Introduction

The purpose of this article is to foster a little discussion about how to choose whether to draw another eight cards at the beginning of a game. It is the first article I have written, so please leave comments with your thoughts and suggestions.

This may seem like a small issue to concern ourselves with, but I have noticed that players seem to nearly always choose a redraw. Anyone who has played a few games can tell you - no matter how bad you think your draw is, it could be worse. Often I believe this is caused by players imagining they might get "the perfect draw". Rarely will this happen. It is important to learn when your first draw is better than average and accept it.

I hope to provide some tips and issues for you to consider so you can make a more informed decision when choosing to click the redraw button.

Consider This

1. Who plays first? The first point I consider is who is going first. If I will be be playing my hero side first, I give a little extra weight to what hero cards I see in my hand and likewise if I will be playing the villain first. The first turn should give you an opportunity to play a few cards and get a few from your deck, so your hand will not look the same after the first turn.
2. Will I have the power to play them? The second number I look at is the cost of the cards I drew. Personally, I play a larger deck designed to revive adversaries, and I do include some 4 and 5, and even a 6 cost support character. I also throw in a few 4+ cost obstacles and a number of 4 cost adversaries. Clogging up your hand early with these cards that you have no way to get rid of except as complications can spell disaster.
   That being said, let us return for a moment to the "perfect draw" scenario. If I see one such high cost card in my hand, should I automatically toss it in and hope for all 3 cost or less cards? This is not reason enough. I need to continue to look at my hand as a whole, but if a single high cost card is the only problem I see, I am probably going to keep it.
3. Are the obsticles appropriate? Third, I check my obstacles compared to my opponents team. A card such as Language Barrier is a wasted card against a skip culture (Jack) team, and I take this into consideration.
4. How many different color missions am I ready for? Finally, I consider the skills of the low cost support characters I did draw. This brings us to the fine point of knowing your own deck. I usually expect to have a character I can play on the first turn in at least 2 of the 3 skills I am trying to complete. From experience of playing my deck I know that more likely than not I will get a draw that accomplishes this, because I include lots of support characters. If I have a character for each of the three skills, chances are I'm keeping the hand, but again I am looking at the whole picture.
5. Do I have a gold nugget? Fifth, (Wait, wasn't the last one finally?) Well, this is where we will put our wild cards. Sometimes a single card really can make or break your draw. If my opponent is playing a skip combat deck and I draw the adversary Fifth (Hardened Foe), he is a huge incentive to keep my hand (Without a way to stop Fifth, within a few turns he can shut a pacifist deck down). Or on the hero side, if I got Walter Harriman (Technician) I might choose to keep him because he is so powerful in letting me pick my missions, especially when played early.

In Conclusion

Your ability to decide weather to keep your hand or not will improve the more you play with a deck. The more starting draws you actually see, the more you will understand what the different possibilities are begin to accept some first draws as "above the curve". For quite a while I used my redraw every game, thinking "Oh, but WHAT IF...". Since I have begun to try and apply a more discerning eye, I feel that I have made some improvement.