To eat, or not to eat? Isn't it tempting to see a vampire lying in torpor, especially one belongs to your prey or predator, that you'd like to send your own minion to just go there and eat him up? Of course, with great reward comes great risk, as the Blood Hunt referendum could easily cost you that vampire, making it a trade-off rather than an advantage.
Diablerizing a vampire in torpor can be a pretty simple decision sometimes. For example, when you have vote superiority, or you have weenies that you don't really care for. In such cases, eating the vampire in torpor could be a no-brainer. But there are some other things one should always consider before happily going over to eat up some random vampire in torpor, even if that vampire belongs to your prey/predator.
First, you should assess properly the risk element of potentially losing the vampire that you sent over. Having vote superiority does not always warrant safe passage from eating the opponent's vampire. There are cards that could overcome that, or even overcome the higher up "Blood Hunt does not affect this vampire" ability that the selected few vampires possess (such as Tariq). If you know your table opponents, you should be able to assess the risk pretty well. If you don't, looking at the table you could also make a good guess - are there Camarilla Princes or Justicars? Then the Sixth Tradition could be played (and there's a Sabbat equivalent). Is the vampire in torpor more than twice your minions' capacity? Then beware of Subdued by the Blood.
But these are almost always just trivial issues that you can easily settle by asking your allies, and taking the risk when those possibilities lie with your direct opponent.
So the second thing you should consider is then, the reward. It is not true that removing one vampire always makes it better for you. For the case of your predator, it is pretty clear cut that removing one of his vampire, especially an important one, might simply let him fall prey to his predator quickly and net you a new and more powerful predator. In this case, it might be more profitable to make a deal with your predator and actually help his vampire in torpor to survive.
It is also not true that diablerizing your prey's vampire is always good. Of course, him losing a minion is definitely not going to be of much help, but if that vampire is important enough, you might be able to lure him into multiple rescue missions that you can then exploit.
If your prey, after losing a vampire in torpor to you, decided to just give up and sit there, probably just defend with whatever he has left, he might just become a pool wall for your grand prey, forcing you to commit a lot more resources to oust him than what you could achieve by allowing his vampire to live.
So you see, diablerizing a vampire actually is a big thing, and unless your deck is built to do exactly this, it may be a good idea to sit back and think about it before you recklessly go eat up everybody.
That is also a good reason to always include some weenies that you can easily lose to Blood Hunt with the intention of sending them over to eat torpored vampires in a frenzy. These can be used as negotiation chips as one-shot thrown away trading tokens. If somehow they don't die from Blood Hunts they usually get a grade higher if you play Master Discipline cards, and if they're lucky, get some blood too.
Remember that you can diablerize your own vampire, mostly because they are inflicting damage to you, either because they're Famed, or when Dragonbound or other similar cards are in play. In such drastic cases when you need to do that so be it - afterall, survival is most important.
(o.o)
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