A case against Unprepared

[Doomdog]

The only example I can think of where errata effectively made it a new card there is the one you use as an example, Hot Lead Flyin'. In my opinion there is no way that Unprepared is as game warping as that became. If you weren't running it yourself, you had pretty much no chance in a shootout against an opponent abusing it.

I'm not someone who thinks the errata to Paralysis Mark made it useless, but I know many do. You didn't even need to leave your home and get in a shootout to shut a dude down with old Paralysis Mark, and it was very easy to lock down many decks once you got a couple in play. It was massively game warping, far more so than Unprepared.

I agree it's a powerful card, and would still be great if it either lost the bullet penalty, cost 1 GR to play, or only hit a limited number of attachments. For me, it definitely isn't anywhere near as format warping as the cards mentioned above were, as it don't cause me massive headaches trying to figure out decks that I find fun to play that also stand a chance of winning a game. I can understand that if you like decks based around building up one or two tower dudes, or that rely on attachments for Cheatin' Resolutions or shootout tricks, it can be really annoying to have to face.

[Pr0digy]

Admittedly, for almost a year now playing Blessed, every single time I put a miracle on a dude I think "ok, which Blessed does this go on in case one of them is Unprepared?". That's just the card that I think of, but the same effect can come from a pistol whip, rabbits deception, rabbit takes revenge, and even hydro puncher and phantom fingers to a lesser extent.

Lots of cards can mimic Unprepared's ultimate effects, so I don't think it's any more format warping than pistol whip (as one example).

[Zeetoois]

I disagree on the Pistol Whip comparison. PW has direct counters now, particularly with Pedro and Yagns, which are both incredibly popular. There are also an increasing number of "can't leave the shootout" effects (Siege of the Orphanage, Rabbit Takes Revenge, etc.) So PW has gone down in popularity and use. I think design realized it was very powerful, so they made some cards to counter it. Unprepared on the other hand, doesn't have nearly as many counters.

I know there are some direct answers to unprepared, but those also counter PW (Yagns, a Slight Modification, etc.). Also, PW being on 5 means it doesn't find its way into nearly as many decks, as it will often fail pulls. Unprepared doesn't have that issue.

[Pr0digy]

Pistol Whip and effects like it are potentially much more powerful than Unprepared, as they can get rid of both a 'voltroned' up dude, or a stud, or whatever the most problematic dude is from a shootout. It makes sense it has more counters than Unprepared. There are at least 6-7 cards in the game that can send a dude home booted in a shootout, so it would be very oppressive if there weren't counters.

And that's why I have both 3-4 Pedros and at least one searchable Walk the Path in most versions of my blessed decks. The fact that I feel like I have to devote 4-5 cards in my deck to fight against pistol whip-like effects shows the raw power of those cards, and probably shows why cards like Yagns and Pedros were designed in the first place (Yagns had paralysis mark in mind too, I'm sure).

I can see the argument that Unprepared is on the same level as those "send home" cards, and maybe deserves more counters (or less power in the first place), but I just don't think it's at the same level. Obviously personal play styles and differences in metas factor into this, so I can certainly understand the argument even if I don't agree

[Zeetoois]

PW also requires a bit of setup: an unbooted dude to boot who can stand to lose a bullet. As it should! Those send home effects are powerful. And I'm not arguing that Unprepared needs a clause that detrimental. I just think it could lose the -1 bullet clause and still be an incredible card.

[zenarchist]

I think the -1 bullet is what takes Unprepared from being a silver bullet against geared-up Voltrons and spell-towers and makes it into a generally useful card.

The effect of Unprepared is very swingy, based on what your opponent is playing. Sure, best case you get to totally shut down some dude (and in those cases the bullet loss is often barely relevant), but worst case, the -1 bullet is all you get. Those are the times you'd rather have a card like SiYE - ignoring the fact that both cards can be countered or mitigated, I'm pretty sure there are more shootouts where you're facing dudes without relevant attatchments or abilities to Unprepare than ones without opposing studs to make into draws.

So removing the -1 bullet would make it weaker in situations where it's already weak, but not do too much to it when it's strong. Even if one thinks it needs rebalancing (I personaly don't), I think doing it by dropping the -1 bullet wouldn't be the right approach.

[Antaiseito]

This just came into my mind:
Would the card be too weak if you had to choose whether to affect a dude OR their attached cards like it does now?

It would stilll work like it does now against dudes without items, with -1 bullets, which seems to be the most offending effect.

Just an idea, i'm not lobbying for change and generally agree with the people that say the card is not too overbearing if you keep it in mind with your spell distribution and timing, but i don't play as much as others here

[Harlath]

This just came into my mind:
Would the card be too weak if you had to choose whether to affect a dude OR their attached cards like it does now?

Tweaking it like that might be a good change in a base set 2.0 as a new card, might be better than splitting it across two cards?

Really enjoying the debate here, thanks guys. A variety of perspectives and facets of the card being pointed out on various sides.

[Suzy309]

So tbh I am on the side of Unprepared being too powerful. I find that I use it to lock down several deck types (spell/gadget/holster/attachment heavy decks) and for control builds (I have won several games sacrificing a dude so I could boot an opponent and then puppet him the move after).

I agree that the three things it does is too much all in all. But I am also against dynamite counter cards like this that just blows everything up (I am also against silverbullet counters which makes me kind of hard to satisfy ).

One of the biggest arguments for me is that if I play 10s as a value which club would I use? 80% of the time I would use unprepared although I have flirted with 'Recruitment Drive' and 'No Funny Stuff' which is why its only 80%. So unless we want powercreep in the 10s value something needs to be done about Unprepared...

[Harlath]

(I have won several games sacrificing a dude so I could boot an opponent and then puppet him the move after).

Hopefully this comment doesn't come across as "get good" but if somebody has a Puppet on the table (to cast as "the move after", post shootout and potentially an opposing action) shouldn't their opponent run home during step 6 ("Run or Gun") of shootout resolution? Kill opposing sacrificial dude, then run home. This is meant more in the spirit of "this is a good way out of a difficult situation, if it comes up again and people are finding it frustrating".

Appreciate that this is a rule/timing nuance that some people might be unaware of, so doing my best to broadcast it!

[Suzy309]

Ah - yeah, so I wrote it wrong. Puppet him afterwards is what I meant - not necessarily the move after, I would probably need to move into townsquare or the like.

I often keep my puppet in hand if Im doing that move so they wont see it coming.

And ill be happy to walk into their home and puppet them as well... I spend a fair amount of games in my opponents home

[Harlath]

Always be Puppeting! Agree that keeping it in your hand is often the best strategy - at least this gives your opponent a few actions to respond by the time the Puppet is attached and makes its way to its victim.

Hope my tip at least helps a few people out.

I'll try to monitor the prevalence of Unprepared at Worlds and GenCon both in person and via the excellent dtdb.co website.

[Duvalier]

Thanks everyone for contributing in length to this discussion! I'm really happy with the impact it had. Opinions might change over time with new cards but at least I feel we'll keep a closer watch on this individual one.

Thanks Harlath for monitoring the card during events.

[Harlath]

Community threads like this are a great idea, we can all work together to consider solutions.

Also helps flag things to playtest in case we've missed something - sometimes there's an existing solution/playstyle tweak that can work or an article can be written to help players.

Other times its helpful to know about something that is an issue for new/casual players - perhaps there's a deck type that's frustrating to play against that the Richard Carters of this world can cope with, but we still want to know about it if it is damaging local metas.

[RichCarter]

Hey now.

I am a casual player at heart.

My jank is frequently super questionable.

[Harlath]

Hey now.

I am a casual player at heart.

My jank is frequently super questionable.

The price of winning Worlds. Soon to be inflicted on a new glorious winner after Manchester!

Joking aside, I liked the spirit that Worlds and Evil is a Choice were played in. You reminding your opponent of their Legend during your quarterfinal/semi (?) to effectively cost yourself the game was an impressive moment. Need to think of some sort of equivalent of X-Wing's "Fly Casual", but "Shoot Casual" doesn't really work... That said, not sure a campaign like that is needed in Doomtown given what I've seen in the US and UK.

[orrf]

I think the strongest case against Unprepared is the fact that there's no drawback of playing it.
It gives, -1 bullet AND boots the targeted dude AND he cannot use abilitys AND boots the attached cards AND the attached cards loses all traits, abilitys and bullet bonuses. All without any kind of penalty (cost, requirements or timing etc).

With that said i think it's a necessary card to have in the card pool to combat stacked up dudes, i just wished it was tweaked somehow.

[TybarSunsong]

Since I've had a lot of time to think more on Unprepared, I wanted to put down my thoughts on the real problem behind it.

More than the power level, when I was playing gadgets early on, I hated the feeling of helplessness that that card put into me. I usually didn't have the ability to turtle long enough to both invent enough gadgets to stop it from being an issue, and to then spread them out. I'd usually watch as my entire game fell apart because of one card, or I'd have to run a deck that had a few gadgets, rather than a deck with gadgets as a theme.

I came back from one or two GenCon tournaments feeling completely demoralized by one card in the set. I can appreciate that it exists for a reason, but man that card just was a negative play experience, and I'd rather fix those than worry about its absolute power level.

For me, part of the reason it was so negative was that it was easy to slot into any deck, because it did so many things. That's why I'd like to see it have some cost, or some toning down to its ability. I'm not sure, exactly, what it would take.

I will say that a lot of my most negative experiences came from before ASM, so take that into consideration.

[Suzy309]

@TybarSunsong I think you actually make a lot of sense why the Gadget players were frustrated at the start of the game. You put all that money and booting into effects that were ok to good, and then were countered by a single card in the game that a lot of people ran because it was just good no matter what the opponents deck was.

I was and am a proponent of gadgets - but the succesfull decks I have been running at the start of the game was Qman decks with Telepathy Helmets structured 2X16ish with SF clubs in the bottom - thus making my head ponchos pretty immune to the effect of unprepared as that was the counter card to gadgets.

Today gadgets has a lot of answers to unprepared (Yagns, ASM) which helps a lot - but that doesnt diminish the power of unprepared.

[Neramoor]

The other big change for Gadget decks are the dude themselves. The newer lower costed competent MS dudes mean that you can spread your gadgets around more so unprepared has a lower impact. Compare Dr Erik Yapple to Elander Boldman if you are unconvinced