Official V:EKN Tzimisce Newsletter, September 2004 I. Introduction II. Strategy - Legion III. Crypt Focus - Henry Taylor - Agaitas IV. Card Focus - Specialization V. Deck Focus - To scared to close my eyes VI. Follow up - Do the marena VII. End Credits I. Introduction Well. Almost two months has passed by since the last newsletter and I think it's time to write another one. This time about the card Legion and what you can do with it in a Tzimisce deck. I hard card to play but I really wanted to write something about it. Maybe because it's cool, maybe because it feels very Tzimisce or maybe because it's the title of one of the best VNV Nation songs out there. II. Strategy - Legion Name: Legion Cardtype: Action Requires a ready vampire with capacity above 7. +1 stealth action. Put this card on this acting vampire. This non-Sterile vampire can put a Master Discipline card from your hand or ash heap in play to represent a fledgling with 1 level of that discipline and discard the rest of your hand as a +2 stealth action. The fledgling is a 1-capacity, non-unique vampire of the same clan as this vampire. The fledgling cannot act or block or play cards if this vampire is not ready. Ok. So what do we have to work with? First we need an eight cap vamp or bigger. In the Tzimisce clan we have Cyscek (10), Lambach (10), Lambach adv. (10), John Paleologus (9), Stravinsky (9), Velya (9), Little Tailor (8), Meshenka (8), Sascha Vykos (8) and Sascha Vykos adv. (8) to choose from. And we have a pretty obvious choice if we really want to focus on legion and do a whole bunch of babies. Lambach merged with Lambach adv. This gives us the following monster: Name: Lambach (merged) Cardtype: Vampire Clan: Tzimisce Group: 2 Capacity: 10 Discipline: pre, ANI, AUS, DOM, VIC Independent: Lambach has 2 votes. He can equip with an Eye of Hazimel at no cost from your library as a +1 stealth action (shuffle afterward). Once each combat, Lambach may burn 1 blood to make the damage from his hand strikes aggravated for the current round. He untaps when he successfully performs an action to put a vampire in play. +1 strength. So we give Lambach a bunch of legion cards and he can create a horde of small weenie vampires. You can use the other big cap Tzimisce vampires but no-one will have the ability to create such a horde as Lambach can. Next step is maybe the hardest step. You need to put a master discipline card into play. That is not hard :o) But which discipline to choose. I've solved this in this newsletter by doing myself a small list with the pro's and con's with each discipline. I know opinions split a lot when it comes to telling which discipline is the best so I base this list on my own opinions and observations on what disciplines are best to use with a 1-cap vampire. First of, the disciplines of Lambach. - Animalism + Nasty combat and good intercept for free. - Requires a lot of different cards to work well. - Auspex + Mighty intercept for free. - Weak combat. Lacks forward pressure. - Dominate + Mighty bleeds and bounce. - Weak combat. Lacks intercept. - Presence + Vote push, Bleed and combat defence. Cheap to use. - The better combat cards costs blood. No defence. - Vicissitude + Multi use discipline for combat, stealth and bleed. - No defence. A lot of cards cost blood. Then the rest: - Celerity + Lots of good combat cards. - No defence. No forward pressure. - Chimerstry + Multi use discipline. Very good combat defence. - A lot of the cards cost lots of blood. - Dementation + Multi use discipline. Bleed, stealth and intercept. - Weak combat. - Fortitude + Good combat cards. - Lacks forward pressure and defence. - Necromancy + Good stealth cards. Ability to retrieve cards. - Lots of blood costs. - Obfuscate + Massive stealth for free. - Lacks defence. - Obtenebration + Multiuse discipline. - Almost every card cost blood. - Potence + Massive combat. - Lacks defence and forward pressure. - Protean + Multi use discipline with good combat. - Lacks defence. - Quietus + Eh. This was hard. - Lacks the cards to be a good stand alone discipline - Serpentis + Very powerful minion stealing cards. Some stealth. - Most good cards cost blood. - Thaumaturgy + Good combat. Good toolbox discipline. - Lacks defence and forward pressure. It's very hard to decide which of these disciplines that is the best stand alone discipline. Some of them are more powerful than other. But many of them can work fine as mono disciplines in a legion deck. All disciplines have pro's and con's. It's only a matter of choosing your poison. And the only way to know which of these disciplines that are the best one for you is to try them out. In the deck session of this newsletter you can take a look at mine and Erik Torstenssons Dominate/Protean legion deck. Next step of the legion card is the very funny step of discarding the rest of your hand. Putting 10 weenies into play therefore requires 60-70 cards thrown into your ash heap. That's not good. It's not easy to win with no cards. I see 4 solutions to this problem presented below: 1.) Use a lot of permanents. If every fledgling has a .44, a pair of ir goggles, a flak jacket and a laptop you don't need many cards on your hand to win. But getting all these permanents into play is very hard and cost a lot of time and resources. 2.) Lower your handsize. With the help of events and maybe even meddling of semsith you can lower your handsize by a few cards. And then you don't have to throw away that many cards when you have to discard the rest of your hand. The big con with this idea is that you have to make do with very few cards to play with. Since you don't have many cards on your hand. And that most events that affect handsize permanently hit you pretty hard. 3.) Play your prey's deck. This is advanced use of Agaitas. The idea is to play your cards and replace them from your prey. Then when you have a handful of bad cards from your prey on your hand you do the legion action and throw them all away. Bad thing is that you can jam on cards you can't play with. Another thought is to deplete your library as fast as possible while putting different discipline masters into play, then you can try to play your preys deck when your deck is depleted. 4.) Retrieval. Use cards that retrieve cards from your ash heap to your library. Like summon soul, waste management operation, sargon fragment, Carlotta Giovanni, Pochtli, Marthe Dizier and Henry Taylor. With a depleted library, Henry Taylor in play and an earth meld on your hand you will be able to play an infinite number of earth melds. So now you have a horde of vampires and a way to play your cards anyway. And as long you protect your mother vampire you have a functional horde of evil. (would recommend different combat defence from disciplines, obedience and secure haven). What will you do now? With clan impersonation you can get access to nasty cards like Palla Grande and other clan based nastiness. With a discipline like dementation you can use madman's quills to give all your little dementation weenies extra bleed. I guess that your imagination set's your limits. III. Crypt Focus Name: Henry Taylor Cardtype: Vampire Clan: Brujah antitribu Group: 3 Capacity: 6 Discipline: cel, pre, pro, POT Sabbat: After an action, you may move a combat card Henry played during that action from your ash heap to the top of your library. He doesn't share any disciplines with the Tzimisce but he's a cliff when it comes to retrieval. His ability is good when you use him in a regular deck. Retrieving cards is always good. Flash, IG, Torn or what ever you use to do a lot of combat damage. But when it comes to giving him a protean master and playing earth meld with a depleted library. Untaping Henry and bringing the meld back to your hand in every combat (after the combat). Or use him when you have 2 earth meld on your hand and a full library to meld as many times as you like. Then give him Winthrop, Sport bike and some media attention (krcg, rumor mill, club zombie, London evening star, wmrh) and he will stand in the way of everything. Name: Agaitas, The Scholar of Antiquities Cardtype: Vampire Clan: Harbinger of Skulls Group: 2 Capacity: 6 Discipline: for, AUS, NEC Sabbat: When you play a card, you may draw its replacement from your prey's library instead of your own. Put the card drawn face-up in front of you. It is still considered to be in your hand, to be played or discarded as normal. This is a vampire that has been up for strange decks for a long time. And He/She can be a nice addition to a legion deck. If you go for a no discipline approach yourself, and put different master discipline cards into play you can always draw your replacements from your prey and play them with your different vampires. Or throw them away when creating another legion fledgling. He/She also shares AUS with the Tzimisce clan, and Lambach. IV. Card Focus Name: Specialization Cardtype: Master Unique master. Put this card in play. During your untap phase, you may tap this card and discard two copies of the same card from your hand to gain 1 pool. Draw back up to your hand size afterward. A very good card for decks that use multiple copies of the same card. For example a legion deck. Since you use a lot of master disciplines and the fact that you can use them from your ash heap. And it's always better to throw two away for a pool than one for nothing. You can also use it as a nice combination with brothers grim. Play a load of specializations and use them to throw them away for pool and to protect the brothers. Since bloat always is important, especially in a slow moving legion deck this might be a nice touch to your legion deck. V. Deck Focus Deck Name: To scared to close my eyes Created By: Alex Ek (_angst_) and Erik Torstensson Description: Named after the song Legion by VNV Nation. The general idea is to get Waste management into play and then deplete your own library as fast as possible by creating fledglings. Then you can pick and choose whatever cards you need to play from your ash heap. Sargon fragment and Henry Taylor is there to fasten up the retrieval. Earth meld is broken as usual and helps a lot with the general defence in the deck. Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 24, Max: 40, Avg: 8,67) ---------------------------------------------- 4 Henry Taylor cel pre pro POT 6, Brujah antitribu 4 Lambach ANI AUS DOM pre VIC 10, Tzimisce, Cardinal 4 Lambach (ADV) pre ANI AUS DOM VIC 10, Tzimisce, 2 votes Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Master (32 cards) 3 Blood Doll 1 Club Zombie 3 Direct Intervention 2 Dominate 1 KRCG News Radio 1 Library Hunting Ground 12 Protean 1 Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper, The 1 Secure Haven 1 Specialization 1 Sudden Reversal 1 Tribute to the Master 1 Unnatural Disaster 2 Waste Management Operation 1 WMRH Talk Radio Action (14 cards) 2 Govern the Unaligned 12 Legion Action Modifier (6 cards) 2 Changeling 4 Earth Control Reaction (12 cards) 7 Deflection 5 Wake with Evening's Freshness Combat (18 cards) 12 Earth Meld 6 Form of Mist Ally (1 cards) 1 Mylan Horseed (Goblin) Equipment (1 cards) 1 Sargon Fragment, The Combo (6 cards) 2 Plasmic Form 4 Rapid Change VI. Follow up In the last newsletter I complained about Starvation of Marena and got some criticism for that. I then promised to build a deck around it before I judge it. Here I present that deck: Deck Name: Do the Marena! Created By: Alex Ek (_angst_) Description: A nice try to give Starvation of Marena a chance. It is a nasty card, dealing a lot of range damage. So I don't condemn it. But I still stand by my opinion in that horrid form is a better way of fighting your enemies. Just take a look at Bush and you'll know why. Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 15, Max: 29, Avg: 5,50) ---------------------------------------------- 2 Caliban ANI AUS VIC 6, Tzimisce 1 Corine Marcon ani AUS VIC 6, Tzimisce 2 Devin Bisley ANI AUS vic 5, Tzimisce 1 Elizabeth Westcott ani cel vic AUS 5, Tzimisce 1 Horatio vic 2, Tzimisce 1 Kazimir Savostin ani pot AUS VIC 7, Tzimisce 1 Lolita Houston aus VIC 4, Tzimisce 2 Meshenka ANI AUS VIC 8, Tzimisce, Priscus 1 Terrence ani aus vic 4, Tzimisce Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Master (14 cards) 6 Blood Doll 1 Fame 1 KRCG News Radio 1 Library Hunting Ground 1 Mob Connections 1 Pentex(TM) Loves You! 1 Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper, The 2 Vast Wealth Action (8 cards) 2 Bum's Rush 3 Nose of the Hound 3 Pulse of the Canaille Reaction (24 cards) 3 Eagle's Sight 4 Enhanced Senses 6 Forced Awakening 3 Spirit's Touch 6 Telepathic Misdirection 2 Wake with Evening's Freshness Combat (38 cards) 2 Breath of the Dragon 8 Carrion Crows 8 Chiropteran Marauder 6 Starvation of Marena 4 Taste of Vitae 6 Telepathic Tracking 4 Terror Frenzy Equipment (6 cards) 1 Femur of Toomler 2 Flak Jacket 1 Hawg 2 IR Goggles VII. End Credits That's all for September. Next topic is yet to be decided. Have fun! Play fair! Take care! //Alex Ek/_angst_ http://www.vekn.nu/ #vtes #vtes-game @ sorcerynet, IRC http://absolutvodka.no-ip.com/vtesreg chat can also be found @ http://www.thelasombra.com/ or http://www.almadrava.net/damnans/