At Your Disposal : Parity Shift

Unfortunately this card has not been reprinted for a while, but now that the Camarilla is in the limelight again I'm sure you'll see a couple of these floating around killing people from all those annoying Camarilla voters.

And with good reasons.

This is perhaps one of the most effective vote cards in existence, providing vote decks efficient options that no other referendums can provide. In a nutshell, this thing potentially is a Consanguinous Boon with KRC ability coupled with Boon capabilities. No wonder it's not been reprinted for a while.

Let's start with the kill value of this card, afterall, there are few enough killing cards where referendum is concerned.

This card can cause anything from 2-6 points of damage to your prey (unless you play with even larger player tables, in this case, technically, Parity shift can cause ridiculous damage, and is potentially a second turn kill card (26-players table, for example...)) The problem is that you can only target players with less pool than you have - which is a problem in the late game, and an even bigger problem if your prey/predator has less pool than you all the time.

There are ways to go around this of course. One way is via transfers - put as many transfer as you can risk onto your Vampires, invest your pool since you can lower your pool down to a level where you can then Parity Shift them back. After a while you'll find that you have lots of minions to do your bidding while thinning your opponent's pool, and getting them back at the same time. You can also "store" your excess pool on Vampires in the uncontrolled region and transfer them back when you need it later. (Information Highway will come in handy for this, but you really don't like Brainwash in this situation) You also have the option to invest your pool liberally, say, buy many .44s, get random locations, or even buy allies - I'm sure there are many Outcast Mages waiting to work the shift.

You can also use pool-intensive Master cards to increase your chances of using this card, say, with Zillah's Valley, or even Ramses' Tomb. You can also use Boons to take damage for allies (or even opponents if you can bounce those bleeds to him) and then Parity Shift to make your prey pay for it.

There are many ways to play with your pool in order to maintain it at a level that you can use Parity Shift. Transfers is an option and not the best one, mainly because the other Methuselahs will then have one turn to react to this by transferring as well (or spending their pool), they can transfer too, remember? Some of my fellow players quote this as a weakness for Parity Shift - I say, nay. If your prey react by spending his pool, you've achieve your purpose of lowering his pool without even doing anything. If he over-invest in minions or equipment, or simply chose not to block your bleeds in order to avoid Parity Shift, then you've achieved your purpose anyway. If you don't see any viable targets, then obviously you are in an excellent position.

So you see how good this card is? It hurts the one you don't mind hurting, while healing you. At the same time, it is a subtle reminder to your predator that lowering your pool might not be the best idea since you can then use Parity Shift to target him, getting those losses back while retaliating against him. Please also remember that it is often used as a life saver for your allies too, and is a great bargaining chip on the table. This takes some practice but once you get the hang of it it is a great tool.

But it has it's problem of course, besides the pool thing. First, it suffers from everything a referendum suffers from - you need to call it, you need to push it through, and you need to have enough of it. Moreover, in this case, you need a Prince or a Justicar in order to call it, therefore it's not easy to spam it. And finally, it becomes not as effective in the late game when there are not many Methuselahs left, and your opponents is lacking in pool compared to yours. But the most disturbing problem I have with this card is that you seldom have the chance of using it consecutively in a single round to hurt your prey - meaning, it cannot be used as the ONLY killing card (unlike KRC, for example)

But this is still an incredibly powerful card - it is both an offensive weapon AND a bloating mechanism, all in the same package, in a single action. You talk about efficiency, here it is.

(o.o)