47 replies to this topic

[dboeren]

I'll start off my response to this with a caveat; the skill assets "might" be okay for solo play.

 

In multiplayer, they are trash. 3-4 players, the 2nd and 3rd scenarios especially there is simply no time for frivolous use of resources that might "eventually" be efficient or pay itself off. Enemies and treacheries are humming out of the encounter deck, the doom clock is ticking and every action an investigator takes has to have an impact.

 

So what you're actually claiming is that they aren't good cards with 3-4 players in these two specific scenarios.  That may be true.  But, that still leaves plenty of room for usefulness.  Future scenarios may have a slower pace.  Not all games are 3-4p.  So now what we have is a card that is useful in some situations and less useful in others.  It also has a secondary use as a skill booster if you're in a situation where it's not desirable to play it as an Asset.  I have no problem with that.

[ShadowcatX2000]

I'll start off my response to this with a caveat; the skill assets "might" be okay for solo play.

 

In multiplayer, they are trash. 3-4 players, the 2nd and 3rd scenarios especially there is simply no time for frivolous use of resources that might "eventually" be efficient or pay itself off. Enemies and treacheries are humming out of the encounter deck, the doom clock is ticking and every action an investigator takes has to have an impact. Someone up above said "the 10th time you use it it won't feel inefficient" or something to that effect; this will literally never happen, ever.

 

For this reason the cantrip skill cards are absolutely some of the best things you can include in your deck, especially if you aren't taking the LOTR approach that has become common and tailoring your deck to a scenario. You may not want to fight, but even daisy can use an overpower to take out a rat or a cultist that is bothering her and draw a card to boot. You may have no Will checks in deck but being able to buff yourself or an investigator next to you during a bad treachery and draw a card for zero actions/resources is amazing. The list goes on but you get the point; in a multiplayer campaign, every skill cantrip is valuable because every investigator has a primary function, and you will want to group up for the hard parts.

 

At this point I will give an obligatory "Skids with Hot Streak can do whatever he wants" and asset skills might be good for him. Even then, you are blind spending resources that might just get blown out with the auto fail token, so enjoy that gamble.

 

TLDR - Cantrip skills are some of the best cards in the game. Include as many as you can shove in your deck while keeping the ability to handle enemies, clues and whatever your primary function is. Don't waste time on skill assets.

 

My comment about "be glad you have it on the 10th skill check" was hyperbole. I don't personally think the cards are very good, but I do think they have a place in some decks. 

 

Also, I love how your argument for your cards involve winning every skill check so you get the card draw, but the argument against the cards you dislike is the autofail token. You also conveniently fail to mention that cantriping cards draw you into your weaknesses more frequently. 

[ultimate26]

Thank you TripleARay, your experiences confirm my theories, in every LCG game ive played so far there are filler noob trap cards that seem good(not to me) but arent, but i would love to be pleasantly surprised that there will be some kind of efficient use for them in the future. 

[phillosmaster]

The Cantrip Skill cards are definitely more valuable in higher player count games because there are more opportunities to use them on each other to cover holes in each investigator's skill totals.  I do think you need to take into account player count when evaluating the value of these cards. The skill pumpers I think are more concerned with your deck's composition though.  It has a lot to do with how you cost curve works in the deck.  In any deck that is going to juggle lots of assets like Roland for example it's always going to be difficult to play.  For someone like Wendy who has access to Rogue cards and can get by with very few assets or only cheap assets on the board it seems more useful.  That said I feel both Roland and Wendy can be built even in the core such that the opposite can be true.  Concentrate on melee weapons for Roland for example and ignore his expensive allies and all of a sudden you might see resources piling up in your play area.

[TripleARay]

dboeron - right, but this also applies to 2 player games as well. I still believe that skill cantrips are better if there is even one other player in the game, and I would like to think this game was primarily designed for multiple investigators. As I said, in solo play they are probably more valuable as you have more need for them (no help from friends) and more time potentially to get them set up.

 

Shadowcat - you can choose to nitpick my choice of words all you want, but the truth is even if you don't get the auto-fail, you cannot reliably pay the 3-4 resources to get you above the potential -4 or -5 modifiers on all your skill checks. Paying that many resources for a skill check is not sustainable and not smart usage of resources. Meanwhile, I have spent a card for free from my hand, which is essentially 1/3 of the action loss that your (let's assume) 3 resources spent. This obviously moves more into deck building philosophy than anything else. As I stated, in solo play their utility has a much higher likelihood of coming into play.

 

As for your argument that "drawing more cards brings you to your weakness faster", what a fallacy. Your weaknesses on turn 1 are 2 out of 28 cards in your deck; I think I'll take the chance that I draw one of the 26 other useful cards in my deck rather than be afraid and make bad decisions out of the fear I might draw a bad card. Additionally, your random weakness is frequently exploitable or at least something you can prepare for, and should always be taken into mind while making decisions during a scenario.

 

Obviously this is all my opinion, but I would rather focus my deckbuilding down to the cards I need and the ability to get to those cards; in the core set that makes skill cantrips the most efficient way to do so.

[Gaffa]

I'll start off my response to this with a caveat; the skill assets "might" be okay for solo play.

 

In multiplayer, they are trash. 3-4 players, the 2nd and 3rd scenarios especially there is simply no time for frivolous use of resources that might "eventually" be efficient or pay itself off. Enemies and treacheries are humming out of the encounter deck, the doom clock is ticking and every action an investigator takes has to have an impact. Someone up above said "the 10th time you use it it won't feel inefficient" or something to that effect; this will literally never happen, ever.

 

It's happened the last 4 of 4 multiplayer games I've played, so I'd say your hyperbole is not helping your argumentation much (which wasn't much to start with, but whatever).

 

The Neutral Skills are not "absolutely some of the best things you can include in your deck". They are useful for their role, but you need to know if that's a role you need. They remain highly situational cards that clog up your hand if you can't get a pull on the skill they help you on, and they don't help develop a board presence for handling things that don't require +2 to a Skill to handle to the best efficiency of the Chaos Bag.

 

That you airily dismiss the Cthulhu token when talking about other strategies, but don't analyze what it does to your own Skill-heavy build, is another poor sign. A Skill-heavy deck is just as susceptible to the Red Tentacles of Love as any other deck design (Chaos Bag manipulation by Survivors and high-level Rogues and Adepts aside). If we have to "enjoy that gamble" on a Skids Hot Streak build, then you have to "enjoy that gamble" on your Skill-heavy build. If you're tossing Skills at every problem, you're not improving your board for when the Bag turns angry, which it will. That doesn't mean it's the wrong strategy, but it does mean *it's a strategy*, and just dismissing the Skill Talents as unplayable because they don't fit your style of play without actually seeing the costs of what you're asking your deck to do isn't helpful. You can totally throw all your sweet +2 Skill cards into a test, and still draw the Big Tentacle. Net result, you're down a lot of cards, have probably drawn into your weaknesses faster, and you've still lost, so you're that much closer to recycling your deck and taking more Sanity damage. Meanwhile, someone using Skill Talents is just down 1 or 2 resources, because it's usually just not cost effective to boost a Skill +2 or so above the target number on Standard difficulty.

 

You seem to be happy jamming your deck full of situational cards that might be dead draws if the encounter deck doesn't ask you for a Willpower test for five or six turns, or whatever. That's fine, but that's not an innately superior strategy to wanting a deck mainly full of non-situational cards that are useful in more circumstances and that also doesn't increase the risk of further Sanity damage to yourself through deck reshuffles.

 

TLDR - If you want to convince people you have a workable strategy or insight into the game's mechanics, not indulging in hyperbole, thinking through and discussing the faults in your own strategy, and looking at the benefits vs. losses of using other strategies is a lot more useful for discussion, community mechanics growth, and enjoying the game than just parading a particularly silly argument as if you're convincing anyone.

[Gaffa]

Shadowcat - you can choose to nitpick my choice of words all you want, but the truth is even if you don't get the auto-fail, you cannot reliably pay the 3-4 resources to get you above the potential -4 or -5 modifiers on all your skill checks.

 

You don't need to negate the -4 to get maximum value from the investment in mitigating the Chaos Bag. Dear lord, don't try the tables in Vegas if you can't handle odds reading vs. resource investment.

[ShadowcatX2000]

Shadowcat - you can choose to nitpick my choice of words all you want, but the truth is even if you don't get the auto-fail, you cannot reliably pay the 3-4 resources to get you above the potential -4 or -5 modifiers on all your skill checks. Paying that many resources for a skill check is not sustainable and not smart usage of resources. Meanwhile, I have spent a card for free from my hand, which is essentially 1/3 of the action loss that your (let's assume) 3 resources spent. This obviously moves more into deck building philosophy than anything else. As I stated, in solo play their utility has a much higher likelihood of coming into play.

 

As for your argument that "drawing more cards brings you to your weakness faster", what a fallacy. Your weaknesses on turn 1 are 2 out of 28 cards in your deck; I think I'll take the chance that I draw one of the 26 other useful cards in my deck rather than be afraid and make bad decisions out of the fear I might draw a bad card. Additionally, your random weakness is frequently exploitable or at least something you can prepare for, and should always be taken into mind while making decisions during a scenario.

 

Obviously this is all my opinion, but I would rather focus my deckbuilding down to the cards I need and the ability to get to those cards; in the core set that makes skill cantrips the most efficient way to do so.

 

Not nitpicking, simply pointing out that you ignore all the downsides of your own argument and all the advantages of the opponent's argument. Which you continue to do. Sticking your fingers in your ears and refusing to see opposing points of view doesn't do you any credit. 

 

Furthermore, don't criticize me for pointing out, a 1:14 chance when you explicitly point out a 1:16 chance. Remove the plank from thine own eye, and all that. 

[TripleARay]

Gaffa

 

Thank you for providing us with an example of hyperbole, which is exactly what your statement of "it happened in the last 4 of 4 multiplayer games blah blah..." is.

 

If you spent 40 resources on skill checks during your last 4 games you need to work on your strategic approach to the game.. or you know, don't lie to try to make a point.

 

If you had read my further response, you would see that I did address the Cthulu token problem in my own particular deck strategy - to repeat, I would be down a card (and a potential card draw, but that isn't actually relevant to the discussion of costs) versus what is most likely 2 to 3 resources spent on a skill check. Even if you are only spending 1 on a skill check, you are still down 3 resources for the first one, 2 resources for the second one, etc. etc. The rest of your arguments seem to be nothing more than repetition and ad hominems so I think we can safely ignore those.

 

Shadowcat - apparently you did not read my response fully either, as I did put down the downsides to a skill heavy build, which is being down 1 card vs. multiple resources. Again, still a net advantage for the cantrip build, as you both have spent a card, but the asset build is down multiple resources as well. Good luck recovering in time! Also I am not sure what your statement about 1:14 and 1:16 has to do with this argument, but one of them is an autofail and one of them involves drawing cards from your deck. If you want to compare apples to hand grenades, I  guess that's your problem.

 

Both of you seem intent on ignoring the parts of my statement where I agreed that in some select situations, the asset skill will be useful and potentially better (solo, to reiterate at least ONE more time for your benefit). Also skill cantrips are at their most situational and potentially bad in the  same mode - solo. Skill cantrips are always good in 3-4 player games, and frequently just as amazing in a 2 player game because you need to cover each others weaknesses while still bringing broad skill management to the table in a  timely manner.

 

I believe my opinions have been laid out eloquently enough. If all either of you can bring from this point on are personal attacks (thanks for the Vegas advice Gaffa, I'll be sure to avoid gambling for the rest of my life and save countless dollars because of it!) and arguments of omission then I will happily move on.

 

Have a great day gents.

[phillosmaster]

That stupid token bag.  I swear last game we drew that -4 token like 10 times.  You'd think there was more than one of them in there   So many wasted cards on failed skill checks.

[Skelton]

Can we keep it civil.

 

I like both cards to be honest. I like the cantrip style cards for obvious reasons but I am also a big fan of the Asset boosts as well. Yes they are expensive but they can be useful over the course of the game. I generally haven't struggled too much with resources thus far and having the option to increase important checks multiple times seems to work well for me, especially given how severe the skill checks can be sometimes.

[ShadowcatX2000]

Shadowcat - apparently you did not read my response fully either, as I did put down the downsides to a skill heavy build, which is being down 1 card vs. multiple resources. Again, still a net advantage for the cantrip build, as you both have spent a card, but the asset build is down multiple resources as well. Good luck recovering in time! Also I am not sure what your statement about 1:14 and 1:16 has to do with this argument, but one of them is an autofail and one of them involves drawing cards from your deck. If you want to compare apples to hand grenades, I  guess that's your problem.

 

Both of you seem intent on ignoring the parts of my statement where I agreed that in some select situations, the asset skill will be useful and potentially better (solo, to reiterate at least ONE more time for your benefit). Also skill cantrips are at their most situational and potentially bad in the  same mode - solo. Skill cantrips are always good in 3-4 player games, and frequently just as amazing in a 2 player game because you need to cover each others weaknesses while still bringing broad skill management to the table in a  timely manner.

 

I believe my opinions have been laid out eloquently enough. If all either of you can bring from this point on are personal attacks (thanks for the Vegas advice Gaffa, I'll be sure to avoid gambling for the rest of my life and save countless dollars because of it!) and arguments of omission then I will happily move on.

 

Have a great day gents.

 

You only made that comment about being down a card, etc, after called out on it. After that my only real complaint was you saying that the draw into weaknesses thing is only a 1:14 where your original post where you assume that the use of resources is going to hit the autofail is 1:16. On the actual topic, we agree, I do prefer the cantrips myself. 

[MightyToenail]

I have no clue what a cantrip is, but I prefer the cards like Guts and Overpower (are these the cantrips) to the pumpers.

[KhalBrogo]

I have no clue what a cantrip is, but I prefer the cards like Guts and Overpower (are these the cantrips) to the pumpers.

Both those cards are cantrips. Basically it's a old term for a card that replaces itself.

edit: btw I too prefer the cantrips. my deck doesn't even run pumpers and I play Skids.

[starhawk77]

The cantrip skill cards are certainly better for (almost) any single test. Most of the time, you'd much rather spend 0 resources to get +2 and draw a card than spend 4 resources and a card to get +2. But you will usually wind up making lots and lots of skill tests over the course of a given scenario, and the skill cantrips only work once. The utility of the skill-boosting assets comes from:

 

1) Repeatability: they can be used over and over again for multiple tests (as long as you have resources)

2) Versatility: each skill asset can boost two different skill types; the cantrips are all much more situational.

3) Flexibility: you can pump as many or as few resources as needed into the skill assets. The cantrips ALWAYS give +2, but sometimes you really need more than +2 (for a Shotgun test, or if you have some other cards reducing your skill ratings).

 

In exchange for those benefits, you pay an upfront premium. It will be worth paying in certain situations, and a complete waste of resources at other times. I tend to like having at least one copy of a skill asset in most decks at the moment, but that may change as the card pool grows. I wouldn't call them auto-includes by any means, but they are very, very handy if you leverage them correctly. 

[dboeren]

That's a good point about if you don't get to make the right kind of skill test for several turns then a cantrip is a dead card in your hand.  But, there is some predictability to this too.  It's certainly possible to not make a Willpower check for a few turns if they only come out of the encounter deck, but less likely if you're a Mystic who makes Willpower check to cast spells.  It's also unlikely you won't have an opportunity to investigate for several turns as that's generally a player controlled action.

 

So from that point of view, there will often be one or two cantrip cards that are unlikely to be dead draws as well as Unexpected Courage which is similar though it does not replace itself.  Just take the ones that meet your criteria of usefulness vs. reliability and not the others.

 

I also like (and agree with) starhawk77's breakdown of the positive points of the pumper cards.

 

Bottom line is that both have a place depending on the deck, number of players, and type of scenario.

[Gaffa]

Gaffa

 

Thank you for providing us with an example of hyperbole, which is exactly what your statement of "it happened in the last 4 of 4 multiplayer games blah blah..." is.

 

If you spent 40 resources on skill checks during your last 4 games you need to work on your strategic approach to the game.. or you know, don't lie to try to make a point.

 

Y'know, if the only way you can find to win an argument is to accuse your opposition of lying, you're already out the door, but whatever. I'll also note there's a helpful quote function here on these forums so you don't have to be bothered to type out "blah blah...", in case you haven't noticed it.

 

But it's not hyperbole if you are reporting what actually happened, and I did. You said "will literally never happen, ever", and it has. I'm sorry your argument was so poorly supported that you have to resort to such accords to advance it, but since you've already shown yourself the door, that does open the rest of us to have a productive conversation about the mechanics of the discussion without your acrobatics distracting people.

 

So let's get busy...

 

TripleA's belief that you have to negate a potential draw down to the potential -4 draw ("you cannot reliably pay the 3-4 resources to get you above the potential -4 or -5 modifiers on all your skill checks") shows a wrong application of looking at the odds (which is what led me to my Vegas comment, and I'm glad to see TripleA recognizes their vulnerability and will not risk livelihood there!). Whether you're looking at Skill cards, Skill Talents, or (my actual favorite) a mixture of both, overcommitting to a test wastes your resources -- hmm, can't use that word here, might get misunderstood, let's say game currency instead -- wastes your game currency (the game currency in Arkham Horror, what you can spend every turn, are cards, resources, and actions).

 

As in any gambling state, you're trying to get the most expected return on investment at minimum risk to yourself. While we don't know what token we're drawing from the Chaos Bag, we do know the contents of the bag, so we can figure out the odds on any particular draw (and with an actual game state surrounding it we can even include all of the iconography draws, such as whether the Skull will give us -0 or -2 based on number of ghouls sitting on our forehead).

 

The analyses I've seen of the standard difficulty bag for Night of the Zealot put the general penalty around a -1.3; if anyone here is a statistician, I'd love to see a thread where you deep dive into the Chaos Bag for fun data crawls to see what we find! Quoting Max Dog from my Survivors review (Max Dog, you did excellent work! Thank you again so much!):

 

"For example, if your modified skill is +1 greater than the difficulty of the test, your probability of success is 62.5%; increasing your skill advantage to +2 (say by committing a card) increases your chance of success to 81.25%.  This shows us that In general, you want to be at skill advantage of +1 or +2.  Increasing beyond that still improves our chances of success, but not as dramatically as going from 0 to +1 or +2.  In general, we want to aim for +2 if we can without spending too many resources."

 

It's not cost-efficient in game currency to pump every Skill test you do to negate the potential -4 in the Standard Chaos Bag (unless the last turn is here and you're sitting on dozens of game currencies to spend, of course). You don't have to spend 2-3 resources with your Skill Talent on every pull to get a positive return on your investment; improving your odds from even to +1 nearly doubles your chance of success (37.5% to 62.5%); going to +2 above target number gives you nearly another 20% chance of success (to 81.25%). Spending 2 resources to go from 37.5% to 81.25% chance of success is a great return on investment. That, of course, is also how much you'll get from investment of a Skill card (what serendipity!). Getting up to +4 above target number only increases your odds to 93.75%; that's two more resources or one more (appropriate) Skill for a lot worse ROI.

 

No matter your strategy, raising your bonus to +1 at least above target number seems to be the main goal of your commitments or Skill Talents. Getting it to +2 gets as close to sinking the deal as we can with a reasonable spend of game currency, but I'm far more interested in how just a 1 resource spend in a Skill Talent can nearly double your success. The Skill cards will get you from +0 to +2 with one game currency, but then they're gone, and they can only be played on the appropriate tests, which seems to be a great balancing point vs. the 1 resource investment from a Skill Talent. And don't be fooling yourselves that the opportunity cost of having too many Skill cards in your hand isn't one you are paying; I've already seen games where Daisy and Roland never had to make a single Willpower test (except for a Very Special Willpower Test in Scenario 2, which some of you may know of); the Roland player was griping about the pair of Guts in his hand starting half-way through the game (also, my coffee was cold by that point, so I was doubly annoyed). Remember, unlike resources, cards are a game currency that have a limit to their pool (8), and I've also seen games where players had to discard cards due to hand size (one was an Evasion-heavy Wendy, and our Skids and Roland were doing such a great job killing threats that she had a hand full of nothing for anything).

 

So take a look at your game state the next time you play. How often does your deck have 1 resource to spend on an important pull that would push your Skill value to +1 over the target? If you're finding that is the case on a reliable basis, then a Skill Talent in that Skill will actually give your deck a +50% chance on that Skill, and would be a great investment (only Roland has access to all 4 Skill increases through Talents, but be that as it may). If you're finding your key tests are usually at 0 to -1 vs. target and you don't have a resource to spare, then a Skill card will give you a great burst chance of success, but weaken the deck through dead draws in other circumstances.

 

What's extra interesting is that, perhaps, Skill-card heavy decks might be making the best use of Skill Talents to back up the innate situational nature of their hands. If much of your deck costs nothing, your board state costs will be quite low, and so you're more likely to have extra resources hanging around to buck a key test up to +1 or +2. While TripleA seemed terrified of the 2-cost investment in a Skill Talent as a waste of resources, it seems to be a relatively equivalent opportunity cost vs. having situational Skill cards in hand and nothing to use them on, especially if most of your deck is free. Really, it's not like you have to play one or another; like many strategies, combining them will supply the best overall viability vs. a random adventure climate.

 

I also liked the discussion on how Skill cards can vary in usefulness based on number of players; more players = more chances to share Skill cards (which is awesomely interactive and fun to help your friends). But then you're going to have to keep the party together to get the most value of that tactic; is that worth going up against the clock for not splitting up and covering more ground?

[Gaffa]

I have no clue what a cantrip is, but I prefer the cards like Guts and Overpower (are these the cantrips) to the pumpers.

 

"Cantrip" is one of the CCG terms that started in Magic and have spread throughout the land of card games, like a good-natured wart.

 

As supposedly every card you play in Magic is a spell (or a land), when Magic first introduced very minor card effects that did something, but also let you draw a card on top of it, Magic players at the time borrowed "cantrip" from the other great geek influence, D&D, as a term for a minor spell with upsides. In D&D cantrips were actually just very minor spells (with no actual upside), but having a term for a Magic card that was otherwise unplayable but turned into useful by stapling "draw a card" onto it proved to be useful enough that it caught on.

 

There's other Magic lingo in nearly all CCGs/LCGs -- "bounce", "mill", etc. That's what happens when you're the format-defining game and a commercial juggernaut for two decades.

[Lockewood]

Did someone say they want charts?

 

https://arkhamprotec...l-rumors-afoot/

 

Pumping to hit 1 drastically increases your odds.  Pumping to hit 2 really turns it in your favor.  Above that... well I wouldn't do that.

[meathook]

Thanks for the graph.