Review republished from the Malkavian Antitribu Newsletter, Feb 2006.
Babalawo is a Laibon Harbinger, so he enables all the key cards -
Slaughterhouses, Powerbase:Tshwane and Maabara. His disciplines aren't
too fascinating - it's really hard to make a combat deck, or a voting
deck, or any other powerful deck with Harbingers' clan disciplines and
inferior Animalism. !Malkavians share only Auspex with Babalawo, so
he's just going to stay untapped and deflect bleeds. But this really
doesn't matter - the primary reason of using Babalawo is his wonderful
ability.
The ability may seem not really outstanding, but in the
Slaughterhouse/Brinksmanship combo deck it's really fantastic. You need
to cycle your hand until you find at least one Sibyl's Tongue. Then you
play the Tongue for Maabara, play Maabara and return the Tongue from
your ash heap or cycle for another one. You can get all the cards you
need in this manner, and play them several times. Babalawo's ability
speeds up your plans and provides the possibility to mill your prey's
library before he succeeds to oust your grandprey. It's really crucial
for the deck.
What about the second part of the ability? It may seem unimportant from
the first sight, but it's also very good in a Brinksmanship deck.
Suppose you've succeeded in milling your prey's library and played
Brinsmanship. But how are you going to force your prey to lose a card
from his hand? He may just sit with a full hand of cards and bleed his
prey or hunt. But if you have Babalawo Alafin, you may just discard two
copies of any card (Maabara can get a second copy from your ash heap),
and your prey WILL lose a card and will be forced to withdraw at his
untap phase.
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