Research Investment

Today I want to talk about a card in the The Spoils that I think is very bad for this game. That card is Research Investment. For those who don't know what it does,

Research Investment-Tactic
Cost-0 Threshold-4 Elitism

Both players may search their decks for up to 5 staple resources and put them into play.

The basic engine goes something like this. End of opponent's turn 2 or 3 depending on who went first, RI for five resources giving you nine in play. Invent for three leaving one unattached. Get two more RI's and an Invent. RI twice for ten more resources for 19 total, and 11 unattached. At this point, I usually go ahead and Invent for four getting another Invent and and the other three cards are dependant upon the current gamestate. I usually get a Micromajig Avalanche and a Micromajig Master in there somewhere to guarantee I always have whatever card I want. The engine can get a little more complex if you add Voidal Replication to the mix, but you get the idea. Now that I've shown you how it works, let me explain what's so wrong with it.

The first reason I absolutely hate this card is it takes one of the more intriguing deck building ideas in this game and makes it completely unplayable. For anyone who wants to try a two rage Warlord deck, you better hope your opponent isn't packing Investments.

This card has been discussed on message boards and one of the reasons most players say Research Investment isn't unbalanced is because of the symmetry of resources. While it is true that both players will have 20+ resources in play, if one deck is designed to play at that level and the other isn't that isn't really symmetry. Sure the opponent will get to draw a lot of cards, but between, Invent+Voidal Replication, and Micromajig Master, the Investment player will have access to whatever card they want pretty much at all times.

The deck is also increidbly consistent. It looks for 4 cards in its opening hand. 2 Elitism to fulfill the threshold, 1 Research Investment, and 1 Invent. Toolbox Elf can take the place of any of those cards, and a hand with two Invents can get to the same point but one turn later. This deck will almost always choose to go second to get the one extra card in hand to start the game and with the ability to spin off all the cards that aren't needed, this deck establishes dominating board control on turn three or four with remarkable regularity.

There is hope though. The first would be that Tenacious realized it's too powerful in its current form and change it somehow. The most likely change would be to make it cost something. I think three is a fair cost, leaving the threshold at four so it can't be played turn one. This would slow the deck down at least three full turns.
If Tenacious let's the card go as is, then it turns to the deck builders to combat the speedy combo deck. The first way is to play Warlords and use Tactician's Vacation. If you can use the five resources from the first Investment to Vacation the Invent, that should stop them in their tracks. The second is to have a plan built into your deck to play with 20-25 resources in play. use cards that are good with limited resources but get better with an ample supply (Invent is a great card to have in your deck if your opponent wants to give you free resources).

Even given these counter strategies, the Investment player will almost always have the upper hand when the resources get into the double digits. And as the engine gets played and tweaked more, it will only become more powerful along with its pilots at their understanding of the deck will become second nature. I predict if Research Investment isn't given a cost before the launch of the game, it will be The Spoils first banned card.