How to describe a VTES deck

 

Dear Methuselahs, PLEASE describe decks in a way that clearly tell people what deck it is. 

This is the information needed:
1. Clan
2. Groups
3. Deck type

1. Clan: The clan that dominates the crypt, or the clan of the star vampire. If you are sure that no clan is dominating, instead write the disciplines that dominate, for example "OBF-PRE" or "ANI-POT". Also, recently, the Sabbat Path of the deck is more interesting than clan.

2. Groups: This one is straightforward. Just "G6-7" or "G4-5". No, this cannot be omitted just because you mention your star vampire, because support vampires could be different (see below). If you feel particularly wild and crazy, you can drop the "G".

3. Deck type. This one is trickier, but as a general rule, use the deck's main method of ousting here. The viable options are:

bleed: There are some subtypes: stealth-bleed, power-bleed and tap'n'bleed, but generally these are not needed if you also mention the clan. Any Malkavian bleed deck IS a stealth-bleed deck, so usually no point in writing that out. Power-bleed is a very bleed heavy deck more dependant on block fail effects than stealth, but there is usually some stealth in there too. Tap'n'bleed is a bleed deck dependant on tap effects such as Mind Numb and Majesty.

vote: A political deck, ousting with votes. A common subtype is breed-boon, which is a deck that creates a lot of small vampires with The Embrace-like cards and Consanguineous Boon to bloat, and a variant is "Death Star", using Revolutionary Council to oust.

rush: This is a deck that wins by directly attacking minions and beat them down. Most of these decks attack their predator's minions first ("swim upstream"), only rushing their prey to limit their success going forward, and relies on controlling the endgame and taking only 2 or 3 victory points. Others use go heavier on their prey directly with cards like Fame.

wall: A defensive deck that doesn´t do many actions forward, instead relying on cards like Smiling Jack to win. Usually don´t get more than 2 or 3 victory points.

toolbox: A deck with a balanced variety of ways to win.

This is really all you need: bleed, vote, rush, wall and toolbox. It is the basics that should ALWAYS be there when you describe a deck. 

Extras that are good are star vampire/star vampires and known deck concepts such as "bruise-bleed" (heavy on bleeding, beating up blockers), "grinder" (attrition-based combat, slowly grinding down opponents' vampires and/or having superior blood gain), "royalty" (titled vampires), "bloat" (strong pool gain), "ally" (particularly ally-heavy, maybe also "swarm"), "swarm" (the deck creates a lot of minions, intended to swarm prey at some point), "combat" (generally not preferable to "rush", "wall" or "bruise-bleed", as it says less about the deck).

Examples of deck names:
- Malkavian G1-2 bleed
- Path of Power G5-6 vote (Optional: Add "Aaradhya" if she is your star)
- Gangrel G5-6 toolbox (Optional: "Thing" if its very Thing-heavy)
- True Brujah G5-6 Shalmath rush (Here the group might feel superfluous, but in theory you can go two ways for the support vampires)

That was all. Thanks for your time and understanding!