Aaron Fenwick
Australia
Newport
Victoria
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Springing from a conversation I had on the weekend whilst playing Ascension; I was curious to find out what are people's favorite and least favorite 1 cost center deck cards? (from any of the sets)
All of the Void one costs seemed to be the most popular, though I do think Void Initiate is almost always a must buy. (Though Prodigal from Storm of Souls has fans as well) As for least liked... Mechanica Initiate seems to win the most loathed by our group.(poor lil guy)
So.. what is your groups most wanted and least wanted one cost?
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Trent Hamm
United States
Huxley
Iowa
See this text? It's a gratuitous waste of GeekGold.
The game itself isn't important. Spending time intellectually jousting with likeminded folks is the real reason to game.
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splangy wrote: Springing from a conversation I had on the weekend whilst playing Ascension; I was curious to find out what are people's favorite and least favorite 1 cost center deck cards? (from any of the sets)
All of the Void one costs seemed to be the most popular, though I do think Void Initiate is almost always a must buy. (Though Prodigal from Storm of Souls has fans as well) As for least liked... Mechanica Initiate seems to win the most loathed by our group.(poor lil guy)
So.. what is your groups most wanted and least wanted one cost?
Same as you. Void Initiate is the most popular. Mechana Initiate is often simply avoided by the group.
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Jason Farris
United States
Fair Oaks
California
There is a duck in every game. You may not see it, but it's there.
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Void the best with arha a close second. Free vp without effectively increasing your deck size is nice.
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Aaron Fenwick
Australia
Newport
Victoria
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Arha is ace, I am very partial to Void Milita and Guardian of Sadranis as well. (If I go the monster hacking route to victory
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What?!
Arha Initiate is much, much better than Void Initiate. Void Initiate is great in the first few turns; worthless later unless you are buying the most points you can. Arha is always good; you only pass on them when there is a super card for the exact mana you have.
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Kaiwen Zhang
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
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arha initiate is the best one by far, its a free point.
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ackmondual
United States
Virginia
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I've only played with CotGS + RofF. I've played with some promos, but the only thing I remember is the Rat King. As such, below is a list of what I know of for your reference....
Arha Initiate; Hectic Scribe
Lifebound Initiate
Mechana Initiate
Guardian of Sadranis; Void Initiate
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For fave:
It's a tossup between Arha Init. and Void Initiate. The former is indeed a free honor. However, my vote goes to the later since I am a sucker for trimming down my deck. Even better with Deathseeker from exp #1, as you banish her to get a net of +2 honor when the Center Row shifts away from monsters and more Rune oriented stuff.
For hated:
Void Initiate if playing on iOS, as the game slows to a crawl as the AI thinks about its turn with this (among other cards that introduce a decision point mid-turn).
However, a real answer from me would be Guard Of Sadrinis. It really bites when the Center Row doesn't have monsters you can destroy, so at least Mech. Init. is flexible, although worth noting, I still like both cards, and Gaurd only eeks a bit ahead for "most hated".
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James 3
United States
Atlanta
Georgia
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The new Lifebound 1 drop is pretty awesome. Aiyana's messenger. Almost a mystic for 1 rune leads to explosive Openings.
Arha initiate Is always good but doesn't DO much in most decks, so hard to call him a fave despite never being a bad buy.
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Eric Leath
United States
Newark
OH
gamesandgrub.blogspot.com
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johncraven wrote: arha initiate is the best one by far, its a free point.
Can you define "free point" ? All the one-costs are 1:1, so you're getting an honor no matter which one you buy.
My favorite is far and away Aiyana's Messenger. As flamejuggler said, if you're going for a Non-Mechana based Rune strategy, it's essentially a Mystic for 2 fewer runes (and gets you other 1 costs for free!)
I think Void Initiate is overrated personally. It thins your deck out, but it only produces ONE resource. After the midgame, it's essentially an Apprentice. Likewise, Hectic Scribe is moderately overrated as well. It does let you cycle through your deck, but it still ultimately leaves you -1 in card advantage.
Prodigal gets better in multiplaer games because (I feel) his optimal use is hitting the Fanatic to redeem/loop Event trophies from the Fanatic. In a multiplayer game, the probability of hitting an event goes up because you're going through a larger majority of the portal deck.
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Trevor Schadt
United States
Pittsburgh
Pennsylvania
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Whisperhand wrote: johncraven wrote: arha initiate is the best one by far, its a free point. Can you define "free point" ? All the one-costs are 1:1, so you're getting an honor no matter which one you buy.
(*) People will, I'm sure, be happy to argue probabilities and statistics to say that having the card in your deck does in fact impact the card draws of the rest of your deck, and I have no objection to believing them. But as I recall from the last time this kind of thing went around (probably somewhere in the Dominion forum, dealing with the dynamics of a "+1 Card, +1 Action" Action card), the impact is relatively small on an overall scale, certainly small enough for 99% of Ascension players to say "that's worth it for a point." 
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ackmondual
United States
Virginia
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Whisperhand wrote:
I think Void Initiate is overrated personally. It thins your deck out, but it only produces ONE resource. After the midgame, it's essentially an Apprentice. Likewise, Hectic Scribe is moderately overrated as well. It does let you cycle through your deck, but it still ultimately leaves you -1 in card advantage.
If thinning your deck means getting a Mystic or 2 instead of Apprentices on any given draw, then it indirectly produced more resources than it's worth. Also true if you're cycling through your deck faster to get to the really great cards more often.
EDIT: typo, I meant to say "INdirectly" instead of "directly"
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As people get better and the sets get faster Void Initiate gets worse.
It's the 'worst' deck-thinner; it does the bare minimum and leaves behind exactly what you were trying to remove.
Void Initiate is excellent early where you can split buys with other useful cheap cards, but overall players keep buying them when they won't see them enough to justify their impact.
We could be splitting hairs, but Arha Initiate approximates Void Initiate's in that it creates the exact same advantage for one deck cycle while being harmless throughout the game.
Conclusion: If you can get Void Initiate early enough to use three or four times, it's better. If you can't, then Arha is better. An addendum is you don't want too much deck-thinning too.
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ackmondual
United States
Virginia
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Alex Brown wrote: Conclusion: If you can get Void Initiate early enough to use three or four times, it's better. If you can't, then Arha is better. An addendum is you don't want too much deck-thinning too.
I've only played alot with base + e1, but I've noticed that while in theory, an ultra trim deck is "tops", in practice, the game ends by then anyways (perhaps even sooner when pitted against good players). Everyone else finding this same thing?
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Yes, and this is why deck-thinners are great but have to be measured by what else they bring to the table as the game gets along. Arha Sensei is so amazing because he gives two honour for three on top of a great effect.
Deck-thinning is still the best early game mechanism; it just drops off more sharply than most realise. Understanding deck cycles is what it is all about.
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Jean-Philippe Thériault
Canada
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I have to agree that Void Initiate is pretty much the worst deck thinner (in base + RotF... I still had no play with SoS). Every time you draw it right after reshuffling, you die a little inside, because it basically reads "Pay 1 Rune and add an extra Apprentice in your deck". Of course at the beginning of the game you will often have no use for a lone Militia or an extra Apprentice, but the card gets really useless really quickly.
I think Hectic Scribe is *under* rated. It's not a great card but it fits in a particular style of deck that I often play. You rarely want multiples, though, because by nature you will often end up chaining into the second or third one when playing them, and that makes for a sucky turn. But any strategy that has some high impact card (7 or 8 drops) would often rather play a 4 cards hand with those cards in than a 5 cards hand without. A card like Hectic Scribe that draws multiple cards (and thus has a net effect on your deck size of making it smaller) is invaluable to that sort of deck. It is also useful in decks that had to buy both Power and Runes, because it smoothes out your draws (Temple Librarian is a bit less good at that job here because you need to discard first).
These cards also tend to combine well with the Lifebound cards that put cards on top of your deck. You want to have a good number of +draws in that style of deck, so that you can do things like buy a Master Dharta and immediately use it.
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James 3
United States
Atlanta
Georgia
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i'd like an official starting hand variant. alot of these 1 drops are suboptimal, but if they were in starting hand instead of an apprentice, people would appreciate them without reallu imbalancing play.
ive often played 2 player with each of us starting with 1 void initiate and 1 mechana initiate in place of 2 apprentices. this works REALLY well. the standard 5-0/4-1/3-2 splits are way more dynamic as you have a better likelihood of having 2 power or even 3 power in opening draws, and neither feel like they slow you down by only producing 1 resource since they replace a worse card. and both players having "the worst deck thinning" card from the start means both players get to slowly trim their decks and smooth out later plays with zero real cost. try it, highly recommended.
ill have to try out this idea with some other of the 1 drops... maybe lots of them...
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Steve Calomino
United States
Bolingbrook
Illinois
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This is really 3 posts containing 3 separate comments.
Trevor Schadt wrote: (*) People will, I'm sure, be happy to argue probabilities and statistics to say that having the card in your deck does in fact impact the card draws of the rest of your deck, and I have no objection to believing them.
I do. You have Card A and Card B. It can go either AB or BA. 2 ways.
Now you have Card X (Arha Initiate), Card A, and Card B. It can go XAB, AXB, ABX, XBA, BXA, or BAX, all of which reduce to AB or BA. It's still 2 ways.
It doesn't affect reshuffling either because you can always opt to not draw a card. I approve your message, object to them as much as you want.
If ANYTHING, the effect it has on a deck is the option to slow the deck cycle, for whatever various reasons there may be.
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Eric Leath wrote: but it still ultimately leaves you -1 in card advantage
It's all situational. Any deck with a capstone hero that isn't completely thinned benefits greatly from the scribe. For example, I don't think I'd complain if my deck had 3 Hectic Scribes and a certain 6 honor hero. Also, a deck that is really balanced between its resources won't necessarily be penalized as often, by which I mean coming up short on runes and fight for both good heroes/constructs and high value monsters. However, I do understand what you're saying.
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**Um, now that I read the last 2 posts, what I meant to say here was, "I concur with XDarkAngelX's remarks."**
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Alex Brown wrote: Understanding deck cycles is what it is all about.
FTW
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