Usability of Heart Aspect Followers.

[Dak]

Something about one of the Follower Types annoys me a little.

So, Heart Aspect Followers are able to "Charm" the public and fix your reputation, which is incredibly useful in preventing Hunters from obtaining any Notoriety and creating evidence. However, maybe I'm using them wrong, but this ability of theirs is not as useful as I first thought. Mainly due to a few reasons.

1. The First Reason being that, in a situation where you suddenly get Notoriety, your instinct would be to send your Heart Follower to charm the public and get rid of that Notoriety ASAP, before the Hunter can use it. The problem however is that, whenever I try to do this, the Hunter seemingly always, "conveniently," begins their investigation right after I send my Heart Follower to do their job.

Because the startup time before an investigation takes only 10 seconds, while waiting for your Heart Follower to begin their charming is 60 seconds (usually it reaches around 30 seconds by the time the investigation starts), the investigation magnet will always steal the Notoriety before your Heart Follower has a chance to get it first. This has happened multiple times in the Hunter's favor. Perhaps I'm just unlucky.

2. The Second Reason is that, even if your Heart Follower manages to finish their timer first, if you happen to have Mystique, especially if you have a LOT of it, the Heart Follower will often go after the Mystique instead of the much more important and dangerous Notoriety card.

Perhaps I am just using Heart Followers wrong, or I am just terribly unlucky, but I feel like something about this doesn't seem right, and that it ruins, or at least severely hampers, the usability of the Heart Followers most important use, and that maybe something could be done to make them more viable. How, I'm not entirely sure. Though maybe making it so that Heart Followers only target/ prioritize Notoriety over Mystique, since Mystique is far less dangerous.

[Maina]

For number one, I think you're just unlucky. It isn't something I've seen happen with any regularity. There is nothing in the game files to call Season of Suspicion when using Charm. You can look at your Time Passing verb to see what Season is coming up next. That might help you with your timing.

For number two, this is one of the many downsides of painting for money, and one of the reasons I don't recommend it to new players no matter how often other people call painting "OP." There aren't many other ways to flood your board with Mystique like that.

Also, it doesn't always take Mystique first. It just takes a random Reputation card off the board. If you have more Mystique than Noteriety, then it will have a higher chance to take Mystique. If you have more Noteriety than Mystique, it will have a higher chance of taking Noteriety. You could use painting in this case to reduce the number of Mystique on the board, though this isn't sustainable since it will just create even more in the end.

[Zeks]

They are somewhat limited in what they can do, mostly because detective can even steal notoriety being worked on by your follower.

You mosty know when notoriety is likely to appear on the board though so you can time it so that your heart follower is already displaying the magnet when it appears.

[vokiel]

I don't think you're using them wrong. This is an obvious balance issue. I have Heart followers who are always likely to succeed in their operation fail miserably very often.

One way to focus their attention when you use them is never have Mystique cards at the same time as Notoriety cards on the table. Accumulate Mystique cards on the table and wait for the investigation to drain them all out and close. After this pop whatever Notoriety you need. Obviously watch the timer on your expenses carefully when doing this because I had Investigation just pop back immediately in a couple of occasions.

[Tower]

I dunno, if I'm using Glover and Glover for funds and therefore not accruing mystique, I find heart exalts solve detectives for that game, as long as you time them right as mentioned above. I could see how a string of bad luck might be worrying, but as the strategy doesn't leave a lot of notoriety floating about it leaves a lot of time for damage control if things happen to advance to damning evidence, though they don't tend to get there in my games.

[Лесное хозяйство]

dont spam drawing pictures and u will not have lot mystique. gift tools to your followers to icrease their aspect. for heart minion need tool with heart. money should be earned thorugh working in glover on top position

[vindicar]

Well, I noticed that season of suspicion comes up a lot to coincide with the end of an expedition.
But optimal solution is to have 2-3 Mystique on the table. It's enough to keep the Hunter busy (just hold Notoriety in your cursor as the Hunter is about to grab another card) - but you can pull it into painting for your follower to grab Notoriety.

[Zeks]

Originally posted by vindicar:

(just hold Notoriety in your cursor as the Hunter is about to grab another card)

Wait what? He can't grab notoriety under the cursor?

[vindicar]

Originally posted by Zeks:

Originally posted by vindicar:

(just hold Notoriety in your cursor as the Hunter is about to grab another card)

Wait what? He can't grab notoriety under the cursor?

Card/stack that is held by the cursor cannot be grabbed by greedy Verbs.
Of course, you can only hold one card like that... so I don't think it's that bad of an exploit.