Talent Cards and why they deserve our love

One of the biggest unknowns at this stage of AH:TCG’s lifecycle is – how well will designers handle the character development? Will we be excited, adding new, stronger card to our decks? Will we have interesting choices and dilemmas? Will we feel like the investigators we play are growing in strength as the campaign progresses and they gather experience?

I really like what I have seen in the preview of Blood on the Altar, featuring 2 out of 5 new Talent cards¹. Why? There are few reasons why!

I wouldn't draw a person in glasses for the Keen Eye card...

 The most important aspect of 2 new cards is their “Permanent” keyword. First of all, they do not count against the deck size. Thanks to that, you don’t need to remove a card from your deck in order to add one of them. In fact, they actually INCREASE size of your deck! How is it possible? It’s simple – if you decide to include them, you most probably can remove a level 0 talent card from your deck. I am aware, they do not provide a bonus to the same pair of skills, but still the chances are, you decide to remove the weaker talent from your deck.

This touches fundamental challenge of deck upgrading – many of the level 0 cards are of a great significance to a deck. Exchanging them for a new, high level card might not be a deck improvement at all. There are few ways of dealing with this issue. The easiest solution are higher level versions of a card with the same name (let’s say 0 and 2 level versions of Lucky!). While it works fairly well for some cards and is a way to deal with some of the upgrades, it’s not always the best key (bit more of a detailed explanation has been provided by me here). Another alternative is to replace a card with another one, playing a similar role (let’s say Shotgun instead of Machete).

Finally, the third option is a card with a “Permanent” keyword. The even more ingenious design of the “Talent” cards helps even further to deal with the deck size problem (creating the aforementioned slot). It’s therefore the only upgrade path, which enables you to add new cards with new roles to the deck (in place of the remove 0 level talents).

Bloodletting - a controversial treatment

There are also two minor reasons for me to like the previewed cards. They mitigate chance for a bad luck of a draw, providing you with means of dealing with the scenario from the very first action even if you happen not to get a strong hand. It is even more important in further scenarios (where you can use them) – if you get very unlucky in the first scenario, you can just start the campaign from scratch with minimum wasted time. If it happens in the middle, however, it is very often a strongly negative playing experience.²  

Lastly, they are more than just stronger versions of level 0 talents, they use a new design. Not only it’s fresh, which is good by itself. The new design is also encouraging more of an interesting planning than the 0 level talents do (and, as I've already mentioned, boost a different pair of skills!). Keen Eye encourages you to take advantage of the increased skill value for the entire phase, hence forcing a choice to either fight/investigate 3 times in one turn or waste part of its benefits. Blood Pact has even more of an interesting approach, as adding doom tokens is a very delicate matter (also note how incredibly thematic this card is!).

At the end of the article I’d like to make a prediction. I predict we’ll see higher level versions of signature cards in the far future (around 3^rd campaign cycle or so). Let’s see if I guessed correctly!

¹ The preview uses a bolded word “Talent” to describe them, which suggests it’s a trait, shared by all five of them. However, the Blood Pact card does not have the Talent trait printed on it. It might be just an unfinished version of a card, or maybe the article’s author made a minor mistake.

²I have briefly touched the subject of the luck in the board games in the introduction. The question, whether a sudden loss due to a string of unfortunate random events is a good playing experience in Lovecraftian universe has also been briefly mentioned there (towards the end of the article). It is worth noting, that in a recently published preview of “Investigators of Arkham” FFG designers openly admitted a major difference between purely Lovecraftian view on the world and the Arkham Files setting. In Lovecraft’s work Mythos beings are invincible. The doom is imminent and cannot be stopped by human hands. People, even humanity in general are powerless and meaningless in the cold, uncaring universe. Since it does not make a good background for a cooperative game, that is supposed to be won every now and then, Arkham Files characters are portrayed as willing and able to resist the otherworldly powers to a degree and to repel them at least for time being.

All images are courtesy of cardgamedb.com and fantasyflightgames.com

Undimensioned and Unseen Preview

When it comes to board games I am quite an addict. I read rules for fun, check for new games on regular basis and read forums related to all my favorite games. Some of them multiple times per day (I hope my manager does not read this blog ;) ).

I regularly open FFG main page to check for updates. I was very thrilled to see another expansion pack announced - Undimensioned and Unseen.

 

I don’t like to spoil myself even a tiniest bit of encounter deck. I love, however, to read preview of new player cards. This time we were presented with 2 new cards, which seems quite a standard practice of Fantasy flight Games.

"Turn left! I meant right!"

 

Quick Thinking is a very thematic card, which continues to build an interesting archetype of Rogue investigators as decisive, adaptive and versatile (all of their skill cards so far feature a Wild icon!). It also expands the idea of extra action, as well as succeeding by 2 or more (both being mostly related to the Rogue class). Its biggest strength is having multiple of possible uses, one of which (interrupting a turn of fellow investigator to help them with an enemy).

There is a slight drawback/cost. Technically speaking the card does help with passing the test. However to use it primarily for this purpose is a waste of card’s potential (although when it’s desperately needed, it’ll be used as poor man’s unexpected courage). In order to get the extra action you need to succeed by 2, which means, you need to overcommit to a test (and unless you have a way to control the draw of Chaos Token, overcommit by a wide margin). This means spending cards and/or resources. So in fact, it would mean it’s just a way of turning them into extra action through the use of Quick Thinking. Action is of course not equal an action, sometimes they are more valuable and Quick Thinking helps to get one, when it’s most urgently needed (bit like Shortcut, though both also feature tricks of their own). Another scenario is, where you actually want to succeed by a wide margin (.41 Derringer, for instance). Also note, that when used by the active investigator it nicely stacks with Opportunist.

This is exactly kind of design I’m looking for – thematic, encouraging team playing and presenting with multiple options, both for deckbuilding and playing. I am very keen to put it in my deck, just need to be patient.

I have mixed feelings for Rite of Seeking (Level 4). I wouldn’t like the character’s development to move in a direction, where simply the difficulty of skill checks grows and so does the skill value. Consider two scenarios. In the first scenario, you fight a monster with Fight value of 3, having combat of 5. In the second one monster with Fight value of 7 is faced by investigator with Combat of 9. They are not really different, are they? It does not create a new experience or any interesting choices.

On the other hand, such cards seem to be necessary and playing their role. First of all, they encourage specialization. You need the team fighter with high Combat, to take down the monster with fight value of 7 (to continue using my previous combat-related example), fragile Seeker can handle less and less enemies on his own. And specialization also contributes to importance of team work. Moreover, on the deck-building level you need to decide – do I take stronger Rite of Seeking or a stronger Shrivelling (not there yet, but kinda bound to happen)? Which side of my character should I boost? 

What do you think about the recent preview?