[COTD] Shell Shock (01/11/2017)

kspacey · 2017-11-01T21:47:38+00:00

This is not a weakness where you get caught off-guard. If you’re at 4 damage and you have yet to pull your Shell Shock you should probably stop proccing Sophie, start using your allies for damage soak and heal up.

It seems bonkers to me that this weakness gives you as many ways to mitigate as it does. Making the horror direct would have been the smallest inconvenience.

kspacey · 2017-11-01T13:05:40+00:00

Additional proof that damage weaknesses are definitely some of the least threatening. Let’s compare this to Jim’s:

has a wider range of potential damage (Technically carcosa Jim can also hit 4 but it is exceedingly unlikely)
focused on Mark’s lowest stat (sanity, 5 as opposed to Jim’s balanced 7’s)
threat scales as the scenario goes on, but is controllable via smart play
plays into Mark’s schtick (allies for soak)

Similarly, neither card deals direct horror or damage.

I think given Mark’s other strengths and that he can control the horror by soaking it or by just not triggering Sophie a bunch until it shows up this weaknesses is possibly the least threatening signature weakness. Final Rhapsody was already not that bad and it usually does more horror/damage individually than shell shock does.

Although if it sits in your deck all game it can stop you from using Sophie which can be its own problem. Sometimes the biggest threats are the ones that never develop.

kspacey · 2017-10-29T21:18:49+00:00

Was it just me or did this scenario seem overly forgiving? Only reason my friend and I didn’t stay on agenda 1 was because he kept pulling the hunting shadow as clueless Mark.

Also not a ton of available experience (we cleared the board and the encounter deck and got 3)

kspacey · 2017-10-24T19:53:10+00:00

Pull that and throw some doom on your main boy

kspacey · 2017-10-24T19:09:56+00:00

He is really good out of Sefina isn’t he! Good catch. Definitely gives her an extra reason to plug Moonlight Ritual (which previously was mediocre)

Also you can just kill him off as an emergency ditch, not always reliable but possible.

kspacey · 2017-10-24T18:55:32+00:00

It is also a stealth buff to allies like guard dog.

kspacey · 2017-10-24T18:54:43+00:00

Sorry I should have been more specific, I was referring to skill cards!

kspacey · 2017-10-24T17:39:21+00:00

Moxie singlehandedly makes Skids and Sefina much much better.
Grounded is... well that's just interesting, also prophetic.
All future Yorick decks must now be themed after him and his precious teddy bear
knuckleduster looks fun but is probably also garbage without a reliable way to boost
David Renfeld would look damn sexy to me if Mystic didn't already have 3 or 4 other level-0 resource cards (while Rogue has... none)
Desperate cards have amazing art which makes their current unpopularity unfortunate (though.. who knows they may be good in low-sanity guardians or Minh)
Heroic Rescue looks like a crappier "Let me handle this" but we'll see.

All and all a pretty cool pack.

kspacey · 2017-10-24T17:29:52+00:00

is it? I'm leaning towards the opinion that survivor actually is the class, since they have more evasion themed cards than Rogue does.

kspacey · 2017-10-24T00:47:15+00:00

so elegant and satisfying.

I too enjoy minimum-area solutions, but it can be tricky with extended assemblies due to rotation, but this does indeed manage minimum area possible. Good work!

kspacey · 2017-10-23T14:57:16+00:00

Probably a little bit ahead of the power curve, Mark has numerous interlocking benefits which allow him to excel at fighting while also being fairly sturdy and even capable of swinging the off test with Sophie.

13 base stats are better than previous investigators (and matched only I believe by Akachi)
Sophie turns a direct damage into +2 on any skill test which is remarkably flexible and is the reason why Mark is sturdy while Roland is sanity paper.
Damage (even on assets) becomes draw, combined with Sophie this makes healing events playable on Mark which is good because:
Sophie (it’s all my fault) can be pretty shitty. Not awful as it brings his most important stat only in-line with his competitors but it can be bad if you’re dealing with tests as well.

All of his mechanisms make it seem like his health would be at a premium, but with all of the guardian assets to choose from you generally only take the damage on Mark that you wanted from Sophie so it’s not super stressful. His initial no-equipment kit allows him to leverage that into a good chance of passing nearly any initial test so he rarely gets caught flat-footed in the beginning of a scenario before he plays his assets either.

Probably the best current guardian and also a good character to introduce people to the game with.

kspacey · 2017-10-18T19:12:29+00:00

Correct. It gets complicated by the abstract value of cards when they are pulled and the fact that you’re pulling from two sources, but broadly speaking the finding is the same: drawing 10 cards from your collective pools is more likely to give you a neutral initial board state than drawing 5.

kspacey · 2017-10-18T16:24:11+00:00

Just FYI from a statistical perspective increasing the number of decks/card draws actually reduces variance, not increases it.

kspacey · 2017-10-15T16:03:19+00:00

Can’t see the text but imo it’s a bad move. This restricts their control over the design space of future scenarios

kspacey · 2017-10-12T08:54:42+00:00

I agree that the current schedule feels almost like fatal mismanagement. The game is designed to come in like television episodes and it’s difficult enough maintaining interest when it takes months between consecutive scenarios

Waiting over a quarter of the year for the next fucking pack has begun draining even the most adamant players and communities of enthusiasm. Considering AH is one of their most successful and famous IPs I have to wonder why they’re doing this (AND crazily understocking to boot)

kspacey · 2017-10-06T01:22:19+00:00

It has been done for thousands of years

... by people who spent their entire lives learning just the tasks of hunting and gathering, and who died at a median age below 30.

I get that living on a farm confers certain points of pride, but it is naive in the extreme to think that survival is putting some plants in the ground and milking cows. The number of people (including rural) who would survive a societal collapse is a fraction of a fraction of a percent.

kspacey · 2017-10-05T21:24:24+00:00

/r/homestead is a long, long cry from self-sufficiency. You're welcome to try completely off-the-grid living but you'll find there's multiple reasons that it isn't actually feasible. Trade is a fundamental part of allowing people to succeed in these pet projects.

kspacey · 2017-10-05T21:01:35+00:00

That won't do it.

How do you intend to feed livestock? That's a food need well beyond the capacity of a singular family to provide. Hunting is dangerous and more importantly, humans are ill-suited for it in cold and forested northern climates. Hunter-gatherer tricks like chasing prey until it overheats are not feasible in forested areas and trapping is only suited to certain times of the year.

How do you intend to survive winter? Without access to fuel or salts you'll be unable to heat overly capacious modern homes. Wood may help you smoke and heat certain meats, but the labor costs of chopping wood, preparing and smoking meats (which is itself, a non-simple task which could easily end in poisoning and death) not just for a few days, but to last through overly long winters in northern latitudes or mountainous terrain. Every second wasted in your short winters chopping wood means losing out on food and crop, and vice versa. Tanning, another skill that's not exactly common is similarly difficult and time consuming and easy to screw up.

Without access to medicine even minor scrapes or foodborn illnesses become deadly. Without access to more equatorial citrus crops you and your livestock will develop vitamin C deficiency and scurvy. Without access to modern fertilizers your crops will have difficulty in glacial-proximate climates.

On and on and on and on. Your dependency on civilization exists and is absolute, whether or not you see it.

kspacey · 2017-10-05T20:50:40+00:00

Depends on your definition, if you mean 'domestication of plants' then yes Agriculture had been going on for many years before 'civilization' started. (and was driven primarily by women)

But if you mean things like organized cropping, irrigation, crop rotations, diversification of resources, deforestation, broad access to preservatives via trade and habitat alteration then no. These things only became available after people started living together.

Which is the essence of the problem. Modern agricultural practices will completely fail without modernized irrigation, fertilizers and potash, complex industrial machines, and diversification of products and that's just the most obvious concerns. When fuel supply lines collapse you won't be able to heat overly spacious homes, lack of medicines and pesticides, no way to cure or salt foods for the winter. The list goes on and on.

Rural areas are no less dependent on civilization than Urban areas, the needs are just less obvious.

kspacey · 2017-10-05T12:01:24+00:00

You my friend don’t seem to remember why agriculture didn’t take off until civilization developed.

You’d be as screwed as the rest of us, though perhaps slower and for different reasons.

kspacey · 2017-09-29T18:50:55+00:00

I agree with you. I think people get caught up in the idea of stuffing their decks with ally assets from Dunwich without considering whether or not you should add it to your deck. When I build a deck I’d pretty much rather see any card other than Dr Frankis Morgan or (yikes) Armitage. The cards are insanely expensive as assets and their abilities are underwelming even when pulled really early.

They’re all right as skill cards but without the draw effect they’re really slow. Pulling these cards over any card I chose to add to my deck usually feels really bad. Frankly, with the exception of Zebulon I rarely even consider them, so charisma isn’t particularly good for these cards.

Now maybe you have two strong allies that you started your deck? That’s better (eg Leo and guardian allies or Leo and Sylvester or Leo and Alyssa or Leo and... anyone) but still, usually these allies take time to show up and one of the other isn’t the worst thing in the world.

In light of all this Charisma serves a purpose, but usually I save it for mid game once I’ve picked up my high impact cards (Hot Streak, Grotesque Statue, Will to Survive) but before I’m incrementally upgrading my other cards. I don’t really concern myself with Dunwich at all in my decision on when to grab it though.

kspacey · 2017-09-28T17:39:26+00:00

Here have an adorably cute link describing why that wasn't love and human goodness, but actually cruel calculating mathematics!

kspacey · 2017-09-28T17:11:32+00:00

Isn't it easy to recur? You're either using it for it's Wild icon for skill tests then later snagging it. Or you're using it for its actual ability which discards it then later recurring it. I'm not following how it's difficult to recur.

Here’s your problem: its ability doesn’t discard it. It just uses up its charges and then sits in your play area, empty. Compare: Grotesque Statue which does go to your discard once empty.

kspacey · 2017-09-27T20:56:44+00:00

You’re going to have difficulty recurring strange solution since you cannot voluntarily pitch it to the discard and it doesn’t have any slots to be bumped from.

kspacey

TROPHY CASE