Slave Rule/Hidden Lurker

Slave can not take actions or block. Could I use Hidden Lurker on a slave after a combat is over to make that slave enter combat with the blocking minion?

Yes you can. Entering combat via Hidden Lurker is not an action. In fact even a pentexed minion can play Hidden Lurker to pick a fight Imagination is our only weapon in the war against reality -Jules de Gaultier

Quick follow up, if a slave cannot take actions, what happens when they fall to 0 blood and would be forced to hunt?

Slaves can take actions and they can block. They cannot take undirected actions without their 'master' clan ready, though. If you mean when a gargoyle is pentex'ed and has no blood; they simply stay untapped with no blood. Slave: Some minions are identified as slaves to a specified clan. A slave cannot take a directed action if his controller doesn't control a ready member of the specified clan. Also, if a member of the specified clan controlled by the same Methuselah is blocked, the controller can tap the slave to cancel the combat and to untap the acting vampire and have the slave enter combat with the blocking minion instead. Adam Esbjörnsson, Prince of Örebro

> Xaddam wrote: > Slaves can take actions and they can block. They cannot take undirected actions without their 'master' clan ready, though. > Xaddam, I think this is a typo. Slaves can take undirected actions, they can't take directed actions without their master clan out.

> Almightyray wrote: > Quick follow up, if a slave cannot take actions, what happens when they fall to 0 blood and would be forced to hunt? > the slave would have to hunt since it is an undirested action.

I think he is referring to Toy in specific and not slaves in general judging from his questions. His special text not allowing him to act or block is not in anyway related to the slave rule.

Yes. I happened to get Toy in a lot and he is the only slave I own. He seems oddly great yet useless, and I am trying to come up with a use for him, thus hidden lurker. It's just when I bust him out soon I want to have my bases covered. So can Toy hunt if he has 0 blood?

No, Toy can't act due to his card text. Not even to hunt. Jussi Hattara Webmaster Extraordinaire Finnish Politics!

Dang, ok then, Blood Doll it is!

Some uses I have figured for Toy include. -Have him play veil the legions or babble to benefit your other minions. -Hidden Lurker as mentioned above. -Play him with !malkavians (especially the ones with potence), and when one of your guys gets blocked, use the slave rule to untap the acting minion and have Toy enter combat with the blocker instead and beat stuff with all of those combat discplines he has.

Toy can play Hidden Lurker + Trap + Withering, hands, hands, Disguised Weapon an Improvised Flamethrower to reset the trap, hands, hands, hands, 2 agg. Crazy combo, but burns anyone with 6 or less blood, more if you have a WWS or Signpost handy, and it gets past both prevention and S:CE. And then nobody will ever block you again, and your hand will fill with combat cards and Hidden Lurkers you cannot play and you will die. I didn't say it was a GOOD thing to do... it's just a thing. It's also worth considering that there are silly numbers of G4/5 !Malks with potence or fortitde; I guess he wouldn't be bad to slip into a deck with them. Take a look: Fabrizia Contreraz 4 dem pot G4 Apache Jones 5 DEM for obf G4 Marge Khan 7 DEM for OBF POT G5 White Lily 8 DEM for OBF, built in Disguised Weapon G4 Alicia Barrows 9 DEM OBF POT G4 Harold Zettler 9 DEM OBF POT G4 You could run Toy with the fort folks and play fortitude prevent with a scattering of Hidden Lurkers, Disarms, and Pulled Fangs; prevent + disarm works for Marge too, and anyone can prevent and pull fangs. Swallowed By The Night is a good/versatile way to get maneuvers. Or you could focus on the folks with POT and play some Torn Signposts with your Disarms. !Malks aren't bad bruise bleeders in general, because Kindred Spirits benefits the malk player even if doesn't connect correctly. So the POT !Malk thing isn't terrible, and he's good support for it. Plus you can use The Call to get Toy for free (or at a 1 pool profit if you transfer back)

Answers given here are correct (once Xaddam fixed his "undirected" typo). Other use of Toy: Houngan + 2x Vessel.

even better is taste of vitae

for 2 blood ? :/ The best use i can see is hidden lurker/disarm/decapitate then ritual of bitter rose so all you malkymalk are full of blood again Imagination is our only weapon in the war against reality -Jules de Gaultier

> Pascal wrote: > Other use of Toy: Houngan + 2x Vessel. > This is truly horrible. Leave these three cards out of your deck, and the deck becomes 100% better. Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas "Know your enemy and know yourself; in one-thousand battles you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War* "Contentment...Complacency...Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier Please visit VTESville daily! vtesville.myminicity.com/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/129744447064017

No-one seems to have name-checked Yawp Court, which is a semi-reasonable possibility.

first play cadet on Toy and influence him out. Toy is now a cheap black hand vampire that can you can use with Census Taker, Follow the Blood and Truth in Ink.

> Chaitan wrote: > first play cadet on Toy > No hard feelings, but i stopped reading after these words

> Pendargon wrote: > > > Chaitan wrote: > > first play cadet on Toy > > > No hard feelings, but i stopped reading after these words > None taken. Toy doesn't need a tournament winning combo. Toy is cool enough anyway.

> Pendargon wrote: > No hard feelings, but i stopped reading after these words > You think Cadet is that bad ?

The most effective use of Toy I've seen involved Houngan/Blood dolls/other ways to keep his blood up. He was made anarch, and played Piper to bring out Reanimated corpses unblockably with 4 counters. John Whelan did this.

> Malcolm wrote: > The most effective use of Toy I've seen involved Houngan/Blood dolls/other ways to keep his blood up. He was made anarch, and played Piper to bring out Reanimated corpses unblockably with 4 counters. > > John Whelan did this. > This could be done with any Samedi if I am not mistaken ? Toy only having the advantage of being cap 2 / gr 5 (the second smallest samedi with superior thanatosis being cap 3 / gr 6, and gr6 can be pretty crippling, yes), with a pretty problematic set of disavantadge (like being to recruit without piper in a pinch)

I just want to thank y'all; I brought out Toy with Coroner's Contact and Igo on turn 1. On turn 2; Igo went to bleed, it was blocked by a 3. Toy 'Mask of 1000 Faces' into combat instead, Olid Loa, Behind You, Disguised Weapon, Ivory Bow. Igo went in right away for the diablerie. The looks were priceless. Deck went on to fail from that point forward, but whatever, that moment was AWESOME!!! -Ray

Toy cannot Mask into an action, because he can not act. Hidden Lurker is ok though. Jussi Hattara Webmaster Extraordinaire Finnish Politics!

'Can not act' effects Actions Modifiers as well? Oi I have alot to learn!

> Mask of a Thousand Faces > Only usable by a ready, untapped vampire other than the acting minion who is capable of performing the action. Not usable if any action modifiers or other effects have been used that could not have been used if this vampire were the acting vampire. Untap the acting minion and tap this vampire instead. The action continues with this vampire as the acting minion. > As above, with +1 stealth. > It is limited by Mask's own card text. Mask can not be played by a vampire who could not take the action in the first place. Jussi Hattara Webmaster Extraordinaire Finnish Politics!

That must be fancy new text, different than the text I know and love!

> Almightyray wrote: > That must be fancy new text, different than the text I know and love! > That is the official card text of the Mask. I have no recollection of older texts. Jussi Hattara Webmaster Extraordinaire Finnish Politics!

> It's also worth considering that there are silly numbers of G4/5 !Malks with potence or fortitde; I guess he wouldn't be bad to slip into a deck with them. Take a look: > > Fabrizia Contreraz 4 dem pot G4 > Apache Jones 5 DEM for obf G4 > Marge Khan 7 DEM for OBF POT G5 > White Lily 8 DEM for OBF, built in Disguised Weapon G4 > Alicia Barrows 9 DEM OBF POT G4 > Harold Zettler 9 DEM OBF POT G4 > > You could run Toy with the fort folks and play fortitude prevent with a scattering of Hidden Lurkers, Disarms, and Pulled Fangs; prevent + disarm works for Marge too, and anyone can prevent and pull fangs. Swallowed By The Night is a good/versatile way to get maneuvers. Or you could focus on the folks with POT and play some Torn Signposts with your Disarms. > > !Malks aren't bad bruise bleeders in general, because Kindred Spirits benefits the malk player even if doesn't connect correctly. So the POT !Malk thing isn't terrible, and he's good support for it. Plus you can use The Call to get Toy for free (or at a 1 pool profit if you transfer back) > I need to try this Marge Khan is reasonably priced for the job and she comes with POT DEM OBF. My guess would be that just !Malk pot/dem bruise bleed would be more effective but it'd certainly be fun to see the look on people's faces when you enact the slave rule with Toy when they expect you to play Lost in Crowds. Too bad Compress costs 2 blood.

Why do you need compress when you can just prevent + disarm?

Inferior Fortitude disagrees with failsafe prevent/disarm. Plus you can only Disarm people once. Also, ideally you want to play without any significant amount of fortitude so that you actually get to play your cards instead of clogging on all sorts of fortitude you can only use with Toy after people stop blocking you. Not that it would be a good deck or anything, but I should at least try to be somewhat competitive.

Marge has fortitude also. And that same thing about cards clogging your hand can be said about Compress also.

Your other guys do get to block. And thus can get rid of compress at outferior if you really want to. Plus, it seems pointless to craft in Toy if you can just do the same thing without slave rules and spending 2 extra pool.

"That is the official card text of the Mask. I have no recollection of older texts. " The original Jyhad version of the card (The only ones I have) say something a little different, but you are correct the guy does carry on with the action, so I could try and finagle it, but out of respect I will bow down and not do that with Toy.

I have a question to throw into this topic: Can you use both the Slave mechanic AND hidden lurker on the same action? i.e. a malk anti you control is blocked, so you tap Toy for the slave mechanic. After combat is over, you hidden lurker with another minion (possibly even that same malk anti!) Does this work?

> Malcolm wrote: > I have a question to throw into this topic: Can you use both the Slave mechanic AND hidden lurker on the same action? i.e. a malk anti you control is blocked, so you tap Toy for the slave mechanic. After combat is over, you hidden lurker with another minion (possibly even that same malk anti!) > > Does this work? > IIRC, that doesn't work, for two reason :because the action is resolved before the combat, and because Toy never became the active minion. Don't quote me on that, thought. Edit : if it were working, it would mean that a gargoyle that just use the slave mechanism could play Flow with the mountain to continue the action of the tremere. And it would lead to endless rules clarifications.

you can't queue up a combat if there's already one pending, so you can't play hidden lurker after engaging the slave rule but before the slave combat. and as for after, you can't play it then because it requires, as ohlmann said above, a combat between the acting minion and someone to be finishing, and the slave is not acting. -- salem

Not premium combat, granted, but pretty short chain combat so as to work with !Malk with potence: Mighty Grapple (+ Disguised Weapon) + Meat Hook. Throw in Hidden Lurkers for flavor and to trigger the occasional Withering. Use slave rule as a backup so as to dump excess Hidden Lurkers that are hand anchoring. Sprinkle in Shoulder Drop if you really, really, care.