Bloodlines - Gargoyles

If I am correct, the next PDF set to be designed would focus on bloodlines. Since gargoyles is one of my favorite clans to play, I thought I'd ask the community what do gargoyles need most?

Here's my 2 cents.

Slave attribute
I actually love this concept and added game mechanics, however it really does split gargoyles into 3 clans as it's really hard if not impossible to mix them. This leads to a severe lack in vampire diversity if you consider independent and the 2 slave types as separate clans.

Tremere/Gargoyle incompatibility
In any deck, using 3 disciplines is already less effective than using 2 or just 1. Trying to use Tha/Vis/Pot/Flight or Dom/Vis/Pot/Flight I've found leads to a lot of hand jams and the Tha part of most Visceratika cards are all combat oriented, so you simply lack potential ousting strategies in general. You need superstar vampires like Tupdog or Chaundice to make this work. Trying to actually use tremere's with Gargoyles is the best strategy to shutdown a Gargoyle deck, your only option is to play weenie tremere's to bleed and serve gargoyles, which is worse than playing a pure weenie bleed deck. Granted, there are still some ideas I have which I still need to attempt.

Costly
I've found that playing tremere + gargoyle really depletes my pool fast and it's actually quite hard to replenish. Any attempt to boost blood/pool game lead to hand jams or were simply not sufficient enough due to the multi-clan confinement. The cost of influencing vampires is doubled, since you need at least 2 vampires on the table to start your strategy.

Independent Gargoyles
Simply put, lacks ousting power and vampire diversity, currently you cannot really mix slave gargoyles into this deck type. You're better off playing Brujah or Gangrel.

My wish list for independent gargoyles
1.) More gargoyle diversity
2.) Easy means to lose slave attribute
3.) Any ousting strategy (a reason to play Gargoyle over more efficient clans)
4.) Cheaper Gargoyle Creature Allies/Retainers
5.) Blood/pool generation

My wish list for slave gargoyles
1.) More gargoyle diversity
2.) Dual disc. cards like Dominate + Visceratika for ousting strategies
3.) Influence tools, get vamps on table faster (govern that works on older gargoyles)
4.) Blood/pool generation

More gargoyle diversity is needed most in my opinion. Even though there are a nice amount of gargoyles in total, you really have to split them up in 3 sub clans, leaving little to actually choose from.

Whats your opinion?

Imo slave rules are one the many rules in vtes that should be removed. Two things should be done.
1. Slave trait removed
2. Tupdog banned
Those would solve all your problems with vampire diversity

While I don't disagree that some more tools to help the gargoyles would be nice, I have had quite a bit of success with a group 1-2 tremere/gargoyle deck with the crypt consisting of fidus and all the smallest Tremere, and using create gargoyles with thaumaturgy skill cards, Tremere bleeding and doing other stuff and if they get blocked gargoyle takes over if needed, combat was mostly crawling chambers and flames of the netherworld, which both the gargoyles and the tremere with tha could use, and the gargoyles allowed me to also use those tremere without thaumaturgy (I am looking at you, Mustafa) without it being liability, effectively making the create gargoyles like embraces on steroids.

alek wrote:

Imo slave rules are one the many rules in vtes that should be removed. Two things should be done.
1. Slave trait removed
2. Tupdog banned
Those would solve all your problems with vampire diversity

You could probably do it more elegantly than that - or at least differently. Like, say, banning the use of actions in a Gargoyle's first turn in play if there isn't a master, or something like that. That would still hose some of the Tupdog Rockcat decks (because they didn't actually need to take a action with the Tupdog), but probably leaves most other decks in a reasonable state.

"Slave: Some minions are identified as slaves to a specified clan. When brought into play, until his controller's next influence phase, a A slave cannot take a directed action if his controller doesn't control a ready member of the specified clan. Also, if a member of the specified clan controlled by the same Methuselah is blocked, the controller can tap the slave to cancel the combat and to untap the acting vampire and have the slave enter combat with the blocking minion instead."

Would be nice to find something slightly less fiddly, but you get the idea.


(Also, this should probably be moved to the Card Ideas or Balance forum, or somewhere that's not News and Announcements.)

jamesatzephyr wrote:

(Also, this should probably be moved to the Card Ideas or Balance forum, or somewhere that's not News and Announcements.)

Yeah sorry, this is where it ends up when you add a topic from "Recent Topics" mode apparently... My bad...