Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Card Review: The Dream-Eaters

It's the most magical time of the year again: Time for a new AHLCG deluxe expansion! The newest cycle comes with a full roster of exciting investigators (whom I'll be talking about in a separate post) and two keywords. The first of these keywords is Bonded, previewed in Before the Black Throne. I have my own post on that, of course, but to say this expansion threw a curveball at it would be an understatement. In fact, it threw the glove at me, then ran off the mound to play water polo: These new Bonded cards do all sorts of crazy things with the mechanic, to the point where it's now impossible to generalize it. The other keyword is the brand-new Myriad, which lets you take three copies of a given card for the experience cost of one, making it easier to find the card and enabling effects that care about multiple copies of the same card.

This expansion's a bit of an odd one in that it's thoroughly tied to those two mechanics. Every single card I'm about to review either has a Bonded card or is Myriad (or both, in one case). The Dreamlands are weird, and normalcy is but an illusion. Let's dive in!


The Hungering Blade

We start off with a weapon that has a unique drawback. An unconditional +1 to damage is extremely powerful, but the Hungering Blade comes with a set of three bonded weaknesses to punish the unwary. That effect is nasty if you can't pay the price. Sure, it's only one horror, but you've got three copies, and they reshuffle themselves, so you'll quickly find yourself overwhelmed if you don't get some blood on the blade.

If you do have the offerings, the Blade quickly becomes one of the strongest melee weapons in the game. One appeased Bloodlust gives you a Machete without an engagement requirement. Two of them give you a Timeworn Brand at level 1. If you manage to get all three, you can start considering that free trigger to deal three damage per swing.

In short, it's another "mini-quest" on par with Hawk-Eye Folding Camera. The quest is a bit harder, but the reward is better, too. Now, I was initially dismissive of the Camera, but I've since then come around to it. The "mini-quest" is a downside, but not a crippling one. You might need to use a more accurate weapon to soften enemies up before finishing them off with the Blade, but you'll need spare weapons in your deck anyway. Reliable makes it far easier to use the Blade at its weakest, and later on lets you be more liberal with the free trigger on Bloodlust (though, needless to say, you should only use that when you already have the offerings to spare). Once you get the first Bloodlust attached, you should be hacking away reliably enough to buy the others when they come up (outside true solo play or certain enemy-light scenarios).

One other significant downside that merits mentioning: If the Hungering Blade leaves play, you can never get it back. The weakness shuffle is a cost, not a forced effect, and they don't get set aside when the Blade leaves play. They will then proceed to tear your mind to shreds, as you can no longer spend offerings on them. Be very, very careful about asset hate, and never be in a situation where a bad encounter draw and/or chaos pull will cost you your weapon.

Right of first refusal for this card should go to Mark. His outstanding base combat lets him use the Blade to great effect even before Bloodlust shows up, and his remarkable card draw lets him get the attachments quickly (though, conversely, it also means he can draw Bloodlust too early if he's not careful). Otherwise, anyone with Seeker access (the detectives and, if she's willing to spend the slots, Zoey) can use card draw to find Bloodlust when necessary and mitigate the "Limit 1 per deck" drawback. In particular, Rook can practically call up Bloodlusts on command, and Horowitz can fetch the blade herself if need be (just don't rely on the latter in certain scenarios or The Circle Undone). Otherwise, Yorick and (to a lesser extent) Tommy are ludicrously tanky enough that they might not even care if they fail a couple of Bloodlusts, letting them hang on to the early Blade until they find some sufficiently weak prey.


Solemn Vow

Guardians have lots of ways to protect their fellow investigators; Solemn Vow takes it up a notch by letting them directly transfer damage and horror to themselves or cards they control. Now, in theory, this doesn't actually reduce the amount of damage/horror the party takes, but redistributing those tokens is still pretty valuable. A single damage token is far less meaningful on Zoey than it is on Sefina, after all, and giving some relief to a teammate with an unlucky run of focused encounter cards can save the entire party.

Of course, that's before we start going into the combos. A damage token may be less meaningful on Zoey than on Sefina, but it's even less meaningful on Yorick's Leather Coat, and downright beneficial on Calvin. Carolyn can put horror onto Peter Sylvester for free money, Mark can put damage on any card for emergency draw, and Tommy can put any token on any soak card to maximize its eventual sacrifice. Diana gets particular use out of it as a means of reliably dispatching Initiates and Eschatologists alike. There are also a few cards with incidental healing that can be "wasted" if you're not injured, such as the upgraded Enchanted Blade. Lastly, in the rare situation where you want to be defeated (eg, to trigger Cheat Death, or get more trauma on Calvin, or preempt a doomed skill test on an especially nasty treachery), Solemn Vow can pull it off in any player window.

The Myriad keyword isn't especially meaningful here. In theory, it lets you put a Vow on each of your teammates in a four-player game, but in practice there's going to be a limit on how much punishment you can take. Not even Yorick can take damage forever (he'll survive, sure, but it'll keep him from using his ability more proactively), so having more than one copy in play is more about flexibility than anything else. I'd probably stick with two copies barring an extremely valuable synergy (such as being Calvin). Still, if nothing else, two willpower makes an excellent commit.


Segment of Onyx

Thanks to the Myriad keyword, we now have what can be considered a "reverse bonded" card. Rather than one card which fetches three others when played, we have three cards which combine into a single, powerful one. This creates another sort of "mini-quest" that demands either plenty of deck-searching or tearing through your deck Minh-style to find the three Segments and unleash their considerable potential. And that potential is truly considerable: With the Pendant of the Queen in play, you can easily clear distant Victory locations, teleport across the map, or protect the group from monsters (and don't forget there's a player window between enemy movement and attacks, so it's easy to set up a counterattack).

So, is it worth it? If you're going the search route, it's a little questionable. If you pull one up with, say, Rook, you have to ask yourself if one Segment is really better than any of the eight other cards you're looking at. If you think of each Segment as a single Pendant charge, it's a good idea, but if you don't get all three Segments you've wasted a powerful draw effect. Hitting one with Backpack or Horowitz is more efficient (since you've got fewer targets to choose from), though attaching one to Horowitz should never be your Plan A. Daisy can use this strategy to great effect thanks to her Old Book of Lore, and Mandy can make anyone better at pulling it off. Don't forget that Studious can increase your odds of getting a copy in your opening hand (which in turn increases the value of additional copies, to the point where Rook can be worthwhile).

The draw-heavy route, conversely, is far better at rebuilding the Pendant. Not only do you not have to gamble with your search effects, but also, when the Pendant is expended, you reshuffle the Segments back into a thinner deck to more easily reclaim them (provided, of course, you were able to refrain from emptying your deck in those three turns). Minh gets particular value from this strategy, since the Segments synergize nicely with Scavenging and Dark Horse.


Astounding Revelation

The most interesting thing about Astounding Revelation is not the card itself, but the archetype it promises to introduce. It's the first non-Bonded Seeker event to not have the Insight trait; instead, it has the Research trait (which it shares with Mandy's signature). This gives it a special trigger if you discover it by searching, while actually drawing it gives you nothing more than a single intellect commit. It improves search-heavy decks and becomes useless in draw-heavy ones.

The main beneficiary of the Research mechanic is Daisy. Between Old Book of Lore and Arcane Initiate, she can search six cards every single turn forever once she's set up. Mandy also benefits thanks to her ability dig deep even with shallow searches, though her own signatures cause some interference and she can't search forever. Luke also benefits from Arcane Initiate; he can't search quite as much as Daisy, but he searches well enough that he'll rarely find a Research card clogging in his hand. For other characters, Research cards are mostly something you take if you're already going for Rook or No Stone Unturned or Research Librarian.

As for Astounding Revelation itself (rather than the mechanic in general), it works best in Luke, since he needs to pay for spells and can take the secret option to recharge Dayana (who's quite powerful with him). Daisy doesn't have Dayana, of course, but the resources are still helpful to pay for her minor spells and the boosts she needs to cast them reliably. Mandy finds it less useful unless she decides to take pricey events (like Services) with a Rogue subclass, but she'll never say no to a recharge for Rook.


Crystallizer of Dreams

We now abandon the established 3:1 ratio of bonded cards for an accessory that drags in a single copy of its own special weakness as an additional cost. Seems you've got your hands on some hot merchandise, and the rightful owner is both very angry and also an indefatigable demon from beyond space and time that will pursue you to the ends of the earth and beyond. Luckily, the Guardian is solidly average: Not something you can write off altogether, but easy enough to deal with. It's mostly an annoyance that can screw you over if it shows up at the right moment.

As for the Crystallizer itself, it's an excellent card for any event-focused build. It's common practice to give some of the more situational events double icons, including the entire Service cycle, so using them with the Crystallizer is an excellent bonus. Even the single-icon events are a nice boost; the value you get from the Crystallizer is virtually unmatched for its price. I'd say it's practically a must-have for Sefina and Preston, and a solid option for anyone else who can access it.

(It also, incidentally forms a particularly broken combo with Wendy's Amulet: Using the Crystallizer replaces the event's usual discard, which means the Amulet can't replace it, which in turn means you can commit it and get it back on the discard, which means Wendy can recur any event with skill icons forever.)


Easy Mark

As a simple economy card, you can think of Easy Mark as an Emergency Cache that trades 1 resource for an extra draw. That can itself be a pretty attractive deal for most Rogues, since they can easily make up the extra money with their other economy cards and can use the extra draw to find their Exceptional cards. Thanks to the Myriad keyword, you can get up to three copies of Easy Mark with a single experience point, making it a lightweight addition and potentially quite attractive to investigators like Leo.

Of course, Easy Mark is more than just its on-play effect: Triggering its response ability can make for a nice bonus. I wouldn't recommend going out of your way for it, though. The card replacement benefit is offset by the downside of letting Easy Mark clog up your hand for multiple turns, and by the time you get all three copies in hand, you're usually late enough in the game that it won't make a difference. In general, you should play Easy Mark as soon as you have the spare action (unless you're worried about specific resource-draining effects like Paranoia), rather than going for the combo play.


Stargazing

In what's probably the weirdest implementation of the Bonded keyword, this card comes with an encounter-backed event. Playing Stargazing adds what can be considered a benevolent treachery to the encounter deck. While The Stars Are Right has a bit of utility in letting you spread card draw or spare actions around (and, occasionally, taking an action outside the investigation phase is useful: Say, to trigger Agnes or Mark's abilities, or to play Calling in Favors on the Red-Gloved Man), its biggest selling point is that it takes the place of a harsher card.

The most effective use of this card requires a bit of scenario knowledge. An ill-timed encounter deck reshuffle or discard effect can make Stargazing a wasted play, particularly at low player counts. Be sure you know what, if any, encounter deck manipulation your fellow players are bringing to the table as well: You don't want to interfere with someone else's On the Hunt or make Norman nervous about Split the Angle.

Those caveats aside, it's a solid card. You probably have an intuitive sense of what it's worth to essentially skip one encounter draw thanks to those rare but blessed times when you draw an enemy that can't spawn or a Mysterious Chanting in the witching hour or something similar; one action is a fair price for that. Probably the only investigator who doesn't want it is Patrice, who can't time it to avoid reshuffles and has a decent chance of being forced to commit it (though at least it's got a wild icon). Other than her, it's a matter of priorities: Stargazing is probably a bit of a luxury upgrade, though it's easily an affordable one.


Open Gate

So, this card pretty much breaks movement-related difficulty over its knee. If you've got a decently-sized map with lots of backtracking, two copies of this will save your team a truly absurd amount of actions. If you know you'll have to be at a certain location later (whether to resign or advance the act), just throw a copy down while you're there and teleport your team to victory later. If you stumble across a Victory location with a particular gimmick that some other investigator could handle better, pop open a gate and you can let your teammate through at any later date. It doesn't even cost an action!

There are really only two drawbacks to Open Gate. The first is that it's useless if you've only got one copy in play. That's easily bypassed since it's a Spell and also Myriad, making it the easiest job your Arcane Initiate has ever had. The second is that there are a handful of scenarios where its essentially just a sub-par commit: Extremely linear scenarios, scenarios with heavily connected maps, and scenarios with shifting locations. It'd be easier to list all of those scenarios than to list all the scenarios where Open Gate is incredible, and most of them are at the end of the campaign anyway (so you can just replace Open Gate with something else).


Miss Doyle

The Cat General hearkens back to those original Bonded cards back in Before the Black Throne, except rather than summoning three copies of one card, she summons one copy each of three different cards. All three are mutually exclusive, let you take a single action at base skill 5, and can be discarded to automatically succeed. You can even replace the discard with a reshuffle to recur one of the other cats. Quite the handy team.

Augur is probably the most useful of the cats, since the basic investigate action is the most useful action in the game. She's fully compatible with most investigation boosters (the main exception being Fingerprint Kit), and even if you don't need her bonus, the automatic success can be a big help against high-Shroud locations. Also, as it is an automatic success rather than a testless clue, it clears Obscuring Fog and triggers other investigation-based effects like Scavenging and Milan Christopher.

Hope comes in second. Evasion may not be as permanent as combat, but the upside is that it requires no assets to be effective. Someone like Minh Thi Phan can get Hope into play and rest easy knowing that she'll always have a way out if an enemy shows up. Of course, the consequences for failing to evade when you've got no other self-defense in play are pretty dire, so the automatic success option is quite handy. Even a competent evader like Rita can use the auto-success to save some resources against high-evasion enemies. Also, note the difference between automatic evasion and an evasion that succeeds automatically: The former is not a "successful evasion," so it cannot clear Patrice's weakness or add resources to the Harbinger; Hope's ability, on the other hand, is a successful evasion, so it does trigger those effects.

Zeal is the least useful, mostly because there's not as much need for a basic fight action. That's not to say she isn't useful, though. You'll normally want to deal at least +1 damage if you're bothering with the chaos bag, but a single point of effectively testless damage is very valuable. There's a reason Guardians take Mano a Mano, and Zeal lacks all of that card's restrictions.

Doyle's a great pick for any investigator who can spare the ally slot, so who gets right of first refusal? Calvin and Patrice are in hot competition for the top spot: Calvin can can all but guarantee his success when merely exhausting a cat, and Patrice can both easily find the cats and use them to negate her weakness. Second tier goes to Ashcan Pete, since he has terrible base stats and can use his ability to ready the cats or Duke as needed to compensate. Right behind him is Preston, with his love of testless benefits. Afterwards, we have all the various specialized investigators (like Minh, Wendy, and Tommy) who can cover multiple weaknesses with the cats. Last place is Agnes and Silas, who probably only have one cat apiece that they really want, depending on build.


Fortuitous Discovery

Finishing off the new set, we have a Fortune card with the grave misfortune of being printed after Winging It. The first copy of Fortuitous Discovery is an ordinary investigation, the second is Winging It from the discard, and the third is extremely good. Fortuitous Discovery does have the advantage of being a bit easier to get in the discard pile (the first copy's free, after all), but any discard-themed deck is going to feed those cards to either their investigator ability or Cornered anyway.

Fortuitous Discovery really only pulls ahead of Winging It if you're able to reliable play that third copy. That mostly limits it to Patrice, Minh, and Red Mandy (or some sort of absurd Wendy/Preston combo that uses You Owe Me One to steal the other player's Discovery, but that's almost too janky to mention). Even then, Winging It is usually more reliable. Plus, if you don't want Winging It, it's probably because you're either using an incompatible asset (like Rite of Seeking or Fingerprint Kit) or just not investigating at all, so why would you need Fortuitous Discovery? Red Mandy might want Fortuitous Discovery since she lacks a reliable means of discarding Winging It. It's a pass for most other Survivors (unless they really need five investigation events for some reason).

1 comment:

  1. "There's a reason Guardians take Mano a Mano" - is that reason ' I lost all but 29 of my other cards and I need Mano a Mano to make a legal deck? :P. I tried Mano once and now you couldn't pay me XP to put it in a deck!

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