Card idea : Sabbat Pressure

Aaron wrote:

Name: Sabbat Pressure
Cardtype:
Unique.
Requires a ready archbishop, priscus, cardinal or regent.
Choose a Methuselah. Successful referendum means that you put this card into play. As long as this card is in play, target Methuselah looses 1 pool at the end of each action that results in a combat between one of his minions and an acting Sabbat vampire. Any minion can burn the Edge to burn this card as a +1 stealth directed action.

Possibly overpowered when combined with Frontal Assault?

Each minion I control guarantees at least 1 pool loss to my prey (unless he has enough Obediences to cancel combat), plus each action has a chance of netting me a pool and torporizing a minion. A rush action with guarantees a pool loss and has the possibility of pool gain is very, very good. When it applies to all your minions....



Also, you really need a "player can only be targeted by one Sabbat Pressure" clause. Stacking multiple copies of Sabbat Pressure would be ridiculous. One combat results in 5 pool loss? Uh, okay.

Drain wrote:

Just one sugestion: find a way to work a clause into the card stating that damage must be dealt during the combat, elsewise we might open the door to some incoherent abuse such as PRE/PRO weenies entering combat, untapping with majesty/earth meld and proceeding to bleed.

Drain

I don't agree. The idea here is that the vampires are putting up pressure and lots of it. Even if damage is not dealt, the damage is from the "pressure".

Is there even a PRE/PRO weenie crypt with Sabbat vampires? How are they all going to enter combat anyway? Frontal Assault? Hope you can take the pool damage since you're messing around and not torporizing your prey's vampires.

echiang wrote:

Possibly overpowered when combined with Frontal Assault?

Each minion I control guarantees at least 1 pool loss to my prey (unless he has enough Obediences to cancel combat), plus each action has a chance of netting me a pool and torporizing a minion. A rush action with guarantees a pool loss and has the possibility of pool gain is very, very good. When it applies to all your minions....

Sure, but how many minions do you have? 4? 5? 6? How much pool damage would Sabbat Pressure do? More than 5? For all the set-up, it has to do more than 5 to be better than Parity Shift, I think. It is also much, much harder to pass than Parity Shift, since you can't bribe other players with pool

If the vote is passed that turn, then that's (probably) one fewer minion to rush. If it's called your previous turn, your prey (and potentially anyone at the board with my suggested revision) has a chance to remove it.

I think the idea IS for it to be abusable with Frontal Assault. Frontal assault with a weenie hoard is a late-game stratagem, at which point there may be lots of other titled vampires to vote down Sabbat Pressure. For the Frontal Assault to be truly effective when combined with Sabbat Pressure, you have to have the stealth and vote push to pass it in the late game, then the combat to torporize every target minion in order to avoid the Frontal Assault penalty. Also if you manage to dunk all your prey's vampires with, say, four rushes, you've only done 4 pool damage with Sabbat Pressure. That's good, but why not just play ConAg or KRC?

Still, Legacy of Pander/Crusades/Frontal Assault/Sabbat Pressure would be very interesting, but again your weenies' combat is probably not going to be good enough to do much torporizing. You'd strongly be at risk for taking Frontal Assault damage.

echiang wrote:

Also, you really need a "player can only be targeted by one Sabbat Pressure" clause. Stacking multiple copies of Sabbat Pressure would be ridiculous. One combat results in 5 pool loss? Uh, okay.

I thought the same, but then I realized it's unique. As I mentioned, multiple copies of the card could clog your hand.

Aaron wrote:

I don't agree. The idea here is that the vampires are putting up pressure and lots of it. Even if damage is not dealt, the damage is from the "pressure".

Is there even a PRE/PRO weenie crypt with Sabbat vampires? How are they all going to enter combat anyway? Frontal Assault? Hope you can take the pool damage since you're messing around and not torporizing your prey's vampires.

No need for Frontal Assault. Haven Uncovered would definitely be the way to go, seeing how the minions are not actually trading blows.

The PRE/PRO crypt does not exist as such in an out-the-box way. But there is a certain Toreador Antitribu (very powerful) archtype that relies on swarming, has access to PRE and can vote rather well.

I'm not saying it is an unsurmountable flaw, but it feels contrary to the card's design intent to have minions going around and S:CEing in the face of the opposition in order to rack up pool damage instead of actually, you know, fighting.

Now, on a much more positive note, I've realized that this card might just make Shock Troops actually viable. I like that.


Drain