I know most of you will consider this a blasphemy but -> what do you think is better armor - Perilous Ringmail or Xander's Mail? 1) Both have Reliable Mail 2) Thickened Mail is expected prevention of 1.33dmg, while Officer's Harness is 0.5 (in most situations I prefer seeing TM than OH) 3) most important slot -> Traveling Curse vs Officer's Harness - trait + 5 dmg vs constant 0.5 armor .. I actually think Trait is better.. in my experience, in most situations you're better with anything-from-your-deck that Officer's Harness .. Ok, OH can (maybe) pay off with time .. but .. with time Traveling Curse will hit your opponent as well so that evens out.. The only situation where I see OH better is if you have some armor-roll-boosting .. and maybe in first turn of large map, where you would discard at least 1 card anyway.. (edit) Even if you get 2 Officer's Harness hanging around, that's only expected prevent 1dmg (and vs hard to block its not even that) .. and that really not much.. and you lost 2 cards for that ..
I prefer perilous since I mainly use dwarves. But I'll admit traveling curse might be too much of a liability on elves/humans, so maybe Xander's is better on them. This may sound hard to believe, but I have won more games because of running X2 curses than I have lost because of them
Even elves want Perilous over Xander's. Especially elves, actually - we don't have the HP to afford derping around with bad cards =P
As fun as it is to have Traveling Curse popping around (an absolute auto-draft in Quick Draw), I like to have the Officer's Harness around to feed to Leadership.
It kinda depends on a lot of factors, so it's not like one is strictly better then the other. I.e. I like OH because I don't mind playing carefully (passing turns and postponing engagement until I feel I'm in a good position), so drawing OH means I'm not discarding too many good cards in the process. Also, players using Savage Curse (or the already mentioned Leadership) can actually count OH as a resource to be managed, instead of something unwanted. Lastly, definitely avoid Traveling Curse if you have Raging Strike or other similar handicap cards in your deck. I know this sounds silly and kind of a no brainer, but I've seen players draw Raging Strike and Traveling Curse on round one. Looks like Perilous Ringmail and Bloodrage Dagger don't always go that well together I could go on, but you get the point. What you should pick between Perilous and Xander's depends on your build/strategy as a whole. YMMV
