new crypt cards: ishtarri

group 5:

Davran Sevim


Laibon. Davran may give each unique Ishtarri an additional vote until the end of the turn as a +1 stealth action that allies cannot block.

Ghassan


Laibon. Ghassan gets two additional votes while he is the acting minion. He burns one blood during your discard phase unless he cast votes in a referendum that turn.

Ghassan



Laibon. Ghassan gets +2 stealth on political actions. Other minions you control may not attempt political actions while Ghassan is untapped.
Once per turn you may tap a Mortal ally you control to untap Ghassan.

Makaburi


Laibon. During a bleed, Makaburi may remove a Mortal in any ash heap from the game to give another Ishtarri +1 intercept.

Kioni


Laibon. Kioni gets +1 bleed when bleeding a Methuselah who controls a ready Mortal ally. She cannot take actions targeting Imbued.

Fathiya


Laibon Magaji. Fathiya may strike to steal a weapon at first strike and during the first round of combat, if range is close, she must do so if she can.

I'm liking these. I assume you wish to expand the Laibon's role as to include full crypt groupings, instead of the current "odd groups get few, even groups get many" that was supposedly designer's intent.

This leaves the Ishtarri with 3 Magaji, Ayo Igoli, Davran and Gassan in Groups 4-5. I don't know much more than the first thing about Laibon, but that seems like some hefty political weight for a non-main clan to have. Hence my reasoning above that these would be G6 sooner than G5.

As for the minions themselves:

- Davram Sevim is really cool.. has this Michael Luther vibe about him. Only drawback is the existence of too many Ishtarri weenies in 4-5 as it is.

- Ghassan is well thought out. I like his mini-magaji angle and his pros and drawbacks in both versions. Merged special is weak but that's ok on account of the wealth of habilities (and drawbacks) that he accumulates.

- Makaburi feels really weak. Superior Necromancy doesn't seem to add much to his usefulness, despite two crypt-mates in G4 also having it. He needs a revamp on his special. Mortal Allies may be in-character for the socialite Laibon but in this game they are exceedingly rare.

- Kioni is just all-around solid.

- Fathyia could use a slight boost. Cornercase combat specials are barely worth points in my book and here it even comes with a drawback.

Some other considerations:

- You need a usable "Laibon/Ishtarri mortal ally" the better to make this crypt go.

- No Orun/Aye interaction? For shame. Laibon crypts should always be pushing to make these cards more viable. They are one of the main divides between Laibon and non-Laibon.


Drain

Molloy wrote:

Davran Sevim


Laibon. Davran may give each unique Ishtarri an additional vote until the end of the turn as a +1 stealth action that allies cannot block.

I really like this one. Quite right costed, special ability limited to unique Ishtarri.

Molloy wrote:

Ghassan


Laibon. Ghassan gets two additional votes while he is the acting minion. He burns one blood during your discard phase unless he cast votes in a referendum that turn.

Ghassan



Laibon. Ghassan gets +2 stealth on political actions. Other minions you control may not attempt political actions while Ghassan is untapped.
Once per turn you may tap a Mortal ally you control to untap Ghassan.

I like the advantage/disadvantage thing as well, but I think he's slightly undercosted (maybe half a point). You are gonna use him in a vote deck anyhow, so his disadv. won't be of effect most of the time. Secondly, for the base version I would change the wording to "end of minion phase", so he doesn't loose a blood when he's moved to ready region (almost) immediately. Thirdly, in the merged version this vampire has just too much cardtext. I would put it on two different vampires actually.

Makaburi


Laibon. During a bleed, Makaburi may remove a Mortal in any ash heap from the game to give another Ishtarri +1 intercept.

OK, I guess. Just to make things more clear, I would change the text to "Once during a bleed action, .."

Kioni


Laibon. Kioni gets +1 bleed when bleeding a Methuselah who controls a ready Mortal ally. She cannot take actions targeting Imbued.

A bit bland for my taste, but OK.

Fathiya


Laibon Magaji. Fathiya may strike to steal a weapon at first strike and during the first round of combat, if range is close, she must do so if she can.

Auspex is bit unusual, but fits very well with Ayo Igoli. Again a special ability where the adv. may turn into a disadvantage.

Drain wrote:

- You need a usable "Laibon/Ishtarri mortal ally" the better to make this crypt go.
- No Orun/Aye interaction? For shame. Laibon crypts should always be pushing to make these cards more viable. They are one of the main divides between Laibon and non-Laibon.
Drain

An excellent point about the Aye and Orun...

Fathiya


Laibon Magaji. Fathiya may strike to steal a weapon at first strike and during the first round of combat, if range is close, she must do so if she can. If she has three or more Aye, Fathiya gets +2 strength.

As for Mortal allies, there's always Carlton. Informants are not so bad, some of these hypothetical kindred would make them well worth playing. One might also try some kind of Ishtarri/Imbued hybrid.

Drain wrote:

I'm liking these. I assume you wish to expand the Laibon's role as to include full crypt groupings, instead of the current "odd groups get few, even groups get many" that was supposedly designer's intent.
Drain

Because group 3 was an artificially small group, it's not entirely clear how many odd-group vampires were intended for Laibon clans. It's possible that their numbers were intended to be something like the Indy clans, which also got only two G3 vampires.

Molloy wrote:

Because group 3 was an artificially small group, it's not entirely clear how many odd-group vampires were intended for Laibon clans. It's possible that their numbers were intended to be something like the Indy clans, which also got only two G3 vampires.

We have no way of truly knowing but I assumed that to not be the case on account of there already being Laibon in G5 and the game designers only having printed vampires from a given group when the previous one was already "closed", Advanced Versions and Nergal nonwithstanding.


Drain