Card Submission: Bubasti Mystic

Name: Bubasti Mystic
Cardtype: Ally
Cost: 3 pool
Capacity: N/A
Discipline: None
Clan: None
Unique werewolf with 1 bleed, 1 strength, 3 life.
Bubasti has +1 stealth. Bubasti can play cards requiring basic Chimerstry, Necromancy, or Thaumaturgy as a vampire of capacity 3. Bubasti can give you +2 hand size until the end of the current turn as a +1 stealth action. If bubasti has fewer than 3 life during your untap phase, she gains 1 life.

Flavor text: "We learned secrets that should have been left alone. Worse, we still hunger for them, even now." -Bubasti Caliah

Art notes: A female Egyptian bastet (werecat), looking like a mix of a human and a black cat, gaunt and lithe, dressed to ceremonial robes decorated with egyptian hieroglyphs and mystical symbols, she is also adorned with plenty of golden jewelry. She is inside in a room lit up with candles, standing front of a bookshelf containing lots of very old looking tomes and scrolls and reading through one such scroll.

World of Darkness reference: Bubasti are a tribe of Egyptian bastet, described in at least bastet tribebook and werewolf players guide to changing breeds. They are mystics, scholars, and sorcerers with vast knowledge of occult secrets and lore. The discplines she can use simulate the various gifts, rites, and sorcery that Bubasti use, while the hand size increasing ability represents the vast amounts of knowledge that they have, the +1 stealth is because they are very secretive and work behind the scenes, not really being fighters. Then she has the standard shifter regeneration. She is unique both as balancing factor, and because Bubasti are fairly rare during the modern nights so it would be quite unlikely to find more than one.

How does this card address a compelling game need?: I wanted to create a good utility ally that could fit in to lots of different types of decks, there is always use for more of those, and I think this one offers some fairly unique options and great deal of versatility, while still not really being massively powerful on her own, like she isn't going to torpor other peoples minions, or block critical actions, but she can offer support to many different kinds of decks and strategies. While she can use 3 different discplines that might seem a lot, those are all fairly rare and specialized discplines so you are fairly unlikely to ever use more than one of those in any given deck, so it mostly just increases the variety of what decks she will fit in well.

Created by: Kari Mäkinen

EDIT: Removed the mention of blood costs being paid with her life and effects giving blood giving life instead from the card text to shorten it, seeing that latest printing of Talaq didn't have that either so I guess its automatic for all allies that can play discplines.

I like the concept of a generic card that is ok for most decks and slightly better if you play certain traditionally weak disciplines. Thaumaturgy seems a little too good, the !/Tremere Mirror Walk bleed deck doesn't need this kind of a boost.

Suoli wrote:

I like the concept of a generic card that is ok for most decks and slightly better if you play certain traditionally weak disciplines. Thaumaturgy seems a little too good, the !/Tremere Mirror Walk bleed deck doesn't need this kind of a boost.

Thaumaturgy is included because that seems to be the discpline generally used to represent the various hedge magic paths that allies can use. But if you think of a typical mirror walk bleed deck, what thaumaturgy cards are used in those decks that she might use? Only ones I can think of are Mirror Walk, maybe Magic of the Smith and Theft of Vitae, and of those three, two are mostly applicable if people actually attempt to block/rush her rather than those dom/tha guys bleeding them, so I don't really think the thaumaturgy would make huge difference when she is used in that kind of deck. It would likely make bigger impact in a cryptic mission type deck, and those aren't exactly tier 1 so if they get some help, its cool to me.

Ankha wrote:

I would give her obfuscate rather than Chimerstry if she is secretive, and remove that +1 stealth because she has 1 bleed.

Chimerstry is the perfect fit to the types of things that Bubasti gifts do, for example they have a gift called Mousemaze which makes the target totally confused and disoriented so that they blunder around in panic for a short time, thinking that walls shift and close in, shadows lenghten, sounds drift to their ears from all corners, and familiar places seem strange and threatening. The first thing that came to my mind to simulate that are chimerstry actions like sensory overload and fantasy world.

Giving her obfuscate would just make her automatic fit to any obf swarm bleed decks which I don't think need that kind of help (they might of course still use her just for the hand cycling ability anyway, but no need to make her even better for that kind of decks), and yes she can stealth bleed for 1, but so can a 1 cap obf vampire, and if you want a pure stealth bleeding ally, your much better off with marijava thuggee or Beatrice Tremblay, while removing the inherent stealth from the Bubasti would make her significantly weaker to any chimersty using decks since most chimersty actions do not come with inherent stealth, and generally cost blood to begin with, as does all chimerstry stealth at basic.

Klaital wrote:

Giving her obfuscate would just make her automatic fit to any obf swarm bleed decks which I don't think need that kind of help (they might of course still use her just for the hand cycling ability anyway, but no need to make her even better for that kind of decks), and yes she can stealth bleed for 1, but so can a 1 cap obf vampire, and if you want a pure stealth bleeding ally, your much better off with marijava thuggee or Beatrice Tremblay, while removing the inherent stealth from the Bubasti would make her significantly weaker to any chimersty using decks since most chimersty actions do not come with inherent stealth, and generally cost blood to begin with, as does all chimerstry stealth at basic.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to see her given Obf either, for the reasons you explain - it's fine for those decks to choose to play her, probably less so for those decks to clamour for her.

It does feel on first sight as being somewhat over the top, but in reality would I think that Mylan Horseed is a stronger tool, given that he can (sort of!) take actions requiring all sorts of awesome disciplines, by untapping a fattie who has them. And the three disciplines don't have that much synergy. Nec/Tha has a fair smattering (20+ vampires, with a reasonable spread of capacities in different groups), Chi/Tha has 11 vampires who are all 6+ cap including an Advanced vampire and mostly in group 4/5, Chi/Nec is almost non-existent (2 vamps).

I started thinking about the perma-stealth and wondered if it might be better as "burn a blood to get +1 stealth once an action/turn". Which, as you rightly note, seems quite harsh for Chimerstry, which is sometimes a moderately annoying discipline for a small vampire with only inferior Chi. It seems less of an issue for Thaumaturgy, which has a bunch of more interesting free cards, and Theft and things. And thinking about Thaumaturgy, it does provide a tool for Cryptic Mission/Leopold decks, with an extra +1 stealth, and the hand-cycling potential. So I'd expect to see some mileage there. And I don't think it's that over the top.

Overall, though, it feels quite nicely done. Quite flashy, quite interesting, some solid support potential, but still relatively fragile.