We have the next few episodes recorded, so some things won't change for a little bit. I kind of forgot I had the Skates at all, but they'll be on in the future. I remembered like right after this session. =/Zephyr_DragonLord wrote:As for the Battle Card... I've been meaning to offer a few tips. Mainly, you don't want to be turning the Tiger combo cards into guts so recklessly. A 7 or 3 damage for nothing is great, especially since Hares, Pixie, and Suezos cannot dodge that. It's a big part of what makes Tiger so great. Cyclone is simply superior to Quake, and you should probably swap that card in.... Lastly, the effects of the Skates are important. I want you all to see them in action.
Regarding the Tiger Combo cards, I'm sure there are times I discard them where it's not necessarily correct, but the way Monster Rancher works when it comes to drawing cards, card quality and card advantage is weird. A lot of times I'm engutsing (that sounds wrong but I'm going with it,) a combo piece because taking the extra gut and the extra card draw is, as far as I can tell, more likely to result in something good than keeping the card and hoping for the best draw. With the current deck set-up, it's also important because most of Golem's moveset isn't usable without a lot of guts, and since he has such a health advantage on Tiger a lot of times I could just lose Tiger before assembling the combo. Of course, this is all very match-up dependent, so if I see a team with Hare and Pixie, you're right, I should probably prioritize the Tiger attacks a bit more. (Does Suezo actually have that restriction on his dodge? I assumed the zero guts dodges had it, but Side Roll is 1 guts.)
As for Quake and Cyclone, I'm not really interested in either of them. I don't know that, on a team with Tiger and Pixie, having such high-guts moves is generally worth it. Cyclone is fantastic in the right scenario, but I need to ask a few questions before I run it. Am I going to hit 8 guts consistently? Since I use so many lower-guts moves, I don't think so. I just don't have the cards to discard for it. Is it going to hit enough targets? Obviously hitting one target with a Cyclone is a garbage return on your guts, with two still being pretty bad since I can get 8 damage out of a Chop for 5 guts. Once I get to 8 guts, we're probably later in the game. I hopefully KO'd a monster already, and if I didn't I'm probably losing anyway. I'm also noticing that the computers are wising up to the Step and Back Flip game and targeting Golem earlier if they don't think they can actually take out Tiger or Pixie, so he might not even be around to use Cyclone. It's definitely an upgrade over Quake, but I don't think it makes sense for the deck as a whole. I'm aiming to have Kick and maybe a single Chop as the high-end of my deck.
That's my thought process, anyway. I played this game a lot as a kid, but this is the first time I'm playing it after getting into MtG, which is definitely changing how I think about the game. I do think there's a lot of different ways you can play Monster Rancher and still have a powerful deck, though, which leads to situations where some cards are great when they wouldn't be otherwise. I'm really liking the feedback, since it's getting me to think about the game in a new light. Keep it up!