Revenge of the meek - Tzimisce S&B

Well, once in a while I try to do a deck that try to actually work, by basing it on simple and proven concept. This one is one of them, even if it mainly play the gr3-4 obfuscate tzimisce, which have not a reputation of extreme power.

Vampires
2x Laika 7
2x Lady Zara Slatiskov 8
2x Cyscek 10
1x Elizabeth Wescott 5
1x Petra 5
1x Guedado 4
1x Ana Rita Montana 5
1x Yuri Kerezenski 5


Master: 15
4x Blood Doll
4x Villein
2x Wider View
2x Dream of the Sphinx
1x Library hunting ground
1x Pentex Subversion
1x Anarch Troublemaker

Combat : 18
6x Disguised Weapon
4x Aura Reading
2x Chiroptean marauder
6x Carrion Crow

Combo : 4
4x Swallowed by the night

AM : 14
6x Changelin
1x Elder Impersonation
1x Cloak the Gathering
1x Faceless Night
1x Into thin air
1x Spying mission
1x Veil the Legion
2x Mind of the Wild

Equipment : 6
5x .44 magnum
1x Ivory Bow

Action : 10
8x Fiend Tongue
1x Soul Decoration
1x Pulse of the Canaille

Retainer : 5
3x Revenant
1x Mylan Horseheed
1x J. S. Simmons, Esq.

Reaction : 18
4x Read the Wind
4x Sense the savage way
3x telepathic misdirection
2x Enhanced Sense
2x Eagle Sight
1x Cats' Guidance
2x On the qui vive

The deck try to stealthy bleed its prey to death, while having a bit of wall element to not die too quickly. It try to not look too dangerous, by being more of a stealth deck than a bleedy deck.

Since is not used for combat, the crypt is surprisingly large for a 4-discipline deck. As alway, Laika is the sub-par one, being cap 7 without useful special. She can still play almost all card and do the job.

Some question that I do not know the response yet :

* I wonder if I should not use heavier weapon (AK47, flame thrower) to ditch the carrion crow and be more of a menace. I believe that it's too dangerous without anything against S:CE and without endurance or dodge or something to avoid being destroyed too easily in combat

* I also wonder whether putting more bleed permanent would be worth it. Living manse would add to the permanent menace from the deck, for example. But it would also make the deck slower

* I am unsure of the defense / offense / combat balance. On the extreme, I could ditch the weapons and combat card, put 8 meld with the land, and be more of a classic S&B.

* For the crypt, maybe putting 3x Cyscek and 3x Lady Zara ? the deck is pretty dependant on them, and even with Wider View it's easy to be stuck with subpar vampires.

* Since I have only 4 villein, I have put 4 blood doll in addition. Would replacing them by 8 Minion tap worth it ? It's not like I would choke on master anyway.

* 1 war ghoul as a surprise ? (I have 10 of them, but my intent is not doing a war ghoul deck )

* Would there be enough draw, disguised, and weapon to put them in play reliably ? Would it been useful to add the Barren, and what to remove for it ?

As a fact, I don't have any Deep song. 1-2 at a minimum would be nice, but stupid small printing is stupid, and consequently I want to do without the best animalism card.

At a glance, I feel like this deck is working too hard to justify using the guys with Obfuscate:

-Disguised Weapon is mostly only as good as Concealed Weapon in this deck, and probably unnecessary anyway; stealth + aggpoke usually means people are going to be thinking hard about trying to block you anyway, so setting up a two-card combo that costs you pool is probably a lot more work than its worth
-10x stealth cards could easily be more Changeling and Mind of the Wilds, with the addition of Plasmic Form
-Soul Decoration is probably not worth an action by an 8- or 10-cap vampire

Kushiel wrote:

-Disguised Weapon is mostly only as good as Concealed Weapon in this deck,

I agree. The only reason they are not concealed weapon in this version is the off chance to complete the combat while doing maneuver.

Kushiel wrote:

and probably unnecessary anyway; stealth + aggpoke usually means people are going to be thinking hard about trying to block you anyway, so setting up a two-card combo that costs you pool is probably a lot more work than its worth

There is a number of thing I had struggled against trying to do that :

* I only have 4 marauder chiroptean (the third edition were not liking me ...). It certainly can be helped, but slowly, and imply redoing the proportion for 60 cards. Which can be less than optimal if I expect to use multiples card per combat.

* In groupe 3-4 (I don't have any gr2 tzimisce), you don't get dude smaller than thoses two. You may gain 1 pool by replacing Cyscek by count Vladimir, but it won't change much, so to get ride of the , I must also get rid of the Read of the wind.
(Then again, I don't have more Sense the savage way, nor any Eye of Argus, so using only or only is less easy for me than it could be)

It's possible to get rid of without changing the crypt, but it feel a bit pointless.

* gun are permanent, which mean that while the initial setup is harder I have less potential cardflow problem once installed. The deck may however gain from Heidelburg and equipping the gun from hand, but then the equipping would be blockable (albeit not that easily).

Kushiel wrote:

-10x stealth cards could easily be more Changeling and Mind of the Wilds, with the addition of Plasmic Form

You're right for the 10-cap and 8-cap. But here Guedado, Ana Rita Montana, and Yuri all have good chance to bleed for 2-3 with 1-2 stealth, in addition to the 6 "main" vampires. And a lot of them can equip a gun and do 2-3 damage.

Maybe replacing Laika x2 by Guedado x1 / Ana Rita Montana x1 ? At least this would be cheaper.

A crypt with would be less blocky, a bit less able to deflect, and a bit bigger, and would not bleed more easily.

Kushiel wrote:

-Soul Decoration is probably not worth an action by an 8- or 10-cap vampire

9/10 time of the time, yes, and then some vampire will play it to bleed at +1 stealth (or be discarded for Aura Reading or Dream). 1/10 of the time it will help against redirect.
If I had to remove something, it's a good candidate.

Agree with Kushiel's comments.

In addition, assuming the simple and proven concept is Tzimisce stealth bleed, this deck has little in common with that. Group 2/3 has a solid curve from Olga to Caliban/Corine.

The combat is way too complicated when Marauder/Breath is already annoying enough. The reaction section has too many cards that aren't On the Qui Vive/Eyes of Argus + Telepathic Misdirection.

If the goal is to get use out of Obfuscate for your Tzimisce, I'd be more inclined to run 2x each of the group 3/4 Tzimisce. At the point where you are playing the overcosted Cyscek, might as well have Sha-Ennu out. Could do an Anarch angle. Obfuscate does expand stealth possibilities quite a bit, but that's not really a glaring weakness of Tzimisce. If anything, I might look to run Sacrificial Lamb to justify Obfuscate in a fighty deck. Or, for a real stretch, Old Friends in a deck that calls votes, which is pretty much inferior in every way to group 2/3 Tzimisce with the ridiculous voting power they have.

Ohlmann wrote:

* I only have 4 marauder chiroptean
* (I don't have any gr2 tzimisce)

Sorry, I didn't realize you were working under those collection constraints.

Would it be difficult to trade for those cards? There are loads of them out there, and none of them are particularly valuable.

It's just that I've found stealth/bleed to work best when you either have a lot of minions and/or can bleed for a lot with indvidiual minions. This deck doesn't seem capable of either.

There are exceptions to that, though. Will Kristoff recently won a tournament with a Malk stealth/bleed deck that relied almost entirely on permanent sources of bleed, and which was a fairly toolboxy deck. Might be worth a look, though I believe its crypt size average was significantly lower than yours.

The designers took a big turd on group 4 Tzim. Their creativity was wasted with poor specials, fewer titles, and discipline problems. There's hardly any reason to play them.

With three cards, you can get up to three stealth. Why do you need obfuscate?
-Changeling
-Plasmic Form
-Mind of the Wilds

If you must include obfuscate, you can have Lady Zara be your "star" and do some veil the legions for card efficiency. The rest of your "stealth" could come from things like Misdirection, Anarch Troublemaker, and Pentex Subversion.

Do you have any Art's Traumatic Essence? How about Revelations? There's some auspex based bleed help. When all else fails, you can just wail on people with a little maurader + breath of the dragon. Rottschreck taps em and sends em to torpor.

I wouldn't stretch the idea further than it has to go. Efficiency is usually key to success.

Good luck!