kpr_ep25_discardpilestrategy

[00:00:00] How many cards could a dis demon discarded artist. Stephen could discards. Let's get sweaty.

Hello, dear listener, and welcome to key forge public radio. My name is Zach Armstrong, and I'm going to be your humble guide into the pile of refuse. That is key forges discard. Pile. It's always there. It's usually always growing and then sometimes it just disappears. So what we're going to be talking about today here on key forge public radio, where we help you become a better key forge player. Is the discard pile and to all of the factors that it affects all the factors that it holds in, it, it interacts with in the game.

It's a giant source of growing information for both your own deck and your opponent's deck. There's a number. Of different mechanics [00:01:00] and kinds of card effects. We've seen that we need to consider when we're thinking about our discard pile and how we're interacting with it, especially when we have cards that give us that choice.

We need to talk about when we want that discard pile to flip and exactly what kind of influence we have over when that discard pile flips and turn it back into your deck when you don't want to drop. And lastly, we're going to be doing a bit of a preview of some of the dynamics around the haunted mechanic in grim reminders.

As a reminder, this next set that's coming out, you are haunted. If you have 10 or more cards in your discard pile, that goes for your opponent to it's simply a binary on off thing. So we're going to be talking about all these things related to the discard pile. It's a bit innocuous it's it's, uh, been, uh, You know, a place in most card games that are out there. Uh, but really it is one of the most important sources of information that you have.

Again, this is key forge public radio, and Hey, if you're not subscribed, go ahead and hit that follow button on whatever podcast platform you're currently on, because guess what, that's going [00:02:00] to help you hear these things. As soon as they drop. Every single Wednesday. Okay. So, like I talked about at first, the discard pile is a critically important source of game information. Now, if you haven't listened to it, go back and listen to episode seven, handcrafting mastering a core key forge system, because this is really the CQL. To that. Episode. So because what I'm talking about, when I say that the discard pile is a critically important place, you gain information is that as you play your cards, you'll be able to count the houses in your hand, the houses in play in the houses that are in your discard pile to calculate exactly what your house spread is in your deck.

And if you don't know why that's important, guess what? You probably didn't listen to episode seven about handcrafting or your, maybe you did. And you're just very smart already. And you're here because you like the sound of my voice. Voice, which is, you know, Neither here nor there. You're probably better at keyboards than me, but. [00:03:00] You want to know exactly what's left in your deck so that you can intelligently strategically select what your house is for the turn, not only based on what, how you can affect the board state, how you can affect your game plan by what's in your hand, but by also manipulating as much as possible, the math about what you're going to be drawing up at the end of the turn and how much that affects how many cards you'll be playing on future turns. As a quick overview, if you have, let's say four of one house and two of another, if you pick the two card house, especially if that two card house you're able to be effective with it, maybe you have some things out on the board already. Uh, and those two cards are going to have some great and timely effects.

If you play those two cards, you're taking a smaller two card turn for a chance at taking a five or six card turn, would that other, Hey, would that other house. In your hand because you'll be drawing up those two cards at the end of the turn. And if either of those two cards or both of them match [00:04:00] that house that already had four cards in hand, you're going to be sitting real, pretty.

You just got a little bit lucky and you planned on it. And now you're going to be playing five and six card turns going forward. If your luck holds and you've set yourself up for that. And one of the greatest ways to make sure you know exactly what's going on with your house count. As counting what's in your discard pile. It's a critically important place to gather information for your own handcrafting. Now here's the thing. Discard piles are public information. At all times. So this applies over on the opponent's side of the board, as well as in, you want to be looking at their discard pile from time to time, and you're not going to be able to see what's in their hand.

Right. But you can see what's in play. You can see what's in the discard pile and you can do some math on what number of what houses are left between their deck and their hand. One place that this could be helpful. Let's use a winds of exchange example. Uh, and many of you will be familiar [00:05:00] with the common Bar card from Windsor exchange called Ranton rive.

It comes with an Amber PIP and it says, play. If your opponent has eight Amber or more. Uh, they lose half. They lose half of their Amber. So really this is a great card to keep somebody off of a key. And if you want to burst and your opponent has and this is sealed. So you haven't seen it. So you haven't seen their full list. Uh, and you want to go high, but you, if you go to 10. If you go to 10, you're still going to get punished and not be able to forge a key if they hit you with Ranton rive. But if you're able to count all of their Our cards and you find 12, right.

Or 11. And you want to take that chance, but you find enough to know where nearly all or all of their Our cards are, if you spot all 12, then you know, they don't have right. And arrive or they know, even if they did have it, they played it earlier. So they know, you know, they have no more rant and Rives left. That's just one use case.

And you're going to want to keep in mind as you're looking at your opponents discard, they're really, really dear listener. I'm basically, I just want you [00:06:00] to be looking at your opponents discard. If you're needing to be strategically minded. Of course, if you're in a serious practice match or your you're in a competitive match. And you need to be looking at your opponent's discard so you can stay on top. Of what they've played and what the shape of their deck might be looking like. There's not really just a small list of high impact things. I specifically want you to look for. Really going in and looking in there we'll help you find information or remind you of things. That will help you. That will help you realize what you have and haven't seen.

So for instance, if somebody has played. A whole bunch of action cars and artifacts and upgrades from house. Let's say Starlines winch exchange. And you've seen nine of those cards, but none of them have been creatures. You know, that the last three star lines cards that you have not seen. Our creatures.

And then that, you know, uh, not a lot of Starlines creatures have play effects that are going to keep you off of a key. So, you know, the Amber control in that house [00:07:00] is gone. So really you want to be piecing together as much as you can of their deck with this publicly available information. And I think even in our con, when you look at an arc-on list, It is often a good idea to go ahead and ask to flip through the discard pile. Just to remind yourself of things.

Now, if you're being absolutely brilliant and remembering, uh, remembering. Uh, their entire arc-on list, which you can still look at at any time. If you're remembering that and you feel really confident, maybe you don't need to do this, but I like to do it just to jog my memory about what they've got going on, about what they've got going on, because even if they don't have tricks for the discard pile, like some decks, do. You do need to know what's going on there and keep everything top of mind now. Uh, I am emphasizing, you know, go look through this and now sometimes you'll say, but Zack I'm in a match and it really doesn't matter.

This deck, their deck is not doing anything with the discard pile. I know what houses they have and here's the thing. And that situation [00:08:00] you're, you're totally right. If they're not doing anything with the discard pile, then you can pretty much not worry about it. Right? If you're looking at their arc-on list, you have a general sense of what their deck is trying to do. However, I'm going to tell a specific story from round one at the Philadelphia vault tour, I was against fellow strategic key forge podcaster, second act who publishes the weekend key warriors podcast with Arlie.

They have some lovely discussions over there. So go check out the weekend. Key warriors podcast and something. Something second act had in his deck that I recognized. Is he has, he had key frog, Savage clash. Resurgence. And Gloriana is attendant. So I'll go if you might be picking up what I'm putting down with that combo, but let me explain it just so you can be aware. So first off the, the center is key frog. Key frog is a two power beast with destroyed for Jackie at current cost. So it's a creature he can play and if he can blow it up on his same turn, he can forge a key without any additional costs, except trying to pull off the [00:09:00] combo.

No additional Amber Costa, very powerful. He also has Savage clash, which says destroy, destroy all creatures, except the most powerful enemy creature and the least powerful, friendly creature. So as long as key frog is not the least powerful, friendly creature, it can be killed with Savage clash. And Gloriana is attendant. Is a one power muted.

And so if this one power mutant creature is out on the board, along with key frog, when John plays Savage clash, he can blow up the key frog and forge a key at current cost. And the critical discard PC has here is the resurgence. It says, play return a creature from your discard pile to your hand. If that creature is a mutant. Return another creature from your discard pile to your hand. So here's the thing. If Gloriana is attendant, which has a mutant and key frog, which has a regular creature are in his discard pile.

And he has resurgence and Savage clash in his hand. So he just needs to get those two creatures into the discard pile. He can play resurgence, pull back both of the [00:10:00] Gloriana, his attendant and the key frog. And I believe at least one of them had some Amber enhancements. Then he can play them both onto his board, play Savage clash, and forge a key. And so early in the game, John got those cards into those two creatures into his discard pile.

And I had to keep in mind. Okay. I know I've gotten furnaces. I've got some ways to disrupt his discard pile on Nita. I need to make sure I turn that combo off before he can really use it as payoff if he used it for key one, honestly, that would be fine if he used it for key to. Uh, I mean, that's fine.

At least he spent it before Q3. Right. And I did end up disrupting the combo, making a choice with an furnace to pull one of those pieces out. I believe it was to key frog, just so there was no other shenanigans. Uh, going on. So that's the kind of situation where you really need to pay attention to what is going on in your opponents discard pile. A few other examples.

Like I mentioned in furnace, the four power. Uh, the four power creature introduced in house dis in a worlds [00:11:00] collide a while back that has play purge up to two cards from a discard pile. Your opponent loses Amber equal to the total Amber bonuses. On both cards combined. That's not the exact wording, but that's the effect. So, if you have an in furnace or your opponent, hasn't furnace, you need to be aware of what's in your discard pile when it's in your discard pile on the same thing over on your opponent's side, because maybe you do need to make sure you're using the Amber loss effect.

And maybe you're the only one with PIP. So you've got to track what pips are in your discard pile and know when that's available to you. You've got to know what you might want to hit from your opponent, because they might have key cards that you want to go ahead and. And purge out of their discard pile so they don't get to recur them or see them again. So as soon as there are any effects interacting with this card piles, all of a sudden you've really got to track what's going on in that discard pile, the classic card mimicry, which copies a card. Uh, which is an untamed action card, which comes in as a copy of a card in your opponent's [00:12:00] discard pile. There's Nepenthe. Which is the Omni return card from your discard pile to your hand, there's all sorts of things.

And we're only going to get, we're only going to get way more of these Ingram reminders coming out in a number of months. And so wrapping your brain around what it takes to be tracking what's going on in your discard pile. Is going to be really important to maximize how well you can be playing a game of key forge and managing the vast amount of information that's going to be in front of you.

So. That is really the summary of why the discard pile is a critical source of information and a critical source of strategic choices. As soon as card mechanics. Introduce the need, uh, introduce interactions into the game state where you start to need to pay attention to that.

A few other notes here.

Uh, so we mentioned creature counting, right? So you can try to keep track of where their creatures are. If you're worried about a. Uh, you know, if you're worried about, uh, the, the board getting overrun by their, by their creatures. [00:13:00] Um, where their houses are, where if they've gotten through most of one house, you know, they're just going to be in the other two houses.

And then you use that information as you will. Maybe you have control effects that play off of that. Maybe you don't. Maybe you make a choice to go ahead and get a couple. Uh, get a couple. Creatures out from your hand onto the board. If you know, they have their creature heavy house left. Things like that.

There's a whole lot of use cases and, and for figuring out how to best use this information. So it's tough to go through all of them, but it's more of a general principle. Where, if you pay attention to this kind of thing in more games, you'll start finding smart choices, small, smart choices that you can make that start to add up.

The, the more you make them, especially the more you make them in a single game. And they start to be able to push an advantage that hopefully many times will push you from a loss into a victory instead. Uh, there's a couple of greatest hits for why this is important, right? Why the discard pile is important.

There's a rise. The old discard that returns all creatures of a house from your discard pile to your hand, [00:14:00] there is grim reminder, the uncommon distraction card. From mass mutation, which returns. Uh, which puts all cards of a single house from your discard pile into your archives. So it's just, it's a good thing to note.

It's a good thing to know. It's a good thing to strategically consider, especially against those types of affects, right? You don't want to unnecessarily turn on some discard pile payoff effects that your opponent might be looking for. Now, sometimes you turn it on knowingly because you know, you need to be pushing your advantage, but sometimes you can go ahead. And refrain from turning it on to be fed is not as much of a cost to you. Okay. Now we're going to be talking about when managing. Flipping to draw.

And what I, what I mean by this is there's the rule and key forge that if your deck is empty, You, if you need to draw you, turn your discard pile over and shuffle it. Vegas, you turn your discard [00:15:00] pile over and shuffle it. And you turn it into your deck and then you draw, and this is a relatively simple mechanic that keeps the pace of key forge games going, but there is an awful lot of that handcrafting next level, handcrafting math, I really in deck crafting math.

When it's your discard pile. That really starts to matter here. First off. When you go to drive that car to need to flip. Uh, I'm stating the obvious here, but you'll see where I'm going with this in a second. Right? Your discard pile. Turns into your deck. So the contents of your discard pile turned into your deck, which means you have perfect knowledge and sometimes some control over exactly.

What's in your discard pile. When it flips. Mostly if you have a drought effect, you can activate during your turn. And winds of exchange, you might have the prospect or token, right. Or the queen G outpost prospector has destroyed, you know, draw a car. Does that token creature, a squeegee outpost puts a creature on the bottom of your deck, and then you draw three and maybe. [00:16:00] There's so few cards in your deck that will help you flip. So just know that when you flip. When you flip, you might be in a situation where you really need to DRI draw a certain card for next turn, or you need to redraw. A card that's in this house, that's in the house you're already in. If you are. Uh, flipping to draw during your turn.

And so if you have a chance to not blow up some creatures on your board to send them to the discard pile that you don't want, or you can wait to play some action cards that are not what you want to see again. Then you wait your use that draw effect, and then you play your other stuff, sending it to the discard, pile a new, and it's the same kind of thing.

Say we're in Ecuador and say you have, and let's say you have a car that you want your best chance at seeing again, let's say you're an Ecuador and you've got a generous offer. Let's say generous offered the action card that says, play destroy a friend, the creature. If you do steal to Amber, maybe you know that this is the only Amber control in your [00:17:00] deck. Uh, that will, this is the only Amber control in your deck that will, that will get your opponent off of check.

Let's say you've played it right to get them down to let's say six. And you know, that the only possible way to get more Amber controls to play this card, it gets them down to six. And then to activate your flip to draw by blowing up a prospect or something like that. And maybe, maybe redrawing that card you just played. So really you want to think about when it's important, you need to identify when this is important, because sometimes it's not as important. But when is it important to craft the contents of your discard pile? When you have agency over, when you're going to flip to drop, because you can do the math on exactly what the chances are, or at least, you know, close enough for mid match, you can do the math on what the chances are of drawing a particular card, a particular kind of card, a particular house. So pay attention to that.

That is often a place that you [00:18:00] might not have thought of before. That will be a way you could push yourself closer to victory. Get that smaller chance of victory. Uh, pushing yourself closer to it. As, as you finagle these very subtle key forge systems that might not be obvious at first glance. So one of the other reasons to watch. The watch when you make this flip, especially in more and maybe decks that don't even draw. Uh, don't even have draw abilities.

You can trigger during the turn to try to flip it. Is when your opponent has abilities that might affect your discard pile in an adverse way. I've already mentioned a few of these cards, the old classic. The old classic isn't furnace, right? It purges up to two of your cards and you lose Amber. Uh, you lose Amber equal to the total Amber bonus icon.

So maybe you have Amber control or something with a lot of pips and you can get that discard pile flipped over. Uh, flipped over before the, in furnace has been played. Maybe there is a mimicry on the opponent's side of the table, [00:19:00] right? The untamed card that copies one of your action cards. And if you're able to manipulate it. In a way where you can get that flipped before your opponent. Can can, you know, do that terrible thing to your discard pile or copy a card or whatever.

It's sometimes as a good idea to do that. Now, this is where you have to do the opportunity cost, where you look you say, okay. Um, I could actually go ahead and play this house, which gets me enough draw, or it gets me through enough cards in my hand that either during this turn or the end of the turn. I draw enough to actually go ahead and flip my deck because I want to get the deck flip to this turn, but maybe, maybe strategically there's another aggressive play in a different house that doesn't have the. The deck flip. If you go with that house.

So what you need to do here is weigh the opportunity cost, which is so much of what we're doing in key Ford, strategically, right? Why the opportunity costs you say, do I make my aggressive play here? With a smaller house where I don't flip and their threat is still perhaps. [00:20:00] Online with in furnace or mimicry. And can I take that on the nose and still be okay?

Or is that just overall the best play? Or can I take this turn where I'm drawing cards to get that flipped, to turn off? They're threats and you need to weigh the opportunity costs and try not to be overly cautious, but if you can successfully be pushing yourself towards the victory condition while keeping them off of advancing, that's often a good choice.

But again, if you have a way to be aggressive and you can just. Uh, burst forward as hard as possible and just take whatever punishment they're gonna throw at you on the nose. Sometimes that's what you've got to do. Sometimes. That's what you've got to do. Okay, so that is flipping to draw. Strategically considered.

Right? So keep an eye out on that. The contents, when flipped will often matter. So you know what? You have a chance of drawing and then timing against opponents, opponents, abilities and disruption.

So lastly, we're going to talk about haunted, the haunted mechanic coming. In [00:21:00] grim reminders. So here's the thing. Haunted is simply a binary on off game state. You are haunted if you have 10 or more cards in your discard pile. And so here's the thing. It is simply a, it's a simply a binary state. It's not very complicated. And many card has many cards coming and grim reminders.

And I won't be spoiling anything specific here. So don't worry about that. Uh, but I'll be previewing. Some of generally what these cars want to do. Some cards have one effect if you're haunted and a different effect. If you're not haunted and often both are to some degree. Valuable. They have a lot of discarding from your hand. Uh, discarding off the top of your deck.

They often do this to your opponent. As well. And so the kind, the dynamics with the board state, when you want somebody to be haunted, or you don't want to be haunted, you're going to have to pay attention to all the sources. Of getting cars into the discard pile. Now, often if you're getting a good thing for yourself being haunted, You'll be able to figure this out [00:22:00] pretty well.

Right? You can fight creatures off, then die, uh, on your side of the board and go into the discard pile. You are using the new discard bonus icon that's going to be present. So that is going to be pretty self-explanatory and that mechanic will be relatively obvious in how to manipulate it because it's very baked into to what the cell wants to do. You want to be discarding cards from your hand, right? You want to be. Getting haunted to turn on these effects for the most part. The biggest thing I'm going to say about haunted here that I think is going to be the more subtle thing is when you're playing against a deck that wants you to be haunted, but you want to hold off. Being haunted. So let's think about this a little bit. The. The places, the places that you can give your opponent more of an opportunity to make you haunted are, if you're playing creatures out, they can blow them up in those creatures.

Go to your discard pile. Right? Um, if you're taking, if you're taking big turns and if you're taking big turns that put a lot of stuff into your, into your discard pile, right? You're turning on you turning on [00:23:00] that haunted mechanic. And so you're going to want to keep an eye out for what places in the game.

Can you perhaps slow them down and getting stuff into your discard pile? Now, that being said, I actually. Now that being said, I do think that's a consideration you're going to have to make at certain points with some cards. How, however, however, I actually don't think it's going to be very common that you put much effort to stopping yourself being haunted, because the more cards that are going into your discard pile, that means the more actions you're playing, the more creatures you're playing out to try to advance your game state. And I don't think it's going to be worth avoiding being haunted. To not play a whole bunch of cards. Right.

I think you're just going to have to take it on the nose as these effects turn on and how sky steroid or other houses that want the opponent you to be haunted. And I think you're just going to have to take that on the nose and manage that. Now, if they continually discard cards from the top of your deck and that sort of thing. Of course, you're going to be closer to what we talked about [00:24:00] earlier, flipping your discard pile. That's something you'll really want to pay attention to against grim reminders sometimes once in a blue moon. So not very often, you may be able to resist being haunted and, and play around it. But I think most of the times they'll just have to take it on the nose and figure out. Uh, when you might be flipping that deck, removing your discard pile, right?

It turns into your deck and all of a sudden, you're no longer haunted. So you're going to want to keep that in mind. And I do think you're going to have to take it on the chin. Sometimes. I know. I used to suffer from a lot of like, I must control, I must control the situation, but I would never, uh, I would never figure out when it was exactly. Effective to do so.

And I would end up just trying to control my opponent or a fuller they're bad things. And then I would end up losing, cause I never really advanced my own game state. So don't get stuck. Uh, don't get stuck, trying to be, not become haunted this way. You may just need to become haunted and push your game plan forward as much as you can.

So I'm very excited about the dynamics of [00:25:00] haunted. I think it's much more graceful. Than the tide mechanic back in dark tidings was. And I'm really looking forward to the kinds of the kinds of, of, of binary or, or to state abilities that have one effect when you're haunted one effect when you're not haunted, because I think they are a bit more balanced.

It's not simply a, it's not always just, it gets more powerful if your opponent's haunted, although that sometimes it's a lot of these abilities are simply two different abilities. If you, or your opponent or haunted or not haunted. So that is this. That is it for this episode of key forge public radio, all about the discard pile and why it matters to your game.

And it already matters in a bunch of match-ups. And guess what? It's going to matter even more as you make a lots of complicated, amazing fun choices with the abilities in grim reminders. Again, I've been Zach Armstrong, a we are here to help you be a better key forage player, or even better than me really. Is the dream.

Remember that key forge public radio.com is where you can find episodes, [00:26:00] including I have archived the old hobby drama posts by friend of the show Soho gin, who I interviewed back when I ran call of discovery for three years alongside at Poe cock Soho. So Hogan wrote many articles about the, the messier and darker side of key forge, but in ways that were both entertaining through even handed and in ways that actually really sold people on key forge, even though he was highlighting some of the games, roughest moments, those blogs are going up over on key Ford's public radio.com as an archive so that they are in a key Ford centric place, as well as the old Reddit posts. As well doing that with his permission.

So thank you so much. So Hogan, we appreciate that. And, uh, every once in a while, I am throwing some fun new designs into the key forage of public radio March shop. So go check that out. I know Sydney steal of, of, uh, help from feature self. Who has a rocking. The golden resource shirt. Uh, vault tour earlier this year. Which is quite an honor.

So thank you all so much. Remember to [00:27:00] follow on your pet podcast platform if you're not already. And thank you so much to our Patrion supporters, we could not do this without you. And we really appreciate our AirWave advocate level listeners like Paul Roadrunner. And remember like your radio dial. skills always be well tuned.

Visit keyforgepublicradio.com to find all of our episodes,

is made possible with support from listeners just like you, who believe in this game and this show. When you join the Patreon, you'll receive access to votes on content, sneak peeks, early knowledge of interviews, access to the Discord, and other benefits. So come on down, I'd be honored if you joined us.

Follow KPR on any social media platform you frequent, just search for KeyForge Public Radio, and we're probably there. This show is produced by Rooster High Productions, which is me. And remember, dear listener, the most important [00:28:00] part of KeyForge is the person across the table.