At Your Disposal : Villein

I think that this card will have a prolonged effect on Vtes games once it becomes a little more common than what it is now. It is something like an "upgrade" to Minion Tap, which is one of the primary pool retrieval cards vital to the performance of many a decks, especially those who utilises fat Vampires. In some way, Villein is doing what Vessel had done to Blood Dolls, which replaced the latter for some extent after its introduction in the Lords of the Night. But though Vessel had at least allow Blood Doll to retain utility, and did not replaced it completely, Villein, however, presented a very different threat to Minion Taps.

Let's look at what it does for you, just as a card.

As a Trifle, it is superior to Minion Tap, as you can play another Master card after you use it (or even play 2 of these consecutively on 2 Vampires). Like Vessels to Blood Dolls, this allow more Master cards to be included in your deck without diluting card ratio requirements. Just this alone will make many players abandon Minion Tap for Villein.

Secondly, it causes future Minion Taps to cost an additional pool, and it stacks. Meaning that even if you're the only one playing Villein, which is unlikely once the card becomes common enough, Minion Taps will be costly to play. Imagine 3 or 4 Villeins in play, a single Minion Tap will cost you 3-4 pool, which is a most discouraging factor for playing Minion Taps.

The downside for this card comes in 2 forms. First, future Villein cards played on THIS Vampire also cost another pool, making it expensive to play multiple Villeins on the same Vampire. Secondly, it requires you to remove at least 2 blood on a Vampire in order to play this card.

None of these 2 downsides are much of an issue to most decks.

Think of it, how often do you use Minion Taps on the same Vampire twice? (not including those Voter Caping Vote decks or some weird bloat decks like Saulot Puppeteers) It is not often that a Vampire gets tapped, received a Giant's Blood, and tapped again - and if that's the case, an extra pool wouldn't be a very big issue anyway.

Secondly, the occasion where you Minion Tap for 1 or zero, is when you're just cycling cards, and that is definitely not a good thing. Villein, being a Trifle, should provide you with extra deck space to throw away your other Master cards, and if you can manage to put 2 blood on some of your Vampires, you can still cycle it, it is not something that is very significantly problematic.

So what would you use Villein for?

Firstly, it could be a good pool retrieval card for those decks that relies only lightly on Minion Taps - that is, decks with no significant bloat capability in returning blood to your Vampire, but uses Minion Taps to attempt to recover blood from the fat Vampires that the deck uses. Some Laibon Magaji decks do this, as did some Settites decks that sacrifice their fellas to the Tower anyway. Villein is a natural replacement for Minion Taps in these decks, it saves space, and is very much more efficient.

Secondly, it is anti-Minion Tap. Where Blood Dolls are destroyed by Vessels, they still get to give the user 1 blood back most of the time, Villein reduces the efficiency of Minion Tap, and when played by multiple players in good numbers, removes the viability of the card. This is the first time I see a card that is both useful, and meta against a pretty common pool retrieval strategy, even to the extent of ultimately shutting down certain vote bloat tech like Voter Cap plus Minion Taps.

But it is not a complete replacement for Minion Tap. For decks that need to use a tap tech on the same Vampire over and over again, this card is not only inefficient, but also a problem. It may actually become a card that needs to be sudden reversed~

Also, this card is indiscrimate. It destroys the function of Minion Taps around the table. Unlike Vessels, which allows the user a choice whether or not to bother the Blood Doll across the table, Villein will shut down Minion Taps of enemies and allies alike. This may not work to your advantage.

But one thing is for sure - regardless, this card is going to change the way decks work. Minion Taps will be obsolete for decks that do not use it in a specific way, and it will become a common sight for all others, which will indirectly, shut down the way those decks that uses Minion Taps was using it - certain counter measures, or changing the techniques of pool retrieval, must be discovered to counteract this card. Do note also that though Vessels and Blood Dolls can perform well together in a same deck (which is very commonly done, as they serve in different ways), Minion Taps and Villeins shouldn't be in the same deck.

By the way, I think it makes a perfect companion to my Turbo-Baron deck...

(o.o)y