Wow, they always do intersting stuff with Survivors

[Jobu 720]

'nuff said.

[Network57 561]

This has got to be April Fool's. I mean, I already hate Red cards - even my Yorick build has only 4 of them... This is a complete dumpster fire of an Investigator.

[iGniGhted 113]

35 minutes ago, Network57 said:

This has got to be April Fool's. I mean, I already hate Red cards - even my Yorick build has only 4 of them... This is a complete dumpster fire of an Investigator.

dumpster fire?

that's a bit much.. granted he could've been 7/7 without too much trouble i think, but over the course of a campaign, having a 4/4, or 5/5 investigator is gonna be realllly nice.

his weakness is ... sorta a boon as well. you get a trauma to carry over to the next scenario, meaning with 1 of each trauma, he starts 1/1/1/1, 2 of each, 2/2/2/2, ect. i think getting 3 Trauma of each will be pretty difficult by the end of a campaign, but he can always use "I'll See You In ****!" before resigning for a freebie! the rest of his deck is made of things that will allow him to step in front of other investigators, as well as the nifty ability to include 2 ward of protection as well as the level 2 ward of protection.. i'm think gonna play him as a Guardian like support Survivor, with "heroic rescue" and " let me handle this".  it's funny actually, as i'm not much of a survivor player, but he may change my mind with the faction. tanking face and eventually trying to get yourself hurt is.. well awesome.

[Buhallin 4,563]

I think that may be a bit of an overstatement.  He does seem like LOTR's Valor mechanic on steroids.

Very high risk, but potentially high reward.  You'll have to build carefully and completely to keep him alive once he gets built up.  I'd actually be more worried about how to do anything with him in the early game.  Even with Survivors' bag of "I don't fail after all" tricks, it's going to be hard to get effectiveness out of him.

 

[Jobu 720]

He is a Carry (rest of the group carries him early, then late game he carries everyone else), which takes a certain mindset to run correctly and enjoy doing it.  The rest of the group needs to be onboard as well.

[Buhallin 4,563]

3 minutes ago, Jobu said:

He is a Carry (rest of the group carries him early, then late game he carries everyone else), which takes a certain mindset to run correctly and enjoy doing it.  The rest of the group needs to be onboard as well.

I think the first half of the carry is right, but I worry that he doesn't live up to the second half.

By the time he's really rolling, you've probably got 1 or at most 2 available damage or sanity.  Even apart from the obvious bad draw that can take you out, it limits a lot of other options - many chaos tokens will give you a horror, or make something attack.  You can't absorb an attack of opportunity.  Most of this can be mitigated with assets, but that's far from guaranteed.  And once that bad draw happens you're on your way out, and not carrying anything.  Even up until then, your team will probably still be required to provide a lot of support.  "Say, can you not move Brother Xavier away from me?  Please??"

 

[iGniGhted 113]

1 hour ago, Buhallin said:

I think that may be a bit of an overstatement.  He does seem like LOTR's Valor mechanic on steroids.

Very high risk, but potentially high reward.  You'll have to build carefully and completely to keep him alive once he gets built up.  I'd actually be more worried about how to do anything with him in the early game.  Even with Survivors' bag of "I don't fail after all" tricks, it's going to be hard to get effectiveness out of him.

 

 

i agree.. the 1st scenario with 0/0/0/0 is going to feel very ... very awkward.. especially against a difficult one such as curtain call.

 

1 hour ago, Jobu said:

He is a Carry (rest of the group carries him early, then late game he carries everyone else), which takes a certain mindset to run correctly and enjoy doing it.  The rest of the group needs to be onboard as well.

exactly.

 

 

hopefully we start seeing some 4 and 5 XP survivor cards soon that blow us away.

survivors are really going to need another weapon. as awesome as fire axe is, it's resource intensive to keep it going.. even though it works well with dark horse. they're gonna require something that doesn't cost xp, or doesn't break, and at least provides an extra point of damage.

 

had an idea so i propose a favorite of mine from Call of Cthulhu LCG, Length of Pipe/Lead Pipe..

Length of Pipe
Survivor
Asset. Hand.
Item. Weapon. Melee. Illicit.

Cost 3.

Test Icons: Combat

 

Action: Fight. Place 1 damage on Length of Pipe. You get +1 combat for this attack.  This attack deals +1 damage. 

You cannot assign damage to Length of Pipe.

 

3 Health / / - Sanity

 

 

and just for fun..

 

Log Splitter

Survivor

Asset. 2 Hands.

Item. Weapon. Melee

Cost. 3. (2 XP)

Test Icons: 2 Combat

 

Action: Fight. You get + 1 Combat for this attack. You deal +1 damage for this attack.

Free Action: During an attack using Log Splitter, take 2 direct horror: You get +3 Combat for this Skill Test and this attack deals +1 damage (Limit Once Per Attack.)

 

Edited March 30, 2018 by iGniGhted

[CSerpent 520]

I threw together a deck and tried him in The Gathering.  Rocked it (on Easy, granted)!  Taking on the Ghoul Priest with three horror, four damage, Fight or Flight, and a bunch of Desperates was amazingly fun.

It's not always going to be that way, naturally.  With that weakness, I expect he won't make it to the end of a lot of campaigns.

Edit: I opted to burn the house, of course.  Will and Intellect of 1 from now on!

Edited March 31, 2018 by CSerpent

[DarkFate 70]

I don't think i like him all that much. Even on healthy characters, i find that they can get into dangerously low health/sanity after some bad encounters. I think he is going to have many shortened adventures. Maybe it is because my group usually plays 4 players games so maybe he wouldn't be so bad in 1-2 players games.

[Donel 42]

If you run a four player group I think he would replace your willpower character slot. You need a fighter, you need a clue hoover, and you need an evasion centered character at that many players. Your mystic is always your switch hitter though.  You have no idea what they're gonna be good at until they draw their hands and then a lot of the cards and powers have serious draw backs. And that's Calvin in a nutshell here I think. Until he draws his cards and finds out what hes gonna be good at there's just no way to know going into a scenario

Edited March 31, 2018 by Donel

[Daft Blazer 291]

So he rocked the games easiest scenario, on easy, wow! ?

Have to say he doesn't appeal to me.

[CSerpent 520]

2 hours ago, Daft Blazer said:

So he rocked the games easiest scenario, on easy, wow! ?

Have to say he doesn't appeal to me.

Hey, not everyone can take the GP on solo.

He's a lot like playing Desperate Pete, with the pros of always having the good stats once you have them, and the cons of low health and a slower start.

Edited March 31, 2018 by CSerpent

[Soakman 987]

So, do I have this right, in the last scenario for Carcosa, Calvin may end up with like, 12+ base Will and Intelligence? 

That's, well, that's very good.

Calvin with a Key of Y's might also be nice. When you take 2 horror the key takes one of it, so you get +2 will, +2 Int, +1 Str, +1 Evade. 

Edited March 31, 2018 by Soakman

[Radix2309 355]

Also keep in mind that Calvin has access to Level 0 and 2 Ward of Protection (which also fuel his stats), and A Test of Will. So he can protect himself from danger.

He also has access to a bunch of soak to protect himself.

[Soakman 987]

Thinking about also including 2 copies of gravedigger shovel and lantern for his early game, since neither requires token pulls. I wonder what kind of survivor/spirit cards we'll see with the deluxe set. 

[Hannibal_pjv 203]

Also it is good to play assets when you already are engaged... To get damage...

[StormyWaters 124]

I'm still not sold on this investigator.  It sounds like people have some interesting ideas in mind but you have to find a way to hit 3 damage and 3 horror to be essentially average across the board.  That and you need to not pull a bad rotting remains test or get hit by an enemy.  I'll be really interested to see some decklists for this one but I don't see myself playing him anytime soon. 

[Turtlefan2082 112]

Calvin's abilities do allow for some synergy with Survivor cards such as Lucky and Rabbits foot.  Early on in the scenario, those Lvl 0 Neutral assests that everyone seems to love to hate (any asset that is not flashlight) seems to be a good idea to add.  

On a more thematic note, I would love to see Rex and Calvin teamed up.

[Buhallin 4,563]

55 minutes ago, StormyWaters said:

It sounds like people have some interesting ideas in mind but you have to find a way to hit 3 damage and 3 horror to be essentially average across the board.

Everyone who thinks the Key of Ys is broken should think that Calvin is OP as all ****.

[rsdockery 537]

3 hours ago, StormyWaters said:

It sounds like people have some interesting ideas in mind but you have to find a way to hit 3 damage and 3 horror to be essentially average across the board.  That and you need to not pull a bad rotting remains test or get hit by an enemy. 

Calvin has all of the usual Survivor resilience tricks (Peter Sylvester, Leather Coat, Cherished Keepsake, potentially Test of Will and Devil's Luck), plus Ward of Protection. It should take more than one bad pull to finish him.

[CSerpent 520]

On 4/2/2018 at 3:54 PM, StormyWaters said:

I'm still not sold on this investigator.  It sounds like people have some interesting ideas in mind but you have to find a way to hit 3 damage and 3 horror to be essentially average across the board.  That and you need to not pull a bad rotting remains test or get hit by an enemy.  I'll be really interested to see some decklists for this one but I don't see myself playing him anytime soon. 

Here is the deck I played.  It turns out there are two strong combos in there -- Resourceful + Fight or Flight, and Fire Axe + Labranche, with Dark Horse overseeing it all.

I threw that deck together with existing Survivor and Neutral cards.  I didn't bother with off-class Spirit cards, just because I wanted to build something quickly.  But if and when I hone it, there will almost certainly be at least one Ward of Protection.

Edited April 10, 2018 by CSerpent
updated link

[awp832 447]

I'm glad you're trying him, but I still think you have to reserve judgement until you play him on a more difficult scenario and on at least normal if not hard mode.  Pretty much any investigator can solo The Gathering on Easy mode, so I'm not impressed yet.  

I just keep coming back to the point that I think StormyWaters was trying to make.   Supposing Calvin has 3 damage/3 horror.    He now has the stats of Jenny, but with no special ability, and with 5 less health, and 4 less sanity than Jenny.   He compares to her even less favorably with less than 3 damage/horror, so it's only once you've hit 4 damage/horror that you're really getting anything out of it.   By that point you have not a lot of wiggle room in case you get hit by a treachery or a monster or something.  

Since Calvin's stats are his special ability, that means his stats need to be better than everyone else's to make up for otherwise having no special ability, and they're not.   In fact, most of the time, they're worse!  

[jaqenZann 45]

I've tried him solo through Carcosa on Standard.  He did very well on the first 3 scenarios, including interviewing 3 and killing 4 in Last King.  He did not however make it out of the asylum, thanks to some really terrible luck that most investigators would have struggled with.  I've read that someone else did better than I did and finished Carcosa.

Folks have said the ideal spot to have him is 4/4/4/4, and that's probably true, makes him strong, but still with some room if things go worse than expected.  Before he gets there, he has all of the fail effects.  He's a little strange in that the cards he really wants change a lot from early in the scenario to late.  He's very different to play and build for, and things can go very wrong, but I think he's been pretty good, and man is he fun to play.

[Soakman 987]

16 minutes ago, awp832 said:

I'm glad you're trying him, but I still think you have to reserve judgement until you play him on a more difficult scenario and on at least normal if not hard mode.  Pretty much any investigator can solo The Gathering on Easy mode, so I'm not impressed yet.  

I just keep coming back to the point that I think StormyWaters was trying to make.   Supposing Calvin has 3 damage/3 horror.    He now has the stats of Jenny, but with no special ability, and with 5 less health, and 4 less sanity than Jenny.   He compares to her even less favorably with less than 3 damage/horror, so it's only once you've hit 4 damage/horror that you're really getting anything out of it.   By that point you have not a lot of wiggle room in case you get hit by a treachery or a monster or something.  

Since Calvin's stats are his special ability, that means his stats need to be better than everyone else's to make up for otherwise having no special ability, and they're not.   In fact, most of the time, they're worse!  

It's hard to compare between classes though because they have access to different cards and playstyles. I'm not convinced he is good yet myself, but Yorrick and Ashcan are the only survivors that get close to his even stat distribution, allowing him to do almost anything. The biggest advantage Calvin has is that he can manipulate and change what he is good at doing. If you are needing to speed up your clue tempo, take some horror and give your seeker a hand. If your seeker is getting throttled, jump in, and engage. Next turn you'll be more capable (maybe) than the seeker who should be focusing on clues.

This is his actual strength in my opinion. It's similar to Mystic and similar to Sefina, but in a different way, with potentially more control.

[Jobu 720]

An important part of the game is that different investigators need to support different play-styles.  Not all play-styles will appeal to all players.  Just because something doesn't "work" for you doesn't mean its not good.  Its just not for you.  A campaign takes some time to play and it should be with a character that you enjoy.

I know that I prefer some classes over others and some investigators over others.

Lola and Calvin are extreme examples of these, but even if you look at the differences between Mark and Zoey, there are significant play-style differences.