[Submission] Head Hunter (trophy fetch)

Name: Head Hunter Cardtype: Action modifier/Combat Only usable when this minion burns a Red List minion in combat or as a action. Put this card on this minion. Each time this minion burns a Red List minion in combat or as a action (including during this action), you can search your ash heap, hand or library (shuffle afterwards) for a trophy and put it on this minion. A minion can have only one Head Hunter. Flavor text: Art notes: World of Darkness reference: none How does this card address a compelling game need?: Well, we all know that the trophy mechanics is klunky: it requires too many MPA, isn't very effective if you draw your trophies one at a time. The card is supposed to be easily played once you have a Red List target, and allows to grab trophies faster. Created by: Vincent Ripoll Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> Ankha wrote: > Name: Head Hunter > Cardtype: Action modifier/Combat > Only usable when this minion burns a Red List minion in combat or as a action. > Put this card on this minion. Each time this minion burns a Red List minion in combat or as a action (including during this action), you can search your ash heap, hand or library (shuffle afterwards) for a trophy and put it on this minion. A minion can have only one Head Hunter. > As a one-per-minion card, it's hard to put many in a deck, especially if your Trophy hunters are fairly big minions. But if you can use a lot more Trophies, you probably want to put more Trophies in the deck. So some games, you draw this early and you can pull and thin out the Trophies. In other games, you draw this late and you've probably been clumping on any extra trophies you've slotted into the deck. Or, alternatively, you keep the overall number of Trophies roughly the same in your deck as you would play normally (i.e. prior to this card), and in some games you get them all out quite early, and some games not so much. Either way, it seems potentially a bit swingy - sometimes really quite good, sometimes buttnumbingly annoying, and I think Trophy decks would benefit from something a little more consistent. I'd consider switching it to being a Trophy itself(*), so that on your first burn/diablerie you can pull it straight out of your library, if you want to. Perhaps "Trophy: Renown" or "Trophy: Glory". That changes the dynamics somewhat - you don't get the usual free 'proper' Trophy on that first action, for a start - so you'd probably want to tweak it, but I think overall that heading in that sort of direction it would be a more stable card. Alternatively, sticking with the minion card, I'd consider giving it a weak-but-usable alternate use. Probably something still restricted to Red List minions, but more transient. Say: [act mod] +1 stealth on an action targeting a Red List minion [act mod][combat] As before. Or: [combat] Maneuver, only usable when the opponent is Red List. [act mod][combat] As before. So it's somewhat easier to have a substantial number in the deck, so one of them gets pulled relatively early. (*) Flavour text: Yo dawg, I heard you like Trophies so I put a Trophy in your Trophy so you can Trophy while you Trophy.

What do trophy-mechanics need to be stronger? It's a weird kind of deck because they have access to everything(handsize, permanent untapping, blood, more bleed, pool to recruit and so on) and yet they still don't quite work. Is is that putting red list on someone is too hard? Is it that they need to be combat decks and that, being a combat deck is always something that makes a deck hard to play? Is it that it needs big minions and that the combination of big minions and a complex master-set building troublesome in itself?

The setup needs a bit of effort: titled vampires, with stealth or enough votes to make other people Red List. Then you enter combat with the Red List, which costs 1 MPA, or you rely on "enter combat" cards. Then you grab Trophies, but 1 at a time. So it's complicated for little reward. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

safehouse/operation base/alastor-place master (cost here, I'm very bad at balancing costs) You can tap (this) to put a master: trophy from your hand in play. You can tap (this) to select a red list minion. all your minions can enter combat with it at +1 stealth that costs 1 blood. (Red list vampires can burn this as a direct action, if you feel it needs nerfing) I know it's overpowered but it tries to cover many mechanical aspects: hand resources(master jam), better rewards and MPA.

Why not make it a trophy? ie. Trophy: Head Hunter Type: Master Master. Trophy. When the minion with this card burns a red list minion or claims this trophy, you may tap this card to place another trophy (from your hand, ash heap or library) on this minion. This would also stack. I think "Red listing" a minion is the major problem with the red list / trophy mechanic. I would like to see a combination rush / red list card like this: Action Enter combat with a {insert restriction here} minion, for the duration of this action the chosen minion is considered red list. Amaranth Deck Building Tool : VTES NZ : VTES ANZ Facebook

> Ke. wrote: > Action > Enter combat with a {insert restriction here} minion, for the duration of this action the chosen minion is considered red list. > If the restriction is very harsh or pretty random (e.g. "non-Camarilla" is fine right up until I sit with Arika as my prey and AAA as my predator), people will be unlikely to play it. If the restriction is reasonably achievable (e.g. "younger"), then it basically just means that any deck that can hit that restriction swaps out a few Bum's Rushes for a few of your Rushes and gets a potentially significant power increase for essentially no extra effort. Not sure we'd necessarily want to give already-good combat strategies a significant shot in the arm like that. e.g. in the case of my example of "younger", there are some very good huge vampire combat monster decks. Your text also doesn't include a titled vampire restriction, which is found on most other options. (Not on Public Enemy, which is a bit frustrating.)

The one thing that trophy decks don't need is even more cards for setup... the problem is that they already need too much work for actually activating the trophies, unless you happen to get lucky and someone already has minion that is red list by default. However on the other hand there is also the problem that trophies in general are very powerful, so can't make them too easy to get. That is my main issue with trophy decks, they are such an on/off switch, either they don't get their trophies and end up doing nothing, or they get them and completely dominate the table.

> jamesatzephyr wrote: > Your text also doesn't include a titled vampire restriction, which is found on most other options. (Not on Public Enemy, which is a bit frustrating.) > Forged Anathema Action (requires a titled vampire) Enter combat with a titled vampire, for the duration of this action the chosen vampire is considered red list. How about something like the above, it may it lean towards being too restrictive — but this ensures players retain other rush options (and stops Beast & Enkidu running amok). Running a few of these should the situation arise is still worth while. Didn't intend to hijack the thread; just trying to make red listing more viable. Amaranth Deck Building Tool : VTES NZ : VTES ANZ Facebook

> Ke. wrote: > > Forged Anathema > Action (requires a titled vampire) > Enter combat with a titled vampire, for the duration of this action the chosen vampire is considered red list. > > How about something like the above, it may it lean towards being too restrictive > For my taste, it leans towards being too random to be that useful. Maybe one or two in a deck, but nothing you could really build around, because you could just as easily find yourself sitting next to a title-free Tzimisce War Ghoul monster, Imbued, weenie DEM, a Howler wall, !Ven midbie stick men, Salubri Spirit Marionette with Dom weenies, Legacy of Pander etc. There might well be titled vampires on the table, but they might be cross-table, or they might be only one of your predator or prey's vampires e.g. including Sela incidentally in a !Brujah deck that isn't title-centric. I'm not totally opposed to having a random/uncontrollable element on cards, but Red List/Trophies are weird enough as it is, another layer of pain probably isn't helpful. Some sorts of randomness can be fun, such as having an incidental extra benefit or alternative use e.g. a strike that does one extra damage against titled vampires, but which is perfectly usable for its own sake.