Venture-Lieutenant, Nebraska—Bellevue
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Need some help figuring out the benefit of Traders in Seasons 3 and 4 in organized play. I haven't played through the normal Mummy's Mask set, so it doesn't quite connect to me. Here's a notional comparison.
Suppose I'm playing Reta in the normal Mummy's Mask set. I like weapons and we get a trader who can let me trade for a new weapon from a small selection. In this set, After a scenario I trade two boons for a new weapon. Then before the next scenario, I must make my deck legal, and place a new basic card in place of one of the two I dropped.
Now, if I'm playing Reta in a ACG guild game, I have to do this before a scenario. When I trade two for one, I put one card in my deck box and bury the other. I then get the card for one scenario and have to return it.
So in ACG do I have to play the scenario down one card? Or can I pick a basic card from my box so my deck is legal?
If the card could be an upgrade, could I keep the upgrade? If we were playing normal, the new card is mine.
From the season 4 write up .. "At the end of the scenario, return the spell to the game box and put the first boon back in your deck." If I follow the sequence, the first card was the one I had to put in my deck box. Is this just a one scenario 'rented' card?
It seems to me there are very few cards that would make me want to play down one card. Especially if there is no long term gain. Seems like traders wouldn't get used much. Thoughts?
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Yes, most trades are 2-for-1 deals, making you play down a card. But if you still have some dud cards in your deck, its not all bad - trading two crummy cards for 1 great card can be an advantage - you'll see your good cards sooner that way.
And yes, it's a "rental" - the cards you traded away come back into your deck afterwards (unless the card you got from the trader gets banished somehow during play).
There's a couple reasons you still might want to consider trading, despite the hit to your deck size:
- Season 3 hits hard with the elemental damage, and then throws curses at you when you take elemental damage. Trading for some damage reduction (armors, spells, items) can be *very* helpful.
- Some of the best trades are actually at the Sunburst Market. There, you trade 1-for-1 for any Basic card, which can get you an extra Cure, Elemental Treaty, or a Remove Curse (which are pretty rare in class decks). Or, one of my favourite options is to trade my worst weapon/armor/item for an extra blessing.
- Season 3 and 4 both have some options later on to reduce the cost somewhat for trading.
I've seen groups use trading very rarely, and others that use it all the time. At very least, its worth going to a trader and seeing what your options are.
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Our Season 3 group has been using them quite a bit. Before getting the Trader cost reduction, folks generally went to Sunburst Market and traded a less useful card for a Basic Blessing. After getting the cost reduction people started going to their chosen Trader sometimes, but still often went to Sunburst Market for either a Basic Blessing or a Remove Curse. (We're almost overflowing with Cures, and some of that utility is offset by having a Remove Curse and an Elemental Treaty in the substitution pile.) For 3-6A (where we are at present) we went for the Elemental Treaties; I don't know if we're going to keep doing that for the rest of Adventure 6.
I personally have only traded more than one card once, but YMMV.
A few clarifications, and my own opinions.
So in ACG do I have to play the scenario down one card? Or can I pick a basic card from my box so my deck is legal?
If the card could be an upgrade, could I keep the upgrade? If we were playing normal, the new card is mine.
If you're trading more than 1 boon away, yes you end up down a card (unless you have a means of recovering buried cards... maybe you're playing as the Magus character who can actually recharge buried blessings for benefits, for example).
The traded card cannot be considered an upgrade - it is returned to the box afterwards. If you lost it (such as by being banished), you don't get back the 'original' card you traded for it, but you will get back any buried cards you additionally may have used for the trade.
It seems to me there are very few cards that would make me want to play down one card. Especially if there is no long term gain. Seems like traders wouldn't get used much. Thoughts?
This is where it becomes opinion based but I'm a player who LOVES the Organized Play use of Traders. Traders allow you to tweak your deck in ways that may not be possible in normal class deck play, and they let you tweak your deck composition. If you're playing a wizard with a weapon slot; feel free to use Sunburst Market to trade the weapon for a blessing or an attack spell. Virtually anyone is also happy trading one of their basics for a Cure spell, even if they're not a spellcaster (it's still a strictly-better Potion of Healing). If you want to switch the basics in your deck (lets say you just got an Ultimate Add-On deck, or you just changed your mind) then trading for something that will banish itself (like a spell or potion) is a nice way to 'fix' your deck after the scenario, too.
Some characters I might be more happy to play because I know I can mess with their decklists via traders. I can trade for the basic Blowgun weapon from Mummy's Mask (through Sunburst Trader) to give Rooboo a means of using her 1d10+4 Stealth skill in combat, for example. Or give Yoon another blessing.
Some OP rewards modify the cost of going to traders, and several can be used for 1-for-1 trades. Give Skizza an Alchemist's Kit via Falsin Deek (A largely unfair, but possible, combination)? Some scenarios may reward card types too; I often go to the Ghoul Market to prepare myself with more armors for Siege Deck scenarios ("Defensive Stance"), since you're punished greatly for taking any damage that isn't reduced to 0, but rapid explorations are no longer a big deal.
I'm a big fan of the OP method of Traders, and I really hope they somehow appear in all future seasons. The ability to tweak and optimise your deck just that little bit more opens up so many new strategies and fun decision making potential.
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That brings up a good point: the Traders in general and Sunburst Market in particular are less useful if you don't own the set, as you probably won't know what most of the available cards do. I'm certainly not going to hold up a game at a time-limited venue while I read through all the Basics (for example).
Whilst that's true, various other players, GMs, storeowners or the like may be able to give advice or cheatsheets. The point that Traders are weaker in general if you don't know the set, whilst true, is a statement that also applies to character selection or even boon selection/deckbuilding; and I wouldn't argue it's a particularly new concept. It's just that normally in OP, characters worry about what banes they'll encounter, rather than what boons they can temporarily grab. Even basic boons can be themed for specific tasks/banes that may not be relevant in every set; just look at things like Magnifying Glass, Book of Garund, Bottle of Rum or Blessing of the Elements.
Anti-Undead or Animal powers vary from set to set in usefulness, or anti-incorporeal or even the types and traits of barriers you'll encounter, and it's not always immediately predictable based on the 'obvious' flavor from the box as to which will be commonplace. A player who's never played Rise of the Runelords wouldn't really know that electricity becomes somewhat common towards the end, but - aside from a couple of uses of fire - elemental traits (and their relevance) are incredibly rare compared to WotR and Mummy's Mask. To say nothing of players who don't know the full consequences of how Ship mechanics may affect your character in S&S.
TL;DR: Lack of foreknowledge of a set's boons can impact the usefulness of Traders negatively, but it can impact almost every aspect of Organised Play anyway, I'd argue. Sometimes for the better (the surprise of discovering new things) and sometimes for the worse ("what do you mean there stops being 'Demons' in WotR"?).
Even without trader cost reductions, the traders provide a way to essentially "temporarily" change your deck list. If you are Ezren, trade in your weapon and a spell for an even better spell. Or trade a weapon and an item for a spell and have 1 more spell that you "should". You probably didn't want that weapon anyway. Got armor but you are a player that hates armor? Trade 2 armors for a weapon!
That brings up a good point: the Traders in general and Sunburst Market in particular are less useful if you don't own the set, as you probably won't know what most of the available cards do. I'm certainly not going to hold up a game at a time-limited venue while I read through all the Basics (for example).
Andrew has a cheatsheet for basics available.
I suspect we'll need a site like PFSPrep for ACG soon, with documents like this one.
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The point that Traders are weaker in general if you don't know the set, whilst true, is a statement that also applies to character selection or even boon selection/deckbuilding....
There's a big difference between character selection and deck planning (which you can do away from the table) and searching through a bunch of cards before game setup in a time-limited environment.
As far as banes and targeted powers go, there's a dynamic for what the group wants to know ahead of time. Our group, FWIW, doesn't usually know what's coming other than the generic knowledge of the set's focus. We tend to go for more generally useful things than any specifically-targeted characters/powers. That means some characters/roles get skipped, but there's far more to choose from than we'll ever play.
Andrew has a cheatsheet for basics available.
Unfortunately, this is the sort of redistribution of copyrighted card text without permission that prevents us from creating publicly shared card databases.
[...]Sometimes for the better (the surprise of discovering new things) and sometimes for the worse ("what do you mean there stops being 'Demons' in WotR"?).
For the record, I miswrote. I did, of course, mean to refer that Outsiders stop being relevant in WotR, not Demons.
For the record, I miswrote. I did, of course, mean to refer that Outsiders stop being relevant in WotR, not Demons.
Wandering side note: My group kept forgetting that the rules from WotR don't necessarily apply to SotR.
In WotR, the Outsider trait on banes is ignored at Abyssal locations. This isn't true in SotR unless explicitly stated (Adventure 4?).
Unlike WotR, there is no point in SotR where all locations gain the Abyssal trait.
Those two rules caught us a few times, as we kept inadvertently transferring the WotR rules to SotR.
Similarly, in our current campaign, we keep wanting to gain the Curse of Poisoning in Factions' Favor whenever we take poison damage. Well, "want" isn't the right word, but we keep wanting to apply that rule from MM even though it doesn't apply in FF.
(I've not yet gotten the opportunity to play Season of the Righteous, so I didn't know that. I assumed it was similar, given the thematic reason for enemies losing the Outsider trait.)
(I've not yet gotten the opportunity to play Season of the Righteous, so I didn't know that. I assumed it was similar, given the thematic reason for enemies losing the Outsider trait.)
We kept forgetting anyway. I'm sure you'll do better in SotR than we did. :)
(I've not yet gotten the opportunity to play Season of the Righteous, so I didn't know that. I assumed it was similar, given the thematic reason for enemies losing the Outsider trait.)
SotR follows a completely different storyline from WotR. The final adventures aren't all inside the Abyss, so it wouldn't make sense to universally ignore the Outsider trait.
Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant
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That brings up a good point: the Traders in general and Sunburst Market in particular are less useful if you don't own the set, as you probably won't know what most of the available cards do. I'm certainly not going to hold up a game at a time-limited venue while I read through all the Basics (for example).Andrew has a cheatsheet for basics available.
I suspect we'll need a site like PFSPrep for ACG soon, with documents like this one.
There's an ACG section on pfsprep, just nothing there...