Card Analysis: Grooming the Protege

Master. Move up to 3 blood from a ready vampire you control to a younger vampire of the same clan in your uncontrolled region.

An excellent card that I've observed speeding up my gameplay and providing options even mid/late game. Primarily thought of as a Master card accelerator similar to Zillah's Valley, Information Highway, Eternals of Sirius, Tend the Flock; the fact that it moves blood from a ready minion to an uncontrolled minion allows it to mimic the ability of Minion Tap.

First up, Grooming's advantages are that it a) effectively reduces the cost of the 2nd minion by up to 3, making your spent pool go a longer way. This also allows cap 7 and lower minions to be influenced in 1 turn. For decks that do not or cannot use Governing the Unaligned/Enchant Kindred this can be a godsend against a weenie or bleed deck. b) by moving blood from a ready minion to your uncontrolled region, this makes Grooming a Minion Tap-lite for 2+1 (bring 2 with 4 transfers, then 1). Sure this takes up transfers, but transfers matter most in the early game, and at that point you'd want to influence out vampires instead. Rarely do I find myself Minion Tapping for more than 4 anyways so 3 is plenty in many cases; plus it is not affected by Villein (which everyone packs due to HttB starters).

Its limitations are 1) older vampire -> younger vampire, and 2) they must be of the same clan. These limitations aren't really that limiting, as often decks themed around specific overall purposes often share a similar disc. spread, and clan-similar vampires usually share that. Mind you, that's alot of qualifications there, so Grooming is not for every deck. Also, you must first have a minion out, and so it speeds up only the 2nd minion onwards.

Tactically you also must decide if losing 3 blood from your (likely to be first) minion poses a hazard, or at least ensure that the 2nd minion influenced out will block any rushers. And obviously it can't be used if there's no uncontrolled minion.

Zillah's Valley and Information Highway suffers from the fact that they do not have the blood/pool management like Grooming. They are, to all intents and purposes, allow you to spend your pool at a near 1:1 ratio (Zillah's Valley has an additional cost of 1 pool). Eternals of Sirius is Followers of Set-specific. And other than Eternals being a decent Ascendance (needing at least 4pool to buy in), they are nigh on useless mid/late game. Benefits wise Eternals is for one turn 9caps, Zillah's Valley is for 8caps while Info Highway allows first turn 6caps or 2nd turn 9-11caps. Importantly, they can help influence the 1st minion.

Tend The Flock is clearly a superior version of Grooming, but has a limitation of only infernals. Infernals have their own pool management problems to address, thus the power boost.

All in all, Grooming the Protege is a versatile card that I find is a welcome draw whether early or late game. I'm willing to sacrifice some advantages of other accelerators and Minion Tap if I can get 90% of either on a single card.