Hello all, I just wanted to share some tips and tricks that I've come accross. I hope that they are helpful in your games.
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NUMBER 5 - When using an effect that selects a card and removes it from the game, the cards that are shown left most in this card selection menu will be the cards that are in the turns used card pile.
Number 5 in Practice - You purchase a Karth Man-Hunter from the Tavern without having played another Red Eagle card for the turn. Afterward, you purchase a Bloody Offering. Bloody Offering's effect resolves, you destroy one of your cards, and then draw a card with the combo 2 effect. After Bloody Offering Resolves, the Karth Man-Hunter combo 2 effect immediately triggers and brings up the menu to destoy a card again. But since you drew a card, it's possible that you drew a Writ of Coin and still want to play it to gain 2 gold and purchase further cards from the Tavern. So in the case that the destroy card window shows multiple Writs of Coin, because you had play other Writs of Coin during the turn, and you do want to destroy one of them, you can save the Writ of Coin in your hand from destruction by not choosing to destroy the Writ of Coin that is on the most bottom most right of the destroy card window. Pick a different one.
The above scenario can also happen in different ways. You may want to hold on to certain cards in your hand for the purpose of comboing them at a specific point of your turn. In the case that you played one of those cards already, are saving one in your hand, and then want to destroy one of them from the destroy cards window, now you know where to find the card that is in the played cards pile and not your hand.
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Number 4: Some card effects can be cancelled after initiation of that card effect by pressing right click. The ability to right click cancel applies to cards that require making a choice. Contracts will go back to the tavern. Card from the hand will go back to the hand.
Number 4 in Practice - This is a neat little trick for when you may click a card by accident, be playing too fast, or decide to change your mind. So let's say that you are playing quickly, purchase a card from the tavern, and start the animation for purchasing Imperial Plunder. You may realize that a new card in the Tavern became revealed as the Imperial Plunder animation starts to play through to the point where you have to make a choice of what cards in the tavern that you want to select with it's ability. You'll only lose the gold for buying Imperial Plunder once this choice "goes through," so you can right click, cancel the use of Imperial Plunder, it will go back to the Tavern, and you can then purchase the other card that you realized that you wanted.
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Number 3: Sometimes you should think ahead so that your combos happen when they would be most beneficial to happen. TOT isn't always as simple as playing all of your cards and then deciding what you want to do. Waiting to play a card with a combo effect or using the cards being combod in a certain order can be very beneficial and give you alot of extra value sometimes.
Number 3 in Practice - The simplest example of this tip in practice is with the House Hlaalu cards. Let's say that you have an Oathman and Hostile Takeover in hand. If you play Oathman and then Hostile Takeover, Hostile Takeovers combo 2 will trigger, you'll pick a card (or not) from the tavern with it's effect and afterward Oathman's combo 2 will trigger. Oathman only allows a player to take cards that cost 6 or less from the Tavern, so if a Currency Exchange becomes revealed after the resolution of Hostile Takeover's effect, then you may miss out on being able to take Currency Exchange from the Tavern. Now if you had played Hostile Takeover first and then Oathman, Oathman's combo 2 would be triggered first, you'd get a chance of revealing a 7 cost card from the tavern and then Hostile Takeover's combo 2 would trigger and you would be able to take a revealed 7 cost card with it's effect.
Another example that I will point out is with regards to keepin in mind all of the game pieces that you have available, how they work together, and how you can get the most value from them. For this instance, let's say that Red Eagle is a patron, you have Dreaming Cave, Time Mastery, Psijic's Insight, Scrying Globe, and Vestments of the Druid King in hand. There is a Druid King Vestments within the top 4 cards of the draw pile and other Time Mastery cards such that you can expect to draw one more. There is a Forest Wratih in the Tavern. Here is my thought process.
You generally want to play Druid King Vestments in these sitations as early as possible. So you will want to find the one on top of your deck in a guaranteed fashion and play it quickly. But here is the catch. If you play Time Mastery as the first card of the turn to guarantee finding the Druid King Vestments in those 4 cards, because Time Mastery only generates gold with combo 2, you woudn't be able to purchase the Forest Wraith from the tavern without first playing another Psijic card. So a more optimal play from a power generating perspective is to first play Vestments of the Druid King and Scrying Globe for the turn and purchase the Forest Wraith right away. It's possible that Scrying Globe revealed the 2nd Druid King Vestments within the top 2 cards of your deck. With the single power already generated from the previously played Druid King Vestments and Scrying Globe (pitch 1) interaction and the single power generated from Forest Wraith triggering when entering your tableau, you'd be able to then use the Red Eagle Patron to draw the top card of the deck, the second Vestments of the Druid King, and start generating 3 power for every single card pitched by the rest of your Psijic cards. That's alot of power. If you are silly and don't lead with Vestments or play the other Psijic cards besides Scrying Globe first, then you lose out entirely on this theoretical maximum line of play. This line of play won't always happen because the second Druid King Vestments could be the 3rd or 4th card of the draw pile, but if you are thinking well, then you'll see this possible line of play and at least try to maximize your chances of generating as much power as possible for the turn all else equal.
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Number 2: When a card would place multiple cards from the cooldown pile to the top of the draw pile, the cards from the cool down pile that are furthest up and furthest left in the card selection window will be placed furthest to the top of the draw pile once the card placing effect resolves.
Number 2 in Practice - Several cards allow you to put multiple cards from the cooldown pile to the top of the draw pile. Hel Shira Herald and Hira's End are a couple of these cards. Let's say that you will use Hira's End to put 3 cards from the cool your cooldown pile to the top of your draw deck. There is a Harvest Season in the Tavern which you plan to buy. Pretend that your major goal is to simply maximize the number of draws this turn and that there are no cards in the draw pile (so if you would draw, the cooldown pile will become shuffled as your new draw pile). You have played Peck this turn as the only Duke of Crow card (so far). Let's also say that the cooldown pile has the following cards and that they are ordered from top left to bottom right in the card placement window as you see them written below. Can you figure out what cards you want to put on top of your draw pile, with the Hira's End that you are using, to maximize the number of cards drawn this turn? I'll put what I think the answer is at the end of this post.
Writ of Coin, Scratch, Writ of Coin, Toll of Silver, Scratch, Pilfer, Toll of Silver, Writ of Coin, Writ of Coin, Hel Shira Herald, Murder of Crows, Toll of Flesh, Murder of Crows, Squawking Oratory, Writ of Coin, Hira's End, Toll of Flesh, Writ of Coin, Writ of Coin, Blackfeather Knave, Pool of Shadow, Plunder, Squaking Oratory, Hel Shira Herald, Blackfeather Brigand, Writ of Coin, Blackfeather Knight, Plunder, Blackfeather Knight, March on Hattu, Pool of Shadow.
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Number 1: When using a Psijic ability to view and pitch cards from the top of the draw pile, the cards furthest to the left in this choose card window are the cards closest to the top of the draw pile.
Number 1 in Practice - The Psijic cards are possibly the most powerful cards in the game when used correctly. Let's say that you have a Time Mastery, Dreaming Cave, and Good's Shipment in hand (the other cards for the turn where Bewilderment). There is a Ring's Guile and Bag of Tricks in the Tavern. You use Time Mastery to Reveal...
Grand Larceny, Hostile Takeover, Grand Larceny, Twilight Revelry.
With Time Mastery giving you the knowledge of how the top cards of the deck look, do you see the play to make the opponent discard their hand next turn?
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So with those tips, I'm going to call it for now. This can all be alot to think about, but if you want to better your TOT game, then it's good to start thinking about some of these ideas. Getting down your player order as well as understanding the mechanics of ordering cards that the game uses will give you an advantage over those who are careless in their play order or don't know how the games ordering mechanics work.
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