Make Big-Caps Better

Hukros is the biggest ---piiiiii---- ever made, but Elimelech is a really capable vampire. He is in various tournament winning decks as the crypt boss. I made a list mixing Dabby Keeney Cholisterase Inhibition( excuses if I wrote it wrong) concept with seraph´s stuff, and it does not look "casual play".

Dr.Mafrune wrote:

Hukros is the biggest ---piiiiii---- ever made, but Elimelech is a really capable vampire. He is in various tournament winning decks as the crypt boss.

Still, he is one of the least used 11 cap, and the TWDA seem to agree he is pretty bad, with 4 TWDA and less than a page of decks.

The problem is not that he is bad once on table, it's that he is underwhelming for 11 pools and transfert, like most "bad" 10-11 cap. He also suffer from severe discordance between his bleedy discipline and his combaty special.

That thoses kind of vampire that may or may not need to be helped. Nobody want to see more Alexandra or Lutz. And my position is that thoses baddish vampire should not be helped because bad vampires exist at every capacity.

Having played Lost in Translation plenty its blood cost is unnecessary. Especially since its effect is essentially a basic level Redirection. Easier to graft dom masters or dom weenies and just run Deflection, IME. And the icing on the oh-so-disappointing cake was this clause: "Only one Lost in Translation may be played each action." A waste of an opportunity, which is still fixable now with easy errata, but unlikely due to our rather calcified community.

Further, that Atonement observation is spot on. Big caps don't have an equivalent -- unless you sorta believe No Secrets is equivalent even though Magaji (Overseer) only needs 4+. I don't know if adding more intercept walls is good for this game right now, I'll hazard a guess of no at the moment, but it does point to a bang-for-the-buck discrepancy. I think there's better design directions at the moment.

Often big caps are sold with extra disciplines as an advantage, but most decks don't run but 2-3 disciplines. So large discipline spread is often just a vampire's flexibility for crypt choice, not its in play impact. If you can get your crypt choice for cheaper there's little cost incentive not to. A goal would be to increase big cap incentives outside of their specific titles/specials.

Bigger capacity seem to need more bang-for-the-buck as a trait. I think "requires older" clauses are a step in the right direction. Saying that, more big cap disciplineless cards would be a nice design goal, going a long way to raise bigger capacity as an incentive, like:

Familiar with the Art of War

Only usable during a bleed. Requires a vampire with capacity above 8.
+2 bleed when attempting to bleed your prey. After playing this card, you cannot play another action modifier to further increase the bleed for this action.
Reduce a bleed against you by 3.

Gives responsible bleed against bounce and switches for bleed defense.

I'm going to take a different tack here.

1x 11 cap bleeds for 1-4 in one action without cards. You risk all your eggs in one basket.

11x 1 caps bleed for 1 in 11 actions without cards. You don't care if you lose 1, it would only be a 9% drop in offense.

The problem might not be big caps per se. Yet still they win - usually because their card text specials (which are innately and persistently available when you influence the minion) are powerful enough to overcome this limitation.

Clearly, not all card texts are created equal. Welcome to a game that is intended to be diverse - but cannot be at the highest levels of competition because only a handful of specials surpass the requisite criteria for power.

Azel wrote:

Often big caps are sold with extra disciplines as an advantage, but most decks don't run but 2-3 disciplines. So large discipline spread is often just a vampire's flexibility for crypt choice, not its in play impact. If you can get your crypt choice for cheaper there's little cost incentive not to.

Little incentive but not none. If the discipline spread is interesting enough, you can entice someone to play the vampire. Saulot and Konrad Fleischer are good examples: I've built decks around both of them before because their discipline spreads are unique (and, in Konrad's case, because his special makes the Dawn Op/Weather Control combo devastating), with reasonable success. Interesting discipline spreads on high caps aren't usually worth it instead of raw competitiveness, but they can encourage innovation.

DeathInABottle wrote:

Azel wrote:

Often big caps are sold with extra disciplines as an advantage, but most decks don't run but 2-3 disciplines. So large discipline spread is often just a vampire's flexibility for crypt choice, not its in play impact. If you can get your crypt choice for cheaper there's little cost incentive not to.

Little incentive but not none. If the discipline spread is interesting enough, you can entice someone to play the vampire. Saulot and Konrad Fleischer are good examples: I've built decks around both of them before because their discipline spreads are unique (and, in Konrad's case, because his special makes the Dawn Op/Weather Control combo devastating), with reasonable success. Interesting discipline spreads on high caps aren't usually worth it instead of raw competitiveness, but they can encourage innovation.

I agree that several vamps are overlooked such as konrad , bindusara , and myfavorite, gotsdam. plenty of 8+ caps are great just underplayed. my only real complaint is 11 caps that are barely playable and ten caps that are simply unplayable because you get squat for investing 1/3 of your pool into them. why play a hukros combo deck when you can have nergal get concordance, clan impersonate malk , and force of will bleed thru madness network with block denial every turn. even bad/joke decks arebetter without junk vampires.

I think atonement for 11 caps would help without breaking nergal , Mary Anne, etc.