But if you’re looking to get discarded starting dudes back, Recruitment Drive does it with less fuss, and that’s niche enough that the card still sees almost no play. Is this card’s effect so much better than Recruitment Drive that it’s playable despite also forcing massive deck building restrictions on you?
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I’d argue this is superior as you can drop it out for 1GR as soon as you have it and it can sit on the table until needed allowing you to redraw.
Let’s also not overlook the fact that the dude you fetch with this also gains an influence, which you do not get for recruitment drive.
It does not force “massive deck building restrictions”. A little less hyperbole please. I happily run off value cards in all my pull decks (normally these are cards that fail themselves - Soul Blast, QMAN etc, but running 4 off value guys that you can tutor at will is by no means a huge restriction that’s going to nerf your deck,
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I’m not talking about the off-value guys you throw in. Obviously, a few off-value dudes to fish for isn’t the biggest deal. I’m talking about the stuff you have to put into your deck to succeed at a skill check of 9 often enough to make this card worthwhile. Recruitment Drive doesn’t lock you out of playing 3 and 5 as your main values the same way that this card will.
I think dropping it in advance is more of a drawback than an advantage, because it telegraphs your intentions to the opponent. And obviously, the free influence is purely good, there’s no denying that. I just don’t think it’s nearly good enough to make up for the opportunity cost.
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And I forgot another drawback this has compared to Recruitment Drive… Recruitment Drive lets you pull deeds too if you want.
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I’m sorry but not playing 2 values is still not “massively restrictive”
Especially if we stay with Law Dogs, since their main shooter values are better out of 7 and 8 (which both pass a Blessed 2 pull) and that’s assuming you’re building a “usual” Law Dog deck, which you won’t be
That’s like saying Shadow Walk is shit because you can’t run 3s and 5s.
Blessed decks WON’T be running those values to begin with, so claiming that this suddenly invalidates this particular miracle is a bit daft.
I like the concept (and artwork) of this card a lot, but I do agree that it is a tad awkward from a deckbuilding perspective. At least with the current card pool.
One thing of note about the somewhat high difficulty is that so far the average difficulty of a miracle is 7.5 by my count. The average difficulty of hexes (not counting difficulty X abilities) is 6.7. The average skill value of Blesseds is only 0.83, whereas the average skill value of Hucksters is 1.1.
That statistical difference, along with the more limited set of Blesseds and Miracles, seems likely to lead to a perception that their deckbuilding is significantly more restricted. Obviously there is a lot of nuance in available deckbuilding options above-and-beyond those four numbers I just cited.
I think though that it tends to underscore why some may feel unimpressed by this card at a glance. If there was a Smiling Tom-esque Blessed, people might feel different about it.
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All I’m trying to say is that Recruitment Drive is already not played much at all. The effect on it is not good enough to warrant a spot in most decks. This card is a new version of Recruitment Drive which can search your deck and your discard pile and give a permanent +1 influence to the guy it fishes out, but in return, only Blessed dudes can start it, it can’t get deeds, it has an additional chance of failing if you run any cards less than 7, it might not let you choose the dude you want if the value you draw is high enough to pass the skill test but too low to hit the guy’s grit, it gives 1 less GR, and it take an additional action to attach it and use it before you can run the job.
It’s not like Blessed decks couldn’t already run Recruitment Drive if they wanted to, and as far as I have seen, they don’t. Is this card so much better than Recruitment Drive that this effect is suddenly worth playing? At first glance, I certainly don’t think so. I mean, I’ll try it when it comes out, but I don’t have high hopes.
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Yeah, with 6 total Blesseds (Law Dog and Neutral) and 22 total Hucksters (4R, Sloane, and Neutral), there’s definitely a large design space for miracles to grow. Still, at the moment they feel reaaally tight for deck building, and frankly a few of the miracles are downright weird (has anyone managed to use Soothe without feeling like you’re stranding your blesseds?)
No, I haven’t. I feel more and more like it is a trap card. It seems good at a glance because unbooting is so useful. But given the costs and difficulty it is generally not worthwhile.
The problem isn’t that there aren’t plenty of cards in the card pool that are legitimate targets. There are.
The problem is that every single one of the dudes you listed fails the check if pulled. And if your deck is structure to reliably make the pull, even with the Blessed 2 few will be the dudes who fit in your value structure and qualify for the requirement that their grit be less than the pull.
So you’re either polluting your deck with (lower) off value dudes to make this spell useful, or you’re severely hurting the odds that even a successful pull will yield any positive benefit thanks to the grit limit, and what’s worse, your Blessed is still obliged to go on the job if the check is successful, even if the check isn’t high enough to actually beat anyone’s grit.
Recruitin’ Drive has a lower opportunity cost with a better and more flexible outcome. The +1 influence and ability to go to deck or discard is attractive, sure, but recruitin’ drive can grab deeds and provides a greater discount.
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Obviously, those were examples. Anything below 7 is an autofail on the pull, and only 2 Blessed succeed with 7s and one with 8s. Reliably making this pull does massively restrict your build, and claiming otherwise is just silly.
Yeah, the boot-for-unboot tradeoff is rough, especially given that the difficulty is so high, and its opposite number (Paralysis Mark) boots you without booting the caster, and so can be cast repeatedly.
I like it, but as others have said, -in the current card pool- it’s a bit niche. However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have room to grow. More blessed able to leverage it and more valuable cards worth grabbing with it are almost certain to come.
It likely will need some kind of caster that can get significantly higher skill check outcomes compared to the pulled value to work well. Either by just having a higher skill value outright like Smiling Tom or by having some way of increasing their skill check outcome like Antheia. That way you could tutor on-value dudes with 2-3 combined bullets and influence still (i.e. the vast majority of dudes).
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