PCK Laibon Set Round 3 of Playtesting has Concluded

Crap, my original reply was deleted.

The quick version: Thanks for sharing these! Would love to participate but the local VTES scene in my parts has gone into torpor since the game's "demise." Still think I can help somehow?

Also why isn't Guardians of the Faith available on JOL and on lackey? I would think this would be a great idea for casual non-sanctioned play and would give a fair amount of folks a chance to play with the cards you guys designed. I know you don'T control either of these formats but I was wondering whether or not some petitioning has been done on that note?

Also why isn't Guardians of the Faith available on JOL and on lackey?

For the same reason the hundreds of fan-cards in this subforum aren't.

DeathInABottle wrote:

Diamond Mine is a little long on text, but I love that it does something useful as well as hurting master recursion decks.

It is indeed a cool idea but why making it an investment while designing it like a powerbase?

Also, I find it not clear enough where are going the counter when a Laibon steal them.

They're blood counters, so the Laibon gains blood.

KoKo wrote:

Still think I can help somehow?

Also why isn't Guardians of the Faith available on JOL and on lackey? I would think this would be a great idea for casual non-sanctioned play and would give a fair amount of folks a chance to play with the cards you guys designed.

Contact us via email at pck.vtes<at>gmail.com or PM us here for more info.

I just sent PNGs of the GotF cards to Sydnelson for inclusion on OCTGN3. I understand that VTES doesn't work on OCTGN3 currently. Hopefully when he has time for that volunteer work, you'll see the GotF cards available there soon after.

Since people have inquired, the CSV files for Guardians of the Faith are now posted on our Google Drive. These files can be imported into ARDB automatically. Have patience when ARDB does its thing---it often appears to get stuck at 50%, but it is still working!

The PDF files can be printed out and used with card sleeves. Make sure you print at 100% size and not shrink to fit so there are no issues between A4 or 8.5" x 11.0" paper sizes.

More information can be found at our blog:

pckvtes.wordpress.com/2013/07/06/guardians-of-the-faith-csvs-posted/

I think Irawagbon should say 'with' first strike rather than 'at'

Jeff wrote:

More information can be found at our blog:

pckvtes.wordpress.com/2013/07/06/guardians-of-the-faith-csvs-posted/

Borrowed Time appears to be somewhat overly good.

When playing a card with a cost of X, X can be zero. (See Hidden Strength for a common example of this.) Thus it's very easy to cycle Borrowed Time any time you get bled. If you go back in time before Wake With Evening's Freshness had a more reasonable do-not-replace clause, people were very aware of just how awesome Wake was. For example, this article on deckbuilding from years back . Get a massive benefit when you need it (a wake) and cycle it very, very easily when you don't. So there's very little strategy regarding including quite a few in a deck. (This is different from twister decks with 70 burn option cards, because those cards don't give you a benefit.)

Working as it does, it also has the standard problem a lot of bleed defence cards face - it hurts decks that bleed occasionally and want to make it a good bleed more than a consistent stealth-bleed deck that can bleed for 3 at +1 stealth. Say, the bruise-bleed deck that does one bleed for 6 every now and then. Faustrecht is more reasonable in this regard, capping the reduction (a real reduction, in this case) at 2.

It would also seem to make weenie oriented decks much more resilient, who can often afford to be leaving multiple minions untapped. Not sure they need the help, even the ones that aren't Dominate-oriented. (Say, weenie Dem bleed with a Sabbat focus.)



Taking Out the Cornerstone feels like a Lasombra deck could use it alongside Baltimore Purge to make the table unpleasant. Not necessarily win, just make the table really, really unpleasant. (See also: Gehenna events and Anarch Revolt pre-errata.) Toss in Vulnerability or White Nights Massacre. Pick a titled vampire with Fortitude for Freak Drive, Renewed Vigor... possibly unpleasant. Ambrosio is possibly interesting because he has Presence, but a decent title (2+ votes) + Taking Out the Cornerstone + Sabbat Intrigue is already 5 votes for an AB, possibly 6 with a Cardinal or Priscus. Plus Power Structure in a lot of Lasombra decks.


Mustering the Forces is interesting, but if you already have a viable vote-passing strategy, you probably have a winning deck strategy available to you. Seems like an odd design decision to help a strategy that's probably already viable, rather than - say - giving some direction to City Gangrel combat, or another obvious Sabbat problem.



Sabbat Intrigue lets weenies do Fiendish Tongue (+1 bleed) at +1 stealth, for zero blood and no discipline. Feels like breed and weenie decks would be happy. Actually, one of the reasons why weenie Pre goes anarch is for Power of One, for the stealth. Would you be tempted to stay Sabbat and get stealth that way? Playing a bunch of Fiendish Tongue seems a fair bit easier than going Anarch, with your need for Anarch Converts (or similar tech). And a breed-y deck with a host of weenies bleeding for 2 a turn at +1 stealth is pretty solid - and works even with Embrace. Not sure weenies really need the help. Group 2 has five one-cap Panders (with only Royce being terrible for these purposes), and 2 in Group 3. This isn't looking too pleasant.

If you chose to toss in a few Ductus, you could find yourself with a 1 cap weenie sometimes bleeding for 3 at 2 stealth (or 1 stealth if you don't pull another Ductus), and a bunch a friends bleeding for 2 at 1 stealth. And the initial Ductus action isn't wasted even if you don't pull any others, because it basically gives you permanent +1 bleed if you want that, and you could even hand it to someone else in the first turn - and it requires a Sabbat vampire, so Sabbat Intrigue is playable on that. And toss a single copy of Ductus into a deck and it's better than a single copy of Camera Phone or Laptop, and more versatile (votes), and free, and stacks with them (it's not equipment so stacks with Camera Phone).

Was there an aim of "make disciplineless weenie stealth-bleed really quite awesome"?

jamesatzephyr wrote:

Borrowed Time appears to be somewhat overly good.

Borrowed Time can be cycled well for 0, but not quite as good as the old WwEF. It does require a bleed against you after all, while old WwEF could be played during any action--the good old "wake and watch." Also in contrast to old WwEF, BT requires the Sabbat vampire to be untapped to play it.

As you note, BT is not true reduction, so any pool loss will eventually be taken. BT works best against large bleeds because it puts off the pool loss further into the future. BT is not so useful against many small bleeds because you'll burn the pool during your untap anyway, though you may keep the Edge as a result of playing it and mitigate some pool loss.

BT was designed to give the most benefit to large Sabbat vampires without access to easy intercept or bounce---you can bring out your 10-cap on turn 3 and be able to slow down heavy stealth bleeders behind you, even if Pentexed! Action modifiers can be played after BT so the bleed can still succeed. BT provides flavor for the Sabbat sect and their "live fast, die young" mentality.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

Taking Out the Cornerstone feels like a Lasombra deck could use it alongside Baltimore Purge to make the table unpleasant.

Mustering the Forces is interesting, but if you already have a viable vote-passing strategy, you probably have a winning deck strategy available to you. Seems like an odd design decision to help a strategy that's probably already viable, rather than - say - giving some direction to City Gangrel combat, or another obvious Sabbat problem.

Sabbat political actions such as TOtC should be unpleasant, shouldn't they. MtF is indeed interesting. It is intended as a long term, end-game strategy---reduce bleeds early on, then hammer hard with successful bleeds later on.

Giving direction to Gangrel antitribu was indeed paramount with our design. Malfean Pact is a very good card IMO. However, expressly directing City Gangrel combat was studiously avoided. As our brainstorming was wrapping up, we deliberately did not make or playtest any cards that required disciplines. We did not want to create spillover effects into other clans during the first go around with new cards. The law of unintended consequences was very much on our minds.

Sure, making a CEL/PRO card might have been a cheap, targeted way to help a clan that needs some help. But that would have meant that other clans also needed a new card to be fair. We prudently chose not to go there. As you can see, with one set under our belts, we took our designs to another level with our Laibon set and worked discipline cards quite vigorously.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

Sabbat Intrigue lets weenies do Fiendish Tongue (+1 bleed) at +1 stealth, for zero blood and no discipline. Feels like breed and weenie decks would be happy...

Presence Anarch decks highly favor Undue Influence for the base +1 stealth, and Power of One can provide that crucial additional stealth. Not bad for a discipline that doesn't typically have any stealth and is known more for combat evasion and pool gain from bleeds or votes.

Points taken with SI and FT. But that "combo" is more or less the same as Computer Hacking and +1 stealth. Consider though that the typical Obf/Hack deck actually gets to +2 stealth frequently. Sabbat Intrigue only gets you to 1 stealth and *requires* an action that requires Sabbat. Cardless actions like the basic bleed do not qualify.

SI was really designed to help out Sabbat political decks. It can provide stealth for Sabbat actions, which naturally includes those requiring Sabbat titles, and if stealth is not needed, it provides votes for those actions. Plus, we wanted a singular card that could bring some cohesion to the Sabbat sect as a whole (such that they actually accept cohesion as part of their daily unlife).

jamesatzephyr wrote:

If you chose to toss in a few Ductus, you could find yourself with a 1 cap weenie sometimes bleeding for 3 at 2 stealth (or 1 stealth if you don't pull another Ductus), and a bunch a friends bleeding for 2 at 1 stealth...

Sometimes this is true. A deck with 10 Ductus, 20 Fiendish Tongue, 25 Sabbat Intrigue and 5 Stealth Ritus might have limited success while simultaneously being boring as hell to play and having almost no flexibility to adjust to the other decks at the table. It is worth nothing that, if the Ductus (pack leader) ends up in torpor, then none of your vampires can even play the other Ductus cards. This was by design and keeping in mind with our high-risk, high-reward concept for our Sabbat cards. If you want to be the leader, you've got to be strong to keep it.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

Was there an aim of "make disciplineless weenie stealth-bleed really quite awesome"?

No. In our final analyses, with weenie decks factored in, these cards provided a reasonable incremental change for the better.

Week 4 of the PCK Laibon set card previews continues at pckvtes.wordpress.com.

In other news, the amazing Fernando Cesar, aka Sydnelson, put Guardians of the Faith into OCTGN3!

pckvtes.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/guardians-of-the-faith-on-octgn3/

Thanks, Fernando!