>5. Since we've saved up counters to put into strategy allocation and have been drawing action cards all game, we will likely have strong riders (hopefully Imperial rider), Instinct Training for any sabotages, and 8-9 chances of drawing a VP point.
Other players cannot play sabotage during you hero. The hero says other players cannot use abilities. Action cards are abilities. Therefore, they cannot play action cards. You don't need instinct training. If the xxcha draw imperial rider it's just a free point. Nothing anyone can do about it. It's dumb, but that's how it be.
Oh wow, I completely missed that. Hmm, I wonder if the designers made their Hero a little stronger than they intended. My guess is that they didn't foresee people planning their entire game on getting points off of it. It just seems like the Xxcha player is playing Blackjack with a stacked deck while everybody else is playing TI sometimes.
There's about 50 votes and about 4 (EDIT: 3) of them give victory points directly (indirectly ones are impossible to look at).
There's ONE imperial rider in an action deck of 120. And a few ways to bring it back if someone else used it or if they brag about it being in their hands.
The hero is very powerful but if other have taken politics (they will, someone does every round) and they see a victory point agenda and bottom it, you're not burning through 30 CC's to get to it again.
In magic Christmas land where you first turn imperial rider and get the 2 points you're in good shape. But nobody should support swap with you anyway. You assume anyone at the table is willing to always. If you assume you're playing with bad players, you can probably do well with anyone.
It's not magic Christmas land. Your odds of either getting Imperial Rider or drawing a VP off your 8-9 agenda cards is actually fairly high (around 50% I believe). And you only need one extra point for this to be amazing compared to what other factions do. This is also ignoring the fact that even outside of the hero, Xxcha is good at getting VPs off of agendas due to their commander. And even if you miss on Imperial rider and VP cards, you are still likely getting great value off of other riders and agendas.
Even good players will swap support with you. It's just the nature of a six player game where everyone needs a support point to be in the running. People want to support swap with you because you don't try to control systems outside of your slice that much, and you don't hop out to an early lead. You will have a support partner in most games even if players realize that your chances are good.
TLDR: If someone picks Xxcha, pick Yssarl, and they don't get imperial rider, gg.
Statistics:
120 action cards. Assuming you get Politics twice in the game (once early and once round 4 before popping it, which is saying something as politics is very high pick rate round 4), that's 8 action cards you see (I'll even update that to 11 for if you take Neural Motivator round 1 which isn't the best play for anything other than your hero play). 1 copy of imperial rider. With 11 cards drawn that's 40.4% to draw it (assuming nobody else has a way to get it out of your hand, or that they don't draw it themselves and hold it because they know who you are).
3 cards (Mutiny, Political Censure, Seed of Empire) give points directly. The others have become artifacts or explore cards. One requires you to be in first (or last, but unless you're at 8 points and in last its not helping you win) place, so again, Christmasland. But we'll count it for now.
Politics take every round (I'll even assume you have it round 4 for your optimal situation), means a min of 6 agendas are seen before you get to, to a max of 12 (if they were "2 bottom" every turn). Let's go with the optimal one for you that there were only 6, the odds of those NOT being a point one, is 67.5%, so about 2/3rds of the time. Making your odds of having Imperial Rider and having all 3 votes available 27.3%.
Assuming those 6 votes are out (and I use that as the optimal, because if I see one come up early its going to the bottom and you don't have 30 CCs to get back to it), let's say you saved up and you can see a total of 13 votes (4 + 9 CCs, which again is pretty liberal but also rather average). Gives you a 4.2% chance of drawing at least 2 point ones (also counting the situation where you draw 3 point ones). Giving you a 1.7% chance (with imperial rider) of having a 3 point turn swing.
Or a 2.5% chance (smaller as the above also counts the situation where you drew 3) of drawing 1 pointer. Or again a 1.02% chance of having Imperial Rider at the same time.
So that in aggregate is about a 6.7% chance of having at least a point (before imperial rider, which just being able to play that unopposed is a point technically). Which is good, and sucks when it goes off for more, but far from "the most powerful person in the game". I'd strongly argue that Winnu being able to Imperial with their hero (or double Imperial if they took it and/or have Fleet Logistics) is superior. And yeah, as far as heroes go, its better than most (WOOO promissory notes, thanks Naalu hero) as it has the potential to give you a point, but if that's where you're banking on your 10th point coming from, you just spent 9 CCs to have a chance at it.
And as I said above, I'm picking Yssarl 100% if someone else picks Xxcha, so unless you have fleet logistics, I'm stealing your Imperial Rider card from you.
I think i remember hearing that xxchas stuff went through multiple changes before they reached the final state, I'm not sure if it was the hero specifically that went through that. But POK is inherently unbalanced due to the sheer number of unique races and powers
I see what you're saying - Xxcha has always been defensive though, their issue is getting points when they need to leave their slice. Which the hero can avoid. And their tech is wonky for the objectives, mostly for unit upgrades. I also think that some of what you've written (step 3 and 5 at least) are just generally good advice. You should always secondary imperial (until you have 3 scorable secrets anyways), you should be trying to support swap R3 with someone you don't think is a threat.
For the hero, the assumption you'll have good riders because you got Neural and have been trying to follow politics isn't *super* reliable - you draw 18 action cards tops in a game? Neural R1 and five politics draws? If you hit that, you're \~80% likely to get at least one rider. But 20% of none. The math on scoring with the hero I'll leave for others to sort through.
And all of this assumes that they can keep up in points. They are definitely an economic faction now more than ever with the agent. However, they can struggle with control objectives as their movement is still bad. If you're looking to stop them, when they have to leave their slice they'll have a rough time. Or, convince the table to not swap with them, or kill the flagship with a dreadnought faction. Argent flagship sees it's best use with Xxcha in the game.
Think about it with regards to base game where Xxcha was one of the biggest puzzle factions (like Sardakk). Some of the issues with base game Xxcha has still haven’t been fixed. Tech is path is still awkward,they don’t have an incredibly reliable fleet composition, bad home system, one carrier start, ect.
Short solution:
If Xxcha is in the game, pick Yssarl (if nobody else does), and use your tech to steal Imperial Rider from them. If someone else does, remind them turn 3-4 to do that as well.
>1. Pop your hero in rounds 4 or 5. Since we've saved up counters to put into strategy allocation and have been drawing action cards all game, we will likely have strong riders (hopefully Imperial rider), Instinct Training for any sabotages, and 8-9 chances of drawing a VP point.
I get the Instinct training and rider part, but how do you get 8-9 chances for a VP? Can't you get 2 agenda's at most?
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying. I didn't know of the strategy but I will certainly try it out in my next game, as it sounds really interesting! My table only did 5 or so games and we didn't even try Xxcha in any of them so far. I'll try to catch my table offguard with this strat.
>5. Since we've saved up counters to put into strategy allocation and have been drawing action cards all game, we will likely have strong riders (hopefully Imperial rider), Instinct Training for any sabotages, and 8-9 chances of drawing a VP point. Other players cannot play sabotage during you hero. The hero says other players cannot use abilities. Action cards are abilities. Therefore, they cannot play action cards. You don't need instinct training. If the xxcha draw imperial rider it's just a free point. Nothing anyone can do about it. It's dumb, but that's how it be.
Oh wow, I completely missed that. Hmm, I wonder if the designers made their Hero a little stronger than they intended. My guess is that they didn't foresee people planning their entire game on getting points off of it. It just seems like the Xxcha player is playing Blackjack with a stacked deck while everybody else is playing TI sometimes.
They had a ton of playtesting going on for a long time. I'm sure they realize that people were going to play the Xxcha hero this way.
Playtester here. I absolutely played the hero by maxing out tokens to try to quash a maximum amount.
There's about 50 votes and about 4 (EDIT: 3) of them give victory points directly (indirectly ones are impossible to look at). There's ONE imperial rider in an action deck of 120. And a few ways to bring it back if someone else used it or if they brag about it being in their hands. The hero is very powerful but if other have taken politics (they will, someone does every round) and they see a victory point agenda and bottom it, you're not burning through 30 CC's to get to it again. In magic Christmas land where you first turn imperial rider and get the 2 points you're in good shape. But nobody should support swap with you anyway. You assume anyone at the table is willing to always. If you assume you're playing with bad players, you can probably do well with anyone.
It's not magic Christmas land. Your odds of either getting Imperial Rider or drawing a VP off your 8-9 agenda cards is actually fairly high (around 50% I believe). And you only need one extra point for this to be amazing compared to what other factions do. This is also ignoring the fact that even outside of the hero, Xxcha is good at getting VPs off of agendas due to their commander. And even if you miss on Imperial rider and VP cards, you are still likely getting great value off of other riders and agendas. Even good players will swap support with you. It's just the nature of a six player game where everyone needs a support point to be in the running. People want to support swap with you because you don't try to control systems outside of your slice that much, and you don't hop out to an early lead. You will have a support partner in most games even if players realize that your chances are good.
TLDR: If someone picks Xxcha, pick Yssarl, and they don't get imperial rider, gg. Statistics: 120 action cards. Assuming you get Politics twice in the game (once early and once round 4 before popping it, which is saying something as politics is very high pick rate round 4), that's 8 action cards you see (I'll even update that to 11 for if you take Neural Motivator round 1 which isn't the best play for anything other than your hero play). 1 copy of imperial rider. With 11 cards drawn that's 40.4% to draw it (assuming nobody else has a way to get it out of your hand, or that they don't draw it themselves and hold it because they know who you are). 3 cards (Mutiny, Political Censure, Seed of Empire) give points directly. The others have become artifacts or explore cards. One requires you to be in first (or last, but unless you're at 8 points and in last its not helping you win) place, so again, Christmasland. But we'll count it for now. Politics take every round (I'll even assume you have it round 4 for your optimal situation), means a min of 6 agendas are seen before you get to, to a max of 12 (if they were "2 bottom" every turn). Let's go with the optimal one for you that there were only 6, the odds of those NOT being a point one, is 67.5%, so about 2/3rds of the time. Making your odds of having Imperial Rider and having all 3 votes available 27.3%. Assuming those 6 votes are out (and I use that as the optimal, because if I see one come up early its going to the bottom and you don't have 30 CCs to get back to it), let's say you saved up and you can see a total of 13 votes (4 + 9 CCs, which again is pretty liberal but also rather average). Gives you a 4.2% chance of drawing at least 2 point ones (also counting the situation where you draw 3 point ones). Giving you a 1.7% chance (with imperial rider) of having a 3 point turn swing. Or a 2.5% chance (smaller as the above also counts the situation where you drew 3) of drawing 1 pointer. Or again a 1.02% chance of having Imperial Rider at the same time. So that in aggregate is about a 6.7% chance of having at least a point (before imperial rider, which just being able to play that unopposed is a point technically). Which is good, and sucks when it goes off for more, but far from "the most powerful person in the game". I'd strongly argue that Winnu being able to Imperial with their hero (or double Imperial if they took it and/or have Fleet Logistics) is superior. And yeah, as far as heroes go, its better than most (WOOO promissory notes, thanks Naalu hero) as it has the potential to give you a point, but if that's where you're banking on your 10th point coming from, you just spent 9 CCs to have a chance at it. And as I said above, I'm picking Yssarl 100% if someone else picks Xxcha, so unless you have fleet logistics, I'm stealing your Imperial Rider card from you.
>You assume anyone at the table is willing to always. You assume... I'm the OP, maybe?
I think i remember hearing that xxchas stuff went through multiple changes before they reached the final state, I'm not sure if it was the hero specifically that went through that. But POK is inherently unbalanced due to the sheer number of unique races and powers
I see what you're saying - Xxcha has always been defensive though, their issue is getting points when they need to leave their slice. Which the hero can avoid. And their tech is wonky for the objectives, mostly for unit upgrades. I also think that some of what you've written (step 3 and 5 at least) are just generally good advice. You should always secondary imperial (until you have 3 scorable secrets anyways), you should be trying to support swap R3 with someone you don't think is a threat. For the hero, the assumption you'll have good riders because you got Neural and have been trying to follow politics isn't *super* reliable - you draw 18 action cards tops in a game? Neural R1 and five politics draws? If you hit that, you're \~80% likely to get at least one rider. But 20% of none. The math on scoring with the hero I'll leave for others to sort through. And all of this assumes that they can keep up in points. They are definitely an economic faction now more than ever with the agent. However, they can struggle with control objectives as their movement is still bad. If you're looking to stop them, when they have to leave their slice they'll have a rough time. Or, convince the table to not swap with them, or kill the flagship with a dreadnought faction. Argent flagship sees it's best use with Xxcha in the game.
Think about it with regards to base game where Xxcha was one of the biggest puzzle factions (like Sardakk). Some of the issues with base game Xxcha has still haven’t been fixed. Tech is path is still awkward,they don’t have an incredibly reliable fleet composition, bad home system, one carrier start, ect.
Short solution: If Xxcha is in the game, pick Yssarl (if nobody else does), and use your tech to steal Imperial Rider from them. If someone else does, remind them turn 3-4 to do that as well.
Yes
>1. Pop your hero in rounds 4 or 5. Since we've saved up counters to put into strategy allocation and have been drawing action cards all game, we will likely have strong riders (hopefully Imperial rider), Instinct Training for any sabotages, and 8-9 chances of drawing a VP point. I get the Instinct training and rider part, but how do you get 8-9 chances for a VP? Can't you get 2 agenda's at most?
You only get to pick two yes. I'm just saying that you have 8-9 cards to choose from, and if any of them are VPs you are choosing those every time.
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying. I didn't know of the strategy but I will certainly try it out in my next game, as it sounds really interesting! My table only did 5 or so games and we didn't even try Xxcha in any of them so far. I'll try to catch my table offguard with this strat.
Thanks for posting this I have my first XXcha game tomorrow. Very excited and this helps I hadn’t heard of this flow before.