Taboos I'd Like To See In Arkham LCG

[@Mattastrophic]

After sleeping on it, one of the Taboo segments there has me thinking... Key of Ys, as strong as it is, has lost its lustre over time. A fully-XPed Living Ink is starting to creep up on its door, in particular, but also compare it to Pendant of the Queen! In other words, we've had powercreep since Carcosa!

[@griffinlobster]

"Taboos I'd Like to See," click the video, immediate Delve Too Deep haha. I feel that. Possible change: have it give only the person who played it the XP. Then you get the bonus flavor of inconveniencing your allies for the sake of personal insight. And I love Cat Burglar to 0 XP. It's just being kind.

[@Mattastrophic]

Small problem with Cyclopean Hammer, pal... Runic Axe came around and said "Hold my beer."

[@yuzu-6245]

I was genuinely surprised to see that Delve too Deep didn't get the Dilemma treatment in the latest taboo list.

[@RolandIronfist13]

Which part?

[@benwillingham6823]

Have to agree with your updated taboo philosophy. I’m sure there’s a small subset of new players that use the taboo list, but if they’re that dedicated to know what the taboo list is when they just started then I think they can handle 2 changes at once. I know they want to be accessible to new players, but the taboo is an optional feature by design. It therefore doesn’t need to be “beginner friendly”. They also provide print and play versions of all taboo cards so people can substitute if they really can’t remember what the changes are. Not sure I quite agree with you on a forbidden status for delve too deep. I don’t think it is busted beyond belief, but I almost never play with it already so I don’t have a large sample size. I do agree that key of ys should be forbidden. I already never play with it anyway.

[@thebeanz7838]

I'm glad I am still new enough to just ignore the Taboo list

[@markusschmidt9260]

I agree, that it is kind of odd, that Rogues have no (non neutral) foot buff at level 0. I would say though, if you do the foot matters archetype, you likely do that in Finn or Rita, who both have access to Peter and Track Shoes. You are not the first to say, Mystic cards are balanced around XP accelerating cards, but I never understood, why. To my experience, the level 4 or 5 spells are usually very strong an worth their experience. Ward of Protection 5 might be an exception, but only, because the level 2 version is so fricking strong in multiplayer. I still take it sometimes as a luxury upgrade, depending on the enemies, you could expect in the final scenario. On the contrary, Flute of the Outer Gods, which has no other options to accelerate the purchase besides D2D, was severely overcosted compared to the spells or other DtRH-upgrades, and in my opinion it still is, even after Taboo. Regarding Charon's Obol, I hate this card, don't want to play it, but I think, just reducing its effect to earning zero XP would be too mild. If the campaign runs smooth, getting defeated is not that common. Even, if you don't play it save, it might only hit you once. And if this scenario was not granting that many XP to begin with, this might be like the hit of an Unspeakable Oath, or Unsolved Case, or the like. The difference, that you HAVE to play it save, makes a lot of difference. It is a card, people take for getting the kick out of it, and it would lose much of its thematic tie in, if you make it safer.

[@matthiashofmann9]

I agree with every point, think I include them as houserules

[@ShunyValdez]

Same! I'm considering house ruling them in

[@L0grak]

Agreed on most of these. I'm not sure if Delve needs to necessarily be Forbidden but someone else suggested basically making it a Dilemma, which I think would help balance out the risk/reward of playing it a bit. At the moment it's just too easy to hold it until right at the end of the game when everyone else resigns. If there was actually risk of it royally messing up a scenario by being drawn at a bad time, that might make it more of a decision as to whether you run it. What I really would have wanted was for them to never have printed any cards that change the XP curve, and to not have balanced certain classes around them existing (looking at you Rogue and Mystic!). However, I think the cat's too far out of the bag at this stage so it is what it is. The existence of In The Thick Of It I really dislike as it basically means you never have to play a true level 0 deck ever again, and the trauma is very often worth it as the 3 XP are worth so much more at the start of the campaign than later on and just help you snowball so much. I actually intentionally don't take it now in my more recent decks, which does hurt my soul a bit as it is often a sub-optimal move to not have it. For Cat Burglar, I agree with the principle that a level 0 agility boost ally or asset for rogue is really needed. The only caution is that the action ability on the Cat Burglar is situationally extremely strong, especially as player counts go down. In true solo, Cat Burglar can trivialise some enemies on its own and making it level 0 would make it an auto-include in rogue at that player count. That being said, I'm not sure that's that bad of an idea given that Dr. Milan exists, who was also an auto-include Seeker ally for years (and kind of still is).

[@RolandIronfist13]

Its annoying Rogue cards and Mystic cards have basically been xp costed in line with the idea of these victory cards. Down the Rabbit hole, or Arcane Research or Charon's obol. I think the only reasonable ones are Let God sort them out (because its incredibly niche and difficult to pull off, and In the Thick of It, but that also feels broken, because it gives such a headstart on certain deck types. While I love getting Easy Mark scenario 1, or my Jessica Hyde etc etc, player cards which give XP are inherently broken and should never have been made. None of them are punishing enough to counteract how valuable the xp is. Sure you may not have the moment in one scenario to play Delve, but in the next you will. And yes, the dearth of level 0 assets for the other stats when Milan exists is wild. Getting rewarded for doing what you'd already do, while being more able to do it, on top of having potential 3 soak... its wild.

[@fivifivia1146]

Just the fact that cards like Cat Burglar are 1 xp and Dr. Milan is 0 shows what a complete joke is FFG at balancing this game. Don't even get me started on Crack the Case, Magnifying Glass, Deep Knowledge, Practice Makes Perfect, Shortcut etc. And they are all lvl 0 cards lmao!!! Imagine if Guardians had something like Mag Glass from the core set, which most of the community does not even see as problematic, but imagine a guardian asset like this: takes up an arcane slot for example, 0 cost-0xp fast asset that says you get +1 STR. Why would anybody in their right mind NOT play that card? And they won't print it because it would immediately be auto-include in most Guardian decks. But even if they print such an insanely broken and not fun card, here's the fun thing; IT WOULD STILL BE WEAKER THAN MAG GLASS! (since mag glass gives Seekers the thing that they use all game long in almost all of their actions, which is investigate, while fight is something that you need only when enemies show up and most of them end up being dead in the same turn). Seekers are just too broken. Even now if they print another guy with access to Seekers 0-2 and give him high INT, that character will be broken too, like we see with Darrell. They are beyond saving. If FFG were smart they would print campaigns which punish insane clue-getting pace of Seekers, kinda like TFA punishes killing snakes, but maybe they don't have the brain for it and they end up printing another boss where you can spend clues to deal dmg, because that is "balance" in their mind lmao

[@SlebenGates]

Man, hallelujah and amen to this commentary. This is so true, and one of the reasons I only play for "theme" nowadays and to show other people the game and to gather around, but those days when I liked to build my decks and do better are gone because I noticed that never you will be able to put a Rogue like Skids/Finn/Kymani/Jenny in the same league that the worst Seeker, that's just bad for a card game.

[@Mattastrophic]

Good call on Magnifying Glass... Compare it to the 1xp Ice Pick from Edge of the Earth if you want a laugh.

[@joshuawestlund]

Sad sad sad sad I am sad