I haven't heard any of these floating around, so I thought I'd start:
The basic idea around my deck was get select vamps of mine into torpor and then use that for massive effect. Here are what I had planned:
Alice Trudeaux and Rue were to be my victims. Since they both had Fortitude and Auspex, they would make this deck work well. Rue's Thaumaturgy protected her with Stone Slumber, and I had enough Necromancy floating around that I had Ward for the Deceased and Gift of Hades ready to save them if necessary. I also carried a couple SR's for the rogue Vulnerability.
Once I had them in torpor, one would serve as "blocker" while the other would be my blood gainer, by using Regeneration and multiple Blood Dolls. The "blocker" would use copious amounts of The Dreaming to give anyone who needed it intercept.
This idea should have given me the time to whittle everyone else down with Anarch Revolts, Smiling Jack, and Antediluvian Awakening.
It didn't work out that way, mostly because my prey (Rob) decided I was a bigger target than his prey. Also, the vote defense in this deck was minimal, which my predator (Demos) exploited. While I was in the game, there was a considerable amount of cross-table action. I like this. Most specifically, I very specifically targetted Dave when he was dying when he played a Minion Tap that I Sudden Reversaled. My reasoning for that was that both Demos and Justin (my prey and grandprey) had vampires with very low levels of blood. If I kept them weak with Smiling Jack, they wouldn't be able to do much against me while I worked on Rob, who worked on Michael, who worked on Justin... Then I got hit with the KRC before I could get someone in torpor. I didn't expect that.
One interesting effect was that once people knew that I was trying to go to torpor, they spent some effort protecting my vampires from their own destruction. I don't think I've ever experienced that in the game before, but the tactic made me lose quickly. I should probably have kept those plans a little more secret.
I didn't see any cards that I really felt were abusive in this game. I must admit that my strategy was only possible with the playtest cards and vampires; Rudolpho G. was the only non-playtest vamp I used.
I'm looking forward to how others felt about this game. I'm afraid I'm going to have to take a break from moderating for now; I've got a Master's thesis due in a few weeks.
Okay, my own thoughts.
My deck was supposed to be a basic Malk stealth and bleed deck, but with extra combat defense via the playtest card hidden presence. I did this because it always seemed to me that the biggest vulnerability of the malks was to rush combat, and I figured this might be a way to abuse the playtest cards.
I also used delusions of grandeur and the 5th tradition to make sure that my vamps would have enough blood to pay for expensive cards and pool gain via minion tap.
After a slow start because of my predator's (John Baker) employment of a completely non-standard strategy, it manage to function approximately as I had planned, and I was able to pick up the last 3 vps.
In conclusion, however, I don't think that the new cards actually caused any sort of a problem since using them forced me to water down the usual stealth and bleed.
The new vamps (I used Yves, Hadrian, and Ina, who never came out) were solidly useful. Hadrian in particular was pretty nifty, although I really missed his votes a couple of times.
As a side note, I'm surprised that Michael didn't use Erkki, since he has all the right disciplines and a nifty special ability.
Fellow playtester !
My deck had not so much to do with testing playtest cards but with trying to void the setites (at least that was the initial idea :)
I went through the cards and looked for effective defence against setites that also should use as few cards as possible. IMO any setite based deck would need lots of low capacity vamps and I realized Corruption's Purge would deal with them nicely.
We also had a discussion wether potence is dangerous or easily defended against and sice I think potence is dangerous I decided to make a point here as well.
Both of the above resulted in Brujah politics (BTW: they have the most and lowest capacity titles of all clans).
My deck started out furiously. Too bad we didn't have any setites around - I couldn't make use of Corruption's Purge :-)
After a first quick oust I came across Justin's weenie fighters which IMO did remarkable well. They also demonstrated I'd need maneuvers in my deck - Constanza would not have gone to torpor had I had a maneuver handy.
I also had too few KRC in my deck - this and Justin's weenies demonstrated the vulnerability of my design: his weenies were better fighters due to them having more combat cards at their disposal. I didn't even consider my deck could be outfighted :-)
My bleeddefence was in place (quite a few Deflection in the deck). However I had lots of 2nd Tradition but only a few WWEF and thus couldn't use them when I needed them most.
Regarding playtest cards:
while selecting cards for my strategie I simply didn't come across
new cards that would fit nicely into my initial idea and thus I skipped
them. However I included Jurgen Braun who didn't come out.
I didn't see _new_ cards that I'd consider too strong or abusive though.
I was playing a version of SoL with JJZ and Voodoo Dolls, but before I could get started, I was ousted. Way too quickly in my opinion. Never got off the ground.
Well, my deck was straightforward: weenies with Potence. Rush, Increased Strength xN, Immortal Grapple, Undead Strength/Pushing the Limits/Mighty Grapple, plus Taste of Vitae and Pulled Fangs/Disarm when possible. The only playtest library cards I used were Secret Diablerie and Minor Rampage. Sceret Diablerie was fine and useful, and Minor Rampage I never got a chance to use.
My crypt had 5 playtest vampires (Ms Meddle, Cletus, Pepin, Felice, Dantice); all of whom seemed fine.
The deck did well in combat, although it suffered from not having enough Immortal Grapples -- it should have had about twice as many (a mistake of mine for which I can only plead temporary insanity). Fake Outs and Bum's Rushes provided all the manuevers I needed. There were a couple embarrasing hand-jams when I played some Increased Strengths but didn't pull a strike card; those were just random bad luck.
The deck had 2 main problems. First was that it had no way to oust people except for swarm bleeds for 1. This proved to be harder than I thought, because although I was able to bring out lots of vamps (there were only 2 left in my crypt at the end) they tended not to last very long. Thus it took me until nearly the end of the game to oust my prey, even though I successfully kept him paralyzed for most of it.
The second problem was cardflow; the deck was built on the principle "handjam bad, cardflow good", but during the course of the game, I ran through ~90 (out of 100) cards. By the end, I was trying to carefully ration my last handful of combat cards, which is precisely what the deck *wasn't* supposed to have to do. And, since I didn't have any permanents other than Potence Cards and Haven Uncovered, after running out I would have literally nothing to do.