Submission: Sabbat Binding

Name: Sabbat Binding
Cardtype: Master
Cost: 2 pool
Capacity: NA
Discipline: NA
Clan: NA
Master: unique location
You may lock this card after a Sabbat vampire employs a retainer to unlock the acting vampire. As a discard phase action, you may exchange a card in your hand for a retainer in your ash heap.

World of Darkness reference: whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Auctoritas_Ritae The Binding is the ceremony where vampires take an Oath to the Sabbat, but more importantly it is yearly gathering of Sabbat and many other rites like Creation Rites are performed. Originally, I thought about making this card work on recruiting allies or creating new vampires but backed away from the idea because of concern that it might be too powerful.

How does this card address a compelling game need?: The card helps to encourage retainers and provides a means to put them back in your hand in case they were burnt by another effect (example: text of Pack Alpha or to feed to War Ghouls). It means that you don't need to run as many retainers if you are willing to use the discard phase action. If you are using Retainers for intercept or combat options and do not have the ability to perform multiple actions in a turn then the unlock mechanic is great. The nice thing about this card is that the effect isn't limited to Animalism retainers. This means that there are cute tricks with Ghoul Escort and Masquer (Wraith) which both have a burn effect and if the employ a retainer action is blocked, you have a way to attempt the action again.

Created by: Justin Lacey

Update: September 3rd 2017

This card is quite strong and creates multiple viable bruise / bleed decks. It has place in Sabbat vote decks as well, to a lesser extent. It could be used in Mid cap Sabbat vote decks for strictly for the unlock. Not surprisingly the extra unlock tends to help out larger vampire more than weenies.

Sabbat Binding
Master
2 pool
Master: unique location
You may lock this card after a vampire successfully uses an action requiring a Sabbat vampire, to unlock the acting vampire. As a discard phase action, you may exchange a card in your hand for an action card requiring a Sabbat vampire, in your ash heap.

Update: September 8th 2017

Added non-political to text to disallow it to work on political actions.

Sabbat Binding
Master
2 pool
Master: unique location
You may lock this card after a vampire successfully uses a non-political action requiring a Sabbat vampire to unlock the acting vampire. As a discard phase action you may exchange a card in your hand for a non-political action card requiring a Sabbat vampire in your ash heap.

Update: October 1st 2017

Forgot flavor text and art notes

Flavor text: “The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.” ― T.S. Eliot
Art Notes: A crowd of vampires filing the streets with large fountain of blood in the center.

Update: Feb 26 2019

Reason: Removed and reformation to match template of the Camarilla sect location. This design fits much better thematically than the original card.

Sabbat Binding
Master
2
Master: unique location
Lock this card when a titled Sabbat vampire announces an action to put a vampire into play to gain +1 stealth (even if not yet necessary) and if successful, the acting vampire gains a blood and unlocks.

Comment: This pretty much fits most Sabbat breed and boon decks. This version is pretty much tailor made to work with Creation Rites (which is very fitting). There are two very important distinctions that make this card manageable:

1. It requires a titled Sabbat vampire. It can be any title.
2. The action does not have to be a Sabbat action.

So... A Brujah Antitribu Bishop using The Embraced, totally fine.

I'd rather actually have it work on "Actions to bring vampires into play" or "Recruit ally"; it fits the theme better, as you already referred to, and it's definitely not too strong. The most obnoxious deck type for this could be either Nephandus (but then again Nephandi decks rarely take actions for their recruits anyways) or !Toreador Embrace things, but you can't spice the worst kinds with this anyways (which is atm the Tumnimos breed).

Generally I'd be very careful in adding any recursion to the game, but your restrictions seem pretty hefty, so we can call it a fair direction to approach from. That being said, if anything would benefit from recursion, it probably could be either "Embrace" actions (I'd love to have that as a keyword to Creation Rites, Embrace (the), Tumnimos, etc) or Retainers, not so much allies as that could be a bit over the top.

With these kinds of effects I'd like to keep the recursion in check and make it work only on "non-unique" retainers/allies, whichever is decided. Unique guys are always more potent, and the non-unique ones make sense in flavor as well.

All recursion is effective. Maybe add an extra cost to the effect to make it even harder to abuse, if it ever comes to that? Burn a blood from a vampire or burn a pool to take the card?

So here is a thought. What about "actions that require Sabbat vampires" instead of "retainers"?

Is that still reasonable? That would include Creation Rites and most of the other Sabbat rites as well.

jblacey wrote:

So here is a thought. What about "actions that require Sabbat vampires" instead of "retainers"?

Is that still reasonable? That would include Creation Rites and most of the other Sabbat rites as well.

This would require some thought. Let's see...

Secret Library lists 22 different actions requiring Sabbat.

I'd guess the most powerful plays for recursion could be:

Under Siege
Games of Instinct
Rumble
Fiendish Tongue

Under Siege is obviously super powerful, and recursion for it could be problematic. It wasn't designed with recursion in mind. Rumble and Games of Instinct both offer recurrable rushes. Neither of them are super powerful, and with some tool up you'd effectively make vampires without inherent rush abilities, well, vampires with inherent rush abilities. Seems strong. Fiendish Tongue is a powerful bleed card especially in Tzimisce.

Most of the other ones are minor blood gain tools and tool-up actions for extra untaps, mostly for blocking. Basically works for them only if the tool up actions are blocked.

Not saying it would brake the game, but are these the actions you had in mind with the card? Are these within the designer's intent?

Here, having the clause of burn 1 from a ready Sabbat vampire you control would definitely keep this in check. I know, I know, you're not a fan of it and I'm not pushing it more than this, but I just want to keep the idea floating.

Oh, and of course there's plenty of political actions that require Sabbat, as well as some equipment (which are actions as well, and thus recurrable with the card strictly speaking), but those would require some additional thought.

Overall it's a bit harder to evaluate the powerlevel of this card than the anarch one.

jblacey wrote:

Name: Sabbat Binding
Cardtype: Master
Cost: 2 pool
Capacity: NA
Discipline: NA
Clan: NA
Master: unique location
You may lock this card after a Sabbat vampire employs a retainer to unlock the acting vampire. As a discard phase action, you may exchange a card in your hand for a retainer in your ash heap.

The very first thought I had when looking at this, was "War ghouls" . Play this master, equip a retainer in minion phase, use this to unlock the vampire, play war ghoul that eats said retainer. Considering that you can already get a war ghoul out the first turn your vampire is active (like, the second turn of the game) by playing Jake Washington as the master card, I guess it wouldn't be a huge upgrade.... but this card is re-usable. Even more, it allows you to recycle random cards into more fuel for future war ghouls. I am not sure is this what you had in mind.

I am inclined to agree with the above idea of restricting the card to actions that require sabbat vampires or sabbat titles maybe.

Kraus wrote:

Under Siege is obviously super powerful, and recursion for it could be problematic.

I would say "super useful" rather than powerful. Powerful is the adjective I'd use for cards that enable you to win the game.

Under siege is already severely limited by its uniqueness, therefore recycling it wouldn't really be any different from running multiple copies of it in the deck, except that you wouldn't be bothered by wasted card slots. I would be fine with recycling it personally.

This card is meant to specifically target the Sabbat Rites, which is uniquely Sabbat. For reference these are the 13 Auctoritas Ritae:

1. The Binding
2. The Blood Feast
3. The Blood Bath
4. Creation Rites
5. Festivo Dello Estinto
6. Fire Dance
7. Games of Instinct
8. Monomacy
9. Palla Grande
10. Sermons of Caine
11. Vaulderie
12. War Party
13. Wild Hunt

The Binding is an opening event where most of the above listed rites are used, so thematically this card would work if it makes most of the above rites better. Since the majority of these cards are Sabbat only actions in V:tES that led to my current change of the card.

New Version:

Sabbat Binding
Master
2 pool
Master: unique location
You may lock this card after a vampire successfully uses an action requiring a Sabbat vampire, to unlock the acting vampire. As a discard phase action, you may exchange a card in your hand for an action card requiring a Sabbat vampire, in your ash heap.

After playing around with this card what I found is that there are two really good decks that can use this card.

1) A weenie Sabbat vote presence deck using the Crusades, Blood Feast, and Creation Rites. The combo is Creation Rites -> Sabbat Binding -> Blood Feast.
2) A really cool bruise bleed deck using Fiendish Tongue and Rumble/Games of Instinct. There is more synergy with the Tzimisce version, but this isn't clan specific combo so it is viable for all Sabbat clans. Rumble/Games of Instinct -> Sabbat Binding -> Fiendish Tongue. This basically adds a flexible bruise/bleed deck type to every single Sabbat clan.

Both of these decks are viable. The weenie presence vote deck gains the least since they could already use Media Influence. This card could be viable in Mid Capacity Sabbat vote decks as well, but I didn't test that deck. If you don't care about the recursion and just want to focus on the unlock this card does some interesting things with Blooding. Under Siege is good obviously, but it usually isn't a main focus.