Nice card for Crabs

seems great with wichhunter, moutain does not fall, reprieve..

Not only for crabs. It's a nice splash card that should be useful for any clan. Maybe even more since the other clans tend to include less holdings than crabs thus improving the chance to flip a character.

Like Unicorn!

Assuming you are Playing Crab.

Upside: Free Body (Big upside), you get to see another card.

Downside: Really restrictive to play with no guaranteed outcome. You could flip a holding (Which to be fair, still has a good chance of helping to prevent a break unless you flip Funeral Pyre, but then you might get a card). You could flip a unique that is already in play and fizzle. Only works on Defense. Only works if your opponent targets a face-down province to attack (or you slide them into it via unicorn shenanigans). Does not work on the stronghold. Does not work for Political.

I am unsure on this card. Initial reaction is "This is good", but after further processing, "This seems hard to use."

The worst scenario is flipping a unique like Mirith said.

But for Crab seems good cause can be a game changer, I see a strong uni splash with captive audience and fallen in battle.

Even if your opponent attacks a revealed province If you have a charge you can do a great surprise combo.

And theres many good chars to appear, wichhunter, kisada, engineer, the guy who give fate when dies, the new berserker..

And the combo with the mountain does not fall and reprieve is pretty awesome.

Besides that we have the well known combo wicthhunter + spyglass for uni splash.

Seems a fun deck, I would like to include maybe 2 copies, seems worth the risks for 0 cost.

38 minutes ago, Yakamo no Oni said:

Not only for crabs. It's a nice splash card that should be useful for any clan. Maybe even more since the other clans tend to include less holdings than crabs thus improving the chance to flip a character.

Then they would have to splash Crab

What if there's a character there already? If you can't put the character into play, this card is lousy. It's a free-Charge that has a different set of restrictions.

Oh I forgot dash characters. Military Dash characters won't work with this either. Crab doesn't have any of those, but one could make an argument of running Otomo Courtier out of Crab to balance out the political.

Pre-emptive rules attack! Note that you MUST flip a character face-up (Can't already be face up) to trigger the ability.

Page 16 of the Rules Reference

Quote

The word “Then”

If the effect text of a card ability includes the word “then,” the text preceding the word then must be successfully resolved in full (i.e. the game state must change to reflect the intent of the pre-then aspect of the effect in its entirety) before the remainder of the effect described after the word “then” can be resolved.

◊ If the pre-then aspect of an effect does successfully resolve in full, the resolution of the post-then aspect of the effect must also attempt to resolve.

◊ If the pre-then aspect of an effect does not successfully resolve in full, the post-then aspect does not attempt to resolve.

!!!WOW!!!

Holy cow...... I need a few of these in my deck.... ?

Just now, Mirith said:

Pre-emptive rules attack! Note that you MUST flip a character face-up (Can't already be face up) to trigger the ability.

Page 16 of the Rules Reference

Wow, the value of this card has gone down for me. Nothing like getting an Eager Scout on defense. I guess it works if you need a body, anybody, on defense.

Just now, Hordeoverseer said:

Wow, the value of this card has gone down for me. Nothing like getting an Eager Scout on defense. I guess it works if you need a body, anybody, on defense.

Yeah, I was just thinking about that you don't know what card you get. It could be a body, but if you need 2M and flip an Envoy or Scout, <Price is Right Fail music>

7 minutes ago, Mirith said:

Yeah, I was just thinking about that you don't know what card you get. It could be a body, but if you need 2M and flip an Envoy or Scout, <Price is Right Fail music>

The card certainly has some risk vs. reward calculations, but overall I think it's definitely worth it. Even with the Envoy or Scout they may not be ideal, but they also aren't useless either. Scout might be able to get sacrificed to a Gunso or Pyre, and that Envoy will still be a free fate/card at the end of the turn you wouldn't have had otherwise. Something like 50% of the time you're likely to get a very valuable character for free. The majority of the remaining times you'll get a semi-valuable character or a semi-valuable holding. In a very small minority of cases you're going to flip a Unique character you already have in play and it'll fizzle.

Seems worth a 0-cost event to me.

2 minutes ago, Darguth said:

The card certainly has some risk vs. reward calculations, but overall I think it's definitely worth it. Even with the Envoy or Scout they may not be ideal, but they also aren't useless either. Scout might be able to get sacrificed to a Gunso or Pyre, and that Envoy will still be a free fate/card at the end of the turn you wouldn't have had otherwise. Something like 50% of the time you're likely to get a very valuable character for free. The majority of the remaining times you'll get a semi-valuable character or a semi-valuable holding. In a very small minority of cases you're going to flip a Unique character you already have in play and it'll fizzle.

Seems worth a 0-cost event to me.

If it was from any province sure, but your opponent needs to attack a facedown province. That gives your opponent control over when you can play it.

1 minute ago, Mirith said:

If it was from any province sure, but your opponent needs to attack a facedown province. That gives your opponent control over when you can play it.

You still have some control about which provinces you buy from.

8 minutes ago, Mirith said:

If it was from any province sure, but your opponent needs to attack a facedown province. That gives your opponent control over when you can play it.

Your opponent has a lot of control over when you can play many cards. /shrug

Also, my speculation would be that as the card pool matures we're going to see some fairly nasty Holdings in Crab that opponents won't want to swing into. So you might have 2 holdings up much of the time and buy from your other two provinces. Meaning they either swing at a nasty holding or they swing at a province with facedown dynasty provinces habitually.

You can also combo this with Charge! to force a province to become empty and get refilled unexpectedly, etc.

Maybe it'd be worth playing (and even paying the honor to draw), but is it worth sacrificing so much versatility from Charge to save one fate? And if not, is it worth playing alongside fate just for the bodies? I'm on the fence, but the fact that it puts in a card from a facedown province is a fair point, and provides a warm body. Probably decent in decks that just need people to sacrifice, but unreliable if you're looking for a strength boost.

Just now, Khudzlin said:

You still have some control about which provinces you buy from.

Sure, and you can funnel the choice, but you buy before you draw, so if you then draw it, you'll needed to have made the choice "Did I want to buy from the broken province or unbroken province?". Say I'm down to 2 provinces, one has a pyre in it from last turn. I flip 2 Witch hunters, some other chud, with a witch hunter in the remaining unbroken province. I would choose to buy the chud and witch hunter out of the broken provinces given no other input. I wouldn't want to have to debate which one of the witch hunters I'd have to choose based on whether or not I draw this card in the next draw phase (Which has a good chance of only being 1 card) or off some other card already in play (Pyre typically hits at the end of the turn for me, not beginning). This means that I need to wait a turn to setup this card, which might be too late (For example, if they break the province, now I can't use it on the stronghold).

To be fair, in my example, you'd probably just attack the funeral pyre anyways, which would make the card unplayable anyways, but while I use a specific example, I have seem this sort of board state a number of times in various combinations.

If the newest Crab holding is any indication, I think there's even MORE reason to swing into a holding than not. Also, this is an absolutely dead dead card when they attack your stronghold.

Holding on to a card and hoping "I hope my opponent attacks this province...and it's a Hida Kisada" is pretty lousy. It would have been a great card if you could pick any face down card. Still a gamble but a far better flexibility and makes it a true contender versus charge.

Ugh. All they had to do was add the word "facedown" and it would be explicitly clear how the card works. I'm getting sick of having to dig through the rules to explain how every sloppily worded card can't be used cleverly.

2 hours ago, Darguth said:

The card certainly has some risk vs. reward calculations, but overall I think it's definitely worth it.

^This!

Sure, you may draw your 0 military courtier or something even less useful. Or you might get your 5 5 Togashi Yokuni who is not already on the board in the first challenge of this round. Second challenge you go for Water, ready Yokuni and either defend again or counterattack with him. Now is this a very likely scenario? No, it is not, but it is possible. This card might do nothing for you or it might gave you a game changing or maybe even winning opportunity and all of that for 0 fate. If it would cost 1 or two 2 fate, I'd never even consider putting it in my Phoneix deck.

2 hours ago, AradonTemplar said:

Maybe it'd be worth playing (and even paying the honor to draw), but is it worth sacrificing so much versatility from Charge to save one fate? And if not, is it worth playing alongside fate just for the bodies? I'm on the fence, but the fact that it puts in a card from a facedown province is a fair point, and provides a warm body. Probably decent in decks that just need people to sacrifice, but unreliable if you're looking for a strength boost.

I could be tempted to include a Crab splash with this card in my Dragon deck. It’ll depend on what the other cards can afford me overall.

This card might be a stronger value as a splash inclusion in other Clan decks rather than a Crab deck.., just a thought. But I still like the direction of where this is going. ??

I really don't see much of a downside to this card.

Besides flipping a Unique replica (fizzle) or not being able to place fate on them ---> REPRIEVE (might even be a good reason to run a GOOD OMEN (though probably not))

Flipping a holding ---> only really a problem if you already have a holding up in another province ---> even then, what crab doesn't want more holding options for a round (HIDA GUARDIAN)

Any character card that gets brought out is a sacrifice option you get for free ----> this is HUGE!

Biggest negative is the restriction of being only on Military defense - but we have ITIMIDATING HIDA forcing then to make challenges, so it's a mitigated restriction

My overall opinion is this card is extremely in line with the CRAB playstyle and I'm excited to play it!

It has the potential for a BIG swing effect, and at it's worst it still speeds up your deck and will always provide good new options within any match up. Couple that with 0-cost and it will definitely see some play.

Overall 7/10

22 hours ago, Mirith said:

Oh I forgot dash characters. Military Dash characters won't work with this either. Crab doesn't have any of those, but one could make an argument of running Otomo Courtier out of Crab to balance out the political.

It works, they just go home bowed after they enter the battle...then they get SACRFICED for some other effect.

Fodder is still good.

On 10/28/2017 at 2:13 PM, kraken78 said:

It works, they just go home bowed after they enter the battle...then they get SACRFICED for some other effect.

Nope. A character with a dash cannot enter play in the relevant conflict type.

Actually if this card turns a holding face up that's not bad either. Now you have the option of using that holding for it's defensive buff and/or it's ability. Pretty much the only Crab holding I wouldn't want to see turn up is Pyre because it's got no defensive buff and it can be worthless in the battle if I have nothing to sacrifice to it.

If I was playing with this card I think I'd also include cards like Charge (and Ambush in Scorpion) to make sure I have a facedown card in my province. Also if I was putting holdings into the dynasty deck I would make sure they all have some sort of impactful ability mid combat or a nice defensive buff to prevent a break. Then I'd cut any dashed military character (not hard in Crab). All pretty easy. In fact my current Crab deck doesn't run Pyre, runs 3x charge and has no military dashed characters. The real gotcha is how do you run Crab without 3x Kisada and 3x Shuichi. Those guys are both great, and we don't have a lot of good dynasty card options to sub them out. So even if I tuned my Crab deck currently I'm still running into a situation where I can turn up a worthless card. that's not even getting into the fact that this card is worthless when defending your stronghold. I feel like right now it's a fun swingy card, but until I can make it much more consistent I'm not sure I'd run it in a tournament.

I could see this slotting pretty easily into a Unicorn deck actually considering their uniques aren't that great and they have no clan specific holding to consider. The problem is they don't have any good options to sub out those unique right now. Maybe after 6 packs in 6 weeks is done we'll see some strong deck builds for this card.