Danse Macabre Previews

Count wrote:

Actually, yes, designers should look at the star vampires when designing new cards. Instantaneous Transformation is troubling: It's effects are too similar to Freak Drive and Force March, and tt benefits star vampires with these disciplines more than the Gangrel! who need the real boost.

Yet, very often we find players worried that a large cap vampire is paying for disciplines they'll never use. Why pay for 6 disciplines, when your deck is only using 2 or 3, sometimes 4? So it's not clear to me why giving a benefit to vampires with wide discipline spreads is bad per se.

Count wrote:

Rather than addressing the problem that clan faces, the design team looks to have just thrown untaps at the problem. Is that the solution to weak disciplines? Just replicating other card effects that already exist? More stealth? More untaps?

It seems odd that you want to improve the (City) Gangrel Antitribu but simultaneously want to prevent them getting access to abilities that are known to be strong. It doesn't have to be an either/or.

Count wrote:

I would have less of a problem is the card was more limited or specialized in some way. Untap after a non-bleed action, take an action to gain an untap a la Rutor's Hand. Instead this design is just more of the same.

We should avoid getting more of the same by replicating Rutor's Hand?

jamesatzephyr wrote:

We should avoid getting more of the same by replicating Rutor's Hand?

I don't mean to imply replicating Rutor's Hand. I mean to suggest looking at it as a potential model. What I find troubling - among others - is how Instantaneous Transformation is basically Forced March or Freak Drive with little to give it character. I'm also troubled by simply replicating other powerful abilities, instead of trying to give Gangrel Anti their own powerful abilities. They already have clan cards, but simply ones that are not strong enough. A good design would try to supplement the Gangrel Anti in a fashion tailored to their clan. Instantaneous Transformation simply cribs from other disciplines diluting the distinction between FOR/CEL and CEL/PRO. I'm not arguing that it's a weak card, but that's it's uninteresting, and contributes more to The Unnamed and Enkidu than Gangrel Anti. It's not serving the function that the new set should.

!Gangrel have plenty of powerful vampires. Aksinya, Una, Enkidu, even Janey Pickman - all very powerful. But they aren't city gangrel. The way to help the city gangrel is to make dual discipline cards for their unique spread of cel obf pro.

I think that this is perfectly fine bit of design.

Count wrote:

jamesatzephyr wrote:

We should avoid getting more of the same by replicating Rutor's Hand?

I don't mean to imply replicating Rutor's Hand. I mean to suggest looking at it as a potential model. What I find troubling - among others - is how Instantaneous Transformation is basically Forced March or Freak Drive with little to give it character. I'm also troubled by simply replicating other powerful abilities, instead of trying to give Gangrel Anti their own powerful abilities.

So, you're objecting to them getting a card that uses Forced March as a potential model (because that's not giving them their own powerful abilities) and saying to give them a card that uses Rutor's Hand and Clotho's Gift as a potential model instead (because that apparently is giving them their own powerful ability).

Alrighty then.