More Cards for Serpentis

Ohlmann wrote:

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.

If you ignore the fact that you need to get the Corruption Counters into play. Sure, it is more powerful. Kahina doesn't see play for her vote, so it is clearly under powered.

Ohlmann wrote:

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.

Sure, I can accept that opinion.


Set's Curse appears in 17 TWDA decks going back to 2005. It most commonly appears as a single card or two copies in a deck. Some decks utilise 4 copies.

Mind Rape while very very popular in comparison, (50 decks going back to 2005), appears relatively rarely along with Serpentis. Also, most decks which utilise more than 1 copy of Mind Rape tend to utilise around 8. Including a Corruption Counter mechanic to play Beholden so you can play a cheap Mind Rape repeatedly might dilute the core Mind Rape component too far. Feel free to draft a genuinely working deck using the card and Mind Rape to test out just how 'broken' it might be.

Independent: Kahina has 1 vote (titled). She can call a referendum to inflict 1 damage on each minion who has one of your Corruption counters as a +1 stealth political action.

I don't understand what allow you to get more easily the damage than with your hunt action. I may be misunderstanding something, or maybe you're confusing with another vampire. (I could swear there is a justicar who can pitch one damage to all of your prey vampire at once)

Also, it's limited to once per turn. I do agree that using your first card three or four time need an intense setup, maybe something indoable in something tournament worthy. It also put your prey out of the game if each of his minion have corruption counters. It's a bit the same problem as tupdog : in both case, if you try to use them too much, you can cripple your prey, and give the game to somebody else.

Being able to make another minion pay the cost of an action is the only thing over the top to me. What if spirit marionette let you steal a minion for any action, and let that minion use one of your minions disciplines?

Its an easy way to drain vamps with a modifier.

As a sidenote, typhonic beast has won tourneys, and i dont think heroic might would really help it much.

However, if this were a printed card, you can bet your ass id build a Nadima deck with some weenie setites. Id get setup, then make every action unblockable with horrific countenance, courtesy of other peoples vamps....

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

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

Why do you bring this up? Do you mean to say that the prevalence of a single card in the TWDA is a meaningful gauge of the power of a combo involving that card and a hypothetical new card? If you do, I would posit that there is no linear or even remotely predictable correlation between those two factors. All you can say based on the TWDA is that Bloodlust doesn't appear much and probably isn't a playable card in the current environment.

@Suoli:
Entirely my point. People don't play Bloodlust, based on TWDA listings. So bringing up how this card might suddenly make Bloodlust broken appears to be something of a straw-man. I am not attempting to rate the power of the interaction of the two cards... I just doubt we're suddenly going to see 6 copies of Bloodlust in every Serpentis deck because this card was printed. Even with such claims as it may speed up Form of Corruption or Temptation decks.

@ReverendRevolver
It is worse than Spirit Marionette for the person playing it. You take the action with your minion, put your minion in harms way and then make another minion pay for the action. It doesn't have all of those tricks possible, like using Day Op or Daring the Dawn, which are used in some Marionette decks.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

@Suoli:
Entirely my point. People don't play Bloodlust, based on TWDA listings. So bringing up how this card might suddenly make Bloodlust broken appears to be something of a straw-man. I am not attempting to rate the power of the interaction of the two cards...

Yeah, here's the problem: you really, really should be. Consider the following absurd but nevertheless relevant example.

Blood Hound
Type: Master
Cost: 1 pool
Gain 1 pool. If you control a Blood Puppy, gain 30 pool instead.

The TWDA only has 5 copies of Blood Puppy, distributed among 3 decks. It is blatantly obvious that Blood Hound is still broken.

I'm not saying that Beholden + Bloodlust would definitely be broken but you can't ignore the potential interactions with existing cards when designing new ones. The fact that some cards are not currently playable says absolutely nothing about their playability in the context of new cards. That should really go without saying.