Card evaluation - Power vs Consistency
For my first post I'm going to talk about evaluating cards! If you've drafted Magic: the Gathering or Hearthstone Arena, you'll understand some of these concepts.
The result is the player who stacked their hands with flashy loss cards may end up where there is 1 or 2 stragglers scattered on the board, but there is no good card to play. All the cards remaining in their hand are huge explosive options. So the Tinkerer needs to choose between having to use the default move 2 attack 2 or blow a flamethrower for a single target. Not great either way.
Fancy & Powerful
One common mistake new players make is they evaluate cards by what looks cool & powerful rather than what looks consistent and useful. Take the Tinkerer for example
The flamethrower is real fancy isn't it? A 3 target AOE (area of effect) for a potential of 9 ATK and 3 wound markers! Generates fire and 2 exp to boot! It also has a worthless bottom (mid initiative shield with no movement means you wont get the shield before enemies attack half the time).
Let's compare this to toxic bolt, a solid top, 2 ATK, 3 range, neat. It's not as fast as mana bolt, but the poison and earth magic make up for it. The bottom is an interesting loss card where you can try to execute an enemy at close range. This is a perfect example of a solid card. It has a useful reusable half (the top) where you can shoot and tack on poison. While you wait for the perfect moment to use the other situational half (the bottom), to shotgun an enemy to death.
Newer players to card games & Gloomhaven have a tendancy to overpack their hands with flashy cards like flamethrower. While flashy, powerful loss cards aren't necessarily bad, they are if your hand has too many of them. In flamethrower's case, if you don't have a target to burn, you can't really effectively use the bottom half to pass the time.
This is the same concept in most drafting card games (Hearthstone Arena / MTG etc) where you pick too many situational cards (like drafting houndmaster in Arena, then not finding any beasts, or drafting too many colors in Magic because you drafted a red, white and blue bomb card early). The ideal Gloomhaven hand is where most of the cards in your hand are useful and reusable with a few explosive situational cards for when the right moment comes.
Difficulty of use
The other cost of card selection that new players fail to consider is difficulty of use. Lets leave the Tinkerer alone and check out the Brute.
The trap new players fall to is they do is imagine the optimum situation "If the enemies all bunch up the way I want them to, it's going to be AMAZING". In reality, enemies don't always bunch the way you want them to. Sometimes they just sit there, sometimes they move faster than you expect...
In this case lets compare the tops. Sweeping blow looks awesome in theory. If you hit 3 guys at 2 attack each, that's 6 ATTACK! Reusable too! Amazing right?
Spare dagger? 3 Attack at 3 range? pfft, brute should be hitting for more than 3!
Well what you actually find after a few games is
- Enemies don't bunch the way you want to most of the time.
- You might not be able to make the move into the space to make the optimum sweeping blow attack
- You realistically end up hitting 1-2 targets with sweeping blow.
- Sometimes doorways get clogged by a cragheart or invisible scoundrel, and you can't actually make a melee attack... Wish you had your spare dagger...
Spare dagger (top) is far easier to utilize. Yes the maximum theoretical damage is lower, but you actually end up getting more out of the spare dagger than the sweeping blow. Even if an enemy is in melee range, you can either use the bottom or throw the dagger at another target. The enemies don't need to be in a specific pattern and it's ranged so you can avoid that pesky retaliate damage.
This is the reason why Leaping Cleave is usually better than Sweeping Blow. Leaping Cleave is far easier to utilize despite them both having the same theoretical damage output.
Peace out,
May the berries you come across on the road event be tasty and not poisonous.
Bear in mind that starting out, Tinkerer does not have a ton of choices since you have to make a hand of 12 cards out of 14 choices. That means all the level 1 cards plus one of the Xs. I agree with about Flamethrower, though. I carry it but have used the top half only once in four plays. It usually ends up as a discard for a rest. I think Reviving Shock is one of Tinkerer’s best cards. Thanks for the post.
ReplyDeleteVery useful guide. Do you plan on doing it for specific characters?
ReplyDeleteGood analysis. As I was reading your thoughts on sweeping blow I said, "leaping cleave is much better IMO." Then you confirmed as well. I played the Brute to lvl. 4. Spare dagger is a solid card, bottom attacks are always useful.
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