Last trex in deck[/details]
Gold (20)
Midori kills Bigsby, River to max
Nature Reclaims the second council (18)
Prospector, frees basilisk (18)
River breaks Jail
T-Rex, destroying 2 of your workers (10)
Arg pokes your Base for 1
Discard 0, draw 1, rs, draw 1. Float 10 gold.
I think you did need an endgame plan of some sort. Either Juggernaut, tech lab to Garrison/DS, or a tech lab to Liberty Gryphon.
Blueās biggest weakness is an opponent just getting to Tech 3. At that point all the Law and Truth plans stop working, and you need to be winning.
Also, rich earth is just super weak. This game went 11 turns, and it still only saved me 6 gold. 2 gold spent turn 1, to get 5 back (although one of those got stolen)ā¦ its all very marginal.
I think the argument for rich earth is more the acceleration than the overall gold return. I admit it probably is a bit marginal, but 3 turns after you play it you have 1 more gold available to you than you would have if you had just floated the 2g instead of playing the card.
The thing is, that argument works in other games where there is a gating mechanism on the cards you can play (e.g. land in Magic). Acceleration/Ramp is valuable, because it allows you to play powerful cards more quickly than you could have done otherwise.
However, in Codex, there is no gating mechanism, and the only reason for Rich Earth is gold return. Iāve also tried it a lot recently, and very rarely found it to be worthwhile. I think Iāll probably just worker it from here on.
This. If it instead pretended to be an extra worker (so you still got that extra one gold per turn to make your worker for āfreeā) it would be far more useful, as it could allow super early tech 2, or give flexibility. Currently it is just a more expensive and more limited (though harder to kill) merfolk prospector.
Iām now imagining a different version of the card that would allow something like P2T1: get 5g, Rich Earth for 2, worker for 1, Merfolk for 1 and Tech 1 for 1, and P2T2: get 7g, worker for 1, Tech 2 for 4 and 2 drop. Admittedly terribly weak on defense, but still an interesting thought.
I like the economic play that Rich Earth offers. Set aside for a moment that early pressure forcing bad trades onto player 2 is really the dominant strategy in the game.
Rich Earth is sort of an attempt to flip player 1 into being player 2. Player 1 starts out with 4 gold to the opponents 0, then 9 to the opponents 5, and so on. During normal play, player 2 will slowly pull ahead economically if the game drags on as the +1/turn overcomes the +4 initial gold player 1 has. With Rich Earth and everything else equal, Player 2 canāt ever pull ahead in money. Player 1 will remain 2 ahead the whole game.
Thatās significant. Maybe not enough to make Rich Earth into a dominant card, but itās significant. A lot of RTS play is about economy and Codex isnāt that different in my (limited) experience.
I thikn Prospector is a much better attempt at achieving the same kind of economic advantage, but Rich Earth is at least more difficult to interact with.
When casted by player 2, it would seriously hurt early game defense, but change to a 2/turn advantage which would add up very quickly. That would probably result in player 2 dying before really getting in the game, but itās possible it could be a good way to take advantage of an early game stumble by player 1.
I think the problem with this kind of analysis is that youāre assuming both players worker every turn. If the game can move into a state where both players no longer want to worker any more, then P2 pulls ahead again, because they have more gold, whereas P1 just gets free workers.
In practice, I find itās unusual to reach T7 without one player having established a dominant lead. It does happen occasionally, but itās pretty unusual. This means that a lot of the time as you go into a game, you do so knowing you probably only have 6 turns. This means that workering past 8 or 9 becomes an extremely nuanced decision - a worker at this stage is unlikely to pay out a lot of gold while it actually matters, and youāve reached the point in the game where cards are usually much more valuable than gold.
I think this is a really good thing, and itās one of the factors which makes the game interesting and fun. If workering every turn was always the best thing to do, Codex would be a worse game. However, it doesnāt help Rich Earthās caseā¦
STARTING HAND
Traffic Director
Manufactured Truth
Brave Knight
Jail
Brave Knight
WORKERS
Bluecoat Musketeer
Lawful Search
Jail
NextHand
Arrest
Building Inspector
Spectral Aven
Porkhand Magistrate
Elite Training
Tech 2 card(s)
Get Paid - ($7)
Worker - ($6)
Brave Knight - ($3)
Oni kills Wisp
Manufactured Truth newsman into Brave Knight, trades with Basilisk and goes to my hand - ($1)
Traffic Director
Manufactured Truth
The Art of War
Brave Knight
Discard
Arrest
Elite Training
Porkhand Magistrate
Building Inspector
Free Speech
Art of War
Tech 2 card(s)
Get Paid + float - ($9)
Worker - ($8)
Arrest Leaping Lizard Jumping Jehosephat - ($6)
Elite Training Brave Knight and Oni - ($4)
Brave Knight kills Arg, Oni to lvl 7, sparkshot treant for 1
Oni to Max - ($3)
Heroesā Hall - ($1)
Float ($1)
Discard 2, draw 4
[B]Board Info:[/B]
[B]In Patrol:[/B]
[I]Squad Leader[/I]: Brave Knight 4/3+A, Elite Training
[I]Elite[/I]: Soldier 2/1
[I]Scavenger[/I]: Soldier 1/1
[I]Technician[/I]: Soldier 1/1
[I]Lookout[/I]:
[B]In Play:[/B]
Onimaru 5/5+A, lvl 8, Elite Training
[B]Buildings:[/B]
Tech 2 card(s)
Get Paid + float - ($10)
Worker - ($9)
Brave Knight - ($6)
The Art of War, Oni hits your base for 7 - ($3)
Manufactured Truth Soldier into Brave Knight, kills Galina - ($1)
[I]Squad Leader[/I]: Onimaru 2/3+A
[I]Elite[/I]:
[I]Scavenger[/I]: Reputable Newsman 0/3, calling out 2
[I]Technician[/I]:
[I]Lookout[/I]:
Base HP: 20