Opportinity Cards Tactics - Play/Discard/Keep?

ive played for 3 months now and would consider this almost posi time midgame. and as i find myself discarding a bunch of stuff lately i was wondering what you guys’ policy on random cards is. i mean we all trash the photographer after we get one or both suits, and the lost love city vice cards seem to show up more than regularly than anything els, but what about the rest?

do you play the stat/level specific 60ish% chance cards? with around a buck worth of items at a good chance to catch menaces i find myself trashing them once i tried all the options. the only real advantage is that winning these gives you a lot of different stuff.

do you play the connection tradeoff cards? some are really useful like church vs the game (second chances) or urchins vs the widow (- nightmares). but theres no point in picking society ever since there are +33 cp cards at the palace. also the five action options give less than 5 echoes. earlier i usually went to the carnival to keep all connections above 5 to draw these. but that costs a lot of actions and i dont see any payoff anymore.

do you play the lodgings cards? the more expensive ones give useful options but the early ones only give scrap. right now i play them because ill probably need the scrap at one point.

do you have any other tactics? for a while i tried to do all my draws at ladybones to find the location-specific card that gives you the salt weasel but i kind of gave up. i also keep the useless city vices cards because if you already hold them you cant draw them again.

lets get some opinions out there and discuss. id like to steal some good ideas from all of you. cheers
edited by sathanas on 11/16/2014

You can never have too much scrap! That said, anything that only gives +1 for a turn I no longer bother with.

Never play the 5-turn option on conflict cards, that’s a very bad deal as a POSI.

The other choices gain 30 connected and lose 15, so it’s often worth it. They also all build up ‘someone is coming’, which can be useful:

http://community.failbettergames.com/topic9281-using-omens.aspx

Always flip cards in the Flit if you have any use for echoes or scraps - there’s a very good rare card there that require orphans or revolutionaries connections (don’t take the criminals option), so try and keep them high enough.

Unless you have opened the Nadir and are done with expeditions, then trading docks connection for supplies is probably the best deal, so docks is good too.

Hell->church will reduce quite a bit of scandal.

Raising criminals is hard, and very slow, but can get you magnificent diamonds eventually, so you take any cards that help with that if you need them.

If you’re not stat-capped, then Great Game->Church gives 1 of each second chance, which is really good for menace-free levelling, and probably worth using the copper cipher ring for to keep game up. Make sure your total chances less than 20 each, and blow 5 on nice stat boost at lodgings when you get near to 20.

Oh, and come Christmas, assuming it works the same as last year, you will be able to get a 3-card lodgings that stops all the city vices junk cluttering your hand. Many people use this in preference to the 5-card lodgings!

And one more thing - become an &quotAnnoyance to Jack-of-Smiles&quot, and stay that way. This turn the otherwise lacklustre Smoky Flophouse lodging card into a nice source of criminal + revolutionary connection, and the occasional Aeolian scream.
edited by yetanotherone on 11/17/2014