More political actions like Dramatic Upheaval?

Thinking more about it, and following the statement from Lönkka, I think that the issue is that political actions, as a whole, are as if they were 1 discipline, and so they are competing with themselves. The same reason you usually see govern+conditioning as a bleed pack with dominate, you will see KRC for pool burn on political decks.

I feel the way would be adding specific cards for specific sects/clans/disciplines. What makes disciplines interesting even when they are kind of "optimized" is the mix with other disciplines, as you won't plan your dominate equally if you are running a dominate + obfuscate crypt, a dominate + fortitude deck, or a dominate + auspex.

Right now for political cards you either go Prince/Justicar for KRC+Parity, DoC for KRC/Lily Prelude, and, to a lesser extent, anarch with their own political cards.

Also, another option is adding new "burn" cards that add some extra value with them. As presence have "bleed plus do stuff", and dementation has "bleed whoever plus gain some pool", you could add a "Burn 2 pools from someone and do 1 damage on 2 of their minions", or "Sabbat pol act, enter combat with a minion, and if the minion ends the combat as a strike or isn't ready at the end of the combat, it's controller burns 2/3 pools". An option for a weenie deck could be "Revealing secrets: Select a Mathuselah. If the referendum passes, send this acting minion to torpor, and put this card in play. Each minion bleeding the chosen mathuselah can burn 1 blood/life to gain +1 bleed that doesn't count against the limit. The chosen mathuselah can pay 1 pool during their unlock phase to burn this card".

More options: "Dead or Alive: Choose a minion with capacity above 6. If the referendum passes, attach this card to that minion. Any minion can enter combat with this minions as a action. If this minion leaves the ready region while in combat with another minion, the controller of the opposing minion steals 2 pools from this minion's controller. Any minion can burn this card as a +1 stealth political action".

"Sourvellance: Choose an untitled minion. If the referendum passes, attach this card to that minion. The attached minion cannot act as normal. At the start of any minion phase, their controller can burn 1 pool to ignore the effects of this card until the end of that minion phase. During their unlock phase, they can lock this minion to put 1 counter on this card. Whenever this card has 3 counters on it, burn it.".

"Sabbat Rule: Requires a titled sabbat. If the referrendum passes, attach this card to this acting minion. Emplying allies cost 2 additional pools (for every mathuselah). Any minion can burn this card as a +1 political action. Burn this card if this minion goes to torpor"

"Anarchist pest: Requires an anarch vampire. During this political action, anarch minions gain +1 vote, and non-anarch titles are worth 1 less vote. If this referendum passes, put this card in play. After a political action is announced, any player can lock any number of anarch minions to burn 1 blood from the acting vampire if the action is succesful. The acting vampire can choose to fail the action after this. Burn this card at the end of your predator's discard phase."

"Drawing attention. Requires a non-camarilla vampire. If the referendum passes, put this card in play. Every hunt action cost 1 additional pool. After 5 pool are payed this way, burn this card"

@Ratadin: All of those (while not being cards I think are needed, just basis for potential cards) touch on the old First Tradition style politics, where voting for or against depends on how it specifically impacts your game at that time and overall, which is an interesting thing.

Now, I'm seeing livesbyproxy keep defending himself by stating the idea is a "Defensive Card".
I can honestly say it is not, regardless of intent, ever going to be such. Anytime something could be in the "ok" level but with almost no effort goes to being broken, it will just become broken.
Girls Decks took some cards that on their own were between "OK" and "Good". Villein helps make fatties less of a liability, LB enables that, so if you wanted a B tier deck with Saulot, Fakir, Hardestadt, and Eleimelech, you could. Tablets, Anthelios, Liquidation, and extra MPAs all were used in decks to recur important cards, draw certain things fast, or even in combat decks to put red cards back in the deck.
Now, all that together with a free bounce by pitching a master, 2 minions and 1 master all granting extra MPAs, and being able to recur DI, Sudden, Pentex, or even secure haven broke every card HARD. Anthelios being banned unintentionally hurt decks that used it to meet the 1 other gehenna card in play requirement on stuff, but stopped nonsense that needed stopped.
LB was never used to get a skill card and became a way to pay 0 pool for 11 caps, so it went away. Villein is finally fixed, and that's great, since it adds playability to the game.
No matter how much you argue that LB is to get Fortitude on 2 9-cap !malks in a potence dementation deck(which was my argument) its going to be used to get Nana, Cybele, Aksynia, and later Enkidu out for free.
You vote being "defensive " doesn't matter, its usage for an easy vp will be used more, because it wins games. That's how life works in a competitive environment, the argument that goes back to complaints from competitive Street Fighter arcade fights over "cheap wins".

I agree that they compete with each other.

There are plenty of variations possible on lose pool or steal blood or whatever, but that's not superinteresting. Could have more steal effects, like steal ally or retainer or whatever that had "or" clauses to give you 2 pool instead so that they weren't as narrow. I wanted to put Permanent Vacation in a deck recently, but it didn't justify itself.

Could have "Choose any number of Methuselahs. If the referendum is successful, each chosen Methuselah discards four cards from their hands or, if unable, their entire hands." and the like to play around with what exists - I could see choosing yourself a reasonable amount of time. Could have a Victim of Habit style vote that does more than one pool damage that attacks recursion. And, so on, in terms of components of the game that exist without just doing different versions of existing cards or having incredibly griefy effects.

If you wanted to get dangerous, "Politics Is Broken may only be played once per game. If the referendum is successful, your predator gains 6 pool, all of your predator's minions are unlocked, and your predator must skip their next turn." Not sure what happens when predator is attempting to withdraw, but withdrawing should just be removed from the game, anyway, because Brinksmanship really isn't as cool as it sounds.

ICL wrote:

.....

If you wanted to get dangerous, "Politics Is Broken may only be played once per game. If the referendum is successful, your predator gains 6 pool, all of your predator's minions are unlocked, and your predator must skip their next turn." Not sure what happens when predator is attempting to withdraw, but withdrawing should just be removed from the game, anyway, because Brinksmanship really isn't as cool as it sounds.

It's a meat shield vote. Not without possibility, but skipping a turn is huge. Protected resources style limits would be more appropriate "Your predators minions cannot bleed you for more than one during their next turn, and cannot cause you to burn more than 2 pool during a political action until your next untap phase." Then they gain pool and maybe untal a minion of their choice?

Brinksmanship should say:
Brinksmanship
[Action]Action

[3 Pool]
+1 stealth action
Requires a Harbinger of Skulls with capacity greater than 6.
Put this card in play. Any Methuselah who has exhausted his or her library and begins his or her untap phase with less than a full hand must attempt to withdraw. On that Methuselah's next untap phase, if the withdrawal fails, that Methuselah is ousted. If any Methuselah successfully withdraws, you are ousted.


There. I fixed it. Let's print.

Well I'm glad this discussion evolved into talking about Political Cards and not just how terrible my ideas are.

That said, a couple of thoughts:

Ratadin, if I'm understanding you correctly, you would like to see Political Cards require disciplines (among other things?) I've had that thought before, and there is precedence for that sort of thing ( ) but I thought it was one of the crazier ideas. I for sure would like to see referendums requiring disciplines, and, if the disciplines were taken to be more abstract in nature (which I think they should be), we could even have and Political Actions.

Surveillance State
Political Action
If the referendum is successful, put this card into play. Each minion gets -1 stealth.

Door-To-Door
Political Action
If the referendum is successful, starting with your prey, each vampire must
Art: A armed police task force is breaking down apartment doors.

I also think that decking / milling someone should just be an automatic ousting condition. You can't draw a card because your deck is gone? You lose. Withdrawing is archaic IMO and Brinkmanship is way to much work to be a viable win-con. Having 2 Brinksmanship / Slaughterhouse decks in the TWD is nice, but it isn't an archetype... yet.

I also think that the keywording / phrasing of referendums could be streamlined. Referendum is a long word (a lot of card space) and so is "If this referendum is successful, put this card into play." That's 10 words, two of which are long words. I think we could simply this to be:

"If successful, enact this as law."
'Laws' would be be 'referendums that stay in play', 'enacted' means 'put this card into play'. We don't need to reference the referendum when referring to success, IMO. A referendum has two chances to fail, the first when you attempt to call it, requiring stealth/intercept, and the second when you need the votes to pass it.

Also, fun card I thought up:

Entomb
Political Action
Choose a vampire. If successful, the chosen vampire is put on the bottom of its owner's crypt. The controller of that vampire may distribute any blood, equipment, or retainers on that vampire among his or her ready vampires.
Flavor Text: There are some fates worse than death...

I also think that decking / milling someone should just be an automatic ousting condition. You can't draw a card because your deck is gone? You lose. Withdrawing is archaic IMO and Brinkmanship is way to much work to be a viable win-con. Having 2 Brinksmanship / Slaughterhouse decks in the TWD is nice, but it isn't an archetype... yet.

Now, see, now you're not talking about political actions anymore. Now you're talking about the base mechanics. And I couldn't disagree more with the above statement: withdrawing may be only clutter in the game at this point, but focusing on decking=ousting mind set is archaic as well. It has served a purpose in games to give a game a definite ending point so that they won't drag to infinity. A:NR ends the game if corp deck runs out, but doesn't if runner deck runs out. V:TES already has the definite end point in 2h in tournament games. There is no -need- for this.

And even if that were up to debate, it has nothing to do with political actions.

And changing naming conventions has nothing to do with political actions.

Could we please talk about THIS game, and the game you'd rather want in another [website] altogether?