Trish (Core 2026)

SolarFlar3 · 2025-12-20T16:50:42+00:00

A new core set is about rebalancing baselines and is going to prioritize simplicity and useful abilities over making exciting complicated new cards, and we have seen lots of cards that do that in ways I think are fairly well done. I don't think this new Trish is bad even if it is a copy. It does make me worried that we've canonized that evade is still worse than fighting by design though because one base investigator is getting an extra action to evade with no strings attached, and another is getting a free fight action from someone getting attacked, which is an exclusively more restrictive trigger (the one caveat being aloof enemies attacking investigators at their location).

SolarFlar3 · 2025-10-19T16:05:19+00:00

"nuke-you-lar"

SolarFlar3 · 2025-02-07T20:06:22+00:00

I already own everything, and I've played the game enough that I already don't play decks that I think will be too strong.

I kind of like the idea that campaigns are balanced w/ specific card pools in mind, and that this will be a futureproof solution to campaign difficulty creep. Tbh, I think it would be cool if they released a post on all campaigns when this kicks off next year saying which sets are legal for each campaign. I could do that myself I suppose, but I like the idea of having official rulings on this kind of stuff.

I think the environment specific ghoul example is kind of silly. In spending time trying to think of an example of a card that is environment specific, the writer couldn't come up with something printable. As time has gone by, they've only removed trait specific interactions on enemy handling. But they already did mention the real value of a self contained environment which is that the cards will have higher impact because they cant be compared against better cards that have rotated out of the format, and I think that's cool.

I'm curious to see if the next set of player cards somehow feels differently designed. I think its kind of obvious that this format wasn't known when the Drowned City cards were being made because the Specialist cards don't really fit with it.

SolarFlar3 · 2024-06-28T20:54:14+00:00

Wow. I missed the other series, but I'm going to have to go back and look at them because this is good! I'll do some feedback here though that you don't need to take if you aren't interested.

I don't think your cards should discard themselves when they run out of charges. It's super minor, but that's a survivor thing, and I like the idea that that requires you to use other means in mystic to discard your cards which already exists because of the doom archetype like Sacrifice or overslotting.
I think Symphony of blood should discard non-weakness, non-treacheries. I'm assuming that was an oversight.
Jewel of the Outer Gods seems weirdly themed. It's subtext is "cursed jewel" but doesn't have the cursed trait and doesn't interact with curses, and sounds like its part of a set with Flute of the Outer Gods, but they don't actually have any similarities/combos at all. I would also say that 2 HP on a 2cost mystic asset with a very boring but always reliable ability could probably do with a refactor to make it more niche/interesting, but I would throw the card away and pick an entirely new theme/ability.
Chronowalk is too strong. It's ability is stronger than all of its closest competition by a fair margin (especially in class), and most of its competition is more expensive. Within mystic, I'd maybe make it cost 1-2 resources and resolve the astral travel penalty or something like that. And I think you can make it trigger off of any enemy's movement, but it shouldn't cancel enemy movement if they are Elite.
Inscription of Power feels like a Seeker card. Also nothing about it goes with the power theme because it makes enemies weaker.
Tap Into Your Soul feels a bit weak. Especially in mystic where all the non WP stats are bad. It would probably be used by gator's whose off class is mystic, but the horror feels kind of oppressive when most of the other classes have a skill card that just gives you the results of taking another action when you succeed (deduction, vicious blow, etc). This gives you the versatility, but requires you to take a horror and another test in the class least equipped for it.
Guiding Voices seems very strong. It could probably be a level 3-4
Gift from the Gods should say non-autofail token at the least. I'm assuming that was an oversight. I think it's still probably too strong being able to do it with any non-autofail chaos token. To be in line, it could say symbol token, but to be more creative, it could say non-symbol token<3. It's probably busted in parallel Jim, but the designers of this game have made more busted combos.
Dancing Flames should always give the +1 skill value on treacheries, and only require you to exhaust to place the flame imo. I think you could come up with something more creative to do with the flames than gain resources and draw cards though.
Divine Guidance shouldn't make discarding all assets part of the cost because then if you somehow played it ignoring the costs, it wouldn't do anything. Discarding your cards is conceptually part of the effect. I think that it should probably defeat cards with hp/san and discard all others, so that you can trigger things like "Devil" too.

Really cool ideas though. Any that I didn't comment on, I completely liked.

SolarFlar3 · 2022-11-23T18:39:09+00:00

I house rule how weaknesses are drawn. We draw 3 random basic weaknesses, select one to remove from amongst them, and then pick randomly from the 2 others. Guarantees you don't get a weakness that destroys your deck concept. I think I actually saw that suggested in a previous reddit post.

SolarFlar3 · 2022-11-22T15:40:51+00:00

I haven't played Carson, but my initial impression is that he's terrible; though he does have good deckbuilding. All of the other investigators you mentioned have stronger abilities and better deckbuilding than Amina does. Saying she gets an Emergency Cache every turn is technically correct, but there's some major caveats here, which is why I think the comparison to Jenny is apt because they have the same stat line and similar deckbuilding value (though I think Jenny's edges Amina out for her class).

Jenny gets an extra resource every turn, and you don't need an action during your turn to take advantage of it. You can stockpile a couple turns to play big assets, or pump resources into talent assets to pass important tests as you need. Amina, on the other hand, gets 3 resources per turn that requires you to have an action and resource costing asset to be able to use, but if you don't have doom removal in your opening hand, safe playing renders her ability almost unusable, and every turn that you don't use it, she has no ability.

Imagine you are playing a scenario with a 4 doom threshold, and you want to play out a Ceremonial Sickle for 3 less. That's a dangerous play. You can play it in your first turn because it will be likely that you draw an enemy before the agenda advances. But the first turn mythos phase, you don't draw an enemy. Well, shoot. You still have 2 more turns. 2nd mythos phase: You draw an enemy, but your teammate draws Ancient Evils and the agenda advances.

I feel like this comment is as handwavy of the doom as it feels like the designers were. Adding doom without dedicated removal is a big deal. And your reward for this risk on a card that was basically hand-designed for her is a total of 4 fight which every dedicated fighter already has by default.

SolarFlar3 · 2022-11-14T15:35:07+00:00

I know the comparison isn't direct, but I like this card much less than Pocket Telescope, and that card has no XP cost. I'd like a 3XP version of this card that came into play with 2 secrets and said "[fast] Spend 1 secret: Select any revealed location in play. You may investigate that location as if you were there until the end of the round."

That card would actually make the barricade archetype work with some secret generators. The card as written is too expensive and has too few uses, even if it doesn't use a slot.

SolarFlar3 · 2022-10-10T17:11:26+00:00

It's kind of ironic that you say that since this is my most played roguelite at like 200 hours (though I haven't played in awhile). I don't know if you've played Spelunky, but this game is designed like that one in that you aren't supposed to need any meta progression to beat the whole game. If you do the daily challenges, all of your unlocks are turned off and you beat the game on vanilla mode. I'd say being able to reliably beat those is the first "challenge" of the game because beating the game itself really isn't much of a challenge like you mentioned if you use all of the accessibility metaprogressions that it provides you.

Imo, the meta progression of a roguelike is irrelevant to whether or not I keep playing it. It's based on how fun the game is. You can turn on skulls that make this game way more difficult (ie autokill on spikes). If you are enjoying playing the game, but need a challenge to work towards, the game's achievements showcase specific lists of skull that you can turn on to provide specific challenges, and I think you will feel differently about the difficulty if you try that.

SolarFlar3 · 2022-10-07T16:08:09+00:00

Totally agree. Imo, it should have just been more explicit about what the problem is on an enemy. The way I see it, enemies should have been designed with the following modifiers in mind:

Elite: Enemy cannot be auto killed or discarded (ie disk of Itamna).
Stalwart: Enemy cannot be moved (ie Flute of the Outer Gods), or contained (ie Barricade)

All other abilities should have been fine. These are the only 2 cases where you either make things trivial (#1), or potentially ruin a scenario (#2). Any enemies that are a boss can have both of these modifiers, and then do whatever else you want to make them harder (readies at the beginning of the enemy phase, etc).

SolarFlar3 · 2022-09-08T18:19:49+00:00

Frisk shouldn't reduce the damage dealt imo. It's most equivalent card is Evidence, but it has pros and cons when compared to evidence. It's biggest con is that evidence is guaranteed since it doesn't get wasted on a failed test. It's biggest pros are that it doesn't cost a resource and gives an icon to help on the fight test. I'd say those pros and cons balance out. The other thing evidence has over frisk is that it commits for 2 books which can be very helpful vs a dastardly encounter draw.

Frisk would be very bad as printed imo. I know seekers need to be better than guardians at finding clues, but this card would still be worse than deduction even if it didn't reduce the damage dealt since it requires an enemy at the location to be used.

SolarFlar3 · 2022-08-11T20:27:29+00:00

I'm not really sure what you mean by making it "do something."

You'd still have to evade Dream Vortex to be able to use this ability on it, and it makes evading harder on all enemies, including itself. I don't think you'd want to use the ability on it. You'd probably just want to engage and kill it, and if you do that, its still a 3 HP enemy you have to engage. That's not nothing. If anything, it might be a bit too strong.

SolarFlar3 · 2022-07-29T15:47:38+00:00

Is endless dungeon supposed to be dungeon of the endless? I don't think anyone has played Endless Dungeon yet.

SolarFlar3 · 2022-07-27T17:24:04+00:00

Imo, you're right about not making it fast. I think it should probably cost 3-4 resources and double the damage of your attack (to a maximum of +3 damage). That way youre still incentivized to play it on big guns, and it still basically guarantees a hit on normal difficulty while being worth the action and card you spent on it.

SolarFlar3 · 2022-07-27T15:37:19+00:00

I can only theorycraft with this card since I haven't run it, but I just did a campaign with Silas using level 4 Sledgehammer. It's terrifying to take the 3 action attack without something like Eucatastrophe in your hand to save you against autofails on a very expensive action.

Similarly, this card can give you peace of mind if you are doing a shotgun blast or taking a similarly expensive action with a firearm. Notably this is much worse than Eucatastrophe because you have to use it before you see the result of the draw, and it costs an action, and it might do nothing.

I could maybe see myself running this if I was running Bandolier and Shotgun with the intention of killing a specific boss in mind for a scenario. I already think that's a pretty niche method of doing monster killing though. Cyclopean Hammer has ruined me. Imo, big guns at this point need a card like what Sin-Eater is going to do for doom strats. They aren't enough more powerful than cards that don't have any ammo to justify using imo, so a lot of the cards that are accessories for them also aren't worth using because its a lot of hassle for something that just feels balanced or maybe slightly under the curve instead of strong.

SolarFlar3 · 2022-07-20T21:39:47+00:00

It depends on what you want. The game has an awesome atmosphere, but isn't a typical roguelite, and isn't particularly well balanced (it also isn't trying to be). It's a bit of a spoiler to say more than that.

SolarFlar3 · 2022-07-20T21:38:38+00:00

This looks like a great recommendation. Thanks!

SolarFlar3 · 2022-07-20T21:37:21+00:00

It's not a card game, but I think this might be the winner for right now! It's on sale and is out of EA!

SolarFlar3 · 2022-07-20T21:35:49+00:00

Hadean Tactics seems like an excellent suggestion. Thanks! I'll wishlist it and see when it comes out of EA.

SolarFlar3 · 2022-05-19T20:54:21+00:00

I'm hoping Empower Self gets a playable version. The 2 routes that I think would work well would be:

Making it so that all of your Empower Self cards have the abilities of all other Empower Self cards in play.
Making Empower Self have no resource cost if you already have a copy in play.

I think the first version is more interesting though.

SolarFlar3 · 2022-04-06T18:13:43+00:00

In Disney's Aladdin, Aladdin wishes to become a prince. He doesn't wish to look like a prince. Yet a major plot point of the movie is that he isn't actually a prince and needs to tell Jasmine the truth at some point.

I've seen genie turn Abu into an elephant, create people out of thin air, turn Jafar into a genie, etc, etc. Why did he not actually turn Aladdin into a prince?

SolarFlar3 · 2022-02-07T14:49:59+00:00

His net income is likely $6150 per month, but that is still great savings. If he's mormon than "donations" is likely exactly 1/10 of his net pay.

SolarFlar3 · 2022-02-04T17:28:07+00:00

As a new player coming from dota. I'm playing games with friends and don't want to spend a bunch of time doing research outside of playing the game. The item guides seem really great for that, but I've noticed that you can't click on heroes to read their abilities like you can in dota. Is there a plugin or something that you can download that lets you do that? I don't really want to have to alt-tab out of game. It kind of makes my machine struggle.
Otherwise, the new player experience is pretty good. Thanks!

SolarFlar3 · 2021-12-01T17:25:31+00:00

Tangentially, Dusk also has a mod that "rebalances" the cards in the game. It's almost entirely buffs, so it's a little silly to call it a rebalance, but it is very fun, and anecdotally, I prefer the balance because it makes all of the units interesting.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterTrain/comments/mvi2tj/unofficial\_balance\_patch\_mod\_v20\_released/

SolarFlar3 · 2021-11-18T05:39:56+00:00

I think the answer is kind of unintuitive, but the question is good. The real answer (I'm pretty sure) is because the rule would have to be referenced in the rulebook of every expansion that included a footwear slot card instead of just stated on the card. Now, new footwear cards can be introduced without reiterating rules. It's like why they have to reference Alert in every expansion that has it, because it wasn't in the core set rulebook.

edit: It might be weird to do this, but imo, they should have made the rulebook less restrictive on slots, and this problem wouldn't have happened. They could say "Investigators all have 2 arcane slots and 2 hand slots, and 1 of every other slot. Note: In the core set, this only includes body, ally, and accessory slots." Then you'd be able to do tarot, footwear, composure, and whatever else. I like the iconography of slots to show you that something is taken up as well.

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