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Golden Bee posted:In scenarios with bad tokens, canceling a skill test by itself, especially when you’re likely to fail, is a great use of your cards cash and horror. As Kalko points out, this is entirely dependent on how bad failing the skills test actually is. I think a big lesson new players need to learn in this game is that not every treachery card is actually bad. Combined with health and sanity being resources, it means there's plenty of tests or cards you can just ignore and take on the chin and move on. It's kind of similar to how in Netrunner the runner needed to learn to ask "what's the worst ICE the corp could actually rez on me if I facecheck it right now?" and (for new players) the conclusion from that was almost always to make more runs. The AH equivalent is that tempo is king in the vast majority of scenario's and the way to achieve tempo is by spending your resources (and indeed building your deck) towards achieving objectives and getting clues (very often the same thing) rather than defending against the encounter cards. Unless, of course, absolutely necessary to prevent defeat. I think I agree with everything you are saying Kalko. For sure WoP's value fluctuates heavily, perhaps more so than any other card (similar maybe only to Deny Existence?). I think playing it correctly is actually often very simple: don't use it for anything other than Ancient Evils or a card that could very plausibly (or even guaranteed) defeat someone right now. In scenarios absent Ancient Evils, that means it is much less likely that this "correct" opportunity actually presents itself. This means either it sits in hand doing nothing or you use it for a "lesser" case to grab some tempo. Whether that is worth it / the right choice might indeed be one of the most difficult to evaluate decisions in the game. Anyway, my point here is that given this, it might also be very difficult to evaluate if WoP should be in your deck at all, seeing as if we start using it for tempo there might be other cards better at achieving that. If, and this is key, Ancient Evils or similar effects didn't exist. Because cancelling Ancient Evils just gives you so incredibly much tempo it's a no-brainer. So what I think this lets us conclude is that the effect of Ancient Evils on the game is so large that it makes a card which otherwise might at least be a debatable include for some investigators in some campaigns an auto-include for every investigator who can take it in every campaign. Which is a really huge effect when you think of it that way. And to go a step further, I don't think having cards which are auto-includes in all situations is good for the game because it cuts down on deck and play variety. I think this is just another way in which Ancient Evils fails as a design. Although I do think being able to introduce uncertainty in turns remaining is interesting and fun. So maybe it's Ward of Protection itself which is too good? There are other encounter card cancellation cards in Seeker and Survivor for instance and they see play much less often. Though I think a big part of that is how WoP(2) can already always take care of the best targets for those alternative cards anyway.
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Dec 14, 2021 12:05
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 08:53 |
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Kalko posted:It does have some use cases I'd label as proactive, though, like mitigating the effects of an attack of opportunity or tanking an enemy for a round to gain an advantage. These are both good points. Another reason why Deny Existence is so good is the flexibility. All of the things it can do have value, though indeed some a lot more than others, but it can also just do so many things. Like WoP it's probably just too strong though, because I just don't see any reason why I wouldn't include it in an investigator which is allowed to take unlimited lvl 0 Mystic cards, and it's always a consideration for investigators that can take a limited number. I also agree that while the 5XP version is undeniably insanely strong, it is a luxury because the lvl 0 version already does the most important part of the card and 5 (more likely 10) XP is a lot, and honestly the only reason you might still end up with it is because you get a discount. The way to demonstrate that the lvl 0 version does the most important part I think is to imagine being hit with a "discard 3" effect. Lvl 5 turns that into a draw 3. Drawing 3 is great. But you will decide to play Deny Existence (5) in this situation almost never based on "do I need to draw 3 here?" and almost always based on "can I afford to discard 3" + "is there a worse thing that could happen to me for which I should save Deny Existence in hand" (aka, "am I currently at critical health and/or sanity?"). So you are effectively spending 5XP (or 3, sort of) on a bonus. A good bonus, but a bonus.
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Dec 14, 2021 15:17
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Pretty sure it’s just not a very good card for its cost. Seems like it’d be best in a skill-card based investigator if you had to play it somewhere.
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Dec 26, 2021 11:28
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Huh, the difference between 2 and 8 frost tokens in ecpected outcome is smaller than I expected and between 0 and 2 is bigger than I expected. How is the chance at succeeding with 0 frost tokens and 0 over the test lower than both 2 and 8 frost tokens though?
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Jan 1, 2022 16:15
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Kalko posted:That would be because my code is a hideous mess and I had some incorrect bag comps. I just edited the post with plots which should be accurate. I added a second Cultist token for the story choice at the start of the campaign, and I set Skull to -3 even though it's highly variable throughout the first scenario. The rest of the values are for that first scenario. Ok so I still have a question. The bag with 2 frost tokens contains two separate ways to result in autofail, whereas the bag with no frost tokens only contains 1 autofail. Given this, how can they both max out on the same success percentage?
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Jan 2, 2022 13:10
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 08:53 |
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Huh, that's certainly a smaller effect than I'd have guessed. Always good to see the actual numbers, thanks! Also means the frost tokens are certainly not to be avoided at all costs.
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Jan 2, 2022 14:46
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