Submission: Samiel

Name: Samiel
Capacity: 10
Cardtype: Vampire
Clan:
Discipline:
Group: 3
Sabbat. Damage Samiel inflicts on other vampires is aggravated. Damage done to Samiel from other vampires is normal damage, not aggravated. Samiel may enter combat with another minion as action. Samiel can play and use cards requiring Salubri. Samiel enters play in Torpor and cannot be diablerized while in Torpor. +2 Strength.

Art notes: I found no detailed description other than to call him the Vengeful Angel.

World of Darkness Reference: Progeny of Saulot. Sire of Ithuriel , Gabriel , Aariel , Uriel , Ezrael and Za'aphiel. First knight and founder of the Warrior bloodline. Wrote the Code of the Warrior. Creator of Valeren. Hero of the Baali Wars. Silas claims that Samiel slaughtered Tzimisce. However it was later revealed that Tzimisce used Reform the Body to survive. Samiel entered Torpor after the fight because of devastating wounds that he suffered from the fight with the Antediluvian. Clanbook Salubri page 40.

How does this card address a compelling game need?: Samiel is a beat stick for Salubri Antitribu and his disciplines allow him to cross over with both Salubri and Salubri Antitribu. He has combo option with Ventrue Antitribu as well as he has all of their in clan disciplines at superior. Part of the problem with Salubri Antitribu is they only have two vampires with a built in rush option. They need a large vampire that they can build a deck around that has enough options that create a wall or press their prey. Starting in torpor is a significant disadvantage, but also means they that he has synergy with cards that rescue a vampire from torpor or are only usable in torpor.

Created by:
Justin Lacey

Update: July 28th 2017

Good and Bad.

Good = The ability to do aggravated damage with a combat rush ability is very nice. Dominate for grave robbing is awesome.
Bad = isn't good enough, he really needs for the ability to move blood to uncontrolled vampires (Scouting Mission or Govern the Unaligned). He is really slow in his current form and it takes a while to get moving. Zip gun for aggravated damage is a cute trick, but he doesn't need it; Walking Stick however is fine. The aggravated as normal is complete unnecessary and detracts from the vampire, plus adding unnecessary text. doesn't really add anything useful, cool for him to have, but unnecessary. Perhaps his biggest issue is that 1 prevent card completely stops him.

Here is the math for the new design,

10 Cap = +12
8 Disc = -8
Damage is aggravated = -1.5
Damage is unpreventable = -1.5
Only usable at close range = +0.5
Enter combat with D action = -1.5
= 0

Basic idea, is that his strikes (and the important text) can be avoided by being at long range, strike: combat ends or strike: dodge and he still only does 1 damage (without additional cards) to Allies. His enter combat ability is not at stealth. He doesn't have a title, +bleed or +strength. However vampires that try to trade damaging strikes at close range will likely lose.

Samiel
10 Cap Vampire group 3

Sabbat. Samiel's damage at close range in combat is unpreventable and aggravated. He may enter combat with any minion as a action.

Update: August 12th 2017

Reasons:
1) Dodge, Strike: Combat Ends, and Maneuvers are all meant to be natural foils to his text. Samiel should be playing Thoughts Betrayed or Telepathic Tracking, so unpreventable damage on that top of that was too much. This means that prevent is now another way to defeat his combat mechanic.
2) +1 Strength means that he is more effective against Allies that block him.
3) The treat aggravated as normal was very potent. It basically meant that Undead Persistence beat all other Combat decks.

Samiel
10 Cap Vampire group 3

Sabbat. In combat Samiel's damage at close range is aggravated. He may enter combat with any minion as a action. +1 strength

Clarification: This removes unpreventable. Unpreventable was replaced with +1 strength. Unpreventable and +1 strength are both 1.5 points.

Update: August 22nd 2017

I have no problems giving him ; this technically makes him 0.5 points under-costed but since it is completely for thematic reasons and doesn't change his power level... it seems reasonable to give it to him effectively for free.

Samiel
10 Cap Vampire group 3

Sabbat. In combat Samiel's damage at close range is aggravated. He may enter combat with any minion as a action. +1 strength

I forget off the top of my head what the max character count is for four lines of card text on a crypt card, but there is absolutely no way the text for Samiel fits.

Yeah, it is definitely too much. I will reduce it.

5 lines of text (~150 characters) for crypt cards.

Yes there are examples of crypt cards with 5 lines of text - and the Design Team is guilty of a couple of them - but strive for 4 lines.

Samiel
10 Capacity Vampire group 3


Sabbat. Samiel has aggravated damage and treats aggravated damage as normal damage. Samiel may enter combat with a minion as a action. +2 Strength

Is that better or still too long? There are a few ways to say this, but the text gets longer the more clear I make it. Is there a key word or phrase for aggravated damage that doesn't require a sentence to state it?

I managed to take 10 words out of the equation:

Sabbat. Damage from Samiel's strikes is aggrevated. Samiel treats aggravated damage as normal in combat. He may enter in combat with a minion as a action. Move Samiel to torpor when he enters play. He cannot be diablerized when in torpor. +2 Strength.

I removed the Salubri clause, since there's only, like, a couple of Salubri cards. Most of them require Obeah instead. It seemed like the most redundant clause.

Should Samiel's hand strikes only be aggravated, or all damage? Even guns like Magnum? Would hands and melee weapons be more flavorful? I'm not that much familiar with the lore, but Salubri seem to deal with melee weapons mostly.

I'd really love for a word or character count for crypt cards instead of how many lines we're permitted.