Pool Management. Part 2: Indirect Blood Conversion

Part 1 of this series introduced a lot of terminology, building a foundation on which we build for the next few posts.  Hopefully, the new entries will be more digestible as a result.

INDIRECT BLOOD CONVERSION (IBC)

Introduction

Definition: Moving one or more of a minion's blood onto an uncontrolled minion.  Only blood is moved, no additional counters are created in the process.

Crypt-based Examples: Saulot, Menele, Ayo Igoli
Library-based Examples: Grooming the Protege, Bay and Howl, Social Ladder
Limitations:  Most indirect pool conversion is limited in the amount of blood moved per use.

Scaling

The limitation above clearly indicates that this mechanic is of fixed size, usually intended to accelerate or create horizontal growth (more minions).

When considered as a method to actually manage pool, IBC return is limited by the number of available transfers a player possesses. As such, one expects to yield the 2 pool allowable from the rules-dictated 4 transfers. This aligns well with the card-text size of many effects.  It is possible to increase this available withdrawal from uncontrolled minions through the use of cards like Information Highway or to completely subvert the restriction and dump all the blood into pool with Kaymakli Nightmares.

Design Considerations

There are two general philosophies for using IBC, both of which focus horizontal growth.

1.  Gradual Growth with Fully Financed Sidekicks.

I believe that the crypt-based effects were originally designed with gradual growth in mind, sometimes seeing the IBC minion as a way of completely paying for new minions.

These vampires are large, are influenced over several turns, then emptied over several more.  Slow expansion of the controlled region over turns 4-9 turns is a logical result of looking at these vampires with the intention of fully recurring their blood though IBC. Pacing that horizontal growth is independent of emptying or refilling the IBC vampire (e.g., 2 can be moved even if it eventually empties the vampire, or if you're refilling the vampire in the draining process).

2.  Immediate Growth with Partially Financed Minions

Decks can also leverage mid to large capacity minions with IBC, but this approach opts for additional speed over the safer recursion of vertical DBC (a risk described in Part 1 of this series).  Decks which rely on IBC over DBC focus on one of the following:

• committing to overwhelming their prey in the mid game, using mid capacity minions and Grooming the Protege.  This deck thrives with the additional offensive output often required to outrace their predator and/or generates pool as part of the offensive action (e.g., Kindred Spirits stealth-bleed)

• protecting their pool very effectively, mostly with mid capacity (4-8) minions partially financed with Grooming the Protege to accelerate development.  This design prioritizes additional development of the controlled region over flexibility in pool management.  The defensive expectation that hard-influence transfers could be slowed to make up the survival difference if needed, while the acceleration both counteracts swarm predation and enables opportunity-based lunges (e.g., Stickmen derivatives).  

Benefits and Drawbacks of Crypt-Based IBC

The benefits of crypt-based IBC should be clear.  Since one's 12-card crypt is far easier to manage than one's 60-90 card library, the design should consistently establish its set-up conditions.  This is a real strength of the deck - dependable and persistent (though limited) recycling of blood into a pool-surrogate (blood on uncontrolled minions).

The most apparent drawback is that the IBC minion is clearly influenced first and is a key part of the deck's function.  It therefore comes into play with a large bulls-eye clearly painted on it.

Now things is where things get a little murkier.

The perception is that minion-based IBC alone can finance a well-developed controlled region,
then turn into a perpetual pool machine. 

Here is the surprise message.  Design conflicts make decks built on that precept so slow and impotent that they are largely untenable in tournament situations.

• Star vampires (IBC minions) are typically very large - at least 9 capacity, therefore requiring 3 turns to influence.  
• At face value, there is limited incentive for influence acceleration.  After the star vampire (IBC minion) is influenced, the deck shouldn't be consistently hard-influencing at the inital rate.  
• Since most of the IBC minions move only 2 blood, the end-game benefit of using permanent influence generators (e.g., Information Highway) is lost. There isn't a 3 blood on the uncontrolled minion to pull back as pool.
• The deck then tries to catch-up with its predator and prey, while limiting additional expenditures, using its internal IBC.  
• Without additional acceleration, but still desiring speed, the additional minions in the crypt are 6 capacity or less (IBC for 2 plus 4 transfers).  This suggests the use of high-return vertical DBC cards is less appropriate (again, covered in Part 1), extending the period of vulnerability.   
• Many IBC decks use a formulaic solution: very small minions as support for the star.  In the end, that creates a play space and deck using a "small minion mentality", only without all the speed advantages derived from simply hard-influencing weenies.
• True "pool gain" (getting beyond recurring the initial pool investment) doesn't occur until about turn 9.  When you think of it that way, its pretty tough to justify deferring true pool return for this long.
• If there is any combat  in the meta-game, the star minion must be resilient enough to protect the blood that is intended for uncontrolled minions, especially since that blood will be exposed for several turns.  
• It's is unlikely that cards included for this purpose will be well-leveraged adequately by weenie "sidekick" minions, creating another situation where the deck works against itself.

The upshot - most these decks provide the illusion of creating free minions, but its nearly impossible to realize that vision with meaningful minions in a usable time frame.

Different Perspective: The Prepaid Information Highway

Perhaps the most interesting use of crypt-based IBC is to completely rethink the intent.  If IBC can become 2nd/3rd turn, prepaid Information Highwway, (not mission-critical independent pool management function), then, it creates a variant on the "Immediate Growth" model proposed above.  Such a deck would be created with the following, counter-intuitive philosophy. 

• Consider the star minion more expendable than typical IBC decks; 
• Rely (paradoxically) on vertical DBC as the primary tool for pool recursion; 
• Play mid to large capacity sidekicks to leverage DBC and the library;
• Defend pool without resorting to combat, offsetting the modest early development speed;
• Include traditional influence acceleration to complement the IBC
• Include layered blood gain for the IBC minion and use its ability for 
• mid game acceleration (turns 3-6) 
• late game supplemental pool management (non-rush predation, or any emergency)
• a dump for any excess blood that is expected to be gained across any turn.

After I made this list, I looked to see if an example existed in the TWDA.  I found the ingenious Saulot and Nergal Dating deck inspired by Marco Lindroos, designed by Isak Esbjörnsson Bjärmark and played by Erik Torstensson.  It clearly conforms to these guidelines.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Library-Based IBC

The situation here is much different. There is a single goal of library-based indirect recursion........to generate additional minions quickly.  That means one of three things will result,

• an action-to-block advantage  (likely used to bleed),
• a block-count that is comparable to both predator and preys action count (which was possible with reaction cards, even without the extra minion, begging the question of "why so fast").
• or a combination of both (he'll bleed for 3 as offense, not Freak Drive, but keep an untapped minion with superior Dominate for Deflection or superior Auspex for Telepathic Misdirection and/or blocking). 

As a predator, you have to decide if limiting growth in the uncontrolled region is critical (knocking counters off minions) or if you can simply take pool counters off the table and generate an oust.  Your own deck archetype will likely influence the decision, but it is important to remember that IBC recurs less pool than other options - so even modest bleeds will often be a better choice than a non-bleed carded action.  

Conclusion

We've now discussed how moving blood from a vampire to another in the uncontrolled region is actually a second form of pool management, both in limiting expenditures from influence and from creating a pool resource than can be slowly recurred.   We've also touched on it not being what it seems, some of the common development pitfalls of the mechanic and how to read the intentions of decks that use transient IBC to accelerate mid game growth.  

All things considered, I generally view the entire mechanism as being inferior to DBC in all but a subset of decks (speed bleed and bounce/bleed wall decks).  The early gains are tenuous and the inability to convert large blocks of blood into pool create dangerous situations that development speed might not offset.  When one is running a high-risk, high-reward deck, fully committing to it is usually the best course.  It's only in those decks that IBC shines.