Combat-anti-bleed-bounce modifier?

The proposed card is bad - not because it doesn't work as advertised, but because it is boring. It may create an interesting decision for the deck builder: how many copies? It does not make for fun or interesting game play, however. Your prey is going to bounce the bleed whether you have the card or not. You will play the card if you get bounced no matter what. The only thing this card truly accomplishes is make the victim feel like an idiot for thinking that the bounce card he played would actually keep him out of combat.

My biggest problem with wastaz's card is this clause "Choose one of your preys ready minions, your minion and the chosen minion enters combat." Vtes should be about actions and blocking. Just entering combat messes about the basics of the game which work great. Just entering combat without action is bit lazy design. Also that card is bit too one dimensional.

Dorrinal wrote:

The only thing this card truly accomplishes is make the victim feel like an idiot for thinking that the bounce card he played would actually keep him out of combat.

So, what is perfectly fine for S:CE (who let the player that take them in the face feel like an idiot because he believed that he could damage its opponent) is not for bleed bouncing ? (same thing with block denial vs intercept card, etc)

Don't get me wrong, there is a part of truth in this, as bleed are less disruptive to your plan than torporized minions. But it's not as straightforward as you may believe.

Maybe a clause like "play when a reaction change the target of one your bleed. The minion playing the card can cancel its redirection. If he don't, stop the action, untap the reacting minion and the acting minion, and the acting vampire must enter combat with the reacting minion as a action unless he must hunt".

A bit verbose, far from perfect I understand, but the deflecter methuselah actually have a choice.

Tangle is a great card, Id love to have some more of it but...rare and everyone wants it = horrible.
CoT is nice, but I think that B&B is a bit too card-intensive as it is and losing your bleed action and having to have a cot and some good other action and then maybe some combat cards...I just feel that it's not worth it, it's too card intensive.

I'm not really interested in _just_ anti-bounce tech (even though I feel that the game could use some, the bounce-around-the-tables borders on silly sometimes and "everyone" splicing in aus or dom to be able to bounce is just..no). Anti-bounce is nice, because maybe if bounce was less powerful options such as bleed reduce would actually be considered a bit more.

But the main problem as I see it is that as a B&B deck you have to oust your prey. This is generally done by bleeding, and then you get bounced and then you end up ousting your grandprey or bashing someone elses vampire.
Or I can rush my preys vampires, however that takes actions that I generally dont have since I have to bleed him to death as well...and then I have nothing left to work with when my prey finally gets ousted and I end up facing a new metuselah with totally fresh vamps.

So by constructing a card like this I was hoping to be able to still get something out of the bleed actions. While I do agree with you Dorrinal that the card can be a bit one-dimensional, I do actually think that it could create interesting decisions when playing. Say if I get a public trust bleed for 3 on me from my brujah predator and I have some vampires with dom untapped I could either bounce (and hope that I don't get one of these), or I could take the bleed if I have the pool for it, or I could actually block it with a random vampire in order to be able to choose my own poison (my original post has the card only useable when you actually get bounced to someone else than your prey). Or maybe I could start playing bleed reduction instead of bleed bounce? Still, much less of the silly trips around the table. And also, if your prey doesn't pack bounces you better hope you've got a barrens in your deck

As for Surreal, what about Yawp Court? That does allow you to just enter combat with a minion. Of course, the minion has to play a political action and yawp court is a master... But there's no blocking involved. Though, yawp court hurts you if you fail to obliterate the other vampire..

Well, alright, yea...I guess its a bit too onedimensional, but how do you propose to strengthen the bruisebleed archetype then? Packing both bleed and combat in the same deck always seems to make it hard to have the correct things when you need them since combat is so card intensive, if combat is supposed to work as a delivery mechanism there should be more cards helping the delivery mechanism to actually deliver?

Hard to say how to make B&B better. Adding a new card to the mix only aggravates the card flow problem inherent in the style. Perhaps enhancing card flow by providing rush actions, intercept or flush tech, is the key.

Change of target is not really anti bounce tech. Tangle and CoT seems very similar at first but they fill different roles in a deck. They are not really so comparable. Lets use bleeding example.

You bleed get bounced and play CoT. You just lost 1 card (+bleed cards) and bleed action. Other player lost 1 card.

You bleed get bounced and play Tangle. You just lost 1 card (+bleed cards). Other player lost 1 card.

Huge difference. Player who uses bounce is always safe from bleed with CoT.

As you mentioned those two cards are not the same. Still Change of target is an anti bounce tech similar to the spying mission provides. It's different than tangle but still prevents you from hurting your grand prey. with tangle you can bleed again which is a big difference in Stefan's deck. But if you have built in rush available, you can just rush after change of target so you still have a chance of hurting your prey. One major difference you didn't mentioned is that tangle cost a blood which a very scarce resource in a deck using a lot of governs and conditionings