Lilith's Blessing... a poor NYC prince simple question

Shard wrote:

Put this card in play. As your first master phase action, you may tap this card to search your library for a master: Discipline card and choose a ready non-Bahari vampire you control who has no blood. That vampire gains the Discipline card (if any) and 3 blood and becomes Bahari.

Nice suggestion. Too bad we hadn't that for the poll back in december. It could have won.

I really like the idea about if having to be the first master phase. You can still do tricks with vessels and such, but its not as big a swing.

Actually I think the issue with Lilith + Villein might not be Lilith, but Villein.

Last RTR addressed the issue of Villein making Minion Tap completely unplayable but doing so completely removed the possibility to have a Villein-Minion Tap interaction comparable to the Vessel-Blood Doll interaction.

Vessel is worse than Blood Doll (slower) but is Trifle and hoses it. Problem with Villein is that it was not really worse than Minion Tap, but still trifle and Minion Tap hoser. That was fixed by making it not hose Minion Tap anymore, while, in my opinion, it would have made more sense to "nerf" it so that it was actually worse than Minion Tap (e.g. with a 1-2 pool cost or by having it increase the cost of all Villeins - and Minion Taps on this vampire only - instead of the opposite).

This would allow to get an interesting Villein-MT interaction (while right now Villein is a no brainer unless you play heavy refill) and to limit the possibility of emptying a vampire to your pool *as a trifle*, and this way limit the Lilith Blessing combo.

What is the actual effect of using Lilith's Blessing?
1) You can gain 3 extra blood per minion
2) You can gain a discipline card (i'll mostly ignore this, it's part of the equation, but blood seems to be the pressing issue)
This costs you:
1) One MPA and one pool as investment
2) One MPA per use
3) Emptying your vampire

One MPA for three blood, I would say is a worthwhile cost, three blood can change a lot in a game. The cost will, though, be two MPAs if you only use it once. Two MPAs for 3 blood? Not so efficient, compare with Life in the City which can get you 4 blood with two MPAs for no pool cost and no opportunity cost. Most likely, to efficiently use Lilith's Blessing you want to use it multiple times.

It's probably likely you get to use Lilith's Blessing once in a game if you don't cut corners. Two could also happen, but will not happen every game. I would claim that to make Lilith's Blessing efficient you need to ascertain it's being used at least twice during a game. Else you're better off with Life in the City, The Coven, Giant's Blood or Jake Washington.

So, what do I mean by cutting corners? What are the ways we employ to empty our vampires so we can use our hard-earned Lilith's Blessing in the most efficient way? They include, but are not limited to:
- Playing cards with certain minions which have low amounts of blood
- Playing wasteful (or half-wasteful) cards which costs blood
- Building the deck with a low amount of masters (not a way to empty vampires, but still a price we pay to make Lilith's Blessing efficient)
- Transferring off extra blood with blood doll/vessel/villein

Playing cards with certain minions which have low amounts of blood
The most obvious example of this is if you have two minions ready you chose to play deflection with the minions with one blood, rather than the other one. Another example which I would put in this category is playing The Becoming, Creation Rites or Third Tradition and moving enough blood to empty the sire or to not move any amount of blood to make the childe be empty of blood. This category of uses is not wasteful per se, though a deck which is regularly low on blood might have other problems, or a deck which uses above mentioned breed-cards has some constraints which in turn might be wasteful. (e.g. Becoming requires lots of skill cards, Creation Rites requires a sabbat titled vampire)

Playing wasteful (or half-wasteful) cards which costs blood
This is kind of self-explanatory. I would mostly say that this is a good option to have, it's good if you use it intelligently but can still be really bad. If you don't have any other masters, you have an Eluding the Arms of Morpheus you can't imagine any other use for and you really need two more blood immedietly you can play the Eluding and then gain three blood during your next masters phase. What is important to know is that this is not a net gain of 2 blood. Since every vampire can only become Bahari once using Lilith's Blessing early is actually just borrowing blood from yourself. I remind you of what I said in the opening; Lilith's Blessing is a blood gain of three per vampire. An 8 cap will have 11 blood to use during a game, disregarding other ways to gain blood.

Building a deck with a low amount of masters
If you want to be most efficient with Lilith's Blessing you want to use it for all of your vampires. If you for the length of a game bring out 6 vampires (not unlikely with a Lilith's Blessing-focused deck) the cost in MPAs will be 7, so this one single card replaces 7 other masters. Most decks use their MPAs for a combination of ousting (Dreams, Pentex, Misdirection, AT, Fame, crypt acc.) and blood gain. With a Lilith's Blessing-focused deck you commit your masters to almost solely blood gain (i.e. using Lilith's Blessing). This has an obvious and tangible impact on your own ability to oust, especially if your prey uses this new combo "Villein+Lilith's Blessing". One might say that the introduction of Lilith's Blessing makes it impossible to play Lilith's Blessing because of the risk that your prey uses Lilith's Blessing.

This part becomes less of a problem for decks with multiple MPAs, since they can include above mentioned oust-masters still. These decks do still have to prioritize Lilith's Blessing over something else, though. I would for instance have a hard time seeing it possible to have oust-masters, heavy Lilith's Blessing use and Liquidation+Ashur Tablets in the same deck. So the point still stands for master-decks, even if it might be on shakier ground.

Transferring off extra blood with blood doll/vessel/villein
By far the most common way to facilitate repeated and reliable use of Lilith's Blessing is Villein. Blood dolls and Vessels can serve the same purpose, but it's less common. As pointed out earlier, playing cards which empty your vampires for the express intent of using Lilith's Blessing is, in effect, just borrowing blood from yourself. You could have played the Villein for Cap-1 and have had 4 blood available, or Cap-2 and have had 5 blood available. Why does this not happen? I can see only two explanations; 1) to use MPAs more efficiently (i.e. no more masters on hand), or 2) the counters are more valuable as pool than they are as blood.

The first point is a deck-building error, I think. It's possible to build a deck which plays good masters every turn, you should not be forced to play your cards sub-optimally just to make use of your MPAs. The second point is the big reasoning flaw which makes these decks so popular. With this games efficient cards and disciplines blood can relate to pool on a 1:16-ratio in the most extreme cases and 1:1 in the most unfavourable cases. 1:16, how? Say Arika bleeds you for 8 with GTU and conditioning. If you spend one blood to reduce the bleed by 8 and at the same time deal 8 damage to your prey. Given, this does not happen very often, but to bounce a bleed for 2 is still favourable by a ratio of 1:4, or if you feel like being extremely uncharitable to this reasoning it's a ratio of 1:2. A ratio of 1:2 still makes the counter twice as powerful as blood than as pool. I realize that if you want to compare GTU+Conditioning the most valid comparison would be against Scouting Mission+Threats, in which you pay 2 blood to do 2 more damage. But, to my knowledge there is no comparison where the ratio goes lower than 1:1, and there are plenty where it's higher than that. (I would love to discuss this topic, though, card efficiency and card comparison is really interesting, but I guess that's for another thread.)

So, blood is better than pool. What's the conclusion? Villein should ideally be used so that you run out of blood just as the game ends. That way you get as much defensive capabilites as you can from Villein and you'll not be limited by your blood. Over-villeining is in my experience a bigger detriment than under-villeining.

The first counter-argument to this would likely be "but I will use the pool to transfer out new minions". Excellent idea, the only problem is that it's too slow. By the time you have your 5+ minions the game is already over (by time-out, in my experience). To transform villeins to new minions at a useful pace you need crypt acceleration, but you can't play it if you need to use Lilith's Blessing.

Conclusion
Lilith's Blessing has it's place in some decks. Where you can empty vampires without impeding your deck's normal functioning or where empty vampires is a part of your deck's normal functioning. Where you have less use for oust-masters and more use for blood. Where you can add the benefit of disciplines to the equation and thus tip the scales in Lilith's Blessing's favour. But for most decks, in most situations, Lilith's Blessing is too huge a defensive committal and will gain you less integers of VPs and more fractions of VPs than Life in the City would.

I love the theory behind the post, but I would like to point out a small point : you don't talk about the fact that Lillith Blessing is card-efficient, since it can "easily" give you 3-6 blood for 1 card, while Life in the City is 1 blood for 1 card.

I know that the automatic refill make VtES not overly dependant on card advantage, but there is still a significant benefit to "only" have to draw one lillith blessing to refill vampire pretty conveniently. It's the same idea that make the perma-rush on Templar or Archon convenient : you don't have to draw multiples Bum Rush (or Nose of the hound) to make your rush, making the whole mechanism more reliable.

In short, Lillith blessing also have the distinct advantage to allow you to put less master blood management card in favor of a smaller deck, or non-master useful cards.