David Boeren
United States
Marietta
Georgia
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One thing I think beginners often have trouble with is evaluating characters. It's a very common thing to be looking at your deck trying to pick one of two different characters, and trying to decide which one is better. It's a complex question with a lot of "that depends" going on, but hopefully I can help a little bit to at least guide you on how to think about this question.
Through this article I will be using some example characters, and I'm going to try to mostly stick to the Core set or maybe Secrets of Arkham to add some practical benefit in that these are characters that beginning players are likely to have.
When looking at characters there are several main criteria:
1. How many icons do they have, and of what types?
2. What is their Skill?
3. Do they have any Subtypes or Keywords, either positive or negative?
4. What, if any, special abilities do they have? What do they cost to use?
Let's tackle icons first, as I suspect this is the first thing most people will look at. As a general rule of thumb, I would say that a character who has a number of icons equal to their cost is strong in icons. Not all characters meet this goal though, and that doesn't make them bad. A couple of characters may have MORE icons
than their cost. It's rare, but not unheard of. Bird Demon is one for instance, or Crazed Shoggoth. But you've got to look at the whole package. Bird Demon is a good basic character, but has no special abilities - he's just a cheap hammer. Crazed Shoggoth on the other hand is a little more interesting, he's powerful for his cost, but has a negative special ability that counterbalances his benefits. Let's step through the icons in order and talk about each one.
Terror: This is the first struggle at each story. Terror icons have two effects - they can help drive enemy characters insane, and they also protect your character from going insane. In one sense, Terror is handy because it acts first, it can take out a character before that character can use its other icons. On the other hand, it's a little weaker. Compare Terror vs. Combat for instance. Terror will take someone out of commission for a while while Combat removes them for good. Anyone who has either Terror of their own or Willpower is also immune. Overall it's a useful effect but less reliable than Combat since more people are immune to it. Also, the second effect (protecting you from insanity) is diminishing returns. The first Terror icon is good because it provides both benefits, then after that additional Terror icons only help with the icon struggle and do not provide further immunity. Yes, it's possible your opponent can remove an icon with a special ability, but it's a pretty situational benefit. Therefore, I rate the first Terror icon as being worth a lot and any more being a minor bonus.
Combat: Combat is similar to Terror in that it removes characters. Only a few characters have Invulnerablity to be immune to it, and you'll rarely see a whole group of them at once so somebody is getting hit. There are characters with Toughness, but at least some progress is being made. Consequently, Combat is typically well valued but it does have its drawbacks. First, you've got to get through Terror first and still have enough Combat icons. Secondly, keep in mind you can only deal one wound in the Combat struggle no matter how many icons you have. This means that third - a lot of players can afford to send a cheap/weak character to take the hit so that they're not really losing much of consequence. Alternately, they can assign wounds to characters with Toughness and at least for a time not lose anybody. Still, Combat icons are solid and they are not subject to diminishing returns as Terror icons can be. Extra Combat icons are worth pretty much as much as the first one was and you can expect your opponent will be trying to have a fair number of them as well.
Arcane: Arcane is probably the trickiest icon to judge, with the effect of re-readying one character at that story. How much is this worth? It depends a lot on how good a character you can re-ready! Will he be able to do much in defense? So, it's situational. But effectively having an extra character for defense, or even multiple extra characters if you won Arcane at more than one story, can be quite bit. Having at least a little Arcane somewhere is very useful, but it doesn't always matter that much WHICH character has it, since you can re-ready a different character than the one who had the Arcane icon. And since you can only re-ready one character per story there is a bit of diminishing returns but it's spread out more over the character pool than just on one character and dimishes more slowly than Terror. Of course, keep in mind that Arcane is also sort of a "slow" icon in that you must live through Terror and Combat first but it's well worth having some and even a little is useful since it's less common than Combat.
Investigation: Last of all is the Investigation icon. These are mainly available to the human factions, and help gain additional success tokens at stories. Like Arcane, you've got to survive two other damaging struggles to get here, but the rewards are great - shaving time off of how long it takes to win a story. You can even earn success tokens on your opponent's turn! Pairing that up with some Arcane can be quite powerful, the same Investigation character can be winning tokens on both turns if he's stout enough not to get knocked out in other struggles. Since winning stories is the way to win the game, Investigation icons are fairly prized and worth having on at least some characters. Also like Arcane, there's usually not a lot of them around and only 1-2 is plenty to win most struggles. If you're playing a faction that can get them, it's seldom a bad idea to have a few.
Skill: Skill also contributes to winning stories, but you can only win tokens on your own turn unlike with Investigation. Typical Skill is usually around the character's cost or maybe one less. More Skill is always better, and you'll frequently big totals on both sides as characters pile up to oppose each other. Consequently, a character with unusually high Skill is valuable - potentially doing the job of multiple characters in some cases when the icon struggles are tied up or inconclusive. Moderate or low Skill isn't that big a deal and it's not usually a big factor in choosing characters other than in two situations. First, when it's unusually high in a character such as Elite Hit Squad, a Syndicate card with 6 Skill for 3 cost (but with the drawback that it can only commit on the owner's turn). The other is when a character has *zero* Skill. Zero skill is quite a bit worse than one skill because if this character is defending a story it will still count as being unopposed and allow the other player to earn an additional success token. A good example is Young Deep One, a character with 3 icons for a cost of 2. He's quite good at *assisting* at stories but fairly bad on his own without someone else to provide the skill.
Subtypes or Keywords are hard to assign values to. First, there are many kinds and their value varies depending on the situation. Is Toughness+1 worth more than Willpower? Well - are we going up against a deck with a lot of Combat or a lot of Terror? Second, a lot of them relate to other cards in your own deck. Say my character has the "Deep One" trait. That's pretty much worthless on its own, but it becomes valuable when I include other cards that key off of it such as Shadowed Reef that grants a free Terror icon to all Deep Ones. So, be sure to take into account any synergy in your deck when evaluating cards. Not just for their subtypes, but anything else that references other cards in your deck. The Cthulhu Event card "Pulled Under" requires you to exhaust a friendly character with 2+ Terror icons to destroy an exhausted enemy character. Normally, extra Terror icons are only moderately valuable, but if you are including this card in your deck you will probably give them greater emphasis. This is one of the great things about the game, even if a character may appear a little sub-par, there are lots of ways to elevate them to greatness depending on the rest of the cards in the deck. Every subtype a character carries is a potental to turn them into something greater.
Special abilities tend to come in several forms based on their price:
1. Put into play effects
2. Exhaust them to do something
3. Pay a domain of some size to do something
4. Shuffle the character into your deck or return to hand to do something
5. Sacrifice the character to do something
There are more, but these are the main ones. To judge the use of an ability, I try to evaluate it as if it were an Event card that came free with the character. For instance, look at Hard Case. He's a 2-cost character with 2 Skill and a single Combat icon and the Criminal subtype. He would be a little lackluster, except that when you play him you can exhaust an enemy character (usually one costing 3 or less) for free. Examining cards that provide a similar effect, I would say that that's a weaker form of the card Intimidate which exhausts a character for 1 cost but with fewer restrictions. However, this is for free and doesn't take an additional domain which in my mind makes up for the restrictions. Besides, a lot of characters cost 3 or less so it's not a big deal. Going by that, now I would judge him as a pretty good character, except he's strongest when he first comes out and then he's only so-so. It'll be up to you to decide if that's better or worse than another 2-cost character with more icons that doesn't have a special effect. If their ability costs more, you just need to factor that into your judgement, but just having an ability that is reusable is worth something extra.
Let's look at a few examples between similar characters and how you'd choose between them. Say you're designing a Shub deck and you want a discount on your bigger characters. There are three choices:
1. Priestess of Bubastis. Cost 1, skill 1, no icons, exhaust to make your next Shub character this phase cost 1 less
2. One of the Thousand. Cost 1, skill 0, Terror, shuffle back into your deck to make your next Shub character this phase cost 1 less
3. Ghoulish Worshipper. Cost 3, skill 2, 2xTerror, 1 Combat, all Monster and Ancient One characters cost 1 less
The most direct comparison is between Priestess and One of the Thousand. They cost the same. Priestess has some skill, making her a better defender, although she's unlikely to survive long with no icons. She has to be exhausted to get the discount, but she IS reusable. One of the Thousand is actually better at stories due to the Terror icon. Zero skill is bad, but early in the game when cheap characters are most useful a Terror icon is very strong and less likely to be defended against. But, she can only be used for the discount once and then she goes back in your deck. So, it becomes a question of which you need more - an early defender or an ongoing discount. Maybe to answer that you'd have to look at the costs of your deck and see if you've got mostly cheap characters or a lot of expensive ones where you're really hurting for as many discounts as you can get. Ghoulish Worshipper is more of a hybrid character, he costs more but he provides a discount AND he's stout enough to be useful at stories. Moreover, his discount is reusable and costs nothing so you can use it as much as you want. It doesn't worth on all Shub characters, but to balance that it's cross-faction and can be used on foreign Monsters or Ancient Ones as well. Certainly a decent character *if* you have enough other characters in your deck that match his discount.
Getting back to our Syndicate friend, you may have a spot open for a 2-cost character and be considering Hard Case that we talked about previously. But, there are 18 other Syndicate characters going for that slot too! How do we choose? Well, in most cases you'll need to look at what your deck does as a whole. Who helps your strategy? Who matches other cards that provide synergy? Do they help with any weaknesses or provide access to unique abilities?
For instance, here are a few other guys you might be considering, all from the Core or Secrets of Arkham sets:
0. Hard Case. Cost 2, skill 2, Combat, exhaust a character of (usually) cost 3 or less when put into play
1. Anarchist. Cost 2, skill 1, Combat + Investigation, Fast
2. Triggerman. Cost 2, skill 2, Combat + Investigation, Loyal, Willpower
3. Extortionist. Cost 2, skill 1, 2xInvestigation, if overpaid, exhaust a non-Ancient One when put into play
3. Clover Club Torch Singer. Cost 2, skill 2, Combat, Pay 1 to give a character -2 skill
Anarchist and Triggerman are pretty similar to each other. One has Fast, allowing them to win ties (but one less skill). The other has Loyal (a drawback) and Willpower (an asset) and doesn't have the lower skill. There are certainly fans of both. Fast is handy because it can often be made to equate to an extra icon of several different types you possess at one story. Willpower on the other hand is at a premium in this faction and can be very useful against Terror. The Hard Case might be able to exhaust a Terror causing enemy but that only takes it out of commission for one turn. Both of them have Investigation too, which is very nice and could win you an extra success token. But maybe just exhausting a defender could earn you 1-2 extra success tokens for running unopposed?
How about Extortionist? He's more similar to the exhaustion effect of Hard Case, but you have to pay at least 3 to get it. It works on higher cost characters though, that's nice. He's also got two Investigation icons so he's pretty sure to win most Investigation struggles but he can't fight. Do you need that? Can you exhaust enough guys through abilities and Events that it won't matter?
The most different of the group is the Clover Club Torch Singer. She fights as well as Hard Case and has the same cost and skill. No come-into-play effect, but for a cost of 1 you can reduce somebody's skill. In some ways, that might be like Investigation if you can reduce skill to 0. Also, a lot of abilities are limited and only work on targets with a skill of X or less. She can make it so you can target characters that you normally couldn't. Paying 1 is a bit of a drag, but you do often have a 1-domain free since you can't afford to be building them all up. Might as well make use of it, so how many other 1-cost cards or abilities is she competing against? If it's not very many, that's a lot like a free -2 skill every turn which is pretty good. Also, an ability you can use at any time has more surprise value because your opponent doesn't know WHERE it will happen so he has to guard against it everywhere.
Some characters have very weak icons/skill and expect to make it up with a strong ability - particularly when it's one that doesn't carry a domain cost with it. For instance, I'm using a card in one of my decks now called Grim Wraith. It's a character that costs 3 resources with only one Terror icon and a Skill of 1. From just that, it sounds awful! Those stats would be more appropriate on a cost-1 character, right? But, his ability makes up for it. It reads "After Grim Wraith commits to a story, choose an icon struggle at that story. Instead of resolving that struggle, resolve and additional Terror struggle in its place."
He is, in short, a problem solver. Anything icon struggle you're bad at (assuming it isn't Terror), you can just get rid of. Depending on the opponent, you might even get some extra insanity out of it as well. Don't underestimate control style abilities just because they don't directly kill things. Stopping your opponent from killing one of your characters is just as good, or stopping him from winning a story with Investigation, or stopping a character from restoring through Arcane that would cause you story problems on the next turn.
Most of the time I feel like I'm comparing same-cost characters to each other. You've probably got a rough resource curve in mind for your character costs and you're looking to pick guys that fit both the curve and your intended strategy. But at other times you may consider adjusting the curve a little to fit somebody in, especially if they're a very good fit for how you want your deck to work. As long as you're aware of the effect this has and you don't slow things down too much by upgrading to a bigger character, I don't see it as a problem. Just keep an eye out and make sure that he doesn't cost you more than he's worth though, you can't afford to take ALL big nasty guys, there's got to be some cheap ones too and it can be hard to avoid thinking that you can do better by upgrading those 2's to 3's with all the added power that comes in that trade but then you get smoked out of the starting gate before your big dudes can get rolling. Upgrading to a more expensive guy just for icons should be done sparingly, or maybe to get a rare icon that your faction doesn't have much of. Look more for characters that fit the strategy or theme, or who shore up an important weakness, rather than simply one that has one extra Combat or whatever. Those guys are great and all, but may not be worth straying too far from the curve to fit in.
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Andrew Esh
United States
Steilacoom/Tacoma/Fort Lewis
Washington
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Thanks for all of these great articles! I appreciate the time you've taken to type them up and share them with us. They've been very interesting and keep me itching to play.
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Chick Lewis
United States
Claremont
California
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Wow, really great post. Although the text is long, it is still concise, clear, and useful.
I consider myself a good writer, but I could not have done half as well as the above article. You should be proud of your work.
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David Boeren
United States
Marietta
Georgia
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Thanks
I've written a lot of strategy articles in the past (mostly on the Warmachine forums) and it's given me some practice in how to try to explain a gaming concept to people in a way that they can hopefully understand it easily. The key I think is to provide reasoning for WHY you make the conclusions you do. If you don't understand the reasons, you're likely misapply the (merely memorized) knowledge and it's not going to help you nearly as much.
When I stepped back and took a wider look at the example decks, I realized that I needed more to back up the character choices so people could have a better understanding of why *these guys* over *those guys* and that ended up growing into a whole new article 
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Vincent de Wildt
Netherlands
Beverwijk
Noord-Holland
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Nice to mention Grim Wraith which I think is a really neat card. I'm trying to compose a competitive deck which forces opponents to commit, strip away their terror icons and (more difficult) removing their willpower. Grim Wraith surely speeds things up and protects me from combat
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David Boeren
United States
Marietta
Georgia
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He was the best example I could think of of a character that if you looked purely at stats, completely sucked. But then his ability makes up for it so well that he's totally worth it By coincidence, I'm using him in my latest deck too which is all Shub with a Monsters theme.
You certainly wouldn't want a whole deck of support characters like that though - just like in pretty much all games that have support types.
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Yet another excellent article. Thank you!
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