johnny shoes said:

That's because people like you like to brand upstanding people like Mr. O'Bannion a criminal. You're just jealous of his succes! It's all just supply/demand, really. People need a certain good or service, and the Syndicate helps them. Take Hatchetman, for example. He's just eager to bury the hatched... in your head...

Glen Jedrusek illustrated 13 cards before Julia, all FC and newer - the wishes, an AP6, and five spawns including gun runners club. Grim Wraith is by Michael Williams, who illustrated only one other, also an AP6 - Ammunitions Expert. Erich Zann is Loic Zimmerman's first card. Hope he does more.

Syndicate: shifty, shady, scrappy, sinister, sneaky.

What could those other three cards be? Is a Herbert West implied? Guesses: Dr. Carson - MU Scientist TIA. Called by Azathoth - Neutral Event. Those Without Faces - Hastur Character

johnny shoes said:

Carson could be a dead giveaway...

Bard said:

Could I ask why these cars would not be much fun for competitive players?

sepayne7l said:

There are a lot of cards that don't contribute to the archetypes that popped up during Eldrich block popular with competative players. For instance, Cthulhu had 2 blocks worth of control/destruction cards. It can't compare with Hastur control, which is a new thread seeded in. In a very competative environment, most GOO's are simply too expensive to be worth it. Eldritch Block had a huge powercreep. It'll take time to rebalance. If it's done too fast, you'll be seeing pack on pack of archetype hosers, which is more reactive then proactive, and, for the more casual crowd less fun. The shift of focus to mid- to long term strategy doesn't sit well with people who are used to having their games decided and sealed turn 2 at the very latest.

Carioz said:

Well sure if you take any single card you can always pick another card to use when setting up a situation to make it look like a bad play. I don't buy that sort of thing as a valid depiction of a card's usefulness though. By that same token I could tell you that The Rip Off was a useless card because if your opponent played Court of Y'htill in response then they probably spent several less and hosed your play.

While many top competitive level games don't last for very many turns, I'd like to point out that not all the matches are decided on the first turn or that the game has become a die roll to see who goes first. For example, a deck I consider to be among my strongest is actually a control deck, and, while capable of quite fast victories, it normally takes 5+ turns for the game to end.

sepayne71 said:

"Could I ask why these cards would not be much fun for competitive players?"

They aren't much fun for competitive decks simply because they won't be played in those. Of course, there might be a combo hidden somewhere, but honestly with cards this basic, I find that hard to believe. A good guideline for characters would be that if they cost over 2, they should play a very important role in the deck. I think I could be a lot more precise with my answer, but characters which have some icons + a minor ability just aren't normally worth it.

But who knows, maybe the Sleepwalker is a huge beast and will dominate the competitive field.

AE through Core set there are 39 TC characters with costs ranging from 0 to 3 from 5 factions + neutral. Each one of those chars is undefeatable by EZ Yellow.

Let's add the 8 C willpower chars from the 3 human factions you have a total of 47 chars which will make EZ useless.

(I could still add the T skill 3 chars, but why bother?)

On the other hand you have exactly 4 cancels which work on The Rip-Off. Furthermore when T-Ro hits the table your opponent is done, when EZ does, well...

Still, would you care to explain to me why EZ is so powerful? His ability seems rather unuseable and ineffective to me, and its icons are not great.

Well, I'll leave it to the better tacticians to evaluate just what the big deal is about Erich Zann. Carioz brings nice stats to argue Zann is very limited. Kennon argues that a character worth three needs to bring a little more than what Zann does. But Erich Zann is a flavorful card. Flavorful unique characters can be playable: Legrasse, Kirby, Jack Brass, Pickman, Professor Lake. Some class uniques are great cards to play: Victoria, Omar, Carl Stanford, Paul Lemond, Mr. Grey, Mulder. Many more are not at all playable (Professor Dingus, Cost 8). At least Zann costs only three, even if he fronts against human factions and still needs backup, to flip only one. He's one of the great looking cards of his type in the game. Better than Charles and Hildred. More colorful than Basil or Lavinia or Granny, who are more playable.

johnny shoes said:

Zann isn't powerfull as is , since he lacks Combat icons. Terror Icons are a mixed bag, really; Some of the time they're more powerful because it hits before Combat - but since 1 terror can cancel out 50 it soon grows to be pointless. Well, if FFG gives everyone combat too, then too, the meaning of those icons will be diluted too much at some point. Also, what will Zann do to get Combat? Know someone out with his violin? He's all about the haunting music that keeps the baddies at bay.

Zann is pointed towards larger skirmishes, where knocking out 2 characters is a must. So, yes, he needs some backup most of the time. An extra character, more geared to Combat is nice to have as a backup - At least you don't have to be worried about Terror.

The replacement effect of Zann helps to pinpoint you insanity better. Teaming up with either Cthulhu ( Y'ha-Nthlei Home of the Deep Ones , Forgotten Isle ) or Shub-Niggurath ( Temple of Haon-Dor , Ezbekiyeh Gardens ) will help pinpoint the insanity bomb, bypassing terror icons or willpower.

Grim Wraith works well, because the terror struggle is likely to end in a 'draw' - or at least, having no effect. Teaming up GW and Zann means his lack of Combat is moot, Haon-Dor is active and you'll be able to force your way through a lot of opposition.

Competative play will mean that you'll have to dedicate a huge chunk of your deck agains Cthulhu's destruction effects (well, at least Zann is Yig proof at least) and have ways to stop decks that run on a self-sustaining combo engine. And it isn't likely you'll have to push through crowds of opposing characters anyways...

Competative players look for (and evaluate) the following in cards:

1) Cards with generic abilities that can be cleverly abused for nefarious and here-to-fore unseen purposes (The 'Creative' Factor).

2) Cards that allow the extension of a strategy. If you are building combo then something that enables that. For control, something that helps you enact your strategy..etc etc. This is a mixture of creativity, vision and statistics.

3) Cards that enhance statistical odds in the users favor.

4) Cards that allow new strategies that havent been seen before, or make other not-so-good strategies suddenly viable. To wit, Cards that allow other cards to become viable.

5) Cards that change the environment in a way that challenges them to re-think the meta-game strategy.

The current cards that are being put out by Nate are fecal matter because they are useless to any of the above. There is no strategy that can be set around them due to their arbitrary and qualified useage.

In addition, it looks like Nate went to great pains to make sure they were non-combo-able and narrow by encasing them with such qualifiers as to make them *at best* unreliable, and to any comp player worth his salt, unreliable cards arent very useful and certainly not strategic.

-Furthermore, unreliable cards with meaningless abilities are relegated to the "Crap" bin.

As for Zann, just look at the requirements in order to use him:

1) The opponent *must* has chars in his deck

2) The opponent *must* have a story phase

3) The opponent *must* have 2 or more chars in play that don't have either 1+Terror or Willpower

4) The board conditions must be such that the opponent must be forced, or desire to commit both chars to the same story to block or attack, knowing that Zann is in play. (as opposed to just blocking with a T or will char)

5) It must actually matter which char goes insane.

6) Both opponents chars *musn't* have 1C, otherwise you are trading a 3-cost card to "disable" an opponents char for 1 turn. Usually not a good trade.

7) You actually have to win the struggle to enact.

Any variation on this (eg more chars on each side) will make it less likely for him to be used, as more options will become available.

#1 and #2 are not necessarily important per se, but 3/4/5/6/7 are very important, and this is the major problem.

#3: it is very rare actually to see chars without will or T in good decks(and the few chars that dont have it aren't there for "commital", they are usually there for special effects (unless its synd rush..but then you got speed and #s and zann is just an overcosted resource).

#4: is relying on random events and board position that cant be "planned" in advance, and/or poor opponents who havent thought out their deck strategy and can't take into acccount terror.

For all intents and purposes I define "strategy" as a "plan" - therefore this is not strategy, as it cannot be planned.

#5: is equally fatal, as the opponent has the *choice* of commital, so your being given a choice from your opponent - which will most likely be no choice at all, and/or pre-calculated with minimal effect.

At any rate you can not make any apriori assumptions about the board or your opponent, so the deckbuilding control aspect of this card is useless.

#6 is the likely "choice" you will be given by an opponent who willfully committed.

#7 is as all of the above, "random" due to board setup and opponents char types.

Assuming that all of the above were to actually happen, the effect (driving a char is insane), is pretty weak/useless when you consider things from a utilitarian perspective (especially when considering that a char was going insane anyway).

When statistically looking at the above, it becomes obvious that the card is unplayable from a combo/control/rush perspective (the % chance of aligning all the above points is essentially 0), and weak from an ability pespective. Worse, it is random in general as you have no control over whether and when it can or cant be used.

I will not address the cost/icons issue, but this card will stop nothing.

Of course this leads to a much more troubling aspect. ALL of the new cards (and the cards to come) are limited to story commital and suffer the same fate of analysis.

They are specifically limited to and by the story phase, and they share the same statistical problems as the card above to varying degrees. They satisfy NONE of the 5 "competative" axioms. Whats worse is they look to be the same set rehashed (terror..now do it again in combat..and again in investigate etc). Much like conspiracies, the 'strategy' (and I use that word lightly here) is a failed concept that wont come to light dumping more worthless cards into its bottomless pit. Prostituting this random group of cards as "a different type of strategy" is disigenuous at best. It isnt strategy as its not plannable in advance, there can be no control aspect of it as control implies control - these cards only work while you are ahead, and even then not very well. Many of the polar cards are evadeable just by slight modification of play (for example:commiting all chars or
using their abilities first (exhausting them) then commiting renders alot of the polar crap useless.

Realizing that "organized play" is going to consist only of this garbage in the future, an enterprising player would find that the best "tourny" deck is the one that uses the least of this crap. A player that goes through the core set and pulls the most effecient group of chars (efficient in the cost/icon sense) with a handful of "non qualified" removal cards (shotgun blast etc) will wipe the floor with anyone bothering to use commital crap. Commital chars are intrisically more expensive (you have to pay for that ability!). So dropping more/cheaper chars with better icon grouping and straight removal, will guarantee victory over the rubes who try to build "the current" struggle theme. You will always have more icons than they do, faster and cheaper. Their events will sit unused due to their qualifications and their chars will not be able to commit. Most of their cards will clog up their hand as they cant seem to get an advantage with all the overhead of the "theme". Ironically these cards only help when you are ahead, and are an albatross tied around the neck when you are behind - to which I simply ask "what is the point". This was my "observation" just looking at the polar crap, and this is *exactly* how it played out. There is no skill, thought, or even luck involved, just drop chars and run straight at them and the commital decks will roll over and die. I would suggest cthulhu/agency in the white boarder only environment...3xEach of the agency removals, sac off and the rest various chars with good icon/cost ratios (ignoring each of the new sets as much as possible). I would bet that this deck will steamroll any decks that utilize the new "ffg tourny icon crap" as a strategy. As for the "casual" group, I openly wonder why you dont just pick up munchkin cthulhu, its much cheaper, and can be played multi-player over beer and pizza, without a recurring cost every month or so and no forethought has to be given to deckbuilding (friends dont need to buy it either).

Marius Wrote:

>>The shift of focus to mid- to long term strategy doesn't sit well with people who are used to having their games decided and sealed turn 2 at the very latest.

This is a patent lie. The reasons we left the game are detailed above. You can be "nates apologist" all you want, but remember that we are supposed to pay money for this crap. And when the newbs accidently figure out the above analysis while playing, they are going ot get bored and leave.

Bard Sothoth wrote:
>>But who knows, maybe the Sleepwalker is a huge beast and will dominate the competitive field.
I will personally guarantee that you will be let down in a big way. After being exposed to several "Nate packs", you should realize that you can never lower your expectations low enough.....

Bard Sothoth again:

>>While many top competitive level games don't last for very many turns, I'd like to point out that not all the matches are decided on the first turn or that the game has become a die roll to see who goes first. For example, a deck I consider to be among my strongest is actually a control deck, and, while capable of quite fast victories, it normally takes 5+ turns for the game to end.

THANK YOU for pointing this out - Marius has been repeating the "coin flip" argument so much as an "apology" for the crap cards being released that others were beggining to repeat it. There was never a time when all metas were being overrun with "coin flip" decks...there was at most 2-3 bad decks that needed errata - as opposed to the nerfing of the entire game.

On a happier note:

I will also say that I *LOVE* Julia Brown. This is the most ingenious card I have ever seen. Here, Nate has thrown a brilliant piece of work for newbs! This pile-of-crap actually discards itself from the players deck after suicide blocking! This is an incredible deckbuilding concept, as deckbuilders are rewarded by the crappier cards auto-discarding themselves from the deck, leaving them with a better chance to draw better cards! Bravo Nate!

The_Rip-Off said:

Thank you for misinterpreting my comment.

- Turn 2 is hardly a coin flip point any more. Coinflip wins happen turn one, where the opponent even doesn't get a turn to set up any defense.

- Even if Cthulhu wins in turn 15, they will have established control around turn 2. They better, because that's how fast a good rush deck potentially could win. If Cthulhu sets up a good control, it almost doesn't matter what character hits play afterwards, as it will die immediatly.

The_Rip-Off said:

Ah, a game of imperfect information.

By this token, Shocking Transformation andForgotten Temple are "Bad." Or anything with Willpower, because they don't change the game state after a terror loss. Or potentially playing with a 47 or lower card count in your deck.

Marius said:

Would you care to expand and explain? I do not understand what you mean.

Carioz said:

When I interprete TRO's comment as sarcasm, which is likely true , he says that Julia is bad, because she goes to the discard pile to activate. Event cards do this, as well as the Temple, who sends another card to the discard pile. The event cards, and the temple, cannot help in chump blocking.

While such flaws, and exploiting them is part of the game, it also is detrimental to the games' health on the long term, as it closes design spaces, and eventually will make rotation a must. Balance is the bane of anyone playing on a competative level, as (too much) balance means anyone can win. Too little balance means that the game is unattractive to new players though.

After Eldritch Block (which pretty much threw balance in the wind on most fronts, and thus from my perspective was a flawed block, when taking the game's overall health in account) now Nate has to find ways to bring back the balance - and to make it extra difficult, by throwing in as little errata, bannings or need for rotation as possible.

The new seeded archetypes are less powerful than say, the "Jump Tech" archetype. It is my personal opinion that an archetype that bypasses most of the game (draw phases, resource building, story control) is ultimately unhealthy on the long run. Yes, it's clever, it's fun to use and takes lots of skill to pilot. But by bypassing most of the game, design space is closing fast, except for non-fun pure hoser cards, and longlivity is hurt.

If the comment wasn't sarcasm, then I was wrong about that particular comment though.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
- Charles Darwin

Ladies and Gentlemen, I will ask you to calm down a bit here. Disagreement is fine, but keep it on the topic at hand, and don't get personal.

This goes for everyone.

- Jeremy @ FFG

Marius said:

Exploiting badly designed cards and finding broken combos is definitely a big part of 'playing to win'. Except for the excessive bile I liked TRO's post a lot. It's really a good analysis from a competitive viewpoint.

You are also quite correct that FFG is in a difficult position, because 'playing to win' is often the antithesis of a fun game:

Ideally, you're looking for a strategy that cannot be defeated (if you do not make a mistake), regardless what the opponent is doing. Of course it sucks to be the opponent if you manage to achieve this. Still, there's quite a few games out there that fullfill this criterion. The simplest example is Tic-Tac-Toe. Over time other games have been proven to belong into that category, too: Reversi and Checkers, for example. It is strongly suspected that Chess also belongs in this category.

Once you know it is impossible to beat someone playing the game flawlessly, it becomes pointless to play it. The game is dead.

To prevent this, most games introduce an element of chance. The problem with this is: The stronger the element of chance the less attractive does the game become for someone 'playing to win'. If through sheer luck a newb can beat an experienced player, the game is no longer worth playing (for the competitive player).

So, either way you're going to lose a part of the player base, either the ones 'playing for fun' or the ones 'playing to win'.

Phasing out cards helps to keep the game from dying as does providing different rules for casual play than for tournament play.

Anyway, this is a very complex topic that I can hardly do justice. Others have written a lot more insightful articles about it than I could ever hope to.

There's also an additional aspect particular to CCGs and their step-child LCGs: How do you get players to buy expansion sets?

Since you have to prevent (blatant) power creep, the obvious route is to introduce cards that are only situationally better. Eventually, though, you'll end up with cards that are so situational, they're essentially useless. Again, one answer for this problem is to allow (limited) power creep but phase out the most powerful cards and replace them with new, equally powerful cards or just return to a clean board by making a fresh start, removing all existing cards from play. How long you can do this successfully depends on a lot of factors.

Seeing how MTG is still around, I'm really amazed about its longviety.

As an aside: I believe that MMOs are in a very similar situation. For MMOs the problem is: How do you get players to continue subscribing?

Ah, well, I've clearly got to stop - I'm seriously starting to ramble...

Nice discussion!

I also agree with alot of what you're sayin' TRO.

Purely competitive players are going to be 'to say the least'

unsatisfied with the Call Of Cthulhu LCG, paticularly if and I expect

it's true that the new format will only support the new white bordered cards.

With that said, I have never been a 'Purely Competitive Player' and in fact

I am to a great extent captured by the games subject, flavour

and superior mechanics. I myself have shifted gears and expectations

a bit and thanks to that I am looking forward to running events as a Servitor

in the newly announced OPP. The whole premise of the Nates' cards are crap argument

seems to me almost if not completely based on the point of view of a purely competitive player,

maybe I'm wrong? In the 'black border only days' the new cards would never hold up but

I sense that those days are gone and I'm prepared to turn the page. I'm not suggesting

these discussions are invalid because it's important I think to talk about where we've been

as well as where we're going. We may be heading for a glorious or noxious rebirth of the game.

I hope 'glorious' and I'll be along for the ride to find out. I hope that there will be many other

proud parents there in the 'delivery room' to see.

I think you missed the point on the final part of Graham's post, but he'll be able to explain it better than me.

If I have not understood mistakenly you say that Polar was needed because anything more powerful would have just reinforced existing broken archetypes, right?

Carioz said:

It's a very black/white way to put it. Maybe not excisting archetypes. But eventually, it would mean you get to play the exact same deck with all Cthulhu and all Hastur cards. The notion of factions becomes meaningless. Why put seven factions in the game, when in the end every 7th part of the total card pool does the same thing?

Would it hurt if Polar was more powerfull than it is now - Well, probably not. If the game goes on, though, and I hope it does, there might come a point when Polar gets revisited, or some other card is made that makes polar the deck to beat. The foundation is there. The seed has been planted. It's not the worst - as in: least playable- thing I've seen over the years. A polar deck could probably take an overpay, brotherhood, benefactor or (why isn't it playable?) Tome deck on...

I remember playing Arkham Edition, struggling to find good one-drops, because they didn't need my to resource anything, which meant I could speed up my board development by a few turns. So, blackwood associate was pretty good. It gave you a combat icon, for no further investment than draining a domain. I could have 4 of those. Great. The card meant something. Now I also get Canine Guardian (almost strictly better, with strictly better meaning that there is no situation at all when BA tops CG - this is not 100% true, because of Anthropology Advisor) and Alaskan Sledge Dogs. This means my very good essentially free to play special card became less special. More cards came to fill that particular card slot - which for whatever reason was needed in the overall strategy of the deck- and it also somewhat obsoleted the 4x card rule.

The growing of the card pool means that whatever comes in, even if it slightly above the curve, eventually my deck will become close variantions of one particular card, that fills one particular need. It leads to power creep and a superconsistancy, which isn't much fun. It might be good, tournament wise, when I bring my "300 DOA's" control deck" - just keep resourcing DOA and smack everything as it comes into play, hoping that you run out of your 50 cards before I run out of my 300, but it won't exactly be fun. In such a case, I hardly have to make descisions on what to keep and what to resource anymore.

So, then a new AP comes along. It has a slightly worse version of Blackwood Associate or Deep One Assault.

I can approach this in two ways:

- Complain how the new DOA is far worse than the old DOA, and thus utter epic fail, because it's obvious that the designers didn't even take the old DOA into account when designing it. Because I'll pick the old DOA over the new, crappy DOA any day.

-or-

- Realize that the new DOA is inferior to the old DOA, but since the old DOA was pretty **** good, at least, in a pinch, I have a better chance to have a DOA-like effect when I need it, even though DOA 4-8 (or with the 3x rule, 3-6) isn't as good as I want it to be. It opens options, and consistancy.

So, yeah, even if some cards probably never make the cut in my deck, having the option to put them in around is good. Trying to move away from the arm race and the power creep sounds like a plan if I want to be able to enjoy the game for a long time, without having to think about rotation and bannings and errata too much. Because that is what eventuality looks like, and if the game survives, eventuality is something that needs to be taken into account.

433 said:

Thanks, Jeremy. I've been reading this thread with the same growing sense of horror that I get listening to two siblings arguing with each other without ever ackowledging the other side of the argument.

Granted, I'm rather off topic now by saying this, but oh well.

Marius said:

It's a very black/white way to put it. Maybe not excisting archetypes. But eventually, it would mean you get to play the exact same deck with all Cthulhu and all Hastur cards. The notion of factions becomes meaningless. Why put seven factions in the game, when in the end every 7th part of the total card pool does the same thing?

Well, having Hastur go control-lite (and I am using control in the loosest way possible) maybe wasn't the right way to expand it, considering that: already 4 factions feature control-destruction heavilly; if the risk of overlap is so high that the main idea (control) needs to clash with execution (randomly appliable) to avoid threading other factions grounds, maybe the idea is to scrap as a whole. Hastur had lots of themes to be expanded and lots of holes to be plugged (one of which is it still has at most two viable insanity generating interactions -and insanity, as an effect, is pretty underwhelming-, while Hastur should be the insanity king).

Marius said:

Would it hurt if Polar was more powerfull than it is now - Well, probably not. If the game goes on, though, and I hope it does, there might come a point when Polar gets revisited, or some other card is made that makes polar the deck to beat. The foundation is there. The seed has been planted. It's not the worst - as in: least playable- thing I've seen over the years. A polar deck could probably take an overpay, brotherhood, benefactor or (why isn't it playable?) Tome deck on...

Sorry, but I do not agree with this: either a card / cycle / mechanic is meta shaping (mind you, I am using meta shaping in a loose sense here: it more like should be "credible threat"), or it is useless: I consider "It will become powerful in the future" wishful thinking at best for two reasons, which are that I have to play with current cards and that future boostings are more often then not, unefficient or unimportant (which makes sense from a commercial point of view: if a boost is so good that it causes people to go back to older editions, the ever expanding nature of collectible card games is swimmed against).

Marius said:

I remember playing Arkham Edition, struggling to find good one-drops, because they didn't need my to resource anything, which meant I could speed up my board development by a few turns. So, blackwood associate was pretty good. It gave you a combat icon, for no further investment than draining a domain. I could have 4 of those. Great. The card meant something. Now I also get Canine Guardian (almost strictly better, with strictly better meaning that there is no situation at all when BA tops CG - this is not 100% true, because of Anthropology Advisor) and Alaskan Sledge Dogs. This means my very good essentially free to play special card became less special. More cards came to fill that particular card slot - which for whatever reason was needed in the overall strategy of the deck- and it also somewhat obsoleted the 4x card rule.

The growing of the card pool means that whatever comes in, even if it slightly above the curve, eventually my deck will become close variantions of one particular card, that fills one particular need. It leads to power creep and a superconsistancy, which isn't much fun. It might be good, tournament wise, when I bring my "300 DOA's" control deck" - just keep resourcing DOA and smack everything as it comes into play, hoping that you run out of your 50 cards before I run out of my 300, but it won't exactly be fun. In such a case, I hardly have to make descisions on what to keep and what to resource anymore.

I find this a bit contradictory with what you explained in the first paragraph: if overlap is never achieved, then 3x rule is just a dilution of strategy. Having an unconsistent card base and less slots leads to a much more random game.

Marius said:

-skip-

So, yeah, even if some cards probably never make the cut in my deck, having the option to put them in around is good. Trying to move away from the arm race and the power creep sounds like a plan if I want to be able to enjoy the game for a long time, without having to think about rotation and bannings and errata too much. Because that is what eventuality looks like, and if the game survives, eventuality is something that needs to be taken into account.

Sorry, but I do not think that variety for variety's sake is good: a good card needs to be at least challenging to existing archetypes (not only top tier ones, just mid tiers would be good), otherwise it is a lazy man work.

Seriously, I don't get why this discussion is having place.

I've moved on to CoC LCG from a different game (L5R) after playing it for like 8 years. Almost every single time a new expansion was released for it, there were maybe 2-3 playable cards there (out of 150) and although people whined they still bought it. Why? You can use the playable cards you want and give out the rest to someone else who might be interested (like new players, who need cards and don't care much about their power level), or you can keep them to see if they would be playable in the future or in a different deck theme. Or you can just not buy this expansion and wait for the one that has something you could use.

And why the hell are you judging an expansion by looking at just 3 cards from it? Maybe they're only showing unique/single cards that will be there and the true strength of the expansion will lie in the cards not shown?

To sum it all up:

1. You are not forced to buy this expansion.

2. If you do buy it, you are not forced to use all/any cards that are in it.

And most importantly:

3. If all the cards would be super playable it would be boring, wouldn't it? Maybe I'm just too used to buying expansions for just 1 card, or none at all but having them for future use (and how many times have I seen a situation where a card considered utter crap or mediocre turned out to be the most sought out one 2 expansions later).

I agree completely with you, Manit0u.