Powering up Laibon, Orun and Aye

Hi there. The Laibon are -- Ishtarri excepted -- fairly weak because they have no ousting power (Akunanse/Osebo) or are too heavy (Guruhi). I figured the Aye/Orun needs improvement too, because it is WAY too complex to get anything from it, despite Brutal Influence and Exile. And Aye is weaker than Orun.

Well, for starters, I think the first step would be to change the Laibon trait. For instance, let's make just a quick addition :

When a Laibon comes out of an influence area, you may put an Aye or Orun from your hand, library or ash heap on this Laibon.

It would be the same mechanisms we have with Imbued, so, not that counter-intuitive. It would require only one turn with two Aye/Orun for cards that require Aye/Orun to work. Yes, small cap vampires benefit more from the bonus, but let's face it, you must have AT least three Aye/Orun to start doing something. Not nice.

The crypt choices are also weak -- except for Ishtarri -- because there is a clear lack of synergy between vampires. So. I decided to craft one vampire per clan to help Aye/Orun strategy and Laibon better overall. Some cards should come later, especially to make Aye playble, vicious and dangerous.

Regarding Laibon, the atmosphere that oozes out of the Laibon sets is that jungle is brutal and radical, primitive up to a certain refinement. So, I think the elegance of a Laibon desing should be straightforwardness and ferocity.

Nuaha
(Akunanse)
Group 5
,
Once per turn, when Nuaha plays a card that requires Abombwe, she gains one blood.

(Making Abombwe more manageable in terms of blood cost is a key to playability of the Akunanse ; decent fighters, bad against S:CE, can toolbox a lot but loose tons of blood.)

Ivory
(Osebo)
Group 5
,
Ivory can take an action to put an Aye or an Orun from your hand, ash heap or library onto a Laibon you control. Untap Ivory if successful.

(CEL+POT are actually some kind of stealth. I think Abombwe can be replaced, though, by a better discipline; though, pre and for don't make sense. If the action gets blocked, you've spared yourself one rush.)

Z
(Ishtarri)
Group 5
,
Z can take a +1 stealth action that costs one blood to give inferior Protean to a ready Ishtarri.

(Luanda Magere felt alone. Multi-rush still possible, very aggressive, though. I set the cost of the action because I know Ishtarri have blood management issues. That should be enough. Combat for Ishtarri should be an interesting option; unfortunately they are too big compared to what you can do with weenie CEL or weenie POT.)

Kossi
(Guruhi)
Group 5
,
Laibon magaji. For every three Aye or Orun on him, you have +1 hand size.

(Aren, Priest of Eshu felt alone. Obf / Pot could be used with Nangila Were for fight as well.)

Hope you like these solutions. I'd love feedback on this so that I can alter my way of designing for next cards.

I am not sure if I agree with the general statement that laibon are weak in the first place. Last I checked Guruhi have been doing quite well for example, and Akunanse are fairly solid also. Yeah Osebo might have some problems with ousting, but not any more than tzimisce do, they are pretty much in the same boat (although deep song did help Tzimisce a lot, as it helped Akunanse).

As for the individual vampires, lets go through them each one at a time.

The Akunanse kind of sucks, 6 cap with only one superior discpline? His special is also kind of weak, as abombve is one of the cheapest discplines in the game, right off-hand, I can only think of 2 abombwe cards that cost blood, and one of them is the fairly useless DC: Hands. A 6 cap with all in-clans at superior would help them much more.

Osebo is very weak, his action is at 0 stealth and he pays 2 points from it. It should at -most- be 1 pointer, probably not even that much, so he needs 1 point more, superior auspex wouldn't hurt.

Z is again, overcosted, change his special to letting him search your library for a master discpline card to put on a ready ishtarri instead, and give him one more superior in-clan, as 7 caps with only one in-clan at superior tend to be terrible.

The guruhi is points wise ok, but again suffers from the issue of being a 7 cap with only one in-clan at superior, so basic obfuscate and superior presence would make him much better (or animalism if you don't want his discplines to be exact mirror of Aren).

I know Abombwe is cheap, but, on the other hand, damage and/or fortitude cost blood. You'll put this vampire in the kind of deck in which you want blood dolls to be stable with your pool. You really need multi-actions as well. So, new version with ANI at superior.

Nuaha
(Akunanse)
Group 5
,
Once per turn, when Nuaha plays a card that requires Abombwe, she gains one blood.

As suggested, Auspex at superior feels more balanced. Added readiness requirement. Remember that Osebo can play Brutal influence and could wall well with Aye+Aus. Still wonder if a +1 stealth would ruin the action or not.

Ivory
(Osebo)
Group 5
,
Ivory can take an action to put an Aye or an Orun from your hand, ash heap or library onto a ready Laibon you control. Untap Ivory if successful.

OK; this didn't work out well. I changed the design to make it more reckless. I trust it's not overpriced this time.

Z
(Ishtarri)
Group 5
,
If Z untaps while it is not your untap phase, discard a card.

Giving Presence at superior seemed too much ; Aren hasn't got votes to compensate his really good special whareas Kossi has two. I feel this would be a really strong vampire, however it would not be that broken.

Kossi
(Guruhi)
Group 5
,
Laibon magaji. For every three Aye or Orun on him, you have +1 hand size.

I think also that laibon are quite strong, especially Gurunhi and Akunanse. But Aye&Orun mechanism is a bit failed design. It eats too many master phase actions and takes too much space in a deck. You have to devote the whole deck to make Aye&Orun even remote playable. I would like to see some card helping with Aye&Orun and not needing to jam your whole master phase with Aye&Orun. Giving better vampires is not the way to go. Laibon crypt is already quite solid. Also those proposed vampires are not very special so I don't see them changing anything.

What I would like to see is something to help with Aye&Orun problem. Also I don't like change laibon trait or add things to rulebook. Card that allows Aye&Orun playable from ash heap would help a lot (+some way to get Aye&Orun to ash heap also). It could be a master card, action or even event. Just problem with that is you would have to draw the specific card to help with Aye&Orun. Having copies of Aye&Orun in deck and then needing some copies of card which helps to play those Aye&Orun faster is a bad design.

So best thing helping with Aye&Orun would be a crypt card, like Anarch Convert. Something like this:

Random Dude
Caitiff
Group: ANY
Laibon: When the Dude enters play, you may remove him from the game to search your library up to three copies of Aye or Orun and put them to your ash heap and either gain 1 pool or draw a card from your crypt. If Dude is ready during your master phase you may put one Aye or Orun from your ash heap to a Laibon you control.

Or something like that. Could be super weak/strong. But idea is to make Aye&Orun smoother and not cloging the deck at same time.

Surreal wrote:

Or something like that. Could be super weak/strong. But idea is to make Aye&Orun smoother and not cloging the deck at same time.

To be honest, I would better see the aye and orun put under a bus until the mechanism could be significantly changed. You should need one aye, one orun, and some effort per vampire, not 6 of each. This could be done by rewriting the aye and orun as card that charge up with counter, the counter replacing the card ... but this seem too much effort unless a real extension devote itself to repair the mechanism.

Ohlmann wrote:

Surreal wrote:

Or something like that. Could be super weak/strong. But idea is to make Aye&Orun smoother and not cloging the deck at same time.

To be honest, I would better see the aye and orun put under a bus until the mechanism could be significantly changed. You should need one aye, one orun, and some effort per vampire, not 6 of each. This could be done by rewriting the aye and orun as card that charge up with counter, the counter replacing the card ... but this seem too much effort unless a real extension devote itself to repair the mechanism.

Ye, I agree that whole new mechanism would be a way better. But I feel that mistake has already made and it is annoying to rewrite whole system.

I feel there has been same recurring problem with some parts of designing Vtes. Whole new mechanisms has left half done and instead of fixing it, new half done mechanisms were added. That is lazy design and tells bit lack of real vision. But at least anarch and black hand works somewhat ok now. There are still problems with for example corruption, contracts, trophies, Aye&Orun, Sabbat, some Imbued etc. This problem exists also with some disciplines.