If RC Wraith was just Discard it or put it back on top of the Environment deck
I like that. I’m going to change her rules on the oversized hero cards I use to be that, because that does sound much more fun.
Agreed.
Though I agree that Stealth is far more generally useful, the main advantage of Sleuth is to skip the worst environment cards.
except that you don’t really. Because you still draw the same number of environment cards (actually, you draw more, but I meant you draw the same number of cards on the environment turn) so you’re equally likely to FORCE a bad card to come up, if otherwise the game would have ended beforehand.
If it was -discard or put it back on top- then you could do just as you suggest, allowing the environment to play not-so-bad cards and discarding the worst. But what happens under the current set of circumstances if you draw a card that is manageable for the heroes? Well your choices are:
- Discard it. Thats not helpful.
- play it. You get the benifit of the card (usually quite minimal), but what you DONT get is a “safe” (or relatively painless) environment turn, because you’ll just play the top card of the environment deck.
Corner cases where Sleuth might be useful:
- You want to increase the number of cards in the environment discard – perhaps you want to increase the likelihood of a destroyed volcanic eruption bringing an Obsidian Field in to play.
- You want to increase the number of environment cards in play – Ra’s Scorched Earth does damage based on the number of environment cards in play.
- You want to avoid a particular environment card – There’s only one Volcanic Eruption, so if you can intercept it and get it into the trash, you won’t have to face it.
For #3, if you don’t pull Volcanic Eruption, then you’ve to some extent wasted your power. Sleuth gives you the possibility of doing something useful, but it doesn’t guarantee you’ll do something useful. I agree that this is pretty weak, but to say that there’s no value to Sleuth is overstating the situation.
Also, note that as much as I agree that Stealth is better than Sleuth, I’ve seen plenty of instances of Stealth go essentially unused, as The Wraith builds up 4, 6, or more prevention and it all gets used on a smaller attack.
Also consider the case of playing alongside Visionary, you can put the worst card to the top of the deck and then discard it, ensuring it never comes up, not just moving it down the stack.
thats simply poor play. For much of what you are suggesting -avoiding a specific environment card, for instance-, would require the use of the Sleuth ability over and over, for at best a mere 50-50 shot of avoiding the intended card. As flamethrower49 mentioned, this severely reduces Wraith’s effectiveness, as you will be unable to use her good stuff, like Razor Ordinance or Stun bolts or infared eyepiece.
I thought the point was to compare the base power to the base power, not to compare the base power to any possible power that might or might not come out in a game. Almost every base power loses out to every other power in a given deck.
I would agree that until Sleuth lets you not play a card but not discard it either, it is basically useless.
But, if the next card is, say, something that would severely cripple your team like Self-Destruct Sequence or Pervasive Red Dust, discarding it can be immensely useful. Also, if it’s something that increases damage done but can be destroyed at the beginning of the environment turn, the heroes would benefit from it without letting the villains get in on it too.
Still, those are very rare, specific cases, so overall stealth is far superior; especially since you can use Visionary to do the same thing, but better.
I’ve just played RC Wraith and found it weak too.
Does anyone know how to play RC Wraith? I mean, surely it has been playtested, right?
I will say one thing about RC Wraith… really love the art on it. Looks much more “CEO” and less “neighborhood watch”.
Looks much more “CEO” and less “neighborhood watch”.
We’re talking about the card where she’s kneeling in an alley examining some mystery fluid on the pavement, right? I’m not detecting a lot of “CEO” in that pic. 
I describe a use of Rook City Wraith to enable finding a specific desired environment card in this thread. Beyond that, though, this thread has not been able to come up with a concrete situation in which Rook City Wraith is superior to the original.
The best we’ve come up with seems to be hoping the next environment card is the worst one in the deck so you can avoid it entirely, or playing some card that will help the heroes first before destroying it. With most environments, that’s really too much of a crapshoot.
I believe he meant to say CSI.
Actually CSI as well.
I mean to say her costume looks a lot more high budget in that version than the bandaged version.
Yeah, I’m just going to change her power to “look at the top card of the environment deck; either put it back on top of the environment deck, play it, or discard it.”