Okay for more resources, see here and here
The most success I’ve had is with Tower + Scribe + Onimaru.
Trust me that no matter what you do in the first few turns, you will come out behind on board. A start like Vandy + Jav + Haunt with follow-up into Deteriorate / StW is hard for any starter to handle, and blue especially struggles with it having very little aggressive-trading units.
Your goal is to stick Newsman on 0 and Traffic Director / Building Inspector + tower + tech 1 in the first two turns, then set up Onimaru behind Scribes and Cadets, maybe Tax Collector if you’re feeling frisky.
The primary issue is Vandy levels super cheap and gets cards for free with Dark Pact, so she makes super good trades in the first four turns, and if she hits maxband with a Hero’s Hall she’s of IMMEDIATE danger.
Honestly I’ve played 20-ish games of this matchup, and Vandy → HH → Garth → Disease Tech 2 → Threaten Crows or Metamorph is SUPER hard to deal with. Peace machine is a little too slow to stop Vandy threatening Meta, Law running Scribes and Insurance Agents to land a Censorship Council and play for Lawbringer is a tight squeeze, and Truth just gets wrecked by Deteriorate + Dark Pact (and don’t say “Put Newsman on 0”, you can’t protect him from board pressure / StW for long at all).
Blue P2 against a Black P1 that plays the above line is, in my guesstimation, 20% to win at best in an expert v expert matchup. I’d love to be wrong about this, but the games I’ve played of the matchup don’t suggest as much, as I’ve tried a LOT of different things as Blue.
Free Speech can help, but it’s expensive and leaves you very beatable on the board; Quince usually just gives free levels. Injunction doesn’t matter at all to Vandy + Garth, they’ll play at tech 0 and just metamorph. Elite Training can help but it’s expensive and Oni is liable to give away levels. Maxing out Oni to try and Base Race can get close by Garth usually gets a nether drain off to kill Oni before you can make it to double hammer range.
Really the tower and good draws vs bad draws for Black are about as good as you can hope for. If you find a better solution, please let me know!