Seeds of Corruption

Thanks for the explanations, especially jamesatzephyr (you rock).

So do people generally think Seeds of Corruption is a good card? Good enough to make a deck around? I recently made a blood miser deck (lots of ways to make prey's minions burn blood) with Gabrielle di Righetti and friends, with Seeds of Corruption as the centerpiece, and I have playtested it twice on Lackey with pretty good results. It has Mirror Walk, Crocodile's Tongues (very good card, actually) and some dominate goodness. I'm not sure if it worked because of Seeds of Corruption or just because it has princes and justicars with superior Dominate (which is a decent discipline, to say the least). What are people's takes on Seeds of Corruption? What do you think of this deck:

Deck Name: Gabby the blood miser
Author:
Description:


Crypt (Capacity min=5 max=10 avg=8.5; 12 cards)
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2x Dr. John Dee 9 chi ANI AUS DOM THA Tremere:4
1x Frondator 5 dom tha AUS !Tremere:4
4x Gabrielle di Righetti 10 obf pot ANI AUS DOM THA Tremere:5
2x Gerald Windham 9 AUS DOM FOR THA Tremere:5
1x Neighbor John 5 dom for AUS !Ventrue:4
2x Troius 8 cel AUS DOM THA Tremere:4

Library (90 cards)
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Master (15 cards)
1x Arcane Library
1x Chantry
1x Giant's Blood
1x Heidelberg Castle, Germany
1x Pentex(TM) Subversion
1x Secure Haven
1x Smiling Jack, The Anarch
1x Society of Leopold
1x Sudden Reversal
1x Vampiric Disease
2x Vessel
3x Villein

Event (1 cards)
1x Hunger Moon

Action (19 cards)
1x Dominate Kine
4x Govern the Unaligned
6x Magic of the Smith
3x Rutor's Hand
5x Seeds of Corruption

Political Action (8 cards)
1x Archon
2x Banishment
4x Parity Shift
1x Political Stranglehold

Equipment (8 cards)
2x .44 Magnum
1x Bowl of Convergence
1x Heart of Nizchetus
1x Helicopter
1x Signet of King Saul, The
2x Sniper Rifle

Ally (1 cards)
1x Ponticulus

Action Modifier (17 cards)
2x Bonding
2x Conditioning
6x Crocodile's Tongue
5x Mirror Walk
2x Seduction

Reaction (21 cards)
2x Cats' Guidance
3x Eyes of Argus
6x Obedience
6x Second Tradition: Domain
4x Telepathic Misdirection

mjvtes521 wrote:

So do people generally think Seeds of Corruption is a good card? Good enough to make a deck around?

It's not completely terrible, but it's not helping you as directly as it might.

Ideally, what you want is your prey to be unable to thwart you, but still be able to punch your grand-prey about a bit, so that when you oust your prey, your grand-prey is weaker. (This is a common problem that people face when building their first rush combat deck - smash your first prey completely to death, and you've just given your grand-prey a totally free ride to do whatever the hell they want.) Also ideally, it's nice for cards to not go away when you oust your prey - such as equipment, retainers, or cards you put generically in play, rather than on your prey's minion.


- It will mostly make your prey hunt a bit more often, by ending up on zero blood and needing to hunt. This can make it easier on your grand-prey.

- It's not that great versus weenie decks (sure, you mess up one weenie, but they have lots) or Imbued decks (no vampires to put it on). Both potentially decent in tournaments.

- The special ability aspect is quite random, because you don't know what you're going to have as your prey. And you may well find that you help your grand-prey out more by, say, thwarting Anson's special ability than you are helping yourself.

Of course, you will see fewer blocks, fewer bounces, and less blood available to play - say - Majesty, so it's not terrible. But it's a bit random and hard to exploit. Sod's law says you get a prey who keeps blocking on zero blood and plays Obedience.

Personally, I think Blood of Sandman is a little more interesting, especially if you combine a bit of tap-and-bleed, Seduction kind of tech, but it obviously depends on your crypt selection and age vs commonly-seen opponents. In either case (Seeds or Sand), I'd only be looking at a small number - 1 or 2, 3 at a push.

Ive used Seeds aend had allstars seeded. When the latter happened, Ariadne with 2 blood and no special text agg poked and ate Helena for ruining my game. When I played it, i immobilized things, but I was out 3 blood on Petaniqua, and in the long run, I could have just bled, tooled up, or recruited a wolf for similar cost in beads and opportunity, and any of those help you win more in many situations.

People like Trixie and Gabrielle who steal blood are good vamps to play it, but as James said, BoS is better 90% of the time (Paraphrasing).

BoS isnt as hate-gaining, as it doesnt garuntee that vamp cant do things to its prey, and it helps alot with attrition in the endgame.

Did Ariadne get burned in the resulting blood hunt (since Seeds canceled her special card text)?

mjvtes521 wrote:

Did Ariadne get burned in the resulting blood hunt (since Seeds canceled her special card text)?

Of course. But, I had no game due to my predator blocking tool up actions but letting his predator set up. My prey was bled for 6 all game and took some rats, and once seeds came out, one of my 5 or 6 caps went down taking the remove action.
I told my predator Helena had to go since seeds wouldnt, and she got eaten next deep song I drew. Burned thanks to his prince, and I blocked him ousting with Ryder, not enough pool to play another vamp to go forward.
Meanwhile, he let his predator setup, and my prey got to ignore me and drill into his prey. 5 person table. Grandprey is all on not dying, so my grandpredator gets perfect setup, has no predator, blows through 2-3 torries (dont even remember what he was playing) and then gets me next turn(how many on the q blocks can Ryder do? No big Ani, and StSW was most of my untapping other than on the Q and one forced)

Moral of the story is if Ariadne was sandman'd, i would have had to dive forward. My prey has to divide his attention, his prey gets to go forward, and my predator wouldnt have had the full attnetion of his predator in. addition to a burned Helena.play it once the table developes and its solid. Too early and you better be at a 4 person table. Or go backwards.....

If tried it some time ago and my opinion is that it's not good enough to make a deck around. Maybe in 1-2 copies as a silver bullet but there are probably better cards to use as a silver bullets if you want to use any cards like this. Biggest problem with Seeds is that it works only against your prey, reducing his offensive power. So it helps your grand prey much more than you. If it worked on your predator.. than it would be really good and worthy to build a deck around. But it's not. Don't bother.