The Becoming

I might consider it in a Giovanni deck. Either with Guillaume Giovanni to give you massively increased handsize, or using Sudario to fetch a Becoming and 2 discipline cards.

Joscha wrote:

I'm a big fan of the card The Becoming. I really like the background. Unfortunately I find it hard to build an effective and competitive deck around the card. Hopefully your thoughts on this can help me and others who face the same problems.

Let's have a look at the card.

Becoming, The
[Action] Action
[2 Blood]
+1 stealth action. Requires a non-sterile vampire.
Put this card in play. It becomes a 0-capacity non-unique vampire of the same clan as the acting vampire. Move up to 1 blood from the acting vampire and up to 3 Discipline cards from your hand to this vampire. This vampire cannot act this turn. If this vampire has no capacity-increasing Discipline cards, burn him or her.

The Becoming is, from a design-viewpoint, a failure.
What is it supposed to be? A replacement for The Embrace and 3rd Tradition? If yes, it is clearly inferior to those.
The Embrace can be put in play anytime, it doesn't require a Master: discipline from your hand. 3rd Tradition has the bonus, that you can search your hand, library and ash heap for a discipline card to put it on the new vampire.

The Becoming has a BIG opportunity cost, because you have to have at lease 1 discipline card in hand when you play it. How many Master: Discipline cards do you want to play in a non-specialised deck? IMO, the additional cost of 1 blood compared to 3rd Tradition, coupled with the opportunity cost makes it wallpaper. Would it be better if you were allowed to take up to 2 discipline cards from your hand, and search your library for a third? This would mean in the early stages of the game, you could be quite sure to get a Becoming in play. You'd have at least 1 discipline and payed 1 additional blood, compared to 3rd Tradition. In the late game, it would be less and less likely to able to put a Becoming in play due to lack of Master:discipline cards.

The Becoming is poorly balanced, and was probably poorly playtested.

Compare it to Shock Troops. In playtesting, the card was interesting, as you could take Master:discipline cards from your hand, ash heap and library. Sure, it enabled some mildly broken plays (aiming at time-outs, or multi-rush, etc.). But it got nerfed into oblivion. Who in their right minds plays Shock Troops?

Having cards in the set that have such glaringly huge opportunity costs is bad set design and bad card design.

What was the bit about the background you like about The Becoming? You don't mean the art, do you?

Amenophobis wrote:

What was the bit about the background you like about The Becoming? You don't mean the art, do you?

I like the idea that you 'learn' some disciplines by getting the essence from your Sire when he embraces you. In the RPG you actually start with some dots at least in your inclan-discis. In VtES an Embrace gain nothing, bad.

I don't think that you can compare Becoming to Shock Troops. The minions you get through Shock Troops can't bleed and get -1 stealth. THAT is bad.

I'm still thinking about the best combo. Is it pot/for? Or pre/obf with !Tor?

Amenophobis wrote:

The Becoming is poorly balanced, and was probably poorly playtested.

You're making a huge assumption -- that LSJ takes all the advice that he receives during play testing about how to fix the rocks in the gumball machine.

I'll tell you right now: for whatever reason, he doesn't.

KevinM wrote:

Amenophobis wrote:

The Becoming is poorly balanced, and was probably poorly playtested.

You're making a huge assumption -- that LSJ takes all the advice that he receives during play testing about how to fix the rocks in the gumball machine.

I'll tell you right now: for whatever reason, he doesn't.

Having been playtester myself, I'm fully aware of that.
I have lost count of the now-wallpaperish cards which we had pointed out during playtest which would have needed a small boost... *sigh*