Now that the Battlelines Storyline is legal for normal play, one of it's most influential card will probably see emergence in many decks. Lilith's Blessing is probably one of the most effective and powerful cards that will impact the environment in the post HttB scene.
Of course, we still have very little use for the Bahari status. At this point, its only purpose is to prevent a vampire from benefiting from Lilith's Blessing more than once in a game - a very good indication of how powerful this card is.
In the Battlelines Storyline, Lilith's Blessing is one of the 2 cards that will begin in play, depending on which faction you choose to support. Compared to Guide and Mentor, Lilith's Blessing is a lot more efficient, as well as effective, even in common deck types.
Let's see how else you can get the benefit that this Master card provides.
Normally, in order for a vampire (let's just ignore the no blood part at his point), to gain a Master discipline card directly from the library and to gain 3 blood, he has to diablerize an older vampire with at least 3 blood on it. Now how often this happen without the vampire burning from the blood hunt? Well, I think that puts the power of Lilith's Blessing in perspective.
Lilith's Blessing provides several advantage once it is in play.
First, for any vampire with no blood, a single master phase action will let it gain 3 blood and let it continue to function with no need to hunt. Although every vampire can only benefit from this card once a game, and assuming that you only get to do it once in the whole game, it is 3 blood for 1 pool - not too bad, especially if you needed that vampire to be functioning at a crucial point of the game where Lilith's Blessing is in play. And if you have a deck that is prepared to capitalize from this card, and has packed your deck with trifle pool recovery cards from the vampire - such as Vessel, and especially Villein, Lilith's Blessing becomes a very effective support for retrieving blood but yet replenishing it in the same turn.
Secondly, the same master phase action allows the vampire to immediately gain a Master discipline card on the same vampire - this could range from crucial to helpful, depending on your deck strategy and the vampire in question.
Just how effective this would be can be illustrated from a weenie Animalism deck. As we all know, Animalism is a discipline that is best used with superior quality, and does suffers a little when the vampire isn't able to use the superior version of the discipline. Therefore Animalism weenie decks do need a very quick way to make all its vampires learn superior Animalism as soon as possible. Lilith's Blessing is a answer to Animalism's prayers. With Lilith's Blessing in play, and enough Villeins, the Animalism weenie deck can retrieve all the blood from a newly influenced vampire, and immediately searched for a Animalism master discipline card and top it up with 3 extra blood, often to its full or near full capacity, which will make it effective.
Put this card in some other more specialized deck, such as a Blood Sister POT deck, or a Gargoyle Hatchlings deck, Lilith's Blessing is practically essential, or at least extremely beneficial to have.
Now, there are issues with using this card too. You must first get the card to be on the table, and like all master cards, it can be Washed, or Sudden Reversed (or Rewind Timed, for that matter). Secondly, the number of Lilith's Blessing to include in a deck is also an issue - too many will clot up the deck, too few and you can't get it into play in time. Lastly, it still takes a Master phase action to activate Lilith's Blessing, limiting it's speed. And there is also the issue of it only useable on a vampire with no blood.
The first 2 issues are issues facing pretty much the majority of "only-need-one" master cards in every deck, and could be circumvented with good planning and deck building. Also, Lilith's Blessing, in most cases, shouldn't be essential to the point of endangering the deck's function without it on the table - it does not have the kind of impact of, say, Path of Typhon in a Typhonic Beast deck. Therefore, it is still not that much of an issue.
But in order to use Lilith's Blessing effectively, the deck must have means of reducing the Vampire's blood to zero during the master phase. Now, Villein is the natural answer to this, and it is a trifle, and it can be the immediate and common partner to Lilith's Blessing. But even Blood Dolls and Vessels can slowly prepare the vampire for the Blessing. There are some specific vampires or cards that can make use of the Blessing efficiently - the Hermana Menor, for example, or the Hatchlings, are all excellent cards to make use of the blessing quickly.
The ability to quickly replenish 3 blood on a vampire with no blood as a master phase action can also be very useful for some traditional decks. For example, a Gangrel wall who uses Homunculus to untap can quickly deplete it's blood, and very often will have the option to use the Blessing, the same goes to Eternal Vigilance or other cards which requires blood to react to enemy's actions, and prepare the vampire to have zero blood during the master phase.
Even without extensive support, even a one in a deck Lilith's Blessing can help at times. We all know that vampires will run out of blood at one point or another, therefore the chance of using a Lilith's Blessing in a course of a game is pretty high. So if the deck intend to use multiple vampires, this card will definitely come in handy.
The thinning of the deck by calling out the Master discipline is also a good extra boon, and it can be extremely useful to certain decks. Packing such powers into a single card that can is re-useable and have very little weakness to exploit, no wonder the Bahari is getting so much advantage when compared to the loyalist.
(o.o)
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