"Fair Hand" mechanic removed?

[msgameandcake]

For the duration of playing the game, the game had a "Fair Hand" mechanic where the game would ensure your starting hand would always have a 1-blood or 0-cost card that could be sacrificed, alongside your guaranteed squirrel. A number of strategies to beat the toughest challenges in the game revolved around this strategy, typically involving having only one card of that cost to guarantee its appearance, and then buffing it to instant-winning power levels.

However, for several runs now, almost in a row, I've had starting hands that consisted of the guaranteed squirrel and then a bunch of 2 and 3-blood cards that I couldn't play. This factor, on top of being put up against one of the most infamous fights in the game (Turkey Vulture + Mole) meant that the fight was a guaranteed loss without item usage, and once items ran out (this happened two fights in a row) guaranteed loss outright.

The biggest point of confusion to me is that I'm not even doing a strategy that involves only having a single 0-cost or 1-blood card. I've been using the 0-cost deck. As such, I've had somewhere around 3-5 cards that would qualify for the Fair Hand mechanic to kick in and ensure at least ONE of them would be in my starting hand. I could see Fair Hand being disabled if you've only got one card that qualifies as a means of nerfing that specific strategy, but when I have several in my deck? My only reasonable explanation is that Fair Hand has either been removed outright or drastically nerfed in some way. Or maybe its some kind of glitch in the system.

[drae_perin]

No.

Fair Hand exists and people use it all the time to scum their way through the game.

[msgameandcake]

Originally posted by drae_perin:

No.

Fair Hand exists and people use it all the time to scum their way through the game.

Yeah so I tried out the classic Mantis God strategy, making it my only 1-blood card, and it did show up consistently, indicating that Fair Hand still exists, but that just makes my experience of it not kicking in when I had several cards that qualified all the more confusing.

Maybe skull selection had some kind of impact? When I did the Mantis God run I did so without any skulls active. However, during my No-cost runs where Fair Hand failed to activate, I was running the game with both Difficulty Increase skulls and the All Totems and Boss Totems skulls active. Essentially, I had every skull that increased Leshy's capabilities other than Final Boss without any skulls that decreased my own capabilities, resulting in a difficulty rating of 65.

[drae_perin]

The Fair Hand mechanic doesn't work the way that you think it works.

Challenges in Kaycee's mod do not affect Fair Hand.

First you draw a squirrel and two cards. If both of those cards cost two or three to play the algorithm does nothing to help you play either of those cards. Fair Hand will try to get you a one cost card, but if you don't have one you get a random draw.

More specifically, there is no check to give you a free card as your fourth card.

0 cost cards are only used in the event that you draw one naturally as one of the 2 cards you always draw. If you get a Free card and a two cost card the game will count the two cost card as "fair" and you will draw a random card.

If the cards were squirrel, free, and three cost, the game would try to give you a one or two cost card.

To reiterate; Fair Hand will not guarantee you a free card to play under any circumstances, it will only help you to get cards that have a cost, that you are able to play based on the 3 cards you draw first. To get free cards in your hand is entirely a matter of RNG.

The Free Deck and the Egg Deck are two of the hardest decks to build around for this reason.

[Slicer [OSL)]

Originally posted by drae_perin:

Challenges in Kaycee's mod do not affect Fair Hand.

Yes its a Myth.
There are situations where you have 15 cards in your deck with excellent combos and in 1 round you get 2 fur cards and 2 bone cards on your hand just 4 fun vs a doublestrike vulture : s
If you dont have a rescue item at hand you are just doomed