Just picked up Terror in Venice and I actually really dig the theme. Makes me wish they made more theme based expansions.

I was curious about Conspiracy’s. How many people play them in their decks? How effective are they? They don't seem that awesome to me, but I'm still new.

For an interesting game idea I was thinking about just using the cards from Terror in Venice and some from the core to make decks and then use the Conspiracy cards like they were story cards. How do you think that will change the game?

If you haven't already done so, you may want to have a look at the Terror in Venice card review articles over at CardGameDB. Here's a link to part 3 including the Conspiracy cards: http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/index.html/_/call-of-cthulhu/terror-in-venice-review-part-3-r840

Personally, I felt that up until Terror in Venice, there had been only one or two worthwhile conspiracies. But the majority of the conspiracies in TiV are really good and it offers additional cards with interesting synergies. However, you'll typcally want to design your deck around the conspiracies to gain the full benefit.

Mixing story cards with Conspiracy cards for casual games is something I've been contemplating, as well. I think this would work best if each player was allowed to choose a number of Conspiracies to be included.

The Conspiracy tourney at Worlds included a story deck comprised solely of Conspiracies. The games were a bit wacky with not all the players being intimately familiar with their effects and sometimes big swings when the effects were enacted! I for one really enjoyed the format and as I recall a good number of the participants did as well. Our local group has participated in a conspiracy themed league with great success. We even created our own Conspiracy card that was auto in play as one of the three stories at the start of the match.

I agree w/ jhaelen, the Conspiracy cards in Venice are overall quite good and worth building decks around them.

The thing is though, a Conspiracy deck is sort of like a Day/Night deck. You can't just throw the Conspiracy card in there and expect it to work. You have to pick your Conspiracy up front and then tailor the deck around it. A lot of the cards you use might be the same ones you'd have taken in a non-conspiracy deck but at least some portion of the deck should be there to directly support the Conspiracy.