Submission: Relentless Hunter

I should explain the thought process of using "burn" vs "loss". "Burn" is everything including paying costs. The idea of "loss" is that it is a subset of pool burned which is not a part of the cost. This gets tricky with card effects where it isn't clear if it is meant to be a cost.

From a design perspective,

The inferior ability is meant to be a fair card (1 blood for 1 pool loss). It requires a condition "successful bleed action" and two basic disciplines but because it specifies "prey" it gets around bleed bounce. It can work as anothet trigger for blood loss effects but that is both a positive and a negative.

The superior ability is meant to be a powerful combo card. It has the same conditions as the basic but requires . It has an additional restriction that stops future copies of the card at both inferior and superior to prevent stacking abuse and disaude use in Turbo decks. The biggest advantage is that the card text is flexible enough to work with any pool loss as long as it occurs during the minion phase.

I gotta say that using the search function the only instances of "lose" on the rulebook are for "losing life", or for "losing pool" on the withdrawing section (and obviously in other instances like "losing titles").

Obviously we can understand the concept of lose, and it would not be a weird one, but I was just pointing out that "lose" is not usually used, and if it does not have a definitive meaning by the rules, or is not usually used along with certain effects, it could be related with other unintended uses.

For instance, in the rulebook, the bleed action is described as "burning pool from your prey", and paying costs is described as "burning pool" too. If we used "lose" without any previous definition, and we were implying that it does work on bleed, there is nothing there stopping people from understanding that it works with paying costs as well. If the rulebook were to use "your prey loses pool" on bleed, and "you burn pool" on cost, even if no explicit mention of the word "lose" and its meaning were to be made, we could understand what lose actually mean (being forced to burn). This is not the case.

Of course, we can just say "lose means X, period" without having to involve the rulebook here, and I'm completely OK with that. I was just pointing this out because it was a card submission, and this kind of clarifications tend to have repercussions (even if we don't know it yet).

Happy to see more submissions out of jblacey.

Now, as an obnoxious huge Malkavian fan, I can tell you that I personally have no fewer than 3 decks (either 100% assembled or partially assembled) that would make this card anger enough people to be banned within a year. (I also need no searches to tell you who has celerity in the [not antitribbu] Malkavian family)

Santaleous and some anarch buddies (partially assembled, used to be Santaleous and Asguresh anti girls deck) utilize a little bit of madness network in a celerity guns sho oi t wall, where you bleed at stealth and untap with with that one anarch 3way, and have the same combo on another anarch 3way to rush. And nose of hound. All the while using antoine and sometimes Lord Fionna, who you field train to big if possible, to help good old Santaleous do what have been doing for 24 years, and shoot the shot out of predators taking actions while slowly grinding at your prey. This deck could utilize both versions without changing playstyle, since basic combos with bleed and untap fine, and superior even more so. Use at end of predators turn, bleed heavy, then if they bleed you, bounce bleeds that will also be extra pool damage.

Second deck, which is better (and almost completely together) is adv Dancin Dana with field training on Victoria (best madness network support vamp ever) as well as zoe, didi, and I think I still run watenda..... anyway, madness network, celerity, guns, auspex, you get the idea. Also a few disruptive cards (constant revolution is obvious, since people rarely have enough actions to burn rev, jack, and steal monty) but runs a few border skirmishes to keep things interesting (left over from a more multibleed, less combat capable iteration)

Third deck (together, untested in this version) is "Quick Draw Mcginley" which is 80 card kindred spirits spam trading some stealth for a few rush and DBR guns nonsense, and also running ashurs, enabling dreams, specialization, and barrens to be worked hard to get what you need for maximum pool damage, be it clearing a path or bleeding. This deck would only ever use inferior version, but still people get pissed burning extra for a game or tension (which is a risky card for this deck) dunk.

Now,

I love much of the card, but it fits better with half of your target clan than the other.
!gangrel can piss off, they can (with ) rush, strik earth meld, psyche, strike then act, then untap with I transformation. If they can't figure out how to do anything with a "free" rush and potentially 2 other actions, they should just hang out with Matusuntha or Unnamed more often, because I can't help them.

Now, Assamites..... poor assamites.

They can win, but they're bad at it. Vtes is bad at doing justice to blood magic, but I feel Assamite Du an kah or whatever the hell it was called could be awesome as combo stuff. Super awesome. I'd have to close out of my current pdf to dig up something appropriately titled (or go get Kindred of the Eboby Kingdom from my basement) but I'm sure they have something thematically appropriate for this exact effect. I'd add a burn a blood to untap yo superior even.

Unnamed.

Nuff said.

If you want to do a !gangrel bleed card, it will need to have a !gangrel requirement i'm afraid.

ReverendRevolver wrote:

Happy to see more submissions out of jblacey.

I am going to look at some targeted fixes. That said, this fix is a little on the loose side because I would like this card to enable several strategies.

Now, as an obnoxious huge Malkavian fan, I can tell you that I personally have no fewer than 3 decks (either 100% assembled or partially assembled) that would make this card anger enough people to be banned within a year. (I also need no searches to tell you who has celerity in the [not antitribbu] Malkavian family)

I feel like we have talked about these decks previously. My first V:tES deck was a Zoe and Dancing Dancin Dana Zip Gun + Dragon's Breath rounds deck... yes, that was some time ago but this conversation seems very familiar.

Santaleous and some anarch buddies (partially assembled, used to be Santaleous and Asguresh anti girls deck) utilize a little bit of madness network in a celerity guns sho oi t wall, where you bleed at stealth and untap with with that one anarch 3way, and have the same combo on another anarch 3way to rush. And nose of hound. All the while using antoine and sometimes Lord Fionna, who you field train to big if possible, to help good old Santaleous do what have been doing for 24 years, and shoot the shot out of predators taking actions while slowly grinding at your prey. This deck could utilize both versions without changing playstyle, since basic combos with bleed and untap fine, and superior even more so. Use at end of predators turn, bleed heavy, then if they bleed you, bounce bleeds that will also be extra pool damage.

Played it. Fun deck, imho it is average. You are mistakened how Relentless Hunter would work with Madness Network. You still need to take a bleed action. Madness Network is at the end of the minion phase and you would not be bouncing anyone at that time.

A better combo would be... play Relentless Hunter, steal your predator's minions to bleed your prey. It is easier to with Dream World but you get the point.

Second deck, which is better (and almost completely together) is adv Dancin Dana with field training on Victoria (best madness network support vamp ever) as well as zoe, didi, and I think I still run watenda..... anyway, madness network, celerity, guns, auspex, you get the idea. Also a few disruptive cards (constant revolution is obvious, since people rarely have enough actions to burn rev, jack, and steal monty) but runs a few border skirmishes to keep things interesting (left over from a more multibleed, less combat capable iteration)

You could totally do this, but I would argue that Relentless Hunter doesn't enable anything in this deck that you can't already do right now.

Third deck (together, untested in this version) is "Quick Draw Mcginley" which is 80 card kindred spirits spam trading some stealth for a few rush and DBR guns nonsense, and also running ashurs, enabling dreams, specialization, and barrens to be worked hard to get what you need for maximum pool damage, be it clearing a path or bleeding. This deck would only ever use inferior version, but still people get pissed burning extra for a game or tension (which is a risky card for this deck) dunk.

Bottomline, the inferior is effectively one blood for one pool damage on a successful bleed action, which is totally fair.

I love much of the card, but it fits better with half of your target clan than the other.
!gangrel can piss off, they can (with ) rush, strik earth meld, psyche, strike then act, then untap with I transformation. If they can't figure out how to do anything with a "free" rush and potentially 2 other actions, they should just hang out with Matusuntha or Unnamed more often, because I can't help them.

You could play both gangrel anti and assamites in the same crypt. Also... speaking of multiple rush decks Matusuntha, works really well with Relentless Hunter. Imho, that is probably the scariest deck that could use Relentless Hunter. I plan on testing it soon.

Now, Assamites..... poor assamites.

Assamites have multiple issues, one of the biggest being that they have very few ways to burst pool damage. In fact, Assamites desperately need the pool damage from the inferior version. I have been turning them into Anarchs for that exact reason.