Card Ideas: Allure of the Heart's Blood & Aura Noire

Name: Allure of the Heart’s Blood
Cardtype: Master
Cost: 2 pool
Unique Master. Requires Gangrel Antitribu.
Put this card in play. Whenever a Gangrel Antitribu commits a successful diablerie he untaps and gains a blood from the bank. You may tap this card after a Gangrel Antitribu successfuly diablerizes a vampire to give him and all Gangrel Antitribu younger than the burned vampire +1 bleed until your next untap phase.

Name: Aura Noire
Cardtype: Action Modifier/Combat
Requires Gangrel Antitribu
Only usable by a vampire who can commit diablerie. Usable when the vampire opposing this minion in combat would go to torpor or on a diablerie action. Diablerize the opposing vampire. The controller of that vampire burns 2 pool. Not usable by a vampire being burned or going into torpor. Only one Aura Noire may be played in a combat.

Game development:
- Expand the competitiveness of the maligned Gangrel Antitribu, particularly the City bloodline.
- Expand upon the Sabbat's theme.

Flavor:
- Diablerie and the pursuit for the rush of power that already pervades much of the !Gangrel's backdrop.

Balance:
- !Gangrel already have a healthy thematic backdrop related to diablerie. Aggropoke also tends to pull in that particular direction so giving them something to synergize feels like a distinctive way of giving them competitive bite. I tried to make both cards interact with each other and also not infringe upon effects already given by other cards. You'll still need depravity for stealth on diableries, you'll still need Urban Jungle/Gangrel Conspiracy for surviving the blood hunt. The one card I activelly replace is Amaranth, obviously.

- Allure of the Heart's Blood: 2 pool seems like a decent cost for what can be essentially a semi-hunting ground with added oust. The player will probably be in no hurry to abuse the "gain a blood and untap" hability since he needs the plus-bleed and can only get it once per turn. I'm still unsure regarding if it should only be usable in combat, to prevent abuse with Baltimore's Purge.

- Aura Noire: Amaranth was always one of these cards that really clunked up the combat chain in a claws deck. With Aura Noire being a combat card-slash-modifier you gain some flexibility while also dealing some minor pool damage.

Competitiveness:
- High. These cards are aimed at filling the void in oust power that the !Gangrel suffer from. Making them depend upon minion denial makes them tricky to use but still better than most other options available to the clan.


Drain

The master seem useable if !gangrel are small enough for it (because you have honestly no way to be sure you won't die to the diablerie).

The new amaranth does not strike me as very useable, but it's more a problem of diablerie being too costly than anything else.

In both case, it's assamite turf somehow.

Ohlmann wrote:

The new amaranth does not strike me as very useable, but it's more a problem of diablerie being too costly than anything else.

It improves upon the existing option in every way. It also dovetails into the type of combat strategy that the city !Gangrel tend to pursue. What's not to like?

I can see it being an all-sabbat card though, or perhaps for Red-List.

Ohlmann wrote:

In both case, it's assamite turf somehow.

Why's that? By default Assamites cannot even diablerize as per the card game...
You could say that all of the Sabbat expouses the same principles on diablerie and that restricting one or both of these cards to !Gangrel is arbitrary (which it is).


Drain

Drain wrote:

It improves upon the existing option in every way. It also dovetails into the type of combat strategy that the city !Gangrel tend to pursue. What's not to like?

Well, burning a vampire is something you need only in specialized cases.

If the vampire is one of your predator's minion, you'd better have a weak grandpredator. It's too much of a gift to him most of the time.

If the vampire is one of your prey, it's more often useful, but you'd better be already ready to lunge for the kill, 'cause you may stop your prey from going forward.

In both case, you are likely to lose a minion, so a lot of time you will skip the opportunity because you need manpower.

Drain wrote:

Why's that? By default Assamites cannot even diablerize as per the card game...
You could say that all of the Sabbat expouses the same principles on diablerie and that restricting one or both of these cards to !Gangrel is arbitrary (which it is).

The assamite clan was cursed to be unable to diablerize for a reason. Thematically, those who diablerize the most and have specifics rituals and all that are assamite.

All sabbat clan tend to diablerize, but if a clan were to be the diablerizing clan, it's Assamite.