Denial is not a river in Egypt

As I have written earlier cardflow is an integral and important part of the game, denying cardflow slows down decks and makes them unwieldly or even unplayable.

Denial in deckbuilding is about denying the opportunity for the opposing players to cycle cards during normal play. This is done by playing cards such as Seduction, Mirror Walk, Obedience, Mental Maze and the master package commonly known as Eurostealth (Pentex Subversion, Misdirection and Anarch Troublemaker), among others.

Denial as a tactic is different, it also affects opponents cardflow but is not dependent on your deck. A common example is the tactic vs. stealthbleeders; not blocking so they stack on stealth. Tactics are difficult to pin down since they vary from table to table, but the main thing to keep in mind is minimizing cardflow.

Denial in deck archetypes fall into different categories: active denial, passive denial and reactive denial.

Active denial is commonly combat decks, the idea is to remove the active components in play (vampires and allies) so that cardflow is reduced to as close to 0 as you can manage.

Passive denial is by introducing elements into the game that will stop certain decks from working properly by simply existing, such as lots of votes in a deck not centered around voting (ex. Girls will Find Inner Peace), an active element that is incompatible with other decks (ex. Imbueds since they are not affected by a plethora of cards) or a vampire/ally special that is a silver bullet to certain decks (ex. Santaleous, Aksinya Daclau, Xeper, Sultan of Lepers etc).

Reactive denial is seen both as action modifiers and reactions, either by stopping cycling from happening at all by ending actions before any combat cards or action modifiers can be played, or by forcing cycling to a pace the deck cannot handle and making it run out of support cards (walls that make decks run out of stealth, or repeated actions with untaps/Tangle Atropos Hand that make a decks run out of reactions etc.)

The easiest way to introduce denial into a deck is by adding the Eurostealth package. This denies the ability to play reactive cards unless the opponent has a wake, since most decks don't pack excessive amounts of wakes defending while being tapped out repeatedly denies alot of the other reactive cards you could play. The Eurostealth package does not combine overly well with other support disciplines, it could easily jam your hand on support cards used to aid throughput cards, it does combine well with multiact as a denial ability, so packing eurostealth into a Ventrue lawfirm or Presence weenie is very beneficial.

Using this analysis we could try combining several forms of denial, Active denial with Reactive denial could be used in a Tzimisce prey punisher by playing Read the Winds and Mind of the Wilds/Deep Song. Passive denial with Reactive denial in a DOM-THA bigcap bleed deck. Active/Reactive denial in the form of bigcaps playing Banishment and multiacting to bleed could be a possibility.

Based on the analysis above of denial in deck archetypes you could also formulate a strategic denial. By thinking in forms of Active, Passive and Reactive you can analyze a table to minimize opponents cardflow. Not bringing up vampires early to stop Active denial decks, not blocking or doing blockable actions to stop or create Reactive denial. There are as many possibilities as there are tables. Passive denial on the other hand is the hardest to handle or emulate since it's situational, but you need to be able to identify it when it appears. The main thing to keep in mind is of course to hamper and minimize the cardflow of opponents, hopefully this analysis clears things up and creates some structures for in-game analysis.