This month's focus: The Contract Mechanic

While the Samedi have the Dirty Contract, it is our Assamites who are famous for being hired killers. Along with Quietus and the inability to commit diablerie, it is what distinguishes our clan from the rest.

A contract is fairly limited in scope - it allows one Assamite to enter combat with one chosen minion. One advantage the contract has over transient 'enter combat' actions like Bum's Rush or Ambush is obvious - your vampire gains an ability for the rest of the game, not just this turn. It's the same kind of advantage equipping with a Meat Clever has over using a Lucky Blow.However, I have found that using contracts might not save you very many card slots if you plan to get the most out of them. A dedicated rush deck using any other clan will likely need 10-14 rush actions, depending on library size and individual vampire's text specials. When you switch to contracts, you will probably want to use 9-12 cards.

Unlike a Haven Uncovered, a Contract does not have a burn clause. Unless it is thwarted when played, the target can only remove it by taking a Violation of Trust action. If you are EVER playing in a game and someone plays, or even discards, a Violation of Trust, please note the date and time and e-mail me with the players name and decklist @ veknpont...@yahoo.com. That I gotta see.

Aside from the permanent rush action, what does the contract mechanic do for us? Sadly, not a whole lot. While the ability to enter combat is a major advantage for a clan with excellent combat proclivities, there are currently only two cards that require a contract in order to use, discounting the aforementioned Violation of Trust.

Provision of the Silsila
Type: Action Modifier/Reaction
Requires: Assamite
This card can be played as an action modifier or a reaction card. Usable by a tapped vampire. Only usable after a combat involving this Assamite and an opposing minion with a contract naming this Assamite. Only usable if the opposing minion is not ready and this Assamite is ready. This Assamite gains enough blood from the blood bank to reach full capacity, and the contract is burned.

This is an excellent way to take advantage of the contract mechanic, if not the best reason to use it. Provision allows your assassin to fill up regardless of the amount of damage done or capacity of the opposing minion. Theoretically, an empty Ur-Shulgi could gain 11 blood for successfully inflicting 1 damage on a Courier. That's right - contracts can target any minion, even Allies. Well, except the one that can't... While the Provision provides an excellent benefit for using a contract, it also burns the contract in the process. If you didn't burn the target minion, you will need to put another contract on it if you wish to continue hunting it.

I like to compare Provisions to Taste of Vitae, which is commonly used in Potence decks to counter hitback. Since the Assamites are thin on vampires with [POT] (none) and [pot] (3+ Web of Knives Recruits), but very adept at generating aggravated damage and/or additional strikes, efficient use of Provisions can be vital to keeping your assassins ready for battle. As Provisions is a Rare card found only in Final Nights, you may have to combine it with Taste of Vitae to consistently recoup blood lost during combat. Non-Assamite players in your area may not value their Provisions all that highly, so be sure to look for any trade opportunities! Whether or not our Assamites have Potence, we can use a contract to increase our hand damage with:

The Khabar: Honor
Type: Combat
Requires: Assamite
Only usable if this Assamite has been chosen for a contract on the opposing minion.
Strike: make a hand strike at +3 damage.

This can be devastating when you catch your opponent unprepared to deal with it. It is a hand strike, and so cannot be used in conjunction with a weapon strike. That is not to say, though, that a weapon cannot be used on additional strikes, or vice versa. Should you not have three Honors in your hand, beating your opponent with a Weighted Walking Stick and using an Honor as your finishing move on additional strike two or three is perfectly acceptable. Conversely, using Honor to burn off your opponents blood and ensuring their destruction when you land a hit with Kali's Fang on your additional strike has a bit of pinnache, as well. I advise combining this strike with a Shadow Feint, to help it strike true.

Since both Provisions of the Silsila and The Khabar: Honor require a contract to use, you will need to be sure that your Assamites have plenty of contracts to fulfill if you intend to get maximum value from them.

In the good old days of Ancient Hearts, you could only play a Contract as a master card. Given that combat-heavy decks tend to run a low number of masters, and that they also tend to rely on masters to deal pool damage, heavy use of master-card Contracts is a difficult proposition at best.

Fortunately, with the release of Final Nights, you could pay a pool and take an action to enter into a Clandestine Contract, which puts a contract on a vampire of your choice AND gets your Assamite into combat with that vampire. Though the pool cost can be a bit expensive, especially for combat decks (which don't usually have much potential for pool gain), Clandestine Contract is much less likely than a master-card Contract to jam your hand during your minion phase. It has the benefit of providing two separate 'enter combat' action options when played. If you can multi-act with the Assamite who played the Clandestine Contract, you use the card's text to enter combat with the same minion again, without breaking the 'no repeat action' rule.

Most recently, Kindred Most Wanted introduced a new kind of contract:

Haqim's Law: Judgment
Type: Master
Requires: Assamite
Master: contract. Trifle.
Tap a ready Independent Assamite you control to put this card on a younger vampire. Every Independent Assamite is considered chosen for this contract. Any Independent Assamite may enter combat with this vampire as a +1 stealth (D) action.

It will only benefit Independent Assamites, so don't try to utilize it with Tegyrius, Yazid, Joe Hill, Reza Fatir, Micheal DiCarlo, or Tariq Advanced. Additionally, this is the contract that can't target Allies, as the text specifies it must be placed on a younger vampire. While it's drawbacks are significant, Judgment's Trifle status means you can still use your master phase action to do something useful, like Minion Tap the elder Assamite you just tapped, or play Tension in the Ranks or Fame to capitalize on the dizzying display of combat prowess you are about to unleash. Remember that the contract will stick, so even if you want to wait a turn so that your tapped elder can get in on the fun, you can. If you plan to use Provisions to gird your assassin in the combat, don't let any of your opponent's Independent Assamites beat you to the kill - they are all chosen in this contract, too! Judgment is an excellent contract if you are using several mid-cap Assamites or running a star assassin and weenie horde full of maneuvers and Taste of Deaths. If you have Fame on the targeted minion, you could be able to dunk and rescue it several times, doing significant Pool damage to your prey that he cannot reduce, deflect, or cast votes against. Because Judgment chooses all Independent Assamites for a contract, they can all use Provisions and/or Honors when in combat with the chosen minion. Judgment is a rare found in the Kindred Most Wanted expansion set, so it's not likely you will have an abundance of them to include in a deck. Again, sniff around in other players' collections and see if you can come up with a trade.

So how to best utilize the Contract mechanic for your Assamites?
Let's look at one way we can try to do just that:

Deck Name : Sign on the Dotted Line
Author : Tom Duncan
Description :

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 2 max: 8 average: 5.75
------------------------------------------------------------
3x Fatima al-Faqadi 8 CEL OBF QUI aus for Assamite:2
2x Parnassus 7 CEL QUI aus tha Assamite:2
2x Yusuf, Scribe of A 5 CEL aus obf qui Assamite:2
2x Parmenides 4 CEL qui Assamite:2
1x Kalinda 6 CEL OBF tha Assamite:2
1x Abd al-Rashid 5 CEL QUI obf Assamite:2
1x Kanya Akhtar 2 cel Assamite:2

Library [90 cards]
------------------------------------------------------------
Action [9]
7x Clandestine Contract
2x Web of Knives Recruit

Action Modifier/Combat [4]
4x Swallowed by the Night

Action Modifier/Reaction [4]
4x Provision of the Silsila

Combat [39]
4x Acrobatics
3x Blur
4x Thin Blood
6x Khabar: Honor, The
5x Psyche!
5x Pursuit
4x Side Strike
5x Taste of Vitae
3x Weighted Walking Stick

Equipment [6]
1x Bowl of Convergence
1x Ivory Bow
1x Kali's Fang
1x Meat Hook
1x Poker
1x Sengir Dagger

Master [15]
1x Auspex
2x Contract
1x Depravity
2x Fame
2x Haqim's Law: Judgment
1x Market Square
5x Minion Tap
1x Tension in the Ranks

Reaction [12]
6x Black Sunrise
1x Precognition
5x Quicken Sight

Retainer [1]
1x Mr. Winthrop

With this particular build, we are relying on three cards to help us achieve victory: Fame (x2) and Tension in the Ranks. Until one of these cards shows, we will want to gear up with weapons and defend our Pool the best we can, while Minion Tapping and completing contracts to use our Provisions or Taste of Vitae to recoup the blood on our vampires. This is a good time to assess our predator's strength and determine his strategy. We will probably have to pick one of his vampires to make an example of at some point - just be careful not to cripple him too badly or let your prey go unchecked for too long. Once we have a Fame or Tension in play, we can ...