Card idea: Impaler's Claw

Okay, so one frustrating thing I've encountered is how you spend so much effort (and card-slots) rushing a particularly annoying vampire, you get past their Majesty, lay in with some aggro-poke... then they get a weenie to rescue them and they're back Parity Shifting you with nothing more than a couple less blood to show for your efforts.

Impaler’s Claw

Cost: 1
Only usable at close range.
strike: strength aggravated damage.
as above, and put this card on the opposing vampire. This vampire cannot attempt a Leave Torpor action. Burn Impaler’s Claw if the vampire with this card is rescued by an older vampire.

The design intent boils down to '...and stay down!'. At inferior, it's comparable to Body Arsenal or Chiroptean Marauder (the 'only close range' text makes it harder to cycle, naturally).

If it's too strong as written, what about this...

Impaler’s Claw v2

Only usable at close range.
strike: 1 unpreventable damage. If the opposing minion is a younger vampire, this strike's damage is aggravated.
as above, and put this card on the opposing vampire. This vampire cannot attempt a Leave Torpor action. Burn Impaler’s Claw if the vampire with this card is rescued by an older vampire.

This makes it a close-range-only non-hand strike, which is kind of sucky, but balances it out with unpreventable damage and no cost. Another option would be to transfer the Claw at inferior Vicissitude and do aggravated damage at superior, but that wording felt a little clunky and set up some curious delay effects (you were more likely to have the Claw stuck in you but not be in torpor - the Tzimisce equivalent of a Nazgul's blade tip, if I am allowed to mix genres for a moment...)

cheers
Disco Stu

The card is bugged: the fatter the vampire you play it on, the harder he is to rescue. You need to remove the "older" condition to avoid punsihing big vampires.

I probably wouldn't play it in a defensive deck: Rotschreck is more polyvalent. Maybe in an offensive deck with Mind of the Wilds...

Hi Boris,

Thanks for your comment. The second version gets around that bug to an extent, in that you're unlikely to be sending them to torpor unless you are older than them. To stop Lolita Houston from getting a Claw onto Arika, what about a removal condition (D action to burn card, etc.), similar to Fleshcraft or Bonecraft? That would be in line some old-school Vicissitude card templating, while shutting down Arika for one action while she removes the pesky - but potentially fatal - Claw... not to mention creating a rather juicy action for the Tzimisce to then attempt to block if they have their Rotschreck in hand

cheers

Disco Stu

So you can get rescued by a younger vampire, the claw is still there and you´re free to act? Doesn´t seem right.

Perhaps as version 1 but with:

the minion with card gets -2 strength (or a similar penalty).
Vampires with capacity 6 or lower may not resue this vampire. Burn this card when this vampire leaves torpor

OR

the minion with card gets -2 strength (or a similar penalty).
a vampire with capacity 7 or more can take a +1 srtealth action to remove this card (no age restriction to rescue).

agzocgud wrote:

So you can get rescued by a younger vampire, the claw is still there and you´re free to act? Doesn´t seem right.

Perhaps as version 1 but with:

the minion with card gets -2 strength (or a similar penalty).
Vampires with capacity 6 or lower may not resue this vampire. Burn this card when this vampire leaves torpor

OR

the minion with card gets -2 strength (or a similar penalty).
a vampire with capacity 7 or more can take a +1 srtealth action to remove this card (no age restriction to rescue).

That seems way to good compared to existing cards. It would more or less make it a chiroptean at superior combined with bonecraft and an additional penalty. If I understood you right that's more or less three cards in one.

The original version would also be quite strong even without any sort of meddling with the leave torpor action since it would be the only card allowing for penalty free aggravated at close range for one blood at inferior vissicitude, (bone arsenal is 2 blood, chiroptean is only at superior and breath of the dragon is self inflicting at close range). It is however a strike that needs to be committed to compared to the 'make handstrike aggravated' type of cards.

Still I think that barring a vampire from leaving torpor could be a bit too strong, it could potentially ruin star decks (that already suffer from single minion lockdown quite bad) but at the same time not put that much of a dent in swarmier decks. What about making the leave torpor action cost one more blood and rescuing this vampire costs an additional blood? This combined with aggravated damage on inferior would make it worthwhile to switch at least a few chiropteans for this card.

Impaler’s Claw

Cost: 1
Only usable at close range.
strike: strength aggravated damage.
as above, and put this card on the opposing vampire. Leave torpor action costs this vampire an additional blood and rescuing this vampire costs an additional blood. Burn Impaler’s Claw if the vampire with this card is rescued by an older vampire.

Also I've only mainly considered the first version, which I prefer to the second one (I think one should be very restrictive about making unpreventable aggravated damage).