chorists - submission

Chorists
daughter of cacaophony
cap: 2
grouo: any
Mel
Independant. Non unique. Chorist may burn a choir you control to make your prey loses 2 pool as a action. You can tap the chorists during your influence phase to prevent a choir card from being burnt. Chorists cannot block.

Source: melpominee discipline explains that daughter of cacophony could gather and join their powers together....

gampeplay: choir decks do not function well if ever... you need an harmony or a daughter of cacophony to burn them and to get unblocked and to get really lot of choirs in play... hanging fermata allows you to save them once but this vampire would allow :
- to help daughters weenie/ bleed decks
- to save choirs (or at least one or few of them each turn) or to burn one of them directly...

snegiem wrote:

Chorists
daughter of cacaophony
cap: 2
grouo: any
Mel
Independant. Non unique. Chorist may burn a choir you control to make your prey loses 2 pool as a action. You can tap the chorists during your influence phase to prevent a choir card from being burnt. Chorists cannot block.

So, I like the thrust of trying to make Choir decks better, but I'm not 100% sure that this is firing on all cylinders.

With inferior Mel, it can put a Choir in play itself, which is fine.

With this text: "Chorist may burn a choir you control to make your prey loses 2 pool as a action.", you get to take two actions (one +1 stealth, one zero stealth) and spend a card to cause your prey to burn 2 pool. Now, if, as you say, people are having trouble getting the superior Choir action through at superior, with +1 stealth, a zero stealth action with a weenie is also in trouble. Of course, expecting Scout Youngwood to take the superior Choir action, your prey might hold back a couple of intercept/wakes etc. to try to thwart that specifically - but zero stealth actions are a pain at best. Missing Voice and Phantom Speaker are also very weak with a small vampire (such as a 2 cap) with only Melpominee, because of the older/younger thing. 2 actions and a card for at most 2 pool seems like a poor trade.

"You can tap the chorists during your influence phase to prevent a choir card from being burnt. Chorists cannot block."

The cannot block text is obviously in theme for the Daughters, with their reaction/intercept/blocking weaknesses, but is quite debilitating - you can't use the 2 cap as a chump blocker.

The dynamic of having to have your Chorists untapped during the influence phase also makes using them quite fiddly. If you have a vampire out with MEL, what you'd really quite like to do is have the Chorists play a Choir at inferior, and have the MEL vampire burn it - in that order. In order to get the benefit here, you might well have to hedge your bets, and leave the Chorists untapped - you think your action with Yseult will succeed, but can't be sure, so you leave the Chorists untapped as an insurance policy. But if it does succeed, what do the Chorists do - bleed for one? After all, you can't leave them untapped as a chump blocker to save yourself when you get rushed. The one time where it could help out is when you have a couple of vampires out with inferior Melpominee, but haven't had chance to get your MEL vampire out yet - so you play a Choir or two, use the Chorists to save them, then flip Scout Youngwood out, then burn them next turn. But: a) that's mostly a once-per-game window around turn three or four, and b) would it just be better to transfer straight to Scout Youngwood rather than the other vampires first? There would be other possibilities - it's not a question of flipping the vampire out, but of rescuing them from torpor next turn (and if you rescued Scout this turn, she's tapped already), say - but that specific timing glitch of "Don't have MEL vampire now, will have next turn" is relatively niche.

One mildly diverting possibility would be that they could throw down a few Echo of Harmonies to help you vote push and cycle it out when you don't want to use the superior, and hunt to refill. (Echo of Harmonies at inferior Mel doesn't require you to be untapped, like Cloak the Gathering.) Not super powerful, but mildly interesting. Of course, just playing Awe and Voter Cap is potentially better...

.

Have you considered using the Chorist to help the Choir action get through?

or perhaps:

The former is restricted only to Choir actions, but gives you the negative intercept for 'free' (i.e. no cards); the latter more flexible, but requires a card.

Tweak to taste for power level and utility - perhaps with the latter ability, only one Chorists can tap per action. Or perhaps there's a blood cost to activation. Or perhaps the blocking minion can burn some blood or life to ignore this. Or whatever else you can imagine.

You could of course combine this with some other elements of your card, such as the "Chorists cannot block" restriction. I might personally stretch to "Chorists cannot block older vampires" (can block weenies and allies), that sort of thing.

Edit to add: I guess the former does still require you to have the Chorist untapped when you go in for the kill, so to speak, though. Possibly allow it on any Choir action (not just superior)? Still not perfect. Perhaps give it some sort of assistance ability (whatever that might be), but if it's still untapped in your influence phase, it has a different boost? Move a card to your hand? Tap to assist, but alternatively tap during superior Choir resolution to deal an additional damage? Hmm hmm.

I actually think this one is over the top powerfull. You can scrap all the other text, it's the Non unique part that matters here. Having decent crypt to play your choirs has always been biggest hurtle in getting choirs to fire. Put six or seven of these little sunday singers to your deck and fill the rest with regular daughters and you can easily lauch choir attack worth 12+ pool by fourth turn.

So first idea was to fill several goals:
- to save one choir or more turn after turns in order to make a decent loss to my prey
- an alternate way to crush at least one choir instead of leaving it to be destroyed
- a weenie vampire to complete daughters crypt... and beside able to play harmony...

After i agree that their limitation was intently very restricting as i really wanted to make them "one goal"
i agree that their action shall be at +1 stealth.
maybe i should.even see them turn to capacity one.

let s see about stats with cap 2:
Turn 1: depending on sitting order you can move to the ready region 0 to 2 chorists (3 with communication network) let s say 3 to consider the more powerful options

turn 2: choir basic, choir basic, harmony.
Unless your prey plays weenie, it is mostly to lose 6 pools.
and you reveal during your influence another chorist and move a new card into your uncontrolled zone
your predator gets stanislava (zillahs and zillah second turn + transfers)
your prey gets anatole (+1 intercept)

turn 3:
your predator bleeds you in govern inf + conditioning, yiu cannot block stanislava and loses 8 pool (so you are at 13 => 8 due to the chorists + 1 for.new crypt card)

your prey having a minion with intercept, you put 2 choir in play and tap 2 chorists to.save them. Your prey don t block as he waits for a choir at sup or a harmony.
you move delilah monroe cap 4 MEL to the ready region. You are at 9.

turn 4: stanislava bleeds again for 8 so you are at 5.
You have still 2 choir in play and 5 minion (delilah + 4 chorists) your prey is at 12 (8 for anatole, 6 for choirs, 4 for others transfers)
With your 2 first chorists you put 2 choir at basic in play. With delilah you go.burn them with harmony and get a vp...

I thought about this overnight...

In fact this kind of vampire would be more efficient to a shattering crescendo deck than to a choir deck: as it allows to multiply the attempts to do damages...

with a card like ensemble it would allow, it would allow to make a big bleed a few times...

With art traumatic essence, it would allow to make kind of jar the soul decks.

echoes of harmony would allow mass voters.

For lily preludes, if i am correct you can only do once per turn the same vote, no ?

Weenie with mel are strong with siren s lure as it allows to sacrifice a weenie to prevent a block...

And the tap to keep a choir is finally very restrictive...

so second attempt as a vampire:
Chorist
cap 2
mel
non unique: chorist can play choir as if he had MEL. Chorist cannot block vampires. During your influence phase, if you control any choir, for each choir, the chorist may spend 1 blood instead of burning a choir.

An idea i had overnight: to switch it to an ally instead:
Chorist
ally. Requires daughter of cacophony. Burn option.
Cost: none.
Mortal. (Non unique).
Strenght 1 bleed 1 life 1
Chorists can play choir cards as if they had basic mel. During your master phase, you can a chorist card to give a daughter of cacophony you control an additionnal level of mel. During your influence phase, if one or more choir shall be burned, you can tap this card to prevent a choir from being burned.