Discussing The Mystic Class | The Arkham Horror "Podcast"

[@dragonhawk00]

I love the idea of broadening mystics weirdness with different xp manipulation and trauma matters cards. I also wouldn't mind more cards that exile themselves with powerful effects

[@devonfornal3050]

I love mystics simply because of the aesthetic. Everyone else is a 1920s caricature using guns and axes and knives and you pull up with a spell that turns your enemies to ash.

[@ChenowethGames]

I love Mystics. They feel like you are massively impacting the game with every card you play.

[@astutedunsparce4036]

Think we’re about an incredible half-box of new upgrades away from Down the Rabbit Hole being a must-have. Didn’t expect there to be so many new upgrades since it was released.

[@Chiungalla79]

Down the Rabbit Hole is awesome, if you play a deck where it fits. If your "goal deck" (the end of scenario version you are striving for) has more upgraded cards than newly bought higher level cards you are golden. And there are most often like 6 skills you want to upgrade. If there are some assets and some events too, you are saving XP.

[@L0grak]

AFAIK I think you can still cheese summoned hound into play with chance encounter. The change they made was updating the wording on Crystallizer of Dreams to be the same as Summoned Hound, rather than vice versa. You can actually get Crystallizer in play with something like Eli Horowitz now and bypass having to shuffle the jellyfish in (because you didn't actually play the crystallizer).

[@oranjezicht]

I like Mystics - I love Jacqueline, especially for solo runs, I also like Mystics who aren't Mystics after a bit or don't have to be classic Mystics, like Lily and Diana.

[@lazulin]

Objection: Sixth Sense is amazing. It has no charges so in a 2-player game where you have a dedicated cluever, it comes in clutch because you never run out of ability to find clues. And it does still provide extra clues pretty often. It provides them even more often if you're Jacqueline or if you have any sort of token manipulation in your deck. For example, I love playing it with Premonition. You already know you have a token that's bad for your rite of seeking, so you play sixth sense and discover multiple clues while spending no charges. If I'm running sixth sense, I am frequently having my fighter reveal multiple locations so even if I'm going in blind, if I get a token, I'll be able to pull multiple clues. I am actually happier to pull sixth sense than rite of seeking because I often run out of rite of seeking charges well before the scenario stops needing clues. I think you guys don't see the benefit of it because in 3p, you have backup for clue-finding. No such thing at 2p.

[@PlayingBoardGames]

I really like Sixth Sense and play it very often in my Mystic decks. But while it provides clue consistency, it doesn't provide clues at a fast enough rate to get ahead of the game. So it needs some support in another spell or additional explosive clue getting to keep up with the pace in three player. But I'll always play two of Sixth Sense, even in Mystics that don't have token manipulation. Card is consistent and consistency is key.

[@nuraby_9228]

I like it with Lily, fills an arcane slot early on for her Dragon Pole and it gives her something to do when there's no monsters.

[@PlayingBoardGames]

@@nuraby_9228 I dig it.

[@davidko9289]

Arcane Research made me think about other take at deckbuilding trauma cards. Something like "Battle Scarred", Guardian. Take a physical trauma. Gain +1 to all skill checks on weapon assets.

[@kelly-de-haan]

I'm playing my first scenario with Norman Withers, and I'm really looking forward to using my arcane slots on something other than being able to do my job. I'm going to buy experienced Mystic cards I normally wouldn't play because I can finally spare those slots.

[@BJPaskoff]

Loved Bryn's Binding of Isaac reference

[@markusschmidt9260]

I agree, that In the Thick of It is worse than Arcane Research. But comparing 3 XP to 14 is not really an accurate comparison. I would say, the XP you get from AR after the seventh scenario are just that: 2 XP. The ones, you get after the sixth scenario are double the value, because you benefit from them in 2 scenarios, and so on. So if you weight that in (assuming no side scenarios), AR gives you 2+4+6+8+10+12+14=56 "XP per scenario". ItToI gives you 3 XP for 8 scenarios, so 24 "XP per scenario", 43% of the value of AR. That's not that bad for a neutral equivalent, that lets you even choose the traumas you want to take. It's still a situational card, but it can give you a critical jump start by providing you the card in scenario 1 that enables you to archive more victory points there and purchase something else before the second game, because you already have your most critical card. (E.g. the first Charisma in Leo.) Compared to Sharon's Obol: this abysmal card costs 2 XP after the first scenario. So it just breaks even after the second and earns you XP after the third. The "XP per scenario" gained by that are 30. I would argue, it's even just only 16, because you paid "14 XP per scenario" for it! You could have had something nice instead for 2 XP for seven scenarios! And it is a class card with a much worse side effect than either of the other cards. Like you said, it proactively makes you play worse despite the XP you gained. Neither ItToI nor AR have that.

[@Halcyon00]

Outside of mystic arcane slots, Down the rabbit hole is particularly good with Rex/Zoey since a lot of good level 0 cards also have good upgrades. Apparently it don’t work with ll skids or ll Agnes deckbuilding, since it’s more “when you would upgrade, you can do this instead” instead of just upgrading, so it would cost one more xp each.

[@TastyToast1]

The difference between 'cancel' and 'ignore' is that with Cancel you stop part (or all) of the effect before it happens. But with ignore, you resolve the effect, but ignore a part (or all) of it. Functionally the same, but because they have used 2 different words, then they don't mean the same thing, which is unfortunate.

[@JannPoo]

Is that really so? Let's take the practical example of something that allows you to draw multiple tokens and then *cancels* some, like Jacqueline's ability. And then a card that also draws multiple chaos tokens and then *ignores* one, like Grotesque Statue. There is absolutely no difference between the two cases, in both those examples the canceled\ignored token is treated as if it was never revealed and it's definitely not resolved. You can check the ruling shown on the arkhamdb page of Counterspell. That ruling also mentions that something can be partially ignored, but it suggests that something can also be partially canceled.

[@TastyToast1]

@@JannPoo I know, they are functionally the same thing, but they have different words and do 'technically' do different things sometimes.

[@JannPoo]

@@TastyToast1 No doubt they have different words. But not everything that has different words in this game is different. MJ confirmed, for example, that "encounter card" and "scenario card" are used interchangeably. You say that "ignore" and "cancel" do different things "sometimes" but can you provide an example where changing "cancel" to "ignore" or "ignore" to "cancel" would change the effect?

[@TastyToast1]

@@JannPoo Deny Existence with Diana's signature weakness

[@PlayingBoardGames]

And I'd still argue that having two different words here is a problem. The edge cases where it does matter makes it a bit... messy.

[@goldcreeper7376]

Time for the gals and guys in purple!

[@fredfredrickson5436]

The thing that's been bugging me as a new player is, why no black sanity and meat damage tokens to represent trauma.

[@PlayingBoardGames]

They can be healed in a scenario, so they likely wanted to avoid any confusion about it. Would be cool to have though, I agree.

[@fredfredrickson5436]

@@PlayingBoardGames Surely consulting the campaign log at the start of the scenario and recording investigator trauma on your character card with tokens would be far smoother than committing your trauma to memory. My point is, with all the insane stress of gamestate upkeep (and baring in mind upkeep is a big part of what makes the Arkham so thrilling, in synergy with the time management and narrative stress of the game) I think remembering how much trauma you have is a small headache that detracts from the central experience, that is, it's extranious negative stress that detracts from the seat of the pants, moment to momemt positive stress of problem solving.

[@Chiungalla79]

@@fredfredrickson5436 You should really look up the rules for trauma. You are probably doing it wrong, if memory is involved during the scenario. Trauma does NOT lower your max. It gives you one damage of the type at the beginning of the scenario. Token and everything.

[@fredfredrickson5436]

@@Chiungalla79 Yeah, I cottoned on to that post post. At the time I'd wrongly assumed trauma couldn't be healed either. Thanks for the heads up though.

[@MisterCram]

Any chance of working on Travis (guy at end of table?) speaking a bit more slowly and annunciating more clearly? He seems to have very interesting insights but it's often difficult to understand him.

[@blinxy511]

Sorry, I've been trying to be better about that. I have some issues with my tmj and masseter muscles that get especially bad towards the end of our recording sessions.

[@mathieumartin6372]

​@@blinxy511 I am a non native and most of the time it's fine 😊 you're doing great ! Especially if you have some kind of condition

[@thetimebinder]

The thing Justin hates about Mystics: they make the game too easy thus boring.

[@mrdeer111]

Nice

[@ChenowethGames]

Nice

[@RoosterLewis]

Me earlier today: Huh i wonder where the mystic one is.

[@RoosterLewis]

I personally do not particulary like playing mystics, but I think that it's probably my fault to be honest. Just using and boosting willpower to succeed at everything feels kinda hollow on a long term and for some reason I cannot make myself build any other decks. There are some other deck archetypes but thinking about them makes me feel conflicted and bored out of my mind, due to them being very wordy and unintuative. Also the flavour of being an arcane genius who cast spells does not click at me like the other investigators, for cosmic horror spesifically. Others are normal people, surviving, using their own skills and professions to tackle impossible. Mystics feel detached in this way. All that being said, I really want to try mystics again and try to break free of the curse of my deckbuilding with them.