At Your Disposal : Antediluvian Awakening

Let's be nostalgic and talk about a very old card indeed - the Antediluvian Awakening.

At first glance this seems to be a pointless card - since it damages everybody at a slow pace without giving the user any special treatment - all take 1 pool damage at untap phase (or burn a vampire of at least 4 cap to burn the card) - no questions asked. What's the point? I have yet to see a prey killed by Antediluvian because he is down to 1 pool and has no vampires to burn, but I have seen lots of times that an Awakening with longevity caused a hell lot of damage to everybody and ended up forcing one of the players to finally lose a vampire or die - this may not always be under the control of the original user of the Antediluvian Awakening, and more often than not, some random ally suffers the damage instead of the prey - really quite difficult to control.

Gone are the days before the appearance of Vessel, the Awakening is even more fearsome than, and can perhaps be used as a last minute killer, but now, most of the time you'll see the opponent losing 1 pool that is taken from somewhere.

But first thing first, this card does treat the user kindly. 

The prey will be the first to suffer from this card - 1 pool or 1 vampire. Sometimes this can be rather troublesome for the prey, and if timed well and with good judgement (or lucky), this card can cause incredible damage to the prey that he/she might not recover fast enough to survive the next round. 

Next, the appearance of the card is strictly at the choice of the user, nobody is forcing you to go wake the fella if you are the one with the lowest pool. Therefore in decks that does have the ability to survive the Antediluvian, this is a hell of a damage card that will hit the whole table.

Last, but not least, this card is used by many themed decks to burn his own vampires - usually as a trigger for some funky effects, such as the Soul Gem. When one needs to get rid of your own vampire in a hurry, this card is probably one of the very few that can help you do it without physically asking another of your minion to go diablerize the vampire in question (and will require that vampire to be in torpor first)

Meanwhile, with decks that are focused on quickly killing everyone, Antediluvian is a great way of reducing overall pool / minion counts on the table, regardless of who owns them. For fast bleed decks, some of them actually don't care who dies first, as long as somebody dies - and since the highest damage output is usually delivered by the bleeder, the prey is usually the one who cannot play the endurance game and has to let go of a vampire, opening himself up for more bleeding pain.

Combat decks can consider that too - since the damage will come from pool or blood, the combat deck will usually see an easier time against the prey - plus, combat decks really shines when there are less players on the table (less minions help too, which is the essence of combat decks anyway). Not to mention combat decks that actually do burn/diablerize vampires - that could even make sure that the prey doesn't have vampires to burn for Antediluvian.

Using Antediluvian Awakening will require the user to have some form of pool recovery that should be superior to all others - it can be as simple as "I kill first, always", or "Too many Vessels for you to count", or as complex as all those Golconda plus Villein combos. Regardless, if you're the one with the highest pool gain tech and everybody else is slipping, just watch the jaws of your prey drops when you From a Sinking Ship his last vampire when he's down to 1 pool. See how he die to the Antediluvian Awakening on the ship- darn funny.

(o.o)