[Submission]: Waterborne Spirit

Name: Waterborne Spirit
Cardtype: Retainer
Cost: 2 Blood
Discipline: Animalism

Animal with 2 life.
Inferior animalism [ani] Once each combat, you can discard a card requiring animalism [ani] for the employer to gain 1 blood. A vampire can have only 1 Waterborne Spiri.
Superior animalism [ANI] As above, and while the employer is in combat, you get +1 hand size.

Flavor text: None

Art notes: A horse spirit or a big animal that lives in water.

World of Darkness reference: A spirit animal or a horse type or animal

How does this card address a compelling game need?: This is a new retainer for animalism to assist in animalism combat. It has a high initial cost similar to raptor but the goal is to give sustainability to the retainer by allowing you to gain blood again in combat and cycle cards. The superior effect, instead of simply increasing the life like other retainers, it would give +1 hand size only in combat. Given these effects 2 blood seems an appropriate cost.

The card is not unique so you can place more than one in the game but only 1 per minion. Being unique could be a consideration given it has really good effects and may be too strong. If playtesting reveals this to be overwhelming then the superior effect of the card could just be to add more life to it, but I found that those effects are almost always useless since retainers rarely get damaged in combat.

Another interesting limitation that could be given is make it so this retainer can be targeted by strikes even at close range, that way it would make it more vulnerable and include retainers more in combat.

Created by: Pedro Valentim
With card art using AI software.