…Or is that ‘Cards Drawing Cards’?

Anyways, in a recent installment, we talked about 1- and 2-rune cards, but forestalled the conversation about cards drawing cards. Here is the list:

Void:
Spike Vixen (2 runes/1 honour, gain 1 power & draw one card)
Arbiter of the precipice (4 runes/1 honour, draw two cards and banish one of them)

Enlightened:
Arha Initiate (1 rune/1 honour, draw one card)
Temple Librarian (2 runes/1 honour, discard one card, draw two)
Ascetic of the Lidless Eye (5 runes/2 honour, draw two cards)
Master Dhartha (7 runes/3 honour, draw three cards)

Mechana:
Kor the Ferromancer (3 runes/2 honour, two power, draw one card if you control two constructs)

Lifebound:
Wolf Shaman (3 runes/1 honour, draw one card, gain one rune)
Flytrap Witch (5 runes/2 honour, draw one card, gain 2 honour)

There are a number of things you can see from this list. First, enlightened really likes drawing cards, it’s kind of its thing. Let’s reorder the cards to show some other patterns. I’m going to put them in ascending rune cost order, secondary sort by descending honour order, with the idea that a 3rune/1honour card is considered more powerful than a 3rune/2honour card, and you are being compensated at the end of the game with the extra honour point:

Arha Initiate (1 rune/1 honour, draw one card)
Spike Vixen (2 runes/1 honour, gain 1 power & draw one card)
Temple Librarian (2 runes/1 honour, discard one card, draw two)
Kor the Ferromancer (3 runes/2 honour, two power, draw one card if you control two constructs)
Wolf Shaman (3 runes/1 honour, draw one card, gain one rune)
Arbiter of the precipice (4 runes/1 honour, draw two cards and banish one of them)
Ascetic of the Lidless Eye (5 runes/2 honour, draw two cards)
Flytrap Witch (5 runes/2 honour, draw one card, gain 2 honour)
Master Dhartha (7 runes/3 honour, draw three cards)

Starting with the Arha Initiate, it costs 1 rune to add ‘one free honour’ to your deck. Interestingly, Spike Vixen (+1P,+1C) and Wolf Shaman (+1R,+1C) are parallel to and similar to Heavy Infantry (+2P) and Mystic (+2R). One would expect them to be strictly more powerful, due to their relative rarity (as you can always purchase a Heavy Infantry or Mystic). Also, the next card you draw is at minimum an apprentice or militia, so you will get a minimum of +1 something with your card drawn, likely more, especially in the end game.

Temple Librarian and Arbiter of the Precipice deal with the issue of unwanted cards in your hand in slightly different ways. Each of them is overall card neutral (+2 cards, discard or banish one). It is telling that the act of banishing a card over discarding one is worth two runes in card cost, even more, as the Arbiter only gives your one honour rather than the normal two for a four-rune card in the end game. But as our previous simulations suggest, the banishing is totally worth it.

Kor the Ferromancer is a tricky card to get a bead on. At +2P,+0.5C for 3R/2H, it’s considered slightly more powerful than +1P,+1C for 2R/1H. I find this a bit surprising, as you would think the card drawing would be more important. In gameplay, it turns out that +2P is much more powerful[1] than +1P, and you end up drawing the card much more often in later gameplay, making the card worth more when it counts.

The last three cards are the most costly of the card drawing cards in the basic Ascension set. Master Dhartha (+3C for 7R/3H) is considered the most powerful card in the set[2], and it should be[3], as it gives you two extra cards, or a 40% stronger hand. Interestingly, it’s 1R/1H for +1C, 5R/2H for +2C and 7R/3H for +3C, suggesting that it’s either much easier to get 5 Runes than 7 Runes (which it is), or that +2C is that much more useful than +1C than +3C is to +2C.

Comparing Flytrap Witch (+2H/+1C) to Ascetic of the Lidless Eye (+2C), both costing 5R/2H shows how powerful card drawing is perceived to be, that drawing an additional card is worth two honour! If you have multiple card-drawing cards in your deck (as I generally do), this can easily be the case. If the card you draw is a heavy infantry, +2P can easily be worth +2H, and the cards scale up from there.

As always, thanks for reading, comment if you want specific parts of this game (or others) analyzed!

[1]Ha!
[2]Except for possibly Hedron Cannon (+1P/turn for each Mechana Construct, for 8R/8H)
[3]Except possibly for an early ‘The All Seeing Eye’ (+1C/turn for 6R/2H), which we removed from our games for being too unbalanced.