Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Strategy #2—Playing Your Cards

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

This is the second installment of our strategy blog written by game historian Shannon Appelcline. You can read the first installment here.

Your deck of cards is your most personal resource in the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, and the one you have the most control over. So how can you make the most efficient use of it?

Cycle Your Cards Quickly

You want to move through your deck quickly. That's because you'll have some cards that are notably better than others, and you want to get to them. Even better, you want to get to them again and again. However, cards are your second most valuable resource [after time—see the first blog!], so you don't want to just toss them all into your discard pile. How do you balance these priorities?

You cycle cards, which is to say, you frequently play cards that can be recharged. For characters including Lem (recharge to aid), Lini (recharge your animals), Merisiel (recharge to backstab), Sajan (recharge your blessings), Seoni (recharge your spells), and Valeros (recharge your weapons), this comes naturally. Use their recharge powers liberally. Most of the magic users can also recycle their spells if they're careful. For the other characters, try and focus on rechargeable items and allies.

Oh, and recharge that armor at the end of every turn if you can—and if you can't, pick up magic armor and/or armor proficiency so that you can.

Corollary #1: Don't wait for the perfect use of rechargeable cards. It's tempting to wait forever so that you can use your rechargeable card just when you need it most. Don't. It'll clog your hand, and you may end up never using it. Yes, the card is gone once you recharge it, but you'll have something else just as useful in your hand, and you generally can't predict which card actually will be helpful on the next turn.

Corollary #2: If you can't recharge, discard and heal. Some characters (such as Amiri, Harsk, and Seelah) just aren't that great at recharging. But you still want to rapidly cycle their decks to get to their great cards again and again. Accept that their method of cycling cards goes through the discard pile: use their cards up, then have a healer ready to recycle them.

Discard Your Cards Quickly

When you get a card that doesn't look like it's going to be useful to you, don't be afraid to discard it. This is particularly important when you acquire a boon that's not that great. A few characters, such as Amiri (bury any card for additional dice), Lem (recharge any card to aid), and Lini (discard any card for improved skills), have reasons to hang onto bad cards. Absent that, toss those losers!

You should also aggressively play useful cards like blessings, allies, and weapons even if they're one use. Don't use them pointlessly, but do use them when they look useful, rather than hoarding them for some future day. Use what you have; you'll draw more!

Late in the game, you may even throw out formerly useful cards without using them. If you think there are no more barriers to deal with, get rid of that Masterwork Tools. If you're expecting to only support your friend fighting the villain, toss out your own weapons in the hope of drawing blessings.

The exception to this is, of course, when you're getting low on cards. You don't want your character to die! However, if you're forced to slow down, you should call over a healer so that you can quickly get up to speed again.

Don't Clog Your Hand

Cycling and discarding quickly is all about making sure that you don't clog up your hand. If you have the same cards in your hand round after round, you're not making the most efficient use of your resources. You could be using high-power cards that require discarding or medium-power cards that require recharging, but instead you're using low-power cards that require revealing... or maybe you're not using your cards at all! Amiri and Seelah are among the characters most prone to this problem, because of their lack of recharge powers, but anyone can get stuck with an immobile hand of cards.

A good rule of thumb is that if you get to the end of a turn and your hand is exactly the same as it was at the beginning, you need to do something.

Corollary #1: Unclog your hand by playing your cards. Most obviously, you can unclog your hand by using it. You should feel really free to recharge cards, even if doing so is a total waste. Alternatively, you should be discarding cards for their powers.

Corollary #2: Unclog your hand by discarding your cards. You might flat-out discard cards when resetting to free up your hand, particularly if you have duplicates of a card type—usually weapons or armor.

Corollary #3: Unclog your hand by moving your character. If the cards in your clogged hand aren't useful in your current location, but would be useful elsewhere, then move! If you've got a handful of weapons, go somewhere with piles of monsters, and if you've got a Crown of Charisma, go to a location that has a lot of allies, or one that requires a Charisma check to close.

Heal Yourself Quickly

In an ideal world, you'd save your healing cards until you were guaranteed not to waste any of their potential power. It seems wasteful to play a Cure that could heal up to five cards when you have only three cards in your discard pile! However, the world of PACG isn't ideal, and if you choose not to use your Cure, it's going to sit in your hand, wasting space turn after turn.

Sometimes you should just use your Cure to keep your hand cycling, even if you might waste some pips on the die roll. This is especially true for Kyra (who will probably recharge her Cure and who can heal it back into her draw pile with any Divine card if she messes up), for Lem (who can exchange any other spell for his Cure), or for someone else with multiple healing powers.

(You might want to be stingier if you're playing a Fighter or a Rogue that's depending on Father Zantus for a one-time heal sometime in the game.)

Hold On to a Blessing

Though you want to play your cards and cycle your deck, don't go too far. You should try to ensure there's always one blessing somewhere in your party. Kyra's a good person to be the Designated Blessing Holder (DBH) if she's in the game, since she can use it for healing.

By holding onto one blessing, you're slowing your progress a little bit, but you're also making sure that you're ready for that great boon or that awful bane that someone can't quite deal with on their own.

Take Your Time if You Have It

Sometimes you'll play aggressively enough that your location timer will get ahead of your blessing timer. This happens immediately in a one-player game, where your 30 location deck cards already match the 30 blessings deck cards. However, you can get ahead even with more players—sometimes.

When this happens, you should start playing more slowly. Don't worry about discarding or recharging as much. Dig more for good boons. Save your blessings to improve rolls, not to go again.

If you start falling behind, you can always speed up play again.

Next time: Knowing your cards.

Shannon Appelcline
Game Historian