I have a general question pertaining to the use of the Character Add-on and Class decks.
Aside from the extra characters in the Character add-on decks and the few unique weapons, armors, allies and items bearing the "B" (for base deck) and "C" (for character deck) designations, most of the cards in these decks are copies of existing cards in the base game.
I understand that the other intention of these decks is to expand the game for use to 5 to 6 players.
Unfortunately, when you typically play your games solo or with 2 or three players, adding the complete contents of these decks to your base decks actually serves to dilute your pool of cards with common cards. So when drawing a card after successfully completing a scenario, your chances of drawing a good card are actually diminished.
Has anyone who plays primarily with the normal number of players adopted the policy of only adding unique cards from these add-on decks to the base pool of cards? Is this cheating? To me, it doesn't appear so. It seems like adding all the cards to a box used to support a lower number of players is actually taking away from the excitement of completing a scenario.
Looking for your thoughts
I played all of Rise of the Runelords with three characters (plus with other groups too). Two of them were from the add-on pack. It wouldn't occur to us to adjust what we added and we had a great time. I don't think it's meant to give you fast rewards; the characters build too slow for some people's tastes. But you should play the way you get the most story and fun out of it.
Has anyone who plays primarily with the normal number of players adopted the policy of only adding unique cards from these add-on decks to the base pool of cards? Is this cheating? To me, it doesn't appear so. It seems like adding all the cards to a box used to support a lower number of players is actually taking away from the excitement of completing a scenario.
Yeah, I've done this. It was a pretty big hassle though, as different class decks have the same cards, and some class decks will add duplicate cards but in different APs. I suggest adding all of your class decks and the base deck together, splitting them out by their adventure deck number, and going through each AP removing duplicates (but leaving duplicates that existed in the base deck e.g. 2+ eye patches). Up to you if you additionally want to remove duplicates between APs as well, I found it hard to keep track unless you have all of the APs already and are willing to sort through the cards ahead of time.
You miss out on some duplicates of cool cards like Safe Haven but I've found the increased variety makes it worth it. It also feels that much more lucky when you do come across the one rare card you want, as it's that much more rare. It makes scouting through decks more worthwhile and generally makes you hesitate before closing locations via henchmen.
As a side note, last night we finally got Venomous Dagger +2 from the rogue deck. I'd seen it come up four times beforehand but it was either in a closed location or the one time someone tried to acquire there were no blessings left and they didn't have the right skill. Even though we're on AP5 now I added it to Olenjack's deck as the recharge to add poison trait is so useful.
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What in the world...? No, the character add-on decks are filled with super-awesome cards, most of which warrant putting the whole thing in the box. You're probably going to have more locations to fill if you get the add-on, so the ratio of good to not-good isn't diluted, I would argue.
Class decks, however, add a lot of the same stuff...a lot of it's good, but less of it is unique. Still, you might find you need those cards for the characters in those decks - e.g., as Pyrocat has already illustrated, poison weapons for Olenjack (or Bludgeoning for Vika, etc.).
So is adding the numbered Adventure Packs incremental? For example, when we finish AP1, do we keep all of AP1 cards and also add AP2 cards? As well as the base cards and Character and class cards? Is there any point where older cards are removed fron the total pool of cards?
Correct, when you start an adventure leave the previous cards in and you add in the new cards. Cards are removed based are the basic or elite traits via the rule on the Adventure Path card. For the basic trait it starts in adventure 3 and for the elite trait it starts in adventure 5.
What in the world...? No, the character add-on decks are filled with super-awesome cards, most of which warrant putting the whole thing in the box. You're probably going to have more locations to fill if you get the add-on, so the ratio of good to not-good isn't diluted, I would argue.
Not everyone plays 5-6 character groups. I imagine there's a lot of people like me and my wife, who play 2 characters and use the Add-On deck for its unique cards.
What in the world...? No, the character add-on decks are filled with super-awesome cards, most of which warrant putting the whole thing in the box. You're probably going to have more locations to fill if you get the add-on, so the ratio of good to not-good isn't diluted, I would argue.
Class decks, however, add a lot of the same stuff...a lot of it's good, but less of it is unique. Still, you might find you need those cards for the characters in those decks - e.g., as Pyrocat has already illustrated, poison weapons for Olenjack (or Bludgeoning for Vika, etc.).
Number of locations is dictated by number of characters, not whether or not you've mixed in the character add-on deck - so whilst you can't have 6 character without it, doesn't mean you'll have 8 locations with it.
Ehh, it's not so bad. I just finished a two-player game with four class decks added in, and our characters still had a lot of the excellent gear by the time we finished.
For RotR, in our group of 4 (and another one of 6), we added 6 class decks on top of the add-on deck. I added everything including duplicates. We also added an additional location each scenario for the 4 player group.
After adventure 3, all the cards could not fit the default insert so we culled the Basic duplicates. As we progressed to higher adventures, if a card type has too many cards to fit in the box, the cards we remove first are cards with Basic trait that are duplicates, then Elites (Starting adventure 5), prioritizing class deck cards first.
Overall, the experience made it more challenging as we didn't get good gear easily since the pool is diluted. With slower than normal gear progression and an extra location, we always barely beat scenarios leaving 0-5 turns remaining. This made the game more fun for us than the popular "zis game eet izz too eeeezeee"
The class decks provided enough unique cards that we are really not encountering more of the same stuff all the time. We rarely encounter a boon that we've seen no more than twice. The same cannot be said with banes. Since class decks do not add additional banes, I cannot tell you how many times we encountered a Sneak for example.
Would you rather encounter the same Bastard Sword ten times throughout the whole AP, or would you rather encounter 5 unique weapons of the same power level as a Bastard Sword? That might not be the best example but our idea was to dilute the pool of cards so that we don't progress in power level too fast, and so that we don't encounter the same stuff all the time.
However, for S&S, we decided not to do the same. (This post made me realize I haven't posted our conquering heroes for RotR)
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FYI, our recommendation is that you only add class decks for characters that you're actually playing.
I am aware and definitely considered. However, as of today there is no Paladin deck, so we instead added the Fighter deck. Our spellcasters wanted to have more spell variety so we added Sorcerer, Cleric, and Wizard decks. On top of the Rogue Deck, our Merisiel wanted to have more bows in the pool so we added the Ranger deck as well. We got the deck late, so we only added the Ranger deck starting Adventure 5 (only added adventure 5 boons and then 6 when we reached it).
I also understand that because of these homebrew additions, our conquering heroes may have been invalid, but I posted them anyway just incase it might still be useful.
FYI, our recommendation is that you only add class decks for characters that you're actually playing.
A question to this, is there any way of telling what cards are part of what class decks and so on? I bought my game second hand (or well, half a hand? the person had only played it once) and the addon cards where already mixed in. Is there any way to sort them out?
I know how to differentiate vanilla cards from the addon cards (I think? It's the B vs the C right?) but between classes, I have no idea.
FYI, our recommendation is that you only add class decks for characters that you're actually playing.A question to this, is there any way of telling what cards are part of what class decks and so on? I bought my game second hand (or well, half a hand? the person had only played it once) and the addon cards where already mixed in. Is there any way to sort them out?
I know how to differentiate vanilla cards from the addon cards (I think? It's the B vs the C right?) but between classes, I have no idea.
Cards with "C" means they come from the Character Add-on Deck. Cards from class deck cards will have a banner on the top left corner where it would say "Cleric Class Deck" for example. These cards will have the appropriate adventure number on the upper right corner. So for your cards, if it doesn't say "Skull & Shackles" or "Rise of the Runelords" then it must come from a class deck.
Here is an example of a card from the Bard deck:
Retainer
Oh wait now I understand. I didn't realize that "class decks" where a separate product; I thought they where cards that where part of the character addon. Thanks!
I think you were more asking about Add-On Decks, but Class Decks are good for new classes, such as Alchemist. I believe Alchemist Damiel is only in Skull & Shackles. If you have Class Deck Alchemist, you'll be able to use that class in Rise of the Runelords and Wrath of the Righteous, too.
Additionally, Class Decks have additional builds. You might look at Boardgamegeek.com to see the different characters in some of the decks. An example review of Class Deck Fighter, by YouTube personality "ZATANN4" is here.