The Becoming

I'm a big fan of the card The Becoming. I really like the background. Unfortunately I find it hard to build an effective and competitive deck around the card. Hopefully your thoughts on this can help me and others who face the same problems.

Let's have a look at the card.

Becoming, The
[Action] Action
[2 Blood]
+1 stealth action. Requires a non-sterile vampire.
Put this card in play. It becomes a 0-capacity non-unique vampire of the same clan as the acting vampire. Move up to 1 blood from the acting vampire and up to 3 Discipline cards from your hand to this vampire. This vampire cannot act this turn. If this vampire has no capacity-increasing Discipline cards, burn him or her.

Advantages: For just an action for two blood you may get a vampire with up to three capacity and nearly any combination of common disciplins you can think of. It doesn't require a titled vampire and (thus) can be played with low caps. If you like you can add a blood from the acting vampire to keep the new blood from hunting.
Downsides: To really make the card count you have to have many Master: Disciplines in your deck. It cost of two blood is rather high. If you havn't got any Disciplines in hand you can't do the action.

Regarding these points there are some thoughts coming into my mind.

a) First question of course is which combination of disciplines do I have to take to get the best out of this card?
b) Obviously the master section of such a deck will be rather big as you want to have many Master: Discipline cards in your hand when you play The Becoming. Big master sections almost always call for more MPAs to be able to get the MCs played. The question is how to adress this problem.
c) As you will have many Master: Discipline cards in your deck, your aim should be to make as many The Becomings as you can. That means that you play rather midcap to lowcap minions to have more actions. Which ones? (That refers a bit to a) but not that much, as you are able to give your minions disciplines.)
d) Blood management will be an issue, as the two blood (+1 if you want to give the new minion blood)for The Becoming is a big chunk for small minions.

My thoughts on these points are:

a) As I want to play with low to midcaps I have to plan using disciplines at inferior. The best use of inferior disciplines seems to be anarch cards. So what about for/cel? As you are limited in card slots because of the master cards, you will benefit from permanents. You could play Desert Eagles with Diversion and Groundfighting backed up with Psyche and Forced March. Splash in some Scattershots, maybe add a Magazine or two. You could add dom as third discipline for some Graverobbing and Deflection.
b) You could play The Parthenon or build a deck around Anson or Nana. Anson can't become Anarch though. Nana is good as she is with ani-weenies. So there wouldn't be a need for Becomings. You could play with Abombwe as they are trifles. What about abo/pot/dom or something?
c) My first take would be something like
Caroline Bishops
T.J.
Abu Nuwasi
Fahd al-Zawba`a
Gustavo Morales
Kenyatta
Janni
Elizabeth Conde
4 Owain Evans, The Wanderer
for example.
Owain is good for point d), the Blood Management. With cel/FOR he is a good addition. Blood Turnip is a little helper. As I plan for guns I'd go for at least some Taste of Vitae. Lilith's Blessing could be a good card in this deck giving blood and a Disciplinecard on an empty minion.

The main problem of my planned deck is getting into combat. I have too few slots left for Bum's Rush or similar cards. I can't play enough Haven Uncovered because of my already full Master Section. I have to play cards like Dreams of the Sphinx to get a bigger hand to have the needed Disciplinemasters in hand at the right time. I need something vs. Scourge of the Enochians, that means The Uncoiling. I need at least one Aranthebes to counter one. I wish to add at least a Powerbase: Tshwane, Powerbase: Luanda and some Seattle Comitee, to let the Becomings become anarch. Actually I need at least a few Concealed weapons to get the guns inspite of Intercept. As there are some combos needed in the deck I don't feel very confident with it.

What are your thoughts on a good Becomingdeck?

Reiner Stoschka and tha/dem Becomings might be an interesting choice. Making the discipline cards trifle means that getting rid of them is a lot easier, thaumaturgy means that new blood is relatively easy to come by and dementation is easy on the blood cost while being very effective.

Or perhaps a Talbot & Aksinya deck (put those extra discipline cards to good use).

What are your thoughts on a good Becomingdeck?

I don't think such deck exists.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of the Becoming, but the card has one big glaring problem: the discipline cards have to come from your hand.

That means that if you were to make the most of the Becoming to make it actually superior to just an embrace or a progeny, you have to stack your deck with discipline cards. And I mean like seriously stack. Surely you're not going to make just one little "becoming" guy, but are planning to make 3+. That means LOTS of discipline cards. Now, as mentioned above getting rid of them isn't all too hard (Assinya being the obvious choice) but the problem is, you just won't have sufficient cards in your hand/deck to actually make the best of a wacky 3-discipline combo.

Izaak wrote:

Now, as mentioned above getting rid of them isn't all too hard (Assinya being the obvious choice) but the problem is, you just won't have sufficient cards in your hand/deck to actually make the best of a wacky 3-discipline combo.

Yep, that's the problem indeed. And you cannot afford adding things like Storage annexes or too many hand size enhancers as you already have got that many discipline masters in the deck.

Although I have to mention that it doesn't have to be a 3-disci-deck. You always can give them the same disci twice.

Izaak wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of the Becoming, but the card has one big glaring problem: the discipline cards have to come from your hand.

I agree. Compare to all the awesome Shock Troops and Zhenga decks out there.

I find The Becoming works ok in a casual deck that already uses a fair bit of discipline cards anyway; it can provide a welcome way to clear the hand of them mid-game. A weenie presence deck, for example, with mostly inferior and not much superior Presence minions; the discipline cards are handy, and making more minions fits well.

But at least in my case, I've found that a better crypt leads to not needing as many discipline cards, which makes for a better deck and which also crosses The Becoming off the list. For example, shifting to slightly larger cap vampires and putting together a weenie presence crypt where more than half already have sup Presence, now allows replacing those Presence master card slots with better cards. Meanwhile The Embrace becomes the better option for breeding.

To build a deck around The Becoming, I'd be tempted to go to the Assamites, for Basir and Deviki Prasanta. Probably not a strong deck, but could be fun.