Building a Hecata deck

There are some doors in the World of Darkness that sensible vampires never open. Behind them lie old promises, forgotten names and spirits that should probably be left undisturbed. The members of Hecata, of course, looked at those doors centuries ago and thought, "I wonder what's behind this one?" Then they opened every single one. That, in a nutshell, is why I find them so fascinating (plus I have always loved the Giovanni and the Cappadocians before).

For some time now I have wanted to build my Hecata deck. This is very much an experiment, so please don't mistake it for a tournament guide. Some of the cards I include will be there because they fit the atmosphere rather than because they are mathematically optimal. If I wanted to optimize everything, I would probably end up playing another Ventrue political deck. This project is about something different. It is about building a deck that feels like the Hecata should feel: mysterious, patient and always one whispered ritual away from something very disturbing.

My Hecata collection currently consists of two starter decks and three New Blood decks, which gives me enough pieces to begin assembling something interesting. Before touching a single card, however, I wanted to decide on the deck's identity. To me, the Hecata are vampires who operate just beyond the veil separating life and death. Their greatest strength isn't raw violence or explosive bleeds, it is their relationship with things that refuse to stay dead. Naturally, that means zombies, wraiths and enough Oblivion rituals to make the local priest reconsider his career.

The first challenge appeared immediately in the crypt. I absolutely love Hel-Blá. In a calmer world, one with fewer anarchs carrying Torn Signposts and anger issues, I would happily build the deck around her. Unfortunately, my recent tournament experiences have taught me that investing nine pool into a superstar vampire can sometimes feel like buying an expensive new car only to have someone reverse a truck into it before you've left the dealership. This time I decided to stay with lower-cap vampires. Losing one still hurts, but at least it doesn't require a minute of silence.

The crypt almost built itself after that. Mora, the Death Seer immediately became the centrepiece. Her ability to recover cards from the ash heap feels very much Hecata, as if death itself were simply another filing cabinet to browse through. Lenelle, Mambo of Birmingham joins her because exchanging cards between your hand and the ash heap sounds incredibly useful once the rituals start flowing. Alek König deserves a mention simply because every deck appreciates a three-cap vampire with superior Oblivion. He also reminds me of a fantasy dwarf, which means every time I see him I expect him to complain about tunnels rather than haunt them. Monica Giovanni was an automatic inclusion as well. Superior disciplines across the board, an excellent capacity and artwork that perfectly captures the cold confidence of someone who could negotiate your inheritance before arranging your funeral. I still secretly wish she had Dominate and Potence like the old Giovanni, but one can only dream right? Gebeyehu Abdu brings superior Auspex for those all-important Telepathic Misdirections, while Peter St. John, Hiromitsu Asano, and Holliday "Burgundy" Hall round out the lower end of the crypt with cheap access to Oblivion and useful utility. I would certainly have liked one or two more small-cap vampires, but compromises are part of deck building. Even necromancers have budgets.

The library almost wrote its own ghost story. Rotting Behemoths are simply too thematic to ignore. If you're a clan of necromancers, eventually you should probably animate something large enough to make your prey reconsider combat. Spectral Servitors are another favourite, quietly drifting across the table to deliver those irritating little bleeds or help with defense. Since Behemoths are quite costly, Split the Veil felt like an obvious inclusion to keep the undead workforce growing without constantly paying premium prices. Shroud of Decay provides both bleed enhancement and unavoidable pool damage, while Psychophagia should help replenish the blood inevitably spent on rituals, or lost after some overly enthusiastic Brujah mistakes my vampire for a punching bag. To make sure those rituals actually resolve, I included the familiar Oblivion stealth package of Shadow Cast, Shadow Cloak, and Stygian Shroud. Add Telepathic Misdirection and a few wake effects and suddenly the deck starts feeling like less of a failure and more of a functioning strategy.

The first version of the deck looks something like this:

Crypt:

2x Mora, the Death Seer
2x Lenelle, Mambo of Birmingham
2x Monica Giovanni
2x Gebeyehu Abdu
1x Alek König
1x Hiromitsu Asano
1x Holliday "Burgundy" Hall
1x Peter St. John

Library:

1x Biotech Company Hunting Ground
1x Cappadocian Crypt
6x Family Gathering
1x Giant's Blood
2x Perfectionist
1x Powerbase: Munich
3x Villein

2x Psychophagia
8x Shroud of Decay
4x Split the Veil

8x Spectral Servitor
8x Rotting Behemoth

2x Freak Drive
5x Shadow Cast
5x Shadow Cloak
2x Stygian Shroud
2x Where the Veil Thins

2x Eyes of Argus
3x Shadow Sentinel
7x Telepathic Misdirection

The overall game plan is refreshingly different from what I normally play. There are no explosive Govern chains, no overwhelming vote lock and no grand speeches from impeccably dressed Princes. Instead, the deck wants to take its time. Family Gatherings should help bring vampires out steadily, Spectral Servitors begin applying early pressure, and once enough allies find their way into the ash heap, the Rotting Behemoths can emerge to deal with problematic vampires. It feels less like sprinting toward victory and more like watching fog slowly roll across a cemetery. Nothing dramatic happens at first. Then, eventually, you realize you are completely surrounded.

Whether this turns out to be brilliant or completely misguided remains to be seen. Like most of my deck-building adventures, it is based on equal parts curiosity, atmosphere and optimism. I'll be testing the deck over the coming weeks, and I'm genuinely excited to discover whether the Hecata reward careful planning... or whether the dead decide they have plans of their own.

The game never ends, only pauses. I'll see you at the next move.

Custodian Hargrave

Clan Focus: Nosferatu

Let us descend beneath the city streets, past the cafés, office buildings, and carefully maintained Ventrue domains, into the damp tunnels where the Nosferatu make their homes. Now let me start by saying that this article gave me an unexpected problem. My original plan for the Clan Focus series was simple: look at tournament-winning decks, identify the stars of the clan and figure out what makes them successful. Unfortunately, when I arrived at the Nosferatu, I discovered they seem to be so good at hiding that they have practically hidden themselves from the tournament winning scene. They still win occasionally, but their victories are rare enough that the community celebrates them the way astronomers celebrate spotting a comet that only appears once every few decades.

This surprised me. On paper, the Nosferatu looked fantastic to me. They have Obfuscate, arguably the king of stealth. They have Potence, which is excellent for persuading people with your fists. They have Animalism, a versatile discipline that offers combat tricks, intercept and allies. It sounds like the recipe for success. Yet after discussing the clan with more experienced players, I started to understand the problem. These disciplines are a bit like owning a sports car, a fishing boat and a tractor. Each is excellent at its own job, but they do not necessarily work together as one elegant machine. Yes, you can sneak. Yes, you can fight. Yes, you can recruit helpful creatures. The challenge is turning all of that into a clear and efficient path to victory.

The crypt itself contains some excellent vampires. Looking through those few tournament-winning decks, I kept seeing familiar names: Molly MacDonald, Petrodon and Sheldon. The Nosferatu Justicars seem to carry a lot of the clan's competitive ambitions. They span multiple groups and provide strong foundations for different deck styles. If the clan had a board of directors, these would be the executives sitting around the table while everyone else listens carefully.

The library choices were even more interesting. One common approach is political Nosferatu. The plan is straightforward: establish titled vampires, gather votes and start controlling the table through referendums. The problem, at least from my outsider's perspective, is that Nosferatu don't seem to accelerate their crypt particularly well. Unless Petrodon and his Dominate are involved, getting enough vampires onto the table to achieve political dominance can feel a bit like trying to organize a corporate takeover using only public transport.

The other major archetype leans heavily into combat. Deep Song appears everywhere, allowing Nosferatu to rush opponents or bleed depending on the situation. This flexibility is fantastic. Combined with Animalism and Potence, they can become surprisingly dangerous in combat. Their defense often comes from Second Tradition if they are title-heavy, while various allies help reinforce their intercept package. In practice, many Nosferatu decks seem to solve problems by dragging vampires into dark alleys and having a very direct conversation.

The more I looked at the clan, the more conflicted I became. Thematically, Nosferatu are incredible. Information brokers. Sewer kings. Masters of secrets. They embody the idea that knowledge is power long before a Ventrue discovers it and writes a report about it. Yet their tournament results remain modest. The official VTES Discord even has a dedicated Nosferatu channel where players regularly discuss how to improve the clan. Whenever a Nosferatu deck wins a tournament, people get excited. Not because it is impossible, but because it feels like witnessing one of those rare moments when everything finally aligns.

Of course, perhaps that is exactly what the Nosferatu want us to think. Maybe twenty-five years of shameful tournament results are not failure at all. Maybe this is the longest bluff in VTES history. Perhaps somewhere beneath the streets, hidden from our sight, thousands of puzzle pieces are slowly being assembled into a master plan. After all, twenty-five years sounds like a long time to us. To a Methuselah, that is barely enough time to finish a cup of blood. Maybe next year will be their year.

The game never ends, only pauses. I'll see you at the next move.

Custodian Hargrave

Cities of blood and power

The Jyhad has always been one of my favourite concepts in Vampire: The Masquerade. The idea that ancient vampires spend centuries manipulating, plotting and occasionally destroying one another in a secret holy war is wonderfully atmospheric. Even VTES itself was originally published under the name Jyhad. Back when I was devouring the Clan Novel series, I was fascinated by the events unfolding in cities like New York and Atlanta. Every chapter left me wondering which domains belonged to the Camarilla, which had fallen to the Sabbat and which unfortunate city was currently serving as the battleground for some elder's thousand-year-old grudge.

In those days, Vampire for me was largely a story about the Camarilla and the Sabbat. The Anarchs existed, of course, but they rarely took center stage in our games. Then came V5 and suddenly the political map became much more complicated. The Anarchs stepped into the spotlight, cities changed hands and the World of Darkness started to feel less like a cold war and more like a three-way bar fight where everyone insists they are the reasonable side.

Naturally, this got me thinking. I wanted a map.

Not just any map, but the kind of map a paranoid Ventrue elder might keep hidden behind a painting in his private office. A map showing who controls what. Which cities are Camarilla strongholds? Where do the Sabbat gather? Which domains have fallen into Anarch hands? I imagined something that would let me zoom out and see the eternal struggle spread across the globe. Then I remembered something. VTES is full of titled vampires. Princes. Barons. Archbishops. The people whose entire job description can be summarized as "I am in charge here and I would appreciate it if you acknowledged that". Those titles are tied to cities. And suddenly the project became much more interesting.

Instead of trying to build a definitive political map of the World of Darkness (a task that would probably require consulting fifty sourcebooks, three wikis and at least one Malkavian oracle) I decided to build a map using VTES titles. Every Prince, Baron and Archbishop became a marker on the globe. The result is not necessarily a perfect representation of modern canon, but it offers a fascinating glimpse into how VTES sees the world. Some cities have a single ruler standing proudly atop their domain. Others look like political disasters waiting to happen. There are places where multiple vampires claimed authority over the same city, which immediately raises important questions. 

Looking at the finished map feels a bit like peeking behind the curtain of the Jyhad itself. You begin to notice patterns. Certain regions are packed with influential vampires, while others seem strangely quiet. Some cities have enough competing leaders that they resemble a corporate board meeting organized by the Sabbat. As a Ventrue enthusiast, I naturally spent far too much time examining which cities have Princes. As a Tremere fan, I immediately started wondering which of those Princes are secretly being manipulated by someone else. Old habits die hard.

In any case, I wanted to share the result with fellow fans of both VTES and the World of Darkness. If you enjoy lore, politics, city domains, or simply seeing where vampires have decided to establish questionable governments, you might find it interesting. You can explore the map yourself using the link below. Just remember: every title on that map was earned through politics, betrayal, influence, violence or some combination of all four.

VTES Vampire Map

The game never ends, only pauses. I'll see you at the next move. 

Custodian Hargrave