PCK Laibon Set Round 3 of Playtesting has Concluded

jamesatzephyr wrote:

Borrowed Time appears to be somewhat overly good.

Borrowed Time can be cycled well for 0, but not quite as good as the old WwEF. It does require a bleed against you after all, while old WwEF could be played during any action--the good old "wake and watch." Also in contrast to old WwEF, BT requires the Sabbat vampire to be untapped to play it.

As you note, BT is not true reduction, so any pool loss will eventually be taken. BT works best against large bleeds because it puts off the pool loss further into the future. BT is not so useful against many small bleeds because you'll burn the pool during your untap anyway, though you may keep the Edge as a result of playing it and mitigate some pool loss.

BT was designed to give the most benefit to large Sabbat vampires without access to easy intercept or bounce---you can bring out your 10-cap on turn 3 and be able to slow down heavy stealth bleeders behind you, even if Pentexed! Action modifiers can be played after BT so the bleed can still succeed. BT provides flavor for the Sabbat sect and their "live fast, die young" mentality.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

Taking Out the Cornerstone feels like a Lasombra deck could use it alongside Baltimore Purge to make the table unpleasant.

Mustering the Forces is interesting, but if you already have a viable vote-passing strategy, you probably have a winning deck strategy available to you. Seems like an odd design decision to help a strategy that's probably already viable, rather than - say - giving some direction to City Gangrel combat, or another obvious Sabbat problem.

Sabbat political actions such as TOtC should be unpleasant, shouldn't they. MtF is indeed interesting. It is intended as a long term, end-game strategy---reduce bleeds early on, then hammer hard with successful bleeds later on.

Giving direction to Gangrel antitribu was indeed paramount with our design. Malfean Pact is a very good card IMO. However, expressly directing City Gangrel combat was studiously avoided. As our brainstorming was wrapping up, we deliberately did not make or playtest any cards that required disciplines. We did not want to create spillover effects into other clans during the first go around with new cards. The law of unintended consequences was very much on our minds.

Sure, making a CEL/PRO card might have been a cheap, targeted way to help a clan that needs some help. But that would have meant that other clans also needed a new card to be fair. We prudently chose not to go there. As you can see, with one set under our belts, we took our designs to another level with our Laibon set and worked discipline cards quite vigorously.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

Sabbat Intrigue lets weenies do Fiendish Tongue (+1 bleed) at +1 stealth, for zero blood and no discipline. Feels like breed and weenie decks would be happy...

Presence Anarch decks highly favor Undue Influence for the base +1 stealth, and Power of One can provide that crucial additional stealth. Not bad for a discipline that doesn't typically have any stealth and is known more for combat evasion and pool gain from bleeds or votes.

Points taken with SI and FT. But that "combo" is more or less the same as Computer Hacking and +1 stealth. Consider though that the typical Obf/Hack deck actually gets to +2 stealth frequently. Sabbat Intrigue only gets you to 1 stealth and *requires* an action that requires Sabbat. Cardless actions like the basic bleed do not qualify.

SI was really designed to help out Sabbat political decks. It can provide stealth for Sabbat actions, which naturally includes those requiring Sabbat titles, and if stealth is not needed, it provides votes for those actions. Plus, we wanted a singular card that could bring some cohesion to the Sabbat sect as a whole (such that they actually accept cohesion as part of their daily unlife).

jamesatzephyr wrote:

If you chose to toss in a few Ductus, you could find yourself with a 1 cap weenie sometimes bleeding for 3 at 2 stealth (or 1 stealth if you don't pull another Ductus), and a bunch a friends bleeding for 2 at 1 stealth...

Sometimes this is true. A deck with 10 Ductus, 20 Fiendish Tongue, 25 Sabbat Intrigue and 5 Stealth Ritus might have limited success while simultaneously being boring as hell to play and having almost no flexibility to adjust to the other decks at the table. It is worth nothing that, if the Ductus (pack leader) ends up in torpor, then none of your vampires can even play the other Ductus cards. This was by design and keeping in mind with our high-risk, high-reward concept for our Sabbat cards. If you want to be the leader, you've got to be strong to keep it.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

Was there an aim of "make disciplineless weenie stealth-bleed really quite awesome"?

No. In our final analyses, with weenie decks factored in, these cards provided a reasonable incremental change for the better.

Week 4 of the PCK Laibon set card previews continues at pckvtes.wordpress.com.

In other news, the amazing Fernando Cesar, aka Sydnelson, put Guardians of the Faith into OCTGN3!

pckvtes.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/guardians-of-the-faith-on-octgn3/

Thanks, Fernando!

RE: Guardians of the Faith Set

1) Is there a thematic reason for Faustrecht or is it just a 'stop gap' or silver bullet?

2)Divergent Evolution will require far too much paperwork. How are you supposed to keep track of which Divergent Evolution gives which discipline on different minions OR on the same minion?

3) Why is Malfaen Pact only available to !Gangrels?

4) Does Defending the Warren give intercept AND bleed reduce? Shouldn't there be a cost per minion reducing the bleed?

5) For Sabbat Intrigue: How are you making Inquisitors? If it's anything like Templar it will be basically unplayed and wallpaper.

6) Empowering the Curia... is it meant to have NO way to 'dis-empower' the Curia? Or once this hits play it is permanent AND Self-stackable?

7) Inquisitors (in general)... For a self made set, the number of cards devoted to Inquisitors seems very sparse and not enough to warrant the additional keyword in the game. I'm not sure why you felt the need to create so few cards and to only create them in one grouping rather than adding in some for each grouping back and dedicating a full 50-card set to fleshing the idea out fully. Red List wasn't fleshed out in KMW, Anarchs took at least 2x 50-card sets to be relatively feasible.

warrant the additional keyword in the game

To be precise, it is greatly underdeveloped, yet present official keyword.

Sabbat Inquisitor

[Political Action]

Requires a ready archbishop, cardinal or regent.
Choose a Sabbat vampire who is not an Inquisitor. If this referendum is successful, put this card on the chosen vampire. This vampire is an Inquisitor and gets +1 bleed. He or she may look at the top card of any Methuselah's crypt as a action; if it is a vampire with Thaumaturgy [tha] , burn that card. Any Sabbat vampire may call a referendum to burn this card as a +1 stealth political action.

Artist(s): Ken Meyer, Jr.

Set(s): Sabbat:U, Third:U

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

RE: Guardians of the Faith Set

1. Our theory is that one of the key weaknesses of the three worst Sabbat clans (!Brujah, !Gangrel, and !Nosferatu) is the lack of bleed defense. We decided to address this common weakness in slightly different ways with Faustrecht, Malfean Pact, and Defending the Warren. We also wanted to do something other than bleed bounce while playing to each clan's strength.

Faustrecht provides bleed defense via successful actions (something the !Brujah do well) and can be cycled even if you aren't being bled. Malfean Pact serves the dual purpose of both bleed reduction and bleed boost---!Gangrel can successfully stealth bleed well, but typically only for small amounts of pool. Defending the Warren can be used for intercept (synergizing with Information Network) when making a !Nosferatu deck focused on Obfuscate and Potence.

2. Proxy cards (such as skill cards) can work. In fact, the ineffable and illustrious Self Biased created wonderful discipline cards to use. Much of the time, the choice will be obvious based on existing disciplines.

Besides, there are other more egregious "paperwork" issues in VTES, such as having multiple contracts out each naming different vampires (most common with Hand Contract) or having a bunch of Embraces of different clans or Tumnimos if different sects.

3. Why is Infernal Pact only available to !Tremere?

Thematically, Malfean Pact emphasizes the connection to Black Spiral Dancers that the !Gangrel have with their Black Spiral Buddy---just like how Infernal Pact emphasizes the above-average infernal connections that !Tremere were believed to have.

4. Yes, on a bleed, Defending the Warren does provide both intercept and bleed reduction. Of course, since it requires a block attempt (otherwise you can't play intercept), the bleed reduction realistically matters only if the action gets stealthed through (meaning your intercept isn't sufficient) or the action continues after being blocked. The majority of the time you will only benefit from one of the two effects (intercept or bleed reduction) so the other is like a failsafe.

5. Sabbat Intrigue is also usable by Black Hand vampires, Seraphs, and titled vampires. The Inquisitor trait is currently gained through the Sabbat Inquisitor card, but who knows what future cards could also grant that trait.

6. We tried such a removal clause in playtest, but the card was then found to be too weak, and the clause took up precious text space. Priscus is often considered a much weaker title than Cardinal or even Archbishop. Multiple Prisci aren't particularly helpful, and it is strictly better to upgrade your title via Cardinal Benediction. Now, Empowering the Curia gives a reason for a vampire to stay a Priscus or become a Priscus and for a Methuselah to control multiple Prisci.

7. As kombainas has noted, the Inquisitor trait already exists, as seen with Sabbat Inquisitor and Auto-da-fe. None of our cards is Inquisitor-only, so we already have Auto-da-fe (usable by cardinals, regent, or inquisitors) as precedent.

And by the way, thanks to everyone for checking out our blog: PCK VTES.

We had a record setting day for page views today. Thanks for your interest!

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