Crocodile Princess - Gabrielle di Righetti

A bit late to the party, but I'll ask anyway...

You have Gabi and you're bound to have a Rutor's Hand on her pretty soon, which means you're going to steal blood/life from all around, meaning you'll refill very very quickly and can do that ad infinitum. So my question is: why no means of getting all that excess blood from your vamps? I mean, several Blood Dolls or, even better due to trifle-ness, Vessels would surely not go amiss in this deck.

Also, aside from Gabi and Dr. Dee, max # of any other vamp I'd have here is 2, meaning at least one Troius would become Gerald.

Kiddo wrote:

A bit late to the party, but I'll ask anyway...

You have Gabi and you're bound to have a Rutor's Hand on her pretty soon, which means you're going to steal blood/life from all around, meaning you'll refill very very quickly and can do that ad infinitum. So my question is: why no means of getting all that excess blood from your vamps? I mean, several Blood Dolls or, even better due to trifle-ness, Vessels would surely not go amiss in this deck.

Also, aside from Gabi and Dr. Dee, max # of any other vamp I'd have here is 2, meaning at least one Troius would become Gerald.

Your advice is sound. Last time I played it Gabrielle filled back up a few turns after getting Rutor's Hand, and the only thing the blood was good for was Deflection. I also had a bad crypt draw: 3 Gabrielle and 3 Troius in a row. Gerald Windham would be a great addition to the deck.

Since this is a blood-denial Banishment deck (apparently). Why is there no copies of:

Charnas, the Imp
Corpse Minion (Gabi can pay for this little beasty quite easily)
Thadius Zho
Wasserschloss

(As well as the Vessel hints above)

Let's see. I ran the deck without combat cards last week and it worked very well. Based on that experience, I wouldn't bother with the Corpse Minion. Charnas is a nifty card but not worth the action for Gabrielle because she can just steal 2 and follow it up with a vote. If I put more actions in, I think Govern the Unaligned is superior. On the other hand, Thadius Zho was in a previous incarnation of the deck and he might be a good choice because of his high pool cost.

The big advantage of Charnas is that he can torpor people while Gabi on her own cannot.

If you're removing the combat, then sure, Corpse Minion is not really relevant. I was still looking at it and seeing Carrion Crows + Theft of Vitae (and no traps??).

Thadius comes with the price-tag which is handy for Parity Shifts. Wasserschloss allows you to convert blood to pool without moving you out of Parity Shift range.

I pondered a bit more about this entire concept of blood denial + ANI damage. Now, I've tinkered a lot with Tremere blood denial and I gave a try Tremere ANI combat and my experience is this (bear in mind, I come from meta where combat-heavy deck are quite common): as long as you aren't overly aggressive, meaning you deny people of their blood but don't actively put them in torpor, they tend to play your own game and not pay any more attention to you than they would to any other deck. Now, Tremere do have a reputation to them, so people are always aware that in any given moment they can bleed you heavily or, with these vamps in play, slap some serious politics in their faces.
However, once you, in addition to an occasional Gabi theft or proper Theft, slam Carrion Crows in their faces, all kinds of alarm go off and suddenly you become no.1 player to get rid of and your vampires just can't bear pressure from both your prey and your predator.

That have been my experiences - the most success I've had with Tremeres was whenever I played not obviously aggressive deck, regardless of its true potential for mayhem. THA+ANI was very very effective and every time I played that, I was more in torpor than out of it.

My point is - perhaps I'd swap those Carrion Crows for some other ANI cards...Mind of the Wilds spring to mind. Also, and it fits in the theme, how about some blood-depraving politics, like Archons?

I'd also cut out some acceleration - I'd keep total of Valleys and Highways to 6 (5/1 or 6/0) and would get rid of some situational costly cards (Legendary Vampire, perhaps even Pentex and Temptation) for Arcane Library and, yeah, some Vessels and Perfectionist or two. Even Papillon is a so-so card in this deck, since you can't play it with only your star vampire in play.