Tokhuah said:

First of all, there have been bans. So It's hard to compare now. Second, It's a meta. The gencon's meta.

Agency gets a card that allows them to bury opponent's cards to get rid of anything that would give them trouble and then another card that clears the board. The combo at the very least makes for NFE in casual gaming because they create an environment where some deck types will be unplayable. For me the recent developments have reshaped what I wil be bringing to the table for the West Coast Regional. Hint: it will NOT be an investigator evasion deck...

Peaslee is your friend. Or be wise and don't play all of your characters. But, yes, investigator's decks are not a good idea to win. But IT had always been this way.

msommi said:

Ok, so With 8 cards + 6 cards drawn (turn 3) you have to pkay the gammx medics, new recruits, exorcists, Eibon, Put 3 cards under the domains at the start of the game + 3 other ressources (turn 3) to kill everybody with a Kaboom which is, LOYAL and then play a 70 steps... No way ^^

B_P said:

I Furthermore, now, I begin to choose my cards. With the number of different cards increasing, I am now hesitating. Wich card may I use? 6 Months ago, it was just obvious. So it's cool for me. And I think this card will "maybe" take the place of small price to pay or a prize pistol. .

I don't see this happening either: the more removals , the better. it will be a mayem.

One card that should have been restricted a long time ago is "a small price to pay".

Agency is already playing 100% removal events.Now we have to choose them.

For a card that has to be in the restricted list is the diseased sewer rat. Auto include in every deck. Not good.

B_P said:

B_P said:

Thanks for reminding me.

Note to self: Add Rats to Regional deck

That smiley reminds me that this site needs Cthulhu based smileys.

Since Agency will be running mass wounding Cthulhu does not need to use Y'ha-nthlei Statue becasue no competitive deck will be running many 1 skill mooks anyway. Indirectly this sort of Agency card will help other decks that may have problems with weenies because no one will be running them...

Of course, if no one is running them, what's the point in running Explosion? And then Explosion is used less, which makes weenies more viable.... thus the gamble. At what point do we hit equilibrium?

Kennon said:

That's a great question.

From my own experience, Weenie Rush decks have a pretty limited potential. The strategy is not solid enough to really warrant playing such in a more than casual environment. They are indeed fast, but lack the fortitude to last long enough to clinch the win more often than not. In other words, they are highly inconsistent considering the current card pool available.

Cards like Y'ha-Nthlei Statue and Catastrophic Explosion pretty much sign their death warrant. Those two cards have created a void. People are now less likely to play rush, and in due course people will be less likely to play those two cards as you noted.

These two cards effectively create a stagnation in a certain portion of deck building possibilities due to an overly powerful threat potential. Thus creating a narrower field of possibilities to play with. Now neither these two cards nor the rush strategy will be useful. The designers have artificially made their usefulness null. It is too much of a gamble to guess if bringing a deck type with already questionable effectiveness will be worth the effort. So we have the current impasse.

It seems that those cards were designed to take care of overly effective cards such as Magah birds and Sledge dogs, but since they are no longer a worry due to Errata and banning, these cards have caused yet more narrowing of the playing field in which they were attempting to fix instead of broadening it.

These cards would have been welcome last year, but now, not so much.

Consider James Hata's Cops and Robbers decklist in the Arkham Nights event guidebook from last October. It is not the most competitive decklist, but I do not think it was meant to be a tourney deck. More like an advertisement and a springboard for new players, but it is a solid foundation to work from and develop your own from it.

An entire deck list has been made ineffective by Y'ha-nthlei statue and Catastrophic explosion. Quick perusal of the card tempo in the graph at the bottom of the page reveals this to be the case.

Every single character in the deck has a skill of two or lower. Easy pickings for Catastrophic explosion. Two single cards are the undoing of an entire deck strategy. The included Dutch Courage is no defense. Y'ha-nthlei statue immediately destroys/locks down one half of the deck, while two plays of "Kaboom" annihilates the other half.

I just can't agree with you. Every card game needs some sort of reset button. And while they are great for holding rush in check, they are equally good at being able to remove more powerful characters that you can't otherwise hit or get around. You both have to start back at zero unless you've planned it out.

Rush decks are still very viable, you just have to play it right.

"Every card game needs some sort of reset button. "

I agree. What was so wrong with Dimensional Rift that required the Agency to have an easier time of it with a super Shotgun blast? It had some drawbacks that made the card fair, and could still be quickly played if you had enough resources.

"And while they are great for holding rush in check, they are equally good at being able to remove more powerful characters that you can't otherwise hit or get around. You both have to start back at zero unless you've planned it out. "

Y'ha-ntlei statue is pretty obvious that its only purpose is locking down weenies. As for Catastrophic Explosion, yes it is a very useful tool against nearly any character. Good thing Agency has been able to hold on to the title of "Got to incorporate this faction in your deck in order to play competitively".

At this point why bother with designing and printing cards for other factions when there seriously is only one obvious choice? Exaggeration? This could perhaps be true, but not from where I am sitting.

"Rush decks are still very viable, you just have to play it right. "

I am not entirely sure how to respond to that.

On the one hand I want to say "Just play it right? Jeez, thanks for imparting that bit of patronizing wisdom to us idiots who have no clue whatsoever in how to play this game" and on the other hand I want to say "If by ' playing it righ t' you mean ' not using Nerds or Mobsters ' then I would agree.".

I am truthfully and seriously not trying to be snarky , but I am at a loss in how else to respond to that last bit.

Oh no, you are trying. That much is obvious, but whatever.

And yes, it means you have to play it right. A lot of people don't understand not overextending. They can be great players as far as everything else, but they fail to take into account the dangers of overextending... gotta hold something in reserve, ready for that reset.

As to resets, I should have been more specific, that every game needs resets, but what I should have said is every game needs multiple tiered resets.

But I don't have an issue with Agency having a number of good resets. I do think that there should be some resets of one sort or another available to everyone, which is why I am a proponent of resets in Story Card form, in addition to a couple of others always being available.

Personally I trust the designer to either spread resets around slowly, or provide a means for non-reset factions to cancel or otherwise ignore at least some of the resets.

We aren't there yet, but we apparently have a new designer. I don't know when his stuff is actually going to hit the shelves (or if this new stuff is maybe from him).

While I may not disagree with the concept of having multi-tiered resets I will disagree with anyone who argues that this Agency card is balanced. If it was balanced it would have been more in line with this:

Gang Warfare
3
[syndicate Event]
Tactic.
Play during your operations phase.
Action: Sacrifice a Criminal character to exhaust each character with skill lower than X. X is the skill of the sacrificed Criminal character.

Agency version:

Busting Up the Gangs
3
[Agency Event]
Tactic.
Play during your operations phase.
Action: Sacrifice a Government character to wound each character with skill lower than X. X is the skill of the sacrificed Government character.

Wait why is that more balanced? WIth this event I pay X and everything on both sides gets wounded if the skill is lower than X. Sacrificing a character with X STR and wounding everything at X, or paying X to wound everything lower than X ends up with the same end effect... unless what you are claiming makes this imbalanced is that you have to pay 3 to hit the skill of your choice, versus paying 1 more than what you want to hit... because I don't see it. I actually think this is more balanced in the end.

Am I missing something?

I do actually have to agree with Penfold. What makes that more balanced? if you just want to compare Explosion to similar scalable Syndicate effect, I'd go with Panic. Of course, in that case, Catastrophic Explosion has more limitations on its play than Panic, unlike your example event where they both have the same play restrictions.

The alternate version requires you to sacrifice one of you characters and requires a higher minimum cost to play. The amount of control the current card affords could allow a player to clear the board with no personal character cost. In other words, the fact that it is like Panic makes it overpowered because it allows the player with all skill 2+ characters in play to clear winnies for the price of 1 (for example).