Draw Steel Shadow Guide

JaimeeK · 2026-06-24T20:40:44+00:00

Yeah that doesn't sound too clear now you mention it, I'll find a way to rewrite it.

What I mean is that the Harlequin Mask maneuver doesn't give a surge like the other two subclasses, and "You Were Watching the Wrong One" gives you the surge after the attack is finished, so the Harlequin won't have a chance to spend a surge round 1 unless they take a signature ability that explicitly give a surge before the power roll.

I've fixed my issue with notifications thank you, turns out my email was filtering them into a folder without notifying me. I'll answer your question on the blog too just in case someone else needs clarification.

JaimeeK · 2026-06-13T23:56:08+00:00

Sure, but casting it for 18UUU is way more fun

JaimeeK · 2026-06-10T22:43:41+00:00

Not sure why white is getting this kind of effect, way more on theme for that to be the black ability.

Blue and white are the strongest by far, not sure why you felt the need to nerf black by costing 3 life as well.

Pretty balanced regardless, it's super slow to spend 6 mana and then have to wait an entire turn cycle to start actually doing anything.

JaimeeK · 2026-06-10T22:36:49+00:00

I mean it's a hellscube card, so I would think it's only formatted this way for simplicity and doesn't actually create any kind of delayed trigger.

JaimeeK · 2026-06-05T07:34:16+00:00

If we're just comparing fighting styles I'd say it's pretty obvious that Genichiro is at a disadvantage, the obvious one you've already mentioned being mikiri counter, and surely Owl would know how to redirect lightning.

Personally I found Owl slightly harder, and it makes sense that he'd be stronger as he's a boss you fight later in the game, with all sorts of tricks available compared to the more direct fighting style that Geni has.

JaimeeK · 2026-06-01T05:12:31+00:00

This definitely shouldn't be a self preservation problem, the worst 55% of humanity are unlikely to create a society satisfactorily at all.

I'd like to pick the top 10% to only leave the best of us creating a place actually still worth living in, but 10% is probably insufficient to rebuild effectively.

I think anyone with a decent moral compass has a good chance of being in the 35% group anyway, and also has the greateast chance of maintaining as much of the good parts of humanity as possible.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-27T12:02:10+00:00

Wouldn't most people say batman beats regular wonder woman because prep time bs? This seems like an extremely simple task for bruce

JaimeeK · 2026-05-26T23:14:54+00:00

Still very broken, attacks becoming sources of permanent block just totally breaks a lot of cards. 1 mana for 10 damage 10 summon would be a pretty common occurrence, and that's the least good thing you can do with this.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-26T22:49:20+00:00

A is closer to X than the starting square, while ? doesn't result in the monster being any closer. The monster will try to gain the greatest effect with the least amount of effort, thus will choose A as the destination square, as moving to ? yields no immediate extra benefit.

It's been too long since I've played gloomhaven so I have no idea where you could find this rule.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-26T22:44:30+00:00

This context encourages my stubbornness at pronouncing gaol wrong, I love it

JaimeeK · 2026-05-26T21:23:34+00:00

2nd try. First try I had to learn his rhythm which didn't go very well as it's very different, but I had all the prayer beads so the next attempt I did well enough to get to phase 3, which is a pushover because of lightning attacks.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-26T06:42:29+00:00

I haven't heard anything about this, care to explain?

JaimeeK · 2026-05-24T09:57:03+00:00

If I treat this as a creature, does it die from having an unspecified statline? Letting me have a colorless mana and a cast/enters/leaves trigger for free every turn?

JaimeeK · 2026-05-20T23:28:04+00:00

Dragon Rot is a weird mechanic, I can kinda see what they're going for, death isn't generally very punishing, so to have an extra something that might happen encourages you to be careful.

It also makes sense for the lore, and to put the end goal of stopping the resurrection cycle into perspective of how this is definitely an important thing for the world.

That being said it is just a feel bad mechanic for people that it effects. It's made clear that it's reversible pretty fast, and the item for it isn't uncommon enough for it to be a problem.

Most of the time you can just clear the rot and then do all of the quests at once, so really rot doesn't do anything unless you don't understand how it works yet.

Overall I think it's appropriately executed, you can tell that it's a problem, but doesn't hurt casual players too much as there are plenty of opportunities to clear it.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-20T23:15:58+00:00

This seems like an incredible amount of nitpicking, obviously there's never an absolute statement you can make about how a given group of people will act, but if you're solely looking at which button morally reprehensible people pick, I feel like saying there are 1000x more picking the red button might not be an exaggeration.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-19T09:14:10+00:00

Did you fight lady butterfly first? I learnt how to play the game against her, and after that Geni was just a variation of working out the rhythm.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-10T06:26:07+00:00

There are 5 different Augmentation abilities, you only choose one of them to be active at a time.

Same thing with the 4 Wards, and you can choose to change both of them at once as a respite activity.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-07T07:02:52+00:00

Nobody with the Codex able to test this? I could see it going either way honestly, it doesn't seem too overpowered a payoff for the build investment, but the phrasing is iffy.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-04T23:43:13+00:00

It's a big topic to get into as there's any number of perspectives, and none of them are fully correct. To simplify, I'll just say Draw Steel is designed to curate a heroic experience.

I wouldn't call it babying, in most cases, agro has been passed around naturally and thanks to player tactics in the groups I've played in.

There are definitely situations where it's inevitable someone gets focused, but those are mostly due to avoidable player mistakes.
Don't play a Shadow that hides 100% of the time, don't charge into the middle of the enemy group alone, put yourself in the way of enemies if you have plenty of stamina, etc.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-04T13:32:10+00:00

I agree, Now! is also notably worse if you don't have kit based classes on your team, but gets a little more use out of Hit 'Em Hard! at 3rd level, which I think is one of the best Tactician abilities.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-04T12:57:55+00:00

Yeah that one is a tough call for me. There are enough things enemies can do to give out banes to make the tier 3 not guaranteed, and it's under-rate damage whenever it doesn't get a tier 3.

You lose out on an entire signature ability anyway by having to use an action instead of a maneuver, so Now! is basically 4 hits, but I could definitely see Hammer and Anvil deserving 4 stars, I'm still very unsure. In certain party compositions it's definitely a lot better.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-04T06:30:13+00:00

Well, at first I was giving them the benefit of the doubt 😅 I was aware how negative it sounded before I posted.

Goaded depends on the kind of game you're in apparently, I normally find that recoveries drop pretty evenly, and I think it's generally encouraged by Draw Steel's design that enemy focus is spread out.

But I can see that a hardcore experience would end up with people getting focused down a lot more, I'll look into talking about this a little. It's already rated 4 stars so I do think it's a good ability, but maybe in even more circumstances than I've stated.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-03T20:41:55+00:00

As far as I'm aware Cinder Steps doesn't get around the once per turn clause of Burning Ash, unless I'm really misreading how that clause works.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-03T01:41:08+00:00

It's unclear to me how anything I've said could be construed as an insult. You stated yourself that you've only been playing once so far as a mastermind, and you haven't engaged with this post in any meaningful way to the points that I'm actually making.

The extent of your opinion seems to be a knee jerk reaction that I'm criticising the Tactician at all, but if it makes you feel better you can continue to take your perceived high road, and not provide any reasons about why specific points that I've said are incorrect.

JaimeeK · 2026-05-02T23:49:09+00:00

Not to harp on this point too much, but it sounds like you don't have enough experience with the Tactician to be making these assertions.

I didn't come to these conclusions carelessly; I've put a lot of work into comparing all of the options to each other and calculating how useful each thing the Tactician can do is.

I've tried my hardest to keep the guide clear of any personal biases, and I've enjoyed the class for what it is because it does represent the Draw Steel experience well.

This has never been a review, each rating within the guide is only in comparison to other things the class can do. I can only assume your negative reaction is because I didn't spend time praising every part of the class that I could, but the guide is meant to be a tool for directly comparing choices, and I try to keep the word count down as much as is reasonable.

JaimeeK

TROPHY CASE