I've been playing a few games with Argent Adept trying to get a feel for him, and while mechanically I can do stuff to help the group, I'm still not "getting" him like I have some of the other characters. So! This is me asking for help, for those of you who play him, what are your strategeries for him. What do you shoot to get first in most situations? HALP!
Adept is easily my favorite hero (to the point that Vyolnce banned me from playing him for a while :(). Helping the group, but the real thing is how much can you do in one turn. He has a few different ways to chain off himself and a few cards which let him use a power or an accompany (the one that hurts himself and Silver Shadow). Adept is always trying to do what is best for the team, always trying to help people play more cards, get more stuff out, or generally end the game quicker. The trick is to grab on goings based on what instruments you have or instruments based on the on goings. The more stuff you can do or the more options you have, the better off Adept is. And don't be afraid to help yourself before helping others. Letting Adept drop more cards into play himself or play another power can decrease his set up time and speed up how fast you can actually be useful. Also, Adept really doesn't like his on goings being destroyed. Losing them sets him back a good bit and because without specific ones, he can't get back quick. On the other hand, Adept couldn't care less about his instuments. His instrument search digs through the trash, so if you have to ditch and you don't need it to play the next turn, ditch an instrument. Just a few points to try and help.
Also, the Adept has a whole load of Arcane Cadence cards in his deck (about four I think), which lt you take the top five cards from your deck and place one into your trash, one on the top of your deck, one on the bottom, one in your hand, and one into play. So if one of the five is another Arcane Cadence, you can make that the one that you play and look at another five cards. I don't generally find it too hard to get what I need as long as at laest one of those comes up early on, and usually end up with most of my deck either in my hand or in play. Later on I tend to play Silver Shadow quite a lot and then use Vernal Sonata to keep getting it back again. If I run out of these, I tend to have a small enough number of cards left in my deck/trash that there isn't much of a wait before they start coming round again :D.
Don't forget that the songs can be sung multiple times per turn, as they aren't powers - the instruments (and the Adept's innate power) are. ISo if you want (and have the means) to sing the same song multiple times in a turn, you absolutely can do that! What I tend to do is ask whether any other heroes need anything in particular that turn, or if there are any particular ongoings or environment cards that need destroying (provided I have the right songs out to do these things), and then try to do that. Or look at which songs I have out (if I don't have them all out) and see what I can do, and then which would be most useful. I very rarely do any damage when playing the Adept - I use him generally as a pure support character to buff the other heroes, let them do more stuff out of their turns (draw cards, use powers, etc), and so on.
That said, it's a right bugger if you get your stuff destroyed. Sodding bloody arsing Devastating Aurora :P.
Hey that ban was self-inflicted.
This is pretty important. It's hard to strike the balance between helping yourself and helping the group, but while it's temping to go for the instant effects of helping others, it's important to get the AA going properly as well. Those first few extra plays? Save them for yourself.
It also really helps to take out all the instruments and songs and take a good look at them. Try to figure out how the different effects are distributed over melodies/rythms/harmonies, and what that means for what each instrument can do. Challenge: figure out how to use every single instrument+your base power in one turn.
I always get overwhelmed by the number of options AA has and take too long on my turn trying to work out what I can do. Once I have my own copy of Infernal Relics, I plan to get a bunch of highlighters and color-code the important words on his cards.
Won't help.
It gets easier the more you play him - you start to learn what kind of stuff he can do and so can anticipate cards coming out - for example, if you're in somewhere like Rook City or playing someone like Plague Rat, Sarabande of Destruction is very useful. Combining the Pipes with the healing song (forgot the name, it's a Melody card) lets everyone regain 2hp a turn, and so on.
it helps to look at his cards when your not playing. It gives you time to lok for combos you can use in different situations.