First and foremost, I know, you don't like the name.
But I find it appropriate. So here it goes :
Name: Sneaky-Peaky
Type: Retainer
Requirement: !Nosferatu
Cost: 1 pool
Human retainer with 1 life.
When the !Nosferatu with this retainer successfully bleeds a Methuselah, you can look at that Methuselah's hand.
Flavour text: An army without spies is like a man without ears of eyes. Chia Lin
Artwork: In a room, a very slim person, bald and dressed in rags, is watching CCTV screens while security operators lie on the floor, apparently smashed by a muscular, covered by pustules form, that still has blood on their fists.
Motivation: Giving the !Nossies some extra help when bleeding. I think this card also makes "weak" vampires stronger as long as they have Obfuscate (I'm sorry, I can't find a link to Mike Ooi's video...)
He should be 'mortal' instead of 'human'.
He is really under powered. Checking your predator's hand is good, but not worth the action, card slot and 1 pool. This does not exactly give !Nos any more bleed power, just utility power.
Owl Companion is free and works when you do what Nosferatu are better at than bleeding: combat. Unless you do Dominate, there is no compelling game need for this card.
What do you do exactly want to accomplish with this card? Your 'motivation' text does not exactly make it clear. Should it combo with something? Is it just simple utility? What kind of a deck should it be useful in?
"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
I've been thinking that !nos would actually be pretty good at bleeding, if they could get +bleed from somewhere that isn't an action and would cost as few actions as possible. This is because of vermin channel that begs to build a deck around it. In this hypothetical deck this retainer might be an inclusion if we upgrade it somehow.
Suggestions:
- make it free to play
- add an ability: This vampire may burn this card to end combat as a strike.
The latter is what might make this worthwhile, especially if it retains its non-uniqueness. The aforementioned !nos bleed deck would consist of pretty small minions to take advantage of vermin channel (which requires no disciplines), so a way to avoid combat would be useful since deck wouldn't have much combat otherwise.
If we would want to improve it further, we could take away the action and make it an action modifier playable when you succesfully bleed your prey; it would be put on the vampire in question and would have the same abilities (without being a retainer).
Smoking craters tell no tales.
—Tex talks Battletech
Why not something like:
Retainer:
"If this vampire would cause your prey to burn one or more cards, your prey burns 1 pool and this vampire may burn 1 blood to unlock."
So that it combos with cards like Dirty Little Secrets, Arson, Feline Saboteur, etc.
This is what I don't understand about VTES. The ways of bleeding or burning pool are so few, even though it's the primary means of accomplishing the goal of the game - ousting your prey. And the best bleed bonuses are found in one particular discipline, which would be fine if that discipline wasn't also good at a million other things.
Player's aren't ousted for running out of library cards, so there is no milling strategy.
Weapons cost a million pool, but the best locations in the game are cheap or free.
Certain cards beg to have certain disciplines or discipline combinations, but then don't have a discipline requirement.
As far as I'm aware, no cards actively grant VPs or remove VP from other players. Only a few cards play with the Edge.
Contesting cards (which I guess could be part of a strategy) are just an attrition war rather than some kind of mind-game. (Compare the contesting rules in Vampire [both players pay 1 pool until someone gives up] to the "Psi Game" in Android: Netrunner where each player secretly wagers 0, 1, or 2 $, and the winner is the one who spends the most. Such rules would be better for Vampire IMO.)
Certain keywords actually have rules intrinsic to them, e.g. "Prince of X", "Archbishop", "Infernal", "Sterile", etc. But other 'keywords' have no inherent rules, e.g. "Camarilla", "Sabbat" "Black Hand", "Anarch", "Seraph", etc. which would be known as traits or types in any other game.
This game is fun and cool in it's own way, but so much about it just goes against my internalized game sense.
Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.