I probably should have added that I play on Standard difficulty, and I expect that most new players don't go above Standard either. On Hard or Expert, it's possibly that skill cards are more useful, but I can't speak to any authority there other than I know that decks are generally built to not take as many skill tests at all.
Me nodding along with the "don't run too many skills" sentiment. Also me playing my 17 skill winifred deck :D Great video haha, super helpful for newer players, I'll definitely share this when I introduce someone to the game
My first few decks as a newbie player were rough 😅 I wanted to play one of every cool card I came across, and I had no plans for making sure I could actually play them or use them effectively.
@@Quick_Learner If it wasn't for all the dang "rules" in this game, I could play the relic-hunting, monster-slaying, token-sealing, clue-finding Ursula I've always dreamed of.
Love me some deck building. Still trying to figure out how to do the 'resource curve' in Arkham, as compared to other tcgs or lcgs such as Netrunner which I came from.
My experience (as a one- and two-handed player) with the balance of assets, events, and skills has been the opposite. As a new player, I was stuffing in far too many assets after being told (correctly) how powerful assets are. This lead to a serious dearth of skill boosts and consequently failing tests too often; sure, Yorick was reliably beating up monsters with his combat boosted by Beat Cop, but he was disadvantaged in scenarios with, for example, many willpower treacheries and few enemies. Eventually I played a solo Pete deck that basically required many skill cards -- and, somewhat unexpectedly at the time, won Dunwich! It taught me that assets require actions to play, they require sufficient economy to play (so even more precious deck slots), and they are susceptible to treacheries like Crypt Chill (which one is in a worse position to succeed on with too few skill cards). I think the popular wisdom for new players that one should strike a roughly 10/10/10 balance is effective in drawing their attention to the fact that skill cards, while generally not flashy or long-lasting, serve an important purpose in winning the game and should not be overlooked. Once this is internalized, adding or subtracting skill cards in favor of assets or events is done more accurately and purposefully.
Interesting. Of course, it definitely depends on your cardpool, playercount, and who else is on the team, but Yorick running too many assets is bit of a surprise since his own ability gives him the ability to play one with no action. The Guardian and Survivor card pools provide plenty of alternatives to passing tests. Who else was on the team? If it was solo, I agree that skill cards go up in value; I stated this in the video, but otherwise they have relatively low value. Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting zero skill cards -- my last Yorick deck had 8!
If it didn't work, it had probably more to do with a bad balance of the chosen assets than the lack of skill cards itself. If you just have a ton of assets that all do the same thing, then of course you are not going to have a good experience. If you look at the investigator starter decks at level 0 you'll notice that all of them have an extremely low amount of skill cards, the one who got the most is Winifred with a mere 6 despite her ability having skill card synergy. Some even have only 2 skill cards in the whole deck. As for the balance between assets and events, with the exception of Nathaniel everyone else has decidedly more assets than events with Harvey having 18. And yet those decks work perfectly and they are far above anything that you could build with the Core (even a revised one). They work because there's a very careful balance in what the various cards do. For example the major problems in not including the Core basic skill cards is that you end up not having enough card draw power. But the investigator starter decks compensate to that with assets like Lucky Cigarette Case or Rabbit foot (which works particularly well for Stella).
Netdecking has lead me to a lot of problems facing campaigns. Now I just build the best level 0 deck taking in consideration what the campaign needs and I buy the EXP cards I think I need to excel better in future scenarios or covering the lacking aspects of the team so far. The latter scenarios always buy a janky 5 EXP cool and shiny event I probably will play once like Seal of the Elders and moving on. Netdecking isn't even useful playing standalone scenarios because they require things, unless you play The Blob so you just want to have fun.
Very nice list with a lot of important points. I think difficulty is a very important point aswell. You can't play Diana Stanley with Machete on high difficulty because your value is too low to kill a rat but on standard it might work out.
