As a newb, I am confused as to this card's purpose. The two uses of it that I can imagine are a relatively trustworthy Leoben or a hidden Cylon trying to bork up the skill check.
Other than those two situations it seems like a large gamble.
So, since I'm sure it must have greater purpose... what do you use Trust Instincts for?
Thanks a ton!
As a human player, we have used the card on checks that include most or all types of skill checks. If the check is three colors and then someone plays scientific research to make blues count, the two extra cards from destiny that Trust Instinct throws in will probably help. Of course, treachery could show up, but for some checks, it may be worth it. It's come in handy for some of the Super Crisis cards as well.
For the first half of the game it isn't particularly difficult to count the Destiny Deck much of the time, especially if you are using Investigative Committee once or twice on each Destiny Deck. You may not know with 100% certainty what is left, but you can frequently be sure that it contains "2 yellow, 1 green, and 1 red or purple" or something like that. Trust Instincts is for those times when it is down to 4 cards and you get a skill check that has several colors - chances are good that you will be able to help yourself if you know that 2 or 3 of the remaining 4 are helpful. You could also just use it to cycle the deck faster; if no red or Treachery cards have come out and there are only 4 cards left, maybe the humans will decide to just fail the check on purpose and dump all those potentially damaging colors out of Destiny to build a new deck.
It can also combo well with Roslin - draw 2 Crisis cards, if neither is so terrible it gets buried without a second thought, she can check the skill check colors... if you know there is "2 yellow, 1 green, and 1 red or purple" left in Destiny and she picks a yellow and green skill check, Trust Instincts + Destiny may almost pass the skill check by itself without wasting many cards from human players' hands.
And like Tsugo said, just putting extra cards in the skill check may help - it'd be nice to toss 2 more cards in for free on some of the SC cards or on Standoff with Pegasus (22 STR skill check where 4 colors are helpful).
Skowza said:
You could also just use it to cycle the deck faster; if no red or Treachery cards have come out and there are only 4 cards left, maybe the humans will decide to just fail the check on purpose and dump all those potentially damaging colors out of Destiny to build a new deck.
We once did this when we knew that 4 of the 8 cards in Destiny deck were Treachery (2 had been added due to Crisis effect). Of course, none came up...
It can help you get out of the brig if you're stuck. With treachery counting as positive for getting out of the brig there's a 50/50 chance of it helping. Red tape, on the other hand, helps keep people in the brig.
JAGONAUT said:
It can help you get out of the brig if you're stuck. With treachery counting as positive for getting out of the brig there's a 50/50 chance of it helping. Red tape, on the other hand, helps keep people in the brig.
I'm not sure I get this. Why does Trust Instincts help with the brig? Only 2 out of 6 colors help in the brig so it doesn't seem like a good candidate for Trust Instincts. Are you alluding to the fact that it allows a brigged player to "add" two cards to the check instead of the one he could normally play? That strikes me as pretty weak, since it deprives you of the one known big help card you could have played in and replaces it with two unknowns of unknown colors. Cards like Jury Rigging and Declare Emergency are very strong for the brigged character since they don't take away his one opportunity to play a card, but Trust Instincts strikes me as a mighty weak play for a brigged character.
The bit about Red Tape puzzles me too . . .
It's worth mentioning, though, that a not insignificant side benefit of Trust Instincts is the ability to watch two cards roll off the deck. In some instances, this can provide a real boon to card counters. Last game, I played a lone Trust Instincts into a check that everyone was passing on, just to know with certainty four of the missing cards from the deck.
As a rule, I consider Trust Instincts a viable play in any check where it has a better than 50/50 chance of helping. I'll do it in early checks if I've been counting the deck and I know more than half of the remaining cards help. If I lose count or the game starts getting desperate, I'll consider playing it into any check with 4 colors.
At the same time, I really do consider Trust Instincts to be a weak card for humans. I suspect the designers added it to balance what they considered an overpowered suite of Tactics cards. I love drawing it as a cylon, of course, to try to roll off a bunch of cards into reckless checks, and because it'll trigger consequence effects, and because it sort of overrides the one-card restriction, but as a human, it's the first card I'm likely to discard if I want to move from one ship to another. (Except treachery, of course; those are worse.)