One of the biggest weaknesses of classic firearms decks is that the moment the shooters take damage, they can no longer use firearms. Clashing Boom-Boom fixes that directly, making firearms decks more relevant. This was my first attempt to make such a deck. 

Characters

• 1 Dharma Bum
• 1 Roger Daly
• 1 Syntax
• 1 Haunts-the-Skyline
• 1 Quari Filth
• 1 Firyal the Whip

Some of these characters make more sense than others. Roger Daly is because he takes care of his prey's shooters (and I really wanted to make use of one of the first big cards I opened). The rest are all Homids with duplicates in Bone Gnawers and Glass Walkers to make sure all the sept deck can be used. And mostly above Renown 2 so they can't be massacred by Breath of the Defiled.

Quari has a really useful bonus ability to remove opponents' combat cards, so he will always have a place in the deck.

Sept

• 2 Junkyard 'Dog'
• 2 Monster Joe's Truck-n-Tow
• 2 Clashing Boom Boom
• 3 Arms Dealer
• 3 Flak Jacket
• 2 Kinfolk Small Town Cop
• 3 Sneak Attack
• 3 Friends in High Places
• 1 Sniper Rifle
• 1 Dreamspeaker Mage
• 3 Shotgun
• 3 The Tide
• 3 Big Game Hunter
• 2 Dead Zone
• 2 Checking the Classifieds
• 1 Endron Security Team
• 3 Recycle

At almost 40 cards, this is a large sept deck; but the huge amount of searching available means that you will burn through this deck. A third of the deck replaces itself on the same turn: you could draw a The Tide with Recycling, use it search for Arms Dealer and the latter to find a Shotgun. The Recycles are a late addition because it is possible by the beginning of turn 4 to be drawing cards you just recycled - likely Sneak Attacks and Friends in High Places.

Dead Zone means we aren't using any of my usual Ragabash fun, including Stands Like a Fool since it's not a requirement of the strategy.

I think 22 Renown of prey is excessive, since other options should present themselves, but I added the last one since 3x The Tide will soon find them all. They are, of course, all wielding firearms so Roger  + pack attacks should make their deaths simplicity itself.

Combat

• 1 Rapid Reload
• 2 Full Auto
• 1 Pistol Whip
• 1 Fancy Footwork
• 2 Duck and Cover
• 1 Vital Blow
  
• 1 Overextended Attack
• 2 Lucky Blow
• 1 Hunting Party
• 1 Rally to Battle
• 1 Cornered Rat
• 1 Stunning Strike
• 2 Dismember
• 1 Attacking the Wyrm
• 1 Taking the Death Blow
• 1 Dry Gulch

Despite there being lots of good 7 Rage combat actions, this deck caps off at Vital Blow. It does what you would expect: pack combat with various card draw. With a cycle of Sneak Attacks and Friends, you should hopefully get into combat where you can swamp the target; with a Taking the Death Blow (onto an Arms Dealer or Kinfolk Cop) if you get into trouble.

The original First Team #21 had the issue that it overwhelming combat drawer was entirely dependent on T.F. MacNeil and anything like Blossom, Expulsion or even a Wyldstorm would cripple the deck. So we brought in a new team where the card draw and other benefits were a lot more spread.

The version of the deck I found looked cool but had all sorts of odd choices, so I've tweaked a few things. Notably, I removed all the prey and excesses of firearms to add more Gifts and some New Moons. I wanted to tailor this as a character-killing deck and that means prevent fox frenzies.

I went from choosing a tournament deck as that seemed like a good choice to publish to creating a completely overhauled deck I've never played. But it at least contains some fun interactions.

Characters

• 1 Elwood 'Slicer' Nedervitch (Crinos)
• 1 Carlotta Stearns
• 1 Leergo Cat Swallower
• 1 Charlene Brell
• 1 Melvin Spivey

Charlene is the best person to use for Sniper Fire, to keep her as safe as she can be. Obviously, Melvin is the main user of In the Public Eye.

Sept

• 3 Shotgun
• 2 In the Public Eye
• 3 Webbing
• 3 Psychotic Hallucinations
• 2 Rocket Launcher
• 3 Sneak Attack
• 2 Friends in High Places
• 3 Whispering Campaign
• 2 Consumption of Gaia
• 1 Unseelie Troll
• 2 New Moon
• 1 Caern of Rytthiku
• 3 Stuck Sideways

You have five firearms in your deck. Yes, did you know that Rocket Launcher is a firearm? Arguably you might want more

The gifts take advantage of the three Eater-of-Souls characters, leaving you with a lot of counters. Whispering Campaign counters pack defence, Consumption of Gaia prevents a lot of gifts, New Moon prevents fox frenzies whilst it's out (although your combat deck has answers to other frenzies) and Stuck Sideways not only prevents Umbral Escape but also may give you extra targets if you pick a secondary character. Troll gives you a backup in case Charlene is removed whilst Caern of Rytthiku gives you an answer if your targets become elusive.

Combat

• 2 Rally to Battle
• 1 Sniper Fire
• 1 Cornered Rat
• 2 Stunning Strike
• 2 Dismember
• 2 Whirlwind Defense
• 1 Iron Skin
• 1 Rapid Reload
• 2 Overextended Attack
• 1 Entrail Rend
• 1 Aggressive Bite
• 1 Dry Gulch
• 2 "'Eat Hot Lead, Dog Breath'
• 1 Lobotomy

The combat decks has four ways to draw combat cards. Which should mean that even if your opponent manages to avoid damage first time round, you can draw it back again. Additionally, Rally to Battle allows you to flip your characters sot that they can use Aggressive Bite to prevent Umbral Escapes (as well as other escapes).

The blocking strategy is reasonably comprehensive (for a round or two). Between hot lead, double Dismember and the Whirlwind Defences, all but the most dangerous attacks will be mitigated whilst a variety of unblockable or undodgeable damage is dealt. The Stunning Strikes are the main counters to frenzies, doubled in case of double frenzies.

Whilst  the deck strategy manifests quickly due the intrinsic power of automatic pack attacks, I think testing would give suggestions on improving this deck. I'm not sure what that might be at the time of posting.

This deck was a playtest deck, trying to take advantage of Sense Prey - how many victims can I make use of in a Gaia deck? That led me inevitably to pack-defending prey and Gang Beating. The name was a typo, but I'm sticking with it.

Sense Prey: “Reveal the top 5 cards of target sept deck. If any of the revealed cards are Victims, place them in the Hunting Grounds. The Gift user gains Victory Points from killing Victims this turn. Shuffle the sept deck after using this Gift.”

Since Sense Prey just requires Animal Breed so you can take your pick of splats, but after looking through the champions I worked out that Blood-on-the-Wind is perfect. As a Wendigo, this is a perfect deck to abuse Knife Wind and War Lodge, and he has a nifty ability.

Characters

• 1 Blood-on-the-Wind
• 1 Old Storm-Chaser
• 1 Whispers-in-Pines

​ I often try to double-up on main combatants but this deck is risky if you can’t get enough cards out early, so I skipped having a second strong fighter to have Old Storm Chaser. Whispers fills in the gap because he is still big enough to attack those prey and/or to use Knife Wind.

Overall, this deck ticks the box of “Get into the fights you want.” It isn’t quite so tough about cancelling fights you don’t want, but then if it doesn’t win through speed it doesn’t have a lot else going for it. It has some answers to frenzy (basically Run Like Hell, Cat Feet or Flame Spirit), character removal (it has sufficient resilience to lose one temporarily) and hosers (Instinctive Attack) and gameplan disruption (because the prey pack defend, Gang Beating just makes the win more likely). 

In many ways, this is deck is an ode to my top Tribal War deck "I swear it was this big", although not as devastating.

Sept

• 3 Knife Wind
• 1 Blur of the Milky Eye
• 1 War lodge
• 3 Sense Prey
• 3 Catfeet
• 1 Wendigo
• 3 Bully's Quest
• 3 Child Soldier
• 3 Suburban High School Kid
• 2 Street Bum
• 2 Flame Spirit
• 2 Sneak Attack
• 3 Visit from White Father

This deck wants to give quick wins so it just has three combat enders - Catfeet. Catfeet can also work with you against prey mobs since we have seven 1-Rage combat actions. Because we are rushing through the deck as well, we only have 2 sneak attacks - and War Lodge. The Least Wanted version of Visit from the White Father is a lot more tactical than the printed version, but worth it in this deck since you want your combo pieces out. Bully’s Quest is an easy 2 VP each time. Finally, Flame Spirits can act as resilient (or disposable) alphas or fuel for War Lodge (or both).

Combat

• 1 Run Like Hell
• 1 Gang Beating
• 2 Off-balanced Attack
• 2 Stinging Wound
• 2 Bitch Slap
• 2 Lucky Blow
• 2 Instinctive Attack
• 2 Telling Blow
• 2 Head or Gut?
• 2 Fast Strike
• 2 Beat Unmerciful

This deck is capped at Rage 5. It has Head or Gut? and Telling Blow to ramp up those VP. All your pack members can use most of these cards. I’ve used all the Rage 1, Damage 2 cards for Catfeet, playing for Prey and so Flame Spirit can confidently wade into combat.

Deck and description by OG Mandarin; my additions in italics.
​Wyrm Deadzone: A Reason Not to Play Skin of the Hellbound

This is an aggro-control Wyrm deck that uses Lunar Eclipse and Deadzone to pave the way for high-damage combat actions. While your Deadzone is in play, you can’t use gifts or fetish equipment but you have protection against gifts like Eye of the Cobra, Whelp Body, Master of the Pack, Take the True Form and “freeze” gifts like True Fear, Body Wrack, and Distractions. Lunar Eclipse is an extra layer of control and can also stop a lot of your opponent’s gift cancelling (if they are playing gift cancelling with the Theurge requirement).

Deadzone was a big tournament card back in the day but I took more notice of it recently after seeing a guy from my local play group – Empty Apathy - use it in a control-based Gaia deck. Deadzone prevents your characters from using gifts so this deck uses Mage of the Celestial Chorus to play Body Wrack, Fetish Sundering, Distractions and Air of Authority. The other victims can each play some of these gifts and are there as backup for Mage.

There are two areas of dyssynergy here: (1) Glade Child will be removed by Mage of Celestial Chorus at the end of turn, so only drop her if you have a clear path to killing her same turn, or if you haven’t drawn a Mage yet. (2) Lunar Eclipse will prevent Angus and Wyldkin from using Distractions so consider holding onto Lunar Eclipse for a turn if you haven’t drawn Mage yet and want to fire one off. Mage can play Distractions using the Stargazers requirement so Lunar Eclipse doesn’t pose a problem for him. When you don’t need Mage, or if you have two, you can kill it for victory points.

Playing the deck is very simple: Get out the Beast of War totem to enable high rage combat action cards and use your victims to play your limited range of gifts. You don’t need to land many attacks so this deck can get away with playing a high percentage of dodges. You have good card economy here so the card disadvantage brought by Feint is less of a problem. The two Feints will help you slip around your opponent’s dodges or land a Disarm. Block and Strike is a nice counter for first round Suprise Attack and goes well with Head Wound, Mangle, Spine Crushed, Entrail Rend, Heart Breaker, or Rent Asunder.

If you need to bail yourself out of a combat gone wrong, you have your two Umbral Escapes. With all the high damage cards you play, Skin of the Hellbound is an obvious problem for this deck. If they drop Skin, you want to blow it up with Fetish Sundering (preferably during combat) or try to break them down the old-fashioned waying using Disarm. You’re going to need good draws to make Disarm work, probably alongside a Frenzy, Feint, and even a Bodywrack. Good news is that Disarm can’t be dodged, so you just want to make sure you don’t eat a Mangle or Headwound when you throw it out.

In a game full of cheesy cards, Skin of the Hellbound may be the cheesiest - the most able to collapse an outsized portion of the meta. Probably designed to curtail “champion style” decks that steamroll with high damage and good card economy (like this deck), Skin (in theory) tipped the meta more in favor of low-rage pack attack decks. When Skin is combined with characters like Tsannik, mass removal like Breath of the Defiled, in addition to the usual range of freeze cards and combat enders, it can become oppressive and make games stretch on a very long time. Unless the opponent plays low-rage combat cards, they will have to use Beast Mind or Redemption to deal with Skin, or if they’re playing Wyrm, they can play Fetish Sundering. Sticky Paws might also work. Skin has answers but I’ve seen it discourage players at the mid-level who weren’t prepared for it.

Characters

• 1x Zhyzhack
• 1x Allonzo Montoya
• 1x Fangthane Bloodjaw

OG Mandarin originally posted the deck with Count Vlad as well, making it a 30 Renown deck. Due the Dead Zone, the only non-combat card which has requirements is Beast-of-War.

Sept

• 3x Sneak Attack
• 1x Kids Love Arson
• 1x Legal Chicanery
• 3x Beast-of-War
• 3x Iron Will
• 3x Lunar Eclipse
• 2x Red Alert
• 1x Spirit Backlash
• 3x Visit from the White Father
• 1x Grrash Tak'hyrrr
• 1x Trinity Hive Caern
• 3x Dead Zone
• 1x Chantry
• 1x Naysayer's Hovel
• 1x Joseph Herlech
• 1x Angus the White Howler
• 1x Glade Child
• 3x Mage of the Celestial Chorus
• 1x Wyldkin Kami

Although this deck intends to fight Victims, having the Iron Will covers either alphas stepping in or (more likely) the victims playing gifts back. Kids Love Arson can have a second benefit of taking your character out of the game in a sticky situation. Note that there is only one other combat ended in sept, Air of Authority.

Combat

• 1x Battle Fervor
• 2x Frenzy
  
• 1x Block and Strike
• 1x Dodge
• 2x Evasion
• 2x Fancy Footwork
• 2x Disarm
• 2x Feint
• 2x Umbral Escape
• 1x Surprise Attack
• 2x Head Wound
• 2x Maim
• 2x Mangle
• 2x Spine Crushed
• 2x Entrail Rend
• 2x Heart Breaker
• 2x Rent Asunder

What's noticeable is how many of the combat actions require crinos form, and how many of them can take out a victim in a single blow. Rage on!

I like Maim because it locks people into combat, but you can also replace it with Massive Wound. If you don’t have Fancy Footwork you can replace that with an extra Dodge, Block and Strike, or Surprise Attack. ​​

​For this deck, I was glad to explore a different Wyrm strategy. Samuel Herlech isn’t necessary but he helps cut through annoying realms like Battlefield, Summer Country, and Wolfhome, allowing your big characters to rampage. If you don’t have Samuel, just add in an extra Red Alert, Wyldkin Kami, or a Subjugation of Gaia.

For a 20 Renown deck I would suggest some of the victims can be trimmed to take the sept closer to 30 cards. If using the Least Wanted version of Visit, you might find Checking the Classified works better for the deck. You could also reduce the duplication of the combat deck to bring it down to 20 cards.

One tactic in Rage is to move quickly to the Umbra and stay there, taking out umbral-only prey whilst your opponents duke it out in the physical world. This is one of those decks, but you get to have extra fun as Lake Nassar allows you to send your gifts over the gauntlet, with a few other ways to disrupt them.

The goal is that this buys you time to take out those mid-range Umbral Enemies.

Characters

• 1 Sand's Last King
• 1 Sweet Luna's Smile
• 1 Lone Wolf Circles

This is definitely a more unusual pack, in fact I've never seen Sweet Luna's Smile anywhere else. The key is that they can both get to 6 Rage with Primal Anger, whilst Smile can use all those delicious Children of Gaia gifts that you are using for disruption.

Sept

• 3 Dream Hunter
• 3 Elethoi
• 3 Lake Nasser Wallow
• 2 Rite of the Opened Caern
• 1 Mnesis Dreams
• 1 Animal Mummy
• 1 Oracle of Sobek
• 2 The Badger's Heart
• 1 Haunter
• 3 Carpet Snake
• 3 Chant of Morpheus
• 2 Primal Anger
• 2 Assegai
• 2 Fog
• 1 Dreamspeaker Mage

These characters don't have extra attacks available, so you are stuck to one attack per turn (and hoping that your opponents aren't around in the Umbra to disrupt you). However, Chant of Morpheus can take out your worst threat if required; or just slow down your main opposition. Badger's Heart is your best option against champion decks (but not much else). Animal Mummy can try and eliminate any single resource threat. Fog can be used defensively or as disruption. And you can get any of these back with Mnesis Dreams (eventually). 

There are some redundancies. You have a full suite of Carpet Snakes to make sure you can get Sand's safely to the Umbra as soon as possible, as well to give you extra flexibility to abuse the Dreamspeaker Mage. They are largely disposable later on. Haunter is a redundancy for Sweet Luna's Smile.

Assegai isn't for anything specific, but does stop Submission Hold. In the wider environment, it also counters Surprise Attack and the occasional Nerve cluster. Mainly it's there as an efficient armour against low level damage.

Combat

• 2 Flicker
• 2 Anatomy Lesson
• 1 Instinctive Attack
• 2 Searching for Weakness
• 2 Head Butt
• 2 Duck and Cover
• 2 Savage Beatdown
• 2 Block and Roll
• 1 Tail Lash
• 2 Aggressive Bite
• 1 Submission Hold
• 1 Desperate Struggles

There really are no good fan combat events for this deck, although you could swap Desperate Struggles for Cornered Rat or Ferocity. You really need to use your sept deck to ensure you aren't facing a high-Rage threat. Searching for Weakness seems weak, but covers you if you don't have enough Rage at a point in the combat where you can take the damage. Remember that your planned targets have a maximum of 5 Rage.

Aggressive Bite stops Run Like Hell mainly. Savage Beatdown, Anatomy Lesson and Submission Hold are all great when playing for prey; but also reasonable mid-range combat cards for just doing damage. Flicker is great, but also the only fan-set Umbra-only card. Oops.

This card needs more combat-draw options, maybe some combination of Reinforcements, Surprise Ally or a standard frenzy. It might also want a Run Like Hell (for prey) but I'm not sure it's necessary. I would also swap in a Vital Blow or two. But mainly, you are going to want to swap in at least one Redirected Attack.

The sept deck is even more where it wants to be. I really only want Sneak Attacks.

Not all factions are capable of running on fan sets alone, but the Ajaba are one of them. This is not going to be the best deck, but I think it's a good way to explore some cards people may not have seen or absorbed.

The deck is predominantly intended to take out Enemies, using Blur of the Milky Eye to prevent Wyrm alphas stepping in, whilst messing with your opponents to reduce their ability to take out their own targets.

Characters

• 1 Thousand Cubs
• 1 Ironjaw
• 1 Amber Eyes-Like-Knives
• 1 Njoki Scarface

There is nothing particularly special about these characters in this deck, although Amber can slow down decks with lots of resources. But you do have two reasonable champions to draw on, and Ironjaw doing an extra point of damage - wait until you can pump her Rage though.

Sept
I'm going to annotate these, but you can also search for multiple card titles in the spoilers.

• 1 Clan of Hyenas - Solid ally with an inbuilt escape clause.
• 2 Scavenger's Quest - Quest. If it works out, that's a free attack and a VP if you succeed.
• 3 Sense of the Prey - Gift. A weaker version of Sneak Attack.
• 3 Laughter of the Soul - Gift. Similar to Harano Gloom, very powerful for disrupting opponents.
• 2 Tzinzie - Personal totem that plays mind games with your opponents combat hands.
• 3 Termite Mounds - Territory. Lets you see what cards your opponent will be drawing and you can use all three. Combo with Tzinzie.
• 1 Gnaw - Gift. Destroys opposing equipment. Only a one-of since you mainly want to face prey.
• 2 Blur of the Milky Eye - Great Ragabash card, stops your opponents stepping in for prey.
• 2 Bitter Hatar - Enemy.
• 2 Ootani Oil Bane - Enemy.
• 3 Dust Storm - Forces an opponent to discard and redraw their carefully crafted combat hand.
• 1 Toreador Poseur - Enemy.
• 2 Primal Anger - Rage for health.
• 2 Dominance - Cancels action cards of those with lower Renown.
• 1 Animal Attraction - Steals an ally

No sneak attacks available leads to interesting deck building, although the Ajaba do have a good alternative. Messing with your opponents' hands will hopefully buy you time to take out enough Enemies, using Termite Mounds to get an idea of when you should deploy your other abilities. The Primal Angers are pretty critical though for making sure you can reliably use your combat cards.

Combat
CombatDeck:
2 Anatomy Lesson
1 Instinctive Attack
1 Overbear
1 Aggressive Bite
2 Duck and Cover
1 Savage Beatdown
1 Block and Roll
1 Searching for Weakness
2 Leaping Rake
1 Mangle
2 The Whole Nine Yards
1 Spring the Trap
1 Bar the Way
1 Chew
1 Head Butt
1 Vicious Assault
The combat deck is the weakest part of this deck without a lot of the usual tricks. It was even worse before I added a couple of disposable The Whole Nine Yards (frenzies) and Spring the Trap (pack action). The latter is particularly useful with the Clan of Hyenas.

However, there are few things to draw out. Overbear is an awkward card but, if it hits, it can be combined with a Leaping Rake to take out any of your prey; or Spring the Trap for a double undodgeable hit. Mangle is a effectively a one-shot kill against your prey targets, but can also be played by prey (especially if you started with Searching for Weakness).

I want to highlight Aggressive Bite as a great way to stop Run Like Hell, Umbral Escape and Fox Frenzy. In fact, it prevents almost any escape if it lands. I swapped in the second Aggressive Bite for Bar the Way from the Rokea set: it's more reliable, but does less. Still very effective against Run Like Hell.

On the contrary, Anatomy Lesson is a great card for your prey to make any attackers withdraw (if they aren't frenzied). Savage Beatdown is real punisher for frenzies as they randomly lose half their hand. And there are four instinctive cards in the deck.

The deck would obviously benefit from substituting some of the five conditional attacks for reliable Sneak Attacks. You might also want to swap in Friends in High Places for the Dominance if your table likes its 10 Renown champions. Because you are playing Ragabash, you almost certainly want to find space for Stand Like a Fool - but do consider whether the disruption already in the deck is more effective, especially with instinctive actions available.

In the combat deck, you probably want to consider swapping in a normal frenzy, certainly a Taking the Death Blow; and probably swap the Spring the Trap for a Surprise Ally. There are some Combat Actions that might be more effective, but to be honest it's not clear what they might be.

The card I did consider is Stunning Strike as an extra option against frenzy, but between Savage Beatdown and Mangle you might have enough.

This is really a Legacy of the Tribes Special. When they released Questor, he really wanted to benefit from killing lots of prey... but in classic Rage there are very few ways for that to happen. Luckily there are victims which will attack you by themselves if you look right.

This deck is about pacing yourself so you can be attacked as many times as you can cope with each round.

Characters

• 1 Blossom
• 1 Questor
• 1 Longtooth Soulkiller

This counts as a double champion deck... even though the champions are not the biggest. They are, however, right for this deck and double for each other. It also leaves exactly the right amount of space for Blossom, the bane of many champion decks (and no answers in classic Rage).

Sept

• 3 Renegade Werewolf Hunter
• 3 Vigilante
• 3 Wild Animals
• 1 Tambertail's heart
• 1 Chronicle of the Black Labyrinth
• 1 War Knife of Benning Simon
• 1 Whip of the Wicked
• 3 Skin of the Hellbound
• 2 Vampire Blood
• 2 Spiral Boomerang
• 3 Sneak Attack
• 3 Friends in High Places
• 1 The Pit
• 3 Gaia's Will Corrupted

The core of the deck are the 9 victims, Gaia's Will Corrupted and a bit of Chronicle of the Black Labyrinth /The Pit (the latter two never did too much for me, but are definitely flavourful). The equipment and The Pit largely serve to back up the strategy by making it harder for the victims or other attackers to deal lasting harm. The Spiral Boomerangs and Tambertail's Heart really dissuade opponents from attacking you, allowing you to end combats you aren't involved in to slow down your opponents.

Combat

• 1 Frenzy
• 1 Taking the Death Blow
• 1 Fox Frenzy
• 2 Vital Blow
• 2 Block and Strike
• 1 Curb Stomp
• 2 Dry Gulch
• 1 Septum Crushed
• 1 Lucky Blow
• 2 Evasion
• 1 Fancy Footwork
• 1 Dodge
• 2 Off-balanced Attack
• 1 Overextended Attack
• 1 Shieldmate

The Frenzy, Taking the Death Blow and Fox Frenzy are fairly obvious. I'm not sure you need the Fox Frenzy but you can normally discard it if you don't need it. You have a bunch of 4 damage combat cards to take care of the six victims with 4 Health; and some Rage 1 cards in case of Vital Blow. And a good selection of dodges so you can outguess your opponent.

I am sure my actual deck (buried in a cupboard) is better tuned than this, but that's what practice is for.

The biggest question in this deck is which characters to play. When I built this deck, I didn't have Zhyzhak so didn't have much often; plus I just like Questor. If your opponent does have a character which the victims might attack instead, Blossom can take them out for you. So I would suggest this is, in fact, the optimal build. But do experiment.

I don't think there are any obvious substitutions, although it might be worth swapping in a single Massive Wound; and you may find that you want to swap in more 4-damage cards.

Pentex isn't the power house that the garou (or vampires) are, but there are some combo cards that can shine if played right. One such is Wailer, a simple 4 cost character who can stymie any number of opponents merely by flipping. This deck combines that with all the boosters and and allies to make pack combat an evil, repeatable nasty. 

Your goal is to get allies into play and then pack attack any target you think that Wailer can successfully flip on. Then frenzy or otherwise flip Wailer; or use Roar of the Wyrm; so your targets have to just sit there and take the damage. Rage has always supported decks who control combat, and this is a good example.

Characters

• 1 Wailer
• 1 Barnaby Shadrack
• 1 Blossom
• 1 Fangs-Through-Eye

Wailer is the core of the deck, but Barnaby can actually help whack your targets with his submachine gun as well as drawing the rest of your pack and other tricks. Fangs is just a strong body, although he can give you Beast-of-War.  Blossom is there to run control.

Sept

• 3 Mass Pollution
• 3 Shapeshift
• 3 Sneak Attack
• 3 Enticer
• 3 Gooshy Gooze
• 2 Beast-of-War
• 3 Roar of the Wyrm
• 2 Stench of Death
• 3 Caern of the Unwashed Child
• 3 Infectious Touch
• 2 Unseelie Troll
• 3 Pentex Executive and Limousine
• 2 Kinfolk Small Town Cop
• 2 Greenpeace Assault Team
• 1 A Bus Full of People

One of the two large groups are cards which can frustrate your opponent and, as it happens, support your abuse of Wailer's ability. Caern of the Unwashed Child is especially powerful in this deck so it's worth having three to get it out first; whilst Infectious Touch is rarely as useful as it seems it should be. Shapeshift is rarely useful as a card, but I thought it was fun to try here to allow your to put Wailer back into Homid form, ready to frenzy again. Roar of the Wyrm is there as a backup option, but only Wailer can use it.

The second group are your allies. Pentex Executives and Limousines are a risk since they are juicy kills to make; but their ability to wreck havoc with caerns make them hard to pass up.

Three special notes. Sneak Attacks, in this deck, might be best once you have an alpha so you can use Ass Whuppin' Lynch Mob. And careful with Beast-of-War that you don't undermine your Wailer. However the combat resilience of the extra Rage is worth including it for.  The deck is also, at 38 cards, on the large side; but that's because Barnaby gives you a chance of drawing all those cards.

Combat

• 1 Hunting Party
• 1 Ass Whuppin' Lynch Mob
• 1 Shieldmate
• 1 Taking the Death Blow
• 1 Head or Gut ?
• 1 Beat Unmerciful
• 2 Lucky Blow
• 2 Overextended Attack
• 2 Reckless Swing
• 1 Surprise Attack
• 2 Off-balanced Attack
• 2 Stinging Wound
• 1 Dodge
• 2 Run Like Hell
• 1 Fancy Footwork

The combat deck is mainly low-Rage damage cards, with a smattering of 4- and 5-Rage cards. It differs from Gaia weenie because it only has one Hunting Party; generally you should end up with one Hunting Part or Lynch Mob in your hand after every mass combat. Instead it has a shieldmate, so you can bring in Wailer whoever they attack. Finally, it's "only" 21 cards - the 21st is Head or Gut? - for the same reason.

It's worth noting that you aren't expecting a huge lot of damage back: at full deployment, your opponent is at -5 Rage and -6 Gnosis. Most decks aren't prepared for that and will have to escape or go home (which is why you have a Beat Unmerciful, since Run Like Hell and Fox Frenzy may be the only two repeatable escapes they can use).

I remember using Wailer in a Wyrm weenie deck. It had fewer sept cards but its theme was largely the same. I used the Barnaby version here to show how impactful he is. It makes the deck slightly less reliable; but probably more effective.

The sept deck probably requires fewer cards and if you feel you can eliminate some after testing then go for it. You could tweak the combat deck to include some Head Wounds or simply Dry Gulches and maybe some more evasion; which would make it easier to defend prey or do more damage; but I'm not it's required with the Rage denial in your sept deck.

If you were lucky or wealthy enough to get a Count Vlad, this was the deck you wanted him for (or some variant on it). It takes the characters with the highest stats in the game and some consistent Gift options and combines them with frenzy and a heavy combat deck. And lots of healing.

The deck wants you to get into combat and smash things. It's a classic double-champion deck.

Characters

• 1 Allonzo Montoya
• 1 Count Vladimir Rustovitch
• 1 Juicy Johnes

Not belonging to main splats, these two champions can't use a lot of non-Gift cards; but they have lots of good gifts. Whilst Black Spiral Dancers do have good stats, these have better

Sept

• .2 Horns of the Impaler
• 2 Wyrm Hide
• 2 Patagia
• 3 True Fear
• 1 Caern of Rytthiku
• 1 "Kirijama, 'The Hidden Foe'
• 3 Consumption of Gaia
• 2 Subjugation of Gaia
• 2 Eyes of Hate
• 3 Sneak Attack
• 3 Friends in High Places
• 1 Spiral Boomerang
• 1 Mage's Talisman
• 3 Skin of the Hellbound
• 1 Whip of the Wicked

As well as the usual, this deck has extra combat enders (Spiral Boomerang/Patagia), disrupters (Consumption/Subjugation of Gaia) and the mirror-match friendly Skin of the Hellbound. Eyes of Hate and Whip of the Wicked are mean ways to control what your opponent plays and leads to some interesting timing as you try and guess when they will play the first card you would worry about. Horns of the Impaler are not critical, just give you a little resilience.

Combat

• 1 Surprise Ally
• 2 Frenzy
• 1 Taking the Death Blow
• 1 Umbral Escape
• 1 Run Like Hell
• 2 Mangle
• 2 Entrail Rend
• 2 Vital Blow
• 2 Dry Gulch
• 1 Disarm
• 2 Feint
• 2 Dodge
• 1 Evasion

This is a very damage-heavy combat deck. You have the expected combat events. Run Like Hell is an emergency release. Whilst timing of when you play evasion/escape/damage is critical, that's about as subtle as the combat deck.

The one thing that's different is the Surprise Ally, to give you double the firepower. Remember you can always play it just to draw a card (when attacking), without bringing in a packmate.

You could choose to swap in combat actions that your champions can play before they flip to crinos. Otherwise, there aren't any immediate swaps I would think about.

This is largely based on my favourite deck from the classic era. Most of the deck are commons, there's lots of disruption and it gives those rare frenzy decks a run for their money. Putting this deck here feels like I'm giving away my old secrets. Unfortunately, large packs tend to make Lackey unhappy so I didn't play it as much later on. 

The goal of this deck is similar to frenzy decks, but focuses much more on enemies. Against a low Rage enemy, especially against high Rage decks, you can play tactically without Stand Like a Fool. But if you have a Stand Like a Fool, there are very few decks which can survive a single round against you.

Characters:
Characters:

• 1 Carleson Ruah
• 1 Susan Anthony with a Kinfolk Small Town Cop
• 1 Frenar
• 1 Dharma Bum
• 1 Passer
• 1 Banana Split
• 1 Jubati
• 1 Cesare Sodalis

Carleson Ruah is the single most important character in your deck because it allows you to have a Renown 0 alpha who acts first. So no matter how big the other alphas, you get first dibs at whatever is in the Hunting Grounds and, if they attack you, they get nothing to show for it. The other characters are a combination of synergistic abilities and with the ability to play your sept deck. Banana Split is just nifty as an extra Stand like a Fool.

One thing to note is that this is a post-Wyrm version which means it can survive a Breath of the Defiled should somebody actually play it. 

Sept deck

• 3 Stand like a Fool
• 2 Sticky Paws
• 3 Ka Spirit
• 1 Flame Spirit
• 1 Wyldstorm
• 3 Friends in High Places
• 3 Sneak Attack
• 3 New Moon
• 2 Kinfolk Small Town Cop
• 1 Dreamspeaker Mage
• 2 Sky River Caern
• 2 Pentex Refinery
• 2 Pentex First Team 43
• 2 Chainsaw

In this version, I really went to town on those low Renown allies, all of whom are fantastic in a Hunting Party; but shout out to the Ka Spirits who might never die. New Moons are your answer to frenzy. Even though they are less effective against some Wyrm decks if you're playing by older versions of the rules, they are still really good in the deck. As a combat deck, it has the full suite of Sneak Attacks, Friends and stymies. Wyldstorm is in there because there are very few good decks for this silly card - it's often not that effective for you. There are a few top cards in there to give you extra protection.

Kinfolk Cops do double duty of attacker and a way of locking down opponents. More effective against some decks than others.

Combat deck

• 2 Hunting Party
• 1 Taking the Death Blow
• 1 Attacking the Wyrm
• 2 Bitch Slap
• 2 Off-balanced Attack
• 2 Stinging Wound
• 2 Run Like Hell
• 2 Lucky Blow
• 2 Overextended Attack
• 1 Surprise Attack
• 2 Reckless Swing
• 2 Dodge
• 1 Bite
• 2 Entrail Rend

I found that this deck always needed to be oversized, otherwise you wouldn't be able to draw enough cards. Whilst Attacking the Wyrm allows you more attackers, and is ideal for alpha actions, it can't be used with Sneak Attacks. You have three so you should always have one in hand, ideally the one you need. The Entrail Rends can be bluffed if you get through all your opponents playable cards. A lot of decks don't have a lot of low-Rage cards so that happens. But you also have a couple of Chainsaws. They are essentially there so you can finish off a large opponent, otherwise you would struggle.

Run Like Hell are for prey, and Taking the Death Blow are to protect your key characters (Carleson mainly, but also Banana Split if you haven't used his ability). 

I never came across a better weenie deck than this, but there are other things you can do with the combat deck. If you add more weapons (Flamethrowers or Shotguns probably), you can add cards like Head Wound or Beat Unmerciful (to counter Run Like Hell). You can also tweak the numbers and probably remove Sky River Caern for Visit from the White Fathers. And of course you can swap characters to include your favourites. Tim Rowantree was in one version.