[Submission] Survivor of Kaymakli (HoS card removal and pool damage)

Name: Survivor of Kaymakli Cardtype: Action Clan: Harbinger of Skulls +1 stealth action. Requires a unique Harbinger of Skulls. Put this card on this vampire. If this vampire is ready during your prey's untap phase, he or she removes one card in his or her ash heap from the game or burns 1 pool. A minion can have only one Survivor of Kaymakli. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

I can understand the general idea, but since your prey choose the card removed it's almost not a problem even for deck with recursion. And decks that use recursion often use Liquidation or burn-option cards so they have quite a lot of card in their ash heap. It also don't work at all with HoS milling card. They are basically unplayable anyway, but still it's pretty strange.

So I play a full harbringer deck. I have 4 harbringers out (!!!) each one with a survivor on him. Choice 1 my prey play recursion and would take an additional 4 minutes to choose. Choice 2 my prey just have to play 3 cards a turn and discard in order to take no damage. Choice 1 will hurt my prey but not so much if he plays liquidation and will make the game slower which will greatly hurt my HoS deck ( ) Choice 2 will hurt a wait and see deck but not so much Now, I've killed my first prey \o/. Oh... I've got a prey with 30 cards in his ash heap. I've got 4 useless cards on my otherwise useless vampires. On the other hand, there is actually a good combo with trochomancy but in the choice 2 scenario above, your prey will have most of the time not enough cards for you to remove in his ash heap. Therefore you will have dead cards in hand. In short, If you play only a couple of it it will have no use and if you focus your deck there will be to many scenario in which your main strategy will have no meanungfull effect on the game.. BUT I think all I said would be nuts if you removed the only one per minion clause and add instead a burn clause. HoS are very good blockers. Make use of it. Or if you want it to have a good synergie with other milling effects, replace it with "burn the top card of his library or burn a pool"

I can see a stackable and removable version that mill card from the top of the library being playable, even if extremely dull. It could ba called a boring bit if you want*. But that's a strategy that, even more than standard wall, put no pressure whatsoever on your first prey. If she don't use too much card she may oust two or three prey before you finish his library. And you cannot do much to avoid that, since you need at least 10 or 12 turns in best and optimistic case scenario to mill a 90 card library. * bonus points for thoses who understand what I am refering to.

There were multiple goals: 1/ remove cards against recursion decks; but not too effective, that's why the prey chooses the card 2/ provide pool damage when the ash heap is empty 3/ have a synergy with Trochomancy As you point it, goals 1/ and 3/ are problematic: 1/ the prey may stall. Leaving the card choice to the HoS controller makes the card more powerful AND allows the HoS player to stall. => possible remedy: pick the card at random ? 2/ goal reached 3/ there's indeed a bad synergy as Trochomancy requires at least 7 or 13 cards in the ash heap. => possible remedy: remove 2 card instead of 1. Trochomancy would be useful to deplete quickly the prey's ash heap, then the SoK would keep it dry Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

I dunno. Trochomancy makes it an army of rats. Eventually, that is. In the mean time, you are pumping bleeds by one(for optimum card burning) among other things. So, even if you have army of rats and this, you need several non bug hos to be good. I dont think its too broken. Id narrow it to sabbat if someone can show otherwise. You end up with maybe 2-3 of these, one AoR, and jack in a wall. More ousting power for HoS isnt a bad thing. And bamba, becoming, creation rigjts, and embraces cant use it. Seems ok.

If I already play trochomancy, I would certainly put more trochomancy instead of this card. Trochomancy and this card does not work together at all since both consume the same "ressource" for the same end. But Trochomancy is way better. So, I believe the 3/ is utterly failed. At least for me, I would never, ever consider putting both in a deck.

> Ohlmann wrote: > If I already play trochomancy, I would certainly put more trochomancy instead of this card. Trochomancy and this card does not work together at all since both consume the same "ressource" for the same end. But Trochomancy is way better. > > So, I believe the 3/ is utterly failed. At least for me, I would never, ever consider putting both in a deck. > This card is a stackable army of rats. Trochomancy is just to make sure it goes off. How hard is it to start eating away an ash heap 13-7 cards at a time? Thats just to help it happen though, during yoir preys untap, each Harbinger wearing one of these hits your prey for a pool if they have no cards in ash heap. Shy of nod fragment, or barrens between yoir minion phase and this triggering, they burn pool. On average, g2 hos probably have 3-4 vamps out in normal setup who may be hos, maybe one weenie. G4 with 3 or 5 see the same amount, maybe ben-nun with solomon and the bishop with ani, or the laibon plus phagian and the bishop(name escapez me). So, maybe 4 ish pool being burned, plus using jack and maybe rats. Seems ok to me. All it costs is an action, and keeping the minion above ground. Even computer hacking daring the dawn 2 times with trochomancy pump, oitferior lord of serenity, and discard could basically be a lunge of 9....... Edit: oops. Its not a bishop with ani, is the 7 cap laibon. So, pheasibly, bobalao, nicomedes, zygadat, mina, and solomon could be ready with tapping or villeining, or probably using groomings and pb monty. So, while HoS arwnt helped tons by this card, its one of the few balanced and playable ones i think ive seen in awhile. Theres less than half a dozen HoS crypt angles, so the number of HoS decks are small. Competent ones even smaller in number. This card(id have to test it before being certain) could become a HoS archetype. Samedi are good with dead hookers, HoS could have survivor wall. Survivor of K plus jack, then add in animalism if you want, sabbat if you want, and you have a for aus wall with a different feel than stickmen grinders. Even using g2 with omaya would be viable, with abbots, pb monty and barranquilla, and maybe aome hungry coyote action. Ith gives them an archetype, which is far from making them great, but its a start.

playing Trochomancy with the hope to make it unplayable as fast as possible does not sound like a sound plan to me. And once you take into account that your goal is to empty 3 ash heaps at least, it start to stop making any sense. If you do 10 trochomancy bleed in a game on average, why do you need this card exactly ? Edit : also, if your opponent is careful to let 6 card in his ash heap (via discard and careful cycling), the card is useless, and trochomancy don't help.

> Ohlmann wrote: > playing Trochomancy with the hope to make it unplayable as fast as possible does not sound like a sound plan to me. > > And once you take into account that your goal is to empty 3 ash heaps at least, it start to stop making any sense. If you do 10 trochomancy bleed in a game on average, why do you need this card exactly ? > > Edit : also, if your opponent is careful to let 6 card in his ash heap (via discard and careful cycling), the card is useless, and trochomancy don't help. > Im not sure you need ten. Except for liquidation nonsense, 13 cards should be one whole ash heap. With 3-5 of these on yoir guys, best case senario, they arent going to get many cards in the ash heap, and even just 3 of these running is going to mean a few trochomancies do the job, unless they are running dreams plus nod frag plus barrens. Or rushing raptors. Or playing liquidation. So, trochomancy garuntees the pool burns with this, but the point is ousting power for a wall deck. Bleed once, sit, watch prey deal with jack and other pool damage eveey turn. And stop it by torping minions and keeping them down or by hoping to play enough cards and not get trochomancied.p Not saying its huge, just that it isnt unplayable. And hacing exactly 6 cards in ash heap is like making sure your death spark is always stacked right in discard pile in mtg. You can do it, but ouch. Also, HoS have slaughterhouse, and more easily, millimg or discarding abilities on minions. They can make 6 into 7.

13 card should be a whole ash heap ? That's 2 card per turn at maximum. You can triple that easily, especially since your later prey will have had at least 10-15 turn of play. So 10 trochomancy for 3 prey, which is more or less your objective to get a GW. And if you begin to need milling to make the card work, it's... well, clunky at the extrem. Especially since Slaughterhouse is completely at odds with this card.

I really don't see what's the hate here... Maybe just general "VEKN members really love to hate!", but who knows. What I see here is a potentially very powerful card, which leans Harbingers towards either milling OR Ash Heap destroying. I don't really even know if this should be burnable or not. It has a chance of being on the weak side, but on the other hand it could be very effective. Also, I'd say multiple copies of this actually speed up the game (or might have that effect) since your Prey would most likely get some speed on just to fill up his Ash Heap. The card seems very hard to evaluate on theoretical basis, but I see some great potential here. Especially with G4-5 and animalism angle. Army of rats with a couple of these? It could wreck something. Play testing is what I think it needs. Really good points about the stalling though, a randomized pick would deal with this. Or just let the judges deal about stalling and power up either the Harbingers or Recursion decks by giving choice? "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

In which way removing card from the ash heap help milling deck ? If anything, deck milling is the one thing you don't want with this card. Note that I don't hate the card. It's just badly designed because it look like it work with other HoS card, but in fact it don't. And it's too easy to counter. A milling version, once again, would work with existing card instead of being at odds with them, but would have all the trouble that make deck milling pretty weak, notably not putting any kind of pressure on your first prey. But at least, your second and third prey will be easier to kill, not a whole lot harder.

> Ohlmann wrote: > In which way removing card from the ash heap help milling deck ? If anything, deck milling is the one thing you don't want with this card. > Did I, uh... say anything as such? > Lé wrote: > What I see here is a potentially very powerful card, which leans Harbingers towards either milling OR Ash Heap destroying. > Anyways, I think the whole point here is not to make it work with other existing cards but give them a new tool to try kill your prey. Of course you'll need more than one in game for it to be effective at all, so it could be stronger, but the main idea's okay really. It just needs some extra tweaks. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

> Kraus wrote: > What I see here is a potentially very powerful card, which leans Harbingers towards either milling OR Ash Heap destroying. > That was what I interpreted as "this card work with milling".

Thanks for all the comments. Like any card idea, it would greatly be improved by playtest. There are multiple possible variations: 1/ require a unique HoS or not Requirement avoids a HoS swarm deck (and lore-speaking, Embrace can't have escaped Kaymakli, as they weren't there). Removing the requirement make it stronger (you could expect to have in play 6 of them instead of 3) 2/ remove 1 or 2 cards Currently, I think 1 card is too slow and makes the card ineffective. 2 cards would be better. 3/ leave the choice of the cards to the prey/the HoS/randomness Prey = weak HoS = strong random = quick, but make Ghost Eater hard to play in the same deck (but the card isn't played anyway) The purpose being to empty the ash heap, the randomness may be the better solution anyway. 4/ make it a master card +1 stealth action can be blocked (even though NEC can help). It could take the slots currently used by Slaughterhouse for instance. I don't know if it's a good idea. 5/ grant the HoS an additional bonus such as +1 strength Could make it useful for a different-angled deck 6/ remove the choice of removing cards or burning blood Prey could be forced to remove cards, and if he or she can't, she burns 1 pool. Current suggestion: Name: Survivor of Kaymakli Cardtype: Action Clan: Harbinger of Skulls +1 stealth action. Requires a unique Harbinger of Skulls. Put this card on this vampire. If this vampire is ready during your prey's untap phase, he or she removes 2 cards at random in his or her ash heap from the game or burns 1 pool. A minion can have only one Survivor of Kaymakli. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

Survivor of Kaymakli Action Requires +1 stealth action. Requires a unique Harbinger of Skulls. Put this card on the acting vampire. When this vampire successfully bleeds it may burn 1 blood to choose to remove X cards from their ashheap or X/2 cards from their library; where X is the total pool lost in resolving the bleed action. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> Ankha wrote: > Thanks for all the comments. > Like any card idea, it would greatly be improved by playtest. > > There are multiple possible variations: > > 1/ require a unique HoS or not > Requirement avoids a HoS swarm deck (and lore-speaking, Embrace can't have escaped Kaymakli, as they weren't there). > Removing the requirement make it stronger (you could expect to have in play 6 of them instead of 3) > > 2/ remove 1 or 2 cards > Currently, I think 1 card is too slow and makes the card ineffective. 2 cards would be better. > > 3/ leave the choice of the cards to the prey/the HoS/randomness > Prey = weak > HoS = strong > random = quick, but make Ghost Eater hard to play in the same deck (but the card isn't played anyway) > > The purpose being to empty the ash heap, the randomness may be the better solution anyway. > > 4/ make it a master card > +1 stealth action can be blocked (even though NEC can help). It could take the slots currently used by Slaughterhouse for instance. I don't know if it's a good idea. > > 5/ grant the HoS an additional bonus such as +1 strength > Could make it useful for a different-angled deck > > 6/ remove the choice of removing cards or burning blood > Prey could be forced to remove cards, and if he or she can't, she burns 1 pool. > > Current suggestion: > > Name: Survivor of Kaymakli > Cardtype: Action > Clan: Harbinger of Skulls > +1 stealth action. Requires a unique Harbinger of Skulls. > Put this card on this vampire. If this vampire is ready during your prey's untap phase, he or she removes 2 cards at random in his or her ash heap from the game or burns 1 pool. A minion can have only one Survivor of Kaymakli. > 2 could be ok. I think making it a trifle action , or burning a blood to untap is better than a +1 strength to a clan withone minion with pot. Avoiding someone trying at 6 cards to avoid this triggered by trochmancy in easier with the winnower and Lopez in g2, adding a minion to an ash heap, but in general, i dont see it being a problem. I think tjis card would make mordechai ben-nun alot more playable, since ive been trying to use him well since he was printed with limited tournament luck. He blocks and fights good, but his limited support cast not being able to deep song rush made decks reliant on jack alot. This card helps oust without him having to rush as much, in theory, so he gets to block, letting this card help oust while he eagles sights away with some crows and whatever strike package, be it 44s, bats, sticks n pnp fortitude, or whatever.

Mordechai is not really interested, for the simple reason he is enough to play army of rat, which will almost alway work better by the virtue of being simpler and not needing other cards to oust that may jam your hand when you really want to have only wake, intercept, and combat in hand. That's a bit like why you don't try to oust with Dragonbound when you make a Adana de Sforza rush deck : bleeding for three is more reliable.

> Ohlmann wrote: > Mordechai is not really interested, for the simple reason he is enough to play army of rat, which will almost alway work better by the virtue of being simpler and not needing other cards to oust that may jam your hand when you really want to have only wake, intercept, and combat in hand. > > That's a bit like why you don't try to oust with Dragonbound when you make a Adana de Sforza rush deck : bleeding for three is more reliable. > Also, Adana is squishy, because even free adaptability sucks. If you try ousting with db in an ic deck, other than maybe Hardestadt, your doing it wrong. Anyway, poor example. Mordechai plus jack plus rats doesnt work as well as having essentially a stackable rats that requiresxminimal setup for hos, other than running cards they can use anyway. If you run shaal fragment and nicomedes, you will probably get what you want in hand . Obviously, youd build planning on setting up pool damage with SoK. Its not dedicating a deck to it, like diary(which can win, is a gimmick, and requires your whole deck working toward one goal to accomplish). Its a module, in a wall deck. That does pool damage. As setup, you remove cards from ash heap, and pump bleeds.

"minimal" setup ? That's where we disagree. This card demand a lot of setup, unlike army. If you just stack some and stop caring for it, it will do exactly nothing to oust your prey. You need something else to make it work.

In a HoS wall deck though, bleeds of one are all you do with most of yoir midgame actions with most minions. So, making a few actions being to get this one a few minions, and then cycling into trochomancy (again, kinda eqzy with nicomedes) is easy setup. Your not taking more than an action to get it out per minion, and its just pumpimg bleeds after that. And g45 can play rats too. Is it as versatile as rats, no, but for a clan needing cool toys, a stackable rats variant seems solid.

So annoyingly, I wrote a response to this, then my machine blue-screened. (Actual blue screen. It was awesome.) I spent some time trying to work out what was bugging me about the card, and it's roughly this. A deck that is permanent heavy probably sends very few cards to the ash heap. Maybe you're mostly playing Blood Dolls and allies and equipment, so relatively little hits the ash heap. You get hit by a card like this massively harder. Whereas, say, a Twister Burn Option/Liquidation deck that throws dozens of cards into the ash heap is hit way less. Imbued decks are often permanent heavy. And SoK functions "during the untap phase", so you can order it after you've recycled some Convictions. But if you had an expensive turn last turn, you might have thrown lots of Conviction into the ash heap, and losing some of those might be really quite painful. And so my basic issue is that in general deck-building, you simply do not care how many cards get into the ash heap. For sure, you care about having a good deck flow, but what that means for two different decks can be very different. A weenie Computer Hacking stealth deck has a very different 'burn rate' to Turbo-Arika which has a different burn rate to a wall-y grinder etc. Obviously, throwing some unexpected things a deck's way is fine - you want decks to react to things. But it's actually very hard to respond to a request of "More cards in the ash heap, please!" because if you don't have Liquidation or The Barrens or Dreams in your deck, you can't just magic them up. On the flip-side, punishment for things a deck can adapt to are more interesting - Anarch Revolt's "control an Anarch" option is readily thwarted by many decks, taking a burn action is readily achievable by many decks. Absolutely, your opponent will attempt to thwart you, such as by rushing your vampires or blocking their actions or whatever, but it's all within the realms of possibility. Suddenly turning a deck of permanents into a gushing torrent of card spray? Not so much. Much like Slaughterhouse/Brinksmanship, I get antsy about cards that take utterly corner-case mechanisms and put them front and centre, with few reasonable ways of reacting. Well, ways that aren't just "Destroy the controlling Methuselah", because that can do funny things to table dynamics. (e.g. I feel forced to smash my predator to death, so my grand-predator gets an easy time) So yes, it's an action, and yes it's on a vampire, so there are two points of interaction. (Though, reasonably, my wall deck might have been your grand-prey and unable to block you when you took the actions.) But it just feels a bit too "You played the wrong deck type? Here comes a beating with a sack of oranges."