Card Idea: Depths of the Dark Continent

Name: Depths of the Dark Continent
Cardtype:
Requires a ready Magaji. Not playable if you control any ready non-Laibon vampires. Unique.
If this referendum is successful put this card in play with up to 5 counters from your pool on it. You may burn a counter from this card to reduce a bleed against you by 2 once per turn. You may burn two counters to cancel a referendum that would make you lose pool once per turn. Burn this card when it has no counters.

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.
- Expand upon the Laibon's thematic.

Flavor:
- Based upon the really cool Terra Incognita, a card that pretty much tried to redress the fact that Laibon decks using just clan disciplines were not very likely to deflect bleeds and that the Laibon is a misterious and secluded sect, whose base of operations resides in far flung lands.

Balance:
- This one feels about right. It is a card that requires a rare title and that forces you to play a sect that usually has trouble passing many votes.
- Laibon decks are tipically lacking on the defense. That is the flaw that this card aims to supress, it can net a benefit of some 5 pool points in reduced bleeds or less than that in cancelled KRCs but potentially more in the event of other damaging votes (read: Parity Shift). It also interestingly artificially lowers your pool total.

Competitiveness:
- Medium. Mono-Laibon voting is not very easy to pull due to the lack of titles but the card itself is really worthwile to include due to it's strong defensive boost.


Drain

I really like this card.

But I do wander what Laibon deck you see? I ask because the one's I run into almost always have good defense.

Well I'll be upfront about this: I've rarely seen Laibon played and never outside of Ventrue-Ishtarri crossover for the stealth-vote angle. It's just that the in-clan disciplines of 3 of the 4 main legacies cannot redirect bleeds and are also weak in table titles, thus me infering weak defense capabilities and the need to help them out (while also hurting Parity, natch).
I know they can have some pretty fearsome No Secrets walls with permacept that can make a true barrier of a deck but these are not the typical benefactors of the card being proposed.

All of the non-exclusive legacies like Laibon Lasombra/Ravnos/Assamite don't really seem to have enough crypt support to play this card as it is.

Drain

Laibon vote is reasonably viable. They can produce a gazillion votes out of nowhere even without a lot of titles and have some solid titled vampires to build around.

That said, I think the card as written is wallpaperh. Paying FIVE pool upfront to then maybe safe 10 pool over the course of the next FIVE turns is a very bad deal. Especially since you only get 10-11 turns to work with in the first place. All it does is put you in ousting range earlier and make people lunge with 3-4 big bleeds while your csrd sits there useless.

It'd be much better to just play a Con Boon and gain 3 right now.

I like the idea of it, but I'd need to be a lot stronger. Like:

Name: Depths of the Dark Continent
Cardtype:
Requires a ready Magaji. Not playable if you control any ready non-Laibon vampires.
Unique.

If this referendum is successful put this card in play with 3 counters. You may burn a counter from this card to reduce a bleed against you by 2 once per turn. You may burn two counters from this card when you or a minion you control is selected by the acting Methuselah in the terms of a referendum to make that referendum fail. Burn this card when it has no counters.

Any titled non-laibon vampire may burn this card as a action

Drain wrote:

All of the non-exclusive legacies like Laibon Lasombra/Ravnos/Assamite don't really seem to have enough crypt support to play this card as it is.

Tsunda with Tumnimos and The Eldest are Kholo is both frightening and effective. Not unstoppable, but potentially very powerful.

Breed weenies with Tsunda (Tumnimos inherits the creator's sect). Convert a few others with Mozambique Allure. That can be either a crypt vampire so it can breed a few more Laibon, or a few Tumnimos weenies after they've been created with the 'wrong' sect, depending on the card flow and your preferences.

games.groups.yahoo.com/group/rgtcjdeckarchive/message/4565

Izaak wrote:

Laibon vote is reasonably viable. They can produce a gazillion votes out of nowhere even without a lot of titles and have some solid titled vampires to build around.

That said, I think the card as written is wallpaperh. Paying FIVE pool upfront to then maybe safe 10 pool over the course of the next FIVE turns is a very bad deal. Especially since you only get 10-11 turns to work with in the first place. All it does is put you in ousting range earlier and make people lunge with 3-4 big bleeds while your csrd sits there useless.

It'd be much better to just play a Con Boon and gain 3 right now.

Slight correction: Paying _up to_ five pool. I know perfectly well that there are times when the player wouldn't want to overcompromise himself with this card. Also, reducing bleeds by 2 once per turn also functions on bounced bleeds so the math is slightly more favourable than you put it.

That said, I do admit to having worded it conservatively so here's a slight retype, just to up it's power value:

Name: Depths of the Dark Continent
Cardtype:
Requires a ready Magaji. Not playable if you control any ready non-Laibon vampires. Unique.
If this referendum is successful put this card in play with up to 5 counters from your pool on it. You may burn a counter from this card to reduce a bleed against you by 2 once per turn. You may burn two counters to cancel a referendum that would make you lose pool once per turn. Burn this card when it has no counters or if you control a non-laibon vampire.

This should make it fairly more attractive and less abusable by Eldest are Kholo Decks. If you feel even more steam is needed, simply remove the 'once per turn' clause next to the part of cancelling referendums.

Note that I don't feel anything's the wrong with your proposal, Izaak, it's just that I see the artificial lowering of the player's pool and the need to play laibon only to be nuclear parts of the card's appeal, that I would like to avoid having to part with.

Also, I want this card to avoid any kind of explicit sinergy (other than requiring Magaji, of course) with No Secrets. Making it burnable means the card has to be defended and could just as well be some Laibon Powerbase (in itself not a bad idea, mind you). Requiring just Laibon is also to prevent crossover with bounce/political-happy clans (read: Ventrue).


Drain