Fortitude reaction card

My suggestion is that any reaction meant to defend against bleed and bleed alone needs to be as powerful as Deflection to be worth anyone's time. In my opinion such a card is not appropriate for but don't let that stop you.

Edit: for what it's worth I'd rather see a card that makes it easier to block than any kind of bleed reduction, because reduction is so weak.

I might as well contribute something...

Fortitudey Bleed Reaction
1

Do not replace until your untap phase.
: Usable by a tapped vampire. This vampire may attempt to block and play reaction cards as if he or she were untapped.
: Reduce a bleed against you to 0. (Further effects may increase the bleed).

So the effect is weaker than Deflection. But its inferior effect makes it playable in quantity without being a dead card against light bleeders. The reduction angle also makes an interesting mini-game with your predator. If your predator declares no modifier hoping to bait the reduction, you can take the bleed and save it. But it also works the other way, if they're out of e.g. Conditioning, but want to bluff.

Dorrinal wrote:

My suggestion is that any reaction meant to defend against bleed and bleed alone needs to be as powerful as Deflection to be worth anyone's time. In my opinion such a card is not appropriate for but don't let that stop you.

I don't really agree with that. Compared with other CCGs (ahem, magic, ahem), vampire has always put emphasis on your ability to play. Sure no one can play shit cards well enough to win, but the player you can afford the most Enkel Cogs isn't necessarily gonna win all his games.

I think there is an area for cards that are "good enough" to play, that may not be as good as another card in another discipline, or clan or whatnot. Sure, this card idea isn't as good as Deflection. But it's "good enough" to give fortitude some bleed defense without everyone jumping ship from deflection to this proposed idea.

My point is, cards that are not as strong as Deflection are not "good enough."

Dorrinal wrote:

My point is, cards that are not as strong as Deflection are not "good enough."

Yes they are.

You go into the ice cream parlor. They have:

Vanilla Ice Cream
Chocolate Ice Cream

Chocolate Gelato
Strawberry Gelato

Plain Frozen Yogurt
Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

You want Vanilla and Strawberry, but mixing yogurt and ice cream would be gross, so you would have to settle for plain frozen yogurt, but no one likes plain, but you settle for it.

Then someone has the idea that there should be Vanilla Frozen Yogurt, so the manager makes Vanilla Frozen Yogurt, but someone complains that the Vanilla Frozen Yogurt is as good as the Vanilla Ice Cream, so why shouldn't we have Vanilla Gelato as well?

So the manager compromises and cuts the vanilla Frozen Yogurt with the Plain Frozen Yogurt that no one wants anyway, and you have a Vanilla Frozen Yogurt that is not as good as the Vanilla Ice Cream.

Now I am hungry.

@Dorrinal
I expect to see all of your decks as Weenie decks, Malk '94, Lasombra/Kiasyd/Gio Powerbleed and maybe even mix it up with a Kindred Spirits deck... since apparently everything else in an inferior card and not worth playing.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

@Dorrinal
I expect to see all of your decks as Weenie decks, Malk '94, Lasombra/Kiasyd/Gio Powerbleed and maybe even mix it up with a Kindred Spirits deck... since apparently everything else in an inferior card and not worth playing.

No he plays Tremere.

Dorrinal has an analytical mind: what he is saying is that it's not worth making a card that isn't as good as Deflection. Sure by the numbers deflection is strong. Remove a threat from your pool and put it on your prey. You can't beat that with a stick.

But what it doesn't account for is the more ambiguous: First of all there's gameplay styles. I am more of an intuitive/feeling type, I can't play his decks and he can't play mine.

On top of that you really have to playtest a card to see how it interacts with other cards. There could be card combos that make the card more useful than you think, or that there are too many variables to consider, but in the right circumstances a particular card will do well.

Players with more analytical minds like Dorrinal can look at a card and try to determine it's value in respect to: cost to play the card, opportunity to play the card, value of the card slot, etc. I can't do that. (which is why I am bad at Magic: the Gathering, and I suck at drafting cards for Agricola.)

The main reason I disagree with Dorrinal's point is that looking at a single card and evaluating it is not good enough to determine it's value. Someone is going to do something with that card that you don't expect, or play it with a combination of cards that baffles you, but works for them. Unless you are a genius (and as much as I love my brother, Dorrinal is very smart, but he don't know everything!) you can't conclude EVERYTHING about a card with a few minutes glance at a forum post.