The construction of a deck will necessarily deal with the size of the deck's crypt and library, and therefore is often one of the earliest decisions that one has to make when assembling a deck. A Vtes deck has 2 components - the crypt and the library, and therefore technically one has to make 2 decisions as to the size of each of these.
The Crypt is a simpler choice. Although there is no cap as to how many vampires you can include in your crypt, the tournament standard is of a minimum of 12 vampires, and that is the normal number that you'll see in the vast majority of decks. Only weenie decks and certain themed decks (such as some Soul Gem Turbo decks, or Goodnight My Sweet Prince decks) will play with more vampires than 12. Even that, the crypt will generally revolve around maybe 18 vampires at most. In most cases, if you're able to bring out all 18 vampires onto the table, then you must be doing something right, or all your opponents are doing everything wrong. Of course there is that one famous deck with ALL the vampires in the crypt, but it is a legendary concept that I've yet to see on the field.
The library is a totally different animal, with a size range from 60-90, technically depending on the number of players on the table, but rarely do we actually care about that. Therefore, one pretty much has the option to build a library of 60 cards to 90 cards, depending on his style and needs.
In theory, since Vtes allows the replacement of spent cards almost immediately, the cards in your hand is a valuable asset, and therefore the library is a big warehouse for you to keep your resources - the reason why anyone would play with less than 90 cards (the maximum number of assets that you can have) is mainly about how quickly or efficiently you can find the right cards in your warehouse, exactly when you need them. The more cards you have, well, the less chance you'll get the one card you need unless you throw in a lot more copies of that than other cards, who will then affect your ability to get other cards that you need. Of course, the right ratio will mathematically means you'll draw the same card in a 60-card deck or 90-card deck by statistics. But since you'll probably be spending your cards in different ways in different games, this mathematical concept doesn't seem too reliable. (There must be some mathematical concept behind it but that's beyond me)
Having a larger library has its benefits. For certain kind of decks, it becomes a necessity. Imagine a POT combat deck. Let's say you rely on combat to deal with most of your problems, and you use POT as the key discipline for it. Assuming you'd need to enter combat with 2 minions of each of your prey before rendering them ineffective, and assuming you'd want to kill off 4 preys.
Now let's say you use exclusively Ambush to enter combat, a Torn Signpost with Undead Strength damage package coupled with Immortal Grapple for the combat end answer as well as a second round to secure a kill. That's 4 cards per combat. Multiply that by 2 minions and 4 preys, and you'll need to fight 8 times, and that will require you to have 32 cards just to achieve that. Now assuming that you throw in 4 Taste of Vitae to replenish your vampires' blood, 4 maneuver cards in case your vampires' Ambush is blocked and you need extra movement to get in touch, 4 Sideslips to get out of jail and a Disarm for fun and laughter. This combat package will need a commitment of 45 cards. In this example, if you use a 60-card deck, that will only give you 15 more cards to insert, including Master cards, reaction, and most importantly your means to kill off your prey - namely Bleed cards and/or pool-damage cards like Dragonbound and Fame. In this case, a 60-card deck might not be a very good idea. This is of course an over-simplification of a combat deck, but it illustrates the basics of it.
The same idea goes towards many other deck types, which is why you see so many 90-card decks around the place. Malkavian Stealth Bleed for example, need to combo Kindred Spirit with at least 1 stealth card, preferably 2, more if the environment is Auspex heavy, and more multi-purpose cards like Swallowed by the Night if combat is an issue, and then there is the need of bleed enhancer. So for every Kindred Spirits you'll probably be looking at a 3-5 cards package. And you'll need to bleed an average of 10-15 times in order to secure a table win (at least), that would be a staggering 45-60 cards requirement before looking at anything else like defense and Master cards. So if you have a stealth bleeder that uses a 60-card deck it'll likely to lose out on a 5-player table.
Of course, if you have a deck built with 3 players in mind then everything needs to be re-calibrated. But I see few players who does that at all.
The case for 60-cards or decks with less than 90 are usually decks who goes for the throat, with very efficient and fast combo that requires either a particular few cards to pull off, or requires a very quick consecutive card-chain to get it up to speed. Many theme decks are like this. A Spell of Life deck, for example, do not require a lot of cards once the Spell is pulled off, so a lesser deck that secures a more consistent draw might be crucial. I believe that this is the key reason for using libraries that are less than maximum.
Not to forget, one of the key issue in using smaller libraries is the ultimate financial reason. In order to keep to an efficient ratio of key cards, one may be forced to play a smaller library simply because he doesn't own the necessary number of cards in that combo chain. Face it, there is only so many Sensory Deprivation (Boo!) that one has, then one cannot play a Sense-Dep deck with 90-card library - you might never draw the 1 of 3 that you have.
(o.o)
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