Rethinking The Low-HL Company
Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2023 3:58 pm
The orthodox doctrine for competitive decks has been the idea of the low Hazard Limit. Small company sizes combined with HL reducers to sidestep hazards. The prevalence of this philosophy was due in no small part to Josh Grace, who had an undefeated record in tournaments using such a strategy. Larger companies often had their own ways of reducing the hazard limit/avoiding hazards, such as the Balrog's Great Shadow/cloaked by darkness or large companies squatting at a relatively safe site, e.g. Red Hills.
I've recently started wondering about the potential benefits of the other extreme -- simply wandering around with seven characters in a company, for a base hazard limit of 7 instead of 2.
Once the initial shudder of revulsion passed, I realized that there can be some advantages to such an approach, so long as you go full bore. A company size of 4-5 inherits the worst of all worlds.
Some points in favor of absurdly large companies:
1) You have more tools to deal with hazards. A triple river just doesn't mean as much when you're wandering around with seven Rangers.
2) The odds of your opponent actually *having* seven hazards in their hand are actually low. Barring something like Revealed to All Watchers, you're probably looking at 7 characters to deal with 4-5 hazards in a given movement/hazard phase.
3) As a related point, it opens up cards that would be murderous to smaller companies while dampening the power of some other cards. A card like Orc-mounts is useful with a large company -- shifting the HL from 7 to 9 is ultimately trivial, while a -1 prowess to all hazard creature attacks that turn is great, while with a small company, going from a HL of 2 to 4 is atrocious. On the hero side, Hundreds of Butterflies just doesn't have drawbacks when used with a large company, while an extra hazard against a HL2 company is often disastrous. Daelomin at Home and Power Built By Waiting, which are often to be found in hazard portions, are functionally useless when the HL is already 7.
So instead of focusing on "how can I get the hazard limit lower," a more fundamental question to ask when designing a deck is: "Do I go big or do I go small?"
Some decks might benefit more from one approach than from the other.
I've recently started wondering about the potential benefits of the other extreme -- simply wandering around with seven characters in a company, for a base hazard limit of 7 instead of 2.
Once the initial shudder of revulsion passed, I realized that there can be some advantages to such an approach, so long as you go full bore. A company size of 4-5 inherits the worst of all worlds.
Some points in favor of absurdly large companies:
1) You have more tools to deal with hazards. A triple river just doesn't mean as much when you're wandering around with seven Rangers.
2) The odds of your opponent actually *having* seven hazards in their hand are actually low. Barring something like Revealed to All Watchers, you're probably looking at 7 characters to deal with 4-5 hazards in a given movement/hazard phase.
3) As a related point, it opens up cards that would be murderous to smaller companies while dampening the power of some other cards. A card like Orc-mounts is useful with a large company -- shifting the HL from 7 to 9 is ultimately trivial, while a -1 prowess to all hazard creature attacks that turn is great, while with a small company, going from a HL of 2 to 4 is atrocious. On the hero side, Hundreds of Butterflies just doesn't have drawbacks when used with a large company, while an extra hazard against a HL2 company is often disastrous. Daelomin at Home and Power Built By Waiting, which are often to be found in hazard portions, are functionally useless when the HL is already 7.
So instead of focusing on "how can I get the hazard limit lower," a more fundamental question to ask when designing a deck is: "Do I go big or do I go small?"
Some decks might benefit more from one approach than from the other.