By and large an iffy asset. It has a number of problems that make it inferior to some routinely good cards, even some straight up mediocre cards are better at doing the things this one is supposed to.
This card is...
1) Unwieldy! This is an asset that specifically targets a playercard type. Without a Firearm this thing is blank. It doesnt have Icons that lessen the impact of having a useless copy of this in your hand. When the time comes to actually use this thing it's an action and 2 resources to play, on top of the XP. Guns are already cost and generally XP intensive so these are steep costs indeed.
2) Ineffective! In general, swapping for or the enemy -Fight- for -Evade- is a net benefit of +1 or +2. You're getting this benefit because of an innate skill or difficulty difference, so you're paying the costs agove not to get a bonus on top of your good numbers, it's to replace bad numbers with good numbers. I.E, a character that doesnt have this thing in play either has a small enough difference between and that a similar benefit would be accessible via Hard Knocks, Delilah O'Rourke or Well Connected, or the difference is so great that without Sharpshooter in play the Firearm's you aim to use it with are outright unusable (for example if you play Trish or Sefina).
3) Useless! The only benefit of playing this thing is to get a statistical upgrade on attacks, something that a heap of other cards can do already, and do it better at similar or lower XP costs (Delilah O'Rourke, Hard Knocks, Well Connected). Worse still, this thing Exhausts! You only get to buff one attack per round!
I do NOT like this card. For this mechanic to be useful it ought to be a Permament card. Frankly I think I'dd be happy to pay 4 or 5 XP for this card exactly as written. Heck make it a 2xp exceptional permament!
Wishlisting aside, this thing is garbage, if youre looking to spend 3 XP on Sharpshooter, just save the 1 XP and get Hard Knocks.
Fully agree. I think Sharpshooter is a trap. Dont take it.
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StyxTBeuford
· 13051
I'd say it's a very situational card. Most Rogues don't have a combat more than 1 point lower than their agility, with Sephina, Winifred, and Trish being the exception (Tony has a 3-point gap, but in the wrong direction). With Sephina, she might want to have a firearm option, but she's somewhat more likely to just pack more spells and leverage that willpower instead. So that leaves Trish and Winifred as the investigators where this would really shine, and both could use some enemy management boosting. If you use both abilities with either of these investigators, you could be looking at a +4 pretty often (since there are a lot of enemies with a 2 point difference between combat and evade). So, is this a must-include? No. Is this a useful tool for a few specific investigators/builds? Yes. I, for one, welcome the opening of new deck styles.
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LivefromBenefitSt
· 1091
Oh, I do agree that it would be better as a Permanant -- having to dig for this as well as a firearm just makes the whole thing harder to pull off.
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LivefromBenefitSt
· 1091
The problem is that there’s very little reason to run this even in the evasive investigators. Just take Ornate Bow, or if you’re really committed to having a once a turn boost, use High Roller. You could use both, sure, but at that point you’re investing heavily to make something suboptimal passable. Sharpshooter is just plain bad imho.
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StyxTBeuford
· 13051
We ran it in a Flex Finn deck and it was solid. Usually it was +3/+4 (sometimes much more) since he was already running Track Shoes and The Boyfriend for extra agility. And didn't have any of the resource conditionality/risk of High Roller (the only real direct comparison). As a Flex, he only needed the boosted shot once per round to help with the Fighter's damage and it paired will with the lower bonus 1h firearms that he wanted to hold alongside a Lockpicks anyways.
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Death by Chocolate
· 1484
Agreed, should be a perm.
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MrGoldbee
· 1493
Have you actually played with this card in Winifred? I have, and it turned out to be the MVP of the deck -- the firearms Winifred's starter deck includes work well enough for her that she gets along fine with not finding it (and wouldn't want Ornate Bow -- the "pass by 2/4" effects are that good), but *with* it you end up just steamrolling everything.
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Thatwasademo
· 58
Oh, and I guess it helps a lot that Winifred can quickly find it if it's not in your opener thanks to her amazingly strong draw engine.
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Thatwasademo
· 58
Basically, here's the thing: Every asset that exhausts for a free +2 is *really good*, and even with the hoops you have to jump through for this, it's no exception.
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Thatwasademo
· 58
The alternatives you list aren't always good alternatives -- Delilah occupies your ally slot, Hard Knocks is actually just worse and I don't know why the people on this site love those types of cards so much, Well Connected actually is also good, but has different hoops to jump through that means it goes in different decks.
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Thatwasademo
· 58
But that’s the problem- you either have a deck that does fine without it, or you have a deck that is filly dependent on it. Wini is the absolute best case scenario for this since her draw means she can find it more quickly, but even there you have major opp cost. Unlike the other available +2 boosters, this one only matters if you’re fighting, and the irony is that it’s best in people who could just as easily evade anyway. This card is nowhere near as versatile as Well Connected, or High Roller, or honestly even Hard Knocks 2. When you draw this card, you could’ve instead slotted something else with much more utility.
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StyxTBeuford
· 13051
Fully
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StyxTBeuford
· 13051
I disagree that this is a poor card. Rogues start scenarios with a 1 or 2 difference between agility and combat but there are numerous agility boosts available in Rogue but very few combat boosts. This can easily be a +3 or +4 by the end of the scenario when you have to face the boss. And you can't just evade boss usually. There are enemies that have to die (Hunters or VP for example) and this card with a few guns in the deck would be a potent combo.
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The Lynx
· 999
I think "could just as easily evade anyway" isn't really a good counterargument (evaded enemies are still there, which may matter for a lot of different reasons: hunter, having to return to the same location later, boss fights), nor even really true in most cases (the *good* rogue guns give a stat boost, and while there are an asset or two that help with evasion, that kind of defeats the argument). It takes more work to get Well Connected to 10 than this in play for anyone who'd consider both (Preston ain't gonna use a gun, and Jenny has equal stats). High Roller is a decent alternative that the review above absolutely should have mentioned -- it's one less XP, but a bit riskier to run in play (if you fail you're out three resources on top of exhausting the card, as opposed to just exhausting the card), and doesn't have the upside potential this has (plenty of enemies have lower evade than fight). The fact that it only matters when you're fighting ... isn't really a big deal, at least in multiplayer? You don't get many turns where there's no enemies being drawn, and if you do usually the rest of your team is very happy about it so you can live with the loss of value of not getting to exhaust Sharpshooter that turn.
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Thatwasademo
· 58
Oh, as for the complete dependency vs unnecessary excess issue: The deck I ran Sharpshooter in that gave me my opinions used it with the Beretta M1918, so it made the difference between a skill of 7 before committing cards, wanting to succeed by 4, and a skill of 9 (+ possible reduced difficulty) before committing cards, wanting to succeed by 4. So it wasn't like I'd be missing shots without Sharpshooter in play, but I'd be exhausting my gun or not getting +1 damage, or having to commit more of my ? icons to attacks until I found it and could start using my icons on investigating or scenario card tests.
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Thatwasademo
· 58
There was also some incidental value thrown in with occasionally getting to use Nimble attacks to save actions moving without leaving an exhausted enemy behind or having to waste those actions reloading a bow, but that's not a particularly strong argument.
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Thatwasademo
· 58
use Nimble *on* attacks, even
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Thatwasademo
· 58
And, to actually elaborate on my point above that "Hard Knocks is just worse": An action, a card, and 3 resources spent on Hard Knocks gets you +3 to one test and the ability to throw more of your money away on future tests. An action, a card, and three resources spent on Sharpshooter in Wini gets you at least +2, fairly frequently more, that comes back for free the next round.
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Thatwasademo
· 58
Sorry, did I say "three" resources? This card costs 2. I had forgotten and assumed it had to be 3 since there had to be *some* upside to Hard Knocks.
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Thatwasademo
· 58
Hard Knocks can be used multiple times in one round, this cant. Hard Knocks also lets you boost other combat and evasion checks, such as Locked Doors. Those are, in fact, two major upsides to Hard Knocks 2. It’s also one XP cheaper.
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StyxTBeuford
· 13051
In a practical best case scenario, it's a 1/round +3 bonus to a fight check, assuming you have a Firearm out and static bonuses to Agility. I think that even an unconditional +3 bonus to a fight check 1/round might be overcosted at 3xp, to say nothing of the actual setup required for Sharpshooter to work.
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suika
· 9506
As if to add insult to injury, we have Hard Knocks 4 now as well which gets the replenished 2 resources/turn. So yeah, in the right deck, Sharpshooter may reliably be a +3 on average, but having the ability to boost agility or combat for any test versus being forced to a once/turn boost on just firearms makes it a much more flexible choice. You maybe have to pay an extra 1 now and then for an equivalent boost, though it should also be addressed- whatever boost Sharpshooter gives you is largely out of your control and not necessarily that important for the bag math (e.g. there may be literally no difference in chance of success between +2 and +3), the point here being that you don't always need to match Sharpshooter's boost to have the same effect.
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StyxTBeuford
· 13051
1- Isn't a problem, if you are taking this you have a gun centric deck. 2 - is just wrong, it gives a lot of investigator +2-4 on their attack, it's especially good with long guns where you often only need one hit to kill the opponent (hence why it’s called Sharpshooter) 3 - What ? None of the cards you cited fit the archetype this one does. Don't listen to this guy, play the card it works quite well, and it's been tabooed to cost 2 XP, it was OK but expensive at 3, at 2 its quite good.
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DakonBlackblade
· 11
Don't sleep on the ability to attack an enemy's Evade stat instead of Fight. I checked Core, Dunwich, and Carcosa, and about 40% of enemies have a lower Evade than Fight, with about half of those having a difference of 2 and the rest split between 1 and 3. (Note: I did not account for rarity when counting those numbers, so a one-and-done enemy counts the same as one that shows up over and over).
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Staffan
· 3
