black plague bearer

Black plague bearer
master
1 pool
Harbinger of skull.
put on a vampire you control. A vampire can gave only one "black plague bearer".
Each time this vampire or a minion with a disease counter is in combat at close range with another non wraith minion, the second minion gets a disease counter. An vampire with a disease counter cannot gain blood by hunting. When a non zombi non wraith minion with a disease counter untaps, he or she burns a blood or, if unable, burns the disease counter. A minion can have only one disease counter.

source: harbingers were regumarly in touch with diseased corpse and consequently many beared the sickness through ages... nowadays they still focus a lot about diseases in general trying to unleash a wide epidemia. Furthermore the lamie bloodline weakness was to transmit diseases to both human and vampire ...

Uses: combo with strike mercy for seth. Makes more strong wall decks using hsk (as vampires blocked will have to deal with aditionnal blood loss) and besides other methuselah would be less eager to block the minion as it would incapacitate their vampires.

This card is almost a copy/paste of the vampiric disease master and would work well with a few of them in a deck.

Is it a master, equipment or action?
If it's a master or action I think there needs to be a way for others to remove the card or this can get out of hands really fast.

I corrected : it was a master in my head...
and of course only minions with disease counters are affected by the burning one blood/life effect...

I didn t made a way to remove this card as :
- i have seen quite a few vampiric disease master played around my table. Usually, it makes one or two vampire infected. As harbinger you usually puts the first on your predator and then if you get a second on your prey... the disease never went far as vampires get rid of it usually when they go out of blood (if ever) and 11 cap vampire have a long long way before to be really affected dangerously by it (5 untaps ?)... finally the decks which were the more strongly impacted was the ones with untap cards (majesty, meld with earth, freak drive and so on)...
- this card has a drawback or a backfire: the bearer infects people but this card does not protect from disease counter from other vampire if they enter again in fight with him, he can infected too
- many masters are playable on a single vampire and have no way to be removed (debauchery, art of pain...)... and they are more strong than "plague bearer" card.

and last a small example:
I have a harbinger (hsk) cap 8 full blood with plague bearer master.
My predator has a 8 cap vampire (malkavian)
Every of hid turn he bleeds me and i block him with my plague bearer. If we do only hand damages, play no other cards and so on, it gives:
Predator turn1 (pt1):
Hsk - 1 blood = 7
Malk -1 blood = 7 malk gets infected
my turn (m1)
No action
hsk = 7
Malk = 7
Pt2
Malk untaps (-1 =6) bleeds and is blocked
malk -1 = 5
Hsk -1 = 6 and get infected as well
my turn 2
hsk untaps -1 = 4
pt3
malk untaps -1 = 4
Bleeds get blocked and combat
malk -1 = 3
hsk -1 = 3
My turn
hsk untaps - 1 = 2 blood and so on...

snegiem wrote:

and last a small example:
I have a harbinger (hsk) cap 8 full blood with plague bearer master.
My predator has a 8 cap vampire (malkavian)
Every of hid turn he bleeds me and i block him with my plague bearer. If we do only hand damages, play no other cards and so on, it gives:

...a pretty much entirely useless result.

If you are building a deck, you build a deck to exploit the cards you're using. You don't build a deck relying on a combative element and base the results on "I only do hand damage and play no other cards", because that is not how the deck will work. You know that your deck does a thing, you will include cards to capitalize on it. You know that that thing gives you a weakness, you will quite possibly include cards to minimize that.

Imagine a parallel universe with no Immortal Grapple, and I proposed Immortal Grapple for Potence and then demonstrated how good it was based on both of us doing hand damage and playing no cards. Because that's totally how the game would work, right? No-one would ever combo it with anything?

Further, bear in mind that the Harbingers of Skulls have Auspex and Fortitude. This gives them reasonable multi-acting capability, and solid blocking ability, with multi-blocking being very possible with: a) Wakes generally and b) Eyes of Argus specifically for Auspex. And can potentially cross-table meddle (e.g. to soften up their grand-prey) with Eagle Sight. This means that spreading such counters around the table is not that hard.

snegiem wrote:

Predator turn1 (pt1):
Hsk - 1 blood = 7
Malk -1 blood = 7 malk gets infected

And then card text: the Harbinger of Skulls is also infected in the same combat.

The Harbinger is in combat with the Malkavian. The Malkavian gets the disease counter. But now the Harbinger is in combat at close range with a minion with a disease counter. So the Harbinger gets a disease counter.

(This is irrelevant with Vampiric Disease, which triggers off the presence of a disease counter to start with.)


Further problems:

As things stand, if you play this and Vampiric Disease, the effect stacks. You have two master cards in play saying that when the diseased minion untaps, they burn a blood. So they do it twice.

Similarly, this card is not unique (though one per minion), and so the effect stacks that way too.

But the card says a minion can only have one disease counter.