Can someone explain Verbal Duels?

[Ygdrad]

So I have absolutely no clue how verbal duels work, did some searching and didn't find any useful info.

I can figure out there's a 3x3 grid, you get random verbal cards/moves drafted and you have to pick one. There's synergies and ways things interact on that 3x3 grid but I have no idea what decides where the move you pick goes or really how the score or much of anything else works.

[WarHøg]

no one does. Its mostly random BS.

What Ive gathered so far: The opponent has its own game going on, nothing you do counters him, you just need to make more numbers than him every round and keep it steady.

You start with a set of random cards already in place, then you choose one to add to it each round. Each card has base damage and some have abilities that trigger depending on where they land on the board, which is random.

Like, a blue one that erases white ones next to it, adding a multiplier of some sort to your total damage. The ones erased that round wont show up again on the board.

You have to keep playing and figuring it out, I recommend finding someone who is level 1 or two, they are easy to beat. you can challenge them over and over again maybe wait a day each 3 duels with same person

[ManlySalmon]

It is a lot of randomness, but skills let you delete cards from your deck and get more of them to choose when you get new ones an even reroll. Also ye achievments outside of the verbal dueling unlock new cards too, for example having a lot of grudges. Some cards together transform into other different cards. In the end try to build a combo that gives a lot of points basically

[VoiD]

tl;dr cards have different classes and effects.

The translations of most of those effects is quite horrible, so it takes a lot of guessing to figure out what most of the advanced cards do.

So every round you'll see a 3x3 grid, all the cards in your decks are randomly thrown in there, each card has an eloquence value, your score is the sum of all of those values, plus the sum of all the values added by their effects (IE: Some cards can delete adjacent cards for 2+ eloquence each) and every time a card triggers a skill in that round you also get an additional +10% eloquence modifier, so if you trigger 5 effects in a round that round gets +50%

There are several strategies you can use, but most of them come at higher levels, and some cards evolve into better cards with better effects once you learn certain kung fu skills.

Here are some examples of simple strategies I found to work:

1 - Get every WItty Barrage you can get, as it triggers it's skill if it's adjacent to other Kind (blue cards), seeing as witty barrage is also a blue card they can trigger off themselves, use other random blue cards whenever you can't get another witty barrage just to fill in the gaps between rounds.

2 - Make a weird spam build with Beating around the bush, once it's placed on one of the 4 corners of the board Beating around the bush can permanently buff an adjacent card's eloquence value, so if you spam Beating Around the Bush with any other card, like Nonsense, you could end up reaching a point where each nonsense card has like 15 eloquence base, this one works, but it takes some luck and a lot of time to build up, better for long discussions you plan on engaging for multiple rounds.

3 - Try to evolve Bash Ignorance, it needs 4 cards to trigger the evolution where you sacrifice all 4 for a powerful 20 eloquence card, so keep taking these when they show up, the problem is that all of them can also generate nonsense, which is usually a very bad 1 eloquence card, so you might want to add some cards like perseverance to keep deleting the nonsense from your deck as you do it, this often requires a balancing act as too many perseverance won't have much to delete, so they won't trigger skills to give you % bonuses each match, so you might need to add some White Horse aint a Horse to delete the excess perseverance cards at some point, while watching how much nonsense Bash Ignorance is producing to see if you'll neeed to start taking more perseverance again.

There are certainly more advanced strategies involving combos and card crafting which I don't fully grasp yet, but the system is fairly interesting once you start understanding what's going on.

PS: You can't see your opponent's board, but you can see the arguments he's throwing at you each round, so if you have quick eyes you can kinda see what kind of build he's using.

Skipping turns is often a good idea too if your options aren't going to help your strategy and your board is already full anyway, there's no point in adding more cards just to make your arguments more random and luck reliant if they have skills you know you can't use in that match.

The game's a lot less random when you place 9 cards in the board every turn and you keep the number of cards in your deck a bit over 9 as well, then the only randomness involved is in the positioning of certain cards.

[Sinister Sage]

Some people above me have good specific strategies or observations, but I think I've done it enough now that I understand how it works and the general strategy for doing it well.

Basically it's a mini-roguelike deckbuilder if that makes sense to you. Either way, I'll explain what I mean starting from the top. Keep in mind it clicks pretty fast as you do it after you get an explanation. tl;dr at the end.

Basics:
You start with a random deck of arguments. Every round you add one or no arguments to your deck. Every argument has a base eloquence, some have a triggerable effect to add more eloquence or do other things. After you select an argument, a random set of arguments from your deck is placed in a random order on a 3x3 grid.

From there each argument will add its base eloquence value, then add eloquence from triggered argument effects, then multiply your total eloquence by the amount of effects triggered. If a card has two effects triggered it'll increase the multiplier twice.

You win when the difference between yours and your opponents eloquence is higher than their spirit.

Strategy:
That sounds complicated, but it makes sense after doing it a few times and paying attention. Here's the general strategy for doing it well.

First determine a set of 9 cards that consistently score high eloquence. This is your power combo. Your goal is to have only those 9 cards in your deck so that you draw only that powerful set of cards every round.

If you have 9 good cards and 18 mediocre ones then a random draw will be 2/3rds mediocre cards. It's vital to remove the weaker arguments as you acquire stronger ones.

However if you're skipping every turn looking for the perfect cards you'll probably lose before you get to your power combo. So you need to add weaker cards early to survive, then replace them as you find your stronger cards.


Examples:
The most basic power combo I know is 9 persuasions. They have base eloquence 1, adding 2 for every adjacent kind argument. Persuasion is a kind argument so they trigger each other. If you have only 9 persuasions you'll score about 110 every round with no variance.

9 Witty Barrage is another power combo the above poster mentioned. It's stronger than the persuasion combo.

The most powerful combo I know is 9 Tactful Guidance. It's more complicated than the others, but 9 of them score about 1200 eloquence every round with no variance.


tl;dr the general strategy for success is this.
A power combo is a set of 9 arguments you know can score high
1. Search for the arguments to form your power combo.
2. Add arguments as necessary to survive long enough to find your power combo
3. Use removals to remove weaker arguments as you find your strong arguments.
4. Once you have your power combo skip until you win or lose.

I could go into specifics on how to do each step well, but keeping those four priorities in mind is a good start. However complicated it sounds it makes sense as you play it.

[Codex79]

Like everyone else is basically saying, find 1-3 actually useful cards and spam those. The first duel in a set is the hardest. If you beat that one you can snowball to the 100% vigor damage ridiculously easily.

I spam Spot-On and Nonsense with Witty-Barrage if I can fit it in there. Spot-On buffs itself every time there is a White/Neutral card next to it and crits if It lands in the middle of the grid. Witty-Barrage occasionally creates free Neutral cards that themselves will occasionally grant free re-rolls.

[Ferrous]

It's less random than what people are suggesting, the skill here is 1)to know when to mulligan, 2)know when to remove cards from your deck, and 3) know when to fullsend.

Though you would need to grind for the relevant skills and good cards as well. Unless you are up against unskilled debaters.

Pure Tactful Guidance is definitely a winning combo that you can get relatively early, since you start with the component cards already, all you need to do is to unlock the "card recipe", which I believe is done by raising someone's opinion of you via verbal duels by... 500? something like that.

[Loonessia]

Spot on is singlehandedly the most busted card in the game. Once you get one on the board, spam a bunch of "Nonsense cards" buff the living hell out of Spot on, then you can start spamming Spot On cards which EACH copy the base amount of the original card. I swear to god I dealt 235 damage in one turn
What I've learned: Just like in early game with kung-fu, you don't want to go against the boys. Try picking the farmer that you started out with, who might be a level 2.
This game is not about "You vs them on the same board and your goal is to take out their cards and keep yours" No. Your board is your board, and their board is their board, and there's nothing you can do to sabotage them.
You CANNOT see your enemy's board and he cannot see yours. your DECK is what solely determines your board. It's a 3x3 grid in which your cards in your deck are RANDOMLY placed in the grid. That's why it's important to have little over 9 cards in your deck, because you're just playing with the Number God after that.
The goal is to score as many points as possible. The ones that delete cards then give you 2 eloquence? ♥♥♥♥ those, unles your whole purpose for them is to clean your deck. your opponent will be very quickly scoring 70's especially if they're level 4. Your goal is to stack cards that both synergize with each other and give you battle-permanent bonuses to your eloquence gain, and pray to RNJesus that the cards land where you want them to go each round.

[Dvatrij]

Whoa that's a lot of text. Ok, short and dumb but working strategy.
1) Kill the lover or family member of who you want to verbal duel.
He/She got only 10 spirit left, so easier to win. (Instead of up to 400 lol)

2) Select all the blue dudes cards you see
!!Suitable for Combo ones
(Which combines to ANYTHING, but you need them appear at once)
If no: Blue dudes With more points. Better "good" (blue) than "evil" (red)

3) when your deck hit 9 - remove all trash cards (see left bottom of the screen)

4) rinse and repeat.