diablerist's bane

Master card, out of turn, trifle.

When any vampire attempts to perform diablerie, the acting vampire instead goes to torpor.

Compelling game need: it is unfair that should suffer from Eyes of the Dead alone.

Boris The Blade wrote: Compelling game need: it is unfair that should suffer from Eyes of the Dead alone.

I chuckled.

However, that is not constructive criticism.

mirrdes, currently there are no out-of-turn trifles, with good reason. Gaining a master phase action from a trifle only happens during your master phase. If you want to bend/break/change rule or precedent please explain your reasoning.

"Opportunity of play" is a huge consideration when designing a card. A card that requires another player to do something is always a low opportunity to play. Avoid cards that have a low opportunity cost. If you want to address a game need, find a way to accomplish that goal with a greater opportunity cost.

direwolf wrote: mirrdes, currently there are no out-of-turn trifles, with good reason. Gaining a master phase action from a trifle only happens during your master phase. If you want to bend/break/change rule or precedent please explain your reasoning.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here. There are currently 3 master out of turn trifles in the game:

Wash
Two Wrongs
Subdued by the Blood (which is in the same space of interfering with diablerie)

And the rulebook has a specific sentence about how these are handled:

Rulebook, 1.6.2, point 5: trifles wrote: For an out-of-turn trifle, she gains a master phase action in her next master phase.

I don't see how this card is changing the rules.

mirddes wrote: Master card, out of turn, trifle.
When any vampire attempts to perform diablerie, the acting vampire instead goes to torpor.

Barring something extremely weird (such as a diablerie heavy Storyline variant, say), this is pretty much never going to get put in a sensibly constructed deck. If you want something that's anti-diablerie, it pretty much needs to have an alternative use. The obvious example there is Carlton van Wyk who is very good against diablerie but is a reasonable ally the rest of the time too. Almost all the specific anti-diablerie tech is essentially never played, because it's poor - Sixth Tradition is probably less terrible than Deadliest Sin and Eyes of the Dead, and none of them see play.

A master card, even a Trifle master card, is expensive compared to other card types. You're competing against some excellent other cards. Wash is a strong card that this competes with. With Villein, it potentially screws up some of your options such as playing Villein+Giant's Blood in the same turn. Where a deck might play Villein + some other powerful master card in one turn - say, Villein + Dreams of the Sphinx or Pentex Subversion - it can't do that if it's played an OOT trifle.

Most people would rather be in the situation where the vampire doesn't go to torpor in the first place, and so most of the time would much rather play combat avoidance or combat defence. Much of it is minion-card based (e.g. Majesty, Obedience, Earth Meld, damage prevention etc.) and so much cheaper in terms of resources than a master card. And it works against combat decks that don't commit diablerie, which lots of them don't - or only do so relatively rarely or opportunistically.

And it's only any use if you're near to a deck that's torporizing you a lot (mostly, but not exclusively, combat decks - there's also Kiss of Ra or Baltimore Purge, say). But that's not that many decks. You could easily sit down at a table with a selection of decks that are bleeding, voting, breeding, Imbued etc. and basically not see anyone commit diablerie all game, or even through your whole tournament. And then it's just a dead, dead card.