Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Strategy #1—The Three Resources

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Today, we begin a strategy blog written by game historian Shannon Appelcline. As Shannon says, these are strategies for one way to play the game, based on tabletop playthroughs of all three current Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Adventure Paths, plus about a gazillion plays of Obsidian Entertainment's addictive Pathfinder Adventures.

The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game is a complex game that supports extremely high replayability. That's because you can play it in many different ways. The core of playing PACG is understanding the three crucial resources that form the core of the game: time, cards, and decks.

Time is the First Most Valuable Resource

PACG has a constantly ticking clock. Normally, if you advance through 30 player-turns without completing your goal, you lose the game. It's a balance between two hourglasses: the blessings deck timer, which counts down the turns, and the location timer, which lays out what still needs to be explored.

That means that everythingshould be seen through the lens of time. If you fail to defeat a bane, that's not necessarily disastrous, but it does cost you a turn. Conversely, if you play a blessing or an ally that allows an extra exploration, or a detection spell that successfully enables an exploration, you gain a turn. Minimize your lost turns and maximize your gained turns and you'll practically guarantee a win.

With that said, running out of time and losing isn't a big deal. It just means that you need to play the adventure again. Don't put your character's life at risk to win an adventure, and if you get to the point where you decide you're losing, look toward other priorities (like improving your deck).

Corollary #1: Build decks to take extra turns. Give your character cards that will maximize your turns. This is easy for Kyra, who has tons of blessings, and Lini, who recharges her animal companions. It's trickier for Ezren, who has no blessings, and Sajan, who needs to conserve his blessings for super punching. Though most characters should give preference to allies who give extra explorations, that's particularly important for these blessing-impaired characters. Characters like Ezren also need to concentrate on gaining turns via other means, such as the Detect Magic and Haste spells.

Corollary #2: Play cards to take extra turns. This mostly refers to blessings: you want to be conservative about using them for their extra dice effect when they could otherwise provide extra turns. It's particularly easy to misuse blessings when you're trying to save a character who got backed into a dark alley by a bad combat. If you're looking at spending two or four blessings to save him, carefully consider whether it's worthwhile. Is saving the cards in his hand plus killing the monster really worth those two to four lost bonus turns? (Maybe, but you should make the calculation.)

You should even think about whether it's worth recharging a card like an ally that you could otherwise discard for a new turn. This is a tougher calculation because it's advantageous to keep cards in the deck, and you will probably eventually get to discard that card for its extra turn when it drifts back up through your deck.

The idea of focusing on cards' turn-gaining ability becomes moot if you've played aggressively enough that your blessing timer has caught up with your location timer. When this happens, become more willing to play your blessings and allies for purposes other than just pushing forward—particularly for improving your deck, another PACG priority.

Corollary #3: Don't worry about player count! When you have more players, it feels like you need to play faster, but that isn't necessarily true. Whatever your player count, you just need to close two locations, then you have the right number of characters left to spread out and be ready to temporarily close all the locations when someone stumbles upon the villain.

With that said, player count does change the way that PACG plays. Lower player counts bring the blessing timer and the location timer into balance, but they decrease the amount of support you get from other players (in the form of blessings) and the amount of coverage you have for different skills. PACG is probably tougher with a smaller party… but that's not necessarily due to the timer.

Cards Are the Second Most Valuable Resource

PACG has another ticking clock: the cards in your character deck. If they run out, your character dies. And you're encouraged to run out because playing more cards generally helps you accrue time, and that's the biggest ticking clock in the game.

This means that Cure is the most important card in the whole game. It lets you recycle 1d4+1 cards, which could easily be 1d4+1 extra turns. If you know there are Cures in the game, then you can play more aggressively and make it more likely that you'll complete the scenarios.

The other healing spells and powers are important too. Kyra is likely the most powerful character in Rise of the Runelords because of her heavy density of blessings combined with her Heal power, which gives her the ability to return cards just by spending one of her plentiful Divine cards and a first exploration. Seelah is probably the second most powerful character if you take the Hospitalizer role, because she can freeform heal by burying Divine cards. And that's to say nothing of cards like Father Zantus, Staff of Minor Healing, and others.

Corollary #1: Give multiple heals to Divine casters. Consider giving any Divine spellcaster in your game two Cures so that they'll come up frequently, and so that you can use one to recover the other if you roll badly on a recharge. At higher levels a Mass Cure or even a Pillar of Life can, of course, substitute for one of those Cures.

Corollary #2: Give healing ability to other characters! This can take the form of Father Zantus, Staff of Minor Healing, or even Potion of Healing. This lets these characters play aggressively too, without worrying about having to hook up with Kyra, Seelah, Lini, or Lem.

Corollary #3: Back off if you need healing! You never, ever want to lose your character to death in PACG. Do your best to ensure it's not a possibility. If you're getting to the point where your draw pile is the same size as your hand size, give up adventuring. Stay in a nice, safe, closed location while the rest of your fellows continue on. (And tell someone to come heal you!)

Decks Are the Third Most Valuable Resource

One of the trickiest aspects of PACG is that you're not just trying to win an individual game. You're also trying to improve your character to make it more likely that you'll win future games too. That means that you sometimes have to spend your short-term time resources and card resources to improve your long-term deck resources.

Corollary #1: Don't worry about gathering boons you don't want. If you encounter a boon that's clearly not going to improve anyone's deck, and if it's not likely to give you extra turns or other notable advantages in your current game, don't expend resources to collect it.

Corollary #2: Do worry about gathering boons you do want. If a card would improve someone's deck, expend the effort to collect it. If it's a big improvement, you should do this even if you have to spend turns (blessings) to do so, and maybe even if you might lose the game as a result.

Next time: Playing your cards.

Shannon Appelcline
Game Historian