Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Strategy #2—Playing Your Cards

I have definitely noticed that Balazar has a hand-clogging issue, since activating Padrig requires placing a card on top of his deck instead of recharging a card. Meanwhile, my wife, playing Adowyn, has no such trouble, since Leryn lets her recharge an arbitrary number of cards per turn.

Harsk "not good at recharging"?!? I guess we're thinking about 2 different versions of the guy...
(Unless that was an underhanded jab at dwarven Constitution: Fortitude...)

I'm not so sure I agree with the sentiment that keeping a card for revealing in your hand is wasting your full potential.
By that logic, all the 'Reveal this item to add +N to your X skill' from RotR are mostly pointless, and they make up a big part of the higher AD items and loot.
I agree that this applies to situational cards, like a potion that lets you succeed at a skill check that is neither involved in any location nor with any henchman/villain, but then again this becomes more of a question of why you keep situational cards in your deck in the first place, when you could also use cards that have a broader range of applicability.

In the end, I think keeping your hand is fine if your character can utilize every card in some way depending on the situation. If you have a weapon, an armor, some items that boost your primary skill through reveal and a blessing and some cards reserved for closing your location, I don't see a point to change your hand, even if it stays the same for some time - chances are you're likely to draw something worse for the situations to come. And if you have a big hand like Ezren, you might already have a tool for everything that might come up, so there is no need to change the cards around either.

Also, the advice to lose your armor as soon as you can may be useful for RotR, but depending on party composition that might not be the best idea in WotR, just to give an example.

Apart from that, I think there were some good pointers about using ressources more efficiently by not clogging your hand in a inefficient way.
I feel like selecting the right card feats can go a long way to make your deck more fluent as well and solve quite a few clogging problems.

If you're playing anything other than Runelords, chances are you'll be losing your armour to cancel damage soon enough. Recharging it (unless you have duplicates in hand) just feels suicidal.

Same with weapons. Obviously there are some times when you need to discard for an extra dice for a really crucial fight, but generally, discarding (or recharging) your only weapon and just hoping to draw another seems like a very daft idea - you're likely to have to either forfeit turns whilst you wait for another, or explore without a weapon, and just hope that there are no monsters around...

This definitely seems geared more towards the "Runelords" set. But even so, I do agree that healing is the key to effective deck cycling. Characters that have problems cycling their decks are generally strong in other ways. Combining their natural (but costly - often involving discards) strengths with the deck cycling that comes through healing can create a winning combination.

The whole concept of cycling does vary a lot based on many different factors. For example, the more players you have, the more essential cycling (and healing) becomes, since you just are required to use more cards per turn, mostly on exploration, in order to beat the blessing deck. Cycling is still useful in 1 or 2 player games, but you can cycle over the course of several turns and not get punished for it too badly.

Likewise, certain scenarios or AP's have different cycling requirements. For example, in WotR, you often want to hang onto an armor like Jim said, since there's so much damage dealt before/after you act that you need to account for. In S&S, it's much less of an issue, since you need to get to your barrier fighting cards or scouting, since what you are really worried about are the barriers or non-combat based monsters. Mummy's Mask further introduces overkill penalties as a major mechanic, which will often penalize you for over-using a weapon, or pumping a million blessings just for cycling.

I think in general, cycling is something you should always be keeping in mind. And once you figure out the right amount of cycling, as well as how amenable your character is to it (as Bard points out, with Balazar you really need to make a conscious effort to cycle unless you already have your good cards), and the needs of the scenario. I think this article works well as a first-level introduction to the idea, since a lot of new players can be scared of 'wasting' cards. However, in order to become a true expert, you need to be able to determine when cycling is right for your particular situation.

Harsk?

I'm with Longshot on this. Can't every Harsk recharge a card to add a d4 at another location? In large parties Harsk cycles his deck like no one's business. In Runelords we gave him the Holy Candle because he was sure to see it.

Re: armor. Quickly recharging it isn't a bad idea -- unless there's a henchman or villain who does substantial BYA damage. Or if you're playing Wrath.

Can't every Harsk recharge a card to add a d4 at another location? In large parties Harsk cycles his deck like no one's business. In Runelords we gave him the Holy Candle because he was sure to see it.

Actually, this is the kind of in-depth advice that can be useful to new players:

If there are cards that are of huge benefit to the whole party - you *always* put in the fast-cycle characters' decks.

I'm surprised that the probably most important thing about cycling, the hand size, was ignored in this article.

When I started playing the game, I thought upgrading the hand size was a bad way to spend a feat. While I can't remember the logic behind it, I remember being clearly dissappointed in characters with 2 feats for upgrading your hand size, since that would mean you are forced to use at least one pre-role. One reason probably was that it doesn't look like much compared to an active power that you can see being useful during the game immediately.

But one thing I learned very quickly while playing the game was that a hand size of 4 or 5 can easily get clogged with stuff you don't need right now. That's good in the sense that it forces you to discard a card from time to time, which you might be reluctant to do in the beginning, but it also made bigger hand sizes much more appreciated.

Nowadays, I always make sure to upgrade the handsize pre-role to 6 if possible, which seems to be the sweet spot for me.

The easiest way to improve the cycling capability of your deck is increasing the hand size, at least imho. The bigger your hand size, the more control you have about how many cards can stay and how many cards are supposed to be replaced each turn.

When I started playing the game, I thought upgrading the hand size was a bad way to spend a feat. While I can't remember the logic behind it, I remember being clearly dissappointed in characters with 2 feats for upgrading your hand size, since that would mean you are forced to use at least one pre-role. One reason probably was that it doesn't look like much compared to an active power that you can see being useful during the game immediately.

Looking back at our old RotR character sheets - we used to be exactly the same. We would get the fighter-types up to 5, but that was about it.

Nowadays, I feel it's agonizingly slow when I have to take a character up to HS 6, especially when they already have a couple of cooler pre-role powers (Yeah, my A4 Imrijka still misses her Perseption: Wisdom power - that would be inconceivable back when we were starting with PACG!)

I also agree, HS 7 is usually overdoing it, or at worst - a sign of weak role design.

I think the big reason people don't like higher hand sizes at first is due to the nature of your deck being hit points. The larger the hand size gets, the fewer hit points you have, which makes you feel much more vulnerable (this is especially the case with a character like Seoni, which can easily burn through her deck in a couple turns, leaving you feeling like you're one bad roll from death). Over time, most people learn that having too small a hand size can just make your deck non-functioning, but early the idea of having to pay a feat to become closer to death is really scary.

Yeah, I usually don't bump to HS 6 until they've gained a couple of card feats, just to slightly offset the faster deck burn.

This is pretty much the exact opposite of how I play PACG. It's not like I'm the greatest of gamers but I've generally taken the approach that I won't use a card in a way that removes if from my hand until it's absolutely necessary. The definition of absolutely necessary changes based on the situation and is largely dependant on how "permanent" the removal of that card is going to be. I'll use a recharge power without much thought but a power that requires banishing is always the last resort. I will recharge redundant armors but always keep one in hand unless a character desperately needs to get some card drawing going. This approach has generally served me well with all group sizes in all APs to date. Having said all that, I feel the strategy of this article is more for card games like Magic, Netrunner, etc. where speed is most always your ally, running out of cards isn't always death and you're usually starting with a "big" deck of cards to churn through. You could say I favor the tortoise over the hare in PACG.

As for investing in Hand Size, my attitude towards this has changed greatly. When I first started playing PACG I would not put feats into HS unless forced to. (Such as graining a third power feat, pre-role card, and all non-hand size feats are taken) I'm not sure where, when or why this happened but I suddenly gained a new appreciation for characters with large hand sizes and now I'll go out of my way to increase hand size for any character. I think the decision to invest in hand size or not comes down to personal, past experience with PACG. If you've suffered a lot of character deaths with large hand size characters, then I can see having an adversity to making hand sizes even bigger then they already are. This has happened to me plenty of times but I'll still go out of my way to ramp up hand size to seven or eight. If I had to give a recommendation, I would say increasing hand size should be a priority for characters who do not have their primary combat cards as their preferred card type. Such as Ruinlords Seelah who is a melee weapons fighter but has armor as her preferred card type. Just to increase her chances of starting of with, or quickly drawing, a weapon, I will increase her hand size asap.

Speed is also your ally in PACG. You want to get to your good cards, and get to them often, and your hand should contain as many options as possible. Hand size is one way to do that, but it's also possible to do that through cycling. Having at least one armor, one weapon or spell, one blessing, and one other item in your hand at all times is imperative. Cycling makes sure that, no matter what you do, you keep that even distribution of options open to you.

Groups that have no healing, or groups that don't cycle, have trouble with this and tend to have a more difficult time with the game, I've found.

I'm not so sure I agree with the sentiment that keeping a card for revealing in your hand is wasting your full potential.

By that logic, all the 'Reveal this item to add +N to your X skill' from RotR are mostly pointless, and they make up a big part of the higher AD items and loot.

:

In the end, I think keeping your hand is fine if your character can utilize every card in some way depending on the situation. If you have a weapon, an armor, some items that boost your primary skill through reveal and a blessing and some cards reserved for closing your location, I don't see a point to change your hand, even if it stays the same for some time - chances are you're likely to draw something worse for the situations to come. And if you have a big hand like Ezren, you might already have a tool for everything that might come up, so there is no need to change the cards around either.

Ezren uses his big hand to hold the 'reveal for +N items' so that he is guaranteed to recharge spells, and playing spells pull more spells into his hand. He wants to have a deck of only spells with useful cards in hand and everything else in the discard pile. Wand of Enervation will need to cycle through the deck, but it can slow down your turn.

HARSK: Yep, I agree, great at recharging. I must have been thinking of one of the others when I wrote.

REVEAL: I think the +1s and even the +2s just clog your hand, but when you get better than that, you start to have a strong argument. If you're someone like Lem or Harsk who can recharge those cards as necessary, then that's a lot better. I talk more about some of the Reveal cards that I like in the next article.

The definition of absolutely necessary changes based on the situation and is largely dependant on how "permanent" the removal of that card is going to be. I'll use a recharge power without much thought but a power that requires banishing is always the last resort. I will recharge redundant armors but always keep one in hand unless a character desperately needs to get some card drawing going.

My feeling is that absent a strong knowledge of what's going to come up on a near future round, any card is just as likely to be "absolutely necessary" as any other card. So, if it's not going to be useful immediately, you cycle it. Or, you use the poor man's cycle of discard + heal.

Some of the strategies I suggest definitely require healing, but as I said in my first article, I think it's one of the important resources in the game.

Great blog as usual Shannon. Although, as some of us pointed at, you could have point a bit more on how playing with 1 or 6 characters may impact the importance/relevance of ecah of your points.

We pretty much only play with 6 different real players (which is not the same as 1 or 2 real persons playing 6 characters (*)). A bunch of things (time pressure - only 5 turns in average, designated healer, designated scouter, optimization of the who goes where, giving cards...) impacts a bit what you are very well summarizing.

(*) I could write a full blog on that idea. Simple example: if (say I play the digital game) I play 6 characters, I will naturally optimize the group efficency. So maybe my healer won't play any blessing to reexplore to keep them to help/heal others (I don't care that one character actually explores a lot less than the others because my fun comes from playing all characters). On the opoosite, if we are 6 players and I play the healer and only have 5 turns to play during the whole scenario, since I'm human, I will use some of my blessings to reexplore so I have my part of fun. This is an important part to take into account when testing for example. It's more expensive and time-consumming but to balance games, fun and characters sometimes you must have 6 players and not only fewer than that playing altogether 6 characters.