I’m in, and will take the Scout Master (just assume for all PA/NH/Asc leagues that I’m in at this point, and if I need to cry mercy I’ll back out).
Re: Randomness + Punishing, I think that Ascension hides it better because it’s mostly on how the board changes with a bit of lucky draws in yours or their hands. With PA, the board is out there in full from the start of the game. There’s no hope of “If the right cards hit the board, I can catch up”, aside from the ordering of the Boss Loot cards. Also, you may end up in the hole at the start because you have the choice of two power-based heroes, and the board has 8 stacks of Green cards (or the reverse). Add in the dice roll confirmation bias (“I fumble way more than I should and my opponent never fumbles!”) factor, and it can feel like you have no chance to recover.
I think the other main issue with this game is that it’s much more snowball-y than Ascension. There, the goals of racking up VPs right away and improving your deck quality to have better future turns are often pulling in opposite directions, leading to some interesting choices. Monsters and mechana have big, immediate score boosts, but relatively modest effects on the board and on future turns, while other sorts of cards are only worth a few VP, but will help you a lot later. Here, buying a boss loot is not only a huge chunk of points, but also a powerful card that’s going to get you more and more ahead whenever you play it.
How weird it might sound, but PA is so random that i actually still have fun playing it. I just can’t take the game seriously the way i take Ascension (mildly) serious. The differences in loot, the insane difference between critical hits or not (let alone 2 critical hits in 1 game) and of course the stupid Natural Twenty card which you just have to pray you draw more than 1 of.
That being said, i make more than enough mistakes at the beginning of the game to find it still challenging. Also, i still feel i haven’t figured out how to use some starting cards in a good way. I think i like the cat is best (it is a free Natural Twenty), but then there are some cards like “play 4 different cards” or “buy a green and a red card for a free card next turn” which seem weak to me, but others beat me to bloody death with it.
Yeah, PA is definitely more snowball-y than Ascension. If you get your deck tuned right early, you can just rapidly blow the other player away. Usually this is only possible if there are banishing cards available though.
Yeah, I’m guessing that without those extra three cards, you wouldn’t have been able to kill the boss, and then I would have done so on my turn. Oh well.
I think that board would have been great to go green, but the here’s I got were Tycho and Kreazie so I ended up going red. I think I basically won because I got the double your power boss loot, nicely played.
Yeah, it was a good game. I had to laugh, given the discussion that we had going up above that you won on the critical (claim a green boss loot, which was the last one). I think you had enough coin to buy it anyway. I think we were separated by 5 points or so. Really close.
Yeah, I had the tokens for it anyway, just wasn’t worth playing them after I already had it. Whoever got the last boss was going to win that game, I just had the first crack at it.
That was really nicely played Aeneas. You got on top of me with the PVP/unicorn combo, and I was a little too late to pick up on it and never worked my way out from under your attacks.
