A case against Unprepared

General
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I wanted to share my thoughts on the card Unprepared. Many games playing with and against it have drawn my attention to it.

Why do I consider it overly powerful? It is proof against every single hearth cards you can bring to a shootout, and will continue to cancel any future card printed. It is also proof against any ability the target may pack so double-it as meta against most spades ability as well. It also unconditionnally boot any target dude. Most other cards that can boot a dude have setup requirements, conditions to play them and are much less versatile. Even if your opponent does not run any goods you can still get a lot of mileage just from that ability. Your goods will also lose all traits which means that its also a meta against very strong club cards (such as calling the cavalry, hex-slinging, etc.) which require you to have specific types of cards in play. You lose bullet bonuses as well from goods. And to add icing on the cake, the target gets -1 bullet which is always useful, in every games you will play. It’s also on a value10 which will help you win pulls and ties in hand ranks.

I am a big fan of shootout interactions but this card has the potential of removing almost any form of interaction from a fight. Any shootout: ability ever printed can and will be rendered void by this card.

The only way to defend against it is to get the first shootout action or play hiding in the shadows. Even in these specific cases your opponent will simply choose the next best target and still get his unprepared anyway. Even if you unboot the targeted cards with counter-meta you still lose everything that those cards did.

And for all that, it costs you what? 0 GR. A card from your hand.

I understand its role in the game: it’s meant to be a meta card against tower units or powerful goods. Contrary to most meta cards however, it is good against every opponent and every matchup (except perhaps slide decks).

It at least has the redeeming feature to be in the starting set, so available to most players very easily. If Doomtown didn’t have its inherent deck structures limitations, I don’t think I’d ever build a deck not featuring this card.

I would be curious to know if there is a higher success rate for decks running it over anything else.

Finally, I’d like to compare it to another versatile card from the base set: Sun in your eyes. Compared to Unprepared, Sun in your eyes will give the target dude a piddly additionnal -1 bullets, and maybe, in the best case scenario, make it a draw. It does not prevent them from getting back their stud state later or claim more bullet bonuses. It also is a very low value card which is a detriment to many skilled decks. Would you trade -1 bullet and maybe make someone a draw against the whole package above? Is unprepared really that well balanced?

What do you guys think? Am I over-analysing it?

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Unprepared is S tier for sure, but there are ways around it.

  • Unprepared doesn’t remove keywords so Hex Slingin’ and Callin’ the Cavalry still work (also sidekick and harrowed stay in)
  • Unprepared removes attachment traits (that is the text without a Bold timing window) but doesn’t remove traits from dudes. Tommy Harden, Emilia Vivirias and Nicholas Kramer (who’s got a passion for bein’ prepared) will get -1 bullet, but they keep their studliness and their important attributes.
  • Voltron dudes (like J. W. Byrne) will lose out on all their attached bullet bonuses, but they will still benefit from the keyword/trait interactions. Abram’s Crusaders gives a +1 for having a melee weapon which will counter Unprepared. Add in a few spell effects and you won’t even notice that your Tlalocs’ are blanked.
  • Large posses that shoot well won’t be hurt by unprepared. 1 stud gets hit and another will shoot in his place.

If you are playing a deck that is reliant on specific attachments (hex decks or holster decks) then you should always be wary of Unprepared ruining your day, being Pistol Whipped or just having stacked bullet modifiers will put you in the same position. Plan your deck, bide your time, wait till you win lowball, and then go kidnappin’.

Actually, while we are all talking about Unprepared, how does it affect Kung Fu dudes? Can an Unprepared dude perform techniques, or does he suffer from the “cannot use their abilities” part?

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Good point about traits: I was confusing traits with keywords. Good to know.

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Good analysis in the opening post and from @SavageJack pointing out that the dude retains their traits (helps Barton Everest, Tommy Harden etc) and goods retain their keywords (so they still work for Calling the Cavalry/Hex Slingin’).

I agree that this is a very strong card that would encourage you to play Tens or to allocate some of your “off value” slots to this card if you aren’t running Tens.

That said, I think your original post hits on one of the great balancing mechanisms of Doomtown, as the deck construction requirements mean this card isn’t omnipresent.

Indeed, even in tournament decks where I’m running Unprepared I generally go 3x Unprepared and 1x Recruitment Drive as the latter is a huge help against slide/Spirit Fortress. There’s the odd game where missing the 4th Unprepared hurts, but overall testing (and hopefully tournament results!) have shown that this is a reasonable policy.

If I ‘m making a three value shooting deck with a few cards off value I often use cheatin’ punishment cards as my off value cards (as I want to keep these in my hand and out of my Draw structure), so I often have one value with a job/forced callout (for example, 7 for Kidnappin/Run ‘Em Down) or 8 for Bounty Hunter), a second value with forced attrition/hand rank manipulation (J for Hex Slingin’/Outgunned or K for Point Blank) and will then use a third value for my Shootout actions. Here I often find myself choosing between 3 for Sun in Yer Eyes and 10 for Unprepared, and a number of my tournament decks use 3s instead of 10s (Decklist search results · DoomtownDB) but have still managed to work.

The crucial reason for sometimes (but not always!) preferring Sun in Yer Eyes is making a dude a draw, as in an early shootout your opponent may only have one stud, or perhaps two at most but with the second only having one/zero bullets. That means with Sun in Yer Eyes your opponent with be X draw on a 5 or 6 card hand, while with Unprepared they’ll be X draw on a 7 card hand and have a fair easier time making strong/legal hand. One extra stud makes a huge difference to probabilities with three value decks (a fairly common draw structure). For example, with a Law Dogs starting posse featuring Hattie DeLorre and a copy of Sun In Yer Eyes, even a posse with two 2-stud dudes can be dropped to a six card X draw shootout hand, while unprepared leaves your opponent with 7 cards X draw rather than their default 8 stud X draw.

Interestingly, several of the skills can now play around Unprepared (appreciate this doesn’t help non-skilled decks):

  • Hexes - Shadow Walk in and use an an attachment (Soul Blast, for example) before your opponent acts.
  • Gadgets - can cancel Unprepared with A Slight Modification, and you can play as many copies of that as your opponent has copies of unprepared (albeit at the small cost of booting a gadget).
  • Spirits - Totems get around Unprepared as they aren’t attached to Dudes.
  • Miracles - the one skilled suite that doesn’t have a direct answer.

The above all said, Unprepared is very strong. I wonder if this would still have been playable if the ability had effectively been split over two cards, one that hits attachments and the other that boots a dude and gives -1 bullets. Not sure if it would have needed a “One Good Turn…” style “Noon: draw a card” ability to stop in being too narrow in some matches if it was split up like this?

I’m not from the rules team, so feel free to go to them for a formal answer as this has been covered before, but Unprepared dudes can indeed use abilities on Totems/Kung Fu cards. See below for the most up to date text on Unprepared, with my emphasis in bold. hope this helps. :slight_smile:

"Shootout: Choose a dude. Boot that dude and their attached cards. That dude gets –1 bullets and cannot use their abilities. Their attached cards lose all traits, abilities, and bullet bonuses. "

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I have long stated that Unprepared could lose its - 1 bullet penalty and still be incredibly powerful. - 1 bullets is what moves this card from strong to borderline overpowered (my opinion, of course). If I were in a fight and had an opposing dude with no attached cards, I would think before using unprepared just to boot that dude. But booting and - 1 bullet is always useful in a shootout, even if the dude has no attached cards

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I don’t agree that Unprepared is good against “every opponent and every matchup (except perhaps slide decks)”. I think it is extremely lackluster against shooty decks that don’t have attachments, or at least decks without critical attachments (which is a solid chunk of shooty decks). Gadgets, spells, shotguns, and Holsters are where it shines, but if your opponent isn’t playing that the -1 bullets and booting is often an extremely minimal effect. I would muuuuch rather have Sun In Yer Eyes against those other decks.

Yes, there will be that one game where you suicide a dude just to boot their dude with unprepared, then steal a victory, but those are extremely rare.

I think it could stand to lose the -1 bullet, or even the booting the dude effect, or hit a limited number of attachments, and it would still be a powerful and useful card. But I also don’t think it’s in ‘overpowered’ territory. And this is coming from a guy who has been playing Blessed decks almost exclusively for the past few tournament cycles, and Blessed have the least defense among spell types against Unprepared (as Harlath noted). I just make sure to split up my miracles across at least 2 Blessed, and that usually works ok. I also have a strong draw structure so my dudes can often handle a shootout without miracles without too much detriment. Unprepared hurts, but its rarely game ending, and usually just means I go home after the first round of a shootout and get back into the action the next day.

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To be honest I like Unprepared that being said I almost never play with it if it’s on value I never play more than two copies of it . ( it is rarely used in portland meta )

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As a counter argument in favor of Unprepared, it is one of a few cards that their existence keep some of my combo decks from being too powerful. It’s the best way to counter casualty reduction spell stacking, or a dude with Force Field and a side kick.

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To add on to @jayjester, Unprepared is one of the few cards that help Melee decks. Pretty much all of my Melee-centric decks use it.

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I agree, Jay. I honestly think it’s an almost perfectly balanced card. If it didn’t have the - 1 bullets clause, I think it’d be spot on. The rest of the ability is great, and keeps certain decks in check. Again, all my opinion. I’ve played enough online card games to see cards go from overpowered to shoebox status. The last thing I’d want (if it were to ever be adjusted in power level) would be for it to be unplayable.

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Gadget decks have at least two other workarounds I can think of. Because of ordering of events, a dude with a Yagn’s as I understand it would need to be hit with two to ensure the dude is booted. And A Slight Modification can be made :slight_smile:
I don’t think the card is particularly OP: it’s just an important one to anticipate when working out when to take shootouts, working out values your opponent is running, etc. Even if off-value, you know your opponent will only have so many, so you’ll have other tricks you want to pull if you’re planning to shoot.

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Gadgets being tradeable goods means that compared to spells it’s easier to spread them across several dudes. Your opponent has to choose what to hit with their Unprepared.

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Another good point that was brought up in the DtR Discord channel was how spells & attachments are there to use every single turn. Unprepared requires it to be played from your hand, so it’s only one time, and beyond that its hoping you draw another one soon.

And if you have bad luck, you may never see one the whole game…

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To play devil’s advocate, that’s ANY card in your deck. “You might not draw it” isn’t really a drawback of a card, as every card has that aspect.

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Ha! Tolarios would have words with you, mister!

(otherwise yes, that is true, I just mean to say that once you draw a heart, it is there every turn. Once you draw a club, its a one-time use and you have to wait yet again on lady luck for future uses :slight_smile: )

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Haha that’s fair. But in any case, its “drawability” (I’m making that a word) is the same as basically any other club.

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Things in the Meta of your local play environment dictate power of Cards like Unprepared ( Hex decks and Blessed should have more trouble with it than mad scientist’s in my opinion as mad scientist have to boot just to create gadgets and as far as I know few hexes and miracles require the dude to boot just to get them on the board ) as I rarely have a dude with a lot of attachments ( outside of my favorite fancy hat deck ) so all it does is boot a dude and gives -1 bullets . I do love how it shuts down Kung fu as a grip of people in my play group just high kick and karate chop everything in sight anyway long rambling text that was in defensive unprepared is now over

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Unprepared is the single most format warping card that has ever been printed in DoomTown. It’s powerlevel is insanely off the charts, and is way higher than a lot of the banned cards.

The only reason it hasn’t been banned is because it’s powerful in the designers desired gameplay mode (shootouts) and not as powerful in undesired gameplay modes (lose to win, turtle, slide).

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[quote=“bithlord, post:18, topic:2459, full:true”]
Unprepared is the single most format warping card that has ever been printed in DoomTown. It’s powerlevel is insanely off the charts, and is way higher than a lot of the banned cards. [/quote]

There are two banned cards. I don’t think Unprepared is worse than either “Win every lowball and still have good shootout hands all the time” or “Earn points by doing nothing at the safety of your home”

I think the only bent the designers have is toward interactive and away from non-interactive gameplay.

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“There are two banned cards. I don’t think Unprepared is worse than either “Win every lowball and still have good shootout hands all the time” or “Earn points by doing nothing at the safety of your home””

I would also consider all the cards that were erratad into either useless cards and/or new cards entirely to be “banned cards” since the erratad version is not the same card at all. (e.g. hot lead flying, which barely resembles its original version and is effectively a ban + new card).

And… I actually do think unprepared is just as oppressive as both of those cards. It is absolutely format warping.