Submission: Feeble Masters

Name: Feeble Master
Cost: 1
Card type: Master, trifle
Card text:
Move 2 blood from the bloodbank to a slave Gargoyle or put this card in play with 3 counters. During your untap phase, burn 1 counter from this card, burn this card when this card has no counters. Slave Gargoyles you control can perform directed actions.
Put this card into play.
When this card enters play, all slave gargoyles you control burn 1 blood.
Put a counter on this card for each blood burned by this card.
Any vampire can take a D action at +1 stealth to burn one counter on this card.
When this card has no counters, burn this card.
Your slave Gargoyles can perform D actions.

How does this card address a compelling game need?:
A means to play a pure gargoyle deck without adding (!)tremere.

GreyB wrote:

Name: Feeble Master
Card type: Master, trifle
Put this card into play.
When this card enters play, all slave gargoyles you control burn 1 blood.
Put a counter on this card for each blood burned by this card.
Any vampire can take a D action at +1 stealth to burn one counter on this card.
When this card has no counters, burn this card.
Your slave Gargoyles can perform D actions.

How does this card address a compelling game need?:
A means to play a pure gargoyle deck without adding (!)tremere.

It feels a bit... misfiring, if you want no masters at all. (I think it would evaluate pretty differently as a backup to a master, to give you resilience against a well-timed Banishment or whatever.)

If the aim is no master vampires at all, you need to be able to pull it very early on. If you're still on turn 4 or 5 and unable to take actions - no bleed, no rush, no diablerie, no pillowface etc. - things are probably painful. So you want to be able to pull it early, but to do that you need a lot in your deck, and then the others are cluttering you up. Playing a second or a third one when you already have one in play and people mostly aren't burning it, to free up your hand a bit, will get a little expensive blood-wise.

If you want to start moving early on, the first one you play early is probably quite fragile, as you probably only have one or maybe two vampires out. Any deck with a minion advantage - say, your weenie bleed prey, your weenie Auspex predator - might decide to screw with it to slow you down. As your prey, I'd be tempted to do that. Sure, you can still have a go at fending off my grand-predator (your predator), and you can cycle cards to get to your second copy against him. Then you whack that in play, and you've probably already had to spend three or four, maybe five blood on this.

I would be tempted to look at:

- making the effect less variable over the game, so perhaps a fixed number of counters (or going to a different mechanic)
- alternatively, perhaps think about the blood cost when you already have one in play
- thinking about options for cycling it, or giving it an alternate use

jamesatzephyr wrote:

- making the effect less variable over the game, so perhaps a fixed number of counters (or going to a different mechanic)
- alternatively, perhaps think about the blood cost when you already have one in play
- thinking about options for cycling it, or giving it an alternate use

With the previous proposal I tried to avoid helping tupdogs, however a tupdog deck that doesn't draw into a !tremere is basically a bloodbag... So I don't feel too bad about the following proposal, as it's not a very usefull card for tupdogs once they've drawn into !tremere.

For a non-tupdog gargoyle deck, it's now usefull to put multiple copies of this next design in your deck.

Name: Feeble Masters
Cardtype: Master, Trifle
Cost: 1
Cardtext:
Move 2 blood from the bloodbank to a slave Gargoyle or put this card in play with 3 counters. During your untap phase, burn 1 counter from this card, burn this card when this card has no counters. Slave Gargoyles you control can perform directed actions.