Skip to main content

How Variants Improve Skill: Ravnos Example

Tow variants down and one last one to go. As we've seen previously with the Followers of Set and Daughters of Cacophony versions, adapting the Death Star to a new clan opens up new options.

My Original Ravnos Version

I never played this original version in a tournament. After a test of two and some more experience with the other designs, I realized that I had taken an incorrect approach. I won't make that many updates in the winning version, but what was I thinking trying to play Durga Syn in this deck?
Deck Name: Shilmulo Death Star
Author: Karl Schaefer

Crypt (13 cards, min=4 max=30 avg=4)
====================================
1x Durga Syn                     9 CHI OBF THA ani aus dom for      Ravnos:4
1x Alexis Sorokin                8 CEL CHI OBF PRO for              Ravnos:4
1x Tatiana Stepanova, Alastor    7 CHI PRE ani for obf              Ravnos:4
1x Vassily Taltos                6 aus cel chi dom for obf          Ravnos:4
1x Irena                         5 CHI ani for pre                  Ravnos:5
1x Paul Forrest, False Prophet   5 chi for pre                      Ravnos:4
1x Devyn                         4 ani chi pre                      Ravnos:4
1x Marion French                 3 ani chi                          Ravnos:4
5x Anarch Convert                1                                  Caitiff:ANY

Library (76 cards)
==================
Master (13)
------------
1x Anarch Railroad
1x Archon Investigation
1x Barrens, The
2x Blood Doll
1x Carfax Abbey
1x Fear of Mekhet
1x Fortune Teller Shop
1x Garibaldi-Meucci Museum
1x Pentex(TM) Subversion
1x Seattle Committee
1x Twilight Camp
1x Week of Nightmares

Action (15)
------------
1x Fee Stake: Boston
1x Fee Stake: Corte
1x Fee Stake: Los Angeles
1x Fee Stake: New York
1x Fee Stake: Perth
1x Fee Stake: Seattle
2x Illegalism
7x Tumnimos

Ally (1)
---------
1x Rom Gypsy

Equipment (1)
--------------
1x Shilmulo Tarot

Political Action (17)
----------------------
2x Anarch Salon
5x Consanguineous Boon
1x Eat the Rich
3x Firebrand
1x Kine Resources Contested
1x Patsy
1x Reckless Agitation
3x Revolutionary Council

Action Modifier (22)
---------------------
5x Adhocracy
2x Bewitching Oration
1x CrimethInc.
2x Cryptic Rider
2x False Resonance
2x Fata Morgana
2x Mirror's Visage
2x Propaganda of the Deed
3x Smoke and Mirrors
1x Voter Captivation

Action Modifier/Combat (7)
---------------------------
2x Mirror Image
3x Occlusion
2x Swallowed by the Night

Comparing the Decks

Let's break down the decks.  I've chosen a series of categories for the comparison.  You'll notice that some cards end up in more than one box.  These polyvalent cards provide real power through different options.

Role Original Replacement
Permanent
Pool Gain
2 Blood Doll1 2 Blood Doll1
Transient
Pool Gain
Anarch Salon
5 Consanguineous Boon
Exclusion Principle
2 Undue Influence (q)
2 Anarch Salon
5 Consanguineous Boon
Voter Captivation (R)
Childer 4 The Embrace
5 Web of Knives Recruit
7 Tumnimos
Permanent
Bleed
Club Illusion Paul Forrest, False Prophet
Week of Nightmares
Transient
Bleed
Khabar: Glory
3 Spying Mission (O)
5 Adhocracy (i)
Fata Morgana (K)
2 Illegalism (r)
Damaging
Votes
4 Kine Resources Contested
Patsy
3 Revolutionary Council
Eat the Rich
Kine Resources Contested
Patsy
Reckless Agitation
3 Revolutionary Council
Permanent
Vote Support
3 Alamut
Amaravati
The Black Throne
6 Fee Stakes
2 Firebrand
Patsy
Fear of Mekhet
6 Fee Stakes
3 Firebrand
Patsy
Transient
Vote Support
2 Cryptic Rider Adhoacracy (k)
2 Bewitching Oration
2 Cryptic Rider
Eat the Rich2
2 Propaganda of the Deed
Permanent
Stealth
Anarch Railroad
Fortune Teller Shop
Rom Gypsy
Transient
Stealth
18 o cards 11 k/K cards
3Smoke and Mirrors (k/o)
2 Swallowed by the Night (o)
Permanent
Unlock
2 Firebrand CrimethInc. (t)
3 Firebrand
Transient
Unlock
6 CrimethInc. (q) 2 Illegalism (c)
Defense Archon Investigation
Yoruba Shrine
Archon Investigation
  1. One could argue this isn't pool gain, but pool recoup. That's a different blog post.
  2. I am counting the title reduction as push.

Notes

  • We're quite a bit weaker on transient pool gain, trading Exclusion Principle for a second Anarch Salon. Because Chimerstry and Tumnimos are blood intensive, this allows us to recoup some of that cost. Additionally it helps hold off the ill affects of Week of Nightmares. The permanent pool game is identical, with just two Blood Doll for farming.
  • Even though there are two less childer, I consider this equivalent. Web of Knives Recruit takes 3 turns to come into play, so you're never going to play all of them. On the other hand, Tumnimos is a 2-cap that inherits sect. (This was before most childer inherited sect and Web of Knives Recruit still doesn't.)
  • Week of Nightmares firmly tilts the bleed offense in favor of the Ravnos deck.
  • The damaging vote packages are mostly the same. The original is more consistent (just KRCs and RevCos), but the variant has higher damage potential.
  • There are no permanent vote master cards for this like we had in the other variants, so we have a lot more additional transient push. Of all of the variants, this one is best suited to not voting, but to oust by bleeding. This makes the vote package an ousting option instead of the ousting option.
  • We do have a lower stealth count than the original, but have three stealth permanents to make up the difference. You'll also notice that most of the stealth cards are polyvalent. We also have the option to use Smoke and Mirrors in two ways.
  • This deck has the weakest unlock package compared to all of the other variants. Not even sure why I kept the single copy of CrimthInc. because there's only one vampire that can play it.

The Tournament-Winning Version

Poor Mark Loughman was my punching bag for this event. I cross-table ousted him in round one and backousted him in round two. All of which was necessary to obtain my game wins. I earned 2 GW 6 VPs for first seed and took 4 VPs in the final.
Deck Name: Shilmulo Death Star
Author: Karl Schaefer

Crypt (12 cards, min=4 max=28 avg=3.92)
=======================================
1x Alexis Sorokin                8 CEL CHI OBF PRO for          Ravnos:4
1x Chavi Oraczko                 7 ANI CHI FOR nec              Ravnos:5
1x Tatiana Stepanova, Alastor    7 CHI PRE ani for obf          Ravnos:4
1x Vassily Taltos                6 aus cel chi dom for obf      Ravnos:4
1x Irena                         5 CHI ani for pre              Ravnos:5
1x Paul Forrest, False Prophet   5 chi for pre                  Ravnos:4
1x Devyn                         4 ani chi pre                  Ravnos:4
5x Anarch Convert                1                              Caitiff:ANY

Library (75 cards)
==================
Master (15; 1 trifle)
----------------------
1x Anarch Railroad
1x Archon Investigation
1x Barrens, The
2x Blood Doll
1x Carfax Abbey
1x Coven, The
1x Fear of Mekhet
1x Fortune Teller Shop
1x Garibaldi-Meucci Museum
1x Giant's Blood
1x Infamous Insurgent
1x Pentex(TM) Subversion
1x Twilight Camp
1x Week of Nightmares

Action (15)
------------
1x Fee Stake: Boston
1x Fee Stake: Corte
1x Fee Stake: Los Angeles
1x Fee Stake: New York
1x Fee Stake: Perth
1x Fee Stake: Seattle
2x Illegalism
7x Tumnimos

Equipment (1)
--------------
1x Shilmulo Tarot

Political Action (16)
----------------------
2x Anarch Salon
4x Consanguineous Boon
1x Domain Challenge
2x Eat the Rich
1x Exclusion Principle
1x Kine Resources Contested
1x Neonate Breach
2x Reckless Agitation
2x Revolutionary Council

Action Modifier (22)
---------------------
5x Adhocracy
2x Bewitching Oration
2x Cryptic Rider
2x False Resonance
2x Fata Morgana
1x Forgotten Labyrinth
2x Mirror's Visage
2x Propaganda of the Deed
3x Smoke and Mirrors
1x Voter Captivation

Action Modifier/Combat (6)
---------------------------
3x Mirror Image
3x Occlusion

Almost identical balance tweaks to the voting package, we dropped some transient vote support and swapped a Revolutionary Council for a Reckless Agitation.  Eat the Rich proved so useful, I added a second copy.  Swapping one Consanguineous Boon for an Exclusion Principle, which is closer to the original design, and helps protect against Delaying Tactics.  The Domain Challenge helps when you have other breed or ally swarm decks at the table. Lastly, this version drops the Kine Resources Contested for a Neonate Breach.

The most impactful change was to add a second Red List vampire to make Infamous Insurgent worthwhile. I chose Chavi over Mata Hari because her specials were more useful to me even though Mata Hari would have been another vampire with O.

The deck uses Animalism, Celerity, Chimerstry, Obfuscate, and Presence. Being able to take advantage of the Presence Ravnos, the Obfuscate Ravnos, and the Red List Ravnos with the Anarch threeways and the use of single discipline power cards, like Voter Captivation and Forgotten Labyrinth. It's important to not hold onto cards, even if they're powerful if you can't play them right away. (We can discuss discarding in a future post.)

Finally, the winning version should have a City Star Taxi in it, but I never did add the Rom Gypsy replacement when the new card was available.

Final Thoughts

This final version shows off interesting ways to mix in common out-of-clan disciplines. Bleeding the most bleed intensive variant, it also provides a template for perhaps reducing the voting package and working with more bleed until the Death Star is fully operational.

Next, we'll have a short wrap-up post covering this approach and offer some suggestions for deckbuilding exercises to help you improve your deckbuilding skills.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My Watchlist

We know the BCP has a watchlist for cards that are under review for banning/nerfing.  With the upcoming changes to Ashur Tablets and Emerald Legionnaires announced, but not detailed, I thought I take a few minutes to talk about some cards that I feel are problematic in the game.  I'll forego any talk about the upcoming changes. (I don't know what they are and any more talk about those cards at this point is just tilting at windmills.) My Watchlist This probably isn't my full list, but it's what is on my top of mind right now, which means they're important enough to remember that I have problems with them and important enough to think about what we need to do about it. Veil of Darkness A card that Black Chantry must be concerned about because it wasn't even reprinted in Echoes of Gehenna. The effect is powerful, a permanent chance to cancel cards.  There may be some problem with the effect, which is never going to be applied evenly.  Some decks run more Master ca

Thoughts on the 2024 Tournament Season Updates

BCP recently announced errata and changes for this years tournament rules to coincide with the Ravnos, Salubri, and Tzimisce starter release date.  The new cards and the changes will be tournament legal on February 2, 2024. The Errata We knew this was coming as Black Chantry announced that there would be an announcement.  I even stirred up some controversy by posting some changes I'd like to see now that these have been settled.  That being said, here's my initial thoughts regarding these changes. Ashur Tablets As much I would have preferred BCP to ban Ashur Tablets, this is the errata that I expected them to settle on.  I had considered this approach several years ago before BCP began testing changes.  It seems to be a solid middle ground that guts MMPA decks without necessarily gutting other decks that use Tablets.  The Ashur race is now much more of a race.  Gone are the days of 18+ Tablets decks.  I expect decks to sit in the 6, sometime

Let's Build: V5 Toreador with Fortitude

It's our great pleasure to provide the final Toreador spoiler for the new Fifth Edition boxed set.  Without further ado, let's meet Catalina Vega with artwork by Mitch Mueller.