The Heart’s Game has a lot of random factors and which Accomplices are available is randomized.
This is a post for bragging about teams that worked well together or were a fun experiment.
For example: I’m currently running the Knight of Disintegrities, the Page of Lures, and the Page of Teeth, and it’s going astonishingly well. So far I’m two wins for two runs. I start out using the Page of Teeth’s no-preparation progress options, then use the Knight to set up preparation for the Page of Lures. I’m wearing a Watchful outfit.
It’s been ages, but according to my notes Knight of Skin, Page of Lures + Priest of Magpies were absolutely unbeatable with a Watchful outfit (7 straight wins).
The only other combination I noted down were Knight of Skin, Knight of Livers, King of Knuckles - I called them “the Late Bloomers” because they needed huge prep buildup. Nerve-wrecking come-from-behind wins.
I gave up playing pretty soon though, because I had no fun endlessly cycling through accomplices until something workable comes up.
I still play regularly, I try to get 1 win each month to keep racking up the distinctions. Usually aim for always getting at least one distinction per run besides the monthly one, so embalming if I haven’t gotten the option to go for any of the other interesting ones. I like it, both the team-building and the playing are pretty interesting (though often if the team is good enough the actual game is straightforward).
Had a Pages run recently with, I think, Page of Lures, Queen of Loins, and… page of Teeth, I think? That was a more interesting one to play.
Oh, and here’s the obvious fun team - Clown Car Motley strategy, where you pick up literally every accomplice. I’ve heard that’s a winning team though it depends on the draws. I’ve never tried it (obviously I’ve gotten distinction of Motley, but not by getting literally every accomplice. Now that I’ve mentioned it, I’ll try it next time I see Motley…)
I’ve had wins with a few different teams… but a lot of them have been with Spines supported by some Preparations-generators - often some combination of Skin, Livers and Cod.
The Full Motley is technically the most optimal EPA, because of all the excess actions spent in the drafting phase. And also because you’re likely to have several rounds stretch out from bad draws, and lose a few. I recommend trying it! If for no other reason than it’s really funny for Motley to take a chump from 0 to dead in one hit.
I’ve been playing a lot lately, to grind exploits for compendia to sell (so actually winning isn’t the point, though it gets annoying if I don’t), and I’ve had good luck with King of Knuckles, Priest of Smiths, and either another King (Spines ideally) or a preparation-generator depending on the draw.
Got this month’s distinction (plus embalming) with Page of Gambits, Priest of Magpies, Knight of Livers. Used all shadowy gear.
I saw Gambits in the first set of 4 and went for that, hoping I’d be able to put together a team for Distinction of Pages. The main thing that needed was a priest or queen that could make prep - never had the option though. Second draw the only priest I saw was Magpies (helps pages but does not generate prep) and the third draw had no priests/queens. It did have livers though, and that worked quite well for an embalming run.
Ended with a score of 7-2; one loss when Gambits decided to randomly end it, and one loss where I just did not draw Livers cards enough early (and failed the check once) and so I was stuck with no prep for a long time.
I just won a round with the Page of Teeth, King of Knuckles, and Queen of Cod where I had no preparation at all and hit my first level of poison tolerance at the same time as reaching level eight of poisoner’s progress.
Wild
This month’s successful team was Queen of Loins, Page of Roots, Page of Teeth. (7-2, got Distinction of Pages as well as this month’s distinction.)
Before drafting, I counted my distinctions and my lowest was 5, for distinction of pages or distinction of kings, so I wanted to get one of those. My first draw didn’t have any kings but did have Page of Teeth so I started with that pick to try to go for distinction of pages. Next draw included roots so I picked that - roots is a great finisher for pages teams once there’s a few points of poison tolerance, just needed to draw a queen or priest in the last draft round to get prep. Fortunately I drew the queen of loins, giving the final team of loins, teeth, roots. I equipped all the KT gear to 100% the roots challenges. Dangerous turned out to be at about ~90%.
General approach was - build up to 3 prep with loins, in the meantime playing the Teeth options (either the check-free options if still at 0 prep, or the dangerous checks once there’s 1-2 prep). When there’s some prep but 0-2 poison tolerance, keep to playing Teeth. Once there is 2-3 poison tolerance, switch to the Roots cards (should have 3 prep by then).
Generally went pretty well; the bad runs where those there was some combo of not drawing Loins early in the run (and thus had to play check-free options too many times), not drawing Teeth in the middle game (when there’s no poison tolerance and so playing Roots just accelerats that poison tolerance too much), or not drawing Roots near the end.