Here is the winning deck for "Ascendance: 1", with comments from the
winner.  It's a very interesting combination deck using Pool Gain,
Votes, Intercept, and Bounce:

Name: Big Toreador Deck
By: Brian Wellington

"I usually call this the 'big Toreador deck'.  It's based around large
Toreadors with useful special abilities.  Most of them have votes, and
most have +bleed. The deck mostly tries to gain pool (5th Tradition,
Voter Cap, Minion Tap, Blood Doll, etc).  There are votes to call, and
the natural bleeds.  There's enough intercept to block a non-stealth
bleed deck, and a bit of bleed bounce.  There are a lot of untaps -
Wake, 2nd Tradition, and Alexandra and Masika's abilities.  Combat
defense is based around presence S:CE, celerity dodge and prevent, and
the Elysium.

"The deck mostly worked as planned in the tournament, with a few
surprises.  I torpored 6 vampires in the final round with Catatonic Fear
and celerity cards, which has never happened before.  Very few votes
succeeded (I never used a Voter Cap), but bleeding worked fairly well.
I also never saw a duplicate vampire in a game, which is often a problem
with this crypt, and it also helped that I didn't see any other Toreador
decks."

Crypt:

2 Felicia Mostrom
2 Anson
2 Masika
2 Francois Villon
2 Anneke
2 Alexandra

Library:
3 Aching Beauty
1 Dreams of the Sphinx
2 Art Museum
2 Society Hunting Ground
3 Blood Doll
1 Elysium: The Arboretum
4 Minion Tap
1 The Rack
1 Tomb of Rameses III
1 Toreador Grand Ball
3 Information Highway
1 Giant's Blood
4 Telepathic Counter
3 Enhanced Senses
4 Telepathic Misdirection
2 Eagle's Sight
1 Precognition
5 Majesty
2 Entrancement
3 Catatonic Fear
4 Voter Captivation
3 Bewitching Oration
5 Sideslip
2 Side Strike
3 Acrobatics
2 Alacrity
4 The Second Tradition: Domain
3 The Fifth Tradition: Hospitality
5 Wake with Evening's Freshness
1 Consanguineous Boon
1 Scorn of Adonis
4 Kine Resources Contested
1 Protect Thine Own
1 Banishment
2 Disputed Territory
1 Ancient Influence
1 Parity Shift

Coordinator's final comments:

With 22 players, this was the most successful tournament that I have
thrown in New Jersey to date.  Players from many neighboring states were
present.  Many of the locals didn't show up as expected, so we could
have easily had 30 players if they had.

The participants were good sports, the environment was great, and the
tournament ran very smoothly (helped by "The Archon", my Excel-based
tournament tracking system that I created for this purpose).  There was
a lot of camaraderie, and not a lot of cutthroat competitiveness.
Participants came from far and wide to play in the tournament, which
certainly makes me feel great!