Command/Leadership is great. Thinking is horrible. Og so horrible. They are so terrible I'm not seeing ANY reason whatsoever to run them. Forward Thinking: Draw 2, keep 1. A lot of people fixate on how you are "paying" 2 cards to gain 1 and losing card advantage. Thats actually not a concern here. This isn't magic the gathering. Lower hand size and the the fact that lots of cards are less than useful under the wrong circumstances makes it much less of an issue The issue is that it just provide such a small gain. Without FT, you would draw 1 unknown card (instead of FT you draw a card with an ability). With FT, you essentially get an extra option to see 2 cards and choose 1 out of them. Thats really not very useful. Its only a benefit If you get 1 useful card and a useless one in those 2. If you have 2 useful cards or 2 useless cards, FT provided no benefit whatsoever. Lateral Thinking: Without LT, you would draw 1 unknown card (instead of LT you draw a card with an ability). With LT, you would draw 1 unknown card while sacrificing a card. What the hell? This is a RARE? Whats the benefit here? Without LT, you would have drawn your next card anyways since it would have replaced LT. No matter how bad the card you discard is, you are losing it for no good reason. Insp Thinking: Draw 3, keep 2. Ok, this one is acceptable. Without IT, you would draw 1 unknown card (instead of IT you draw a card with an ability). With IT, you would draw 2 unknown cards and get to choose them. Its a good enough advantage. As it is, thinking cards are nowhere close to being competitive with the other human skills. The one thing they are good at is to trim your deck. But racial skills are generally so good that it makes very little sense to want to give up on the better alternatives. All 3 rare/epic tactics skills are essentially a decently good but nothing epic skill + a very bad block + a card that provides a small penalty and literally zero benefit. At the very least, unless i'm missing something big (which is not impossible), LT is essentailly bugged. I don't think its meant to be a card that adds no value whatsoever and penalizes. On a side note: training has the same issues. But to a much lesser extent. Most of the time you just want 1 move card or an attack card when you need them and don't have them. The problem is that you could potentially have gotten those in replace for X training cards if you didn't slot them in. There are too few "self only" cards or unique enough cards to make it that useful. Giving your mage a good warrior armor or your warrior a cleric's drain spells etc is cool and all, but at the end of the day its not super great. Ever though of making it a catnip?
I don't use humans, but FT/LT essentially reduce the size of your deck, which I could see as being quite worthwhile. As long as you don't have to give up a token to have them. Not sure if they compare well with other racial skills, but on their own they aren't horrible. And it can also allow you to use some KEEP items which are penalties (slow, arcane feedback...) since you have a method of removal other than ending your turn with 3 cards in hand. Your last suggestion seems reasonable. And also makes me think how awesome it would be if there was a race (gnomes/sprites maybe?) which had a racial card allowing them to play one other card as a cantrip. So basically on your turn you would burn 3 cards (the racial, the auto-cantrip, then your actual turn) and do something highly unexpected, like sprinting 8 squares and smacking an obliterating bludgeon.
normally its a good thing. But we're talking about human racial items. The skills they offer are so good that its not worth trimming. The alternative choices offer the sort of skills you trim your decks to get. thats the thing. they are. Lateral Thinking is TERRIBLE. Its a literally a handicap card masquerading as a rare. If i'm not mistaken, it shows up in every rare/epic tactics skill (I might be wrong about this).
From my experiences playing Magic the Gathering, I would argue that small card draw/filtering cards are quite powerful, often in quite a subtle manner. I would cite the banning;s of Preordain and Ponder in Modern as my source (Forward Thinking is very similar to Preordain in particular). If each card drawn has a 50% chance of being "good", replacing that draw with a Forward Thinking increases the probability of getting a "good" card up to 75%. On the surface it doesn't seem exciting, but these type of effects that increase consistency are very powerful. As an extension, Insp. Thinking is bonkers. Lateral Thinking is absolutely terrible, I'm not sure whats going on there. Is it so you can cycle out detrimental cards from your hand? (Arcane Feedback etc)
Personally I like Lateral Thinking. Hugely powerful? Of course not, but works as an additional filtering card for me. Sadly I don't use a lot of these because I'm not using humans and so Demonic pain has been my go-to card, yet that's pretty hard to find on items now. Been thinking about changing my current testing team to humans and I'd certainly drop in a fair number of lateral thinking if I could. The downside to Human skills is there is a lot more value if you have to pay talents for them.
Except this isnt MTG. Card advantage in mtg is important because you have a hand size of 7, which you generally won't break. This is an entirely different ball game altogether. Hand size of 2 means card advantage is often wasted when you're forced to discard. The benefits of extra cards from draws stays with you in MTG, it doesn't in card hunter. Sure, i never said it has no value, but is a value of that 25% on a single card draw good enough To justify not using something else? You have to evaluate the items themselves. 3 contains FT. First: unreliable block + LT + FT. So essentially a really bad block + a handicap card + FT Second: FT + walk + shuffle. I personally see shuffle as a prime example of "stuff that replaces good cards and penalizes me" the last one is FT + jarring block and walk, which isn't actually bad, but just cant compete with the alternatives. None of that even deals with Lateral Thinking problem. You would have gotten another card in place of LT anyways without discarding. You can turn it into a black card that reads: trait: choose a card to discard. and there would be NO difference from a mechanical standpoint. It would play out the exact same.
Sure there is. You don't have to play LT and discard a card you want to hold on to. Otherwise, LT might as well be Fumble. With LT you can play all of the rest of your cards and use it to just cycle a card without losing a card at all. Which is exactly why LT isn't as bad as you think. Discard a card that I'm going to have to discard anyway to find something I may be able to use this turn is not so atrocious. Everyone seems to assume that the discard from LT is a forced, uncontrolled discard. If you have two cards, one of them you want and the other is LT, yes it's a waste of a card...this turn. Ever pulled a Shrug it off or Counterspell when playing against three warriors, or even just drawing Slow? LT adds more versatility to your play and the discard a card hindrance, when played, is often not nearly as penalizing (if at all) as it appears out of context. When it would be the most penalizing, the obvious and instinctual move is to not play it, just like you don't play firestorm when it is going to kill all of your party members but leave lots of enemies alive and kicking.
I like the idea of Lateral Thinking, but I don't think it is powerful enough to be a silver card. Aside from that though, I feel like human skills are fine. There are lots of human skills that I'd be happy to use. I'd probably stay away from Unsubtle Thinker, but I'd be comfortable using Untrained Tactics, Tactics, Superb Tactics - or pretty much any of the 'command' ones... (Perfect Command, Superb Command, Trained Command...) I don't think Lateral Thinking is a powerful card, but I reckon both Forward Thinking and Inspirational Thinking are quite powerful - especially in builds where you're trying to draw some particular key cards.
If you don't have that LT, you would still have gotten an alternative card no matter what as replacement for LT's draw. Without ANY sort of discard being required. Does it trim down the deck? Yes. Is it worthwhile giving up the alternatives available to get that trim? Not really. Especially since priest infinite draw/high volume draw strategies, which are one of the most common reason why you want a trimmed deck, is going to getting a heavy nerf.
Not worthwhile to you. To others it may be. Depends on the deck and attempt at a build. I'd hope so, but that doesn't make the flexibility of the card cycling any less powerful in decks in general.
Forward Thinking may not be the greatest card ever, but I've gotten a lot of mileage out of it at the mid-level campaign mode. It helps my (decidedly flawed) decks: 1. It compresses the deck. 2. I can dump bummer cards for something that might be immediately useful. 3. When used at the end of a turn it allows me to at least potentially swap out a card that won't help me next turn for one that might, such as when I have an extra move and the monsters have us boxed in. Maybe I'll get an attack card, or a block, or armor, or (whatever) instead... At mid-level the options are some less than awesome team moves and stuff I'm not generally floored by anyway.
