New Crypt Card: Santangelo

Name: Santangelo
Clan: Gangrel Antitribu
Group: 5
Capacity: 8
Discipline: pre CEL OBF PRO
Sabbat. During your influence phase you may reveal the bottom card of your crypt. If you reveal a younger Gangrel Antitribu, Santangelo may burn one blood to move it to your uncontrolled region with three blood on it. If not, move the top card to the bottom of the crypt.

The forum's been slow lately so here's another card.

Game development:
- Expand the Sabbat's crypt options.
- Enable new crypt manipulation mechanics.

Flavor:
- A recruiter vampire. Built around the idea expressed in its text-box, I agree the correct clan for this kind of crypt manipulation would probably be !Nosferatu but the City !Gangrel need crucial help so I made him one.

Balance:
- I wanted the minion to be powerful without resorting to out-of-clan disciplines and to make whole crypt groups more playable. The problem with !Gangrel doesn't usually lie with 8-caps and above, it's the lower rungs that really fall in the sub-par category.
- The minion hasn't any non-city disciplines to prevent bolstering the better half of the !Gangrel crypt overmuch.

Competitiveness:
- High. City !Gangrel need crypt cohesion and strong specials to offset their suckiness, much like the !Ventrue once did.


Drain

Something to consider - a single Dominate skill card or Seal of Veddartha enables Chain of Command. That can, potentially, put a reasonable number of known younger vampires on the bottom and set up a moderately reliable pool gain chain.

The skill card has the advantage of granting extra capacity, and thus Santangelo (in play) would be older than Santangelo (in crypt) - so you wouldn't be punished too hard for stacking copies. Seal of Veddartha is also potentially quite strong.

Grafting on Dominate isn't that unusual, and - along with a bunch of bounce or whatever else - just a couple of Chains of Command could potentially do a lot.


Not sure that it breaks the card, or pushes it too far, but it's not a completely random effect.

Well catched. In the current environment post-Lilith's Blessing what you point could truly end up being the rule rather than the exception.

Now, what to do that might remedy or at least mitigate that... I don't really mind the Chain of Command angle altogether, just that players would veer away from the 3-in clans and be too heavily rewarded for it.

Santangelo potentially shares dominate with just Philippe Rigaud so we're cool in that regard (this I already had in mind when designing him).

- "Discipline cards can not be played on Santangelo". Really seems to adress the problem. Feels ham-fisted, though.

- His hability might require him to tap at the end of the turn (even if not necessarily "tap to"), so as to limit his usefulness as a deflector. Doesn't seem like enough of a drawback, though.

- He can be disallowed from playing reaction cards. Though I imagine this will also hurt his ability to play the cards that he is supposed to play, like the smattering of reactions in Cel, Obf and Pro.

- No matter how many restrictions I pile up on him, his very design allows for the player to simply (and cheaply) pull up another vampire, smack the discipline master on him or her and take it from there.

Indecision...


Drain

His special ability is too strong.

Once a skill card is put onto Santangelo, the special ability grants a net gain of two blood/pool per turn. This wouldn't be a bad thing (cf. Govern the Unaligned), but except that the effect has

1. no ocst (no 4 transfer, no tapping, etc.), so can easily use the vampire for acting in your own turn or blocking later.
2. is not "interruptable" (no block, no DI, SR, etc.)

For its crypt drawing and putting three blood on a vampire it's only comparable to Mesu Bedshet (irrc), and that's an action that can be blocked and it only gives you two blood for one blood spent.

With the current cardtext I would try to exploit the special ability for a crypt machine, with deck torso like this:

5x Santangelo
7x random Gangrel with cap. 7 or less.

2x Information Highway
2x Wider View
6x Dominate
6x Bay and Howl
2x Lilith's Blessing

Xx Embrace
Xx Govern
Xx Veil of Legions
...

A better version? I would be already content to play him, if for example he gets a city title and he has the same special ability without gaining three blood.

Name: Santangelo
Clan: Gangrel Antitribu
Group: 5
Capacity: 8
Discipline: pre CEL OBF PRO
Sabbat Archbishop of Toronto. During your influence phase you may reveal the bottom card of your crypt. If you reveal a younger Gangrel Antitribu, Santangelo may burn one blood to move it to your uncontrolled region. If not, move the top card to the bottom of the crypt.

Totally playable in a Gangrel antitribu vote or breed kind of deck, Comparable to vampiress like Lodin (from KoT).

I agree that the special is superb. But you must understand that your version, while playable, is certainly not comparable to Lodin, a Vampire with Cam title, superior Dominate, Presence and Fortitude plus a useful special. I've never seen noboby playing Mugur Sabau and I don't think anyone would consider playing Santangelo with such a text. Sabbat title + City Gangrel disciplines is just a pile-up of suckitude.

Of what use is the ability to fetch additional younger !Gangrel if Bay and Owl works specifically with older vampires and Santangelo has no built-in way of doling out blood to the uncontrolled region?

Name: Santangelo
Clan: Gangrel Antitribu
Group: 5
Capacity: 8
Discipline: pre CEL OBF PRO
Sabbat. During your influence phase you may reveal the bottom card of your crypt (shuffle afterwards). If you reveal a younger Gangrel Antitribu, Santangelo may burn one blood to move it to your uncontrolled region. Santangelo can move 3 blood from the bank to a younger Gangrel Antitribu in your uncontrolled region as a +1 stealth action that costs 1 blood.

How about so? More interaction, less Chain'o'Commanding, less raw power all while maintaining the overall idea.


Drain

To be honest, I would better see two different card, one for bloat or putting more vampire into play (maybe like thicker than blood as an action or something ?), and one to put more vampire from your crypt to play. If only to avoid it being abused too easily.