Card Idea: Ill-gotten Gains

I could write a lot about combat in vtes but Izaak already mentioned majority of it so I will just second him in all his post on this topic.
Combat is not supposed to do pool damage and it's very good. Its minion control factor is very powerfull and should not be strenghten by adding pool damage. The main problem is that a lot of inexperienced players thinks that combat deck build like f.e. stelath&bleed deck (so only combat cards with some masters) should be as good in ousting as dementation bleed. IT SHOULD NOT! If you want to oust with combat you have to add non combat cards that increase your ousting power. It's so simple. If it would be not like this we would be playing only combat decks which would be boring.

And by doing things the way you have suggested merely leads to another boring proposition... the current situation where people play S&B or Vote and barely anything else at a Qualifier and almost every deck contains a minimum of Telepathic Misdirection as flick defence (but usually grafted-on Dominate). That's as boring as bat-crap as it is. Sorry, but if playing the "who can draw their S&B combos fastest" is your idea of a great day of VTES then I don't want to play much with your group.

As I've said many times, this is not about turning VTES into "Vampire: The Minion Obliterating" and instead help keep it "Vampire: The Game which Involves Minion Interaction". I also dislike the idea of "Vampire: The Master Card" and "Vampire: The Infinite Loop Combo"... It's one of the reasons why I dislike the "Una Equips the Library Deck" because if you can't smash Una immediately then kiss goodbye to most of your game because it is designed to be overly trumpy of all standard combat and most common defences.

Then start making up cards that can be used in conjunction with combat so that combat can function as a delivery system.

Forced Entrance, action modifier
1 blood
Only usable when the action is announced
pot: After playing this card, you cannot play another action modifier to further increase the bleed for this action. +1 bleed
POT: As above, and if this acting vampire is blocked and successfully inflicts more damage than the opposing vampire in the first round of combat, combat ends and the action continues as if unblocked.

At the moment all you do is make up cards that give players all sorts of extra rewards for smashing minions into oblivion. Which is bad. It is bad, because the reward is already there - the smashed minion cannot hurt you nor can it defend against you.

How about we make an action modifier for dominate that deals 2 unpreventable damage on a minion controlled by your prey or predator after a successfull bleed? That'd be just as silly.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

So rather than instead "Declare GtU for three, oh you blocked... here become a crater"... I'm proposing that you rush, make ONE crater, then get your GtU-style bleed. Look at the sequencing point. Rather than making crater after crater after crater, you don't need to make anywhere near as many to increase the pressure on your prey to oust them.

That's not clear to me from the proposed implementations.

The plus-to-bleed option is not going to help much if:

a) your prey has untapped vampires willing and able to block
b) ... or flick
c) ... or wake and block
d) ... or wake and flick.

In many of those cases, I'm still potentially going to think "Well, let's just kill all their vampires - then use the Ill-Gotten Gains I've played."


That is, "CRATER CRATER CRATER bleed bleed oust" is probably going to be more successful for me than "CRATER bleed block bleed flick aargh".

And by doing things the way you have suggested merely leads to another boring proposition... the current situation where people play S&B or Vote and barely anything else at a Qualifier

I can't see why it should leads to it. Combat decks with added ousting mechanism are good at table control while being able to oust comparing to "only combat cards" decks which are great at minion control and able to oust.
I can't speak out for the tournaments in your country but in Poland and generally in Europe (basing on EC championships) there is very healthy meta with all major archetypes present in fair numbers.

As I've said many times, this is not about turning VTES into "Vampire: The Minion Obliterating" and instead help keep it "Vampire: The Game which Involves Minion Interaction"

Hard not to agree with you on this one

I also dislike the idea of "Vampire: The Master Card" and "Vampire: The Infinite Loop Combo"...

Also agree strongly on this one just I don't feel that strenghtening combat is a good way to go.

@James:
And here we get to the point where Dominate flick has obscenely pervasive power in VTES. Far more than combat. People will graft in Dominate; few people bother with anything more than the most token combat defence in a Qualifier unless it is Weenie-ANI or Weenie Cel-Sticks/Guns.

So while it's not going to be functionally that different in its final effect to a Conditioning or a Telepathic Counter... it does provide that function to clans such as: Nosferatu, Nosferatu Antis, Assamites (w/ Contracts), Gangrel Antis, Brujah Antis (Brujah proper get Princes), Salubri Antis and so on that have been either lacking in the oust or lacking in the defence or both.


@Alek:
The most obvious result of minion interaction IS combat. Otherwise it becomes "Vampire: The Avoidance" or "Vampire: Your attempt fails". That's only half the story of minion interaction. Yes, I do want your average paint-by-numbers bleed deck to have to consider a more than token combat module when playing a qualifier. It actually varies up the metagame.

I'd point to you the deck types seen around Qualifiers in Australia. I doubt they are much different around the world. You see S&B (Las, Malk, Malk94, FoS, etc), Powerbleed (Kia, Las, Gio), Vote (Prince Decks, Tor Voters, Weenie-Vote-Breed, etc) and maybe one or two rogue outsiders who bring either a pure combat rusher (Weenie-Ani or Weenie Cel-Sticks/Guns) or their only deck which is great for social but dies in the ass in qualifier tournaments.