipline combat cards, such as Fake Out and Lucky Blow, since most allies can't use a discipline. Examples are a Giovanni Shambling Hordes deck or a Tzimisce War Ghoul deck.

Attrition: Dealing pool damage to your prey (and the other players) by using cards that damage the whole table. Most common one is Anarch Revolt, but alternatives are Judgement: Camarilla Segregation and Antediluvian Awakening. Often seen in tandem with Bloat.

Bleed: Deck based on bleeding. Lots of bleed cards. Often used together with Stealth. This type of deck usually also have cards that cancel a bleed or a reaction card to prevent its prey from redirecting the bleeds to another player. If the deck doesn't have this, it’s called irresponsible bleeding.

Bloat: A deck that tries to gain as many pool as it can. The general idea is to never die no matter who's preying on you. This type of deck is often played in combination with Attrition, but vote is not much rarer.

Block Denial: A deck that is based on the same concept as Stealth. It simply denies blocking, but not with stealth, but in other ways. A good example are the various Strike: Combat Ends and the action continues cards, that usually make up the bulk of decks like these. Other cards are Day operation, Daring the Dawn, Elder Impersonation or Call of the Hungry Dead. Most commonly seen in combination with Votes or Bleed.

Bounce: Redirecting bleeds to your prey (or someone else) with cards like Deflection and Telepathic Misdirection. It's widely believed is that it's mandatory to have bounce in your deck to be successful in a tournament environment.

Breed: A breed deck is a deck that brings out a few vampires and then starts creating a swarm of one and two capacity vampires with the help of cards like The Third Tradition: Progeny, Creation Rites and The Embrace. It’s often seen together with bloat and vote.

Bruise: The ability to hit back in combat without devoting too much of a deck to it. It's most often done with guns or nasty single strike cards, such as Entombment or Burning Wrath. The idea of a bruise deck is to discourage blocking, so it can effectively do its actions without being blocked.

Card Denial: Deck that denies its prey to play his or her cards, or negates the effects of them once played. Most notable is the Slaughterhouse deck, but card denial is also often used in combination with Bleed to get rid of bounce cards. Revelations and Direct Intervention are good examples of Card Denial as well.

Clan: A deck built around a single clan. Most decks are one clan only (or one clan mainly), since it allows you to take advantage of the clan unique locations and other masters. A deck is called a clan deck when 75% or more vampires it its crypt are of the same clan.

Close Combat: The same as Ranged Combat, but this time it's built to fight close. Mostly used with Potence and Protean.

Discipline: Deck based on a single discipline. Usually this deck uses almost only weenies that have that Discipline, from many different clans. Presence and Potence are the ones that are used most often for this type of deck.

Equipment: Often, but not always a combat deck. An equipment deck takes advantage of powerful equipment to get done what it wants to do. An example is a Celerity Gun deck, or an Eye of Hazimel deck.

Intercept: The idea behind an Intercept deck is to block every action your prey does and all those directed at you, no matter the amount of stealth. Intercept decks are almost always also combat decks. It's effectiveness is very dependant on the threat of blocking rather than the block actions itself. Usually seen with Gargoyles or Tzimitze since both those clans can build up quite lot of intercept and a have a good combat skill to back their blocking actions with.

Master: A deck that has far more masters than is usual for a deck. Most decks have anywhere from 10-17 masters, but master decks can pack up to 60. Multiple master phase actions are gained by using Anson, Huitzilopochtli, The Parthenon and Rumours of Gehenna. It's most often seen with bloat, but there are some very strong Master decks that don't use bloat as a main strategy. The best example is probably the "Betrayer".

Module: A standard set of cards that can be added to any deck and is effective in itself. A Potence Module would include Torn Signpost and Immortal Grapple, just as an example. There's discipline modules or concept modules (vote, bleed etc). A longer and more correct introduction to modules and their use can be found here: http://texas.vekn.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=52

Multi-rush: Basically the same as normal rush, with one difference. This deck type uses one vampire that fights many combats each turn. It generates new combats mainly with the help of Psyche!, but also by using Freak Drive and a new rush action. Fortitude is almost mandatory in this kind of decks because it gives access to Freak Drive as well as damage prevention to deal with other combat decks. The most prominent multi-rush deck is the Fatima Multirush deck, but many variants exist.

Preconstructed: Well, this is obviously a preconstructed deck as they are sold by White-Wolf. You can find the contents of those decks on http://www.thelasombra.com/decks.htm

Prince: Deck built around the various Camarilla princes. Decks like this take advantage of the Six Traditions (or more likely the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th). Usually one clan only, but some clans lack a lot of princes.

Ranged Combat: A deck based on fighting at long range. It's most often seen in conjunction with a rush or wall deck, but not necessarily so. Often this type of deck packs some heavy bleed or other actions that are very desirable to block. Once the action is blocked, long range strike cards are used to damage opponents, while keeping out of the fray yourself.

Retainer: Much like an ally deck, but this time it used retainers to do what it wants. Vampires here are not as small as with an Ally deck since Retainers are often cheap or paid from the vampires blood. Most common example is a Animalism combat deck that uses retainers for extra damage or intercept.

Rush: Combat deck. The whole deck is built around wiping out your prey's minions or getting them into torpor. This type of deck is almost always done with smaller vampires as you need a lot of actions per turn to get it working properly. This type of deck is a slow bleeder, as it is stuffed with cards that allow directed attacks and combat cards. It deals pool damage indirectly with cards such as Fame and Tension in the Ranks.

Stealth: Obviously this is a type of deck that you simply can't block. If it does something, it works, since you can't block it. A common application is the obvious stealth and bleed. These decks are loaded with cards that give stealth.

Toolbox: A deck that can do a little bit of everything. It can fight a few good combats, throw around some votes and can produce scary bleeds. It can, however, do all this only once or twice and that's assuming the cards are in the right order in your library. Decks around a fun theme are often toolbox decks, but very few are competitive in tournaments. Good examples are decks that mix a Bloodline with a regular clan, such as a Brujah bleed/vote/combat deck that used Salubri for blood and pool gain.

Turbo: A deck that uses one Vampire and the Soul Gem of Etrius. The idea is to influence out one vampire that does many actions, one of which must increase its capacity, burn itself and have the Soul Gem trigger. Since the whole crypt is made up of that vampire, it will bring a fresh copy of the chosen vampire into play, ready to do all those actions again. This deck type mandates Fortitude because of Freak Drive. Also, Force of Will is the best way to have your vampire burned. Some of the most well known turbo decks include the Turbo Arika deck and the Turbo Lucita deck. Variants exist where the vampire that it brought into play with the Soul Gem is not another copy of the first, but a smaller vampire, but those decks are somewhat dependant on the order of the cards in your crypt. An example of this is the Turbo Baron deck.

Vote: A vote deck relies on political actions to kill its prey and gain pool. Typically a Vote deck has such obscene amounts of votes or vote cards in it, that it can establish a "vote lock", which means that it has more votes on the table, than the other four players combined.

Wall: A wall deck is a special type of Intercept deck that has only two purposes. First, it will try to oust its prey as soon as possible and from there it will be the last man standing for another two victory points and a table win. A more thorough discussion of this can be found here: http://www.thelasombra.com/walldecks.htm.

Weenie: Weenie is another word for "small vampire". A weenie deck uses vampires with capacities ranging from 1 to 3. It brings out a lot of minions and creates a situation where you simply can't block all his actions. The deck makes sure to make those actions the most devastating. The most common application is a weenie bleed deck, but combat is almost as common.