Card Idea - Ghouled Dog

I've been thinking about ways to help Gangrel Antis get a bit better at the things they do without having to graft on giant piles of Dominate or Presence. Realistically, I've always viewed City Gangrel, in particular, as ambushers. They'd run gangs of muggers. They'd ambush vampires in a dark street by transforming from something simple like a cat into their human form and then launching out of the shadows to take someone by surprise. They'd prey on humans by pretending to be strays first, getting accepted into the house before eating their fill of blood.

And they'd do it with buddies like stray dogs and cats (even though they may not have Animalism). So here is a buddy for Gangrel Antis ... Ghouled Dog.

Ghouled Dog
Retainer
1 pool
Requires Gangrel Antitribu
Ghoul 2 life.
Minions opposing the Gangrel Antitribu with this retainer must burn 1 blood to maneuver to long range.
The Gangrel Antitribu with this retainer gains a press in the first round of combat.

Interesting take on the retainers as a whole. I'm no player of but it feels too powerful.

The closest card, IMO, with the "burn a blood to maneuver" effect is Drawing Out the Beast.

Compared to Hawg + DotB:
- Hawg grants a press (same)
- Hawg is free (Hawg better)
- Hawg cannot stack (GD better)
- GD has clan req (Hawg better)
- Under DotB, opposing vampire cannot maneuver to long at all. (DotB better)
- This combo needs two cards (GD better)

Since there seems to be no precedent for the "burn a blood to maneuver" effect, including a restriction ("A can have only one GD.) seems to be a reasonable balancing factor.

Re-reading the card text, what do you mean by:

Minions opposing the Gangrel Antitribu with this retainer must burn 1 blood to maneuver to long range.

A. Opposing minion burns blood, then plays a maneuver (e.g. Flash)
B. Opposing minion burns a blood TO maneuver


Looking forward to your inputs on this matter.

How is this better then Shadow of the Beast? This cost a pool and as appose to a blood and this is removable, Shadow is permanent.

Pullen wrote:

How is this better then Shadow of the Beast? This cost a pool and as appose to a blood and this is removable, Shadow is permanent.

This one is called at stealth, and there's a huge difference between forcing the opponent to burn blood to manouvre than just gaining a manouvre yourself. It's different from Shadow of the Beast, and in a fine way.

Warrants a pool, definitely. But the card seems solid, interesting and cool. Well done.

I would add "opposing vampire burn one blood if he set the range". Range setting is not that uncommon, and judging by their flavor it seem likely that a dog can complicate them.

IMO it's weak card. Not good enough to include in deck. Typical gangrel antitribu (I mean obf pro cel) won't profit much from press (no animalism, so no carrion crows) and celerity provides a lot of manauvers, so wasting an action and paying pool for making manauvers harder for opponents is really bad.