Nameless Victim - Red-List Convert

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Timo wrote:

I don't see what you could do with them but some one will. And without using any card he will be able to put 4 new vampire in play each turn and with info highway/montreal 7 each turn.

And I allready see a good use of it without any relation to red listing : you can fill your crypt with 6 of them and you have a 6 card crypt for a small cost and some chump blockers...

1) No, you could not use them to bring out 6 minions in a turn. All minions leave the uncontrolled region as the last step of the influence phase. So you would move them into play, then draw the replacement vampires, then immediately go to your Discard phase. There wouldn't be a chance to bring out more of them in a single influence phase.

2) Being able to load a crypt with these in an attempt to cycle your crypt hard is basically paying 1-pool+1-transfer for an Effective Management... it's strictly worse than Wider View as well. I also haven't seen Tupdogs abused like that, and they would basically do the same thing. I doubt you're suddenly going to see these things tearing up tournaments as the sole-crypt cycling trick since they have no real ability to oust your prey in the turn after you get them.


3) For people worried about bloating with them, remember... Caitiff is not a 'clan'. They can't Con Boon. About the best you could do is feed them to Al-Muntaqim... which is its own slow process and otherwise not very useful.

1) Yes you could : you use effective management-like cards to add minion in your uncontrol region, you play info highway and montreal. If you have 7 victims in your uncontrolled region you bring them all and then you draw 7 more.

2) If you could be sure to have effective management/wider view in starting hand and not having extra copies clogging your hand afterward, people will stop playing *4 vampire. And it is not at aall the same thing with tupdog/convert because they stay in play afterwards. Which is a very big deal.. You don't need so much combat defense in your bleed stalth or vote deck anymore, a nameless victim will have a little chat with beast/beetleman while lutz will villein himself, play reins of power and voter cap.. The cost? 1 pool and 1 transfer. And in addition to that, I have a better chance to have 4 different vampires...

3) indeed, it doesn't work with con boon but it works with a lot of other things which I think we do't see right now (e. g. DBR and in this case, the red listing text can be great to reduce the number of bum's rush needed)

Timo,
To address your fears of a weenie horde of horrible...

Why influencing 7 isn't a problem...

As you said, you have to spend a whole heap of cards or transfers to draw more, so you can then influence them out and draw other vampires. They could be used to streamline a crypt, but they have less value than a Convert and a Tupdog because...

Tupdogs are excellent rush vampires. Tupdogs can easily take political actions.

Converts can bleed (with all of those Anarch +bleed options). Converts can easily call political actions.

Why they aren't a horde of destruction...

1) They have -1 bleed so using them to bleed requires a disciplineless +bleed option (or a different minion with )

2) They have -1 stealth so they can't easily call votes.

3) They can't really fight. Hands for 1 is not combat gold here...

Things of note:

The black hand has members in the camarilla. Infact, its aluded to in dirty secrets of the black hand that it has members who arexjusticars and or alastors. Ive always wondered if lucindes gloves hid he crecent moon mark along with the mark of alastor....

Also, caitiff is very much not a clan. However, i dont recall autarkis persecution caring about clan. Now, three weenies with OBF playing psycic veil then cross- cloak the gathering-ing could do crazy things. Especially with thin blooded seers and such. But thats a multi part combo taking setup like diary or spell of life. So its not too stupid.

The fluff would be obviously ignored if a 1 cap dying could make redlist. Unless the one cap was a child of someone who mattered. Or supposedly the child of someone who mattered, like a justicar. So thexpremisexis sellable.

The biggest reason even someone as fluff oriented as myselc is willing to ignore fluff is redlist sucks so bad in vtes that it isnt a huge benefit.

ReverendRevolver wrote:

The black hand has members in the camarilla. Infact, its aluded to in dirty secrets of the black hand that it has members who arexjusticars and or alastors. Ive always wondered if lucindes gloves hid he crecent moon mark along with the mark of alastor....

Well, Dirty secret of the black hand was more or less expelled from cannon.

Even taking it into account, it's the Manus Nigrum that have camarilla member. The Black hand have none, and it's painfully clear that VtES implement only the black hand, if only because every card that give black hand either require sabbat or give sabbat.

So, the fluff have a problem if an Alastor publicly become sabbat. A big problem.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Any older vampire you control may take a +1 stealth action to remove Nameless Victim from the game and make a minion controlled by your Prey or Predator Red-List.

So, the comments I'm about to make could apply to pretty much all of the versions people have suggested.

First thing, Red List as implemented in V:TES pretty much always requires a title, except for Public Enemy which requires a specific set of conditions. Moving to just generic "any vampire can do this" is something to carefully consider - it's hard to pull back.

The wider problem, though, is that it doesn't really address the problems that Trophy decks have. Now yes, not having to draw into a library card is helpful, but you're still using two actions. Like pretty much all the Red List actions, it also requires a turn of delay to use the 'mark' rule - or you still need a rush action anyhow. So in the general case, leaving aside Undue Influence and similar tricks, you bring out the vampire on turn N, take the action on turn N+1, and can use mark on turn N+2, so using two actions across three turns of setup. (And might still find yourself facing Majesty, but that's a second issue.) The only thing you save is the card slot for Trumped-Up Charges or whatever you preferred Red Lister is, at the cost of a pool. Quite hefty.

When I proposed Decoy , the hope was that it might facilitate use of Trophies by reducing some of the setup cost - in this case, removing the requirement for an action. It's somewhat similar to Anarch Convert in the sense that that replaces the need to take a make-me-anarch action (cardless or otherwise) with a play of a vampire, potentially saving you a lot of wasted actions - at the cost of a crypt slot and a pool. So I think most of these variants are trying to solve a tiny aspect of the problem - the Red List action in the library - rather than something more substantive.