Simple vampire special

First thing I thought was "hey look another midcap Tzimisce with inferior vissicitude!"

I raelly like the special, imho it's alot stronger than it seems.

Why's that? I think it's exactly as strong as it seems, which is "mildly useful but nothing to write home about".

It's an useful special, sure. But really, the only thing that it does is allow you to make a discard out of 8 cards instead of 7. The regular discard phase is discard - replace. Now you get to replace first. It's useful, but since it takes up the existing discard phase action its not good enough to cripple a 6-cap otherwise.

If you want to slightly improve the ability you can change it to:

"Erkki can give you +1 hand size until your next untap phase as a discard phase action."

I like it, but it almost seems to be a "0 point" special on the scheme of things. At most a 0.5pt special (since I think something like Selena's downside would be about right to balance it out on a Clan-6 vampire).

I think the most versatile vampires for any deck are the Clan-6 and the Clan-4 vampires, so I'd be disappointed to be paying 6 and not getting something close to a Clan-6.

Izaak wrote:

First thing I thought was "hey look another midcap Tzimisce with inferior vissicitude!"

I raelly like the special, imho it's alot stronger than it seems.

Why's that? I think it's exactly as strong as it seems, which is "mildly useful but nothing to write home about".

It's an useful special, sure. But really, the only thing that it does is allow you to make a discard out of 8 cards instead of 7. The regular discard phase is discard - replace. Now you get to replace first. It's useful, but since it takes up the existing discard phase action its not good enough to cripple a 6-cap otherwise.

The discard phase action is the least utilized resource by most players. Alot of it has to do with the fact that losing a card with uncertain gain is counter intuitive. This vampires special basically gives you the option of doing the best discard possible each turn instead of having to guess at which discard is the best, that makes it strong imho since cardflow is one of the most important parts of the game.

edit: Also take notcie of the OP, the main focus is the special not the disciplines.

Myrdin wrote:

This vampires special basically gives you the option of doing the best discard possible each turn instead of having to guess at which discard is the best, that makes it strong imho since cardflow is one of the most important parts of the game.

The basic (the cardflow is important) is right. The conclusion (the special is strong) is false. The only thing this special avoid is to discard a useful card to draw a useless one - something rare that implie that you still have 6 usefuls cards in hand. Hardly anything to write home about.

Myrdin wrote:

edit: Also take notcie of the OP, the main focus is the special not the disciplines.

That's why we talk about its pricing. The vampire have better be solid if we play it, since it have a not too noticeable special.

That's also why I said that the vampire needed more discipline, to show its cost should be negligible.

The discard phase action is the least utilized resource by most players.

This is a false assumption. Every player I know discards a card almost every turn, unless they already have a hand that satisfies them. The discard phase is never used to discard a useful card and hope to draw into a better one. It's used to discard a less useful card in the hope of drawing a more useful replacement.

Alot of it has to do with the fact that losing a card with uncertain gain is counter intuitive. This vampires special basically gives you the option of doing the best discard possible each turn instead of having to guess at which discard is the best, that makes it strong imho since cardflow is one of the most important parts of the game.

As Ohlmann pointed out, the only thing that this special prevents is that you discard a less useful card and replace it with an even less desirable card. Preventing that is kinda cute but also rather cornercase.

Also, the special doesn't get rid of an undesirable card by any means. It just removes the even less desirable card. Regardless, the actual effect is in both cases that you are effectively playing with handsize 6 until you get another discard phase action.

I'd value it as a "flavor" special that is probably more suited for a Tremere or a Follower of Set instead of assigning it a point cost and downgrade the vampire accordingly.