A debate on diablerie, Angelo-Promo, Revelation of the sire

Potentially, any of those things. Thinking out loud, in roughly ascending order

• a minor annoyance (too minor and it just becomes pointless overhead
• game-impacting, but typically minor (e.g. "Cannot strike with equipment" will affect some decks, but mostly not, assuming a metagame somewhat similar to today)
• game-impacting for a wide range of decks, with a sliding scale of badness
  • vampire can't gain blood from hunting
  • vampire can't block
  • vampire doesn't untap next turn / untapping costs an extra blood
  • actions cost an extra blood
  • vampire has -X stealth, -Y bleed, or -Z votes
• vampire becomes a problem for the controlling Methuselah, such as wasting pool for you (a la infernal, or Fame), creating a danger of a masquerade breach (which would be some sort of new mechanic), hurting your other minions (if a Malkavian has sent you doolally in combat), or decreasing your hand size
• vampire goes to torpor (rare)
• vampire is burned (very rare)

There was a CCG that I forget the name of - I think it was one of the wrestling or superhero ones - where losing cards from your hand was part of the effects of combat. In V:TES, with its constant redraw mechanism, that would also deplete your library. (In a game with a more fixed redraw mechanism, such as Magic and drawing once per turn, it would mostly just give you many fewer options at that point in time.) A Methuselah trying to control public coverage of two supernatural creatures ripping each others' heads off in Time Square might just have to discard cards.


The idea would be that it was a strategy that helped you win, but which didn't necessarily make the opponent lose. A predator getting backrushed by an aggressive Immortal Grapple deck will often have zero fun because they're doing nothing. In this hypothetical magic wand V:TES re-write, the combat deck can backrush to defend and weaken its predator's aggression, but the predator still has minions who can do stuff. When building a deck, you'd always be thinking "Well, Bobby can bleed for 4, but realistically that's a bleed for 2 or 3 after he's had his arm ripped off by ICL's combat decks."


Obviously, this is all in a hypothetical parallel universe. And while combat is the obvious situation here, similar thoughts would apply in a similar way to other forms of minion control/lockdown. (e.g. Protect Thine Own, Banishment, Chimerstry lockdown) Though those are often more under control in V:TES anyway, such as the significant costs attached to Chimerstry. But, yeah, PTO.



Thematically, think of it less as an epic battle to the death between two minions (which I think we have a lot of in V:TES today), and more like a situation where one of them is able to escape, wounded, possibly badly wounded, but roughly in one piece, slinking back to a haven to recouperate. So Leandro and Mukhtar Bey have several confrontations during the game, with Mukthar finally getting the better of Leandro. Or something.

These are all decent concepts, especially from a fluff stanpoint ( look how hard Vitel is to actually kill. They shoot him in the face at the beginning of the confrontation, and he still takes like 20 vamps to bring down. Thats including middle-almost heavy weights like Jan Pieterzoon, Bell, and Christoff, in addition to slews of younger vamps, like Lydia and her crew plus Janns gaurds with machine guns. Vitel is all extra arms, fortitude, superstrength, and shooting lure of flames, all while maybe frenzied, hard to tell. But hes a badass 10cap, ancient roman, and it takes 3 midcaps(in vtes terms, Christoff is like a gen 9 or 8, depending on if he "diablerizes" the setitein the pc game...) and a slew of 2-4 caps, like at least a dozen, to put him down).

I dont think rules changes are optimal, but new cards and mechanics are an awesome idea. Research and development are plainly umdersupported, but card mechanics like redlist that arent reilant on jist 3 cards to matter(although redlist is weak) are viable.

Why no hunger frenzy master or something? Vamps low on blood are very sucesptable to it.

As far as the idea of a methuselah not being able to play master cards due to keeping an epic fight on the down low, that could eazily be a number of concepts.

Plenty of aewsome ideas not touched on. All we've used up is alot of dicipline names. Maybe they shoulda waited on blowing names on cards like eyes of the dead, but oh well.
So, hunger frenzy, most of the setting in kindred of the ebony kimgdom, slinking away barwly alive fro ma fight(like hesha after leopold gets the eye of hazimel back from him), sucking minions into a forced reality like J Bennison H does during thr assault on Atlanta, or even minions escaping a particular squabble after feeling the methuselahs influence (like victoria ash is always trying to do, or like Beckett actually suceeds at after Menele and Helena are trying to get the heart of osiris from the amenti).

LOADS of untouched upon ideas.
And hell, there are decks i havent gotten to try yet im waitimg on pod for. Like evil jensen summoning members of the entourage and then shamblers once they die for defense in a fortitude presence bleeder, along with the ishtari who also have pre for nec.

Or like a billion other cool things ill be able to just keep together once pod happens. If i get +150 freak drives, i can keep wrenching on concept decks without harvesting them for cards. The same goes for eyes of argus, deflection, magic of the smith, abbot, unmasking, carlton, charisma, and loads of other limiting cards.
I always have to rebuild good decks for tourneys and scrap things i cant find the time to test right.

But, baxk on topic, there was an Angelo thread awhile back. He could be a hair better, easily. But the key is letting him do more with other bb and sanguinous, like in fluff. Maybe an advanced version that does cool stuff too. But grouping is useless change, he doeant have protean, it doesnt matter.
And i dont eant to see combat return to pull fangs n die real dead like it was way back when. Less fun in game.

I think combat chanfing as stated in another reality could happen as a meta swimg if enough cards were printed to allow it and they were good. But thats invitng powercreep. Witherings pretty neat and omg those lines though.....

Just my inflated two cents thouvh.....

ReverendRevolver wrote:

I think combat chanfing as stated in another reality could happen as a meta swimg if enough cards were printed to allow it and they were good. But thats invitng powercreep. Witherings pretty neat and omg those lines though.....

The most obvious problem with doing such things in this reality is the ability to get both sets of benefits - kill a vampire super dead, and get some awesome bonuses too.

Having to 'segment' such cards away from normal killer combat options, such that they're only playable when you're not killing someone, or giving the opponent a get-out clause, or whatever else, is likely to be very awkward.

Not really. Its disarm, its wither. Its "put this card on the opposing minion. When the minion with this card is in torpor, something happens or someone get -x something"
Sure, i can eat the minion with amaranth as he goes to torpor, or i could give his controller -1 handsize while hes in torpor, make him not untap next untap phase, and at superior of whatever do all that plus give the opposing minion -1 bleed if the striking minion is ready.

The trick is make it powerful, but balance it. Only useable on younger vamps seems logical on something that does all the stuff i just mentioned. Maybe its a handstrike, costs 1 blood, only useable against younger minion and if they go to torpor thwy get it. Or make it an anarch style 3way, usable by a 9 cap or higher, and have dom dem, and pre effects.

Lots of room for potential. But again, just a possibility, not something that needs to happen.

ReverendRevolver wrote:

Sure, i can eat the minion with amaranth as he goes to torpor, or i could give his controller -1 handsize while hes in torpor, make him not untap next untap phase, and at superior of whatever do all that plus give the opposing minion -1 bleed if the striking minion is ready.

This is getting you all the advantages of empty minions sat in torpor (can't act, can't block, can't bounce, can't vote etc.), while also giving additional negative effects to the controlling Methuselah. Obviously there are some effects taht do this already, such as Fame and Dragonbound, but they are relatively restricted (e.g. Fame is unique). The turbo-IG deck doesn't actually need to eat your vampires, or even burn them, if they all end up in torpor the turn they come out. You rarely get enough cross-table co-operation to rescue all your vampires. Probably more co-operation to get that deck off the table, but the victim is probably still dead.

The magic wand parallel universe I'm suggesting is that the vampire probably wouldn't go to torpor (without a significant amount more effort) and so could still be used for bleeding and blocking and things, but probably with some drawbacks of some sort. Thus the beaten-up Methuselah is not left in a "sit on your hands" scenario. (As a side-benefit, this also makes "lost position" somewhat harder to end up in, making some of the arguments about self-ousting less volatile. I can still act - sub-optimally - and still negotiate.)

What sort of significant effort would let you put a vampire down properly? Multiple combats, multiple wounds. (Perhaps cards like Disarm could be 'wounds', and if a vampire has X wounds, you can do stuff to them.) But also, this might be an Assamite niche. Contracts and planning might have validity as a short-cut, in a world where it is very difficult to toast Arika in one or two fights.

ReverendRevolver wrote:

Only useable on younger vamps seems logical on something that does all the stuff i just mentioned.

Is that likely to just make people play midbie-or-greater multi-rush decks?

Yea, requirements like that would likely make people build around it, but making vtes like wod combat wise would take alot of alternate universe magik wand brandishing.
Id like vamps to be more durable, but looking at the ecolution of jyhad and vtes, i see why it is the way it is.