Funerary Freight

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Too easy to combo?
There is hardly a forest of Samedi decks tearing up the world their their combat prowess (as opposed to variation Dead Hooker Decks).

If you give inferior Than a super powerful vampire stealing mechanism, it becomes a reason for decks to crowbar it in. Look at, for example, Smallpox Griet - a reasonable vampire with a combat package that could take advantage of something like this - POT/CEL, who also has OBF/than. Toss in a couple of Spontaneous Power and/or Agent of Power and you've got the potential for a deck with a combat monster who, unlike other such decks, can steal your vampires when he kills them. Fortitude would be nice for some Freak Drives or something, but CEL brings Zephyr which might useful when used sparingly, and Animalism has reasonable blocking tech, so it's not impossible he could find himself in combat several times even without Freaks.


Creating freakishly powerful cards is also a major downer for designing other cards. It becomes much more painful to design vampires when particular disciplines have freakishly good cards - can a designer drop a potentially decent combat package onto this Samedi who also has Obf/Thn, or is that about to cause cataclysmic interactions? Similarly, can a designer drop some out-of-clan Thanatosis on a City Gangrel or an Assamite (combative clans with Obfuscate support), or is that going to cause the same problems?

It works somewhat similarly from a library card design point of view too: knowing that this new Samedi-relevant/Thanatosis-relevant card I'm thinking of can combine with the intercontinental ballistic missile that already exists in that discipline, do I have to tone it down, a lot? Do I just never even suggest it, because it's so awesome? That already exists in several places to some extent: making Potence combat more vibrant without having headaches from Immortal Grapple and Disarm is annoying; doing anything to make Dominate more fun to play is annoying with Deflection, Mind Rape, and all the bleed cards; making Fortitude and Freak Drive even more attractive by giving Fortitude some fun card that would combo very well with being able to take extra actions is unpleasant. If you were to give Thanatosis combat (especially inferior Thanatosis) a tactical nuke like this, it might become very difficult to ever get another Thanatosis-y combat card through design and playtesting.

There is already a far more common discipline (Dominate) that has a vampire theft card at inferior...
www.secretlibrary.info/index.php?lib=138
Graverobbing
[Action] Action
[Dominate] Dominate
[dom] Steal a vampire in torpor controlled by another Methuselah.
[DOM] As above, and this acting vampire may burn 2 blood to move the stolen vampire to your ready region.

So in comparison...
- For a bloodline discipline requirement, you make it an action mod/combat card rather than an action.
- You get to steal all their blood.

Otherwise, at Obfuscate, it's basically a fancy decapitate/amaranth.

GreyB wrote:

Is basically an amaranth + blood hunt cancel. A lot of decks would really become obnoxiously powerful, not just Samedi.

Basically boils down to a free combat grave robbing and blood transfer. Again, way too powerful @ inferiors.

One of those is a bloodlines discipline. I'd agree with you if it was obf-pot or pot-dom or some other fairly common 'main discipline' pairing. But it's obf-thn.

Worse than inferior, if you're already increasing your bleed power by easily stealing their minions, there's no need to burn vamps for +bleed or even +stealth for that matter. Might use it if you steal a really useless vampire.

Actually intended as 'you have control of them, then you impersonate them' thematically. At any rate, you might not want a vampire that has no disciplines you can use (i.e. they aren't worth the 2 actions and 2 blood to get them ready with 1 blood). So instead, this gives a way for non-Dead Hookers to actually oust.

When designing "burn minion" or "steal minion" cards, you're touching a real sensitive game aspect balance wise. There should be a significant cost or risk. For example decapitate costs 2 blood and requires , if it was free and required only it would be too powerful. Amaranth is a real scary card, but you still have the blood hunt to deal with. Take away the cost and risk and you simply end up with an overpowered card.

1) Bloodline discipline. They're supposed to be good effects in return for their obscurity.
2) There is a cost/risk, you need to get them into torpor with blood (otherwise you're looking at Decapitate @obf, Graverobbing @obf-thn, Graverobbing @obf-thn + Threats or lots of stealth)
3) @obf it is close to a Sacrificial Lamb where you keep stuff but lose the blood (which is hardly tearing up anything)
4) The primary risk/cost is... sending another minion to torpor which a variety of things has made a non-zero challenge.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

GreyB wrote:

Is basically an amaranth + blood hunt cancel. A lot of decks would really become obnoxiously powerful, not just Samedi.

Basically boils down to a free combat grave robbing and blood transfer. Again, way too powerful @ inferiors.

One of those is a bloodlines discipline. I'd agree with you if it was obf-pot or pot-dom or some other fairly common 'main discipline' pairing. But it's obf-thn.

Worse than inferior, if you're already increasing your bleed power by easily stealing their minions, there's no need to burn vamps for +bleed or even +stealth for that matter. Might use it if you steal a really useless vampire.

Actually intended as 'you have control of them, then you impersonate them' thematically. At any rate, you might not want a vampire that has no disciplines you can use (i.e. they aren't worth the 2 actions and 2 blood to get them ready with 1 blood). So instead, this gives a way for non-Dead Hookers to actually oust.

When designing "burn minion" or "steal minion" cards, you're touching a real sensitive game aspect balance wise. There should be a significant cost or risk. For example decapitate costs 2 blood and requires , if it was free and required only it would be too powerful. Amaranth is a real scary card, but you still have the blood hunt to deal with. Take away the cost and risk and you simply end up with an overpowered card.

1) Bloodline discipline. They're supposed to be good effects in return for their obscurity.
2) There is a cost/risk, you need to get them into torpor with blood (otherwise you're looking at Decapitate @obf, Graverobbing @obf-thn, Graverobbing @obf-thn + Threats or lots of stealth)
3) @obf it is close to a Sacrificial Lamb where you keep stuff but lose the blood (which is hardly tearing up anything)
4) The primary risk/cost is... sending another minion to torpor which a variety of things has made a non-zero challenge.

Overall I really don't think this card will be seriously considered. It's simply too powerful, but you can leave this design as is if you like, we're just giving you feedback

It might perhaps be a better idea to design a somewhat better Graverobbing card for and a burn a vampire going to torpor to put a zombie with 1 bleed into play. Both already quite scary.

Thing is, I feel even non-combat decks should be able to defend against "steal a vampire" effects, which is currently done by making the steal require a separate action. Stealing vampires during combat is simply too powerful, you can hardly call it balanced.

Stealing vampires can quickly shift the balance at a table (for example, steal an inner circle) and should be handled with great care when designing cards.