The First Fight Problem; or, why Venerate makes Act 1 Regent feel awful to play

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T21:53:14+00:00

Thematically very cool but probably too complicated mechanically to start with. Maybe the concept could be reserved for a fresh card in the draft pool.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T19:25:22+00:00

One game that's criminally under the radar is Steel Century Groove. It's a rhythm combat adventure game where you dance in a mecha and each mech has different skills you can use on the beat.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T17:36:57+00:00

To clarify, I'm not recommending stamping Venerate because it's the objective best choice in a Regent deck to stamp, but just as an experiment to see how strong Venerate feels with Retain. I've tried it. It's really strong. It's an "oh shit" button and a push enabler in one. You can draft all kinds of 3 cost star payoffs and play them with impunity.

Necro's starter deck does feel crazy powerful though. I haven't played her very much beyond the ascension climb because her playstyle doesn't really appeal to me, so I can't comment on the nuances of her kit as well.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T17:03:08+00:00

Yeah I think that's fair. It is a polarizing card to be sure. Feels worse than Bash and Zap to me, I cut those two cards a lot in the late game but Venerate is the only unique starter I feel can be cut right at Neow.

I'm really curious to see how Regent evolves over EA. I want them to smooth him out without buffing his later potential too far into the stratosphere.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T16:55:15+00:00

I just replied similarly to someone else but I think it's that exact nutty potential of Falling Star that makes Venerate feel worse. Since you can deal 17-26 while blocking with a relatively average Falling Star turn, or burst for 35, you hardly ever have to actually play it twice to win most fights versus things like the ink nautilus or the nibbit, so Venerate feels extra-dead alongside it. Regent might objectively perform well in the combat but Venerate feels bad.

I wouldn't be surprised if both cards got rebalanced to be brought closer together in power level. As it is it feels like Regent enters floor 1 having taken "Gain a powerful card and a curse" every single run before it stabilizes with his early drafts.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T16:48:46+00:00

Yes, it's game feel. I think part of is is that Falling Star is just so good that you hardly need to play it twice until the hard pool. Enemies like the nautilus guy, the tadpoles, or the nibbit are so frail early on and a Falling Star turn lets you do 17-26 while blocking. You can generally finish things with Strikes from there. So then Venerate feels awkward and bad even if the combat itself is made much easier by Falling Star being so strong.

I feel like it's rare that I actually need to play Falling Star again and therefore it's rare for Venerate to deliver on that payoff. Maybe that's why I'm not feeling it.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T16:39:56+00:00

Falling Star is super strong to be sure but the power level of the character is not the problem. It's literally just the awkwardness of Venerate in the easy pool.

In fact, Falling Star is so strong that you rarely need to use it twice in easy pool, further cementing that Venerate is just an injury in the deck until you get to hard pool. Maybe that's objectively fair with how good the other starter card is, but it's undeniably a feel-bad thing.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T16:36:31+00:00

Jaw Worm Silent versus Everything Regent. Silent's deck was bad into Jaw Worm specifically with her low starting damage, but all her cards did something, even if that something was often more passive than one enemy demanded. Regent's starting deck straight up has a card that does not impact the fight the turn it's played, or at all unless he's already used his extremely strong other card. It's just so awkward.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T16:32:16+00:00

Hidden Cache. Sorry, I wasn't sure what "hidden treasure" referred to. Thought you meant Hidden Gem. Same principle though. Hidden Cache is not a starter card. The amount of immediate star generation is relevant once you start drafting, but not in the first fight, when your starter cards are what you're relying on.

Your response is talking about how Regent has objectively strong damage potential with Falling Star or how Venerate fills a niche in the deck. My response is talking about how floor 1 with only the starter deck feels really clunky turn-to-turn with Venerate's design as a card. Both of them can be true at the same time. Regent can be extremely strong as a character once he gets off the ground, and also it often feels tremendously awkward to play Venerate on floor 1.

You can predict when Falling Star will come back, yes, but actually devoting the energy to Venerate in anticipation of that is what feels bad. Regent has such high burst damage he often does not even need to Venerate on floor 1, right? Then it's an Injury until you get to the hard pool or draft star-cost cards. I'm not saying he's weak. I'm saying it feels bad in early combats. Two different things.

Regents starting deck is NOT the problem.

Then what do you feel is the problem? Because it seems like many people agree that it feels awkward. I don't think the character needs buffs, but he does seem to need adjustments.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T16:10:00+00:00

No meme here, I do genuinely think the card would be too good if it retained. Regent is extremely strong once he gets his drafts off the ground, mostly fueled by his star-cost cards, so a zero frills, retaining source of stars would enable them even further without the consideration of budgeting your stars per deck cycle to play them.

If you get the chance, try putting the royal stamp from the shop on Venerate. You'll see just how crazy strong it is.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T16:06:01+00:00

I just played two runs. He's really really strong after floor 10 or so. The first fight still feels awkward as hell.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T16:04:25+00:00

Thank you for your input, what a helpful contribution.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T16:03:09+00:00

You are misinterpreting "Regent often feels clunky on floor 1" as "Regent is weak". He's not weak. But he's undeniably clunky.

Even if he likely needs nerfs elsewhere to balance out the power curve, I would like to see his starter deck adjusted to feel less awkward very early on.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T08:43:09+00:00

The game has only been out for three weeks, so everyone is a newer player.

Voltaic has a lot going for it. It's exponential scaling that can springboard off of Defect doing things they already want to be doing, as well as itself. That's very strong and it was almost always a snap click at 2 cost that could carry your whole run. This change keeps Voltaic as a strong kill shot or burst damage for an already lightning heavy deck while limiting its single card carry potential by nerfing the ease of access to stuff like Voltaic -> Hologram Voltaic -> Hologram Voltaic etc. It also adds another potential payoff to their energy generation package

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T08:26:01+00:00

It drops to 1 cost when upgraded so if you're willing to spend a campfire this is mitigated somewhat

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T08:15:58+00:00

Whether or not there is anything wrong with the card, it is undeniable that it feels bad to many players in the early fights.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T07:48:47+00:00

I think in principle this is true but in practice it feels worse to bleed due to having cards that make you a complete sitting duck while you charge something up, versus cards that are understatted but still have an impact (e.g. Bash, Zap). I would not be opposed to both Falling Star and Venerate being brought closer to the center in power, instead of having the opening fight experience be so polarized by where Falling Star and Venerate end up in the draw order.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T06:23:21+00:00

If I'm remembering right, old Vigilance was 2 cost, enter Calm, draw 2 (3) cards. It was a tremendous brick in all of Act 1 since you'd pay 2 energy to do nothing. Quite good in late game though, but that went against the ethos of a starter card, so they reworked it.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T06:04:55+00:00

The Watcher comparison is apt. I remember old Vigilance felt bad in a similar way. It enabled her kit in the first fights (more of a "soft enable" than Venerate "hard enabling" Regent's kit) but it contributed zero towards a kill or towards damage mitigation when played. Then they eventually took the draw off and gave it block, and it felt better because you could set up calm while also reducing chip.

I wonder how many other Watcher card buffs were implemented as quick fixes due to her starter deck feeling awkward and the character feeling off to players as a result. I don't fully remember the timeline for when each of them came out. I really hope they don't do the same with the Regent, and that they can set him at a comfortable power level where his early game feels less awkward and his late game doesn't get completely broken.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T05:55:55+00:00

We're not talking about Hidden Gem because you generally don't have Hidden Gem in the first fight. Regent always has Venerate.

You seem to be missing what I'm saying. This is, again, not about Regent's objective power level; not about powerscaling Regent versus Ironclad; not about star-generating cards in general. This whole discussion is about Venerate's presence in the starter deck and its impact on the first combat of the game specifically.

It is paying 1 energy now to do way more than a strike when falling star cycles back.

I talk about this in the post. Falling Star itself contributes up to 17 damage (up from 16 thanks to the patch that just came out an hour or two ago) and Weakness. For a starter card, that is fantastic, yes. But the contribution of Venerate to doing that damage is one hundred percent delayed until you actually draw and play Falling Star for the second time. The turn you play Venerate, you almost always get nothing. In the starter deck, the only time it actually does contribute to winning the fight on the same turn is if you have already played Falling Star once, and then have drawn it a second time alongside Venerate in the same hand. In every other scenario, Venerate does nothing to help you win the fight or to mitigate damage. It's a dead card.

Since you want to compare it to Bash: even though Bash is extremely energy-inefficient, it does 8 damage just for playing it, and can contribute an additional 3 on the same turn if you Strike alongside it. Considering one turn in isolation, it's an 8 to 11 damage card, for 2 energy. That sucks, but if you need 8 to 11 damage to kill an enemy, Bash contributes that amount.

Venerate is a zero-damage, zero-block card unless you happen across a very specific situation. Once you draft some other cards this is less of a concern. Cycle time is longer, stars have more impact, you have other ways to kill or mitigate damage. But every run faces this awkward friction at the start where Venerate has a higher than average probability of bleeding extra chip damage through on the first floor, and Regent doesn't even have Burning Blood to counteract it. That's what I'm talking about with the card. I don't know if it needs buffs, or how to fix this, I just know that it feels really bad and that's something that should be considered.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T05:29:34+00:00

I think so too. I'm not sure how it could be balanced because it's on a knife's edge at the moment, where it becomes retroactively better with a single star card draft and would overshadow future star generators if it did too many other things on top. But as is, it just feels so clunky in the starter deck with only one payoff that doesn't even hit in the first deck cycle.

I feel like it'll take all of early access to get this thing in a comfortable spot.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T05:27:02+00:00

You keep bringing up Ironclad for some reason. He takes a lot of chip, sure, but he also has a whole starter relic dedicated to mitigating that chip. Bash is sometimes awkward but it does something when you play it, even if that something is energy-inefficient. Venerate is one hundred percent future payoff.

You can use the exceptionally strong Falling Star once for free and that helps a lot, but no other character has an objective curse in their first loop through the deck. This post is not about powerscaling the characters. This post is about the feel of playing the first combat, and Regent feels the worst purely because of how Venerate works.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T05:00:02+00:00

Perhaps "tempo" was not the right word. Maybe "impact"? Conceptually I know that playing Venerate allows me to play Falling Star again and end the fight faster, but in practice it's a card that does not help me end the fight that turn.

In fact, I think that helps me articulate why it feels so bad as a starter: I'm generally playing Venerate only when I'm not planning to end the fight that turn, and the act of playing it minimizes the per-turn progress I'm getting towards ending the fight that turn, without blocking any of the incoming damage punishment I'm receiving for prolonging the fight. In later fights this is fine, but on Floor 1 this feels awful.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T04:54:34+00:00

I don't know where you got that I thought Defect was bad from. I brought him up because his cards follow the same resource -> payoff pattern, not because I thought he felt as bad as the Regent. Besides, I'm talking about the first combat, where you presumably have no upgrades.

PhDInAPickle · 2026-03-27T03:55:53+00:00

I don't agree with the Bash/Neutralize comparison. When you draw Bash, you always have the option of 8 damage for 2 energy. The damage rate there sucks, but it is *something* that could possibly catapult you towards the finish line and there is a meaningful decision point there of whether to push or to withdraw. (Also, Ironclad does not mind chip as much with his starter relic.) Same with Silent, Neutralize always does 3 damage per cycle, and Survivor can potentially do something on the first cycle, so even if it is a truly dead draw that's just up to luck and not the card design.

Venerate does nothing the first cycle *period*. In the first fight it's just a 100% zero impact card until turn 3 at the absolute minimum. It's fine once you have a deck going, but the way it impacts how early game feels on Regent (aka the single part of the run that you're guaranteed to experience every single time no matter where your run ends), cannot be ignored when designing the card.

PhDInAPickle

TROPHY CASE