An intercepty malkavian that acts every turn with madness network? And can potentially call 5 PS in one loop around the table?
There are a great many decks that start out with "First, I play Clan Impersonation..." which stumble - playing enough Clan Impersonation in a deck that one is reliably playable early can do funky things with hand jam later.
I believe you're confusing discussion of the power of Masika-Advanced with the power of Masika-Merged. People already know that Masika-Base is good, so anything you add on top is likely to make it better - unless you were to make some text on the Advanced or Merged vampire counteract the base somehow. (Possible, but difficult to do elegantly, and in a way that makes the Merged still interesting, given you have maybe three lines of card text at a push.)
For the same capacity, you get:
- the same disciplines
- the same title
- no +1 bleed
- no out of turn acting facility
- an intercept/card cycling facility where you need to be a political deck to use it well.
Losing +1 bleed is fairly hefty. Losing the out of turn acting facility is also fairly hefty. Does the intercept make up for it? Some people think not.
Thing is, as things stand, group 1/2 Toreador already has a fairly good set of political decks available to it. Anneke, Anson, Alexandra, maybe a splash of Francois Villon - three Princes/Justicars, and Alexandra who has a powerful special and 4 votes, which reasonably counteracts her inability to play Traditions. Maybe you think about tossing in Rake, who isn't Toreador(*) but has PRE/cel/aus and is cheaper, so isn't altogether terrible for the deck.
Such decks often don't include Masika-Base.(**) He's far from a terrible vampire, but he's not a Prince or Justicar, and his special ability is fairly orthogonal to the whole issue of passing votes. So for that style of deck, he's quite expensive. You need a fair amount of tech to make his out-of-turn acting
really good - such as Madness Networks, Clan Impersonations, and methods of protecting him. It's not that he's a bad vampire, it's just not usually the most appropriate deck for him.
Most of the same problems apply to Masika-Advanced. Same Primogen problem. Loses out on the +1 bleed which is fairly tasty as a thing to have. But you do get the intercept cycling ability, which might be a good way of thinning cards out of your hand, and you're a political deck. But you're probably not stacking lots of copies of Masika-Advanced in the deck because you still want lots of tasty Princes out, so it's not like you would reasonably rely on it, so you're probably not tweaking your deck to have more political actions, knowing you can throw them away if you need to.
So then you come to playing a star deck - you want Masika-Merged out at a brisk pace to ensure you can capitalize on his utility. Leaving aside any issues about merging(***), which would you prefer to have out while you're waiting? If you're making the most of his untaporama, you probably want the base version? So then you're putting in, what, 4-5 copies of Masika-Base, and one copy of Masika-Advanced, and a clutch of Epiphany? Masika-Advanced still isn't looking great.
But stop and take a look at that star deck that you're suggesting. You have a lot of untap from somewhere (his ability, but also things like Alexandra are possible), and vote push tech. Take the Epiphany action and swap it for a few titles instead - Toreador Justicar, Praxis Seizure: Wherever. Play one with Masika, cycle the others on your other vampires. In play, all you're doing is swapping Epiphany for a title. Epiphany has an untap, but since you can call 4-5 votes using out-of-turn actions, you have a lot of untap from somewhere, so that's not too hard to counterbalance. So... you could play a very similar deck now, most likely.
(*) If you like Toreador Grand Ball, Art Museum, Aching Beauty tech, this is a downer. But it doesn't have to be the end of the world.
(**) There are four decks showing up in the TWDA with Masika and Parity Shift. There are 45 with Alexandra and Parity Shift. There are 72 with Anson and Parity Shift.
(***) In particular, that Epiphany can currently only be played by his base version.
Masika Advanced - Storyline Rewards 2015
