Outbreak! - Harbingers of Skulls

Necro bumping for Chris.

1. How does this card reinforce a strength of the clan/discipline?
Harbingers of Skulls have Auspex and Fortitude in clan, and one notable minion with +1 intercept (Mordechai Ben-Nun). Therefore, they excel at protecting their resources. This card presents opportunities to cycle those Auspex cards and flex their defensive muscles, similar to Army of Rats and Smiling Jack.

2. How does this card reinforce the clan's/discipline's theme?
The "one less blood for hunting" clause reinforces the "resource denial" theme and works together with cards like Shambling Hordes and Crematorium.

3. How does this card reinforce a weakness of the clan/discipline?
It does not.

4. How does this card mitigate a weakness of the clan/discipline?
It provides an additional vector for pool damage, something that they are not very good at.

5. Should all clans and disciplines have access to all the same effects? A subset of effects (e.g. hunting grounds, stealth, etc.)?
Wow, that's a generic question. I should cut it. That said: many clans still need access to better methods of doing pool damage.

6. Does the card mimic an existing card? If so, what are the differences and how do they affect the way the card interacts with the game?
Yes, as mentioned above. It's more punishing because of the anti-hunt clause and the 2 damage to burn it. Seems like a super-powered Constant Revolution or Smiling Jack. I expect it interacts exactly the same way only sometimes sends people to torpor.

7. Did you play test the card? I mean in an actual game. Was it fun for you? Was it fun for the other players? (Hint: Baltimore Purge for Harbingers would not be.)
No.

8. What kind of effect do you think it will have on the META game? Is the result desirable? Ask your play testers.
If it makes HoS more popular, we'll see another wall deck archetype hit the meta game. This will slow down some games, even though it would speed up the Mordechai Constant Revolution deck that won a couple of tournaments a few years ago. I don't think slowing the game down is desirable - perhaps the Harbingers need a more proactive way to generate pool damage.

Outbreak!
Master
Harbingers
Unique master.
Put this card in play and choose a Methuselah. Put 1 counter plus 1 per mortal ally they control on this card. The chosen Methuselah burns 1 pool in their discard phase and their vampires gain 1 less blood from hunt actions. Non-mortal minions may burn a counter of this card as a action. Burn this card when it has 0 counters.

Thematic Reasons:
A large pestilent outbreak could be localised to an area but able to decimate the population there (i.e. ebola). The loss of surrounding Kine resources is represented by the pool loss. The counters represent the size of the population who can keep holding the pestilence. Actions to remove the counters represent either culling or curing of kine.

How does this affect the chosen clan?
This is akin to a directed Army of Rats and aids a 'grind to oust'. With a little bit more 'directionality'.

Should this be more widely available?
Possibly make sense as a Thanatosis card? I'm not sure on the strength of THN to cause pestilence.

Does this mimic a card?
It mimics a stack of Army of Rats, but is Unique so they can't be 'spammed around the table'.

Has it been tested?
Nope.

Metagame effects?
Encourage Gargoyle Grinder style decks, which are already a semi-viable method for Gargoyle Victory. Does combine relatively well with Smiling Jack.

Cool, but thematically it's more suited as an action.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Outbreak!
Master
Harbingers
Unique master.
Put this card in play and choose a Methuselah. Put 1 counter plus 1 per mortal ally they control on this card. The chosen Methuselah burns 1 pool in their discard phase and their vampires gain 1 less blood from hunt actions. Non-mortal minions may burn a counter of this card as a action. Burn this card when it has 0 counters.

In most games, that's one counter. Versus an imbued deck, the counters on it are fairly irrelevant to that Methuselah since they don't have any vampires, and they're not going to convince an ally to take three or four actions to burn it.

So, for a master phase action, you get an Army of Rats, which only affects one Methuselah, and because it's unique you can't cycle any redundantly (like you can with Army) without burning it first - which you could do, but then you're using up a zero-stealth, undirected action and a master phase action. And if you, as the Harbinger Methuselah, do find yourself with an Imbued prey, you can probably say goodbye to burning it yourself to play a second on your grand-prey after ousting the Imbued.

If this is supposed to be semi-reliable pool destruction for a Harbingers deck, I'm not seeing it.

Ah, didn't find this one in my forum search.

For the Mortis-inspired cards I suggested [nec] and [thn] partly because it ensures the vampires that could play it would be rare - it was that or an older cap restriction, and when skill and determine in those arts can matter more than age, I opted for the discipline combo.

If it were felt to be more akin to AoR (and I would agree that it feels better as an action), may I suggest as an alternative that if the card is in play, each non-vampire takes 1 damage during untap (avoidable if the player pays a pool per minion to ensure they are treated/saved that turn) and when put in play it adds a pox counter to one vampire (one damage during untap, three actions to remove). Sucks to have a lot of non-vampires.

Alternatively, it could be simply to assign up to three pox counters to other minions (three actions to remove, can't untap apart from their regular untap action when they take a damage) + burn one pool (al la AoR).

My focus on non-vampires is that the outbreak would affect humans significantly more than it would vamps.

If it's a single action like Army of Rats , could it not be [nec] + [thn], with the option of [nec] + Harbinger?

Even more questions

As an action...

Outbreak! v2
Action
Harbingers
+1 Stealth action.
Choose a Methuselah and put this card in their ready region; you control still this card. Put 1 counter plus 1 per mortal ally controlled by the chosen Methuselah. The Methuselah with this card burns 1 pool in their discard phase and vampires they control gain 1 less blood from hunt actions. Non-mortal minions may burn 1 counter from this card as an undirected action.
Alternatively, you may use this card to put 2 counters on any Outbreak! in play.