ben

I'm back! And here to talk about Wild Cards again! Underdogs win, 3 to 7!

Four games in, I'm ready to conclude with reasonable confidence: Wild Cards is fun!! The game does something really, really cool, that is relatively rare in other card games I've played. There definitely is a way that the game rewards a kind of "skill", reading the game situation, choosing which cards to play and which to discard and when, how to spend your resources, etc. But, once or twice every inning comes a moment when you're all out of tricks - both teams are out of vibes, your specials have triggered, all that's left is the dice. It's so tense! But also (and this is part of the rarity), it has never felt "bad" to get there. Sure, maybe I could have saved some vibe tokens, or perhaps in retrospect the other special in my hand would have been more impactful - but usually, the feeling is one of dread but also hope. Maybe this time, the dice will be in my favor. Maybe this time, we can hit a single. Or maybe I played it right - and even though we're both stuck with no vibes, their pitcher's been hit by a bad peanut, I loaded up my stats with some good weather and good luck, and all that's left to do is swing for the fences. The rest of the post is me talking about specific changes to the deck, and specific moments that came out of those changes in this game - read on if you're interested!

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We just have to fix the mints' offense

The Underdogs have won both games since giving them a little tuning. I don't know if they've flipped prepositions, but the edits were pretty far-reaching. Whereas my beloved kcbm struggled for season after season to get consistent batting pressure, I think we've mostly done it for the underdogs. Here are the edits -

Outings

• Soulscream (draining all of someone's vibe is not bad! but it's usually not enough to swing things, especially with the All-Stars' interference, like Scorpler or Harrison.)
• Wyatt's Broadcast (this combo just is not worth it. s/o to my one commenter from last time who informs me that, per official rulings, this DOES have additional uses, but it remains niche in my opinion)
• Wyatt Mason (is just pointless without the broadcast. sorry wyatt)
• Comfort Glover (you've got a 3/6 chance of improving her stats! but a 2/6 chance of making her worse. there are better things to do with vibe than gamble that way)
• Tilman Henderson (again, vibe is too precious to the underdogs to spend it on stuff that doesn't matter. That includes disrupting your opponent's hand. especially not worth it to discard the pitcher's cards, since they'll just cycle their deck anyway.)
• Scratch Deleuze (converse of Tillman - if you're willing to throw cards away, you're not batting. And if you replaced Scratch, you could have two good cards instead.)
• Chorby Soul (I actually think this could be brutal, but so far in play it hasn't worked out well for me. High risk with the corresponding high reward, but so far I think it's just a better idea to have players that are just good.)

Innings

• Stadium Organist (the All-Stars seem to simply have higher vibe all around - this special is not great, but two additional vibe to spend goes some way towards addressing that deficit.)
• Experimental Vibedrain (the vibe-differential ceiling is lower on this than soulscream - but actually giving a player vibe has worked out to be more meaningful I think)
• Kelvin Drumsolo (a decent player with a way of accumulating vibe)
• Aldon Cashmoney (a decent player with a way of accumulating vibe)
• Nagomi Nava (a decent player and good batter who comes in with a vibe)
• Boyfriend Monreal (a good catcher with a way of accumulating vibe)
• Math Velazquez (a good pitcher with two vibe and a really powerful ability)
• Stephanie Winters (a passable batter who can weaken an opposing pitcher)

There's a trend, which perhaps you've noticed, in the players added! Every single player added has a way to generate vibes. Also, most of them are just good. Most of them are not great - Stephanie is not a great pitcher and is kind of a disastrous pick in the outfield, since her abilities are not optional, Nagomi is kind of lackluster and would synergize better with the All-Stars (although they don't really need additional batting talent), Kelvin is just kind of alright... But in general, simply having access to additional vibe to bump up your rolls and keep that pressure alive even after your team vibe has run low has proved to be valuable. That said, there were a few quirks in play!

Quirks in play

This particular game was batter-forward! Neither team struck out - both ends of the inning came to a close by running out of batters. The Underdogs started at bat, and scored a commanding 7 runs - but let's start with some areas for growth;

• As mentioned previously, Stephanie Winters is actively harmful to your own pitcher. Unfortunately, the second half of the inning started with only Steph and Liquid Plasma in my hand, which made for a very awkward start, and wound up giving the All-Stars two bases at bat. Could have been much worse, but still not great.
• Boyfriend and Aldon are both great vibe generators - but they don't work very well together. Boyfriend wants to catch, and since catchers flip last, she's too late to passively grab vibes off the other players. Aldon is a pretty clutch pitcher to have if the bases are loaded - but it's actually still really tough to turn that into outs! The All-Stars batters were strong enough that Aldon's decent scores (4's all around!) still mostly turned into balls. It was really hard to pressure any outs this way!
• Pitching in general remains weaker than I'd like. Fish Summer didn't manage to inflict any strikes; Alejandro Leaf can keep the hits to singles, but when the bases are full you'd really like to see a better pitcher!
• the All-Stars have two weathers, and they're both really, really good! The Underdogs' weather is kind of lackluster by comparison. The buff is good, but it's conditional on playing 4* players (or lower!), whereas the All-Stars' weathers work for everyone AND generate vibe - which might be slightly more fleeting, but also is just so flexible. If there were better weather in the boosters, it would be an auto-include for the Underdogs I think.
• In general, the Underdogs have some great reactions! But neither of the two replacement specials were incredible. One vibedrain got scorpler'd, and the organist's vibes got spent on two rerolls, one right after the other, but wound up not altering the original roll by 1. That's the dice for you, but it's indicative of the limits I think.
• A bad peanut came in against Ayanna Dumpington but it wound up not even mattering, because of good vibes weather. I can't complain too much because the peanut has done work for me before, but it's a good reminder that very little actually replaces player removal.
• Kelvin came in as the very last batter and failed to do anything interesting, leaving a player stranded on second. His swap-out ability is pretty marginal, in my estimation so far.

Ok, but how about some highlights!

• the first batters I sent out to try and build some base presence just scored. Oops I'd been planning some fun batter combos but we'll just take two runs, that's fine.
• speaking of planning ahead - this deck managed to stay at bat and keep vibe pressure high the whole inning, even with extremely judicious discarding! It really made a difference in terms of how many at-bats I got!
• stephanie forced a pitcher swap after managing to get on base! It worked!
• we got a grand slam!! every part of it worked great - liquid plasma was generating vibes at bat and on base, math flipped someone else's dice from third, aldon came in to cleanup with plentiful vibes to push their swing to the moon, tot fox nabbed the gunblade bat from the all-stars' discard pile... sometimes it just works
• the all-stars were ALSO going to get a grand slam, but reverb (such a good reaction) sent one of their players back to hand, so they only scored three runs. This was actually one of the most hype rounds in the game though, because my opponent swapped York Silk with one of their less impressive batters, but York had gotten on base without using the gunblade bat!! it was an incredible reversal.
• I buried the lede here - the game ended with back-to-back Jaylen incinerations from the mound, ending the game because the all-stars ran out of players. that's blaseball to me.

More edits might be coming... Most of the remaining players in the booster packs strike me as needing a little too much setup to work, but I'd be curious if anyone has any recommendations!