Card Idea: Kiss of the Asp

Here's a silly card that I threw together more for flavor than for actual utility...sticking with the pure flavor of the original ability made it kind of useless as merely a suicide ability, so I changed it a bit by adding the Quietus stuff, which ties in with its origins in Assamite sorcery and gives it a little more use as well.

Kiss of the Asp
Reaction/Combat
Requires a Black Hand vampire. Only usable when this vampire is being diablerized. Usable by a tapped vampire. Usable by a vampire in torpor.
The diablerie fails. The diablerist may take any equipment this vampire has. If this vampire has , the diablerist takes X unpreventable damage, where X was the amount of blood on this vampire. If this vampire has , the damage is aggravated instead. Burn this vampire.

So sort of a Crimson Fury variant available for all Black Hand vamps - and it doesn't *require* Quietus, but certainly benefits from it in a sort of Foul Blood/nastier Foul Blood kind of way.

Now combo that with Undying Thirst and weenies.

Quite frankly, the idea itself is bad. It will never, ever, be used for something else than a silly combo deck.

The fact that something have been evoked in one of the book does not mean that the CCG should represent it.

I don't have the source material, so I only have your idea to go on. Also, I have been eying my "Crimson Furys" lately. I so want to use them. But so far I have resisted the urge

I think making it a reaction/combat card is not the way to go. I think the way to go is make it a card that goes in play on the vampire, and has some bonus to it in addition to the discouraging of diablarie.

Kiss of the Asp

+1 Stealth action.
Put this card on the acting vampire and move a blood from the vampire to this card. The vampire may use the blood on this card to pay for quietus cards. During your untap phase move a blood from the vampire to this card.
as above, and if this vampire is diablarized, the vampire committing diablarie takes aggravated damage equal to the amount of blood on this card.


I think there are many ways this idea can be tweaked. As written, moving the blood is mandatory... should it be optional? Probably. Should the blood have another use instead of paying for quietus? I did consider "this vampire may burn a blood from this card to strike: 1 aggravated damage" or some such.

You could flip it, give the diablarie deterrent at basic and the additional benefit at superior.

The other thing I considered, is reducing the amount of blood allowed on the vampire by the amount of blood on the card, but that seemed like too much text. If someone has an elegant solution for that...

Do you realize that the inferior level is almost alway a liability ? I mean, you lower the blood on the vampire (that can serve any purpose, including paying for quietus card) to put on the card.

Ohlmann wrote:

Do you realize that the inferior level is almost alway a liability ? I mean, you lower the blood on the vampire (that can serve any purpose, including paying for quietus card) to put on the card.

With the moving blood to the card, I was trying to find an interesting mechanic to play the card, but as Ohlmann pointed out it's useless at basic.

Okay, lets work this out:

So the card with ONLY the diablarie deterrent would look like this:

Kiss of the Asp

+1 Stealth action.
Put this card on the acting vampire. If this vampire is diablarized, the diablarist takes an aggravated damage.

There are ANY number of things we can do with the superior. Here are a few:

as above, and untap this vampire.

Put this card on the acting vampire and move X blood from the vampire to this card. If this vampire is diablarized, the diablarist takes X+1 aggravated damage.

as above, but you may burn this card to cause a diablarie action against this vampire to fail.

as above, and if a vampire steals blood from this vampire, burn this card to deal 1 aggravated damage to the vampire.

as above, and this vampire may burn this card to make his or her hand damage aggravated for the current round of combat.