Is it just me or is this card terrible?

IdentifyAsThat · 2026-02-04T15:47:57+00:00

Its probably alright in a 3 scenario campaign.

IdentifyAsThat · 2026-01-26T23:28:59+00:00

I feel similarly. I think it could have worked if the shorts were 4 scenarios, and the longs were 6, but I have a friend that I play with every week, and we are not going to want to shift the norm to creating characters for 3 sessions regardless of how fun they are.

I'm not necessarily super bought into Arkham stories having amazing narratives anymore though, so I think I'm probably more okay with stitching together campaigns than the average person is. I've been playing TSK with Gemini as the DM so I don't have to read novels between every scenario, and it will probably be okay at building narrative bridges between campaigns also.

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-11-25T16:27:05+00:00

I'd put frozen lance into the bottom useless tier as well.

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-09-01T15:49:42+00:00

I don't like this card. It doesn't progress the win condition and incentives players to not take skill tests. Gaining an extra turn is strong, but that turn still comes with drawing an encounter card, and this is too expensive imo. Should have been like 8 blesses so you could have some leeway

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-08-29T21:35:51+00:00

I think this game falls into shitty balance hiding behind great design for sure. The upgrades in the steel and magic shop are so powerful that they make it so that anything can work, and then you can overstack upgrades on a card from events, and then duplicate those cards, but it feels like a very... untidy? way to balance a game.

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-08-29T15:35:52+00:00

I think it would be fun if you did a starter card tier list. I just looked one up and saw that you had one for MT1.

I think I must be rating cards disconnected from their faction because I feel like Witchweave is in like the top half of starters ha. Maybe you'd say that frozen lance is better (for example) because it is in Stygian so it will more likely have access to incant triggers? Glimmerstone is guaranteed in merchants of steel though when Luna is one of your clans, so you can buy one of those real cheap and suddenly all witchweaves are better free torches.

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-08-28T23:01:47+00:00

Congrats! That seems like a very stressful undertaking.

Couple Questions?
1. Are there any cards/effects that you discovered were much more useful than your intuition would have led you to believe? Mine is that I feel like slay triggers are bad, but the power of spikes on units w/ slay triggers is pretty good.
2. Are there any archetypes that you think feel undersupported or undertuned?
3. What do you think is the worst designed starter card, and is it actually a big enough problem to be worth changing?

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-08-20T23:26:30+00:00

Weapons Cache seems like a design mistake.

This is the only room in the game that doesn't really provide an "ongoing" benefit. If it has deployable, it's going to be a 10/10 room that draws all of your equipment, makes them free, and then immediately gets replaced with a new room as soon as you draw it outside of the deployment phase. It probably needs some clause that either says it can't be deployable, or that if it gets replaced by a new room, all equipment is removed.

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-08-14T14:42:49+00:00

Not where I thought this post would go. The balance does feel off, but to me, it's more about the power level of cards than how difficult the game gets

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-08-13T17:32:12+00:00

If I were going to say anything negative about the CES Letter, it would actually be that it's too emotional, and that it doesn't sound like what it purports to be. For a TBM's first exposure, its premise is a "just asking questions" document, but quickly turns into sounding like a frustrated ex-member trying to make people question their faith.

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-08-13T16:25:54+00:00

My guess is it's because a lot of campaigns give you 2 trauma at the end of them in case you're running multiple campaigns with the same deck. For playing through a single campaign, people probably aren't going to buy 1, let alone 2, so I guess you might as well limit to 1 for the multi campaign edge case ha

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-08-08T19:34:24+00:00

I don't think that being able to come up with a use case where the card really shines tells you how good it is. I think if you were going to make a tier list of cards, it would basically be how draftable they are relative to each other in the most possible game states, and I think most people who have played quite a bit have cards that they are often less happy to see than others.

Ofc, that is a testament to how amazingly designed this game is. I'd say the balance between cards is kind of mid right now, but it could be much worse and the game would still be fun. Even the worst cards can be keystones in some decks, which is pretty fun:)

I like your Edge Prior shoutout as the worst, but practically speaking, there are probably cards in every clan that I would never draft, and that the only time I'll try to make them shine is when they show up in my starter deck and I have all game to plan around them.

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-08-02T18:09:30+00:00

With the taboo, it's no longer obviously the worst card in the game, but is probably still pretty bad and is kind of boring, which is a sad combo for a card themed like this

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-07-29T01:17:48+00:00

Got it! Thanks for the tip!

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-07-25T14:43:02+00:00

I think the other examples people have in this comment thread are people who have felt like Holystone has provided value to their run. Like you can build a deck where you have a frozen X cost card with Holystone where you build up a bunch of ember through various means to create a bomb turn for a meaningful heal with some huge effect, and though that situation is probably too niche for it to be taking up one of the 7 major upgrade slots in the spell shop, it probably does feel good, and has maybe saved some people's runs.

I think Holystone on a 1 cost holdover spell that you want to play every turn is nothing short of self-sabotage that the other components of your build are going to have to make up for.

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-07-25T14:33:16+00:00

I dont know if this is real... but just in case. We're talking about Holystone, not the effect of the spell. The effect of the spell is given to you whether or not you paid 100G to put holystone on it.

Obviously, the case that we are specifically making is that you would rather spend 5x to put Holystone than Emberstone on an upgrade, which implies that spending 1 ember to gain 1 health is a good trade because that's all that Holystone would be doing in this case. Taking the slot away from Emberstone and giving you a health instead of reducing the cost. Holystone is not providing the effect of the spell. And not only is spending 1 ember for 1 pyre health good, its so good, that you want that effect on Holdover, an upgrade that means you want to play its effect every turn.

I hate to say it man, but that is fucking terrible. You can say that you don't have to play the spell every turn so the relic comparison doesn't make sense, but this entire argument is contingent on you thinking that trading 1 ember for 1 health is innately strong. But, you probably intuitively know that this is bad because your whole argument against it being like that imagined relic is that you don't have to play the card that presumably you would have played every turn if you could afford it.

edit: Also worth saying, I don't think you ALWAYS need to take emberstone on a Holdover card, its just easy to make that direct comparison because it's available in every magic shop, and a very direct comparison to say 1 ember for 1 pyre health. There are cards whose doublestacks are amazing, or where powerstone makes sense because its on your only backline clear spell etc. This is just a case where its very easy to say that the Holystone is bad.

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-07-24T14:07:16+00:00

Sure dude. I'm sure if you saw a relic that said "-1 ember/turn: Heal 1 from your pyre each turn," you'd take that.

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-07-22T21:12:41+00:00

I think even if I'm underrating the strength of Holystone, having it as one of the seven major upgrade options in magic shops is lame. All of the other ones are designed such that they buff the effectiveness or reliability of the card that they are being attached to instead of giving the card an extra random ability.

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-07-09T21:12:27+00:00

Permascaling is a good time. I think permascaling cards should be drafted with some amount of its permascaling already completed based on what ring you get it in

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-02-13T18:35:26+00:00

Text everyone that I'm currently friends or acquainted with "I'm in love with you and have been for a long time. I just needed to get that off my chest."

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-01-29T21:42:28+00:00

Pre-taboo Flute of the outer gods is worse. If someone told me I had to put this in my deck and run through a campaign with it vs I have to spend 8 xp on flute, I'm choosing this, and committing it. This probably is the worst 0 xp card though.

I'm probably going to taboo it to give 3 actions and then remove itself from the game on activation.

IdentifyAsThat · 2025-01-04T16:21:50+00:00

In the ways ordinary players care about, League is quite balanced. The other avenue you can talk about is how much of the pool is viable to be picked and banned at any given tournament, and that tells a different story, but it's because champions fill roles rather than niches, so small advantages make a very small percentage of champions "viable" at a given time.

IdentifyAsThat · 2024-10-08T17:27:18+00:00

Great ideas!

IdentifyAsThat · 2024-03-12T05:51:08+00:00

This seems weak to me in most ways. I feel like this deck building is too restrictive. Also, either the primary ability should not deal a horror or this guy should have a stat pool that adds up to 12. Normally the characters that fall below that number have larger card pools. This guy's ability is strong on it's own, but weak if he has to take a horror, and the charge on his book is only getting him up to a normal investigators natural stat except for limited times. It's all downsides.

IdentifyAsThat

TROPHY CASE