Trickster's Maquah vs Bejeweled Shortsword, which do you think is better? The step attacks and higher base attack or hard to block 3 and potential bonus damage.
Bejewled because of the two Vicious Thrust besides the high damages. edit: aslo if you like hard to block attacks, I prefer Unnerving Strike for that purpose. I often use Maquah Of Ancient Blood (yep I am aware that you were comparing two common items and this one is Epic) when I want to free a token from the warrior's weapons.
Trickster's Maquah is just a common, mediocre version of Petochl's Sword. And IMO, Petochl's Sword is one sweet weapon. BSS is nicely balanced though.
The ouch doesn't look too appealing to me, you must be a glutton for punishment Squidy! In honesty though, despite the look of these fantastic aota cards like Fienting Strike, nothing compares to extra mobility on a warrior. If you do insist on hard to block attacks however, I'd be tempted to leave a couple of spare gold tokens for items that give me better movement to compensate.
As has been said, the mobility of Bejeweled Shortsword is desirable. Plus, I think Devastating Blow requires other cards to get its full effect. And the experience I've had with the Hard to Block cards has been that I don't really need that effect except for on a few specific adventures.
I really like the Maquah of Ancient Blood (I got one from one of the promotional chests woo hoo!), but I have had too much bad luck with Ouch (between the Helmet Of Thorns and the MoAB). The damage is a bummer but revealing the cards is the bigger downfall. I know it is no worse than the penalty for blood rage, but no one likes to get popped by that either. Well I have been using the Trickster (only 2 matches so far) for comparison purposes everytime I get one of the 2 Devastating Blows I ask myself if I wish it was a Vicious Thrust. So far so good but very small sample size.
I find it interesting that revealing cards is such a bummer to you. Imo effects like these aren't such a problem, for example Obvious Maneuver, I can think, 'Ok the opponent now knows a third of my draw'. But that's where it ends. Regardless of how good those cards are or not, I still have them to hand. We only need to 'paint by numbers'. Further into this, most players will get a sense of what type of deck one is using. (such as Talented healer on priest means in general a vamp type of deck) Either way, it's easy once you know how to deduce someones hands without seeing the cards not played. In reality, the damage is bummer, as it has no ability to be blocked (apart from armor).
Well I disagree in that the specific cards revealed is not the issue but that you now know I have 0-3 attacks (with the replacement card unknown) and that these cards are not blocks extra movement. I have a build I call devastating insight (maxing out Elvish Insight Devastating Blow) and while I did the build to get the max from Devastatings having view of some or all of my opponent's cards was a great help and the deck wound up doing fairly well despite it being an "experimental build".
