Advice on creating ravnos and tzimisce decks

Here is an example ravnos breed deck that I made myself which has worked to me fairly well, it has fairly good combat defense and some bleed defense and can generally get going fairly fast. Since you only bring out 2 vampires from your crypt (Gabrin and one of the others) with a third vampire later if you can afford, you have nice pool buffer for people to bleed through. Basic idea is to tap and bleed, use Gabrin's special and fantasy worlds to take out blockers so you can swarm bleed with all the little guys. Fantasy Worlds can also be used to slow down your predator if needed but are meant mainly for prey. I don't use any paths there because Gabrin should be playing most of the chimerstry cards anyway, and I wouldn't be able to stop people from burning it, and it doesn't help on the cost of Tumnimos anyway which is where most of the blood goes to.

Crypt:
3x Khalil Ravana
2x Joaquina Amaya
2x Vaclav Petalengro
5x Gabrin

Library: 70

Master: 12
2x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Giant's Blood
2x Jake Washington
4x Ravnos Carnival
1x The Coven
2x Week of Nightmares

Action: 20
6x Fantasy World
4x Patshiv
10x Tumnimos

Action Modifier: 30
2x False Resonance
8x Fata Morgana
8x Freak Drive
5x Mirror Image
2x Mirror's Visage
5x Occlusion

Reaction: 8
4x Deflection
2x On the Qui Vive
2x Wake with Evening's Freshness

Glow wrote:

When you compare the G4/5 ravnos to the old ones, especially Gabrin, how to the handle the high cost of sensory dep and the constant blood cost of blood when playing fata morgana, mirror image and so on? I reckon that the path will help some and even ravnos carnival but that only takes you so far.

It takes you as far as you need to go. Path of Chimeristry, Ravnos Carnival, Life in the City, and Svadarma are most of your master slots. You don't need that many Sensory Deprivations in play, if any.

When you say I must focus in the breed deck, and it has quite alot of setup to do I get the feeling that camera phones would be abundant as my actions wouldn't be enough to equip them. Is this so?

You don't need Camera Phones. You have the Week of Nightmares. You also probably don't have room for the Camera Phones.

Breath of the dragon would be the more card effective choice of combat in the wall deck compared to horrid form, right?

Probably. A bunch of Breath of the Dargon and Chiroperan Marauders as all you really need. Back up with Corpse Balloons (which provide maneuvers and intercept) and as most of your fights will be as the defending minion, you get to see if they play S:CE before you commit to your Breath.

bakija wrote:

Probably. A bunch of Breath of the Dargon and Chiroperan Marauders as all you really need. Back up with Corpse Balloons (which provide maneuvers and intercept) and as most of your fights will be as the defending minion, you get to see if they play S:CE before you commit to your Breath.

And Rotschreck, of course. In case you don't want the opponent to end combat and in case he tries to fight back.

Having tried both aggpoke and CrowBats combat modules for Tzimisce wall decks in the years that I was playing them, I found the latter to be much more useful. Access to Taste of Vitae, useful damage-dealing capacity against allies (more important now than when I was playing Tzim walls, since ally decks are much more prevalant now), and no blood costs all added up to the better choice.

I think personally that wall deck is waste of potential with Tzimisce, with ANI/AUS they have lot of very cost effective ways to block people, leaving lot of deck space for stuff to go forward, and are thus much more effective as a toolboxy deck. For example, you got fiendish tongue, abbot, eyes of argus, sense the savage way, cats guidance, even read the winds if you like it, for stuff that gives you either intercept and/or wake in same card, or free permacept that doesn't even cost an action, or bleed and untap in same. Then you also have awesome cards like changeling, plasmic form, and mind of the wilds for getting those bleeds through while also helping you in combat. Finally there is the very effective chiropteran marauder + breath of the dragon combat module (which mind of the wilds supports lovely as well) that gives you nicely card efficient way to stay alive in combat and punish the opponent, a handful of carrion crows can easily be added in to this to deal with allies.

Kushiel wrote:

Having tried both aggpoke and CrowBats combat modules for Tzimisce wall decks in the years that I was playing them, I found the latter to be much more useful. Access to Taste of Vitae, useful damage-dealing capacity against allies (more important now than when I was playing Tzim walls, since ally decks are much more prevalant now), and no blood costs all added up to the better choice.

Ah, yeah, that works too. But I tend to focus on 2 disciplines in a deck like this, and given the choice between ANI/AUS and VIC/AUS, I'll generally go with the VIC/AUS (as then I can maximize my Changeling use and whatever), which means that ANI falls into the background.