So a Xander's Mail dropped for me a couple days age and it got me thinking about Officer's Harness. It seems to be an OK card if there's Firestorm about or maybe if you have an Enchanted Harness (which I don't). Otherwise it's just effectively a half a hitpoint's worth of armor and of little immediate value. But can't you think of it kind of like a delayed positive trait of potentially infinite duration? (I presume this has been discussed but I couldn't find any threads) Once you draw it your deck is reduced for as long as it stays up. Is this card bad or not? Boiling Armor or standing in acid would make you have to start all over - is that why I almost never see anyone using it in MP?
Officer's Harness is ok, but not stellar. It's basically a dead draw which then gives you free .5 point damage reduction for the rest of the match. It can also serve as a padding against Short Perplexing Ray and other forced discard. So it's decent, but it won't be a game-changer unless you manage to abuse card drawing and obtain a fistful of them. (I think the record I've seen was 6, before the Inspiring Presence nerf.)
I like 'em, but I don't play MP. At 18th level there are many more items available and more ways to do things, plus the meta seems to favor blocks over armor. My tokenless SP fighter carries 3x Reliable Mail and 5x Officer's Harness. With 1 or 2 mail and a stack of harnesses in hand, he's tanked through some pretty nasty hits to take out heavy opponents. I usually put Reliable Mail and Officer's Harness on my wizards too. They often come in handy while waiting for Resistant Hide to show up. There is probably some sort of 'card disadvantage' I'm missing, but I doubt it's a bad as being hacked on while naked. Give it a shot, and if it doesn't work you can tell us why not. It it does, you can report your MP ranking.
Officer's Harness is neat. You are potentially discarding one or two less cards at the end of turn, and if you combo it with Leadership they will turn into plusses. It is a nice buffer from perplexing rays sometimes. Also if you can draw 1 Enchanted and 1 Chain/Enchanted Harnesses (Armor 4 100%) and as many Officer's Harnesses as you can, each one is basically Armor 1 100%. With a bit of luck and time, you can potentially have 4-9 points of damage shaved off of every single attack. It's cool when it works.
OK, I've got some Corian's Boots to use until I find Kelharin's Clogs. General Jelom's Helm would make it rock.
I have to agree with Jade. I remember losing a match because the opponent was running with two rocked up elven warriors, and it was really neat to see. I think one of the elven warriors ended up having 4 Officer's Harness and 2 Enchanted Harness. Couple that with a priest with many heal spells, and it was a very fun yet frustrating match
I run Corian's Boots as an amazing no-token shoe option. The Quick Step combined with the Harnesses have done great. If you've got the tokens for better boots, there are better options, and I don't think a Harness build is anywhere near viable, but particularly on token-heavy warriors, Corian's Boots are decent. In SP, however, Harnesses are the keys to quite a few of my builds, and it's basically the only reason I've been able to do the Single-Character Challenge at all.
I disagree. I think you need a lot of legends and epics to make it work, but imagine a character with: Corian's Boots or Argo's Boots General Jelom's Helm Xander's Mail Perfect Stoutness (If on a dwarf) That's a lot of protection that doesn't need to be discarded for 1 or 2 tokens.
I run three human warriors equipped with a lot of Officer's Harnesses along with Advanced Battlefield Training and Battlefield Training and this combo is BROKEN. I just transfer all the Officer's Harnesses on to one guy and then...oh wait, this combo sucks. Vakaz is correct, though. A high-rated player, Beledorf, runs thusly armored Elves to great success.
On an interesting note, I have found that Advanced Battlefield Training is moderately useful in the campaign. It is most useful to me when the positioning of my characters prevents me from using their cards. On rare occasions, I can use it to transfer Reliable Mail or Parry or Strong Bludgeon from someone with too many non-move cards to someone who has few cards or maybe can use it. Most often, I would use it to give Run to an ally so they can bludgeon something. Which is terrible when I could have just used Run, Team! or Dash, Team! instead. Seriously, Move, Team! is usually a +1 whereas Advanced Battlefield Training is always a -1. I don't know why the devs can't see that.
