I will preface this by saying that I love this game. I have gone through the core campaign several times with different groups now and also through and everything campaign. I have had a lot of success with Roland (my favorite character to play so far), Daisy, and Jim. I have been trying to take on Ashcan Pete since I saw him as perhaps the better of the two current survivor characters....I have found the class to be underwhelming so far. They have great cards to splash into other decks, but when trying to build a primary Survivor deck, I just don't find them to have much. Anyone had luck with them so far? If so what have you done?

I've been enjoying playing Ashcan Pete thus far and he's one of my favorite characters. Duke is so very good. I also liked playing Wendy in the Core Set.

In Wendy's case, there are some solid Rogue cards that are able to minimize her weaknesses. 2x Backstab and Sneak Attack seem to be essential, and she's excellent at Evading enemies to allow the hitters time to deal with them.

With Ashcan Pete, you get a free action to move thanks to Duke's search ability and he's a 4 Fight to throw down with. There's some interesting Level 0 cards to flesh him out with. Mystics have some interesting options and you can't go wrong with a Guard Dog or Beat Cop. And given his discard to straighten Duke ability, card draw of some kind would be useful, like Laboratory Assistant. Figuring out the best 5 choices of out-of-class Level 0s is still a work in progress for me, mind you, so experiment.

I'm not a big fan of Survivors myself. Probably more than any of the other classes they have a very distinct style to them. So much of their stuff gives you benefits for being down, or failing, or having few resources, that I just never feel comfortable with them. Which, to be fair, seems to be exactly what they're designed to be so they're great... it just doesn't fit my style. I actually feel a lot of the same about Mystics - if you've got the spells you need, you rock. If you don't, or they run out, you're struggling.

I don't think it helps that both the Survivors are very odd characters. Wendy's signature ability is REALLY hard to manage well, and often blocks itself. Ashcan may be great - but he's so weird I honestly can't figure him out yet.

1 hour ago, Buhallin said:

I don't think it helps that both the Survivors are very odd characters. Wendy's signature ability is REALLY hard to manage well, and often blocks itself. Ashcan may be great - but he's so weird I honestly can't figure him out yet.

Odd...nothing about Wendy's ability blocks itself. In fact, it's probably the most powerful base ability in the game.

All I know is that in the run through of the base set campaign I had Wendy and she rocked the house while my friend played Roland and he struggled a lot. Part of that was he had bad luck on getting weapons out but I loved the survivor cards for Wendy.

Since it's an FFG Arkham game, you lose a lot, or at least have a bad time.

Therefore Survivor's 'thing' of winning by losing, would normally be bad/unreliable/hard to leverage in competitive card game - but here it's actually really good.

Wendy and Ashcan are both great, Rabbits Foot, Scavenging, Look What I Found, Lucky are some of the best cards in the game.

Survivor's theme of "winning by losing", as Jonboyjon1990 puts it, is not a traditional CCG theme where you want consistency and not to be in a position of losing. However, in this game, you can actually manipulate your draws to have a better chance of putting yourself in the position to succeed through failing. As Jon points out, Lucky and Look What I Found are two of the best cards in the game for tests and fairly easy to control the triggering of them.

As for Wendy's signature, its very good if you can play it later in the game. Playing it too early means that you can't benefit from all the Events in your discard pile, but giving yourself an effective double-digit hand to work with (albeit in top-down order) is a very powerful ability if it gets set up right and you have the resources for it. Being able to replay 3rd or even 4th copies of powerful cards is nothing to sneeze at.

I wouldn't describe a survivor theme as 'winning by losing', but rather that many cards provide compensation if you fail a test, hopefully increasing your efficiency average over the course of a game.

I play Wendy and I have her essentially designed to pass tests through failing them. I don't use any of the fighting cards, she just tests and makes a run for it to the next place. Pretty successful so far in a support role.

I think the big advantage of survivor is that it is up front success potential. If you are even on a test (2 lore vs 2 shroud, ect) with any other character you would think "nope, draw for an item, get equipped." With survivor you just take your chances... If you win, then you win and save your cards. If you fail, you play a card and win anyway.. or at least get something out of it. Get a few cards that actually bonus your stats, like fire ax or peter, and you're set to win the game honestly.

On 3/16/2017 at 0:59 AM, Gaffa said:

Odd...nothing about Wendy's ability blocks itself. In fact, it's probably the most powerful base ability in the game.

Sorry - I meant signature as in her signature card - the Amulet. Shouldn't have said "ability" there.

Her amulet is tricky. You need to have played a few events before it's useful. Luckily it's also a double wild for purposes of committing so it can be useful that way if you can't get it out for practicality reasons as an asset.