Board Game Arena

Which do you think is the worst card with a special ability?

In my view it's Stable Boy. Weak base power, its power boost is weak and far too dependent on deck order. Doesn't synergise well with other cards. To get the most out of Stable Boy you have to hinder the rest of your deck by picking a lot of 3 power cards, which is suboptimal since you typically want 4 and 5 power cards in the midgame.

DoctorFianchetto wrote: ↑14 July 2023, 23:35 Which do you think is the worst card with a special ability?

In my view it's Stable Boy. Weak base power, its power boost is weak and far too dependent on deck order. Doesn't synergise well with other cards. To get the most out of Stable Boy you have to hinder the rest of your deck by picking a lot of 3 power cards, which is suboptimal since you typically want 4 and 5 power cards in the midgame.

I actually heavily disagree with this. Stable Boy is a level A card that actually scales into the late game which can't be said for many cards. Sure the vanilla 3's aren't great, but there are some really strong 3s crucially Necromancer which synergizes fantastically.

I'd probably say Butler. I think the variance on playing a >6 uniques deck relying on these effects is too high and you're usually better off just playing a stronger card instead.

I would say it's Hologram. The base strength of 4 is very weak for a pile C card, where you could get a strength 10 card instead. Furthermore, Hologram gives your opponent a free pile B card. That card may be actually stronger than the Hologram itself, since pile B goes up to strength 5.

I actually disagree with everybody here funnily enough- stable boy is a great card in games with haunted house and shipwreck enabled because sailor/reporter/navigator sends him or necromancers to the bottom- I don't think he is good at all in games with either of these sets being cut however.

Butler becomes incredible if you have even 2 of them, unless you draw them first (very statistically unlikely though we are biased to feel it more when it happens)- hitting a sailor or clairvoyant with butler means you can look through your entire deck and know exactly if you will overfill and can send something to the top or bottom accordingly, and thus run more unique cards which is very powerful. Butler is like a smaller vacuum cleaner which is a fantastic card

Hologram is one of the BEST pile C cards because every good player in the endgame has a deck that shouldn't overfill their bench (or at least be close)- hologram has a high (85%+, calculated as the amount of unique pile B cards they aren't running over the total amount of unique pile b cards) chance of throwing this out of whack by giving them an extra unique and causing their bench to fill early. It gets a bit worse if haunted house is in and you suspect your opponent may be running vacuum cleaner/butler.

My pick for the worst card is either gangster or clowns- neither of these cards scale nor do they fit into a powerful deck archetype (gangster kind of fits A.I. decks, but has much better alternatives). Clown is deceptive because it feels like you are making up for losses with extra fans, but really you are just inflating the number of total fans in the pool of players and so unless you win games (which clown does NOT help you do) you can gain upwards of 20 fans and still not make the final. Even if you do make the final, your opponents cards will be better. Gangsters just has too little power to be meaningful, good cards either make your deck better/more consistent or can 2 for 1 with a large number. Gangsters does neither of these.

Fletcheese wrote: ↑17 July 2023, 19:35I actually heavily disagree with this. Stable Boy is a level A card that actually scales into the late game which can't be said for many cards. Sure the vanilla 3's aren't great, but there are some really strong 3s crucially Necromancer which synergizes fantastically.

How many really strong 3s are there? I can only think of Necromancer and Cowboy. Blacksmith is not good, also in the running for worst special ability card. Band is a solid card.

Andrewsmile brings up a good point about Sailor/Reporter/Navigator. I rarely pick these cards but I see them popping up almost every game recently. I haven't realised their potential - Stable Boy being a good use case.

Fletcheese wrote: ↑17 July 2023, 19:35I'd probably say Butler. I think the variance on playing a >6 uniques deck relying on these effects is too high and you're usually better off just playing a stronger card instead.

I appreciate that Butler may be overrated, but worst special ability card? Nah. Butler is really annoying when he comes out first or gets locked in the freezer at the bottom of the deck by Lara Croft, but most of the time that won't happen, and it's nice to have that extra versatility because you don't always end up with duplicates of the cards you want.

That said, in my last game I had two Butlers and went too risky with my final round deck (11 unique cards, including Sorceror and Submarine). The two Butlers never saw the light of day, and funnily enough andrewsmile dealt the final bench-filling blow with a Stable Boy

Andrewsmile wrote: ↑17 July 2023, 23:28My pick for the worst card is either gangster or clowns- neither of these cards scale nor do they fit into a powerful deck archetype (gangster kind of fits A.I. decks, but has much better alternatives). Clown is deceptive because it feels like you are making up for losses with extra fans, but really you are just inflating the number of total fans in the pool of players and so unless you win games (which clown does NOT help you do) you can gain upwards of 20 fans and still not make the final. Even if you do make the final, your opponents cards will be better. Gangsters just has too little power to be meaningful, good cards either make your deck better/more consistent or can 2 for 1 with a large number. Gangsters does neither of these.

Gangster was my second choice behind Stable Boy, but Gangster can be powerful card in the first three rounds. I prefer Treasure which is the inverse Gangster. Clown does suck - I only pick Clown in 1v1s, almost useless in Arena mode. The extra fans are useful but the chance of you pulling it off is not good unless you're rolling with some Makeup Artists.

Hologram is interesting. To me it's a complete wildcard. It can be awesome and it can also backfire horribly. When I pick Holograms it tends to backfire more often than not. Either it gives them a useful card, or I end up facing a deck heavy on bench cleaners so I'm just giving them more and more power.

Speaking of wildcard - Rescue Pod? I do like the thrill of the Rescue Pod gamble but I do appreciate it's one of the worse special ability cards.

rescue pod with makeup artist, or being the first card(free win).
And it could even get ufo in the first round! lol(happened once)

There are no worst cards, because the "worse" cards gets better, because fewer people pick them, it balances itself.
As for least amount of presence in deck that do well I'd say Clown or Reporter, but they also have their use.

DoctorFianchetto wrote: ↑18 July 2023, 00:30
Andrewsmile brings up a good point about Sailor/Reporter/Navigator. I rarely pick these cards but I see them popping up almost every game recently. I haven't realised their potential - Stable Boy being a good use case.

In my opinion, sailor is the best card in the game and it isn't even close. If I had to make a tier list, sailor would be in S tier, UFO and clairvoyant would be in A tier, and every other card would be B tier and below. The reason for this is the sheer power/consistency deck control/ordering gives. I think a lot of people are reading this saying "Andrewsmile you fool, UFO is far superior to sailor because I can run 6 uniques and be guaranteed to see my whole deck plus some free bonus cards the UFO gives me, which may even be duplicates!!". This is a fallacy, and I will explain why:

Sailor and UFO actually fill the same role: Allow me to run more than 6 unique cards, while still seeing my entire deck. The difference is that UFO does this with randomly generated cards, while sailor allows you to send a 7th unique card (the only restriction being it must be the only copy of that card in your deck) to the bottom. The choice and freedom of that unique card being something you decided to put in your deck vs 2 random cards is very powerful.

In addition, sailor can do other things as well: it can send vampires, necromancers, stable boys, mascots, teenagers, and anything else that cares about your bench to the bottom, where they can be far more powerful. Having duplicate sailors only makes this strategy exponentially more powerful, and I flat out win about 80% of games where I get 2 or more sailors for this reason.

I attribute my high winrate pretty much solely to sailors, and now that everyone is taking them in my games I think the secret is finally out but its why I got to 2nd last season very quickly in relatively few games- I'm having a harder time this season haha

Wonderful Plays wrote: ↑18 July 2023, 10:58 There are no worst cards, because the "worse" cards gets better, because fewer people pick them, it balances itself.

This may work for larger games, but I don't think it does in 4p Arena. There are 82 cards in the A deck, for example, so the four players would have to see over 20 cards each for there to be a reshuffle and you to have even a chance of taking something which someone else has rejected. That's quite unlikely.

And even in larger games, the effect is going to be pretty minor - surely not enough to try a "take bad cards" strategy, anyway.

Prince: unlike most cards that facilitate extra uniques, more copies make it more risky, as each copy needs to win the attack...and it has almost no support on the attack - it only benefits from a card which it has as an opportunity cost (Bard), and from a card that every other card benefits as much from (Comic Character).