The Search for More Resources

[joshlytle]

Discuss the article "The Search for More Resources (http://www.thespoils.com/spoils/view.php?pg=article_seed_preview_aristocratic_arti ficer)" here!

[FromTheShadows]

wow, guy seems REALLY good in limited. single thresh with the ability to drop him t1 evein if elitism is off color. AND search t1. then again u sacrifice the tempo of card draw, and your opponent knows a card in hand (that should drop next turn) Add more later after first post

Limited 4/5
Seed consturcted too early to tell
Big constructed hmmm, hard ot tell so far, but i put him at a 3.5/5 as he blocks micromajigs and is a cheap early drop to fix a BAD hand.

[kallisti]

...and so we see another card in the "you will play high threshold" theme, this time an enabler.

That said, I'm disappointed that this guy is rare. He should be uncommon. This guy will likely be played a lot in constructed. Based on what we've seen so far (lots of good high thresh stuff + rare doubles + rare enablers like this) it looks like Constructed will become very expensive. You'll sell more in the short run, but in the long run you'll just drive people away.

And he's usually not that great in Limited. He's a potential bomb, but only if your deck is going to contain lots of Elitism.

[doc8466]

Based on what we've seen so far (lots of good high thresh stuff + rare doubles + rare enablers like this) it looks like Constructed will become very expensive.

I do not believe this at all. Of the 385 cards from First ed. how many rares are in T8 constructed decks? I do not know off the top of my head but I think Bin's deck had the most (rumor) and it wasn't really that many. :chomp: has a basic principle to keep a balance producing a TOURNAMENT card game. If they deviate from that, creating uber powerful rares that are a must for top teir competition, they're shooting themselves in the head.

From all the interaction I've had with virtually every person at the company over the past 1.5 years, that just isn't going to happen.

[Silverwolf]

That said, I'm disappointed that this guy is rare. He should be uncommon. This guy will likely be played a lot in constructed. Based on what we've seen so far (lots of good high thresh stuff + rare doubles + rare enablers like this) it looks like Constructed will become very expensive. You'll sell more in the short run, but in the long run you'll just drive people away.


What makes you think that Uncommons/Commons won't be just as powerful/useful in Seed, like they are in 1ED? Just because they are previewing rares doesn't mean there aren't some great U/C cards in the set.

[doc8466]

What makes you think that Uncommons/Commons won't be just as powerful/useful in Seed, like they are in 1ED? Just because they are previewing rares doesn't mean there aren't some great U/C cards in the set.

Bingo. You and I are on the same page Silverworf. :D

[Hordak]

I think we'd have to see more of the uncommons and commons to make any serious guesses as to how expensive/inexpensive Constructed will be. The dual thresh resources hurt a bit, but I understand why it was done...who needs a million dual thresh resources?

[Silverwolf]

Would you really want dual thresh resources to be uncommon, or common? Once you have 4, you at least have a sufficient amount to build any deck with them. After that, they are really just replacing a card you could have had.

[Hordak]

Would you really want dual thresh resources to be uncommon, or common? Once you have 4, you at least have a sufficient amount to build any deck with them. After that, they are really just replacing a card you could have had.

That was my point actually :)

It's much akin to Discipline cards in Vampire. They were Rares specifically because everyone had a million of them...still hurt to see them pop up in Sealed though.

[Irennicus]

Okay, this article is confusing me. The article states that the card costs 3, then 2, then 1 for his ability. That's obviously not how the card is printed. La_Sin_Grail, are you implying that the cost for the card includes the 3 resource amount to draw it? What if you drew it in your opening hand? What if you just draw it?

Explain please.

[La_Sin_Grail]

I'm saying that if you quantify everything in the game, a card in hard costs three, so yes, then casting it costs two and activating it costs one. This goes back to the theory I studied and created with Jason over the last Summer of tournaments- in studying Will's deck (purple Haze), we decoded why it was so good- if he assassinations a shipping container, it's not just tempo, but it's resource advantage as well!

It's not really that you have to pay the exact cost, but that's how much investment you've put into it overall- that starting card could have as easily been something else. The quantification is largely a rule that governs limited more than constructed, as constructed has a lot based on tempo as well, but this is the reason you should be ecstatic to trade a dock sentinel for two scouts- it's not 7 for 8 resource advantage, but 10 for 14. If this doesn't make sense, that's cool, we're really into numbers so this stuff comes easy to me. I've addressed this in previous articles, written for covenant if you'd like to read more about it. The short answer is a card in hand costs 3.

[Bodlar]

Okay, this article is confusing me. The article states that the card costs 3, then 2, then 1 for his ability. That's obviously not how the card is printed. La_Sin_Grail, are you implying that the cost for the card includes the 3 resource amount to draw it? What if you drew it in your opening hand? What if you just draw it?

Explain please.
That's standard calculation when considering the quality of a card. In order to draw a card it costs 3 which implies that any card you have in your hand would cost you 3 to replace by using the faction. You don't actually have to pay 3 to get him in your starting hand, but any card has an implied cost of +3 because of the standard draw cost.

As far as the card is concerned, I love it! I am a long time gearsmith fan. My first constructed deck at gen con so cal was mono gear, and I am working on a new mono gear deck that is competitive. This guy will rock for getting those higher thresh gear cards out without having to stuff tons of resources into the deck. I would use this guy in any format that I am playing gearsmith. 5/5 points across the board!

Oh and btw, thanks for the review Bernie!

[Falsesanity]

Possibly something for me to think about in my Siege Machine Deck V2.0

[Silentazure]

Possibly something for me to think about in my Siege Machine Deck V2.0


I was just thinking that :D

[Fry]

Usually rarity is one of the first things I notice, but I guess I blew right past it on this guy, as I was thinking "common" until someone complained about it being a rare.

I tend to agree with the philosophy that the Rare position should be used for cards that are A) really swingy in limited or B) really complicated to the point they might turn off newer players (Free Trade Agreement, I'm looking at you). I don't THINK this card is necessarily too ridiculous in limited, and it's definitely not complicated. Moderately large potential for resource advantage, so I would put it at Uncommon with things like Senior Research Assistant.

(Bernie: yes, keep writing. I like having stuff to read while I'm at work. :P)

[J Caster]

Maybe it's rare because it's effective usefullness is constrained to only ONE type of deck........ one running Elitism in it.....

In limited, if this was common or uncommon you would end up with MORE useless cards to make a deck if you are running anything other than ELITISM.

Since it's rare you will see this less often..... Which means more usefull cards
/CHEER!


Also if this was common or uncommon ELITISM would be limited formats king.

[Asukarulez]

Have an interesting discussion, and try to keep it civil.

Hehe, totaly aimed at me. Maybe C3ntury.

Anyhow, I thought this was a Common. Turns out it's a rare. *sigh*

Because it's a rare, it is not relevant for Limited play. Every Limited Expert will tell you that the only thing you need to know in Draft or Sealed is that Commons matter, the rest is just gravy.

This card is gravy in limited. You might have one from time to time, but he won't impact the game state as much as you'd care to believe.

As for Construct, for Seed Cycle this guy is most likely an auto-include. He's an okay replacement for Contriving Engineer. As for Open Construct, I doubt it, unless there's a new Research Investment deck that springs out. Or something to that effect.

I personnaly like it.

Because I play Elitism.

EDIT: Stupid numbers. You're all a bunch of number crunchers. I will not subject myself to more statistics and probabilities. If I wanted more of that, I'd have stayed in Bussiness Admin instead of Poli Sci. And I wouldn't trade 2 Scouts for a Dock Sentinel, because the Sentinel only kills one Scout. :p

[La_Sin_Grail]

Heh, wasn't thinking, my bad. But yeah, commons are the most important things, I just didn't think he'd be too much in constructed because it's too fast- he could be great in limited, and probably will get passed around the draft table a fair amount, so you can probably get it about 1/6 to 1/10 of the time you draft elitism. Doesn't seem like terrible odds to me.

Eh the keep it civil was just a general "it can't hurt to say this" statement.

Anyways, the rare thing I believe is because searching for resources too often would be too frustrating at the common level. People used to complain about nodes searching the deck once, but this guy searches potentially every turn!

[kallisti]

I do not believe this at all. Of the 385 cards from First ed. how many rares are in T8 constructed decks? I do not know off the top of my head but I think Bin's deck had the most (rumor) and it wasn't really that many. :chomp: has a basic principle to keep a balance producing a TOURNAMENT card game.

I want to agree with you, but look at what we've seen so far.

It's generally agreed that doubles will be in nearly every competitive deck. That could easily be 10+ slots in some decks.

Now we see this card, who's likely to fill the slot of cards such as Research Assistant.

So we're already at 8-14 rares in slots in which there were no rares in First Edition decks.

I'll reserve final judgement until we've seen the spoiler, but things aren't looking good for the budget player.

(:chomp: : Feel free to spoil a common/uncommon which will prove me wrong!)


If they deviate from that, creating uber powerful rares that are a must for top teir competition, they're shooting themselves in the head.

These aren't über-powerful rares. These are support cards for the beef of the deck. In First Edition, the support was generally common/uncommon/staple.

[jono187]

great card preview! but as for the article i am not a fan of quantifying the value of the card. 1st of there are to many variables in the game that card values are always changing based on the game state(to some degree). 2nd of all this is supposed to be a tournement game of skill, so why would tell the every1 on the site how you value the cards, let them form there own opinions. Let the good players correctly value the cards themselves, and let jo newb come to their own conclusions.

[joshlytle]

(:chomp: : Feel free to spoil a common/uncommon which will prove me wrong!)

In my opinion, the point of doing previews is to give people a taste of the set. It is not to provide a statistically accurate picture of the various power levels of cards at the various rarities. We've selected cards that show off the basics of the new mechanics in the set as well as an array of powerful/interesting cards to get people thinking about the set and excited by its release.

We won't show you all the best cards, because what fun would that be? We also will typically skew more towards rare cards because they tend to be more interesting and unique by nature. In the case of Seed, we've previewed several commons to show off the mechanics of the set, which are naturally something that matters the most in Limited.

Overall, the previews try to balance a depiction of what new things the set has to offer along with a few "spectacle" cards that are shown off just because they are cool. No one should try to analyze minutiae such as average rarity power until they've seen the entire set, and even then it's not easy to do justice to the subject.

Josh Lytle

[kallisti]

In my opinion, the point of doing previews is to give people a taste of the set. It is not to provide a statistically accurate picture of the various power levels of cards at the various rarities. We've selected cards that show off the basics of the new mechanics in the set as well as an array of powerful/interesting cards to get people thinking about the set and excited by its release.


Agreed so far.



We won't show you all the best cards, because what fun would that be?


You've already said you'll release the full spoiler a few days before release. I think it's more fun for the best cards to be previewed one at a time than together when the spoiler is released.



We also will typically skew more towards rare cards because they tend to be more interesting and unique by nature. In the case of Seed, we've previewed several commons to show off the mechanics of the set, which are naturally something that matters the most in Limited.


No argument here.



Overall, the previews try to balance a depiction of what new things the set has to offer along with a few "spectacle" cards that are shown off just because they are cool. No one should try to analyze minutiae such as average rarity power until they've seen the entire set, and even then it's not easy to do justice to the subject.


I'm not looking at average rarity power. I'm looking at the power of what's already been spoiled.

Even if the only constructed-playable rares in Seed were the doubles, the average price of a tier-1 deck would likely be higher than it is now. Unless the environment is really weird, the doubles are that good. That's basic CCG theory.

Then we see this card. He'll probably take the slot currently occupied by a non-rare like RA. (If he were going to suck because of other stuff in the Seed environment, you wouldn't have selected him to preview.) That makes decks of the type which would use him even more expensive.

So things aren't looking good for the budget player (even if most of the rest of Seed rares suck for Constructed, which I really doubt). That's all I'm saying.

Back to the main topic....

I don't think anyone's mentioned yet that this card is awesome with Selective Gluttony.

[Fry]

I don't think anyone's mentioned yet that this card is awesome with Selective Gluttony. What isn't though? Other than maybe Misfire. :P

[valera]

This card is VERY good. It is incredibly cheap... drawing a "bad draw" for 1... you will probably will never put a facedown resource again ?! 1 thresh - is awesome.

Just imagine how much tempo an resources should opponent use to get rid of it... this card is a pure advantage.

[La_Sin_Grail]

I chose to omit synergy with gluttony because greed is typically paired with arcanist, not elitism, for a control deck. It's worth considering, I suppose, because it's somewhat the ability to pay one and deplete for a card whenever you do eventually play that gluttony...

For the topic of doubles, they're actually not that much better than regular resources. That doesn't matter! The fact is that they are and will therefore be played in competitive decks because why not?

The thing you guys should keep in mind, too, is that The Spoils is based to be a Tournament Card Game. We play limited to increase our collections (at least that's the intention). If you play a sealed or draft every weekend for a month and win like 3 packs additional, you can grab the equivalent of a few boxes, pull some doubles, trade your doubles for whichever other doubles you seek, and it shouldn't be that huge of an issue. Play for eight weeks (getting 6-8 packs per weekend) and you're sitting on 48-64 packs opened, averaging 4-5 double rares, you've got enough to trade for a playset in any trade. It's not that big of a deal.

I actually am anticipating this because the players will be more inspired to go to events even if they have say qualified for their Invitational already, they'll still want to get more cards. I've been hearing stories about how as the Invitational approaches, people stop coming because there simply isn't a reason to go when they're qualified- people don't need more cards and they don't need practice in a format that won't be played anywhere big! When Seed comes out, though, people will have to collect once again, and practice for major tournaments by going to IQs every weekend. This is one of the reasons Seed should snap :chomp: out of the slipping trend we've been seeing- people start going back to local tournaments, they generate money and interest in the game, which is what this game needs to perpetuate itself.

[Furtive Investor]

"This character costs 5 total resources to play: 3 for the card and 2 to play him, plus 1 whenever you use its ability. In general, a resource costs 7. It takes 3 to draw the card and 4 to play it as a resource. With this ability, the cost is changed to 5. In other words, you pay 5 resources for a 2 resource advantage every subsequent turn you don’t have a resource already."

Help me understand:
3 + 2 + 1 = 6 (not 5)

And when comparing either (5 or 6) to 7, what about the cost to play the resource? This card only lets me search, reveal, and put it in my hand. I still have to get it on the board somehow, no?

Did you mean 1 for the ability and then 4 to play the resource (that makes 5)?

But I would still need amortize the 3 + 2 to get it into play across the number of times I actually used its ability.

:confused:

[BudLeiser]

Money rares add value to drafting. Theres no point in buying packs if the cards are worthless.

[La_Sin_Grail]

"This character costs 5 total resources to play: 3 for the card and 2 to play him, plus 1 whenever you use its ability. In general, a resource costs 7. It takes 3 to draw the card and 4 to play it as a resource. With this ability, the cost is changed to 5. In other words, you pay 5 resources for a 2 resource advantage every subsequent turn you don’t have a resource already."

Help me understand:
3 + 2 + 1 = 6 (not 5)

And when comparing either (5 or 6) to 7, what about the cost to play the resource? This card only lets me search, reveal, and put it in my hand. I still have to get it on the board somehow, no?

Did you mean 1 for the ability and then 4 to play the resource (that makes 5)?

But I would still need amortize the 3 + 2 to get it into play across the number of times I actually used its ability.

:confused:

Ok. Card costs 3, guy costs 2 to play. Each activation costs 1. Therefore, he takes 5 to put into play, then 1 to activate each time.

If you search for a resource with artificer instead of drawing one, you save 2 resources spent. Putting a card down as a resource takes 4, so you spend 1+4=5 to play a resource you searched for instead of drawing one the regular way (3) and then resourcing it 3+4=7.

Resource from hand-4
Generic card draw-3
Cost of guy-2
Cost of activatino of ability-1

Above is where all the numbers come from. Hope that makes sense!

[Master St. Louis]

This card is interesting, and potentially handy in a tight situation, but it's nothing that I would use.

[Fry]

Ok. Card costs 3, guy costs 2 to play. Each activation costs 1. Therefore, he takes 5 to put into play, then 1 to activate each time.

If you search for a resource with artificer instead of drawing one, you save 2 resources spent. Putting a card down as a resource takes 4, so you spend 1+4=5 to play a resource you searched for instead of drawing one the regular way (3) and then resourcing it 3+4=7.

Resource from hand-4
Generic card draw-3
Cost of guy-2
Cost of activatino of ability-1

Above is where all the numbers come from. Hope that makes sense!
I think what furtive investor is saying is that you have to pay 5 up front to start getting a discount of 2 per resource played, so you aren't pulling ahead until your third activation. Although that is kinda better than Senior Research Assistant, who costs 4+3 to get you an extra 2 per turn, where you aren't ahead until the fourth activation. Of course, Senior's benefit lasts indefinitely, and the new guy only helps as long as you still have Elitisms to fetch and play. Senior also enables explosive openings like the dreaded leet->senior->beefy. So it's not like Senior has been obsoleted or anything.

[La_Sin_Grail]

Absolutely, that was the part where I talked about tempo- I was trying to get you guys to see it's power overtime, not in the immediate.

Senior research assistant is my favorite card, and this does not change that.

[doc8466]

This card is VERY good. It is incredibly cheap... drawing a "bad draw" for 1... you will probably will never put a facedown resource again ?!

Don't let my buddy Land Shark hear that kind of talk.....

(now if I only knew how to get the theme song from JAWS to play in a post)

[Irennicus]

A card costs 3.

Sorry, I actually grasped that fact before I read your answer to my question. I was just really tired and really high that morning.