You say that like it's an argument against those cards existing, rather than for.
Precisely; a half-chance that something might happen is nowhere near sufficient to justify preparing yourself in case it does, not when the preparations come at the expense of something that is certain to be useful. Most cards are not that situational. If Legacy draws a Back-Fist Strike, I can be 99% certain I can use it to good effect (the 1% mostly covers games against Miss Information, and not even all of those). If he draws Next Evolution, I'd rate it at roughly 50% effectiveness, given the cost in Powers and the fact that many villains do multiple damage types; I might be glad of it, or I might regret it. But the odds that I'll be glad to see SHD are something like 10-20%. That does NOT justify having two copies of the card in his deck, when he only has two copies of the must-have Legacy Ring and the game-altering Take Down. Again, if the card did other things, or was a tutorable singleton, I'd be fine with it. But as-is, it's a lot like Visionary's Brain Burn - a card that might occasionally save your bacon, but is a dead draw more often than not. And at least Visionary can Enlighten herself and discard Brain Burn. If Legacy draws SHD against the Ennead, he receives absolutely no compensation for this rotten turn of luck.
Every card is useful at some point. Some are just useful more often than others. Even if you're only hanging onto/playing a card so you've got something you can discard/destroy later for whatever reason, that's still a use for the card even if it makes no use of any of that card's text. It's a card game, it's random, that's kind of the point. Sometimes you get a hand and you go "Wtf noooo these cards are crap, what can I do with this?" but other times you might get the exact same hand and go "Omg wow I can totally kick arse with this" because you're in a different game. I don't know whether it's possible to play a single game and find that absolutely every card you draw is of good use at some point during that game. But it might be useful during a different game instead. I don't think I've ever used Brain Burn but I'd love to try it in my first turn against the Chairman someday, just to see how well that actually works. I think if every card was useful in every game, then all the villains and environments would have to be pretty similar, and that would get boring.
There's the MTG attitude again, that there should be more copies of the "best" cards because that's a sensible way to make a functional deck.
But this isn't Magic, and the decks weren't created to be as kick-ass as possible to be better than everyone else. They were designed to be fun and relatively balanced with the other decks so that you have a reasonable chance on average of beating the villain as a team.
I don't know why you'd want to add more of Legacy's more generically powerful cards to his deck when he's considered to be a "top tier" hero anyway (by those who think of the game that way). Personally I feel he's more fun to play when you don't have the Ring out all the time, since you have to make the decision of which one power to use, and that's much more of a meaningful decision than which two powers to use.
This. Every card is useful at some point. I see the purpose of a guide not as saying "these cards are awesome but these other cards suck because you almost never use them", but as explaining when you can best take advantage of each of the tools in your toolbox.
For example, rather than just dismissing Superhuman Durability becuase it isn't relevant in a lot of match-ups, a good guide would probably talk about when you might actually want to pay attention to it (i.e. environments with lots of damage boost and a handful of villains that frequently deal larger instances of damage).
From my standpoint, a guide that is negative and unconstructive isn't fun to read and I usually won't pay it much attention. Whereas a guide that talks about possibilities, things that you can do in corner cases is exactly what I'm looking for.
Most people can figure out the bread and butter stuff: Crocodile is good at dealing damage, Rhino is good at tanking, and Gazelle has some support stuff. There's no need to spend more than a few sentences explaining this.
But there are other things that people miss sometimes. For instance, have you ever used Bestial Shift in Gazelle form? You can gain 3HP, use your power to shift to Crocodile form, then execute the Crocodile part of Bestial Shift (since it's lower down on the card that you're processing) to deal 4 toxic damage and use a power. Then you get a third power use during your Power phase. Three powers, healing, and damage all in one turn isn't too shabby.
Or think about when Environmental Allies is most useful. Maybe they're good for keeping those Raptors alive so they can chomp on Dreamer's projections a little longer. Or use it in Gazelle form to protect Unity's bots and the Sentinels from Char. Want to keep the environment targets alive a few more rounds until Akash'Bhuta flips back to her front side? There are plenty of cases where this card is exactly what you need.
Ooooh...that Bestial Shift thing never even occurred to me. That sounds frigging epic - must try that next time I get a chance! :D
Using Bestial Shift to switch between forms for multiple effects and multiple power usages is fantastic, one of my favorite cards for The Naturalist. In a previous thread, someone argued that you don't need to execute the different parts of Bestial Shift in order—that you can use the bottom Crocodile portion to shift into Rhino and still process the Rhino effect—but I'd love to know if there's an official answer on that. Bestial Shift is great no matter what, but that would certainly affect how I use it, making it phenomenal in Gazelle, still great as a Crocodile, and then serviceable in a pinch as a Rhino.
If you don't happen to have any extra powers out, so that you wouldn't have an extra power to use during your power phase after the Gazelle-Crocodile shift, Bestial Shift is also impressive as an off-turn play from someone like Argent Adept. You end up getting two different effects from the card play as well as two power usages, without missing out on a potential power usage during your power phase the way you sometimes can during your own turn. Which means you're regaining 3HP and dealing 7 damage, if I'm remembering the numbers right, very healthy for an off-turn card play and without having to spend any additional cards—by which I mean, it's not like you're playing multiple cards from hand, you're essentially getting four distinct effects as a result of one single card. Even better if you have other damage boosts, since you're getting two instances and will be set up for Crocodile damage next round.
I could see a Naturalist Guide having a whole section on Bestial Shift—which combinations of effects and which shifts are good for which situations, what other powers from Naturalist's deck you may want out first, when you may need to play it sub-optimally and when you want to save it, etc. In my games so far, Bestial Shift has always been one of Naturalist's most impressive plays, it's useful and versatile. Predator's Eye is another that can lead to some big plays—on a turn where you desperately need to kill something big, a Crocodile-fueled Predator's Eye gets you 5 damage itself, and it also ups your inherent power to 4 damage, which is enough to kill quite a lot of the more troublesome minions and potentially a very good use of Naturalist's Turn. The fact that the damage increase lasts for several more turns is just gravy—if Naturalist is leading the charge to make this the last round, he gets to deal 9 damage and also buff every later player's damage, which is a big contribution to pulling out that victory.
Cards resolve from top to bottom - this is trivially obvious in most cases. It's less obvious in the case of Bestial Shift, but since the symbols aren't really anything more than conditional clauses I don't see why it wouldn't still be the case.
I don't know if it would work that way.
The ongoing cards say you may activate those effects.
Bestial Shift does not give a "If Gazelle is in play . . ." so timing might not be an issue.
The argument would be:
The effects on the one shot are not triggered by the one shot, because they can only be activated by the effect of the corresponding ongoing card.
They are all conditional optional effects. When the condition changes the new symbol effect may activate.
We already have cases where the second line of text on a One-shot can be activated before resolving the first line of text.
If the symbol text being unable to activate does not cause a "missed timing" situation then you would be able to do them in order other than top to bottom.
This was covered and answered during PTing. The order of the animal symbols does not matter. As long as you are in the form, you may activate the forms abilities. Think of it like Imbued Fire. Due to the nature of the effects, the order they appear on the card does not matter.
I agree with the logic of your point, BlueHairedMeerkat---the order-of-text answer makes sense. But like phantaskippy, I can also see some reasoning for Bestial Shift being more accommodating. I think the symbols aren't technically processed as "If Gazelle, this card has '<text>'", even though for most cards it works out that way. Instead, I think the wording on the Form card is "you can activate effects" with the appropriate symbol---or maybe "you may"? In any case, something about that wording can be read as giving the player a bit more leeway---it's not 100% clear to me that the text of Bestial Shift is processing three instances of possible text in order, such that you need to have each form at a specific point in time for the corresponding effect. I might still lean that way, I'm not sure, I could understand either answer being the case. But I think Naturalist's forms are quirky enough that I wouldn't mind hearing whether stuff like this interaction came up in playtesting.
Marginally related issue regarding another point in the guide. While the Rhino-based effect on Indomitable Force is not itself worded as being optional, the Rhino form card itself suggests that you can/may activate Rhino effects. So I read the interaction of these two cards as effectively making the redirection optional for each instance of damage. While resolving each instance of damage, if you are in Rhino form then you can/may activate the effect of Indomitable Force to redirect that damage to you. This would let you be a bit more selective with damage, letting Naturalist soak and reduce some, but letting some instances go through if that's preferable---to let Tachyon deal her extra sonic damage next turn, to let Nightmist redirect it, to let Ra counter-attack, whatever. I don't know if this will be taken by most as obviously true, obviously false, or a surprise twist that makes sense in retrospect, so I'm curious to hear others' interpretations.
No cards in front of me, so if I've gotten any card texts or names wrong, please bear with me.
EDIT: Aha! Thanks for the answer, Foote, glad to have an authoritative answer either way. And I like the extra versatility this gives you to switch gears when using Bestial Shift in Crocodile form. Change over to Gazelle or Rhino and immediately start building up a more defensive game. Don't suppose the Indomitable Force question had come up, too?
Second EDIT: In the rare situation when you can have multiple Forms out due to Fixed Point, would the same logic apply to other cards with multiple form icons, like Natural Form's Power? Can you activate the multiple effects that you have access to in any order, as opposed to going down the card? That seems like it might follow, but I don't know in what context this came up during playtesting, so I wouldn't want to jump to any conclusions.
Second EDIT: In the rare situation when you can have multiple Forms out due to Fixed Point, would the same logic apply to other cards with multiple form icons, like Natural Form's Power? Can you activate the multiple effects that you have access to in any order, as opposed to going down the card? That seems like it might follow, but I don't know in what context this came up during playtesting, so I wouldn't want to jump to any conclusions.
Good question.
I'm pretty sure that I have done it on several occasions. Chrono-Ranger was probably involved; on the off chance one of his cards is completely useless, he can just pitch it to Just Doing My Job. I don't expect every hero to quite measure up to that, but even Bunker, the probable overall worst hero in SOTM, at least never has a bad card per se, because every single card in his hand serves as potential fodder for an Omni-Cannon or Gatling Gun. Legacy does not have such cards, so while he's unquestionably very strong overall, just for Galvanize, he doesn't get anything that can modulate his effectiveness to a smooth mean. When he draws Legacy Ring and Motivational Charge, he is flat-out better than when he draws Surge of Strength but no cards which deal damage (and I've totally had that happen too).
I think if every card was useful in every game, then all the villains and environments would have to be pretty similar, and that would get boring.
That's a false dichotomy. It's perfectly possible to make things different in particulars, but equal in overall effectiveness. Balance can be achieved through the use of trade-offs; this could result in matches possibly being easier or harder based on whether your strengths match the enemy's weaknesses and vice versa, but everything would work out to the same net potency, so any match not determined by such matching "slants" would be equally challenging (within a particular bracket; you could still designate some villains as harder or easier, but they'd be equally easy or hard against every single hero, except possibly their nemesis).
Except that it's virtually never an actual choice. If you have to pick between Galvanize and anything else, Galvanize is correct 90% of the time. So Motivational Charge is almost completely useless without Legacy Ring, and Next Evolution isn't much better. This only exacerbates the problem of how many cards in Legs's deck are frequently not beneficial, or at least not enough so.
… jaw drops …Okay, that goes in the guide, with credit to you. I've used Bestial Shift as a Gazelle often enough, just to heal and then heal again, but getting two of the riders on the same card without Fixed Point shenanigans would never have occurred to me. (I guess there's more reason than just text space for why the card's Rhino mode doesn't give you a Power.)
I very much disagree. I've had a lot of games where I've had to seriously think about whether to sacrifice my Galvanise use to heal us with Motivational Charge, and there have certainly been times when I've used it to kill something that absolutely needed to die this turn, knowing my fellow heroes were unable to deal enough damage, Galvanised or not. And when you know everyone's going down pretty quickly Galvanised isn't so awesome.
Do you really want to "improve" Legacy's deck when he's generally considered to be one of the strongest heroes anyway, with one of the strongest base powers? It seems unbalanced to give him an extra power twice as often as he gets now.
Really? Name one.
Point, but…do you then acknowledge that SOTM heroes can indeed be "tiered" (even if the only difference were Tier 1 = Legacy, Tier 2 = Everyone Else)? I don't want Legacy to be more powerful, but I would like him to be more fun for me to play (especially since it's been recommended I play as him while newbie players take other heroes; I haven't been able to bring myself to do it yet). Young Legacy accomplishes a lot in this direction, but she's still frequently stuck with these cards I don't like, and if anything she has even less reason to ever use Motivational Charge than normal Legacy does, unless she finds the Ring.
Incidental Contact.
There are a lot of times when I'd rather use Next Evolution than Galvanize - with Lead from the Front, NE shuts down a lot of villains. Shutting down retaliation damage from the Operative or the Matriarch is more valuable than slightly increasing the amount of damage everyone does. Or if I already have Inspiring Presence out, the extra damage boost from Galvanize becomes less attractive.
It's like Ra using Flesh of the Sun God's power in a fire heavy game - yes, you'd rather Ra was using a highly boosted Drawn to the Flame, but sometimes not dying is better than killing everyone else.
Legacy tends to be a double-edged sword in my games, since the other player really likes using Nightmist as one of his two heroes. Depending on what cards everyone has out and in their hands, Galvanize can end up hurting Nightmist worse than it would hurt the villain—if she doesn't have the Amulet out yet, Legacy's buffs can be brutal for her. Similar thinking, of course, for any other hero whose cards sometimes damage them, or for villains like Plague Rat. If this is a turn when Knyfe, Ra, or whoever else is likely to spend a bunch of HP, I try to be careful with Galvanize. With Knyfe, the benefits of Galvanize are going to buff a bunch of different instances of damage to the villain, so it's often worth it, but I don't want to buff her damage so that she's actually going to incapacitate herself. Galvanize is still great, no doubt about that, but it's nice to also have powers that actively keep people alive.
No. The first line totally starts resolving first. Plus the second line is adding a modifier effect to the damage of the first line, just like Hypersonic Assault.