is Archon Investigation a wasted slot?

Combat decks like it because they are all about crowd control and that's one less minion on the table.
It's a rush-torpor-burn that costs 3 pool and a MPA. B-)

Archon Investigation isn't a bad card on its own merit. In fact, in 100% of usage, it's cost effective.

AI is a bad card because the other Master cards that you can play in place of it are so significantly stronger than AI.

Just take the example given earlier of Dreams Of The Sphinx. Here are the reasons the I can think of that it's better than AI:

-it costs 2 less than AI; that cost can be made-up
-it gets played immediately, rather than sitting in your hand waiting for a condition
-when played, you cycle into more cards, rather than playing with a 6-card hand (think Dragonbound, that doesnt help you win, just keeps you from losing)
-it's an out-of-turn Master, which denies you another Master play on your turn

Is all that worth playing AI for? Even if you don't have bounce, you should be playing Master cards that help you go forward more and out more preys. then you'll be gaining six and who gives a crap if you are bled. VPs > bleeds on you

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Ohlmann, obviously your players play higher-risk VTES. If they will continually risk getting AId on the gamble that it will pay off, instead of just bleeding for 3 repeatedly... then they deserve to get 0VPs. Its a no-brainer... to avoid AI, turn your powerbleed into a regular bleed.

Well, I believe you may be mistaking me for another people, since it would more be Klaus who say people start powerbleeding right away. I may simply have been unclear.

Where I play people start bleeding for more than 3 on two circumstances :
* they will be ousted or locked down next turn (for example, all minion with less than two blood, or simply being at three pool with a somewhat shaky defence)
* the prey is already pretty low (for example, <10 pool and the player have 2-3 ready minion) and their situations is slipping out of control

This is why when you can play AI, you are usually extremely close to be ousted anyway. It's also why I believe AI is better with bleed redirection, not when you have a very shaky defense like a pure rush combat

@Ohlmann: Yes, but if that is the only situation (i.e. lunging for the kill) where you expect to see the use of AI, then it is worthless. I don't see that as the only situation where AI is played or should be played.

As mentioned, combat decks like less minions. So a way to burn a minion with no actions, no combat cards and without even declaring a block... it's not bad.

In a Powerbleed environment, people tend to try tap out a player and lunge. Nothing quite throws a spanner in the works than having a major vampire get burned on the first part of your lunge (and it still costs the 'lunger' their bleed cards). It can also promote responsible bleeding by others on the table, by punishing any player who declares repeated stealth-bleeds when they know their cross table would be unable to defend against that action.

I can't see when AI would be better than flick. I can see potential arguments for it being better than 'reduce', but then I also think that players value reduce fairly poorly in this game.

It only promotes responsible bleeding by bad players.

We had several tournaments over the weekend here in Los Angeles. I won a game in which I played AIs in two consecutive turns. Did they destroy my Dementation stealth-bleed predator? Yes! Was that a good thing? Yes!

I had a Gangrel combat/rush/block deck, so getting rid of stealth-bleeding minions and a player from the table was good for me. If all your predator is capable of doing is bleeding heavily at stealth (or worse yet, unblockably) and you're not in a position to bounce, you might as well cripple him. If you are a non-bouncing combat-type deck and you have become a bleed sink, killing off one player in the bounce chain (your predator) seems to be to your benefit.