Best Echoes Cards

[ZenVee]

Which echoes cards help you the most?

Here is a link to the cards list (scroll past the base set) so you can remember.
https://forum.dominionstrategy.com/inde ... pic=7421.0

Which cards do you think I've overlooked? I know there are some cards I thought were trash before, but then turned out to be very good.

I've strongly relied on these cards:

Age1:
Comb - call blue usually when you are able to find Mathematics from the base set.
Noodles - get more 1s and then maliciously share this, or just plain spam Noodles for score.
Perfume - not a great card necessarily, but good defensive card for when your opponent is trying to speed past the ages. Good defense.

Age2:
Nothing that impressive here. I usually take the blue cards and move along to age 3.
Crossbow/Horseshoes - more defensive cards for opponents aging up fast.

Age3:
Liquid fire - haven't had more than 1 game yet where I've got this card, but my opponents do get a big forecast/achievement and sometimes score if I need to keep a card in my hand.
Deodorant/Sandpaper - these cards feel very similar with Deodorant being better.

Age4:
Slide Rule - oh boy how many games have I been left in the dust from someone aging up on this card?
Kobukson - definitely a versatile card that seems a bit too good.

Age5:
Coke - if you catch some luck this card is nuts. Hitting a couple industry icons and then melding industrialization is game changing

Age6:
Hot Air Balloon - If you can figure this card out then great. Took me a couple games
Stethoscope/Kaleidoscope - Teching up

Age7:
Elevator - Pretty unfair

Age8:
Radio Telescope

Age9:
Laser

Age10:
Cell Phone

[ZenVee]

Hot Air Balloon.

This card is so overpowered it's game breaking.

Echo effect: Draw and score a 7. If the card stopped here, it would be a reasonably decent card.

1st part of Main effect: You may achieve (if eligible) a top card from any other player's board if they have an achievement of matching value, then transfer your top green card to that player's board. So if you can end the game with achievements, then great this card can win the game outright.

2nd part of Main effect: Otherwise, draw and meld a 7. The fact that the player has a choice of these two actions makes the card ridiculous.

And this card has a 7 bonus. Are you kidding me?



Let's compare this card with another card of its age, Kaleidoscope. Kaleidoscope draws and melds a 7, and you may splay the color of the card you melded.
Hot Air Balloon beats Kaleidoscope by scoring 7, giving the option to gain an achievement, and has a 1 higher bonus. And Kaleidoscope is already a great card!!
When you compare Hot Air against other age 6 cards, it's just not even close. Bifocals is trash, Morphine is trash most of the time, Loom is hit or usually miss, Indian clubs is usually not that great.

This card is so ridiculous, it does everything important. Age up and score, with extra benefits.

[nandblock]

I hate Deodorant because it is bad if it gets covered then splayed right. At that point you can't dogma a yellow card without spamming your own board.

It is good for a quick indiscriminate tech up to age 4, though.

[ZenVee]

That's a good point, there sure are some cards with echo effects that hurt you.

Looking at you, Scissors! echo effect sometimes hurts you...


I have to say Noodles is also a BS card. Not quite as OP as Hot Air Balloon, but it's an early card that is way too often better than anything else.

Noodles can be good when it's maliciously shared when you still have more 1s in hand than the opponent.
Noodles can regularly earn the monument achievement AND score a bunch which makes games dull and one sided.
In a fair number of games where all early age cards are gone noodles can start to score higher than 2. Kind of like how pottery can still be useful sometimes.

Overall, Noodles is less OP than Hot Air Balloon, but it occurs in more games since it's age1.

[JamesShen16]

Ice Skate: My favourite Echo 1. It can go up 2/forecast 3, even attack opponent's board. Sometimes, endorsed ice skate+metalworking gives you Destiny+Monument in one turn.
Forecasts are usually very strong in 3rd edition. Choosing to forecast a lot of echoes gives you quite much advantage.
3. Novel is powerful.
3. Almanc+4.Telescope = primitive X-ray.

It would be interesting to give an average value of power of each card deck, on a 0-12 scale.
(You win.=+20. You lose.=-10)

My feeling is:
Base game
Era | Average power
1 2.4
2 2.2
3 2.7
4 3.6
5 5
6 6.5
7 6.4
8 7.8
9 9.1
10 10.6

Echo
Era | Average power
1 2.5
2 2.7
3 3.8
4 4.5
5 5.6
6 6.7
7 7.5
8 8.4
9 8.9
10 9.5

This rating is arbitrary, and reflects how I want to get a card from that deck. It will be more accurate to do a card by card rating.
The 4th edition seems to make the echo power more linear.