Card draw simulator
| Derived from |
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| None. Self-made deck here. |
| Inspiration for |
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| None yet |
ggiles · 439
This is a little twist on a pretty standard Dark Horse Darrell deck, focused on getting benefits by having no resources and no cards. It's straightforward to pilot and (imo) fun for at least a little bit -- I suspect on a longer campaign this will get repetitive, but it's designed to slot into a standalone with 0 additional weaknesses, and I found that the novelty of trying to get cards out of your hand as fast as possible was entertaining.
The general idea here is to abuse the synergy between Empirical Hypothesis - Pessimistic Outlook and Madame Labranche: If you commit your last card to a skill test, you get to add an evidence on Hypothesis, then tap Labranche for another card -- so if we consider evidence's interaction with Darrell's ability, committing that last card effectively netted you another card, plus a copy of Gumption.
There's some other themes to support the core idea:
- This deck is stuffed full of Wild icons that have no conditions to commit. That's why I haven't included standout skills like Deduction, Inquiring Mind, etc -- those are cards you want to hold in your hand until the right time comes along, but that doesn't work with this deck; if a card gets in our hand, we want to crap it out ASAP, because every turn we don't go to empty is a turn we didn't charge Empirical Hypothesis.
- We play with a lot of recursion to offset having no cards. A Glimmer of Hope and Scavenging lets us hold skill icons and assets in the discard while still benefiting from running out of cards. Rabbit's Foot is an easily retrieved wild icon in this instance.
- Since we can't sit around waiting for the right time to play expensive or situational cards, we really cling to the running lean theme and play the Dark Horse suite. There's some synergy with Labranche here, but more importantly one of the big downsides of Dark Horse -- that running expensive events or assets becomes undesirable -- is a downside we already committed to for this deck (since expensive events and assets are harder to get out of our hand). So we might as well bring it in, since the cost to include it is less.
- We also can't build up a big stock of resources to help us get past painful treacheries (we have the option to hold cards in reserve and not charge the Hypothesis if we know we're going to need to pass a big skill test, but treacheries aren't so predictable). So, we're going with the age-old strategy of just taking it in the teeth. Cherished Keepsake and Leather Coat are old Survivor standbys that come in very handy here, since you can pop them into play with no action cost with Scavenging -- in some cases, treacheries actually become beneficial: Crypt Chill knocking a partially damaged Leather Coat into the discard for you to scavenge back, for example. It's also kind of funny just leisurely taking pictures of the Ghoul Minion munching your face off.
And that's all I have to say about this deck! It's a short, sweet little mishmash of classic Survivor stuff, and I hope you have fun with it!
| 7 comments |
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Jan 26, 2023 |
Jan 26, 2023Sorry, I meant Inquiring Mind, not True Understanding, in place of Plan of Action. |
Jan 26, 2023
Nothing Left to Lose is a great suggestion and the card I had the most trouble deciding to leave out. The problem is that there's actually a very narrow window where you want burst economy in this deck. Once you play Mariner's and Dark Horse, there's nothing to spend resources on that Labranche/upkeep won't pay for, and at some point in the endgame, once you have your key assets out and a comfortably full discard pile, you actually want to stop drawing. Going through your deck at that point is just bringing you closer to the point where your discard reshuffles and your board state degrades dramatically without access to A Glimmer of Hope and Scavenging. So NLL (or a loaded Resourceful) has to come at exactly the right time to be useful. It's very useful in that circumstance, but ultimately I couldn't fit it into the deck without crossing over the exp threshold to an additional weakness. Definitely a card to pick up if you take this deck into a campaign, though! Grisly Totem is in this awkward place where it's both expensive and has icons that I couldn't reliably test with -- the calculus might change if you have a friendly Rogue that gobbles up feet like no tomorrow, but I had multiple turns where the second copy (or a first copy I couldn't afford) was in my hand and I just couldn't find an agility test to save my life. It also doesn't offer up that much more benefit than Rabbit's Foot -- I never actually play Rabbit's Foot as an asset in this deck, I just commit it for the +1 and then scavenge it back for another +1. In that context, I like Rabbit's Foot as a repeatable +1 a lot better than Grisly Totem as a repeatable +1, since it's so much less restrictive. You just draw it and throw, whereas Grisly demands you set it up and play around it. Inquiring Mind is a card that I thought would be really good but then it turned out to have a really rough edge, namely that there's certain situations where it will just lock you out of your deck's central gimmick and there is nothing you can do about it. [Campaign 1 spoilers follow] As an example, the last act of The Gathering has no clues whatsoever -- on a playtest, I drew Inquiring Mind, then drew Ruined Film, and promptly had no access to evidence for the rest of the scenario. It wasn't the end of the world -- I still parleyed with Lita and got back and we killed the Ghoul Priest just fine -- but it sure wasn't fun getting locked out of all my core mechanics with no recourse. [Campaign 1 spoilers end] In contrast, Plan of Action doesn't demand that you fit its criteria to use it. Some turns I just saw no way to get an extra icon or card out of it, and that sucked, but I could still play it, take my evidence and Labranche card as a consolation prize, and move on -- none of this "your build is dead until the game throws you a clue" nonsense. Of course, all of that goes out the window if you know that you're playing a scenario with an abundance of clues, so Inquiring Mind is certainly a good card for this deck! It's just that I wanted to keep this deck as generically good no matter the scenario, and Inquiring Mind gets in the way of that. |
Jan 26, 2023You bring up many excellent points! Thank you for taking my questions as I intended them--not as criticisms but as ways to MAYBE make an excellent deck even better. Related: I think the Customizable cards will continue to provide "ah ha" moments for years to come. Good on you for the Pessimistic Outlook synergy you discovered! |
Jan 28, 2023Great, great deck! Very fun and clever. I think adding Cornered could be very useful for oportunity to empty our hand with +2 skill value benefit. |
Jan 28, 2023
If you slot Cornered into the deck as-is, it's actually not doing that much. Being a cluever, the majority of your skill tests are going to be intellect tests, and every card except Cherished Keepsake, Leather Coat, and Dark Horse are going to give you at least a +1. So most of the time, Cornered is only really giving you a +1 -- but that's not a +1 you need. It's pretty regular to be testing at 9 (5 base + 1 Mariner's + 1 Dark Horse + 1 commit + 1 Ice Pick), which is good enough (at least on Hard, YMMV on Expert). It's not particularly difficult to get those non-intellect-pip cards out of your hand, either -- you can always just play Cherished Keepsake and Leather Coat since they're 0-cost. Dark Horse is annoying sometimes, but there's only one copy of it and in the worst case, you can spend a turn clicking for two resources and then playing it. So Cornered is only good in those oddball circumstances where you, say, drew an agility treachery and also only have Leather Coat in hand. It's useful then, but IMO not "add an extra weakness to your deck" levels of useful. Ah, but if you put Cornered into the deck, you can stuff more cards that are hard to get out of your hand in there, because Cornered will take care of that for you, right? Well, sort of. There's an ordering issue here where if you draw your hard-to-discard card (and can't discard it) before Cornered, you're out of luck. This is particularly annoying because Cornered ended up second-to-last in my asset priority list -- Empirical Hypothesis is the keystone of this deck, Ice Pick+Scavenging/Mariner's will save loads more actions than Cornered, and Labranche will draw you a lot of cards if you put her out early. That doesn't just affect the mulligan, either -- if Scavenging and Labranche end up in my discard via Short Supply, you can bet your britches I'll spend my Resourcefuls picking those up before Cornered. All that's to say that I just couldn't get Cornered out early with any sort of consistency, and as a result any cards I put in this deck that Cornered enabled became inconsistent as well. That hassle (plus the cost of putting another weakness into this deck) was too much for me, so I cut Cornered. Of course, a lot of this evaluation hinges on 1.) Standalone weakness/exp limitations, and 2.) Assuming that the Cornered skill boost isn't all that useful. If you're taking this deck into a campaign where you expect to make important non-intellect tests, Cornered is a good pick! |
Jan 28, 2023Thank you for explanation. Now I understand your idea even better. I often play true solo so I need more skill boost than just for cluever - that's why I thought about Cornered. Of course another cards as well but still - I love the synergy and opportunities this excellent deck can give. |
Very clever! How about a one-of Nothing Left to Lose for a late-scenario burst? If you draw it early, commit it for one wild and hope to recur it with Resourceful. Might Grisly Totem provide more utility than Rabbit's Foot? And one last thought: Might True Understanding be less restrictive than Plan of Action?