Board Game Arena

Which cards from the base set make you rub your hands together with glee when you draw them?

For me, it's the one that really get my midgame going.

Invention: getting right splays and scoring feels super, especially when it follows a few turns with Paper.

Industrialization: spamming it for a couple of turns to claim the special achievement feels wonderful.

Experimentation: drawing and melding a 5 blind can really kickstart a game that is fizzling out.

How about you? What gets you going (at any stage of the game?)

by the ages:

1. Wheel
2. Mathematics
3. Machinery
4. Gunpowder (definitely less powerful with other expansions)
5. Coal
6. Industrialization
7. Evolution
8. Mobility
9. Computers
10. Software

1. Oars (keep this till the midgame to spring a nasty surprise)
2. Fermentation
3. Paper
4. Reformation
5. Measurement (easily a game-ender w expansions)
6. Industrialization (best card in game)
7. Bicycle (especially if you've been using Fermenting/Paper)
8. Skyscrapers (brutal!)
9. Suburbia (if you missed Bicycle)
10. Software

My favourites are definitely the ones that are extremely thematic. Alchemy being so tempting because it's incredibly powerful but only if you don't fall into the dark arts is so good.
The best one though is Fission. You force another player to act aggressively (drawing a red), which causes you to retaliate, causing a nuclear war that destroys everything, sending everyone back to the stone age. But because most of the decks were just junked, you quickly rebuild society back to where it was, ending up with weird combinations where you've just learned Pottery, but also you know how to manipulate Stem Cells. Beautiful.