Card Idea: Send a message

Trying to get this thread back on topic sort of.
Master cards are by and large the most powerful cards in the game.My experience in the meta I play is that good deckdesigners will naturally exploit this and I would argue that this can be seen as a trend if you look at how often this kind of deck has shows up in twda:s in the last year or two.
Multiple master phase action decks were strong before KoT was released and after the release of ashurs tablet got an entirely new mastercard focused recursion&bloat engine. Basically there are perhaps three cards that battle this (trochomancy, ecryes fragment and to some lesser extent bleeding the vine). Nowadays it almost as likely as not that at least one deck at your table has at least 2 master phase actions for the most part of the game in my meta and it is far from rare to see decks having 3-4 master phase actions each turn. I tip my hat to the people who have created these decks because they are very succesful and obviously skilled deckbuilders.

But trying as some people have suggested to battle this kind of deck master phase action for master phase action is imho not the right way to go since that would even further cement the fact that the more master phase actions you have the better.
If you agree with this train of thought, you hopefully come to the same conclusion as me that you need minion cards that affect the master phase in some manner. If you dont agree, fine. I guess you play in an anviroment where this isnt very common and I hope to see you at the EC in Poland and that you get to experience this and maybe rethink your position on this issue.

Now, I don´t want complete hosers (As Carlton put a big dent on some decktypes and scourge of the enochians outright killed some decks), but something that can effectively hamper this kind of deck without completely shutting down their deck.

My original post for send a message was such an attempt. Putting a high situational cost and as I thought losing the ability to play 1 master card for 1 turn might be a nuisance, but not being able to play your 3 or 4 master cards for a turn could be troublesome to say the least. Originally when me and some friends sat down and talked about it we thought the vampire would not go to torpor, but that would imo make the card too easy to abuse.

And i hope that more people feel like this and would like to brainstorm around not what kind of effects thaat could be put on cards that arent overpowered, but still have effects that affect master phase actions or perhaps the reasons why you don´t want this kind of cards aside from there is no precedent, because to me that is a non-argument that could be used on any kind of suggestions for evolving this game we all like.

cheers

Ashur wrote:

So Tomas, what do you think of my first comment on your card - "The card is interesting, but a bit too weak. It needs an alternate function, like a +1 strength or maybe press for 1 blood." I think the card is a bit too situational to see much play without an alternate effect. Do you think it would make it too strong?

I would not give it a free disciplineless press without any drawback since that effect would make it better than any disciplineless card that gives a press that i can think of, but putting an additional effect on it to increaseplayability mitigated by a relative high cost for that effect could be aan effective way to go say put a burn one blood for a press to continue or to get +1 strength?

alek wrote:

Send a meesage
Action
D - Enter combat with your prey's minion. If this action is succesfful and at the end of combat your minion is ready and the opposing minion is not, put opposing minion in the ready region instead of torpor/ash heap with one blood/life. Your prey then burns one pool.

would be much more balanced and still very good.

It's total wallpaper. Entering combat to make your prey burn one pool and not lose a minion AND it don't work with fame/tension/dragonbound ? AND it's 0 stealth action that is unlikely to pass ? AND it's restricted to your prey's minions ? Mummify is better than this.

Exactly, the card as written seems fairly well structured. It is limited to "go forward" (which promotes people not choosing the Path of the Salmon).

It does complement the more traditional Fame & Dunk, but it could be amended to work slightly differently so it only triggers once per Minion Phase at most (e.g. If the minion with this card is not ready at the end of this minion phase, the controller of this minion burns 2 pool, moves the minion with this card to the ready region and burns this card.)