More Cards for Serpentis

Feeding Your Addiction
Action
Serpentis
hunt action.
Choose a Methuselah. Any minion that Methuselah controls with one of your Corruption counters transfers 1 blood or life to this acting vampire.
As above, but you may move up to 2 of those counters to your pool instead.

Beholden
Action/Action Modifier
Serpentis
action.
Put a corruption counter on a vampire controlled by your predator or prey and untap.
Only usable when this action is announced. Choose a vampire with one of your corruption counters. The cost of the action card is paid by the chosen vampire. Burn one corruption counter on that minion when the action is resolved.

(EDIT: 11/7/13 to add in Shell Company)
Shell Company
Reaction
Serpentis
Only usable during a bleed action directed at you after blocks are declined.
Reduce a bleed against you by 1.
Choose a vampire controlled which has one of your corruption counters. Burn a corruption counter on that vampire. When this bleed resolves, the chosen vampire burns blood instead of you burning pool. The bleed is successful.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Feeding Your Addiction
Action
Serpentis
hunt action.
Choose a Methuselah. Any minion that Methuselah controls with one of your Corruption counters transfers 1 blood or life to this acting vampire.
As above, but you may move up to 2 of those counters to your pool instead.

Combos rather too well with Temptation and Form of Corruption, especially with the option of running Waters of Duat and thwapping out weenies who can play them a lot. One midbie plays Psychic Veil or Veil the Legions, a pile of weenies cause havoc. Not particularly fun. And the superior apepars to allow you to move 2 blood/life from the vampire straight to your pool, which is probably too good. (The wording of the superior probably needs clearing up though, it's poorly drafted as it stands.)

I'd be much happier with the idea if it was something like:

Or perhaps make it ser+pre. The superior - being SER+PRE - could potentially be a bit beefier. Built-in stealth. Gain an extra blood if successful. That sort of frippery. Maybe at SER+PRE, the pool gain isn't out of reach either.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Beholden
Action/Action Modifier
Serpentis
action.
Put a corruption counter on a vampire controlled by your predator or prey and untap.
Only usable when this action is announced. Choose a vampire with one of your corruption counters. The cost of the action card is paid by the chosen vampire. Burn one corruption counter on that minion when the action is resolved.

Similar reaction to the above, given the superior. There are plenty of expensive actions out there, and a number of arbitarily expensive actions - say, Bloodlust, which works well with Setite disciplines.

Fun fact: it doesn't have to be your minions you grant the ability to, and since it burns at the end of the turn, it won't matter. (Except in the rare cases of out-of-turn acting.) Nor do they have to be ready. So you can often munch an arbitrary amount of blood. Which seems less fun than a beehive in your underpants.

(For added bonus fun, do an Enkil Cog-based Bloodlust during your predator's minion phase, then steal your prey's vampire with your previously-played Form of Corruption in your master phase, thus giving your prey no opportunity to hunt.)


Question: is it intentional that the inferior can't be used to steal minions? (You need the triggering text.) There's no harm, and various sources of Corruption counters can't be used to trigger a steal, but people often assume one way or the other.

RE: Feeding Your Addiction

1) Yes it is meant to be a "Super Cryptic Mission" at and a "Cryptic Mission meets Voter Cap" at . Probably should read "Up to 2 of the blood which this vampire would gain to your pool" (that way you avoid the potential for the semantic crap that still exists in VC... yes yes yes LSJ the Almighty once said XYZ regarding Final Loosening)

2) Sure, so now you turn around to a Temptation Deck and craft on a Corruption Module AND this card... Ditto for FoC.

3) The "Corruption" action is just as bad if not worse with Waters of the Duat than this card is. First you have to get the corruption counters out on the table... THEN you need to use this card. It has a setup time.

4) Kahina the Sorceress already has a similar text (her's dealing damage instead of stealing blood) and who again... rarely sees the light of day as the star of a deck. (8 decks in the TWDA, star of none of them, commonly 1 copy)


RE: Beholden

Sure, people could take really expensive but otherwise useless actions that would never otherwise see play and allow for janky tricks to burn the blood. Or people could probably design decks that would oust their prey/predator and use this card to facilitate it being cheaper.

Note: Excluding Bloodlust, none of the likely choices for actions (FoS, Pre, Ser) cost more than 2 blood with most costing 1 blood. Not exactly game-breaking here. Most FoS/Ser actions are cheap (except for Heart of Darkness). Going for other less obvious options we get cards such as:

- Chain of Command (which so commonly sees play... )
- Eldest Command Undeath (which would really require you to play two decks in one to make it work)
- Blessed Audience at
- My Kin Against the World (the deck will likely pull in too many directions)
- Porphyrion or Petru Sipos do bad things with cards...
- Sacrificial Lamb (?!)
- Angra Mainyu using it and Mind of a Child
- Around 4 vampires from any of the grouping combos be able to use it to get a cheap Pulse of the Canaille @
- The / vampires gaining a free Heroic Might (ooooh yeah very dangerous... those Typhonic Beast decks have been shredding tournaments)
- Some cheap allies (i.e. Impundulu, Procurer)
- And with that we are into 2-blood actions or cheaper.

Note: Bloodlust & TWDA... there are two entries including Bloodlust. Both are single copies within that deck. None since 2009.

It is deliberate not to have the "steal text". It doesn't exist on Nefertiti and a few other things. Actually meant not to be there. This is a kind of backroom-deal sort of thing where someone basically 'owes the FoS a favour...'

The design intent is basically this (from a playing VTES angle, the card name plus corruption counter requirement should cover the thematic angle):

- Give a corruption counter in a targeted way (preferably Predator but maybe a table threat somewhere else)
- Use your deck AS NORMAL
- Have other minions pay for the cost.

Main reason why Kahina doesn't see much play is because she has pretty poor synergy, she is titled and has a voting special, but only basic presence.

Klaital wrote:

Main reason why Kahina doesn't see much play is because she has pretty poor synergy, she is titled and has a voting special, but only basic presence.

Yes, but it is obvious that people are not even attempting to make Kahina's special text actually work as an oust mechanic or as another kind of offensive trick.

And your proposition is a lot more powerful than Kahina text, being a hunt that don't need vote to work that give back blood. You have in one card Kahina ability, no need for votes, and the voter cap.

The superior of the second one is not much better. Mind rape, Set's Curse, or Sacrificial Lamb with this card are just too much for my taste, and the first two are quite playable even without counting for the reduction.

I don't like much both of thoses cards. They may be powerful enough, but they don't feel good. I can see them doing bad play experience, I don't see them doing good one.