[Submission] Ruination (helps combat decks to oust their prey)

Hello Ankha!

I like and understand the need to accelerate the gameplay. But your card suggestion here combined with Dragonbound gives no possibilty for those players that wish to "skip a turn...

Wouldn't that combination be too powerful? (makes me think of "caught between the hammer and the anvil")

Best wishes for 2015!!!

Ankha wrote:

It works both ways. Given the resiliency to combat of Imbueds* (especially when Jessie is out), most rush decks are not able to kill an imbued deck.

This card isn't only playable by rush decks, though. Indeed, a number of rush deck types don't use midibies or above - or do so in sufficiently small numbers - that it wouldn't make that much sense for them.

The burn clause makes it a potentially much more interesting include for wall decks (possibly wall decks with a few rushes/Haven Uncovered etc.), rather than actual rush decks. My prey's vampire goes to torpor, I block the rescue, the rescuer goes to torpor etc. You come across to burn the card, I block you, send you to torpor. If you try to avoid my blocks by going forward, cards like Falcon's Eye or Eagle Sight are, of course, available. I'm pretty certain that a Howler wall or a !Ven midbie grinder would consider it. Some of the !Ven grinders go much more towards weenie Auspex, which have obvious problems playing it, but some of the more successful ones have much bigger vampires. These sorts of decks tend to have slightly more resilence vs Imbued than a rush deck, in that they can block the powers - if they do have some small vampires (e.g. bringing out Isabel de Leon now, but Anneke later), there are better options for blocking the playing of powers, and obviously they can do this in the mid-game. Unlike a variety of other cards that can cause aggravation, this is carefully targetted at my prey - unlike, say, Anarch Revolt (where there's long been the dream of a hard-to-play deck where you let other people create an anarch, but block and rush your prey a bit), or Judgment: Camarilla Segregation, and similar such cards.

Ankha wrote:

In that case, the only pressure a combat deck could make would be the pool damage of this card.

If you're playing a deck with big, rushing vampires, including stealth to pillow-face the weenies is not that hard, in a lot of cases. (If you're playing small vampires, you can't play this card anyway.) Enkidu has OBF and PRO, most Assamite decks have plenty of Obfuscate. Xaviar has PRO. Lazverinus used to be mildly popular for such things and has a meagre one level of Protean - but also has AUS for Crocodile's Tongue, and requiring a would be blocker to burn 2 life is actually quite a lot, especially if you're currently bouncing Imbued in and out of the incapacitated region.

For a deck like Brujah Pot/Cel or Toreador Celeritous guns, Zephyr can poetntially help a lot here if you have CEL. Get blocked on a pillow-face action? Okay, untap. Now let's try that again, with you tapped - pillow-facing is a repeatable action, like diablerie. Multi-rush decks with Cel could enjoy that too, if they wanted to spice things up a bit. To my mind, Zephyr is a potentially very, very strong card, used well. You can't load up a deck with 15 or them, but in a situation like this, they put decks into a nasty situation - do I let you successfully pillowface Lupe Droin, in hte knowledge that Travis Miller can burn a conviction to do you damage, or do I block you with Travis Miller, watch you go to range, dodge, Blur, hit me repeatedly with a gun, become incapacitated myself, play Zephyr, and come along with a pillow again? Oh, and now Travis is unready, he can't burn a Conviction when you successfully pillowface Lupe (or vice versa) - that requires the Imbued to be ready. Obviously, neither Methuselah can be certain that it will work out that way - but it's not a nice choice to be making. And now possible on a heap of vampires who don't have Fortitude for Freak Drive. It's a potentially strong card for a low-stealth deck (including combat decks) that knowingly takes controversial actions. While certainly not Return to Innocence or anything like that, for me it's at the top end for cards that came out of The Unaligned.

The main things that lack tools in this regard are, say, weenie Fortitude and weenie Animalism. Weenie Fortitude is quite obnoxious - but even that can potentially Taste a blood or two back at the end to power a Freak Drive (torporize someone with your normal hands + Target Head and you could taste back two blood, and possibly prevent their hand damage). Weenie Animalism might also gather a bit of stealth from its clan disciplines, though being dispersed over multiple clans might make things unpleasant e.g. you could get a little Obfuscate from being Nosferatu, but your Gangrel or Ravnos chums might not.

MMPA are broken and this submission, not being unique, would be loved by, say, girls kind of deck.

If you can stack, you can kill.

I also agree with the fact that it ignoring imbued is a problem – they can't burn it, they don't have vampires and they have to backrush to then wait for someone else to kill you? Very few cards offer as few options as this.

Also: not all deck archetypes must be able to deal with all other archetypes, but cards that outright kill certain decks are... bad.

Suggestion: make it a unique action, burnable by anyone and drop to 2 pool.

am i the only one who sees " A Methuselah can have only one Ruination." at the end of the card text?

I like the idea of penalizing a methuselah who just waits out the time after having all their vamps pummeled and not wanting to reinvest(use pool in transfers) ... IMO combat decks need something like this... it is sneaky to do... my meta is heavy combat and countless times I've done that (not investing in new vamps for them to kill) .... so I'm a fan of accelerating somehow... my idea was punishing methuselah with no vamps by simply forcing use their transfers.