New Card Idea: Crusade Spearhead

Name: Crusade Spearhead #1
Cardtype:
Requires a ready Archbishop, Priscus, Cardinal or Regent. Crusade.
Choose a Methuselah. Successful referendum means that Methuselah burns 1 pool for each ready Sabbat vampire you control. For every ready Sabbat vampire you control with capacity above 6 the target burns an additional pool. If this referendum was called by a Cardinal put this card into play. You may burn this card to cancel a political action as it is played. Burn this card during your untap phase.

Name: Crusade Spearhead #2
Cardtype:
Requires a ready Archbishop, Priscus, Cardinal or Regent. Crusade.
Allocate 5 points between two or more Methuselahs. Successful referendum means each Methuselah burns 1 pool or inflicts 1 unpreventable point of damage on all of his ready minions for each point assigned.

Name: Crusade Spearhead #3
Cardtype:
Requires a ready Archbishop, Priscus, Cardinal or Regent. Crusade.
Choose a Methuselah. Successful referendum means that Methuselah burns 1 pool or inflicts 1 unpreventable point of damage on one of his ready minions for each ready Sabbat vampire you control. For every ready Sabbat vampire you control with capacity above 4 the target burns an additional pool or inflicts an additional point of damage. The Methuselah may not assign points in excess of the blood or life of his ready minions.


This one's a triple-jeopardy! Help me choose.


Game development:
- Weather the choke-hold that the Camarilla has in political decks by making alternate sect political decks viable.
- Expand upon the Sabbat's theme.

Flavor:
- Crusades. Also, mass embrace, a thematic point that no Sabbat vote card has yet tapped upon.

Balance:
- Political actions for the Sabbat always seem to revolve around some sort of damage dealing or allowing the target to choose the rope from which to hang (Auto-da-Fé, Deploy the Hand, Tribunal Judgement, Blood Siege). I've been tossing around some ideas for a Sabbat political card and found myself unsure as to which theme to enforce. I leave it to you to help me decide upon the best one.

- #1: Is the most direct one. Directness is something I feel that Sabbat politics could use a lot more of, given how uncompetitive the rest of the flavour plays feel by comparison. With this one it's all straightforward: the more and the bigger the minions in your ready region, the more pool your target burns. Also included a bonus for Cardinals, the point here being that I want the card to be super-useful for both small capacity breeders and high-cap decks alike. Might be a little too powerful and encouraging breeding is always something to be done with caution.

- #2: A more middle-term approach. Not completely direct but the price of avoiding a pool loss is really hefty. It's really derivative from Kine and that has its virtues and faults, not least of which is lack of originality. Made it 5 points so as to compare favourably with Kine otherwise it would just have been a weaker version of the card since it is the target who gets to choose the effect that each point assigned by the referendum will have on him. The card does feel sabbat-like, though.

- #3: Again, this one keys off of breeding, much like #1 but is a lot less direct. The other extreme of the sliding scale "pool damage - minion damage", this one is more akin to Free States Rant. Feels like the weakest of the three but, again, that might just mean that it is balanced should the other two be proved overpowered.

Competitiveness:
- High. No matter which of the three you might be focusing on, the intention is for the card to be strong and to attract a player's attention when deciding to build a vote deck.
Note that all three of the cards seem viable enough as it is and two of the three could probably be released under different names but I am assuming that only one slot would be spared in an upcoming expansion and would like to choose the strongest and most balanced card.


Drain

The breeding power of #1 and #2 are turn off for me. Don't forget that you already have consanguineous boon for breeding deck ; the combination of #1 or #3 with Palla Grande seem potentially broken.

The #2 seem good but unpolished, and may be a bit too powerful. Also, as written, it do nothing if the methuselah have no ready minion.

all of them are broken.
#1 and #3 are crazy in breeding deck and overpowered in other decks
#2 is broken just right from the box (4 unpreventable damage to all meth's minions with one action?? Shattering Crescendo looks very weak comparing to it)

Crusade Spearhead
Political Action
X blood
Requires a ready Archbishop, Priscus, Cardinal or Regent
Choose a Methuselah. The chosen Methuselah must burn blood from ready vampires or pool up to a total of X. The acting vampire may not gain more blood than the chosen Methuselah burns in pool.

The idea seems interesting, but the implementations don't feel quite right. But it gave me an idea of something like:

No fixed ideas on X and Y. 3 damage, 2 pool?



I'd also be very wary of any such card that only allocated points to vampires, or pool damage if not. Packs a thumping great whack at the Imbued. And while they may or may not warrant the occasional good punch, I'd rather one card wasn't quite so punishing to them.

I would remove Seraph from the list. Three reasons :

* Seraph don't actually have much autority beside the black hand. They obey titled sabbats vampires, not the other way around ; picture something like the general of navy SEAL or something.

* Seraph and black hand decks does not have much title, because printed titles and votes are exclusive with printed black hand trait. So, they would not really be able to actually play the card.

* it dilute the black hand thematics by adding seemingly random card, or at least card that does not relate to theirs turfs.