Impossible combat starts

[Grigard]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2691439870

So yeah that's fun. This is how the prison boss started for me this run. Surrounded by wall, 2 shield enemies and an auto attacker. No Slip cards or shove. Run ended before I even started fighting back.

Don't spawn the player fully surrounded, pretty please?

[schattencalu]

You still have 9 health after this turn. It's not over yet.

Don't take "Step" cards. If for some reason you end up with one, get rid of it as quickly as possible.

[Torias]

"quick block" and "quick strike" would also be high priority to remove...

I find that removing a card every gym visit is top priority.
then, upgrading cards that reduce cost or increase their draw.

"skip card reward" is also the default choice, unless you are sure one of the offered cards is a great addition.

[Grigard]

Unfortunately the second turn yielded similar results. The step card was in the starting deck. Yes, skipping cards is a good idea. Thank you for the advice anyway. I love deckbuilder games but this particular situation just seemed incredibly unfair.

Even more unfair than Mr 'Gunman with free moves when you move' in the final fight. I'd argue he's more dangerous than the final boss himself. But by then you will hopefully have a deck with enough trickery to get by.

[Zephyr]

Your step card is upgraded. This is a big no-no. Step is the absolute prime candidate for removal in any deck containing one, except MAYBE if you play on purist. Every single movement card is better than step. Even dash isn't good in a world where option play exists, and most people will probably argue option play isn't even a good choice. You have a bunch of good movement cards which allows you two moves if you don't use their effect. Therefore, step or dash, which only give you 1 or 2 moves respectively are bad by virtue of offering nothing else.

I don't specially have a bias toward quick block, they are cheap card which don't do much but can still help pad an other block if need be, but I can understand that they are cards that can in some cases bloat your hand. Quick strike is not fancy but it gets the job done while you wait for better offensive option, so having it in the second act is acceptable in my opinion.

A bunch of starting decks suffer from the syndrome of being relatively poorly made, by design or not, which is why so many people say the first thing you usually do in gyms is trimming them of all the bad to leave the decent and good. I would say the trickster deck is the worst offender in that aspect, but a case could be made for slasher and counter in that regard.

As you said yourself, the important thing to do along your run is to put in your deck all the tricks you will need to deal with the situations you will meet and which can put you in peril. In that particular example, this is why you want cards such as slip or shift movement wise, or maybe even vault. Failing that, shove, throw, tackle, roll tackle(grapple wouldn't have helped here but is good otherwise). Shields don't protect from throws. Relocations for you, the enemies, throws and stuns are in my opinion the 4 great tools any deck should have. The rest is pretty much your offence and utililty.

[fri_freeman]

An important thing is to note is, even for the best player and deck, sometimes damage is unavoidable. That's why you always want to avoid unnecessary damage in the first place, so when you have to take unavoidable damage, you will survive to take another, hopefully better turn (hopefully you'll have shift in your next hand).

[Plumber]

this is where Rising Knee, Back Slam, and the movement throws are good, also get Step out of your deck ASAP even if you’re playing on Purist, since as many cases as you’d like to have a Step card lying around, you’d set yourself up for more trouble by not drawing a better card that does more than move you a single tile while triggering autoattacks and aggressive movement and not even having the courtesy of being free until upgraded. Slip does literally everything better, then there’s Shift, Vault, and Shimmy all good in their own respects

that being said, keep an eye out for the card Root Down - it’s not very high block, but it’s a permanently retained block card which helps to mitigate bad situations like this. Maybe not turn starts, but random enemy spawn locations and inconvenient configurations later, especially in the mafia stage.

also Trickster definitely has some of the worst cards in the game, but also some of the best too - wall kick, ponder, slip, back slam; it’s just the most in need of trimming of any other deck. Aggressive is hands down the best deck for the better designed difficulties, but I’ve had the most success by far on Special Agent and Purist with Trickster.

[Twelvefield]

Originally posted by fri_freeman:

An important thing is to note is, even for the best player and deck, sometimes damage is unavoidable. That's why you always want to avoid unnecessary damage in the first place, so when you have to take unavoidable damage, you will survive to take another, hopefully better turn (hopefully you'll have shift in your next hand).

At least OP is going in with full health. There have been other threads where people are complaining of this and Agent XI's health is so low their limbs are attached by frayed threads.

There are "smart" movement cards and "stupid" movement cards. Smart ones basically allow you to do more than one thing in an action, while stupid ones only do the one thing, Step being elected as Emperor For Life of the United Republic of Stupidistan.

The only smart(ish) movement cards I do not like are ones that are conditional. I think Shimmy is one of them, there are a couple others: you must move at least one square before you get the second effect. If you can't move, then you don't get the second effect and that card is a brick.

[Zephyr]

Wall kick is way too situational to be used with ease and require luck with your positionning. It's a card that I will get rid off fast after some worst offender.
Ponder is not as good as recall, and you will get in situation where you WILL have to sacrifice a good card for a gamble of getting 2 or 3 which may not even be as good. The only reason to use ponder is because it comes with the deck itself, and it sits in a spot where upgrading it is more efficient money for value than getting rid of it.
Back Slam suffers from a huge drawback which is that compared to damage push cards, any enemy who is immune to push will completely prevents you from even using the back slam. Also it's a 2 cost. A frontkick is 1, and if you can't push the enemy, you can still hit him for a good chuck of damage, and frontkick also has 1-2 range. 2 frontkicks do better damage and as much pushing, although not in the same direction obviously. A shove is free. A grapple is free. A push is free. A throw is free. A tackle is a throw so bypasses pushing limitations, and costs 1. You could argue it's a swap combined with a frontkick that does more damage. But a swap gives you 1 combo on use and is a movement card. On anything that is vulnerable to it, sure, it's a decent card, but then you face bosses or others unpushable enemies, and you have a tool you absolutely can't use.
Those are 3 cards which, under certain circumstances, can royally screw you over. It doesn't help that the wall kick will remain in your hand, bloating it until you can get rid of it(although I guess you can use it as ponder fodder but if you go that way, better have an actual useful card for that).

Also Trickster doesn't even have pocket sand and stun dart. For shame Trickster, for shame.

[Plumber]

it’s a permanent retain card so even if you don’t have an immediate use for it it will only hamper you for the single turn you have it (it doesn’t reduce your future draw count at all, even when the deck is reshuffled) and otherwise gives you a sacrificial card for Ponder which normally eats one unless it’s the final card; Back Slam sets it up very handily and so do Slip/Grapple/Pull/Frontkick/Jumping Back Kick (and so on…) which are all very good cards in their own respect. It’s a minimally harmful and always powerful card that ensures you have a delete button for very high HP enemies or a convenient way to finish off enemies just out of range. Keep in mind heavy (throw-immune) enemies, including the Ambassador, count as “walls.”

yeah Ponder isn’t as good as the strongest card in the entire game, that’s true, but it’s still one of the best since it allows for meatier turns and significantly reduces the chances that you’ll get whammied with zero useful cards. It prevents your bad cards from harming your hands in the endgame since it uses them as ammo instead, and turns almost-good hands into huge combos and buff pileups.

Back Slam and Rising Knee do fail against push-immune enemies, but there are only three in the entire game, all of them at the very end. If I get both of them, I will get rid of Rising Knee at the very last gym, sure, but Back Slam is much safer and ultimately helps a lot more against the sonic ninja, infantryman, and baton grunt since it displaces/turns enemies on top of moving you. See above on wallkick, but special mention to Stun Dart which also benefits a lot from this move on top of already being one of the best cards

There are throw-immune enemies interspersed through the game, while push-immune are backloaded. All of the fatties in each stage are throw-immune, then there’s Paramilitary in the final stage. You’re right that throws are very strong and they cover for other situational cards. My winning deck for Purist had shoulder/roll throw. I don’t like Tackle as much as Shoulder because it still leaves you surrounded and fails in situations without the space for it, but while Roll has the same issue, putting you behind the enemy without needing another movement card is extremely strong so it makes up for it. Remember that enemies try not to end their turn on other downed enemies.

[El Dandy]

Never upgrade Step, always remove it ASAP.

[Twelvefield]

Step+ is wearing a shirt that says "Kill Me Now, Please Ask Me How". I suppose you could pick it up already upgraded, but spending hard-earned currency on it is a tragic waste.

Ponder is interesting. It is among a few gambling cards: my favourite are Improvisation+ and Deft+. Ponder does allow you to keep a somewhat larger deck, since it's a card that cycles the deck, and it also enables cards that give you stuff for discards. It's a risk-reward playstyle.

[Plumber]

ponder makes your small deck faster and your big deck less prone to bloat, yeah, it's really strong. used it in my purist specialist run to great effect

also it costs a whopping 50$ to upgrade soooo

[Air Master Burst]

Ponder is great because once you have enough momentum to play out your entire hand it just becomes free card draw.