Official V:EKN Tzimisce Newsletter, April 2004 I. Introduction II. Strategy - The modern Tzimisce III. Crypt focus - Anarch: Anton - Black Hand: Kazimir Savostin IV: Library focus - Anarch: Aranthebes: The Immortal - Black hand: Sire's index finger V. Deck focus - Anarch: Back in the Days VI. Additional Comments I. Introduction. The clock here in Sweden tells me it's 02.36 am on April 1, and this tells me it's time to start writing another Tzimisce newsletter (writers comment: I know it's not april 1 now but it have taken me a few days to finish this). I've got lots of praise for my first newsletter so I'm happy to continue the story of the clan of shapers. I want to give my best thanks to all the people who took their time to comment on my work and those people who stated out the strategies I forgot to mention. II. Strategy, The modern Tzimisce. So what's up in this issue? Well, being in April I thought the best way to start the month should be what I (and most other players) consider a joke. The first theme for the April issue is Tzimisce Anarchs. The second and maybe more serious theme are The Black Hand and what the hand means for the Fiends. So here goes... Strategy 1, Anarch at heart So Tzimisce anarch? You think I'm insane, and maybe I am. I must confess that the Tzimisce's aren't the ideal anarchs. Their lack of out-of-clan disciplines makes them hard to use for anarch (gang) purposes. But there must be some goodies for the anarchs which we can find use in. Therefore I start this strategy discussion with short reviews of the anarch cards from a Tzimisce perspective: - Anarch Free Press, The This card rocks for us, for 1 pool you get free intercept and bloat. - Anarch Railroad Another awesome card. Permanent stealth is something we lack. - Anarch Salon Cool bloat card, but I'm not sure we need it. - Bear-Baiting We have pulse of the canaille, why would we need this? - Body Bag It's cool to be safe and avoid nasty d actions. It might be worth it but I find it a bit too costly. - Border Skirmish Ehrm, we're not interested in your borders. - Car Bomb With auspex as an in-clan discipline? You've better be kidding me :P - Cry Wolf Yes, this wolf will cry when we send the War Ghouls for him. - Diversion A good card in general, but only 2 Tzimisce's can use it. - Emissary Can be good for some vote-push, but I think we'll manage just fine with telepathic vote counting. - Fee Stake: X I find the Fee Stakes awesome, and the Tzimisce's have a good mid-cap crypt. They are really worth playing. - Firebrand Another awesome card. Get your Tzimisce's (who lack fortitude skills) to do multiple actions. More actions equal more VP's. - Galaric's Legacy Turn yourself into anarch. Well, cool. - Go Anarch Turn yourself into anarch 2. Well, cool. - Hospital Food More bloat is good, m'kay. - Improvised Tactics Another 3-way card which only a few Tzimisce's can use for any good. - The Mole The ani version of this card is actually quite good. - Rant! Another vote-pusher, don't think we need it. - Seattle Committee Best way to turn anarch if you ask me. And since you do ask me, I say play it. - Skullduggery Oh, come on, 3 Tzimisce's can play this card, but to what use? - Smash and Grab Well, we can play with this card, but then again, we can play with good cards instead. - Sowing Dissension Too advanced for me to understand. - Status Perfectus, The Now this is good. Permanent fast reactions must be useful. - Stolen Police Cruiser A little good, a little bad. Don't think we need it though. - Sweeper We have Weirding Stone, m'kay. So, that's it. That's all the cards that the anarchs can play (I might have forgotten one or two). So we must ask us, is it worth to turn anarch with our Tzimisce's to get access to these cards. Well, that's a good question. I find cards like Anarch free press, Anarch railroad, Fee stake and Firebrand to be really good and therefore I wanted to make a go at the Tzimisce anarchs. We must also consider that the Tzimisce's have four untitled 5-cap vampires, 2 untitled 6-cap vampires and 2 untitled 7-cap vampires (black hand seraph is not a title). And therefore we have one of the strongest mid-cap crypts you can find. So what's the approach to have to this? Should one vote, bleed, block, rush? I think the answer is a little of everything. I think you have to toolbox to make a successful Tzimisce anarch deck. Add up on some bloat and anarch masters, some fee stakes, damage and bloat votes and firebrands for multiple actions. Some stealth and some bleed. Some intercept. And finally some aggressive and defensive combat. And I think you'll get yourself a GW. I am personally not convinced that anarch Tzimisce's is a brilliant new way to score victory points since the Tzimisce clan already have their sabbat benefits and awesome titled vampires. But I can say for sure that I think that every new way to score victory points with the Tzimisce's deserves to be tested. So let those Tzimisce's take over the Anarch Free State and teach those rebellious Childers what the word voivode really means. Strategy 2, A black hand will rise and choke all who oppose it. Now, this is newer, fancier and cooler. In my opinion the Black Hand rules. Or at least it does in the RPG. So let's take a look on what we can do with our new black hand cards and give them some comments from a fiendish point of view: - Admonitions, The Card cycling is good m'kay. - Art of Memory, The Now this one is strange. Might be useful to get back some of the cards that you don't have that many copies of in your deck. But I honestly don't know if this is good for us or not. - Blooding Only way to turn black hand, therefore it's good. - Bloodwork I prefer Fiendish tongue, but this is a good card. - Chronicle of the Lost Tribe Sweet home Alabama. A free, burnable, elder library. A good card. I would play with it in most Black Hand decks. - Corporal Reservoir This is good, helps us against agg poke. - Council of Seraphim We have 1 seraph, I say this sucks. - Deep Cover Agent Seeing hands is good, but I'm not sure the restrictions on this card make it worth playing. - Dominion Black Hand exemplary, that's cool. - Ebony Fox Hunt Tariq will soon be eaten by the Tzimisce. Good card. - Marijava Thuggee Good card, but I see no use in it for us due to our lack of obfuscate. - Ministry Another awesome card. But we have auspex. I don't think we need this. - Remover This is a good card. We can use it to tap bouncers, blockers and other things we rather see tapped. - Reunion Kamut Great bloat card. Problem is that we only have 2 black hand vampires. - Seraph I think 1 seraph is enough for us. - Shakar Rush younger non-black hand vampires. I find this card very good for us since we're the masters of the aggravated damage. - Watch commander - We still have auspex so I find this unnecessary. - Watchtower: Chosen are Called - More card cycling. I find this useful. - Watchtower: Four Ride Forth Free metro underground for the black hand. This can only be good for us. - Watchtower: Greatest Fall If you can pass the vote you will get one of the best bloat cards there is. It's awesome in a voter feat. a tzi seraph. Ok. The Black Hand does rock. But how should one play with these cards? We must consider that we as a clan only have two Black Hand vampires. Therefore we can't take advantage of cards like Reunion Kamut. As I see it we have two choices. One is for us to take our ordinary Tzimisce decks and add the Black Hand vampires to the crypt. Play with the Black Hand cards as support and use Admonitions, Chronicle and the Watchtowers to help us in whatever our decks normally does. The other approach is hardcore Black Hand abuse. Get your Tzimisce's out into play and let them all become Black Hand under the lead of Kazimir Savostin. Use as many Black Hand cards as you like. Block or rush and use aggravated damage, amaranth, ebony fox hunt, to kill those suckers off. Vampires like Meshenka, Lambach and Velya can be very nasty combat machines when allowed to diablerie at will. And corporal reservoirs combined with Horrid Form can really help you to survive the combat you get into. In this version of the deck you can play with most of the Black Hand cards, and I think you would be able to achieve great results with it. III. Crypt Focus, Anarchs and Black Hand. Anarchs: Anton Name: Anton Cardtype: Vampire Clan: Tzimisce Group: 2 Capacity: 8 Discipline: cel, obf, vic, ANI, AUS Sabbat: +1 intercept Anton is maybe the "most" anarch the Tzimisce's have. With a large discipline spread he can take advantage of whatever 3-way cards you like to put in your deck. He can play Diversion at one level, Improvised Tactics at one, the Mole at two, Skullduggery at one and Smash and Grab at one. So he's one of the few vampires who can find use of all 3-way cards. He is an 8-cap so he can become baron and untap many other vampires with firebrand. He has permanent +1 intercept which combined with ANI and AUS makes him into a dangerous blocker. And he has vic for some stealth, bleed and combat. In short: He has everything it takes to be a good anarch. The Black Hand: Kazimir Savostin Name: Kazimir Savonstin Cardtype: Vampire Clan: Tzimisce Group: 3 Capacity: 7 Discipline: ani, pot, AUS, VIC Sabbat. Black Hand Seraph: If Kazimir blocks an action, he gets an optional press in the resulting combat. This rock! Not every clan gets a Black Hand Seraph. But we do. With access to all cards the Black Hand can play Kazimir is a formidable foe. He gives us access to all the Seraph cards and all the Black Hand cards and that's awesome. Just add him to your crypt and you can play with Watchtowers and other nastiness. His discipline spread is also quite good. He has two in-clan, at superior and one at inferior. And he has inferior pot. I see a pot/vic crypt taking form here with vampires like Kazimir, Stravinsky and Hugo. His special isn't that good, but I can see uses for it. He will be a monster-blocker with his AUS and a press is never wrong to have. IV. Library Focus, Anarchs and Black Hand. Anarchs: Aranthebes, The Immortal Name: Aranthebes, The Immortal Cardtype: Action Cost: 1 pool +1 Stealth action. Unique. Put this card into play. You may tap Aranthebes to give a minion controlled by your predator -1 stealth for the current action. While Aranthebes is untapped, vampires with a capacity less than 5 get -1 bleed when bleeding you. Any vampire with a capacity above 4 can move Aranthebes to your library as a (D) action. Shuffle afterward. I deliberately choose a non-anarch card as my anarch library focus leaving the anarch cards to the anarch newsletter written by Eric Simon. So if you want anarch cards, check his newsletters. Aranthebes on the other hand is maybe one of the best things that have ever happened to the Tzimisce clan. This little mummy buddy is awesome. He lowers the stealth of your prey and protects you from weenie bleed for a pool-cost of 1. Only problem I see with this card is that it will be contested a lot. Another thing is that it's an action and it can therefore be blocked. And it will be blocked since that is the only way to get rid of it permanently. So my tip is for you to add up on some stealth before you try to get this little mummy into play. The Black Hand: Sire's index finger. Name: Sire's index finger Cardtype: Equipment Unique equipment. The vampire with this equipment is immune to frenzy cards (including Brujah Frenzy, Drawing Out the Beast, Frenzy, Rφtschreck and Terror Frenzy). Now, this is both good and bad. The fact that the Tzimisce's are the masters of inducing frenzy into their enemies makes this cards existence frightening to the fiends. So the first purpose this card has for us is to be included in every deck which relies on frenzy cards just for contest. The other use we can have for it is for the fact that it's good. Cards like Rφtschreck, Terror Frenzy and Drawing out the Beast are extremely powerful and getting immunity against them is very good. So therefore I include this tip to you. Beware of the finger. The finger is dangerous. V. Deck focus. This month's featured deck is an anarch Tzimisce deck. The black hand deck had to wait since I haven't played with it yet, and I'm not sure if it works at all. The anarch Tzimisce's on the other hand are KEWL! Deck Name: Back in the days Created By: _angst_ and steelrose Description: Back in the days. Before the formation of the Sabbat and the Camarilla. We Tzimisce's were some of the initiators of the anarch revolt. So one could call us the root to the anarchs. And here is a deck with the fiends as anarch. Baron deck using a little of everything to score VP's. It's great fun to play. Not really a tournament winning deck but for casual play it rocks :) The strategy in the deck is to chill. You don't have powerful bleeds, powerful votes or powerful combat so the idea is to just hang in there. Survive and slowly grind your preys' pool to dust while you keep your own pool at higher levels. Crypt: ---------------------------------------------- 1 Anton 1 Little Tailor of Prague 1 Kazimir Savostin 1 Caliban 1 Corine Marcσn 1 Ana Rita Montaρa 1 Devin Bisley 1 Elizabeth Westcott 1 The Rose 1 Lolita Houston 1 Terrence 1 Horatio Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Master (18 cards) 1 Anarch Free Press (The) 1 Anarch Railroad 5 Blood Doll 3 Galaric`s Legacy 1 Hospital Food 1 KRCG News Radio 1 Library Hunting Ground 3 Life in the City 1 Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper, The 1 Seattle Committee Action (10 cards) 1 Army of Rats 1 Fee Stake: Boston 2 Fee Stake: Corte 1 Fee Stake: Los Angeles 1 Fee Stake: New York 2 Fee Stake: Perth 1 Fee Stake: Seattle 1 Status Perfectus (The) Action Modifier (8 cards) 6 Changeling 2 Telepathic Vote Counting Political Action (18 cards) 6 Consanguineous Boon 1 Dramatic Upheaval 5 Firebrand 6 Kine Resources Contested Reaction (12 cards) 6 Telepathic Misdirection 6 Wake with Evening's Freshness Combat (14 cards) 2 Breath of the Dragon 6 Chiropteran Marauder 6 Meld with the Land Retainer (1 cards) 1 Revenant Equipment (3 cards) 1 Aaron`s Feeding Razor 2 Living Manse Combo (6 cards) 6 Plasmic Form VI. Additional comments. So, this is the second newsletter I produce. I hope you'll enjoy this one to and as always, give your comments, criticism, decks, theme-ideas and Tzimisce fiction to me. Email me on: vtes_trader at hotmail dot com I am also looking for a working Tzimisce Black Hand deck to include in a future newsletter. Peace! //Alex/_angst_ http://www.vekn.nu/ #vtes #vtes-game @ sorcerynet, IRC chat can also be found @ http://www.thelasombra.com/ or http://www.almadrava.net/damnans/