Taxes OP?
There’s a common sentiment among newer players that Tax the Colonies is an overpowered, must-grab card. I’ve seen threads with people saying the game is unplayable without it, or that everything must be balanced around it, because it’s so warping.
In reality, in the roguelike, it’s somewhere between #20 and #40 out of 63 (depending on how you analyze the data), in terms of how often taking it leads to a winning run. In my own evaluation, it fills a specific niche better than any other alternative, but it’s not that game-warping.
So, why is everyone evaluating this card so incorrectly?
The Three Sources of Power
Speed: The ability to do more stuff more quickly.
Flexibility: The ability to do the right stuff.
Sustain: The ability to keep doing stuff for longer. Or alternatively, a measure of all the stuff you can do combined before decking out.
These 3 categories are all tested to different degrees by different missions. If you don’t have Flexibility or Sustain, certain missions WILL kill you.
Traditional deckbuilders like Slay the Spire don’t test your deck exactly like this. A minimum degree of Flexibility is guaranteed by the “draw back to 5” mechanic. And Sustain is less of a thing in a game where you reshuffle your deck, although the concept of “Scaling” is sort of (but not quite) analogous.
Why is Speed important? Some missions attack you fast and early. Others build up defenses that can only be broken through with a sudden burst of strength.
Why is Flexibility important? Unlike many deckbuilders, basic cards in this game can get close to 0 value when played in the wrong situation. You don’t want to play a unit card into its counter, and you don’t want to waste situational removal cards. Having a lot of options lets you answer what’s coming at you.
Why is Sustain important? Some missions are designed to make you go through your entire deck before the mission is over. Some missions punish you using too much Speed, with splash damage that can clear a single grouped wave, regardless of its size. Being able to continue to get out units and answers to their units is critical in these missions.
Tax = Extreme Speed
Tax is an enabler for Speed, but it actually doesn’t solve it single-handedly; you also need a deck that has the high cost cards to spend all the extra income on. But yeah, it’s best-in-class for this narrow enabler purpose.
But Tax doesn’t help you at all with Flexibility or Sustain.
In fact, it noob-traps players into doing both of these things worse. Enabled by Tax, players might dump a key situational card like Pulsewave Missiles when they’re better off saving it for future Flexibility. Or they might play 3 unit cards when 1 would have sufficed, and have the whole group get swept away by a single AoE unit wave or effect, reducing their ability to Sustain later.
This noob-trapping effect explains why Tax performs worse at lower Ranks.
Going After Flexibility
Card draw is the main way you do this. If you have more options, aka cards, you have more Flexibility. I think players coming from traditional deckbuilders (that refill your hand every turn) don’t realize how critical draw is in this game.
If you find yourself sitting at 0-2 cards in hand as the match goes on, consider picking up a Transfer, or a card that keeps coming back to hand like Tormean Uprising.
And if certain missions seem to be hard countering your deck, consider periodically evaluating what your deck does and does not cover. Do you have AoE? An answer to large threats like Anarchs, Titans, and Exodes? A way to sustain into the late game? A way to burst out some units or missiles early? If not, consider plugging the gaps; card draw can only help with Flexibility if your deck has a flexible selection of solutions to the problems you’ll encounter.
Going After Sustain
There are a bunch of ways to go after Sustain.
The easiest answer is production structures. Destroyer Factory has been a top 10 win rate card since launch.
Cards that return to hand, like Tormean Uprising or Director Keys, also provide a lot of Sustain.
And in the shorter term sense, you may also need a bit of card draw for your Sustain to be effective. If the amount of power you’re Sustaining over time is too low because your hand is empty and you can’t spend your resources, try to grab some cards that draw.
So What are the Best Cards?
If I go off of win rate alone, the “best” cards are the most expensive cards, with a couple exceptions like Destroyer Factory and Director Keys. But this is a bit misleading; if you are able to find a super expensive card, that means you’re deep into a run with a lot of max income (a good place to be), so when you claim a card like Imperial Navy it’s likely to result in a winning run.
I track “offer prevalence” as well, and if I weight the win rates by how often the card even shows up, the results become a lot more interesting. The top three right now are:
Destroyer Factory
Full-Scale Invasion
Hijana’s Avengers
Destroyer Factory is the king of Sustain. Almost any deck is made better by 1-2 copies.
Full-Scale Invasion is the second half of the Tax the Colonies extreme-cheated-out-speed gameplan. But if you had to have just one half, you’d probably rather have the Invasion, as it’s useful even before you’ve reached large amounts of income, whereas Tax does nothing without a corresponding expensive card to play with it.
Hijana’s Avengers is just pretty efficient, if a bit slow to build. But since Lancers are so prevalent, most decks will eventually be able to do 7/1 for 30 Lancers, which is a great deal. Maybe this one is just a bit overtuned? I may be adjusting this card for other reasons at some point but… that’s another blog post, so we’ll stop here for now!