Week in Review
I was looking forward to the two posts of this week. Whippoorwills is one of my favorite encounter sets of the game and Extracurricular Activity is among my favorite scenarios.
As for Innsmouth, i decided on just keeping my rotation through the campaigns going on. So there should be some Innsmouth content in five weeks, following a week each for Carcosa, TFA, TCU and TDE. That way, i’ll also be able to talk about the cards with more confidence, after having played with them several times more.
Soapbox
We finally got the latest update to the FAQ and to the Taboo list. I will leave analysing the finer details of the FAQ to people who are smarter than me, but i can offer up some hot takes on the Taboo changes:
Machete(was +2XP, now is +1XP): This is a change i actually made for myself already a few months ago when i wanted to include a copy of the card in my Highlander Yorrick but was not willing to spend 2XP on it. So naturally i approve. Machete at 1XP feels like it’s the correct spot.
Scrapper(was +3XP, now is +1XP): I don’t really care for this card either way, to be honest. I just don’t use the Talents all that much. Scrapper at 6XP was pretty outlandish in my opinion for sure, though.
Streetwise/Higher Education(were +5XP, now are +3XP): Sure. Again, i just think that these Talents are boring in the first place, so this doesn’t affect me much. These were cards that i fell back on with a small card pool, but instead of throwing countless resources at Streetwise, i’d rather Double Double my Intel Reports or something 😉 Spending 8XP was out of the question for me. Not sure if 6XP is much better, but i guess the cards are certainly powerful enough to warrant the XP cost.
Pathfinder(now +2XP): Good change. This is a card that was seriously crowding out other options. Also, since it’s slotless, it often felt like a mandatory buy for your first two XP, no matter which Seeker (or off-class Seeker) you were playing. This gives the card at least some opportunity cost to include. Thumbs up.
Flamethrower(now +1XP): Another card that i personally do not care about a whole lot. Requiring a body slot and thus stopping me from having a bandolier with it was enough of a deterrent to stop me from putting this in my decks. Not sure what an extra XP is supposed to do here, to be honest. If the card is as much better as the other 5XP cards as is often claimed, then an extra XP won’t make me suddenly go for the ‘lesser’ option. Meh, this is a change i don’t see doing a whole lot.
Mr. “Rook”(now +4XP): Perfectly justified in my opinion, the powerlevel is easily up with other 4XP cards. However, i would have preferred a mechanical change. Right now, the whole “choose 3, 6 or 9 cards” mechanic on the card is basically worthless as there is no reason to ever pick less than 9. A mechanical change could’ve made Rook actually play better while reining him in enough that he could stay at 0XP. Or at least at 2XP or so. Proposal: Change Rook so that whenever he finds a weakness, the rest of the search is canceled. Alternative Proposal: Change Rook’s activation to require an action instead of a free trigger.
Knowledge is Power(now +2XP): Fiiiine. I get that it’s a powerful card and that it’s good enough that spending 2XP on it is reasonable. But it’s just a really fun card that you can do lots of cool stuff with. Not being able to put it into my starting deck rubs me the wrong way. I guess i’ll live with it, but i am not completely happy with it.
Segment of Onyx(now +3XP for the set): Yup, perfectly reasonable. 4XP is still kind of a steal for this card, to be honest. But at least it’s got a bit of a threshold before you include it into your deck now. 1XP meant that it went into pretty much anything that drew about 2 cards per turn. Not much more to say about this one, this is pretty uncontroversial, right?
Necronomicon(now +3XP): Meh. I think that the change to Sleight of Hand was enough to cut the most broken interactions from Necronomicon, so i don’t think this is really needed. This card got nerfed so fast, i didn’t even get to play with it yet 😀
Quick Thinking(now once per round): Sure. Removing that interaction with Amanda is a good call and if it stops abusive corner cases while still keeping the card perfectly playable in most “fair” decks, i am all for it.
Sleight of Hand(now affects only L1-3 item assets): Booo. If the LotRLCG survived all these years being Sneak Attack‘d by Gandalf, then we can survive Sleight of Hand on Sawed-Off Shotguns. This change intends to stop the card from interacting with the Necronomicon, but i feel like this hits too many other cool targets as collateral damage. Also, the FFG article suggests i should Sleight of Hand a Colt Vest Pocket. Come on now.
All-In(now RFGs on resolution): Sure, understandable. This is a bit sad considering that it has a really cool place in a deck with Daredevil and the like, but recursion on an actionless draw 5 is a bit much for sure.
Scroll of Secrets(now activates free instead of as an action): Oh, this deserves some testing. As printed, the Scroll is laughably bad but this change could put some life into it. Even if it doesn’t work out, it’s a great attempt and i wholeheartedly approve of trying to revitalise overlooked cards as well in these Taboo changes instead of only hammering down the powerful ones. Ripping the action cost off of this card removes the exact part that was its problem. Now, i am not convinced yet that i have the deck slots for this effect unless i get some extra synergy (the article mentions Gloria and Dexter), but it’s certainly worth a try.
.35 Winchester(now also get +2 damage on other “non-negative” tokens): Potentially this is huge. I tried to make this card work before in a Diana deck with token manipulation. It was on the cusp of being good, but the inconsistency caught up with the deck in the end. This change makes looking at the card again attractive, as not only will it now trigger on Blesses, but also on symbol tokens that have a +0 modifier. Mostly that’s skulls, but those are also in the bag in the largest quantity. Not sold on Jim Culver for this deck, i would still go with Diana, i think. Or go heavy on the bless tokens, but that’d have to wait until we have more of the Innsmouth cards at our hands.
Double or Nothing(it’s dead): Some cards can be abused in a multitude of ways but still have “fair” applications that are worth keeping around. Double or Nothing is not one of those cards. It’s just a broken card that does broken stuff and its existence was consistently weighing on the rest of the card pool as any new skill card that came out had to be considered for what happens when you double it. I for one will not miss Double or Nothing, if only for the fact that i never played it before and never planned on doing so either. There was no point in any of my deckbuilding where i thought that adding Double or Nothing would add something fun to it.
So in conclusion, this taboo change is one that i can overwhelmingly agree with. I still think that Sleight of Hand is a perfectly fine card as printed, but oh well. All things considered, i will just end up using these as proposed.