Nosferatu(-ish) bleed card idea

Unless you play princes or Obfuscate weenies, and aren't necessarily the greatest clans. They suffer because they don't have a bleed discipline or a bounce discipline. They don't necessarily have the best clan cards, either, although they are not all bad.

The should really be a better clan in VTES because of how good they are in the RPG. In the RPG they use Obfuscate and Animalism to gain information by spying in person or sending animal spies, and they then broker that information.

Here is my idea for a card aimed at Nosferatu:

Eyes in the Dark
Action
Bleed at +1 bleed. Gain 1 pool if the bleed is successful.
Bleed at +2 bleed and gain half of any pool successfully burned, rounded down, with a minimum of 1 pool on a successful bleed.

Ousting power and bloat/bleed defense in one package, strongly aimed at the / Good flavor as the uses stolen information to add to his (Methusaleh's) own resources.

Strong card, I like it a lot. Would need some testing though because it potentially creates strong stealth & bleed deck with very good combat package.

I'd be tempted to create a more Major Boon version of this card. The idea being that you can scout out the information needed to make someone else be the 'fall guy' for the Nosferatu.

Eyes in the Dark
Action
Bleed at +1 bleed. Gain 1 pool if this action is successful.
Choose a Methuselah, put this card into play and this acting vampire may burn 2 blood to untap after resolving this action. When you are successfully bled, you may burn this card to force the Methuselah chosen by this card to burn pool instead of you. Once this card is burned, no action modifiers can be played to increase the bleed. You cannot have more than one copy of this card targeting the same Methuselah.

alek wrote:

Strong card, I like it a lot. Would need some testing though because it potentially creates strong stealth & bleed deck with very good combat package.

I am not too trilled by the card. I would usually value Deep song a lot above this card. Also, I would prefer if it had some interesting interaction with the existing bleed tool, like Vermin Channel, Night Move, or Scouting mission.

AaronC wrote:

Unless you play princes or Obfuscate weenies, and aren't necessarily the greatest clans. They suffer because they don't have a bleed discipline or a bounce discipline. They don't necessarily have the best clan cards, either, although they are not all bad.

The should really be a better clan in VTES because of how good they are in the RPG. In the RPG they use Obfuscate and Animalism to gain information by spying in person or sending animal spies, and they then broker that information.

Here is my idea for a card aimed at Nosferatu:

Eyes in the Dark
Action
Bleed at +1 bleed. Gain 1 pool if the bleed is successful.
Bleed at +2 bleed and gain half of any pool successfully burned, rounded down, with a minimum of 1 pool on a successful bleed.

Ousting power and bloat/bleed defense in one package, strongly aimed at the / Good flavor as the uses stolen information to add to his (Methusaleh's) own resources.

lol. now consider :

Julio Martinez, 9, nec ANI DOM OBF POT

I bleed you with eyes in the dark, with conditioning, at xy stealth. You lose 6 pool i gain 3!

Totally balanced, yes.B-) B-) B-)

Ohlmann wrote:

I am not too trilled by the card. I would usually value Deep song a lot above this card. Also, I would prefer if it had some interesting interaction with the existing bleed tool, like Vermin Channel, Night Move, or Scouting mission.

So what you're saying is you think that there should be a bleed modifier for ? As I mentioned, the card is meant to address the problems that have with ousting and bleed defense. Night Moves is not / specific, Vermin Channel is only , and Scouting Mission is a card, and is not a clan discipline.

Pendargon wrote:

lol. now consider :

Julio Martinez, 9, nec ANI DOM OBF POT

I bleed you with eyes in the dark, with conditioning, at xy stealth. You lose 6 pool i gain 3!

Totally balanced, yes.B-) B-) B-)

I'm surprised that you didn't mention Lucian, the Perfect, "lol". There are at most 3 vampires in each grouping with , and all of them are high capacity (well, Tar Baby is an 8). In comparison, there at most 35 vampires in each grouping who can play Parity Shift at base +1 stealth, which can remove 5 pool from prey and add 5 pool to one's own pool, and some of them have capacities as low as 5 or 6.

Yes, the real issue would come in with the option, since superior Conditioning pushes the bleed to 6, netting 3 pool instead of 1 or 2. In the groupings, there are the following number of vampires with this combination of disciplines:
1/2: 0
2/3: 1
3/4: 2
4/5: 2
5/6: 1
The card then becomes very good for a few star vampire decks, although their support crypts are rather limited since only vampires with at least could use Eyes in the Dark. Vampires with in the groups are as follows:
1/2: 4 (avg cap 7.75)
2/3: 6 (avg cap 8)
3/4: 12 (avg cap 8.2)
4/5: 11 (avg cap 8.6)
5/6: 3 (avg cap 10)

Is a card unbalanced if only a tiny handful of vampires can get a big advantage from it? The answer might be yes, I'm not sure. Lucian would gain 4 pool by combining it with a superior Conditioning by bleeding for 9(!). Of course, is it safe to judge card strength based on Lucian? Again the answer might be yes, but I'm not sure.

My original thought was that superior Eyes in the Dark would be a free Legal Manipulations (+2 bleed, +1 pool) but I was curious about going further with the idea that the Nosferatu also gain a benefit from their spying. Principally I was interested in how it would combo with superior Spying Mission and the +2 bleed/burnt pool you can get with that. Superior Eyes in the Dark requires two more levels of discipline than superior Legal Manipulation. Perhaps:
Bleed at +2 bleed. Gain 1 pool if the bleed is successful and 1 additional pool if the bleed succeeds for more than 1.

It could be that I am the only one who finds non-Prince/Justicar/Beast Nossies uninteresting to play because of their lack of bleed and/or bounce and/or in-built rush.

This experiment really comes from being interested in non-titled high-cap Nossies and trying to see how they could be competitive. It also comes from looking at Feline Saboteur and wondering why that wasn't a bleed card of some type.