2781

This is no time for recriminations, but you shoulda banished that genie like I said.

I like opkopk’s suggestion but would banish Tarik, not the Minotaur. I’d kill the Minotaur as a fallback if we don’t draw enough to kill the fire tyrant.

2782

The more I look at it I think you’re right. It’s a bit of a stretch to get the FT.
Now, do we ensure we get the Minotaur by using the SCE on an HI? Or do we take chances? If we ensure we get it we could still draw through that same card with the Minotaur, although it’d be a bit of a waste this turn.

2783

Stone Circle Elder takes Heavy Infantry.
Askara of Fate banishes Abolisher, and draws Heavy Infantry and one other card.
If we drew 2 Heavy Infantry, kill Fire Tyrant. Otherwise kill the Minotaur.
Use Eternal Askara on Fire Tyrant or Minotaur.

Spectacular bad luck for us that he drew a hand that let him take Akam. If you look at the log, it’s Honey Siren -> Heavy Infantry, Raven to draw the Heavy Infantry, Honey Siren -> Heavy Infantry, Battery Monk to draw the HI, and he already had Belthar in his hand to give him 7 power.

Akam is a powerful early game card, but mostly if there’s good stuff to buy. Otherwise he’s a Axe with limited uses. In any case, he’s way ahead of us on Power now.

2784

Yes, I would use the SCE to stack the deck. Then we keep hope alive for the FT. If we’re lucky we kill the FT, if not we kill the Minotaur. Doesn’t he have a good chance to kill any red on the board next turn?

2785

He can go whichever way he wants next turn. Arha Medium and Genie let him choose after he sees what we leave him.

2786

Exactly. He’s got at least 4 power / 4 runes at his whim.

2787

At least we have a good shot at finally ridding ourselves of the Deathsworn efficiently now. That’s a plus. (hopefully we don’t draw it this turn)

2788

This +1

2789

Eep, This is dangerous. Because Tarik is on the board, and Jake can almost definitely kill him, the next card we reveal is scientifically guaranteed* be Aiyana or Adayu or something.

Gus, why banish the Abolisher? Just to deny him a banishing card? If I understand the sequence correctly, Jake had a chance to take it after taking Akam, but went for Stag and HI instead. I don’t think he’s interested in it. So, would it make more sense to banish Tarik, kill tyrant / minotaur, and banish the other?

(*not guaranteed)

2790

I agree completely. Get Tarik off the table. (As we should have done with the genie, he says, grumbling.)

2791

I don’t want to start by using Fate on Tarik because I’m focused more on what we want than what he wants. Suppose we banish the Abolisher, and we get something really powerful as a replacement, like Aaron. Further suppose that we draw 6 power. I want to be able to kill Tarik to copy a powerful card in that case.

If Tarik looks powerful and we don’t have the power to kill him, we can banish him instead of the Fire Tyrant.

2792

Whoa. This is definitely the fastest (and most contentious) Hive Mind ever! I’m not sure I have time to catch up! Let me just add the completely unhelpful observation that, although it would have been a much harder choice to make than the turn previous, I still would haven taken the Stags over Heavies. But that’s largely because whenever I try to switch to power in a non-culled deck, it never pans out.

Go go, Riki Tiki Dave-i!

2793

I’m of the same mind. It’s like CJWheeljack, scottgibson and I are on the right half of the hive-brain, and whereas Gus and opkopk are the wrong half ;P

So my preference is same as Gus’, but banish Tarik instead of Abolisher

2794

We’re down 12 stars now and will get maybe 6 this turn. Our next draw is most likely 3 APPs and 2 OK cards. Maybe a witch? I don’t see us catching up any time soon. Killing all the monsters we can seems like our only hope. If he gets them then he still wins, but there’s no path to winning without lots of monsters that we somehow get to kill.

2795

I’m not really advocating any particular course of action, but there are 39 points left in the honor pool. There’s a lot of game left.

2796

I think we’re only down by 5, and with Eternal Askara (3) + at least Minotaur, we’ll be up by 1 at the end of the turn.

Duhh, you’re counting card honor too, nevermind ;) But as CLWheeljack says, there’s a lot of game left. Plus we have a slimmer deck.

2797

I don’t see that happening, since he’s now better at killing monsters than we are. He has more Power cards, and he has Akam. Eternal Askara is “killing” monsters for us with a single card, though we only get 3 points each.

What we have is banishing power, a more compact deck, and the Stone Circle Elder which can get us 5 rune cards with a single card. He still needs 3-4 cards to take 5 rune heroes. Despite the abundance of green in his deck, he doesn’t have much synergy yet. Just the Witch and the Raven / Honey Siren combo. We have a bit less, just the Stone Circle Elder / Fate or Skeptic pairing.

2798

I see SCE as our only good card. Maybe maximize it by rolling through the board until something useful pops up. Forget seeding the deck with a HI. Just hope one pops out on its own. Banish a six monster, draw two cards. Maybe kill Minotaur if we get lucky. Maybe buy GoS. SCE might find fertile hunting by then. Then we’d get a decent turn on next draw as well.

2799

I thought about that, but my feeling is that I’d rather choose to definitely kill the Minotaur rather than hope that something worthwhile pops up. The odds seem too high that we’d end up with nothing but crap 1-2 point cards as possible Stone Circle Elder targets. At least if we take the Minotaur, we have a future card draw which might get as a powerful card or monster, or that can be used to pop a SCE acquisition at will.

2800

I just realized that this is Decks 2&3&4. That’s why SCE has sucked for us. The farther you get from Deck 4 the worse it gets. Maybe we have 0 good cards…