Contents and card changes in 25th Anniversary revealed

talonz wrote: Simple solution would be (since we are adding text to existing cards) making freak drive state "the cost of this card cannot be reduced". Or make the untap a burn blood effect. Done.

Pissed that my tremere trick decks just got shafted.

That's a valid point, I'd say. Not sure why it wasn't done that way, maybe there were other considerations? One of them might have been reluctance to touch Freak Drive in any way, since it's such a staple in a huge number of decks. Dunno.

I sort of like that idea of having the untap effect burn blood, on a quick think it should solve the issue. But maybe there's something we're missing here?

PetriWessman wrote: since it's such a staple in a huge number of decks. Dunno.

And Parity Shift isn't ?

Confused beginner here ...

Rynkle wrote:

PetriWessman wrote: since it's such a staple in a huge number of decks. Dunno.

And Parity Shift isn't ?

Confused beginner here ...

Well, not quite in the same way

Parity Shift is a staple of titled (and almost always big-cap) Camarilla decks, but it's limited to those. That's a relatively small subset of decks in general though, even if a bit over-represented in TWDA (because Parity Shift is just so good).

Freak Drive fits in pretty much any deck with access to Fortitude, which is a much bigger spread. So I can understand BCP reluctance to touch it (as they stated, in the announcement article).

But as noted, maybe a "burn blood to untap" (instead of cost) would have been a valid way of solving this, instead of tweaking Una & Ankara? I suspect that was considered (BCP + playtesters are a very experienced & smart group of people), but rejected for some reason. Hard to say without more info.

jonathan wrote:

Mewcat wrote: Infinite hunts really overtunes freak drive. Do we need hunt to be repeatable? Prolly not.

Rabbat+Aaron's feeding razor+Freak Drive is the easiest way to abuse that.

But I'm not sure it's broken enough to nerf hunt.


I don't get the euro-hate. I do not think Cordovader said anything about where people come from.

You are missing the point. Decks abusing freak drive play many freak drive, say 30 to 50. Most cards incentivize you to play reasonable ratios or suffer. Since you can, with high reliability, hunt freak drive cycle you dont get punished for playing so many.

Remove infinite hunt and now choking on freak drive is real. What purpose does repeat hunt serve exactly?

As far as euro hate concept I think it it a response to how entrenched some of the old blood seems to be. Dont put it in a response to me cuz I didn't say anything about it.

Personally, this change will likely make me put more parity shifts in the appropriate decks, because previously there was the problem that after you play one, you likely have considerably more pool than your prey and it is tricky to burn through it to play another unless your lucky enough that your predator is heavy bleed deck. Like most of my cam vote decks had about 4 shifts, and even then I had to usually discard half of them due to having too much pool. But, now when it is only 3 pool swing, it is much easier to dump your pool to be able to play many shifts.

Klaital wrote: Personally, this change will likely make me put more parity shifts in the appropriate decks, because previously there was the problem that after you play one, you likely have considerably more pool than your prey and it is tricky to burn through it to play another unless your lucky enough that your predator is heavy bleed deck. Like most of my cam vote decks had about 4 shifts, and even then I had to usually discard half of them due to having too much pool. But, now when it is only 3 pool swing, it is much easier to dump your pool to be able to play many shifts.

That's sort of what I'm thinking, too. Also, even though it's a minor thing, the fact that PS now swings the full 3 pool even when it's 1-on-1 may make it more useful in the end duel, especially against an aggressive opponent who is doing a lot of pool damage to you.

We'll see, the proof is in the actual play. . Still a very powerful card in any case, arguably still the best vote card in the game.