[Submission] Back to the Roots

"Back to the Roots"

Action

+2 stealth action. Requires an unmerged advanced vampire.
Untap this acting vampire and search your crypt, uncontrolled region, or ash heap for his or her base version to move to him or her.
Shuffle your crypt afterward.

(Note: I am considering the "burn option" for this card, since you could not cycle away surplus copies like you could do with "Epiphany".)


Flavour text: "So this, then, was the kernel of the brute!" (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832, Faust I)

Art notes: A long forgotten abbey (or the ruins of it) in a wild, hilly landscape.
Maybe with a waxing moon in a partly clouded night (reflecting in one to the old [broken] windows).

WoD reference: ?

Compelling game need: This is obviously "Epiphany" for advanced vampires.
"Epiphany" works only for base vampires, which is a huge drawback regarding playability (in my opinion).
Sometimes you want to start with the advanced version, and then get the add-ons of the base version and/or the merger.
This card might encourage merging.

Card created by: Rudolf Garski

This should be considered.

Epiphany should have been printed to allow advanced vampires to merge with their basic versions. An epiphany is a mind expanding experience. Merging a base vampire with the advanced vampire is an expansion of the vampire's capabilities just as much as merging the advanced version with the base.

There is a real need for a card as proposed above. A player with more copies of the basic version of a vampire might include "Epiphany," but it is very possible and likely in many cases that a player has more advanced versions than basic versions.

So, either "Epiphany" should be changed to include merging base with advanced, or "Back to the Roots" should be considered.

Hakuron wrote:

"Back to the Roots"
Action
+2 stealth action. Requires an unmerged advanced vampire.
Untap this acting vampire and search your crypt, uncontrolled region, or ash heap for his or her base version to move to him or her.
Shuffle your crypt afterward.

(Note: I am considering the "burn option" for this card, since you could not cycle away surplus copies like you could do with "Epiphany".)

I'd just give it a secondary use instead. Something that would be okay, but not stellar. e.g.

So you can use it as a +2 stealth hunting action if you want to (i.e. gaining +1 stealth over the normal action).

jamesatzephyr wrote:

Hakuron wrote:

"Back to the Roots"
Action
+2 stealth action. Requires an unmerged advanced vampire.
Untap this acting vampire and search your crypt, uncontrolled region, or ash heap for his or her base version to move to him or her.
Shuffle your crypt afterward.

(Note: I am considering the "burn option" for this card, since you could not cycle away surplus copies like you could do with "Epiphany".)

I'd just give it a secondary use instead. Something that would be okay, but not stellar. e.g.

Invigoration
+2 stealth action
Hunt. Alternatively, untap this acting unmerged advanced vampire and search...

So you can use it as a +2 stealth hunting action if you want to (i.e. gaining +1 stealth over the normal action).

I guess the "burn option" would be bad (or at least inferior) card design, right?

Well, I could not have imagined a sidekick like this one, but I really like it.
Think of "Festivo dello Estinto" ...
B-)

Hakuron wrote:

I guess the "burn option" would be bad (or at least inferior) card design, right?

It's not so much that it's bad design, so much as a personal preference for flexibility - I like players having interesting options in the middle of a game, which allow players enough rope to hang themselves by having the option to do something good, but also to screw up by making the 'wrong' choice. I'm not sure that that's 'better' design - there's a lot to be said for short, sharp effects too - but it's my preference.

But also that I think Burn Option has never really been done what it was intended to do. I got the impression that Burn Option was intended to try to let you spice up a deck with - say - 2-3 copies of a Salubri vampire(s) in the crypt, with nine AUS/FOR !Ventrue or something like that. If they came out, great, you can use all the cards. If they didn't, well, that's not too bad, you can burn option some of the clan cards, and use the fallback level on most of the minion cards - e.g. Spirit Marionette has Dom for the !Ven, and overall 5 of the 9 Obeah cards in the Bloodlines set are Aus/Dom/For.

In practice, I think the overwhelming majority of decks do nothing of the sort. Instead, you pick your trick that you want your deck to do and load your crypt with vampires to do it, so you're practically guaranteed to have at least one Salubri out, maybe two in some decks. So, I don't think Burn Option makes that much sense in the game as actually worked out.


Aside: I have no idea what the thoughts were about Twister decks when Burn Option was created - I had no involvement with playtesting the BL set at all. I would guess that someone spotted the fact that you could use them to slim a deck down much below 60 cards if you wanted, and that it was considered an acceptable side effect rather than intentional design - but I could be wrong.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

Hakuron wrote:

I guess the "burn option" would be bad (or at least inferior) card design, right?

It's not so much that it's bad design, so much as a personal preference for flexibility - I like players having interesting options in the middle of a game, which allow players enough rope to hang themselves by having the option to do something good, but also to screw up by making the 'wrong' choice. I'm not sure that that's 'better' design - there's a lot to be said for short, sharp effects too - but it's my preference.

But also that I think Burn Option has never really been done what it was intended to do. I got the impression that Burn Option was intended to try to let you spice up a deck with - say - 2-3 copies of a Salubri vampire(s) in the crypt, with nine AUS/FOR !Ventrue or something like that. If they came out, great, you can use all the cards. If they didn't, well, that's not too bad, you can burn option some of the clan cards, and use the fallback level on most of the minion cards - e.g. Spirit Marionette has Dom for the !Ven, and overall 5 of the 9 Obeah cards in the Bloodlines set are Aus/Dom/For.

In practice, I think the overwhelming majority of decks do nothing of the sort. Instead, you pick your trick that you want your deck to do and load your crypt with vampires to do it, so you're practically guaranteed to have at least one Salubri out, maybe two in some decks. So, I don't think Burn Option makes that much sense in the game as actually worked out.


Aside: I have no idea what the thoughts were about Twister decks when Burn Option was created - I had no involvement with playtesting the BL set at all. I would guess that someone spotted the fact that you could use them to slim a deck down much below 60 cards if you wanted, and that it was considered an acceptable side effect rather than intentional design - but I could be wrong.

Id assume it was considered but not really tested enough to be game breaking. The most aggressive decks pre-BL would have been just barely helped by burn option, there was no wacky combo that deck thinning could crack wide open. Also, not 100% playtesting had been honed great either.

I feel more could be done with burn option (Heirs gave us the first BO ally, and as a psuedo chase rare for Baali) but at this point, we would have to heavily scrutinize such things at playtest. An ally that has a burn option, but you could pay a pool whenever another minion went into the ash heap to place the ally in your ready region could be interesting.

Or we could just erratta junk cards to have burn option, so they become "playable"

As for the submitted card, the consensus has been epiphany is rough, and could use a buddy, and gift of experience isnt on the menue. The more better than base adv crypt cards we see, combined with how many more adv Ferox or Dylan or whatever we see than base, makes it not a bad idea to do something. (For the record, Ferox base is better, but still butter knife in a nuke fight...)