Card Idea: Burning the Fat of the Land

Name: Burning the Fat of the Land
Cardtype:
Requires a ready independent titled vampire.
Allocate 6 points between one or more other Methuselahs that have more pool than you. Successful referendum means each Methuselah burns 1 pool for each point assigned. Any targeted Methuselah who has more pool than you after resolving the referendum burns an additional pool.

Game development:
- Weather the choke-hold that the Camarilla has in political decks.
- Downgrade Parity Shift's playability without actually equalling or surpassing its usefulness.

Flavor:
- Nothing fancy, just your typical "screw them, they have things that we don't!" type mentality often attributed in this game to Anarchs and Independents.

Balance:
- The card has both hefty requirements and effects since I wanted it to interact on Parity's terms, which is to say, with Meths that have more pool than you. My design reasoning is simple, as follows: if more cards, be they political or otherwise, key off of having less pool than other Meths then the players of these cards will be encouraged to reduce their pool totals and Parity Shift will become that less good, denying the Camarilla player targets and forcing him to go ever lower on pool and expose himself more.
- 6 Points plus the bonus seems like a lot and I am, of course, not entirely sure of this number's validity. I definitely don't want to replace Reckless Agitation but, at the same time, having to be lower on pool than your prey is already a risky proposition while playing Parity, let alone a vote that doesn't give you pool whatsoever. Independent Titles are also quite rare to come by out of the box or require some setup in the case of Anarchs, making this a sort of specialized play.

Competitiveness:
- Medium. Independent titled voters are really hard to come by. Going low on pool to damage your prey and exposing yourself is harder still.


Drain

Way to strong, imagine a baron deck that has this, death star and reckless at their disposal. I like the idea of a vote for indies to reign in bloat, but something less aggressive would be better, don't have time to think of anything but indies have this in reckless, they don't need another

Why does independant need yet another very strong political action when they have already quite a bit of them, like Free state rant or Reckless agitation ? Not to forget the melpominee votes and the anarch votes ....

Pullen wrote:

Way to strong, imagine a baron deck that has this, death star and reckless at their disposal. I like the idea of a vote for indies to reign in bloat, but something less aggressive would be better, don't have time to think of anything but indies have this in reckless, they don't need another

Ohlmann wrote:

Why does independant need yet another very strong political action when they have already quite a bit of them, like Free state rant or Reckless agitation ? Not to forget the melpominee votes and the anarch votes ....

I know that it is somewhat lacking in originality. Votes that do pool damage, we've all seen their kind before. They are integral part of the reason to play a vote deck, after all.

The thing is, the Parity Shift poll discussion elsewhere in the forum got me thinking about politics that could give PS a run for its money but not outright supplant it (since I do believe the Camarilla deserves to have the best vote in the game).

In that thread a particular statement was made regarding how a vote-deck that didn't feature PS was not worth playing. I am, of course, aware of Reckless's existence and went scrounging the TWDA for the answers to some questions. The results were surprising: Of the meager 18 TWDs won with decks that featured Reckless Agitation, starting with October 2007 and ranging to the present day, only two used the card in sizeable quantities (11 and 9 copies), other two employed 4 copies and a further two used 3 copies apiece. The rest settled for 2 or a single prayer copy of the card. I never for a minute thought that Reckless Agitation had come to dominate the scene but the results were really underwhelming.

So, there you go: Reckless already exists, yes, but it is clearly not enough to draw players to consider an Independent Vote deck as a serious contender. You may point freely at lack of originality, but not to the voidness of purpose of the card.

Regardless of all the rest, the design proposal of making a given card that requires you to have less pool than your target in order to indirectly foil Parity Shift decks seems really sound to me.

Here's an updated version, reined in its power a bit, to prevent mass use as well as to make it a bit more thematic:

Name: Burning the Fat of the Land
Cardtype:
Requires a ready independent titled vampire.
Allocate 6 points between one or more other Methuselahs that have more pool than you. Successful referendum means each Methuselah burns 1 pool for each point assigned. If any of the targeted Methuselahs has less pool than you after resolving the referendum you lose 2 pool.


Drain

Drain wrote:

Of the meager 18 TWDs won with decks that featured Reckless Agitation, starting with October 2007 and ranging to the present day, only two used the card in sizeable quantities (11 and 9 copies), other two employed 4 copies and a further two used 3 copies apiece. The rest settled for 2 or a single prayer copy of the card. I never for a minute thought that Reckless Agitation had come to dominate the scene but the results were really underwhelming.

There is nothing wrong with those numbers, and you would not get much different figures with Parity Shift. There are two very good reasons not to spam Reckless Agitation. First, focusing on one vote is just begging to have your whole turn shut down by a single Delaying Tactics. Second, Reckless Agitation cannot be used in the final duel, so you need to keep some KRC to finish the job.

Edit: Once again someone beat me to the point, I'll leave this anyway for emphasis

Just a quick comment on why you don't see that many reckless agitations when they do show up: They are not playable in the heads up since it requires 'two or more other methuselahs', playing them in large quantities will most likely ruin your end game.

I still haven't made up my mind regarding the card in question though. 6 points on a single player is significant and is already competing with the role of reckless (reliable big damage vote). Since you won't gain any pool yourself neither I have a fear it also becomes less playable in the end game (unless some serious bloating has been going on), much like reckless. Especially since both are for independents.