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I don't believe that cards should be strictly wed to themes. Like we see with cards like phobia a theme can go way too far towards making a card not worth playing. To that end I would argue that it is OK for the card I'm proposing to go beyond something limited like an anarch may temporarily share a discipline they have with another anarch, but only for anarch cards and at some blood cost. I want to design cards people will play.

I appreciate the constructive criticism. I find that it helps when commentators clearly state their concerns as you have done. It may be that I need to tweak this card, or at least the name. How about "strength through unity" ?

Edit: my phone keeps confusing snatch for anarch. I mean anarch.

brandonsantacruz wrote:

I don't believe that cards should be strictly wed to themes. Like we see with cards like phobia a theme can go way too far towards making a card not worth playing.

That's not really a helpful comparison.

Phobia was briefly considered reasonable because players saw the text "Each master phase" where now it says "During your master phase" - that is, you got (on a five player table) a free S:CE every time the game went round the table. This made it quite a lot more playable, and still totally in theme. It wasn't the best card in the world, even then, but it's far from terrible. Were there not a (fairly sensible) policy of not issuing errata to upgrade wallpaper, it wouldn't be a bad idea.

Theme and power are mostly orthogonal, once you get into the territory of there being a playable mechanic. Say, chunks of Bardo and some similar RPG territory are very hard to do something good with while staying close to the RPG material. But once you get a vaguely playable mechanic, you can fiddle around with its overall utility in a lot of ways.

- You ratchet up the power. Give it more oomph. Make it much harder to block.
- Reduce its cost. Make it free. Make it a trifle. Let a vampire untap after playing it (or at the end of your turn).
- Make it use an action rather than an MPA. Or make it an Event rather than a Master etc. (In the general case, requiring a master phase action is probably the most expensive of the three 'types' of thing most decks do - master, minion phase, discard/event, because there's so much competition for good cards, and you can't just play lots of weenies or Freak Drives.)
- Make it permanent, rather than temporary.
- If it's unique (or one per vampire, or similar), make it have a backup use so that it's easy to have several in your deck without worrying about them clogging up your deck.
- Make it recycle in the way that some cards do e.g. mummies going into your library, Roll can go into your hand etc.


Phobia's problem isn't its theme. Its theme translated fairly directly into perma-S:CE, which is a plausible mechanic. But at the end of the day, it turned out to be terrible, because you wasted an action and 5 whole turns to get an S:CE. It could easily be in-theme - vampire gets scared, you can S:CE or escape combat somehow - and be more powerful, or less powerful.

brandonsantacruz wrote:

To that end I would argue that it is OK for the card I'm proposing to go beyond something limited like an anarch may temporarily share a discipline they have with another anarch, but only for anarch cards and at some blood cost. I want to design cards people will play.

You can go beyond that in a variety of ways, none of which involve anarchs with Temporis. Why make it temporary? Why make it cost blood? Why make it one discipline? Off the top of my head:

(If you reveal an Imbued, it has no disciplines, so sucks to be you.)

Make crypt construction potentially interesting. Going Anarch the hard way (or any of the non-Anarch Convert ways) might be more interesting, to avoid drawing a vampire who's a total dud. Does it have a cost? Probably, as it hands out a lot of temporary disciplines. It's not totally reliable, but you could potentially have a bunch of different lowbies and midbies in a deck, and suddenly all your Brujah vamps can use the Obfuscate (and Serpentis and Presence) from the Setite you just revealed, or whatever. If you want to stuff a deck with multiple, perhaps make it a trifle (with appropriate adjustments and making it temporary etc.), make it an action once per turn where maybe you untap, make it whatever. It could encourage something that feels much more Gang-like - having vampires who aren't necessarily 100% compatible, but where a a gruop of 4 and 5 cap vampires have, semi-randomly, the disciplines of a wider group, giving you extra bang for your buck. And who wouldn't want their Gangrel to be able to play Power of One for +1 bleed and +1 stealth?


Taking a totally different approach, consider Mask of a Thousand Faces. One of the things people used it for (way, way back, prior to the barrel load of rulings) was to try and get a powerful vampire to kick something off and have another vampire finish it off. Would that be an interesting option for anarchs? Anarch A starts off an action, but when it's about to be blocked, Anarch B takes it over. Anarch A starts off an action, then flips it to Anarch B who finishes it off. Perhaps Anarch A and B can tag-team each other in combat - Anarch A does the maneuvering and striking, then Anarch B is the punch bag, or similar - so you get the benefits of both sets of disciplines, though without necessarily granting them to all the vampires all the time. This could be flavoursome, potentially unique to the anarchs, giving them a different feel, while also potentially being powerful, or at least useful.



Speaking of Anarch Convert (as I accidentally did), go the Anarch Convert route and have a vampire that you can flip out giving you access to awesome grooviness for a while.
Should it pull another vampire from your crypt? Maybe.