Card: Vigorous Inquisition

This is an attempt to add more to any possible Sabbat Inquisitors. I'm tempted to start creating some 'built-in' Inquisitors to go with a possible tranche of Inquisitor-related cards.

This is supposed to be a ramped up Edged Illusion for Archbishops, Cardinals and Inquisitors. No stealth built in led to my idea of no cost. For the extra effects, it might be worth putting it at one or two blood.

[img size=400]https://7014330367969587453-a-1802744773732722657-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/juggernaut1981svtesdownloads/home/vtes-card-creations/library-cards/Vigorous Inquisition.jpg[/img]

Hmmm it seems to do this often. It's a public address for the image... I can reference it on my blog...

Vigorous Inquisition
Action
Requires an Archbishop, Cardinal or Inquisitor
Deal 1 unpreventable damage on every vampire controlled by your prey. Deal an additional damage to each Camarilla vampire and another additional damage on any vampire with Thaumaturgy. Sabbat vampires must burn 1 blood to attempt to block this action.

Love the idea, have mixed feelings about the implementation.

Edged Illusion is not a particularly powerful card. I'd call Shattering Crescendo the benchmark card for this kind of design.

For Shattering Crescendo:

PROS: 6 potential damage spread between two minions. No targeting restrictions.

CONS: no stealth, two copies required for every one played, exotic discipline requirement, one blood in cost.

For Vigorous Inquisition:

PROS: scaling damage potential depending on number of vampires, bonus against camarilla (stackable), bonus agains thaumaturgists (again, stackable), advantage against sabbat blockers.

CONS: no stealth, requires certain titles, only affects vampires, only targets the prey.


Now, you already know that it is underpriced, you've said it yourself, but the problems of having such a card around are wider reaching than that. The basic problem underlying this card is it being arguably more all-around efficient than combat and Sabbat being the primary combat-oriented sect of the game.

Think about it: every obf-OBF Archbishop/Cardinal (and there are quite a few) firing away every turn, defense being assured with some bleed redirectors, since the deck will not be wasting slots with silly combat cards. If the prey happens to be Cammie or Tha-based then it's even deadlier. Note that I'm not arguing that it would be the best ever or even a very good deck, just that it would overshadow combat when it really shouldn't.

Edged Illusion and Shattering Crescendo have (in theory) to rely on Chimerstry/Melpominee stealth to get through, which usually costs blood. Other than that, non-combat damage interactions are strong, as Shattering Crescendo has already proved, circunventing the combat defense other people play and actually jamming them in it.


I would start with the card burning blood instead of dealing damage and go from there since that is probably the most important change. It needs a cost and maybe being less effective. Dropping the bonus against Camarilla could be considered, as well as making it only playable by Inquisitors or Inquisitors and Cardinals (to prevent mass Obfuscate from being used to stealth it multiple times a turn).

:Edit: Just remembered: you could also have it only be playable once per turn. That should mostly fix it, but I would keep it burning blood just the same.

Hope you find this constructive.


Drain