Worst card?

jamesatzephyr wrote:

Play a lot of bounce. He can bleed your prey in your minion phase and he can bleed your prey in your predator's minion phase. When your predator stops taking him, you got a decent vampire for cheap.

I think you hit upon it. He's a disposable shock troop for a wall/teflon deck's mid game. Play with him as one.

LOTS of bounce. Hell, maybe play some Connivers. Villein/Tap him ASAP and leave him at 1 blood. Always use his bleed pressure. Freely risk AIs, chump blocks, or diablerie with him. If you're so worried about Miguel being misused, THA already comes with a built-in escape clause in Burst of Sunlight. He'd be the wanton aggression in a reserved and reactive Tremere deck.

As long as your predator doesn't have Heidelberg before you Tap him down, and there's no vampires currently in torpor, who cares? Get your big cap star out, Govern down, and launch Miguel mid-game scraping off the invested pool ASAP. If your predator decides to punch himself for 1 pool to help flush your bounces (assuming proper heavy reaction deck construction) then let him. He's there to explode then go away.

It's similar to the same issue people had with The Mole (not a top tier card by a long shot, but still useful). People assume players like to hurt themselves to stop/receive conditional stuff, even when you show yourself geared against such. But in my experience, it just doesn't happen as often as one would fear. How often have we seen people go anarch to stop The Mole? I bet far less times than they've gone anarch to avoid Anarch Revolt (which a deck geared as such should also be a warning sign that it's better to burn Revolts away instead).

Roughly the same applies here. Anyone playing Miguel other than a live hand grenade and you with the best deflecting tennis racket might be wasting time. He seems to be there as a means to punch through defenses, not an investment to survive greater than a few turns. And yes of course, there's much better all-around vampires to play than him. But James' direction shows promise...

Put an humanitas on him so he can't diablerize, and the only fear will be the political action he plays, if as mentioned before you have tons of bounce XD.

Azel wrote:

Villein/Tap him ASAP and leave him at 1 blood.

Your opponent gets him before you have a chance to Villein him. At which point he diablerizes someone and burns himself in the blood hunt. Or rushes you with him (POT and/or THA) and burns himself out killing you. There are an awful lot of things that can go wrong before you can get all the blood back.

And you could be doing the same stuff with numerous 6 caps with DOM or DOM THA or DOM AUS or AUS THA or AUS POT or DOM POT; bring them out, tap them down to 1 blood, and use them recklessly not caring what happens to them 'cause you got all their blood off before doing so. Except all those guys don't get stolen every turn too.

The issue with Miguel isn't necessarily that he has a built in "steal me!" 'cause. It is that he has a built in "steal me!" clause, and there isn't anything significant that he can do that you can't do with another, similarly sized vampire that *doesn't* have a "steal me!" clause. Such that using him is the secret key to a particular strategy or anything. Sonja Blue, for example, has FOR so she multi-acts, she has a built in Villein, and a lot of good disciplines. So making an all Sonja Blue/Diamond Thunderbolt deck is, while still certainly dubious, a worthwhile bit of hilarity. Miguel isn'y giving you anything unique. Yeah, he has 4 superior disciplines, but you can get 2 or 3 of those 4 superior disciplines at a time on any number of other similarly sized minions without the crippling disadvantage you need to worry about. And it is *highly* unlikely that you'll be using him in a AUS, DOM, POT, THA deck. Which is why he's bad more than anything else. If he had some incredibly crazy discipline spread (DEM, POT, VIC, DOM or something) that made for wacky decks, I could see someone going through the effort to make him work. But given the disciplines he has, there is zero reason to do that.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Immortal Grapple @
Blood Fury/Rage @
Press w/ Immortal Grapple
Range is close (from Immortal Grapple)
Blood to Water @

That empties most people... If you need another strike then go for it... but really at this point it's worth using a Pulled Fangs or a Disarm.

You'll need something to enable you to play Pulled Fangs or Disarm, otherwise you're likely to trade hand strikes for one. Torn Signpost would work.

Pulled Fangs triggers on doing more damage than the opponent in this round. Blood to Water is a burn blood effect, not a damage effect, and so doesn't work.

Disarm works similarly.


Along similar lines, you can't Taste of Vitae to gain the blood burned by Blood to Water. [LSJ 20000718]

LSJ wrote:

Since no damage is done by Blood to Water, the blood lost cannot
be tasted (since, as you note, taste only counts the blood lost
for damage).