Lyrics of the Night : Toolbox

Well, the Asian Championship did pull out quite a bit of interest in Vtes for our community, and we are starting to plan for regular games again. Needless to say, we are all planning new decks and recreating older decks to prepare ourselves for Vtes games again. I am therefore, committed to reviving Singing Vtes as well~ lots of battles to record and I'm sure, lots of insights to learn from my esteemed nemesis(es).

The first thing I do is to re-sleeve many of my old decks with all these Japanese card sleeves that I've received from my Japanese friend. In the process of doing so, I automatically attempt to make each deck better by tuning it to fit my idea of an optimized version. After tuning a couple of decks, I find that I've probably found my preferred play-style now. Contrary to what I used to do, which is to build a deck type of every kind, I kinda like playing toolbox style decks. I've been lucky to win 2 Asian Championship now, and both decks are pretty toolboxy in nature. All the more successful decks that I played are also quite toolbox too. I guess it's a personality thing - I just couldn't commit to a single efficient kill plan, but prefer to be as prepared as possible for all occasions.

Well, toolbox is just that - to be able to do multiple things, or I should say, to attempt to be able to answer all threats, and work around all problems. This is of course a myth - nothing can handle everything Vtes throws at you - it is just too diverse to allow that. However, a toolbox deck usually has the flexibility to handle more situations than other more focused deck types.

For me, I just like the idea that the deck I'm playing has enough thoughts put into it to make it flexible and adaptable.

For toolbox decks I always try to achieve the following for the deck, each element must be answered.

1. Kill Intensity

I try to have enough damaging cards to remove 50 pool in order to sweep the table. I try to make it happen with at least 2 avenues whenever I can - a couple of KRCs in my Prince Gun deck and Magaji Wall; Fame in Maureen Servitor deck and Enticement in my Typhonic Beast deck. So if you add in all the bleed cards, bleed modifiers and other damage cards, you will usually find about 50 damage potential in these cards.

When that is not possible, I will add in elements to either recycle the damage cards, or improve the delivery system to ensure success of the damage.

2. Delivery System

One key specialty of a toolbox deck is its ability to handle different kinds of defense. My Howling deck can stealth through low intercept decks, and can punch through low combat defense deck - a mix of stealth and bruise bleed, with the extra ability to surgically attack bleed bouncers or toublesome defenders. I try to add in stealth of some kind whenever possible, especially if the deck in question has difficulty of branching into multiple adaptations.

3. Defensive Options

Again, one of the key purpose of a toolbox deck is its flexibility to handle most common predators' attacks. Most of my toolbox deck has answers to attackers' common ousting method - a lot of them can do at least 2 of the common defensive measures - bounce, bloat, block or beat. IMHO, a good toolbox deck should be able to adjust itself to match the tempo and environment of the table - shifting the kill strategy as needed. Much of this can only be done because there is a viable defensive plan that one can adopt.

4. Combat

My toolbox deck will never just keel over and die when faced with combat. One important element of a toolbox approach is the ability to handle combat. For that, I try to always have some offensive combat capability, and will throw in multiple defensive option whenever possible - combat ends, damage prevention, maneuvers; combine with high damage output or more commonly, aggravated damage cards should provide some deterrent to the enemy.

For decks that lack bouncing capability (I consider blocking unreliable, and bloating is a must in every deck, so that's automatic), I will try to include surgical enter combat capability so that the deck can handle high bleeders - worse comes to worse, pack AIs or Aranthebes, or even a Lost in Translation or 2.

5. Bloat

All my toolbox deck must have a bloating plan, without that it probably couldn't be called a toolbox. Bloating will of course be customized to be as efficient and as non-intrusive as possible - don't rely on Vessels with high blood usage decks such as Ravnos, and don't bother with Vessels when a PRE vote deck replenish blood every 3 seconds.

6. Surprise Elements

Most fun of the deck building part - always include at least one "wow" card. More often than not, it will wow the table and win you brownie points even if you lose, and occasionally it will win you games too! A Horseshoe in my Lasombra stealth bleed deck was instrumental in winning me a game~

All in all I just adore toolbox decks, they are flexible, they are adaptable, and they are lots of fun to play and usually make you feel that you have a chance in every table, no matter the prey or the predator.

Just that feeling of "Just have to draw that card" is worth all the effort in making every deck toolbox - lots of work to be done.

(o.o)tuning deck in progress