6 hours ago, Seastan said:

But the fact that it's an option doesn't help of you're never going to take it. Which is why we are now discussing the legitimacy of taking a undefended 4-attack early in the game. If it were a serious game and I didn't have a cancellation card in hand, I probably wouldn't.

Just to cross-check my crazy against a better player, I went back to Beorn's Path and read the playthrough of the original SpEowyn/TaGimli/Thalin deck in Beorn's Path. Turn 1, with no Hasty stroke in hand and a Citadel Plate *in hand* that could be played on turn two, Beorn optionally engaged the Jailor and took it undefended -- that's not a four strength attack, but Gimli already had one damage and all the damage-shadows in that quest send undefended damage to hero killing levels (where it'd kill poor Thalin I think, since Gimli was more important.) In a later turn once Citadel Plate was attached Gimli took *two* undefended attacks, and a damage-shadow on either one of which would have resulted in a hero death (again, likely Thalin). Again no Hasty Stroke in hand. I was introduced to the game with Beorn's Path, so it's probably where I got the idea that taking risks with Gimli early was an entirely rational thing to do in a "serious game".

Your point that an early hero death via risk-taking would be unfair in a multi-player game is well taken, though in multi-player neither Stonehelm nor Gimli can touch Bard for effective six quickly. Any +1 will do.

My early point on the desirability of taking a four strength bear attack undefended in Woodland Realm (stage one) relied on Thalin to get the seventh damage point. The 6-and-under crowd all give enough damage for Gimli to one-shot, but he needs more than his native HP to knock off any of the others. Without Thalin or other help do I take the Bear undefended if he comes out round one? I don't think so -- I'm not going to optionally engage anything I can't kill.

17 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

I was introduced to the game with Beorn's Path, so it's probably where I got the idea that taking risks with Gimli early was an entirely rational thing to do in a "serious game".

Your point that an early hero death via risk-taking would be unfair in a multi-player game is well taken, though in multi-player neither Stonehelm nor Gimli can touch Bard for effective six quickly. Any +1 will do.

We're getting into really subjective territory here, but let me define what I mean by "serious game": a game where your win/loss outcome matters to anyone other than yourself. So while a multiplayer game certainly qualifies, it's not the only situation that does. Woodland Realm isn't the only solo situation either. If I'm participating in some sort of competition, like your solo league, where I care about my win/loss ratio, I'd consider that serious. Likewise if I'm going to be posting my win/loss percentage alongside my deck to give people an impression of how powerful it is.

That said, regarding Beorn's path - a loss from an undefended attack of round 1 is not a big deal. Simply shuffle and start again. I don't think Beorn had committed to doing a in-depth writeup on every loss for the Path, so I don't see what makes this a big deal. Regarding the undefended attacks taken later in the game, well Gimli had 9 hit points and 3 damage, so taking two attacks of strength 2 undefended was not risking Gimli's life. After assigning the first 2 damage to Gimli, a hero-killing shadow on the second attack (about 10% chance) could have gone to killing Thalin anyway. Or, if Beorn was waiting for the quest to be finished before starting the in-depth writeup, he again could have just scooped and restarted.

From the comments, the writeup was actually the third shot at the quest, the first two being losses. The more likely you are to lose, the more justified you are in taking risks, I think. In the solo league a master like Rouxxor or yourself may well look askance at taking a 15% chance of hero death round one, since you're confident that you can win without it. For someone like myself, I might think that my only chance at winning with zero tokens is to get lucky, so why not be aggressive and take risks? Optionally engaging an enemy, taking it undefended, then (if you survive) killing the enemy improves my board state dramatically if it works, and it will work most of the time. If I lose a hero playing aggressively, I'm not at all confident I would have gotten ahead of the quest playing conservatively. So I think player skill and deck strength factor (plus quest difficulty and damage-increasing shadow frequency) are no small factors in evaluating whether to risk an undefended or not.

On the later undefended attacks in Beorn's Path, with 9 hp and 3 damage, taking two 2-strength undefended risks *a* hero's life (likely Thalin) if the damaging shadows come out. Gimli can absorb a maximum of 5 damage, the attacks combined account for 4 damage. Hummerhorn's shadow does 2 damage to each defending player character if undefended, it would kill Eowyn outright and result in the death of either Thalin or Gimli from the attacks. Dol Goldur Orcs would add 3 to the attack for an undefended attack; if it came first Gimli could absorb five and then defend against the second attack, though that'd leave two engaged enemies. If it came on the second attack, hero death. Driven by Shadow and Cavern Guaradian on either attack would cause Gimli's Citadel Plate to go away, which would be deadly on the second attack but survivable on the first by defending the second. To that point in the quest, two of those had come out (one copy Cavern Guardian and Dol Goldur Orcs), leaving five cards in the remaining encounter deck to give grief, out of 27 remaining if I'm counting correctly. So 19% of things going badly wrong -- well worth the risk, given that taking at least one undefended was unavoidable in any case (Gimli was only ready character) and not killing an enemy means at least two attacks the following round.

4 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

So I think player skill and deck strength factor (plus quest difficulty and damage-increasing shadow frequency) are no small factors in evaluating whether to risk an undefended or not.

You're right. This is what makes picking apart decisions made during a particular playthrough so difficult. I actually think the risk Beorn took by taking those two attacks undefended was far less than 19% and was closer to 5%, which is a fine play by me.

Bringing it back to Thorin vs Gimli:

Enemy with 0 attack appears: Thorin is easier to set up with 6 attack (Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs 2 axes)

Enemy with 1 attack appears: Thorin is easier to set up with 6 attack (Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs axe and a couple rounds of undefended attacks)

Enemy with 2 attack appears: Thorin is slightly easier to set up with 6 attack (Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs axe and needs to survive an undefended attack for 2)

Enemy with 3 attack appears: Thorin is slightly easier to set up with 6 attack (Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs axe and needs to survive an undefended attack for 3)

Enemy with 4 attack appears: Gimli is slightly easier to set up with 6 attack (Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs to survive an undefended attack for 4)

Enemy with 5 attack appears: Thorin is easier to set up with 6 attack (Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs 2 axes)

Ultimately, I'm still of the opinion that Thorin requires the least conditions/setup to be able to consistently attack for 6 against an enemy engaged with you.

discussion got seriously focused on Gimli, but there were other heroes in the running here. I think we agreed right on the first page of this thread, for example, that Grimbeorn can get the magic effective 6 as quickly/with as little setup as Thorin, but at greater cost.

19 minutes ago, GrandSpleen said:

discussion got seriously focused on Gimli, but there were other heroes in the running here. I think we agreed right on the first page of this thread, for example, that Grimbeorn can get the magic effective 6 as quickly/with as little setup as Thorin, but at greater cost.

Greater cost is greater setup though.

A LeAragorn, LeGimli, SpLegolas deck can quest for 6 Wp and attack for 7 Att on the first round with no need of any card set up for example.

To summarize, any single hero native ability (pay a resource) counts as setup, except discarding from the top of your deck which doesn’t count as a cost, and that such setup constitutes greater setup than 3x dwarrowdelf axe.

15 minutes ago, GrandSpleen said:

except discarding from the top of your deck which doesn’t count as a cost

I'd go a bit further: not only is discarding -not- much of a cost, there are many things that can actively benefit from it.

1 hour ago, ColinEdwards said:

I'd go a bit further: not only is discarding -not- much of a cost, there are many things that can actively benefit from it.

Not yet so many but clearly some and likely few others (probably powerful) to come in future packs.

6 hours ago, Halberto said:

Not yet so many but clearly some and likely few others (probably powerful) to come in future packs.

Even right now I think there are a lot better options for fishing stuff out of your discard pile than your deck. Unless you are actually running out of cards, stuff is probably more valuable discarded.

You don't need to be running a full-on mining deck to take advantage of Orophin, a Hammersmith etc.

13 hours ago, Seastan said:

You're right. This is what makes picking apart decisions made during a particular playthrough so difficult. I actually think the risk Beorn took by taking those two attacks undefended was far less than 19% and was closer to 5%, which is a fine play by me.

How are you figuring 5% -- are you including the negative impact of *not* taking the attacks undefended? In that case it might be below 5%, because I don't see how he'll pull that quest off without eliminating an enemy. But in terms of immediate hero death, it's definitely not 5%. At the time of the second atttack, there were 26 unrevealed cards and 5 shadows left that would kill a hero if they came out.

7 hours ago, GrandSpleen said:

To summarize, any single hero native ability (pay a resource) counts as setup, except discarding from the top of your deck which doesn’t count as a cost, and that such setup constitutes greater setup than 3x dwarrowdelf axe.

I don't think any native hero ability counts as setup. I grant Tactics Aragorn as having a no-setup way to attack for 4, for example. But let me break down Grimbeorn a bit:

1. To attack for 6 on turn 1, both Thorin and Grimbeorn need a 1-cost attachment. In addition, Grimbeorn needs to have 1 resource, while Thorin needs to have 1 card in your deck.

2. Then to continually attack for 6 for the rest of the game, Grimbeorn needs to spend resource per attack, while Thorin needs to discard one card from your deck per attack.

So the question is, is spending 1 resource harder than discarding 1 card from your deck? I argue that it is. For example, if you are using Dagger of Westernesse to boost Grimbeorn's attack, the only way you can achieve the turn-1 attack for 6 is if you have another tactics hero to pay for the Dagger (or some other trickery like A Good Harvest). Thorin does not require such a condition.

Thorin does require discarding a card from your deck. But in most decks, even non-mining ones that Thorin is splashed into, this is not even a cost - it's a benefit. You are (probably) not going to draw through your whole deck anyway. So in a deck that is not using search effects like Heed the Dream, discarding your top card is no different than discarding your bottom card that you were never going to draw anyway. I consider this a slight benefit because you actually gain a bit more knowledge of the cards you are likely to draw into and can plan accordingly.

Imagine that you never draw more than 40 cards in a game, and you don't have any full-deck or repeatable search cards in your deck (Heed the Dream, Master of the Forge, etc.). At the beginning of the game, after shuffling your deck and drawing your hand, you are given the option to discard 10 random cards from your deck (doesn't matter from where, could be top, middle, bottom - you just shuffled). Would you do it? I think it is a benefit to do so, because for no cost, you now have more precise information about what is in your deck and can now base your strategy around knowing that you are never going to draw into certain cards.

To take it to the extreme: Imagine after shuffling that all your copies of Steward of Gondor are on the bottom of your deck, and you will have no way of getting to them the whole game. Is it more beneficial to have this information or not?

2 hours ago, dalestephenson said:

How are you figuring 5% -- are you including the negative impact of *not* taking the attacks undefended? In that case it might be below 5%, because I don't see how he'll pull that quest off without eliminating an enemy. But in terms of immediate hero death, it's definitely not 5%. At the time of the second atttack, there were 26 unrevealed cards and 5 shadows left that would kill a hero if they came out.

I was considering the risk of taking both attacks of strength 2 undefended vs. defending one of them with Gimli. Since Thalin had 3 hit points remaining, one of the undefended attacks could have gone to him. I realize Beorn didn't actually do this, which significantly bumps up his risk of losing a hero, but that's where I'm getting my 5% figure from.

If discarding from the top of your deck is not a problem, it would be a good decision to use Zigil Miner blindly before you draw into an Imladris Stargazer (assuming you're using both cards), as long as you're drawing 2 cards per round ( to equal the number of cards that you are discarding). He's thinning out your deck and getting you closer to the Stargazer.

In your own 'every costs 2' deck, you built it to basically work no matter what gets discarded (with the exception of Will of the West), which is a deckbuilding choice you can only make if discarding from the top of your deck is perceived as potentially having undesirable consequences. But that aside, many (most?) decks are looking to draw a few key cards, so discarding blindly with Ziggy is not good strategy. Thorin's in the same boat, unless you build your deck for mining, yes you should consider the discard a cost with associated risk.

Every card in your deck is equally likely to be a card that you don't want to discard, but whether or not this matters depends on the human being looking at the numbers, not on the numbers themselves. Top card of your deck has a low % chance of being the card you want to draw (therefore it's OK to discard it and it helps you get closer to the card you want), but also the 2nd 4th 15th and 31st card in your deck have exactly that same percentage (therefore it's a bad idea to discard it because every card position in your deck has an equal % chance of being an undesirable discard, including the top card). On the other hand, the bottom 39 cards of your deck have a really high chance of being the card you want to draw, so yes go ahead and discard that top card. If there are 25 cards left in your deck, and you still haven't seen what you're trying to draw, the bottom 24 have a much higher chance of being the one that you want than the top card of your deck, so statistically the correct decision is still to discard the top card. And sure, even if you discard the card you're trying to get, you get information about what's left in your deck, so that's a benefit. But you just discarded the card you were trying to get. The information is less important than the error you've just made. Yes, that was a cost.

The statistics here are able to provide justification for the opinion/perspective you already have, regardless of which opinion/perspective that is.

I guess, it comes down to the mindset of the player. If I had the choice between killing an enemy and risking to discard a valuable card, I would probably discard. Otherwise I would need two additional actions in the next round to deal with the enemy. And that means I have to deckbuild appropriately which is a cost for every deck.

9 hours ago, GrandSpleen said:

The information is less important than the error you've just made. Yes, that was a cost.

I don't follow you here; drawing a card isn't "a cost" (even if it wasn't the card you really wanted!)

Your chance of getting the card you want into your hand is unchanged; the tradeoff is between having your 'undrawn' cards stay at the bottom of your deck or going to the discard pile.

The real trade-off question is 'is it easier to retrieve specific cards from my discard pile or from deep in my deck?'

(Knowing more about what is left in the deck is helpful too, so I'd give the edge to 'discard pile' if you were indifferent.)

Somewhat related: Dwarven Pipe is a terrible card - even in a milling/mining deck.

The bottom of your deck is a really hard place to get stuff from; you really need a shuffle effect to get the value. You draw the pipe instead of something else, you pay a resource for it, the impact is to move a card to a worse place AND if you are using Will of the West, you just undid whatever value it had.

Discuss?

Without shuffling the bottom of the deck is a bad place for a valuable card. But the pipe recycles cards back into your deck, so you can benefit longer from discarding before playing Will of the West or running out. I like to see my undrawn cards as an additional resource to play with in a mining deck.

48 minutes ago, Amicus Draconis said:

Without shuffling the bottom of the deck is a bad place for a valuable card. But the pipe recycles cards back into your deck, so you can benefit longer from discarding before playing Will of the West or running out. I like to see my undrawn cards as an additional resource to play with in a mining deck.

We will likely get a card to reshuffle our deck soon. Already TaBofur ally exist and he will probably be used frequently in the 'new" dwarf discard archetype (meaning featuring new Thorin and/Or Dain heros) even if 3 tactic resources are quite a cost. I expect an attachemt/ally ability allowing reshuffling soon.

One off topic question.

Thorin and Gildor heroes came out on the new starter pack but will be released afterward in regular packs (deluxe/AP). Because of this from when do you believe that using them is considered as play in progression mode? From the new starter pack release or from the future release as regular products?

Dwarven Pipe is at least good insurance against discarding your will of the west. Aside from that, it's narrowly useful for quests that win by running out your deck (Angmar cycle) and quests that care about the bottom card of your deck (Dreamchaser cycle). Tactics Imrahil is also a hero that can often make you shuffle your deck. Two attachments (Mirror of Galadriel and Kahliel's Headdress) can cause you to shuffle your deck, with Mirror you can force a shuffle every turn.

19 hours ago, Seastan said:

II was considering the risk of taking both attacks of strength 2 undefended vs. defending one of them with Gimli. Since Thalin had 3 hit points remaining, one of the undefended attacks could have gone to him. I realize Beorn didn't actually do this, which significantly bumps up his risk of losing a hero, but that's where I'm getting my 5% figure from.

If Beorn had placed the first undefended attack on Thalin, and chose to defend the second attack with Gimli, then there would only be one shadow in the remaining 26 cards that would kill a hero (Hummerhorns), and that's below 5%. But that'd make zero strategic sense, since the most common outcome would be adding no damage to Gimli while exhausting him, the worst of possible outcomes -- and it's also not relevant to the question of the risk of taking *both* attacks undefended, which is what I was estimating.

1 hour ago, Halberto said:

We will likely get a card to reshuffle our deck soon. Already TaBofur ally exist and he will probably be used frequently in the 'new" dwarf discard archetype (meaning featuring new Thorin and/Or Dain heros) even if 3 tactic resources are quite a cost. I expect an attachemt/ally ability allowing reshuffling soon.

24 minutes ago, dalestephenson said:

Dwarven Pipe is at least good insurance against discarding your will of the west. Aside from that, it's narrowly useful for quests that win by running out your deck (Angmar cycle) and quests that care about the bottom card of your deck (Dreamchaser cycle). Tactics Imrahil is also a hero that can often make you shuffle your deck. Two attachments (Mirror of Galadriel and Kahliel's Headdress) can cause you to shuffle your deck, with Mirror you can force a shuffle every turn.

Master of the Forge can do this as well.

On 11/16/2018 at 6:42 PM, Seastan said:

You're right. This is what makes picking apart decisions made during a particular playthrough so difficult. I actually think the risk Beorn took by taking those two attacks undefended was far less than 19% and was closer to 5%, which is a fine play by me.

Bringing it back to Thorin vs Gimli:

Enemy with 0 attack appears: Thorin is easier to set up with 6 attack (Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs 2 axes)

Enemy with 1 attack appears: Thorin is easier to set up with 6 attack (Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs axe and a couple rounds of undefended attacks)

Enemy with 2 attack appears: Thorin is slightly easier to set up with 6 attack (Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs axe and needs to survive an undefended attack for 2)

Enemy with 3 attack appears: Thorin is slightly easier to set up with 6 attack (Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs axe and needs to survive an undefended attack for 3)

Enemy with 4 attack appears: Gimli is slightly easier to set up with 6 attack (Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs to survive an undefended attack for 4)

Enemy with 5 attack appears: Thorin is easier to set up with 6 attack (Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs 2 axes)

Ultimately, I'm still of the opinion that Thorin requires the least conditions/setup to be able to consistently attack for 6 against an enemy engaged with you.

You're ignoring the possibility of damage from shadows, archery, or other encounter effects in this analysis. It really goes like this:

Enemy with 0 attack engaged -- Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs two axes, or an axe and two points of other damage, or four points of other damage. Thorin is very likely easier, but it may be quest dependent.

Enemy with 1 attack engaged -- Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs two axes, or an axe and one point of other damage (plus surviving undefended), or three points of other damage (plus surviving undefended). Thorin may be easier, but it is quest dependent

Enemy with 2 attack engaged -- Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs two axes, or an axe and surviving an undefended attack, or two points of other damage and surviving an undefended attack. Gimli is likely easier, but it is quest dependent.

Enemy with 3 attack engaged -- Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs two axes, or one axe and one point of other damage, or axe and surviving undefended attack, or axe and three points other damage and surviving defended attack (which leaves him exhausted), or surviving undefended attack plus one point of other damage. Gimli is likely easier, but it is quest dependent, and the defending option leaves Gimli exhausted.

Enemy with 4 attack engaged -- Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs two axes, or an axe and surviving defended attack (which would leave him exhausted), or axe and surviving undefended attack, or surviving defended attack plus two points other damage (which would leave him exhausted) or surviving undefended attack. Gimli is likely easier, but it is quest dependent, and the defending option leaves Gimli exhausted.

Enemy with 5 attack engaged -- Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs two axes, or an axe and surviving defended attack (which would leave him exhausted), or one point of other damage and surviving defended attack, or have axe with two points of other damage, or have four points of other damage. Gimli is likely easier to get to six, but is likely to be exhausted.

Enemy with 6 attack engaged -- Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs to survive defended attack, or have axe with two points of other damage, or have four points of other damage, or have two axes. Gimli is likely easier to get to six, but is likely to be exhausted.

Enemy with 7+ attack engaged. Thorin needs axe, Gimli needs two axes, or an axe plus two points of other damage, or four points of other damage. Thorin is very likely easier to get to six, but it may be quest dependent.

Thorin's biggest advantages over Gimli are at the attack counts that are least likely to be engaged first. Thorin obviously has some huge advantages over Gimli -- some of the paths have Gimli defending, which leaves him unable to attack without readying, and some attacks (especially undefended) would risk hero death. Damage from shadows, archery, and other encounter card effects is heavily quest-dependent and usually uncontrollable by the player. I'm not arguing that Gimli is a *better* choice than Thorin for a dedicated attacker; Thorin's lower threat, ramps up more safely, and has a higher effective attack at start of game, and his ability can be used on a different enemy than he's attacking. For Gimli to be a "better" option, the magic-effective-attack-threshold needs to be higher than six (also something that is quest dependent). I'm simply exploring who can get to six *quickest*, and you can't ignore the possibility of other damage when making that evaluation.

57 minutes ago, dalestephenson said:

Dwarven Pipe is at least good insurance against discarding your will of the west. 

Will of the West is already insurance around drawing through your deck (doesn't help you win games.)

Dwarven Tomb (which directly brings it to your hand) or even another copy Will of the West seem like better choices for more insurance. By the time you have 2-3 copies of each, you might not actually need anything more.