Offers of needed power - Baali corruption card

While Follower of set are the best corrupter, Baali also have some card which work with Corruption counter. Lore wise, Baali are the typical deal with the devil temptation. But in-game, they can't easily add corruption counter, except via Contagion. And Serpentis is rare on Baali, strangely enough.

So, this is a way to allow Baali player to open their deal shop, and let everybody pactize with Hell. What you do once people start to be corrupted is up to you ; one option being barrenness + Reformation to steal them.

And if nobody want to take the risk, it's still an hunting ground that help with discipline for you. So never a dead card either, which is a common risk with card that need cooperation from your prey.

Offers of needed power

Master Card.

2 pool
Require a Baali.

Unique. Once per turn, a Methuselah can put a corruption counter on one of his vampire and either give him one level of any discipline until the end of the turn or one blood from the blood bank. Vampires with more than one corruption counter on them are Infernal.

Burn this card when you control no ready infernal vampire.

Ohlmann wrote:

Offers of needed power
Master Card.
2 pool
Require a Baali.
Unique. Once per turn, a Methuselah can put a corruption counter on one of his vampire and either give him one level of any discipline until the end of the turn or one blood from the blood bank. Vampires with more than one corruption counter on them are Infernal.
Burn this card when you control no ready infernal vampire.

So, first a technical nitpick: if the counters come from your card but I choose to activate it, whose are the counters? I think we're in unexplored territory here, so it's easy enough to fix one way or the other. This is important because pretty much all effects using Corruption counters care about them being "your" Corruption counters. (So I can't wait for you to put 10 counters on Arika, then steal her with a single action for the eleventh, or something equally dumb.)


Onto the card itself: making vampires Infernal is really quite harsh, sufficiently harsh that I'd expect decks trying to capitalize on that by pushing out Corruption counters onto other vampires as fast as possible. Imagine a weenie Setite deck with a vampire like Horde or Barbaro Luccesse on hand to fuel the Baali angle. Horde stacks fairly well, being non-unique and all, though is currently annoyed by being in group 6, lacking some of the usual support.

Now I'm not saying that this deck would be the strongest in the world, though I think it could do reasonably well when it had some surprise factor on its side - it's potentially a weenie-ish bleed deck with some surprise extra pool damage on its side. What I do think it could end up doing is making life miserable for other players. Oh look, I've just spent two turns with my weenie Setites hitting all your vampires with two Corruption counters. +1 aggravating. So what's my prey's plan for dealing with it? Back-ousting me so the card goes away? (Otherwise I potentially have to deal with this Infernalism for the whole game.) Yeah, I probably do deserve that, but that's now giving my grand-prey a lot of latitude. So I'd be concerned about the effect on table dynamics.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

So, first a technical nitpick: if the counters come from your card but I choose to activate it, whose are the counters? I think we're in unexplored territory here, so it's easy enough to fix one way or the other. This is important because pretty much all effects using Corruption counters care about them being "your" Corruption counters. (So I can't wait for you to put 10 counters on Arika, then steal her with a single action for the eleventh, or something equally dumb.)

Good point. I never noticed that corruption counter had owner to be honest.

The idea is that the owner of the card can get the counter.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

Onto the card itself: making vampires Infernal is really quite harsh, sufficiently harsh that I'd expect decks trying to capitalize on that by pushing out Corruption counters onto other vampires as fast as possible. Imagine a weenie Setite deck with a vampire like Horde or Barbaro Luccesse on hand to fuel the Baali angle. Horde stacks fairly well, being non-unique and all, though is currently annoyed by being in group 6, lacking some of the usual support.

Well, next to no baali have serpentis, and only Contagion help baali to corrupt people. And more importantly given the fact this card help with serpentis, you would need in addition to serpentis either to be an actual Follower of Set (for Corruption or Cave of Apple), be anarch, or use Venenation, which require cooperation from your opponent.

It certainly is a lot easier than stealing vampire, but it's also pretty slow and require a lot of complex setup.

Also, that's why you need at least two corruption counter to make people infernal.

I would fear a bit more the combination with Barrenness.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

Now I'm not saying that this deck would be the strongest in the world, though I think it could do reasonably well when it had some surprise factor on its side - it's potentially a weenie-ish bleed deck with some surprise extra pool damage on its side. What I do think it could end up doing is making life miserable for other players. Oh look, I've just spent two turns with my weenie Setites hitting all your vampires with two Corruption counters. +1 aggravating. So what's my prey's plan for dealing with it? Back-ousting me so the card goes away? (Otherwise I potentially have to deal with this Infernalism for the whole game.) Yeah, I probably do deserve that, but that's now giving my grand-prey a lot of latitude. So I'd be concerned about the effect on table dynamics.

First, the idea is that vampires stop being infernal once the card go away, the wording may be unclear or wrong.

Then, the card can be a lot of trouble for wallish deck (because Venenation make sure he can't escape corruption), but it seem so slow to me that most deck can mostly take the hit and hope to win the table before it happen.

The treshold for infernal penalty may need to be tweaked (I obviously didn't try to playtest the card), but an Hunting ground for every player at once seem pretty weak, and there is not too much way to benefit of corruption counter.

That card would mainly be used to play disciplines you don't have on your own vampires and blood gain since becoming more corrupted with an infernal vampire has no ill effects.

Im not sure Baali need more help, but id expect thier tempting to have more to do with them owning someones free will more than causing infernalism being the target.

Hard to suggest card ideas from this based on that principle though.

I like cards that help others for some exchange. So this card is a good idea. I'd suggest a change of some effects though if you don't mind.

- This card would be a blast for FoS too. Why do you limit it for Baali only?
- The gain of a corruption counter for the acceptance of help is very funny, good idea, but it shouldn't make a minion infernal. There are enough cards who take advantage of corruption counters.