Overpowered or what?

yes. it will most likely be seeing action in my 'vagueries and misdirection' deck ( edit in deck forum ). with 32 cards of cost 1 or 2 i can see it being quite useful as the whole deck revolves around keeping 3+ costs out of the non perambulans stories ( and of course would be reserved for use with only these ). heh heh heh. im liking this deck more and more each day……

I've been wondering if this is supposed to be simply "once per turn". If he can use it three times per turn it's pretty crazy.

Even once per turn he's a great character and seems like an asset to every Syndicate deck.

COCLCG said:

Indeed.

I can't see the card at work (stupid firewalls…) so I did a quick Google search. It turns out there's a real guy named Peter Clover who writes kids books about Sheltie, the Shetland pony. He's bald, and doesn't look like he owns a speakeasy.

Here's what the card has:

*Peter Clover, 3-cost, CCI, 3 skill, Criminal

Action: Choose a character committed to a story and reveal the top card of your deck. If the cost of the revealed card is lower than the cost of the chosen character, uncommit that character. Then, either put the revealed card on the bottom of your deck or discard it. (Limit once per story, per turn.)

I don't think it's the pony guy - the fellow on the card has hair.

So, if I'm reading this right, he gets 3 tries to uncommit an enemy character (one at each story, maybe more if there are Conspiracies in play) each turn. Big ones are likely to succeed. Smaller ones may not. The cost is that you're showing your opponent 3 cards of your deck, which isn't that big a deal at least for me. Sometimes a good card was on top, but my view is that until the card is drawn any unknown card is indeterminate. "losing" one top card is just gaining another and since they're both unknown they are of equivalent value until they're actually revealed.

I think the key point is the odds of succeeding. The revealed card has to be LOWER cost, not equal or lower. So while it works nicely for cost 4+ characters the smaller ones are increasingly less likely to work. For a cost 2 character they're pretty bad. Cost 1 almost never works (in many decks, strictly never). Cost 3's are iffy, and depend on your deck. They probably work OK, but Syndicate is starting to have more 3-cost cards they may want to include - starting of course with Peter Clover himself and potentially Mr. David Pan or some others. To add insult to injury, if you "miss" it's because you also just lost the opportunity to play one of your strong cards too. You can remedy that a bit by taking one of the Syndicate cards that let you draw off the bottom though.

I can't see any reason not to take him in virtually every Syndicate deck. Even without the ability his icons and skill are solid. You can, if you want, stick to only using his ability on high cost characters who will be affected pretty reliably.

On the other hand, Syndicate is often mentioned as being one of the weakest factions - and you can't remedy that without giving them some strong cards to improve their overall pool. I think then that Peter Clover is intended to be one of those cards and he's powerful on purpose. Whether he's a bit TOO strong will take some testing to get a better idea of how many times his ability will work per turn against real-world decks (and I'll bet he'll have a HUGE bullseye on his head too). Might want to find a Guardian Beast or Mask of Sthenelus or something for him if you want him to stick around

dboeren said:

I think most of the Non-Miskatonic cards in the Seekers set are quite good. It's probably to compensate that there are so few of them

jhaelen said:

Yep, Prism would work really well with Peter Clover, and I've always liked that card in general because it grants you both flexibility and information. OK, it gives your opponent some information too, but it's still a good trade I think and you can limit his ability to do anything with that information.

I was trying out a deck with Peter Clover last night. He was definitely a strong character, but he ran into a few troubles as well.

Once he was the target of Deep One Rising. Another time he got hit with Called by Azathoth to blank his box. Like any important character, he's got a target on him so you can expect your opponent to do what they can to nullify him.

His ability as expected worked well on higher priced characters, for instance Y'Golonac at cost 4. I was able to keep him off a story so that we wouldn't get driven crazy, and even on a turn where most of my guys were exhausted I was able to take Y'Golonac off a story where he was the only Arcane character - keeping my opponent from having another ready defender on his next turn.

But, he's less strong against lower cost guys where the chance of under-cutting their cost isn't as good. Still an all-around great character though and I'd never feel like I was making a mistake to put him into any Syndicate deck. Sometime I'd like to try him against a rush deck with lots of cost 1-2 guys and see how that goes.