Turn action amplification vs. action diversity: which is more useful?

The other day in Twitch, I ended up having a bit of a discussion with another Twitcher (Is that a term? I'm making it one now.) regards Argent Adept's and to a lesser extent Captain Cosmic's effectiveness in amplifying others versus adding another hero who can simply do their own thing.

My instinct is that generally in a "play, power, draw" game, any hero that can get another character to be able to do those things twice or more per round is pretty valuable, and Argent doubly so since he can do all three of those things and fill just about any other role besides damage on top of it. Cosmic, meanwhile, can also do one of those things while being better able to give heroes extra utility options and is better at doing damage. Since I feel that often heroes improve exponentially the more stuff you can set up for them, enough to outweigh the downside of having a slightly smaller variety of options.

But I am not exactly MigrantP levels of expertise when it comes to Sentinels (or, well, anything else that needs strategy), so I thought it might make for an interesting discussion to see how both sides weigh up.

I think a quick example of just giving extra power uses being potent is with America's Greatest Legacy as the stats show he is best version of Legacy.  He is only outshown by Team Leader Tachyon who gives extra card draw every turn.  With Argent Adept some of this is luck based as you might not be able to provide those every game and he isn't giving every hero extra cards just some.    I think as long as the whole team isn't composed of support type heroes then those abilities are more useful.  A team composed of all support heroes is going to struggle a bit early on especially against more target heavy villains without someone who is better at filling a damaging role.  

In regards to that particular individual, I think they have a set strategy/team they use and rarely deviates from it.  Anything that doesn't fit into what they are do is not worth trying.  

Yeah, Grandpa Legacy and TLT have the benefit of being consistent with their support grants. Though I find that I like sticking Argent and TLT together since otherwise I tend to eventually end up with hands clogged with more cards than I can ever feasibly play.

It helps that Argent has so much card draw available that it's rare not to find his best cards pretty quickly. Cosmic suffers from having far fewer options available for digging for just the right construct.

And yeah, perhaps, but I still felt like it was interesting to examine the idea of whether it's more important to build up or repeat existing heroes versus having a bigger variety options available.

Personally I feel that, say, having Expat getting to do a full Unload with every single gun packed full of Ammo in fewer than half a million turns is all kinds of fun.

I would say a hero like AZ greatly benefits from having Argent Adept around.  AZ eventually wants both components out so he gets the most out of his powers and one-shots.  Now with AZ setup you have a tanking character who can handle a lot of threats.  You can have Mr Fixer play Bloody Knuckles and give him one or more power uses so that he gets more attacks with that damage boost rather than just one he'd get otherwise.   Some affects a support hero provides aren't as easy to evaluate but they are things you want.   That damage boost got you through the DR a target has, destroying that Ongoing meant heroes didn't take retaliatory damage, reducing damage kept a hero active so they could deal a final blow, you prevented the villain from playing that one card, or playing that Construct saved one hero character from taking damage.  Overall, support characters make other heroes shine more is how I see it and can provide other benefits on top of it.  

We ran an experiment for this, three heroes, treat (H) as 4, but for the fourth turn we would divide up the play/power/draw so each hero got to do one.  Did nothing to offset lower initial health or smaller total cards in hand.

We dominated.  Largely because the accelerated card draw and play let heroes build up faster, and sending power uses to heroes that are set up to use them, or even to the hero best suited for the situation, is much more valuable than hoping hero 4 can be that hero.

Essentially, being able to play one of 12 cards will almost always be better than playing one of 4, and selecting a power from the whole table is significantly more powerful than selecting one from your play area, and sending card draw to the hand that needs it most is better than just always drawing yourself.

Cards that net (H) actions or benefits (team leader, DDA, Galvanize) will be even stronger, but even just turning your power phase into "One hero may use a power now" is incredibly strong, because the team gains access to (H)-1 more play areas to find the best power for the current board state.

In oue experience, the place where new heroes are less valuable than repeating the other hero actions is roughly 50%.  If over 50% are support you are diminishing value because the loss of play areas to find solutions starts to offset the ability to double down on the good stuff.

Interesting! How do you handle start and end of turn hero effects for that extra turn?

I was trying to think of a way to best test this and this definitely fits that bill.   I can't say I'm too surprised by your results.  

I do so love when people get science all up into things. Especially since the digital game's rigor limited my own attempts to try and create cases to test my assumptions.

Playing a full suport team and making AS the damage dealer is all kinds of fun. Also slow.

I live this game because of all the weird interactions one can do.

Usually getting players to set up faster, play cards out of turns (take down, Unity, greese fun, know when to stand still ect), or letting your damage dealer repeat their power is strong than just having a hero do the same power.

Having to pick who plays or uses a powers asd flexabilty to the game. Who every has the answer can be the one who gets the power.

I mean any game where you can give CC multiple +1 damage is nuts.

I'm not sure who you are referring to with AS?   I'm guessing Argent Adept 

One day I will Make the Auto Correct Submit To my whims, Till that day I will keep having Typos. You are correct Mr Two-Thousand.

There are some limits to how useful "action amplification", as the OP puts it.

• Extra Card plays are limited in their effectivness by handsize, handsize growth potential, and to a lesser extent, the situational usefullness of the card play
• Extra Power uses are hard limited to the number of powers you actually have in play to use per turn. Obviously extra power uses outside of their natural turn are more potent, but still limited to a turn-by-turn basis

The only action that is always usefull is Card Draw (lets throw out situational bias here because I know someone will be all "But Omnitron can damage you for card draw"). Fact is that Card Draw is natually one of the most powerful effects cards can have given the nature of deck based games. Card Draw enables the usefullness of the other two actions as well, having more cards to play and having extra cards which grant power uses sooner.

While all these can be powerful effects in their own right, I think it's important to not overlook just how situation and board state oriented games of SotM can be. Not having an immediate or appropriate answer to threats on the board can, and often do, lead to losses. For instance, It's all well and good to have a ton of card plays in a single turn, but if none of them can deal with the 15 AoE damage Omnitron is about to deal you, then you'd have to ask yourself how valuable were those plays. "Action Diversity" is very valuable in SotM, as it gives you a greater chance to be able to answer whatever the game throws at you in a favorable way. It should be noted that Card Draw is consistently and exponentially usefull in creation "action diversity" as you are digging through all the answers your deck could offer in a much shorter timeframe, allowing you to have the answer you need when you need it more consistently than the other 2 actions.

In the end, I'm not sure exactly how you would quantify the amplification vs diversity debate. In my opinion, I think they are all equally as useful and both are tools to help you win games. Both are subject to wildly shifting practical values in how useful they are given a current situation and board state. The only real true outlier is Card Draw which is always giving you its maximum value regardless of board state

To me, card draw is like Capitan America. Unless you can use extra cards, all it does it make you the best you can possibly me, your maximum potential of your deck. In fact, that is what TLT does, helps make everyone the best they can be. However, extra plays and powers can make you better than your deck would normally allow you to be. The real “super” heroes, not just the perfect human.

Which is better can depend on the situation as other have described above.

To me, card draw is like Capitan America. Unless you can use extra cards, all it does it make you the best you can possibly me, your maximum potential of your deck

I see what you're saying but for me it's not quite right. Card Draw isn't what allows your maximum potential, at least not by itself. I think that is nessesarily a combination of all 3 actions and the effects within the deck working in harmony as designed.

Card Draw, in and of itself, allows you to dig through your deck to find the best possible answers to a given board state sooner than you would otherwise have had. The value of a card draw is always consistently high because of that. Even in situations where you have the right answers in hand for a current job, or a large hand with options, the card draw is still valuable to dig and thin out the deck to recycle back to the answer for the next situation. The action never loses it's maximum value. It's not something you can say for the other 2 actions.

What I mean by maximum potential is without other help. Giving AS more cards won’t make him do more damage (for example) than if he happened to start with those cards. It simply helps him if he doesn’t have the right cards (which is most of the time). Power and plays can actually have him deal more damage than if he was just playing alone.

That being said, personally, I value card draw when I need something. However, if I am good and have several cards I want to play, I don’t need that card draw. Not all the time. It does lose it’s value. Even with TLT I have not used her base power in several circumstances. Not often, but there have been times where the value of the card draw just wasn’t there. To me, at least.

I'm not 100% sure what your stance is, since Card Draw is still action amplification instead of action diversity. I probably didn't do a great job of trying to distill what I was asking into an informative title. XP

Essentially the person was basically saying they thought Argent Adept was merely average and couldn't understand why everyone thought his gameplay was so useful (and thus Captain Cosmic was bad, as being a lesser version of Argent), for reasons that seemed to amount to "why would I take a support hero whose deck focuses around letting other people do their things more often, over another damage dealer or someone else who does their own unique thing so I can have more diversity of options", and while my instinct was the former was more powerful because doing the same good stuff more built up and/or more often seems more powerful, I wanted to get perspectives.

So is your vote, "action diversity is better except for solely Team Leader Tachyon's specific brand of action amplification?"

I see Card Draw as building power (or capability, or options).  Card Play is then realization or actualization of that power.  And Power use is its own thing with some dependence on Card Draw's power build.  Pure Card Draw is great until you've saturated your hand with all your options.  Then Card Play is needed to actualize your cards and make Card Draw useful again.  Since each character has a base power, Power Use is separate, but since decks also have cards with powers, that puts a bit of need on Card Draw and Card Play for other Power Use options.

I always find card draw a weak action. It's great when your hand size is low, of course, but it's just, if there's nothing better to do, draw a card.

Consider it in terms of incapacitated powers: If you've got a couple heroes down and things are looking bleak, you're going to want to be using powers, playing cards or getting other "act now" effects like ongoing destruction. Card draw offsets the extra plays for heroes without extra draw of their own, but it's more a buffering action, preparing for the future instead of trying to beat the villain now.

See, this, to my mind, is a vastly different conversation.

I'll use a terrible math analgoy to try and say what I want to say.

LEt us suppose that the average hero has a value of 2 for "Doing things that are useful for winning" and a support hero has a value of 1 in that category, but multiplies every other person's value by 1.5, but this is harshly reduced per every other support hero (so two only give a bonus of 1.75 instead of 3).

A team of four with average heroes has 2+2+2+2= 8

A team of 3 average heroes and a support hero has 2(1.5)+2(1.5)+2(1.5)+1= 10

But a team of 4 support heroes has let us say 1(1.85)+1(1.85)+1(1.85)+1(1.85)= 7.4

Which is to say in plain english, the more "pure" support heroes you have, the less value you have as a team because while you can bounce around a lot of things, each one of those things is less likely to be a useful answer to any given problem. That's why, IME, a team of support heroes struggle, they are doing a lot of things, but each they have a hard time getting set-up and dealing damage compared to a team with people who are doing things with their actions instead of letting other people do things with their actions.

So, to an extent, that person is correct. You need someone in the game to be the anchor and have an ease of doing damage and removing threats from the game. However, a single support person always that individual to do those useful actions more often, or can make those actions even more useful than they already are.

And Frankly, other than Argent I don't know if we have "pure" support characters. Variants change a lot, but the core deck is still the same, and everyone has a little bit of something that is useful, and most decks have multiple "builds" that can be comboed off of. So, it is far more complex than what I've hastily thrown together to make a point.

I find card draw’s strength scales with how much you do it. Doing it once is not that strong, but doing it many times is extremely strong. Having +1 card is meh. Having +10 cards and all the various answers in your deck is significantly stronger.

In the incap hero break situation, card draw looks weak due to the rng compared to the guaranteed effect of an extra power or play. But imagine the player after you had a card at the top of the deck that’s great for the situation you’re in. Do you still prefer a play or a power vs that card?

As a rule of thumb, I find Play > Power > Draw. Of course, this depends heavily on the situation, Play is worthless if you don't have any cards in hand, and Team Leader Tachyon's power is often more useful than playing any cards despite it being a draw power. And of course, you have AA's power chains which can allow you to do all these things to a player while still doing other actions of your own...

Powers, Plays, and Draws are all necessary for a successful hero.  But for each hero the limiting factors are different.

Wraith and AA, for example are frequently limited by the number of power uses (for all that they get extra).  I see them both often with oodles of cards in their hands and nothing worth playing.

Mr. Fixer, on the other hand, can benefit from one extra power each turn, and that's it.  All others are useless.  Unity often doesn't even have a use for one free power.

Nightmist and Scholar live by their hand sizes.  Extra cards never go to waste.  

Tachyon burns through her hand far faster than she knows what to do with, and would much rather have extra draws than plays.

Parse has enough card draw to keep her happy for a century - unless she plays Snap Decision, in which case she starts burning through her hand like a house on fire.  And she frequently has more powers than she knows what to do with.

I could go on and on.

I've always wondered which of play or power is more powerful overall.

Like, a card play is almost always going to be either extra setup or a good immediate effect. Powers run the gamut, though, and some heroes like Argent can do a ton with a single power use, while others, like say Bunker with no equipment, are going to get very little benefit for having used it.

The question might almost be too situational to be answerable properly.

So is your vote, "action diversity is better except for solely Team Leader Tachyon's specific brand of action amplification?

No, I don't think I'd say that. I think they are all pretty equal, at least in terms of how you win games easier. I think card draw is an outlier worthy of discussion though, which has certainly sparked some good thoughts.

Pure Card Draw is great until you've saturated your hand with all your options

Totally. This goes back to a point that Pydro made as well where he feels that card draw looses value when your hand is already flush with options. It's a valid point for sure. But I think we have different views on what the value of card draw actually is. From a strictly pragmatic lens, it's difficult to disagree with both of you on this point. My question for both of you is do you think that Card Draw should only be viewed from a strict pragmatic stance? In regards to play and power actions, my opinion is a resounding yes. But for Card Draw I question that. Whether you have the answers in your hand or not for the current play action is almost irrelevent to me when looking at the value of digging through your deck faster to get to the next answer, and the one after that. The value of card draw from this lens never diminishes (unless you have near your entire deck in your hand at once, then you probably hit some diminishing returns on that value, but I've never seen that outside of crazy Nightmist shenanigans) 

I come from a competitive card game background like many of you (Magic, Hearthstone, ect.). Does my previous competitive gaming experience force me to give too much value into card advantage in a game such as SotM? This is more self reflective for sure, but maybe that helps others to see where I'm coming from if they are familiar with deck based game theory such Tempo and Card Advantage (more on tempo later). It's quite possible I do, but at this point I do not believe so.
 

I always find card draw a weak action. It's great when your hand size is low, of course, but it's just, if there's nothing better to do, draw a card.

When you are getting into situations where you have "nothing better to do", then you likely did not gauge the value of card draw appropriatly prior to that situation. One thing I should probably note here that I overlooked previously is that drawing cards isn't preventing you from doing the other actions. I want to make it clear that I am not in anyway talking about the edge rule of skipping your play and power phase to take the draw phase twice. While the value of card draw in my mind holds consistent high value, I don't agree that it's always going to be higher than the value of the lost tempo by skipping your other two important phases. This of course is also subjective, since this tempo loss is not as big of a deal with certain decks (ex. Expatriete). 

You are not alone in your feelings of card draw. A lot of people think it's a waste, especially if it's comming at the cost of tempo or other flashy abilities and combos. It doesn't always "feel" great. But I'd like to ask you to reevaluate your opinion here as it truely is an understated yet powerful action. 

I find card draw's strength scales with how much you do it. Doing it once is not that strong, but doing it many times is extremely strong

This is correct in my view. I think I breifly skimmed this before, but Card Draw's value does indeed increase exponentially.

I also come from an MtG background, which is why I also highly value card draw. It’s something that’s ingrained into us because of it.

I think the issue with looking at card draw’s value is that it’s often look at as a single action. It’s an action that in itself doesn’t actually push the game forward and is also heavily reliant on RNG, unlike Power and Play which have immediate and constant effects. But the odd thing about card games is that the best way to mitigate RNG is to do more of it.

Well, I'm impressed. I didn't know we had such interested tactics/strategy questions left to discuss!

The difference with Magic is stuff like how you can play as many cards in a turn as you want so long as you can pay for it, how usually you only get to use a card once, and how you usually only get to go through your deck once. It's a lot easier to trade cards 1-1 in terms of removal and counters. Your opponent is often building up to their deck's payoff turn by turn. So card draw is more important because you really need to make sure to have the right card at precisely the right time. Also you can only have seven cards before needing to discard.

Sentinels has a lot of stuff that changes that dynamic significantly. You typically only get to play one card per turn. You can cycle through your deck as many times as you need to. Even before that pulling stuff back out of your trash is often much easier and less costly. The number of cards that can trade 1-1 for a threat are more limited in number. The villain board state tends to vary more from turn to turn rather than slowly building up to a finale you're racing against.

So I feel it's a lot easier to end up with a clogged hand in Sentinels than it is with Magic. Sure, it can be useful being in situations where you can basically play any card in your deck any time you need it, but a lot of the time cards in Sentinels are way better when they're actually on the board than when they're in potentia.

That's true, Sentinels is more dynamic. There's a balance to be struck though. Early on in a Sentinel game, I'd pick drawing cards over dealing with a very minor threat. Cards are better on the board, but they have to be available for that. To me, card draw means trading taking a direct action now to make a more potent direct action later. There are some cases where that trade off won't be worth it, but for my playstyle there are plenty of cases where that trade off is very worth it.

Even later in the game when things are more bleak, there are times when your direct actions will help only a small amount, but you know there are cards in your deck that can be more helpful in the coming turns, at which point the more you get through your deck the better.

You don't play the Sentinels often, do you?

Yeah, The Sentinels getting their entire deck in their hand is not too difficult. Haka and sometimes Scholar and Naturalist are good for that too.

I think that in terms of card draw versus play, there's different categories of characters regards who wants cards on the table, who wants specific cards on the table, who wants a big hand, who wants to play all the things, etc.

Some characters like AZ, Bunker, Expat, are hard to use at all unless they have very specific cards on the table.

Some folks like Fixer and Wraith tend to operate where you want specific cards on the table but then they almost never need to play much else afterwards.

Folks like Legacy, Argent, Omnitron-X, Unity, often want all their things on the table as soon as you can get it there, since their per-turn options are more dependent on their board than on their hand.

Folks like Scholar and Nightmist usually want huge hands for discard fodder all the time.

Folks like Tachyon and Fanatic want to be tossing one-shots around a lot.

Finally you get folks like Parse & Vis whose playstyles are highly dependant on the overall board state.

So there's basically some folks who can never have enough card draw, some who want to initially filter through their deck but then care more about card play or extra power use afterwards, and some who can never have enough card play.

I missed a bunch of discussion.

  Here's my thoughts.

Disclaimer:  of course exceptions don't just exist, but abound in sentinels, we all know them, so i'm not covering them.

1.  Card Play:  card play is strongest when your play area is empty, and for most heroes, diminishes as you get more cards in play.  Extra card play early is incredibly valuable, letting you set up faster, get in front of limited destruction, and generally get past the initial set up of most villains faster and in better shape.  In my experience, the better you handle the initial villain set up and the faster you recover from destruction/reach  the more likely you are to win, that is why in my value system, card play is the most powerful of the 3 actions.

2.  Powers:  powers always have value, because heroes have innate powers, but they tend to increase in value as heroes get more cards in play.  They tend to be less valuable early, because innate powers tend to be less powerful than one shots, and rarely accelerate setup.  Powers are stronger the more setup heroes have, and also when card play options diminish due to hand size.

3.  Card Draw:  card draw is most valuable when your hand is empty, and loses value as you get better cards in your hand.  Card draw increases your options, but once you have the best option in hand adding more cards will not help your next card play, but only increase probability that you'll have the best card later.  Card draw value reaches 0 once you have access to all your options.

Card draw is also more complex, because it does nothing immediately, it has probability of improving later actions, but no direct impact.  Team Leader is the best example of this.  The card draw is fantastic, it makes the team almost completely immune to hand denial, and gives everyone more options constantly.  Once you have 10 or more cards in hand though, it isn't likely to improve your next card play so much that you would take more cards over using a power or playing a card.  At that point (H) card draws aren't even worth a power use, let alone a card play.  That's one reason Team Leader gets replaced by Research Grant eventually, because that discard becomes more valuable than every other hero getting a card (unless they can discard for damage on their own).

The value for each is dynamic, if your area is empty card play is best, if your hand is empty, card draw, if you are setup powers.

My work on valuing the health impact of each (from right after Shattered Timelines) ended with card play at roughly 3 points, powers at roughly 2 points, and card draw at roughly 1 point.

That means Team Leader is valued at (H) points, making it one of the stronger powers in the game.  (Of course it isn't perfect, card draw is actually stronger in low (H) games, because increasing options for hero play from 12 to 13 is more valuable than increasing from 20 to 21, or to put it another way, the more hands and card plays your team has, the more likely one of you has a card to deal with the current situation, so digging for the right card drops in value)

But again, that valuation is from my own testing, which means it is biased by the data coming solely from games and experiments I was running.  Im my experience early game strength and recovery from destruction are the most important factors in a win or loss, averaged across all villains.

Also, note that while I finished the process and came upbwith the 3-2-1 point valuation, the real answer is "it depends", because each situation in Sentinels is so unique.  The chief value of the process has been the ability to look at innate powers in playtesting with a rough guide on how good they are.

A fun thing from that process:  Impromptu Invention gives you a card draw (1), a card play (3), a search that hits the majority of valuable cards in your deck (this effect came out to around 5 points of value) and playing that card (3), for a total value of 12 points, which beats every other card in the game that isn't Wrathful Retribution (which came out around 17, and was a hard one to value), which was good, because I would have considered the process invalid if it hadn't.

My problem with that system is that it assumes every card play and every power has the same level of effect. Even if everyone has 10 cards in hand, there are occasions where you want to draw more cards. Say you're at MMFFCC and you want to your team to draw another environment affecting card.

Play and Power's effects are always visible, where Draw's power is in its potential. Is there something you want from your deck that really helps against the boss or an upcoming situation? There's a lot of potential power in that siuation. Draw also directly informs Play's power. While Mr. Fixer can get to a situation where he has all he needs on his board, he can also get to a situation where he has a dead hand, with only tools and styles in it. While using a power would be more directly powerful in that situation, more card draw to get him to his one-shots is arguably more useful in that situation (unless there's something that needs to die right now).

Ultimately though, since this is a cooperative game, it's easy to discuss at the table what the best option is, and it'll always depend on the board states of 3-5 heros, an environment, and the villian(s).

P.S. Taking a moment to go back to Magic, there's a idiom in Magic that is somewhat relevant to this discussion: The only point of life that matters is your last. That is to say, HP is a resource just like everything else. While this is intrinsic to the game, it's not always concious. For Magic itself, early on, the devs didn't value card draw and really valued life gain. This is apparent in the cost of both effects and expansions came out. Card draw got more expensive and life gain got less expensive. While Sentinels is very different since life gain can be very important with the way damage comes out, there's still a point to be had here. I'll usually value drawing a card over preventing a couple points of damage. If I'm not set up yet, I'll use Bunker's draw over using his Flak Cannon to kill something that might only do 2 damage, for a more specific example.

The potential isn't that hard to quantify, since every card draw does 2 things, first it moves each card in your deck one draw closer to your hand, and 2, it increases the odds that a given card is in your hand already.  That's why card draw stacking has such value.

It isn't that card draw isn't valuable, it is.  It is just not affecting the fight directly.  Like we have both stated, card draw's value is chiefly the probability that the top card of your deck would be more helpful than the ones in your hand.

Situationally, like when there is an ongoing/env. card that needs to go away before you go after the villain and you don't have a destruction card in hand, that card draw holds the possibility of providing great value.  But it still only holds a percentage chance of providing that value, and even then the value can often seem more than it actually is.

Lwets run some numbers.  Let's say you have drawn 6 cards since the start of the game, and no  RPG Launcher, and now Baron Blade has Backlash field in play.  The chance that Argent Adept giving you a draw will get you RPG launcher is 10%.  RPG Launcher being played 1 round early has a value of 12 in a 4 player game.  A 10% chance of getting a 12 point play is still only worth 1.2 points.  Now if your deck is full of cards that are better than what is in your hand then the point values will be different because the odds of providing at least some value are much better than just 10%.  But if you have shotgun in play and cryo rounds in hand, that card draw isn't a better value better than just pushing through the damage.

But it's not just the RPG launcher's vaule you'd have to calculate, but the value of every card that's drawn a turn before you would have drawn them. If the turn after you draw the RPG launcher you draw Hollow Points which let you ensure a crucial minion kill the round after, that also increases the value of the single card draw. Assuming you've drawn 6 cards, a single card draw affects up to 34 cards, depending on the length of the game, and there's a lot of potential there.

Then there'sthe question is also how much of an impact the shotgun or the cryo rounds will be at this point in time. At this point in depends on your playstyle. For me, I'd rather take a couple points of damage to ensure higher potential later via draw. But also that using the shotgun might not net you anything besides 4 damage on the boss and using cryo rounds might end up futile if you use it to kill a 4 health minion the next turn. I primarily don't agree with "card play = 3 points and power = 2" unless you're talking averages, but then that still undervalues card draw in my opinion.

I think it is even more complicated than that for a couple of reasons:

Some very powerful cards have to come at the right time. For example, drawing cards to get Turret Mode while you have both guns would be helpful. However, since it will take you two turns to play those cards then Turret Mode. If Turret Mode is one of the two cards on top and you would have drawn it anyways, the value of the card draw driops. Just the first example I thought of, but most of the time you don't know that and would want to draw anyways. However, my personnal play style is that if I have a few cards I want to play, I don't worry about card draw since I know I will naturally draw a few cards before I need to play something else.

Another huge issue is game length. If you wouldn't have drawn a card because of the game would have ended, and now due to card draw you would have drawn that card, that greatly increases the value.

Related to this is that the value of the cards drastically change based on when the game would potentially end. Defensive cards, or limiting damage, can be great if they matter. If you can pump out enough damage so that even if you take everything you still win, the value of those cards go down. This is something that constantly changes throughout the game, and can effect drawing for certain cards. I think trying to find out what cards are really important based on what is needed is one of the most important skills of SotM.

It also matters what other options you have. Visionary allowing someone to draw cards is big, even if the draw value is low, because she doesn't always have other powers that are worth it.

Related to this is that when I look at card draw, I don't look at what is the next card, I think," what if I do this same action 5 times, and only then get the card I need." Now, I have to find the value of all those cards against using up my resources for repeating the same action over and over. If that action could have been damage, that could have been a lot of damage that was now lost, and potentially finish the game. Was all of those actions worth it digging for that one card. Well, it depends on the situation, what the card is, and what I am giving up.

Really interesting discussion. I’ve also put some thought as to into how powerful these effects are “on average” since it varies so much based on situation.

The values I came up with were:
1 pt: 1 damage
2 pts: 1 card draw
3 pts: 1 card play or 1 power use or 4 HP recovered

The way I arrived at these numbers was by playing a bunch of games and trying to pay attention to cases where there’s a choice between 2 effects and which effect I’m choosing most frequently. For example, I find that when using Proverbs and Axioms I’ll take the HP recovery over the power more often then not, which suggests to me that 5 Hero HP is generally worth more to me than 1 power use. Or if I have a choice of any of AA’s rhythm accompanys I’ll pick “play” the most frequently and 1 damage the least frequently.

Having values like these in your back pocket is most useful for things like playtesting or attempting to balance custom content… but when just playing a game, it’s almost always better to focus on the board state at that exact moment rather than loose numerical values like these.

As to the original question of action diversity versus action amplification… I would say it’s not really a question of which is more useful as much as how much amplification does it take to make up for a loss of action diversity. As a starting point, I’d suggest setting up a couple of games with Benchmark and Normal Skyscraper incapacitated and 3 other heroes. Treat the games as H=4 and see if they’re easier or harder than a generic 4 hero game.

Drawing cards instead of an action that progresses the game toward a victorious ending lengthens the game.  Which has negative value that needs to be factored in.

I understand the desire to see your hero get to their most powerful version, but stretching the game to reach that point almost always increases your chance of losing.  There are places for card draw to take precedent, but they are more rare than common.

I know my main post was long, but a lot of the points you are making are in it.  It is an average, it isn't universal, because situationality is a key factor in SotM, and a lot of the pro points were investigated.

One problem with the "every card is moved up 1" is that those cards aren't entering play, just your hand.  And the value added by each card getting moved up one is offset largely by whether those cards are better than options you already have.

That's why the idea that card draw stacking is really powerful is largely false, because you almost always reduce the value of future draws once your hand gets big, unless you can internally discard for value (which is value added to discards by other cards, not value inherent to card draw).

Getting a hand full of great cards is awesome, but in the time you spend playing those cards the value of every card you continue to draw has been reduced, because you have reduced the odds that that card will be better than what is in your hand.

Card draw stacking does add value to the team, but the more you do it, the less value each individual card draw has.

It depends on how much the action progresses the game, versus a later action that will progess the game further than the time you lost. As a note, I'm not saying card draw above all else, but there's a certain level where card draw's value exceeds the options you have in hand and on board, and where that line is drawn. I just push it further up than you. I'd rather a more efficient option be available later than a minor inefficient action taken now.

Dandolo, I usally look to see when i play Axium and Proverbs if using a power would get me ahead on the board. Some times it doesn't but other times it is. You also get to see Fun interactions with cards (Fixer), and fun moment where a game is won faster but your heroes end up in a lower hp count, but since this game is not scored who cares.

I love the conversation. I personaly put more wieght on the board state. I have skiped skiped to draw more card to get envirmoment/ongoing destruction because while not harmfull now they would get it and we need to deal with it asap. While Play/power/Draw value change base on the hero, they are all needed to win. I hope no one put this on a number scale (looks at my Nemesis Dandolo). 

I also Promote the use of using AA as a damage dealer. I played a few game where having people play, or draw was worse than just having AA doing 1 damage.

Not just that, but many, if not all heroes, can be played differently depending on the player’s styles. The fact that we can make good arguments on each side about the strength of play vs power vs draw shows how well designed the game is.