I read some saddened article a minute ago, and I was asking myself what was your best trick, using a "poker effect" ?

In a way to clear the definition, let's say that it's a situation where you player A, try to catch the B player onto a strategy he may avoid if is clever enough ^^.

It might deal with bluff, or particular effects which take benefits of the use of your hand (where your cards are hidden), to create special conditions which might lead you to victory.

The most popular one is the use of your hand as a threat :

You leave one domain open during your opponent's turn, which has no use if you don't get an action designed to take profit of this domain. You might have it or not in your hand ... But you don't do anything, rubbing your card in your hand, like if you were waiting to use it with parcimony. This threat is here to keep a little hazard, something weird enough to make your opponent thinking twice before he attacks. and sometimes it works.

You can increase the strategie by poker attitude (leaving your hand on the ground and taking it while your opponent's story phase begin, just like if you were about to play something huge!), and weirdness on the table.

I use to increase this, using card like Demon Lover, Clover Bouncer and stuffs that allow you to uncommit (Celano's Fragments).First, your opponent will judge that you've made a mistake commiting your demon, and you'll need to help him think he's right (rolling your eyes, using dramatic looks or anything that might drive him on YOUR road to victory) and then you might use the best configuration. That's easy enough a young cutist use to practice it. But don't do this too often or you'll gonna be the one your opponent won't like the way he plays ... ^^

What is your best trick ?

Beneath the Mire is pretty good. I walked into that one at Stahleck, lost a good amount of characters. I kept undercommitting the rest of the day when a domain was open.

Terror of the Tides is a good, but risky one. Spawn of Madness is a good enabler, and it also works nicely with other struggle-reaction cards, if you resolve the responses in the right order.

It's always a dangerous proposition to bluff, though. You have to have the trick a couple of times before they catch on, and you can fake it out. There may be some upcoming ones that are pretty good... It takes a little risk, but if you can convince your playgroup that you have enough tricks, and they learn how to play around them, they can be quite effective...

one of my favorites is undercommit. send one or two characters at a story that would get slaughter easily, but with the right cards you can have your guys survive and do damage. baiting them into a trap is always fun.

I am a lousy poker player, but do try to bluff whether I'm in a strong OR a weak position.

If we are talking about traps, I pulled a good one last week.

Playing the Cthulhu and Shub factions together (highlander, core set only) and the game was almost over. Each player had won two stories, but my opponent had four successes on a story, and major character advantage. On my turn I FINALLY drew Shocking Transformation and was TEMPTED to use it to bring the Ravager (Which I had not yet seen, but needed badly) into play. In a moment of inspiration, I decided to wait until my opponent's turn to use that powerful card. Left one of my domains refreshed looking disappointed.

On his turn he dog-piled EVERY one of his eight ready characters onto the story to make sure of a skill win.

Event:Shocking. Commit Ravager. Send SIX of his characters to discard, to the accompaniment of much whinge-ing and wailing.

That's gotta be my favorite so far.

Chick

In my meta bluffing is a waste of time.

The philosophy here is, 'force them to play the card if they have it'

so the game situation is taken at face value. Of course if I have extra

resources I'll over-commit to cover for possible cards my opponent might play.

I might also hold cards to counter my opponents play but I never allow myself to be

bluffed.

chicklewis said:

did he still win with the other two characters?

PJAholic asked: " Did he still win with the other two characters?"

Not a prayer. I continued to commit characters to that story until he lost another character in the combat struggle, leaving only (exhausted) Y'golonac on his side of the board during my turn. I put three successes down that turn (Thanks to Bounty Hunter !), successfully defended again, and won on the 2nd subsequent turn.

@ Hybrid : you may be right saying it depends on the meta. Mine has a huge amount of ccg players that are analyzing everything that hit the table. And sometimes the bluff is a good strategy to weaken your opponent, while he try to understand what the hell you're doing.

I do love to bluff, playing Hastur a lot ! That faction allow you to leave a domain open and smile to you opponent, inviting him to commit in the fear of a sudden "Power drain" or anything that can screw his whole strategy down to pieces. Of course it need you to have a good reading of the whole game. And then bluff is a nice way to enable a kind of "madness" strategy, where your opponent will fear every domain you'll leave open (but it has a counter part : you'll need to keep at least three cards in hand, to keep credibility !)

Speaking about one of the best trick this game offers, I do think that poker advantage is just a matter of stealth and will (don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I've got some, I'm still learning !!!):

You might turn a bad position into a confortable one as long as your opponent believes he don't take advantage on you yet. Your game needs to be effective in consideration of your ressources and you have to play good characters thought. You need'nt attack as long as your opponent might think that you have a specific reason to wait. That's the key, IMM, to success a bluff.

The only problem is that the change to LCG did restraint our hands to X3, and your opponent knows that your possibility to draw a good reaction is smaller than it was in the past CCG times ...

I agree on Beneath the Mire being one of the few workable cards (the only?).

This is also the way my old meta played, so I have always approached the game with that mentality. If they have the card, they have to play it eventually. Waiting around just stalls your own game. Better to get the card out of their hand and start recovering from it. I play the exact same way that you described, Hybrid.

Hybrid said:

The bluff is NOT just that you might play the card. If your opponent thinks you probably have a trick up your sleeve, he will go right ahead and commit to the story, but he might commit 4 characters instead of only the two he thinks he needs 'for sure'. Those extra (un-necessary) character exhaustions could be a big advantage to the bluffer.

Typically, if over-commiting to cover for the potenial of my opponent playing a card

that will hamper my efforts, if this over-commitment will put me in a bad situation

for the next turn then I will not over commit. I'll play it straight up and suffer the consequences

of whatever they have up their sleeve. For me there are no 'never's or 'always'. There is alot to

consider for certain game situations.

A nice one was done against me some weeks ago.

In mixed boarders, my opponent start the game ressourcing 2 Miska + 1 Shubb ressources at each domain. Then the first Miska domain grows up to five. I was waiting for an Historic Discovery, but my opponent used the domain to play Sir Brinton.

I feelt quite safe preparing a nice Power drain against the possible discovery, but there was no more room for it, so, I did choose to use some event to drive brinton, which was commited on a story, insane.

I was sure my opponent would rather play the Miska part of his strategy than the shubb one, and this was a bad decision, as my opponent played a Time to Reap with the domain left unused (with only one ressource). He was then able to win the story right before resolving it, I was totally pulled off !!

As he never used this domain, I was sure he did'nt manage to get something using it. This was a kind of bluff, as I did'nt event thought about this possibility, despite the domain was left open during the whole game !