4. Hand Plus Board: Heuristic and Teacher

There's a heuristic in KeyForge strategy: pick the house to play with the largest number of cards in play plus in your hand. Zach examines why this is useful, why it isn't useful, when you should follow it and when you shouldn't. Turns out that it's a fine heuristic, but an even better teacher.

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Host

Zach Armstrong

KeyForge Podcast Producer & Host since 2020

What is KeyForge Public Radio?

KeyForge Public Radio is a strategy and news podcast helping create informed KeyForge players, hosted by Zach Armstrong. Visit the website to see all strategy episodes, and join us on the journey to unlock the Unique Card Game. To support KeyForge Public Radio, join our Patreon or rock some merch!

Episode 4 Transcript
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Zach Armstrong: [00:00:00] This is the rule you're supposed to break as soon as you're good at Key Forge. It's hand plus board. Let's get sweaty.

Welcome to Key Forge Public Radio with your host, Zach Armstrong. Hand plus board is the keyforger device really designed to be practiced but then left behind as you grow as a player. After you start your turn and you're selecting what house to play for that turn, hand plus board is one way you can decide what house to pick.

What you do is you count up all your cards in play of each house add to each house's count the cards in your hand of each house, and whatever house has the highest number you call that house for the turn. Play those cards from hand, use those cards on the board, and that is one principle you can use to try to select what path to take on any given turn.

So in a keyforge game, hand plus board is is how can I make the greatest [00:01:00] impact at just kind of a one for one count of pushing my board state forward, of fighting or reaping right, and then playing a few cards from hand so that I draw up and see additional cards. Hand plus board gets you the greatest amount of cumulative advantage, thinking in the simplest possible terms.

So this principle, hand plus board, has you balancing between setting up for the future, right, playing creatures or artifacts that don't have any effects this turn but will be available later, and gaining an immediate advantage through action cards, creatures, or artifacts that do have an immediate effect upon playing, and then of course activating creatures or artifacts that are already in play for a benefit.

So hand plus board, is an excellent place to start. It's a middling approach, right? That keeps multiple outs in mind, drawing cards that might be helpful, playing creatures and artifacts out to the table to increase what you can do on future turns, and then taking advantage of what's already out in front of you, right?

My recommendation as you're learning, as you're growing or just needing a default thing to path all back on in a complicated situation, my recommendation is to [00:02:00] default to this rule to see how things go and learn from when it becomes clear, maybe that wasn't the right call. Because this is the rule you're gonna break the most often as you get better at Keyforge.

Hand plus board is the rule you'll break most often as you get better at Keyforge. Really, it's not a rule, it's a heuristic, right? And a heuristic is a general guideline, a suggestion. Hand plus board is a suggestion that you can pick by default if a more nuanced play isn't available on any given turn, right?

There are so many complicated factors in Key Forge in determining exactly what you need to do with your turn that a lot of these, when you start to see what your smart plays are, especially in a given matchup, you're going to leave hand plus board behind for a couple turns. Now, sometimes a turn is simple and you do just need to get a couple cards out of your hand and gain a little bit of an advantage from what's on your board, so you do end up following hand plus board.

But as you get smarter, as you see what you need to hold, what you need to play into in your matchup, you're going to break this rule a little bit more and a little bit more, right? So for this reason, hand plus board really isn't a rule, right? It's not [00:03:00] a rule, it's a heuristic. And the way I want you to use it is more than even a heuristic.

It's a teacher, okay? It's a way to repeat trials across the unthinkably large possibility space that is any given game of Keyforge, and then observe what happens. Right? Use HandPlusBoard, and observe what happens. Learn from the times that it works, and learn from the times that it doesn't. Because HandPlusBoard also speaks to the push and pull nature of how you make decisions in Keyforge, and all of the factors that are going into each card you play.

Because in hand plus board, right, you're thinking about what is the largest number of cards I can play from hand? What is the largest number of creatures or other, you know, artifacts I can use on the board? What's the biggest total between each of my three houses? Let me call that and that's hand plus board, right?

So hand is indicating the value in playing a card from your hand, so that you draw to replace it at the end of the turn and you're getting the advantage for playing that card, right? Additionally, you're introducing information to the board that the opponent [00:04:00] didn't know, which can be good or bad, right?

So maybe you have one too much to protect in your deck, which steals all but six of your opponent's amber, right? It's a huge play if it lands. And playing that card too much to protect indicates to your opponent that it's no longer a threat to them, and that gaining large amounts of amber is now a risk.

That's an example of a time when you might choose to break the rule of hand plus board and you hold your Too Much to Protect so that it's still a threat, but only if that threat matters to your opponent, to the matchup, right? To what their deck can and wants to do. So this is simply the introduction to that decision in Keyforge, right?

Do you wait, foregoing the card draw and withholding the information from your opponent about the impactful card's location, in this case Too Much to Protect? Or do you play it? Betting that the turn on which the card would be impactful is too far away to matter, or the card won't actually have a chance for the impactful play in this matchup.

When your opponent looked at the deck list at the start of the match, did they perhaps mention that card out loud, right? That might be a good indicator that they consider a threat in the matchup, [00:05:00] or maybe they're trying to play you and their deck doesn't actually burst that high. So counting which house call will yield you the most plays from your hand is easy math, right?

Even with some house cheating, being able to use or play cards of different houses on a different house's turn. Reading your match up in your opponent to decide when to break the rule of hand plus board and then hold, of course, is much harder. And the second part of hand plus board, right, which is bored, obviously, indicates the value in using cards you already have in play to capitalize on your available resources.

It counts artifacts and creatures available to a particular house on a given turn, and of course with artifacts you've got to be considerate of what using that artifact is actually doing. If it's a passive effect that's always on or an omni, right, you don't want to include it in this calculation.

Because Keyforge is a racing game, you're going to want to consider whether to use your creatures to reap and see how far that will advance you. You then might want to consider fighting and other non reaping abilities. Do those choices offer favorable trades, right, especially in fighting, killing off your opponent's [00:06:00] creatures while keeping yours alive?

Is there a way for you to generate a threat or a combo apart from reaping? Selecting your active house based on which one has the greatest number of cards in hand plus the greatest number of cards in board calculation, right, will yield you a balance of playing and using cards, right, unless you have a huge advantage in either one.

Maybe you have six cards of one house in hand and none of it's on the board. That might be, that's going to be a great call unless your board is even better, right? So you play all those six cards, you get some effects and then you draw up six. Similarly, if you have five, six or seven or more creatures of one house on a board, that's a pretty amazing board that you can, at the very least, probably be reaping up to check for that next key, if not going even bigger, right?

Or making even more disruptive plays or bigger plays. It's through these situations that I just mentioned where we see hand plus board teach us another lesson, right? Like I said, it's a teacher, not just a heuristic, push your advantage. That's the lesson it starts to teach us in those extremes. Sometimes hand plus board [00:07:00] means a five of a house in your hand and zero of that house on the board.

And that's our biggest hand plus board number, right? Sometimes it's reversed. Like I talked about seven creatures of a house on the board and none of that in hand, but reaping out and just pushing your advantage there on the board is your quickest and best path to victory. Right? Because remember, as soon as you're across that finish line with three keys, your opponent doesn't matter what they're doing, because you've won.

You got across that finish line, you're done, you've won, they've lost. In the case of having a lot of creatures of one house on the board, in our example seven, right, it means we're reaping the benefits of setting up this battle line earlier, pun intended. We're executing on the threat we created. Since seven creatures are each reaping for one amber is already a strong turn, deepwood druids that just heal their neighbors and their three power, right?

Respectable. card, but not very good. With this battle line, even with the Deepwood Druids, we've created an amber generating engine that can advance us very quickly towards our win condition if the opponent doesn't respond. If they're not playing something to keep us from reaping, [00:08:00] if they're not destroying all of our, all of our creatures.

And that is the adventures of creatures, if they can live on the board and if they don't have creature control to stop you, is that you can just reap out and quickly advance your game state towards the win condition. Right? And so that is something that Hand plus Board teaches us when you stick to it just to see what happens and you take notes on that, right?

Hand plus Board being a teacher on top of just being a heuristic. And then, of course, playing the six cards of a house from hand, you know, playing all those cards could do any number of things depending on what those cards are. Creatures and artifacts might have effects when they're hitting the board, but at least they're setting you know, up for even bigger turns later, right?

At least from reaping or setting up their effects. Action cards affect the board state just once and their amber pips are often worth playing even if the action card doesn't have a huge impact in this particular moment. So, hand plus board is a good heuristic and a better teacher. It's a balanced approach to use as you examine the uncountable number of [00:09:00] new board states you're going to encounter in Keyforge, right?

You're always going to be encountering new board states and new puzzles in Keyforge. If you feel yourself freezing up with analysis paralysis, right? Just count your hand plus board options and go from there. If you're freezing up, you don't know what to do, you're feeling a little bit anxious as you look at a game state, just count hand plus board and go.

Even if, upon reflection, it wasn't the right move, you're gonna learn from the mistake and be better equipped for next time. Because you will learn, wait, there was actually a bigger advantage that was bigger than hand plus board present in this other line of play that I didn't pick. There is, of course, no specific list of exceptions to hand plus board, just a mindset with which you depart from hand plus board once you learn and once you see in a matchup your better play.

Hand plus board is often the right call in a simple matchup, right, with a simple board state. Hand plus board, though, breaks down as soon as the matchup is more nuanced or the board state becomes more complicated. [00:10:00] Sometimes it's just right to play one or two cards from your hand and pass the turn. Right.

We're going to talk about handcrafting in a later episode, a remarkably important skill in key forge, which is just picking, picking cards to play based on what house you may or may not draw into to help streamline your house picks later. Right. And sometimes it's right to hold cards. Sometimes you even have a single car that's going to give you a huge advantage and you actually do know you need to hang on to that right.

Until it gives you that huge game ending advantage. Now, an example of a card that breaks hand plus board in two ways is the card Swindle. It's a Shadows Action card from Age of Ascension which has both the Alpha and Omega keywords. Alpha means that it can only be played as the very first thing you do during the step of your turn where you play using and discarding cards.

And Omega, of course, means... Ending your turn after that card and any triggering effects from playing that card are over. And so, once you play, once you play Swindle, that's it, that's your entire [00:11:00] turn. And it has the ability, of course, play Steal 3 Amber. All you're doing on a turn where you're going to play Swindle, is you play Swindle, you Steal 3 Amber, and that's your entire turn.

You can only play it as the very first thing you do, and once you play it, that step of your turn is over. So, first off, counting swindle in your hand plus board calculation among your other shadows cards, that's a mistake, right? That's a mistake. This, this, swindle does not work with hand plus board.

Because you won't have a chance to play or use any shadows cards once you play swindle. For hand plus board, swindle is in spirit its own house with a hand plus board value of one card, right? It's pretty bad by that metric. However, you start to have to look at what's bigger than just the counting of the cards, that stealing three.

And sometimes it is the right call to play that to steal three. Sometimes it's not. Because if you're planning on discarding the swindle during your turn and not playing it, you should actually count that towards your hand plus board number. In that way, because you're going to [00:12:00] be discarding it and drawing up a card to replace it at the end of your turn.

Because that's the other way that I just mentioned before, that one, how Swindle breaks down hand plus board, right? The unit which hand plus board uses to count is cards. The unit hand plus board uses is cards. Guess what doesn't win you the game? Just counting cards, keys when you the game, mostly you get keys through amber and amber comes from card and card effects.

And that's where we actually find that connection to swindle, right? It's one card very weak by the hand plus board metric and it doesn't use, let you use or play any other card. So still quite weak by that hand plus board metric, but it steals three amber from your opponent. You're, they are losing three amber.

You are gaining three amber. That is a big old swing. So knowing when to play Swindle, and when to discard Swindle, and when to hold Swindle is a huge skill tester in Keyforge. Each of those options has a different opportunity cost associated with it. Because [00:13:00] playing the Swindle lets you steal 3 Amber, which is great, and often very tempting.

But what if you have a Shadows board, where you can steal 1, reap for 3 more, and then 2 action cards that... perhaps let you steal another one, or do some crucial ping damage. All of a sudden, stealing three isn't nearly as valuable as it may have been in a vacuum. Swindle could have an entire episode dedicated to it, using it truly as a case study for opportunity costs in Keyforge, right?

Another exception to the math in hand plus board is artifacts without a usable or useful ability, right? For instance, if you've played the Brobnar artifact Pile of Skulls on a previous turn, which has the passive ability, each time an enemy creature is destroyed during your turn, a friendly creature captures one amber, you shouldn't count Pile of Skulls in your hand plus board calculations for the turn, since it's not an artifact you can exhaust to use.

That thing is always on, and factors into Any, you know, creature destruction you're doing to your opponent's battle line. You also shouldn't really count an artifact if it's not currently useful, right? The Brobnar Artifact Canon [00:14:00] reads, Action, deal two damage to a creature. If your opponent has no creatures in play, and it's not advantageous for you to deal the damage to your own creatures, that canon's kind of useless.

It's not going to advance anything. Don't count it in your hand plus board calculation. The list of exceptions and qualifications and buts and ifs for hand plus board are likely much more extensive than the heuristic itself, than the principle itself, right? Because the more complicated your matchup, the more interesting the current board state in front of you, the more often it's going to be the right call to ignore hand plus board.

But that's where you should start, especially if you don't really know what to do. Hand plus board assumes that all cards in board states are equal, and that just isn't true! Absolutely not! However, what hand plus board does right is that every house selection in card played comes with an opportunity cost.

Assuming all cards are equal, hand plus board will let you do the most possible with what you have. And it's a good place to start, and it's a great teacher, if you're taking notes. No Key Forge player ever became great without [00:15:00] losing a bunch of games and learning many lessons through mistakes, right?

That's true of really any competition, any skill, right? Michael Jordan, the great basketball player, has this amazing quote, that he is great because he failed so much, because he missed so many shots. So, when you're in doubt, you can play using hand plus board. And if it goes badly, take notes. Why was that a bad call?

Was it one you could have predicted or not? Don't blame hand plus board for a bad matchup or unfortunate draw, right? Learning where a loss came from is a foundational skill in improving as a player. Hand plus board is a mindset for improving, even more than it's a heuristic for winning. Count the cards of each house in your hand, and the cards of each house on your board.

Do you pick the house with the greatest number of cards in that calculation? Do you have a board wipe in another house that will save you from your opponent reaping out for six next turn? Do you have an interdimensional graft in hand while staring at your opponent's giant pile of 13 amber? I can't tell you what the right play is, and that's a good thing, [00:16:00] because it's up to you.

And you're becoming a more informed Key Forge player. Key Forge Public Radio is produced by Rooster High Productions, which is me. If you have any questions about how a podcast produced by me could serve your business, organization, or expertise, send me an email at zach at roosterhigh. com. To support KPR in our mission to provide the community with resources and raise the profile of this amazing game, join the Patreon, where you will vote on what content is next, discuss the show and share ideas, and receive discounts in the merch store.

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