At Your Disposal : Marijava Thuggee

One of the best allies available in the game, and probably the best that is exclusive to the Black Hands (not that they have anything else to compete against). But even within the large number of selection of available allies in Vtes, these Thuggees remain one of the most effective and efficient allies that you'd want to consider using.

One of the most important advantage of the Thuggees is that they are not unique, and therefore you can have several copies of them working for you at the same time. Granted, they're limited by the number of Black Hand vampires you have, and you cannot have more Thuggees than you have Black Hand vampires. But in most cases, minus the most dedicated Black Hand Superstar deck, you should have 2, or hopefully 3 Black Hand vampires on the table - note that your Black Hand vampires do not need to be ready, just need to be around and they'll count towards the cap for the total number of Thuggees you have.

Even so, there are very few 2-pool cost or less allies that can challenge the efficiency of a Thuggee - the Nephandus definitely, and that is that, no other non-unique allies of similar cost can fight, bleed and do special thing and still run around with 3 life. The Thuggees have all that, PLUS the ability to use OBF cards. This make the Thuggees rather flexible in a game, and is interesting to ponder over the options you have with them.

Despite the limited number of Thuggees you can have on the table, 2 or 3 of them can give a big headache to the enemy, especially if you treat them like semi-disposable thugs like they are. You can use them to bleed, and since OBF is within your consideration you can probably Cloak them or use their own OBF to play some stealth to get the bleed through. These bleeds can be enhanced with equipment or Computer Hacking. (it is usually still alright to equip the Thuggees with Camera Phone, since with 3 life they tend to hang around long enough to make use of it) When the opponent shows off a minion or 2 that is within strike range, your 1 point damage from the Thuggess (be it in combat or with his special ability) can suddenly come into play and perhaps eliminate or delay his plans.

The Thuggees' special ability is a great deterrent that you can use to frighten or negotiate for certain terms when your opponent is vulnerable to it. But that is not all. Remember that the Thuggees can play OBF cards, opening up the way to exploit their extra actions. For example, Conceal will burn an equipment, Blackmail will tap a vampire, and Psychic Veil will help your vampires to gain stealth. These are all extra actions that most allies do not have the option to do, and since the Thuggees have 3 life, they're able to power up many of them with their life, saving the vampires' blood for better use. Not to forget, the Thuggees are excellent candidate for Night Moves. (especially if you need the edge, say, for Enticement (Ezekiel will love that, ya?)) And if you're evil enough you can heal the Thuggees by getting them to play Vulture's Buffet on their fallen comrades at outferior...

And the Thuggees, even without any equipment, can use OBF to protect themselves in a combat. There are now enough maneuver cards for OBF to allow the Thuggees to go where he wants to, even at inferior OBF - for example, the traditional Behind You!, Leapfrog to go the long, Fear of the Void Below and so on, and all these are useable to the Thuggees because they have the blood to pay for it, and then they have 1 strength too, so they can either hit back, or Dodge with many OBF cards' ability. Very handy for an ally.

There are other OBF goodies that you can explore, but the key thing about them is that you must have enough vampires to get the Thuggees working for you, all they'll all be tapped. That seldom happens actually, the Thuggees normally don't survive that long if you're losing vampires left and right - just make sure you're not stupid enough to recruit more Thuggees than you have Black Hands yourself.

(o.o)