Stock Market Manipulation

The suggestion of making Investments into Trifles got me thinking about alternative ways to empower Investments. So, basic idea:

Good for everyone? No, I think a trade-off between card cycling and pool gain is typically not going to be a no-brainer. But for a deck that lacks blood gain (for Villein, Doll etc.), would this give you slightly better pool gain options? (That, of course, could include Imbued.)

Does it need some sort of exhaustion clause?


Does using a discard phase action cost too much that you wouldn't consider playing it? Could it just move a counter once per turn for free, or would that be too much? (The tier 1 VoterCap/Villein deck is probably still playing a clutch of Villeins and not this, right?)


Anyway, have at it.

The exhaustion clause seem useless to me, because emptying completely more investment than the number of player (i.e., at the very least two) just seem unlikely.

Power-level wise, even the first version don't seem outrageous to me, because discard phase action are even harder than master phase to come by ; gaining one or two pool per turn ain't all that useful, and unlike villein it's slow and predictible, even if you were able to get the same amount of pool with both.

The card, however, would make any additional way to get discard phase a lot more powerful than intended, since there is a critical mass of discard phase action which make this card pass from "meh" to "overpowered".

Ankha wrote:

Wouldn't be spending influence better? Say 2 influence to get back 1 pool (once per turn).

Mmm... interesting. Would you limit its usage, or just as many as you can afford per turn? In the mid-to-late game, Ingrid Rossler + SMM would turn Short-Term into not quite "Gain 2 pool". Ventrue Investment is very likely "Gain 2 pool", and Ingrid/Info highway can improve that. I'm not sure any of that's a problem, just thinking out loud.

Mapatano Utando would be interesting in that context, too.

You could Secret Horde to get in range of a Parity Shift, and then fairly rapidly bring the SH pool back. That might be more annoying but, again, thinking out loud.

Since the proposition is once per turn, Secret Horde won't be all that quick. At best 2 pool per turn, one for the master phase, one for 2 transfer.

Without the once per turn clause, it can lead to insanely fast pool gain.