Samedi card suggestions

Reliquary: Loa totem
Type: Equipment
Requires: Samedi
Cost: 1 pool
Unique equipment.
Vampire with this equipment is considered Laibon.
If the action to equip with the Reliquary: Loa totem is successful, untap the acting minion at the end of the turn.
During your untap phase, choose Fortitude [for], Necromancy [nec], Obfuscate [obf] or Thanatosis [thn]. Until your next untap phase, the Samedi with this equipment has an additional level of the chosen Discipline.

World of Darkness reference: Samedi are related with Haitan spirits and Voodoo cults. so far there aren't many cards reflecting that relations. Loa spirit totem originally arrived with imported slaves from Africa so relation to laibon might be possible. as well one of suspected bloodline creators (Lazarus) besides in north Africa, openly until feast of folly.

Art notes: hollow 'half-open' swamp tree with small wooden figurine inside. insides and figure should be covered with gifts and offerings related to voodoo (flowers, fruit, black cock etc...)

How does this card address a compelling game need?: Samedi as a clan are running technically on 4 clan disciplines and various spread makes many of 'pure' Samedi crypts running on 'half-superior' setup.
As well there are currently only 4 ways how to get/improve their signature discipline, while all of them are rather limited. i hope it will help in building more Thanatosis oriented decks.
original template for card is Reliquiary: akunanse remains. i have removed +1 bleed option and capacity gain to avoid any soulgem tricks miss-use.
added 4th discipline option
added change sect for laibon (possible option to play some cards outside the box).
included untap is copied from leather jacket and is partially mirroring as well Hag's Wrinkles already existing 'clan' option.

Slave marketeer
Type: Ally
Requires: Samedi
Cost: 2 pool
Unique ghoul with 4 life. 0 strength, 1 bleed.
During your untap phase, move 1 life from ally to ready Samedi you control.
Slave marketeer can steal a blood (gaining a life) from a vampire younger than his life amount controlled by another Methuselah as a +1 stealth action. He can burn a vampire in torpor to gain 2 life as a action.
Slave Marketeer can search your deck for Slave Auction and put it into play as +1 Stealth action.

World of Darkness reference: Homeland of Samedi was on main chain of slave market. As Samedi started to appear in same exact era this might be refference to some clan origins. as well vampires tend to control money flows and unfortunately slave market used to be quite 'profiting'.
slave ships were as well many times used as option for transport over the ocean in times when airplanes was just dreams...

Art notes: ship docked at bay with 'marketeer in center selling slaves right as they stand at ships plank in row.

How does this card address a compelling game need?: Unique ally that provides blood might replace procurrers in deck and as well adds some additional options.
move live from ally may help samedi deck against ally decks as this ability allows to steal out some lifes from allys controled by another methuselahs (kills imbueds crosstable hoooray).
Animated corpse/shambling hordes decks tend to suffer from lack of blood so stealing 1 life from 'dying' zombies might be usefull as well.
in case that there are no other allies in game his steal life ability is limited for smallcaps (1-3 by default) still helping to avoid weenie strategies. in case that other allies are present even in best circumstences you should be able to steal out blood from 11 caps in round 12 of the game. so raising indefinetly does seems to be the broblem. other allies already do allow to steal life/blood without limitation. and finally there migth be some real interesting use for inferior Thanatosis effect on transfusion...
burn vampire in torpor option is really very dependant, but might allow to help samedi decks to avoid blood hunt so some not frequently used card striking aggravated dmg might be used more for possible combo decks...
option to 'fetch' Slave austion as a card migth provide some additional poolgain that Samedi might need.

Nightmare Drums

Type: Action
Requires: Thanatosis&Necromancy
Cost: 1 blood
[thn][nec]: Put a Nightmare Drums on any non-wraith ally. An afflicted ally cannot gain life. When an afflicted ally untaps, he or she burns a life. A minion can have only one Nightmare Drums.
[thn][NEC]: As above, but you may put this card on any younger vampire instead. Vampire with this card burns blood instead of life. If unable burn this card instead
[THN][NEC]: If this action is sucesfull this vampire may burn 1 blood to untap.

World of Darkness reference: Voudoun necromancy ritual, pretty much unique for this bloodline. Affected targed should hear terrifying drum sounds during night causing inability to sleep, rest, heal, etc.

Art notes:
Female vampire lying in bed hor holding her ears, squeezing eyes. Bed shoudl be surrounded by ghostly half see through silhouets of various drummers - line drummer in uniform from age of napoleonic wars, rasta drummer with hang drum, drummer in circus uniform with huge drum and couple of cymbals on top, drummer in actual army uniform with small drum (like from firing squat), african shaman with appropriate drum etc...

How does this card address a compelling game need?:
Protection from hordes of minions is one of most weak spots for Samedi. current only known protection is to play either specific deck a trun to defend mode or bloat a lot of pool. Both these options are not very strong categories for Samedi.
Card mimmics effects similar to Vampiric disease while still allowing to be placed on ally's and theoretically kill them with some time delay.
option to be placed on vampire was rather placed on thn+NEC than both supperios as it's quite hard to gain additional level of Thanatosis at this moment. gaining level of necromancy may be achieved easily via euqipments (sargons fragment providing directly supperior NEC as a matter of fact) and/or existing discipline card. while gaining level of thanatosis does require action and/or master that is temporary and/or does cost 2 pool. In case that some new options for gaining additional level of Thanatosis will arise this may be merged.
Saving cards and unptap to possible multi-act option has been palced on both supperiors currently playeble by 5 vampires in 4 different groups, costing 1 blood as would freak drive cost (as a matter of fact available to all frohe vampries already).
as requiring necromancy it can be played together with ballefull dolls and thus migth create interesting defence options for samedi decks.

Two centimes

Type: Action
Requires: Samedi
Cost: 1 blood
Remove mortal or ghoul or mage ally from the game. Both you and controler of burned ally may return up to X cards from asheap to library, where X equals current allys life amount


World of Darkness reference: Voudoun necromancy ritual, pretty much unique for this bloodline. Ritual itself allow sacrificed motral and practitioner temporary interact between real world and world 'beyond'. Mortal sacrifices are sometimes willingly offered to practitioner from members of his cult...

Art notes:
dead body laying out on a pallet and with pennies on his eyes.
while on one side of pallet is necromancer and on other ghostly figurine or 'dead body'. both necromancer and ghostly should be gesturing etc so showing idea of ongoing discussion

How does this card address a compelling game need?:
Samedi have no direct defence against ally's so they are in quite a need of one. as ally is removed from the game both necromacer (acting samedi) and target (most probably other methuselah) shoudl receive some benefits of ritual mentioned above. in case target is controled by acting methuselah it simulates willing victing so effect is doubeld as acting methuselah does qualify for both options you and target methuselah.
even through Samedi have already option to recycle cards via necromancy and theoretically steal ally's (ok transfusion is really crapy but it does exist already) i think this might be usefull for decks not planning to play any of those while still in need of ally defence.
as samedi possed necromancy and this might be played on ally you control i have rather placed remove ally on card to avoid any creepy combos. and it as well avoids returning of currently killed ally back into deck.
werewolf is exluced from card as an option so no whole ashur set euqal osians would occur.
as this is as well direrct option to kill imbued it's on default without any stealth so they have a easier chance to be able to block as samedi have Obfuscate as in clan discipline.

Shackles of Blood

Type: Reaction
Requires: Thanatosis
Cost: 1 blood
[thn]: only usable when minion controled by another methuselah is gaining blood or life. move additional blood or life to that minion from blood bank. and put this card on him/her. you still control this card. whenever Samedi is announcing the action you may burn this card. This minion may not block or play reaction cards during this action. only one Shackels of Blood may be played and/or used durign the action.
[THN]: as above but usable by tapped vampire and when burned affected minon may not play combat cards as well.

World of Darkness reference: Voudoun necromancy ritual, pretty much unique for this bloodline. Ritual itself allow to create artificial temporary blood bond. it may be delayed in effect until necromancers wishes. portion of this created blood used for effect above has to be absorbed into victims body.

Art notes:
'Minion' kneeling in from of Samedi kissing his hand. both standing under single bulb light in some half empty Storage.

How does this card address a compelling game need?:
Due to ritual description adding blood/life to gain blood/life used by another methuselah was used as condition. still may be used to play even cross table on hunt and/or Voter captivation and/or taste of vitae and/or something other with intetion for 'later' use so cycling is conditional, but still widely available.
Samedi already posses Obfuscate as option but it's rather limitedly spread within the clan. so additonal fail block option migth be interesting even in decks relyi
as most Samedi do not posses any bleed boosting disciplines they must rather rely on bonus bleed from equipment and retainers. this makes bigger bleed amounts quite predictable for oponents and thus manytimes bouncing bigger bleeds. Denial of reaction cards just for this one action might allow to help against such tactics.
Main tactical enemy of most Sameedi decks is Block as model. this migth allow to help to overcome these decks.

Asnek wrote:

Nightmare Drums

Type: Action
Requires: Thanatosis&Necromancy
Cost: 1 blood
[thn][nec]: Put a Nightmare Drums on any non-wraith ally. An afflicted ally cannot gain life. When an afflicted ally untaps, he or she burns a life. A minion can have only one Nightmare Drums.
[thn][NEC]: As above, but you may put this card on any younger vampire instead. Vampire with this card burns blood instead of life. If unable burn this card instead
[THN][NEC]: If this action is sucesfull this vampire may burn 1 blood to untap.

I really like the theme of this one, but I think the power level is a little over the top.

At inferior, not many library allies expect to get life back. Some of those that might aren't played that much. But a few do, particularly Renegade Garou. Possibly a little harsh there. But the more serious problem is Imbued. As currently phrased, once an Imbued hits the incapacitated region, it can never leave. Even ousting you from the game won't change that, because as a minion card its default controller is the controller of the minion it's on. So it's basically dead forever, unless you manage something extremely unlikely, like a Cleansing Ritual (while it's still ready) or a Smear Campaign. I'd at least think about something like "cannot gain life (except when leaving the incapacitated region)" or something like that.

I'd swap the mid and superior levels over, or possibly just drop the untap element altogether. It's a potentially powerful action, so it's not like it really needs a free untap on it.

At superior, I have similar qualsm to the ally version, in that it staying for essentially ever is a nasty problem.

I'd look at providing some sort of way of burning it (even if the way to burn it is quite harsh), or some small loophole somewhere, while maintaining an interesting and strong blood denial element to it. Like, Sensory Deprivation is a potentially extremely powerful card, but has the abiilty to burn it somehow - even if you have to beg for crosstable assistance. Something along those lines of "This is frustrating and awesome, but..."

Asnek wrote:

Two centimes
Type: Action
Requires: Samedi
Cost: 1 blood
Remove mortal or ghoul or mage ally from the game. Both you and controler of burned ally may return up to X cards from asheap to library, where X equals current allys life amount

Not really a fan of the "if you use it on yourself, it goes for double", although if you used it only on other people's minions it would probably be too unpredictable to be worth including.

On a wording note: where are you putting the cards in the library? On the bottom? Shuffling them into the library?

Asnek wrote:

Reliquary: Loa totem
Type: Equipment
Requires: Samedi
Cost: 1 pool
Unique equipment.
Vampire with this equipment is considered Laibon.
If the action to equip with the Reliquary: Loa totem is successful, untap the acting minion at the end of the turn.
During your untap phase, choose Fortitude [for], Necromancy [nec], Obfuscate [obf] or Thanatosis [thn]. Until your next untap phase, the Samedi with this equipment has an additional level of the chosen Discipline.

I really like this. Not sure about the Laibon thing - it's not especially harmful or beneficial most likely, and favour fluff can be fun, so I don't strongly object to it, just not sure it's adding much worthwhile. But the core card seems very solid for a clan that sometimes struggles to get all four disciplines onto its vampires, let alone all four of them at superior.

Asnek wrote:

Slave marketeer
Type: Ally
Requires: Samedi
Cost: 2 pool
Unique ghoul with 4 life. 0 strength, 1 bleed.
During your untap phase, move 1 life from ally to ready Samedi you control.
Slave marketeer can steal a blood (gaining a life) from a vampire younger than his life amount controlled by another Methuselah as a +1 stealth action. He can burn a vampire in torpor to gain 2 life as a action.
Slave Marketeer can search your deck for Slave Auction and put it into play as +1 Stealth action.

On a note of fluff, if it's unique, consider give it a name - it's not required, but it's just more fun that way than an anonymous dude.

Obviously, it's Gregory Winter inspired, who's not a bad ally to start with. Being able to play both in a Samedi deck might be kinda cool. The extra Slave Auction text doesn't seem to be that useful, though. The reason most master-phase-action pool gain masters aren't played is that you have many better things to be doing with your master phase than wasting it on investments and similar cards.

Asnek wrote:

Shackles of Blood
Type: Reaction
Requires: Thanatosis
Cost: 1 blood
[thn]: only usable when minion controled by another methuselah is gaining blood or life. move additional blood or life to that minion from blood bank. and put this card on him/her. you still control this card. whenever Samedi is announcing the action you may burn this card. This minion may not block or play reaction cards during this action. only one Shackels of Blood may be played and/or used durign the action.
[THN]: as above but usable by tapped vampire and when burned affected minon may not play combat cards as well.

Text question: do you mean "move one additional blood or life to..."? I'm assuming you do.

I quite like the anti-bounce element to it, but it feels a little convoluted as it is. There's probably a core of a solid card in there, though, I'm just not sure I'd execute it like this.

It's probably worth being mindful of the fact that some Samedi do have good bleed disciplines, though. And Lisandro Giovanni has THAN/DOM/NEC, for that fun "can't bounce, block fails" combo.