If there is a deck archetype that I really enjoy playing, but I usually avoid in tournament, is rush combat deck. It’s fun making combat, ant the combat mechanics of vampire offer you a lot of variants, so that you have a lot of different ways to make your opponent fall into torpor, or just burn him in combat. But let’s talk about the archetype.

The combat

Well, its a combat deck, so in principle you have the ways to kill your enemies in combat, before it kills you. Talking about that in this text would be like water in the rain. But there are a couple of problems that combat decks often get in their combats, specially at tournament level.

- When you go out for combat, you normally need to kill, so Strike Combat Ends, its a real threat, and every  rush combat deck at tournament level have to deal with it. Well, the weenie rush deals with it normally by repeating the target, but that’s the weenie way. There are too types of way getting the kill, the first is to don’t let your opponent fall out of combat, by force. In this way you play cards after the S:CE as entered effect, ignoring its efect, Psyche! and Telepathic tracking are the most common forms of this. It as the advantage of making your opponent waste the S:CE card, but in the other hand you don’t get the efect of your strikes of the first combat. If you are using permanent effects, like aggravated hands, weapons and other stuff, this is the best option normally. And you prevent Röthshreck at the same time. But if you want to kill right away, your best way is to denial the chance of your opponent using S:CE at all. Oliver Thrace has it from itself, but you cannot always make rush decks with him. Permanent cards like Blessing of Chaos, are a good help but only from some types of combat ends. The two main choices for this kind of thing continues to be Immortal Grapple and Thoughts betrayed. When you play one of them, you’re opponent, if not a combat deck itself, have if fate doomed.

- The other thing that you’ll have to think is what to do with the torporized vampires. If you send them into torpor with mass damage, it’s not a hard thing to let them stay on torpor, but in the other end if you send them by trick (like Coma, Entombment), or by aggravated poke, you must do something. If must or diablerize, or make the vampire your own. Graverobbing is an excellent addition. But never let a vampire with blood on torpor alone, because he’ll come back.
The way to get the VP’s

This is the hard part of playing a combat deck. You’ll be killing vampires at your prey because he is your prey. Killing vampires of your predator because its your way of defence. Probably killing some vampires cross table for the control of the table. But what about the thing that gives you victory, getting the VP done?
I think that all the rush combat deck players tasted the frustration of killing a horde of vampires at the table, but in the end getting nothing of it, leaving the table with 0 vp’s. Its hard, but its very common. Some people say that Rush Combat its the harder way of winning in tournament, and I tend to agree. But there are some weapons.

- Fame: Definitively its the best solution to kill using rush, but its not enough normally. Even with the old trick of rescuing the opposite vampire from torpor, and getting him down again, you need more power.

- Tension in the ranks: If you don’t play weenie, or your combat is too risky making you go into torpor a lot, its a good card. But always have the problem that it’s easily destroyed, by discarding 2 master cards. It’s not the most regular card, but is pretty strong.

- Dragonbound: I truly like this card. It’s true that this card have a strong drawback, since you loose one permanent hand size to play it. It can be harsh, and could mean that you have a bigger change of handjam. But it’s a reliable source of damaging a lot of people. You need to think before putting it into play, since it’s almost indestructible once in play, and evaluate all the conditions. Nonetheless it’s a strong card.

- Anarch Revolt: Kill all the vampires your prey has, and are not anarchs, and get multiples copies of anarch revolt. A classic, but still a great choice.

- Bleeding: Well, even without any cards all vampires can bleed. And if your prey doesn’t have vampires to defend itself, it’s a choice. But never forget, this is only a true power strategy if you play weenie. Because 8 bleeds of 1, are a strong bleeding power.