Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I appreciate the final discussion, particularly the one about FFG and communication and supporting the game more. I can feel the affect of the reduced content output and the typical FFG communication failure really taking their toll on the game community. For what it is worth, I think a roundtable or a series of discussions like what you did at the end would be good to watch.
For a company that has been around as long as FFG, their inability to communicate effectively time and again with their devoted communities blows me away. They keep repeating the same mistakes game after game. I am not sure why I expected Arkham to be any different.
Sorry to be late to the party, but I appreciated hearing all of your thoughts. I think, for me, there's little point in the taboo list because I don't build obnoxiously broken decks. And if I do play with "broken" cards, it is in a context where it doesn't matter such as solo or with a limited card pool. The real issue is 3 and 4 player which Arkham really struggles to accommodate. The game simply can't do enough to deal with large groups of players. I think I agree that banning cards is the right call since only large groups need to worry about it. Outside of that, my issue always goes back to the original design of the cards. Scarlet Keys finally reigned in Seekers and my hope was that it was a sign of them figuring out which design principles need to be avoided. I also feel they don't do anywhere near enough to buff crap cards (like Trench knife), it's just useless cardboard until they give it some kind of role.
I was thinking about incorporating the taboo list in our plays and this new one dropped. When I saw the Power Word, I made up my mind to ignore the list altogether. If they would start including the mutated version of cards as a bonus cards in the investigator or return to boxes, I'd be down
I strongly doubt the issue with Power Word is based on how it performs in an investigator that's like half a year from releasing and probably isn't fully out of the testing phase anyway. The problem with Power Word is that it was just endless testless clues, damage and healing that basically also completely neutralizes any enemy you put it on once you got it set up. I've played with it and once you got your Power Words out it was basically just an 'I win'-button. It completely breaks scenarios due to never having to worry about enemies anymore and actually getting tons of perks from them. Like, having two of them out was like having an infinitely reusable Scene of the Crime except on the highest of shroud values that also just exhausts enemies so they can't attack, shit is bonkers. I do think the taboo is a bit too much (though I guess you can almost nullify the test with some fine clothes), but that it got tabooed is no surprise. The real bummer about the Taboo though is that it was a card that seemed to be created for Amina (since she can't really do regular Mystic stuff), but due to the Will 3 test using the tabooed version with her is totally unviable.
Well, they've done it before. Switchblade L2 was Tabooed because of Tony Morgan, for example. Maxine herself spoke about this in an interview. Then it would naturally follow that Pathfinder was Chained because of Monterrey, David Renfield because of Amina, etc. As mentioned in the Chained video, we know that at least half of the Taboo changes are for the upcoming set.
@@Mattastrophic I think Tony x Switchblade is more the exception rather than the rule. While it is possible that the taboo was made with the rogue from the new box in mind, I doubt it. I mean, we don't even know if she will even be able to use a fully powered up Power Word (or at all, though it seems likely she will be able to use it to some level). As mentioned, there are plenty of reasons why Power Word would be taboo'd beyond potentially being abusable in a future character, like the fact that it's overall just a bonkers card that kind of breaks the game balance on a fundamental level. On that note, I also doubt that the David Renfield taboo was necessarily because of Amina. If I recall correctly, all they said about it was that the cards in Scarlet Keys made it abusable, not specifically Amina. Like, the combination of Renfield + Elle Rubash + Sin Eater is strong in everything, Amina would just get it online a little faster. They definitely overvalued that combo though, so I'm glad David is now back to 0XP.
Thrice spoken is niche and I would guess rarely used. You have to have drawn all 3 copies, have 9 resources to put them out and want to do the exact same thing to all 3 enemies for it to work. I've never been tempted by it
It's very very easy to find your 3 power word! And there's now a few good ways to find enemies quicker too so it's trivial to have 3 PW in play and just trivialise every scenarios! For 1 action you neutralize 3 enemies and can find clues or even heal your team to full easily! PW and mercy needed a nerf! It was so broken! Adding the test does not solve the problem but removing mercy is a good first step! Instead of a nerf they should have added a number of uses. This would be thematic too! It would show the enemies fighting to regain their control and after that your commands do not work anymore on them!
The angst in this video makes me kind of glad I suck at this game. I lose all the time. So I'm obviously not seeing how to break it. I guess that's a good thing? 🤔😁
The list of taboos was created for the small handful of players who spend a lot of their time building decks that try to break the game. More often that not, they succeed because there are hundreds, if not thousands of cards at this point, some of which have unforeseen interactions. The designers do their best, but sometimes one line of misplaced text is enough to spawn an infinite loop. Personally, I have never had much interest in those decks. They are a curiosity, sure, but I have no interest in building or playing them. I can't imagine anyone bringing one to a multiplayer game because it would ruin the experience for the other players. As Mattastrophic is fond of saying, most of the cards that end up on the list are fine if you don't go out of your way to abuse them. I don't think I have ever come remotely close to breaking a card and probably never will.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I appreciate the final discussion, particularly the one about FFG and communication and supporting the game more. I can feel the affect of the reduced content output and the typical FFG communication failure really taking their toll on the game community. For what it is worth, I think a roundtable or a series of discussions like what you did at the end would be good to watch.
For a company that has been around as long as FFG, their inability to communicate effectively time and again with their devoted communities blows me away. They keep repeating the same mistakes game after game. I am not sure why I expected Arkham to be any different.
The last comment from _man from leng_ was heart crushing, but precise. Hope ffg gets to see this.
Great work on the videos! Cheers!
Sad, but true, I agree. But fortunately a solution is right in front of us!
Hey exactly what I was looking for, keep on the great videos
Sorry to be late to the party, but I appreciated hearing all of your thoughts. I think, for me, there's little point in the taboo list because I don't build obnoxiously broken decks. And if I do play with "broken" cards, it is in a context where it doesn't matter such as solo or with a limited card pool. The real issue is 3 and 4 player which Arkham really struggles to accommodate. The game simply can't do enough to deal with large groups of players.
I think I agree that banning cards is the right call since only large groups need to worry about it. Outside of that, my issue always goes back to the original design of the cards. Scarlet Keys finally reigned in Seekers and my hope was that it was a sign of them figuring out which design principles need to be avoided. I also feel they don't do anywhere near enough to buff crap cards (like Trench knife), it's just useless cardboard until they give it some kind of role.
I was thinking about incorporating the taboo list in our plays and this new one dropped. When I saw the Power Word, I made up my mind to ignore the list altogether. If they would start including the mutated version of cards as a bonus cards in the investigator or return to boxes, I'd be down
I strongly doubt the issue with Power Word is based on how it performs in an investigator that's like half a year from releasing and probably isn't fully out of the testing phase anyway.
The problem with Power Word is that it was just endless testless clues, damage and healing that basically also completely neutralizes any enemy you put it on once you got it set up. I've played with it and once you got your Power Words out it was basically just an 'I win'-button. It completely breaks scenarios due to never having to worry about enemies anymore and actually getting tons of perks from them. Like, having two of them out was like having an infinitely reusable Scene of the Crime except on the highest of shroud values that also just exhausts enemies so they can't attack, shit is bonkers.
I do think the taboo is a bit too much (though I guess you can almost nullify the test with some fine clothes), but that it got tabooed is no surprise. The real bummer about the Taboo though is that it was a card that seemed to be created for Amina (since she can't really do regular Mystic stuff), but due to the Will 3 test using the tabooed version with her is totally unviable.
Well, they've done it before. Switchblade L2 was Tabooed because of Tony Morgan, for example. Maxine herself spoke about this in an interview. Then it would naturally follow that Pathfinder was Chained because of Monterrey, David Renfield because of Amina, etc.
As mentioned in the Chained video, we know that at least half of the Taboo changes are for the upcoming set.
@@Mattastrophic I think Tony x Switchblade is more the exception rather than the rule.
While it is possible that the taboo was made with the rogue from the new box in mind, I doubt it. I mean, we don't even know if she will even be able to use a fully powered up Power Word (or at all, though it seems likely she will be able to use it to some level). As mentioned, there are plenty of reasons why Power Word would be taboo'd beyond potentially being abusable in a future character, like the fact that it's overall just a bonkers card that kind of breaks the game balance on a fundamental level.
On that note, I also doubt that the David Renfield taboo was necessarily because of Amina. If I recall correctly, all they said about it was that the cards in Scarlet Keys made it abusable, not specifically Amina. Like, the combination of Renfield + Elle Rubash + Sin Eater is strong in everything, Amina would just get it online a little faster. They definitely overvalued that combo though, so I'm glad David is now back to 0XP.
The question was how did the original card ever make it out of testing? How did they get it that wrong?
That sort of thing happens all the time, even in well-funded games like Magic: the Gathering.
@@Mattastrophic I would say it's a bit different considering the pace of Magic releases. FFG have a whole year to look at 250 cards
Thrice spoken is niche and I would guess rarely used. You have to have drawn all 3 copies, have 9 resources to put them out and want to do the exact same thing to all 3 enemies for it to work. I've never been tempted by it
It's used a lot tbh, spells are uber searchable
It's very very easy to find your 3 power word! And there's now a few good ways to find enemies quicker too so it's trivial to have 3 PW in play and just trivialise every scenarios! For 1 action you neutralize 3 enemies and can find clues or even heal your team to full easily!
PW and mercy needed a nerf! It was so broken! Adding the test does not solve the problem but removing mercy is a good first step! Instead of a nerf they should have added a number of uses. This would be thematic too! It would show the enemies fighting to regain their control and after that your commands do not work anymore on them!
This is not true, Thrice Spoken is pretty much the go-to first upgrade for Spoken Word.
The angst in this video makes me kind of glad I suck at this game. I lose all the time. So I'm obviously not seeing how to break it. I guess that's a good thing? 🤔😁
The list of taboos was created for the small handful of players who spend a lot of their time building decks that try to break the game. More often that not, they succeed because there are hundreds, if not thousands of cards at this point, some of which have unforeseen interactions. The designers do their best, but sometimes one line of misplaced text is enough to spawn an infinite loop. Personally, I have never had much interest in those decks. They are a curiosity, sure, but I have no interest in building or playing them. I can't imagine anyone bringing one to a multiplayer game because it would ruin the experience for the other players. As Mattastrophic is fond of saying, most of the cards that end up on the list are fine if you don't go out of your way to abuse them. I don't think I have ever come remotely close to breaking a card and probably never will.
I like these changes. I wish they mutated handcuffs too.
Same here. PROOF! that the changes were entirely for Alessandra :)
Milan needs to be Forbidden already.