These card-drawing cards seem grossly over-valued.

While Card Hunter may not have anything directly comparable to a Magic Combo Deck, this isn't Magic.

Let's take the altruism/inspiration combo. With a little luck your priest could draw a massive number of cards in one turn, passing many of the draws along to your other characters. Wouldn't drawing two to three times the cards of your opponents in one round utilizing the synergy between a couple cards be considered good progress towards quickly winning the game?

It might be worth using a forward thinking or other card drawing mechanics to cycle your priest towards altruism to reap the benefits of this Combo.

Just so I don't balance this post on a single example, I submit that stacking damage buffs could also be considered a combo. Let's say you have a warrior that you load up with as many attacks as possible, and load up your priest with unholy wellsprings and other damage buffs. Each buff placed on the warrior increases the value of their attacks and each attack the warrior performs increases the value of the damage buffs. Cycling through your priest for several buffs could be a valid strategy to quickly wipe the board, possibly in conjunction with a mages movement controlling cards.

Sure this doesn't generate infinite of anything (except perhaps rage, hurr hurr) or instantly win the game when you get the right cards, but I believe it is the Card Hunter equivalent of a combo and these strategies can be powerful enough to warrant card cycling.

 

I agree entirely and this is what makes any "draw a card" card good because they can be used and abused in a multitude of strategies. Most the "over-vauled" opinion seems to come from people that just don't enjoy that sort of play style.

 

Hey an actual reply, thanks. Essentially I agree, I even made the same point about Forward Thinking earlier.

The only reason I was comparing the game to Magic is other people did earlier, so why not take the comparison further.

The reason I used such a limited definition of a combo deck (chasing after a win condition directly through synergy) is that if we take "a combination of cards working advantageously together", what deck isn't a combo deck? Very few decks in Magic or Card Hunter would not qualify.

Looking at combo decks in Magic, either historical standard or current vintage we see pure synergy as a viable and even dominating option to the point of not attempting to protect your winning combination. Is synergy that effective in Card Hunter?

I would say no, hence why pure cycling cards are less effective than they are in Magic, and less effective than they could be. But not useless.

I still think it's a good point, even if just like you say the comparison can only be so useful since Card Hunter definitely isn't Magic.

As a side note, I know current magic standard or even current vintage is a far cry from the Urza block or Mirrodin block days and "pure" combo decks are not exactly in style anymore. Of course this does not mean that combo decks do not exist anymore, in mtg theory they certainly do tend toward combo way more than aggro or control, and therefore are combo decks.

They may well be. Like I said earlier I would even rate Inspiration higher than pure cycling since it lets you choose which deck to draw from.

My own evaluation of (IMO) the closest Card Hunter equivalent to pure combo, Lance's Firestorm/Volcano is not as favorable as most people. The deck being able to stomp over an AI that doesn't deal with Volcano properly is only mildly impressive to me. I'll reserve judgment until that build gets played by and against more people than it currently is.

For perspective, I'll remind you that Lance seems to rate that particular build (much?) higher and he has more experience with it or Card Hunter than I do. I still think my misgivings on that build are warranted in light of that, just take them with a grain of salt.

 

The build has had plenty of play, and I would only rate it around a 1300 rating. The build is inconsistent and extremely vulnerable if you know how to counter it. Although, I am and will continue to play it for awhile to further test it's weaknesses, in hopes that I will be able to further minimize them.

I would like to return to the subject matter that is, "these card drawing cards seem grossly over valued."

With that in mind I don't feel that to be the case. Some players will undoubtedly carry a lower opinion of these cards than others. However, there are many of us, including the developers, which hold draw cards in high esteem. Which leads us to some players feeling that increasing their decks, "consistency" even by a small margin is worth it. We've pointed out the pros and cons of draw cards. So, the question now becomes, "are they worth it to you?"

 

Glad to see you admit that your definition of a MTG combo deck is limited.

This is a much better definition for a combo deck and more applicable to both magic and CardHunter.

I disagree. Some synergy was so effective in game it's already been nerffed. Other synergy has yet to be utilized so it is pure speculation in how it would perform. You've already established that MTG is a different game and comparisons are of limited value so it is useless to qualify how good a card hunter card is based on a comparison to how good a similar card is in MTG. I would simplify it to in both games Card Drawing is good; except in magic when it's your last card in the deck, then you lose. There is no such draw back in CardHunter potentially making card drawing better than it is in Magic - as mentioned before these comparisons are of little value though when discussing the actual value of a card in this game. Some cycling cards in CardHunter are way more effective than they should be Leadership particularly on a all human squad especially after some priest induced card draw.

Fair enough if you don't feel like an AI, mom is a valid opponent to test the effectiveness of a players build(even if she cheats and uses OP cards). I personally have not faced her so I can't comment; Lance made a post warning about her difficulty so I don't discount her that quickly. I would of much preferred to watch him play an actual player of a similar rank, or even you and your best build. Sadly I did not get to choose his opponent and only had the one game to observe. I will however follow your advice and give his opinion more weight than yours.

I would also like to see his build and others like it played by and against more people. One reason I encourage people make use of these cards and experiment with combo builds is so that more can be discovered, tested, and their success or failure can be shared with the community leading to even more innovation in card use and synergy as well as provide better feedback to the developers by exhausting as many combination as possible to see if something breaks.

Nice to see you adding to the discussion again Nirvana, thank you.

 

Children. Please. Take it to PMs or, better yet, let it go.

 

I'm not exactly an expert player, but I figure I can add my opinion to this discussion anyway... In my opinion, Inspiration is an excellent card, and Lateral Thinking is mediocre.

Without even doing anything fancy with Inspiration, it allows the player to give another action to the character who needs it most. It might help a character move off lava at the end of a turn, or finish off an enemy who's at low health, or provide another heal (or potentially a string of heals if the character has Talented Healer, which incidentally I think might be an undervalued card). And even if Inspiration isn't being played in one of these clutch situations, it can still be useful to stacking cards onto the character with more buffs, or with more health, or whatever. So I reckon Inspiration is a broadly useful and powerful card in its own right.

Lateral Thinking, on the other hand, seems pretty niche to me. Obviously it can be useful sometimes as has been described in this thread. I can imagine situations where discarding a card might even win the game (eg. if it allows a player to discard Heavy Armor or Unstable Bolt, allowing the player to move somewhere they wouldn't otherwise be able to move.) But more often than not I'd rather just have a different card from my deck. I'm not really sure if it's overvalued - because that really depends on how powerful the niche strategies using the card can become. But I can say that I can't think of any build where it would be worth using a power token for Trained Tactics (except when the player doesn't have enough items to choose from).