The other day in Twitch, I ended up having a bit of a discussion with another Twitcher (Is that a term? I'm making it one now.) regards Argent Adept's and to a lesser extent Captain Cosmic's effectiveness in amplifying others versus adding another hero who can simply do their own thing.
My instinct is that generally in a "play, power, draw" game, any hero that can get another character to be able to do those things twice or more per round is pretty valuable, and Argent doubly so since he can do all three of those things and fill just about any other role besides damage on top of it. Cosmic, meanwhile, can also do one of those things while being better able to give heroes extra utility options and is better at doing damage. Since I feel that often heroes improve exponentially the more stuff you can set up for them, enough to outweigh the downside of having a slightly smaller variety of options.
But I am not exactly MigrantP levels of expertise when it comes to Sentinels (or, well, anything else that needs strategy), so I thought it might make for an interesting discussion to see how both sides weigh up.
I think a quick example of just giving extra power uses being potent is with America's Greatest Legacy as the stats show he is best version of Legacy. He is only outshown by Team Leader Tachyon who gives extra card draw every turn. With Argent Adept some of this is luck based as you might not be able to provide those every game and he isn't giving every hero extra cards just some. I think as long as the whole team isn't composed of support type heroes then those abilities are more useful. A team composed of all support heroes is going to struggle a bit early on especially against more target heavy villains without someone who is better at filling a damaging role.
In regards to that particular individual, I think they have a set strategy/team they use and rarely deviates from it. Anything that doesn't fit into what they are do is not worth trying.
Yeah, Grandpa Legacy and TLT have the benefit of being consistent with their support grants. Though I find that I like sticking Argent and TLT together since otherwise I tend to eventually end up with hands clogged with more cards than I can ever feasibly play.
It helps that Argent has so much card draw available that it's rare not to find his best cards pretty quickly. Cosmic suffers from having far fewer options available for digging for just the right construct.
And yeah, perhaps, but I still felt like it was interesting to examine the idea of whether it's more important to build up or repeat existing heroes versus having a bigger variety options available.
Personally I feel that, say, having Expat getting to do a full Unload with every single gun packed full of Ammo in fewer than half a million turns is all kinds of fun.
I would say a hero like AZ greatly benefits from having Argent Adept around. AZ eventually wants both components out so he gets the most out of his powers and one-shots. Now with AZ setup you have a tanking character who can handle a lot of threats. You can have Mr Fixer play Bloody Knuckles and give him one or more power uses so that he gets more attacks with that damage boost rather than just one he'd get otherwise. Some affects a support hero provides aren't as easy to evaluate but they are things you want. That damage boost got you through the DR a target has, destroying that Ongoing meant heroes didn't take retaliatory damage, reducing damage kept a hero active so they could deal a final blow, you prevented the villain from playing that one card, or playing that Construct saved one hero character from taking damage. Overall, support characters make other heroes shine more is how I see it and can provide other benefits on top of it.
We ran an experiment for this, three heroes, treat (H) as 4, but for the fourth turn we would divide up the play/power/draw so each hero got to do one. Did nothing to offset lower initial health or smaller total cards in hand.
We dominated. Largely because the accelerated card draw and play let heroes build up faster, and sending power uses to heroes that are set up to use them, or even to the hero best suited for the situation, is much more valuable than hoping hero 4 can be that hero.
Essentially, being able to play one of 12 cards will almost always be better than playing one of 4, and selecting a power from the whole table is significantly more powerful than selecting one from your play area, and sending card draw to the hand that needs it most is better than just always drawing yourself.
Cards that net (H) actions or benefits (team leader, DDA, Galvanize) will be even stronger, but even just turning your power phase into "One hero may use a power now" is incredibly strong, because the team gains access to (H)-1 more play areas to find the best power for the current board state.
In oue experience, the place where new heroes are less valuable than repeating the other hero actions is roughly 50%. If over 50% are support you are diminishing value because the loss of play areas to find solutions starts to offset the ability to double down on the good stuff.
I do so love when people get science all up into things. Especially since the digital game's rigor limited my own attempts to try and create cases to test my assumptions.
Playing a full suport team and making AS the damage dealer is all kinds of fun. Also slow.
I live this game because of all the weird interactions one can do.
Usually getting players to set up faster, play cards out of turns (take down, Unity, greese fun, know when to stand still ect), or letting your damage dealer repeat their power is strong than just having a hero do the same power.
Having to pick who plays or uses a powers asd flexabilty to the game. Who every has the answer can be the one who gets the power.
I mean any game where you can give CC multiple +1 damage is nuts.
There are some limits to how useful "action amplification", as the OP puts it.
Extra Card plays are limited in their effectivness by handsize, handsize growth potential, and to a lesser extent, the situational usefullness of the card play
Extra Power uses are hard limited to the number of powers you actually have in play to use per turn. Obviously extra power uses outside of their natural turn are more potent, but still limited to a turn-by-turn basis
The only action that is always usefull is Card Draw (lets throw out situational bias here because I know someone will be all "But Omnitron can damage you for card draw"). Fact is that Card Draw is natually one of the most powerful effects cards can have given the nature of deck based games. Card Draw enables the usefullness of the other two actions as well, having more cards to play and having extra cards which grant power uses sooner.
While all these can be powerful effects in their own right, I think it's important to not overlook just how situation and board state oriented games of SotM can be. Not having an immediate or appropriate answer to threats on the board can, and often do, lead to losses. For instance, It's all well and good to have a ton of card plays in a single turn, but if none of them can deal with the 15 AoE damage Omnitron is about to deal you, then you'd have to ask yourself how valuable were those plays. "Action Diversity" is very valuable in SotM, as it gives you a greater chance to be able to answer whatever the game throws at you in a favorable way. It should be noted that Card Draw is consistently and exponentially usefull in creation "action diversity" as you are digging through all the answers your deck could offer in a much shorter timeframe, allowing you to have the answer you need when you need it more consistently than the other 2 actions.
In the end, I'm not sure exactly how you would quantify the amplification vs diversity debate. In my opinion, I think they are all equally as useful and both are tools to help you win games. Both are subject to wildly shifting practical values in how useful they are given a current situation and board state. The only real true outlier is Card Draw which is always giving you its maximum value regardless of board state
To me, card draw is like Capitan America. Unless you can use extra cards, all it does it make you the best you can possibly me, your maximum potential of your deck. In fact, that is what TLT does, helps make everyone the best they can be. However, extra plays and powers can make you better than your deck would normally allow you to be. The real “super” heroes, not just the perfect human.
Which is better can depend on the situation as other have described above.
To me, card draw is like Capitan America. Unless you can use extra cards, all it does it make you the best you can possibly me, your maximum potential of your deck
I see what you're saying but for me it's not quite right. Card Draw isn't what allows your maximum potential, at least not by itself. I think that is nessesarily a combination of all 3 actions and the effects within the deck working in harmony as designed.
Card Draw, in and of itself, allows you to dig through your deck to find the best possible answers to a given board state sooner than you would otherwise have had. The value of a card draw is always consistently high because of that. Even in situations where you have the right answers in hand for a current job, or a large hand with options, the card draw is still valuable to dig and thin out the deck to recycle back to the answer for the next situation. The action never loses it's maximum value. It's not something you can say for the other 2 actions.
What I mean by maximum potential is without other help. Giving AS more cards won’t make him do more damage (for example) than if he happened to start with those cards. It simply helps him if he doesn’t have the right cards (which is most of the time). Power and plays can actually have him deal more damage than if he was just playing alone.
That being said, personally, I value card draw when I need something. However, if I am good and have several cards I want to play, I don’t need that card draw. Not all the time. It does lose it’s value. Even with TLT I have not used her base power in several circumstances. Not often, but there have been times where the value of the card draw just wasn’t there. To me, at least.
I'm not 100% sure what your stance is, since Card Draw is still action amplification instead of action diversity. I probably didn't do a great job of trying to distill what I was asking into an informative title. XP
Essentially the person was basically saying they thought Argent Adept was merely average and couldn't understand why everyone thought his gameplay was so useful (and thus Captain Cosmic was bad, as being a lesser version of Argent), for reasons that seemed to amount to "why would I take a support hero whose deck focuses around letting other people do their things more often, over another damage dealer or someone else who does their own unique thing so I can have more diversity of options", and while my instinct was the former was more powerful because doing the same good stuff more built up and/or more often seems more powerful, I wanted to get perspectives.
So is your vote, "action diversity is better except for solely Team Leader Tachyon's specific brand of action amplification?"
I see Card Draw as building power (or capability, or options). Card Play is then realization or actualization of that power. And Power use is its own thing with some dependence on Card Draw's power build. Pure Card Draw is great until you've saturated your hand with all your options. Then Card Play is needed to actualize your cards and make Card Draw useful again. Since each character has a base power, Power Use is separate, but since decks also have cards with powers, that puts a bit of need on Card Draw and Card Play for other Power Use options.
I always find card draw a weak action. It's great when your hand size is low, of course, but it's just, if there's nothing better to do, draw a card.
Consider it in terms of incapacitated powers: If you've got a couple heroes down and things are looking bleak, you're going to want to be using powers, playing cards or getting other "act now" effects like ongoing destruction. Card draw offsets the extra plays for heroes without extra draw of their own, but it's more a buffering action, preparing for the future instead of trying to beat the villain now.
See, this, to my mind, is a vastly different conversation.
I'll use a terrible math analgoy to try and say what I want to say.
LEt us suppose that the average hero has a value of 2 for "Doing things that are useful for winning" and a support hero has a value of 1 in that category, but multiplies every other person's value by 1.5, but this is harshly reduced per every other support hero (so two only give a bonus of 1.75 instead of 3).
A team of four with average heroes has 2+2+2+2= 8
A team of 3 average heroes and a support hero has 2(1.5)+2(1.5)+2(1.5)+1= 10
But a team of 4 support heroes has let us say 1(1.85)+1(1.85)+1(1.85)+1(1.85)= 7.4
Which is to say in plain english, the more "pure" support heroes you have, the less value you have as a team because while you can bounce around a lot of things, each one of those things is less likely to be a useful answer to any given problem. That's why, IME, a team of support heroes struggle, they are doing a lot of things, but each they have a hard time getting set-up and dealing damage compared to a team with people who are doing things with their actions instead of letting other people do things with their actions.
So, to an extent, that person is correct. You need someone in the game to be the anchor and have an ease of doing damage and removing threats from the game. However, a single support person always that individual to do those useful actions more often, or can make those actions even more useful than they already are.
And Frankly, other than Argent I don't know if we have "pure" support characters. Variants change a lot, but the core deck is still the same, and everyone has a little bit of something that is useful, and most decks have multiple "builds" that can be comboed off of. So, it is far more complex than what I've hastily thrown together to make a point.
I find card draw’s strength scales with how much you do it. Doing it once is not that strong, but doing it many times is extremely strong. Having +1 card is meh. Having +10 cards and all the various answers in your deck is significantly stronger.
In the incap hero break situation, card draw looks weak due to the rng compared to the guaranteed effect of an extra power or play. But imagine the player after you had a card at the top of the deck that’s great for the situation you’re in. Do you still prefer a play or a power vs that card?