Tuesday, September 29, 2009

CE alien survey #28: CHOSEN

First appearance: Mayfair base set.

Plain-English power: Draw three cards after Reveal; if any are Encounter cards, one may replace/add to the card you played.

Loved by: Slot machine enthusiasts; fans of the movie "Maverick"; top-decking SOBs.

Loathed by: People who play straightforward; unlucky saps.

Three ways to win as Chosen:
  • There are 15 Negotiates and 39 Attack Cards. Why get stuck with playing a low Attack? Go ahead and toss it out, and pray for a Negotiate; be sure to give thanks to Chosen's Higher Power for what ye are about to receive.
  • If the average value of Attack cards is 10.5, then the average value of any two random Attack cards is 21. That's the kind of advantage you have going into most encounters!
  • Any cards you draw when you "pray" are discarded. Note what they are. If you get rid of high Attacks, then that's one more Attack that can't be played strongly against your additive power. In some cases, using your power just to burn through the draw deck faster can get good cards back into rotation quicker, or make sure they aren't drawn for a while.
Three ways to win against Chosen:
  • Ionic Gas. Why? Because it's likely if Chosen fails to beat you mathematically, he'll turn up a Negotiate with his power and settle for draining your hand.
  • When playing against Chosen, ensuring you're at least 11 points ahead before the three cards are drawn makes the random draw a bit less in Chosen's favor (see #2 above).
  • Clumsily hand a mirror to the Chosen player before the game gets going, or make him walk under a ladder. Barring that, make sure the Chosen player's not much of a churchgoer.
At CE Online? No, but wouldn't be terribly difficult to code. It could easily be displayed as the "Slot Machine Of The Gods", complete with Vegas sound effects! [editorial intrusion: then someone code the damn thing!]

— Submitted by Zach Gaskins

21 comments:

The Warp said...

Thank God Chosen was edited from its original version in the Mayfair set. It always sounded like a good power then, but in practice almost never made a difference. I didn't like it so much I had 2 different revisions of it made- the FFG is an even more powerful version of one of them. Booyah!

Unknown said...

I like the change to Chosen as well, but then it makes Deuce obsolete for future expansions.

Rob Burns said...

The original Chosen definitely had to be revised; as Mayfair had it, it was close to being a non-power. This new Chosen is pretty strong, and perhaps overly so - where is it's Achilles' heel?

Big Head Zach said...

Here's a few ideas:
* Obviously, the heavy hitters (Virus, Warrior, Tripler, Warpish) and win-clause-changers (Anti-Matter, Pacifist) have natural buffs that will typically outdistance Chosen's random bouts of good luck, or make his power relatively useless.

* Amoeba can try to ooze to compensate for any perceived disadvantage but leaves him defenseless at home.

* Loser *would* normally be powerful here, but Chosen merely has to replace his card with a Negotiate to win.

* If it's about going up against multiple Encounter cards, then Fodder and Reserve have some utility and flexibility in their tactics.

* Vulch, surprisingly, benefits from Chosen using his power - as long as Chosen does not have his Flare, any Artifacts that are turned up are collected by Vulch after the encounter ends. If Chosen gets picked by Destiny several times in a row, Vulch could end up with a plethora of useful cards at one time.

There are a handful of possibilities with certain Wild Flares, but that's more the luck of the draw than anything else, and we're discussing sound tactics or powers that have something of an advantage or equalizing effect.

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