Drifter Class Guide for Frosthaven

hello everyone and welcome back to the frost Haven series uh I am the kenning Phoenix gaming um we are here today to talk about The Drifter which is a really really neat starting class in Frost Haven I think this class is both fun for experienced folks and um accessible folks who maybe don't have quite the depth of experience that other Haven players might have and so I think The Drifter is a class that uh should be in a lot of parties has a lot of flexibility although I think kind of a couple probably primary roles I will argue I think throughout this and when we played through uh the beginning of frost Haven my partner in two player game played Drifter so I got to see a lot of drifter in action I personally have not played it myself but still have strong feelings about how it goes so we're going to go ahead and dive into that today our goal with today is to try to make this a little bit snappier than our last guide so we're gonna see how that goes for us all right so let's talk about The Drifter himself Drifter is a 12 card class which generally denotes a class with a bunch of lost cards Drifters of course no exception to that we're going to get into that really soon um and the way that The Drifter works is sort of has these uh persistent cards with these trackers that you'll use these little Club trackers that uh will tick off essentially every time you're using them until that card goes away so it's not a one-off use on these lost cards you're using these lost cards sort of repeatedly and then you'll notice kind of amusingly on the back so they rate this as a pretty low complexity no Elemental use um I was gonna say spirit because I played a lot of spirit Island but mercenary and pretty high ratings pretty much across the board and that I think speaks to the fact that the Drifter is sort of a jack of all trades really can kind of slot in on almost any um situation with the exception of control The Drifter is not very good at applying sort of status effects to enemies this is a pretty you know Rough and Tumble I put up Shields I hit enemies you know follows kind of basic number rules of of the Haven games uh more so than kind of the special Trixie effects so that's kind of The Drifter as a whole what we're going to dive into right now is actually talking about how do you evaluate these lost cards for The Drifter that's not a Drifter card you might say that's right the card on the right here icebound quills is a lost card the top of the lost card that is employed by the um the Gemini the other one of the other the more complex of the starting classes and if you're doing this correctly as the Gemini you're making a six attack with two Pierce and you get two experience points um for this lost card that lets you go pretty quickly so a lot going on there right generally lost card is going to be a big wall up this is not the most powerful of lost cards that I've seen there's definitely other stuff that does kind of neater or weird things but it's a really great comparison point for us because we could consider this to be sort of a six or if you're fighting something with shields maybe up to eight points of damage in this lost card whereas crushing Wade over here says in your next six melee attacks you're gonna add two to that attack so as long as you make six melee attacks after playing this card you could consider this card to be a 12 damage attack it's just going to be kind of strung out over all of your cards here and frankly the uh Drifters lost cards are some of the absolute best in all of the Haven games because the insane amount of value that you generate from them they balance this out in The Drifter by making the rest of The Drifters cards kind of crappy and then saying look I'm acknowledging that you are running this class with these sort of persistent bonuses that you are playing in there so be aware that the the way that this class is balanced if you look card for card from The Drifter comparing to other people they're gonna look pretty disappointing but the idea is that you play these lost cards and you have a lot of cards you got those 12 cards that's going to push you to a level that's a little bit higher than I think actually quite a lot of Bruiser classes okay geez yeah out of six of our 15 starting cards we have these sort of persistent abilities that will give you six triggers of this ability um throughout and so if you kind of use that same math that I'm suggesting we could quickly kind of evaluate all of these cards and just really how insanely powerful they are we talked about crushing weight which I think is sort of the go-to ability um it generates plus 12 to your attacks throughout the course of the rest of the battle assuming that you do six more attacks after playing this card to its left is the other kind of aggressive one this is adding one to your range attacks and one to their damage so plus six damage and a little bit more flexibility on where your range attacks go and then over here we have kind of our other aggressive one except for this is retaliate so it's our passive aggressive one um which is 12 points of damage and retaliate uh to enemies within two spaces which is a nice flexibility because it does end up affecting archers uh which we don't always get to have with our retaliates along the bottom we have sort of our more utility or defensive ones we've got six sources of Shield which pairs really nicely with the retaliate obviously so that's six preemptive healing you can kind of view it that way on all the way on the left here we've got the next six heels at plus two um so 12 additional healing that you can generate I will say this bottom left ability I think is the hardest to use six times in a scenario because it's unlikely that you're gonna play tons and tons of healing cards so of the group of these I do think this is the hardest one to ensure you're going to get maximum usage out of uh and then frankly if these ones on the right the shield and the retaliate you don't get maximum usage out of things are probably going pretty well anyway um the bottom middle one here is an additional 12 points of movement uh you'll notice that in the class rated Mobility is one of the kind of lower abilities uh on the um on The Drifter and actually this 12 additional movement really really comes in handy as you're applying throughout the scenario so these are sort of the six different main cards that you have going on there we'll talk about those a little bit more specifically as we go through card by card and even more cards a full nine of these cards say on them you can move um the character token on your persistent abilities back so you're not really triggering your persistent ability six times you might be doing them seven or eight times depending on how you are moving your abilities back and managing that throughout the round I am going to treat these as I'm talking through these cards like they have their own effect so when I play this card bloodletting for instance the perk of killing an enemy here and moving one of my abilities back means that this is in attack three and then depending what Voltron modes I have in play it is either going to be an additional plus two you know move later on or an additional plus to attack later on they have more flexibility depending on what Voltron modes I have selected for that scenario um I will I will still treat those other cards like they have six triggers but it is worth noting that you can persist those triggers by using these nine cards to keep moving back character tokens on those persistent abilities it's also worth noting that six of these nine cards are the same cards that we talked about for actually generating those persistent effects anyway so there's a lot of overlap in terms of sort of maintaining and then using these kinds of abilities all right that was a lot now we get to kind of slow down and just look card by card I'm going to start off by talking about a kind of weird one uh the bottom ability of this card is the one that gives you kind of persistent retaliates uh my partner and I played in such a way that that she was rocking a tank almost all the time and the bottom of this card uh got triggered a lot of times generating a lot of damage that cuts through Shields and everything like that this card allows you to affect certain enemies that you might have a pretty hard time engaging with otherwise for instance flame Elementals or fire demons or whatever they're called um really easy enemies to engage with when you have retaliated at range because these sort of ranged enemies that might be backing up from you are going to eat this retaliate anyway thanks to this bottom ability that range 2 on this really pushes the bottom of this card to something I think truly special I think this is a pretty impactful card and what's nice about it is that you are putting something pretty offensive on the bottom of a card's ability I'm going to talk later about how I really like the movement card but there are some flaws with it the fact that this actually bottom makes means that you're not moving can be perfect depending on the situations that you're in if you're already engaged kind of in combat in the right spot or if you're kind of starting off the first round by just throwing down two of these persistent abilities it's pretty neat top of this card I don't tend to like as much it can be really good when you're transitioning from you know you've cleared out a room and you are maybe going around looting or your allies are long resting because you're a 12 card class and your your allies might be 10 card classes or something like that that top ability there can kind of be a nice Resource Management thing I think it's really satisfying for the Euro game players such as myself to to use that top ability but it doesn't have a whole lot of impact in the board so I would really view that top ability more as like a healing ability than anything else all right crushing weight I think is the absolute superstar in this deck it does a ton of damage um you if you play this pretty early on are going to attack six more times in melee I think this card is an absolute unit and probably you should go into just about every Drifter deck even if you are playing a mode of this character where you want to be a little bit more supportive you want to be maybe more of the range Drifter the bottom ability on this card is completely respectable throwing a little couple points of healing to you or an ally within range you've got the flexibility to do either of those things that's the number one thing about this class is flexibility and sliding a persistent ability backwards one slot there's just a lot of value that's generated on this card I think this card is the absolute nuts you should be taking with you pretty much every single scenario Precision aim is weirder like I said we don't have a lot of experience with playing with uh the ranged version of of The Drifter and I'll point out later why because I don't love generally The Drifters ranged attacks all that much um it is nice to have a different mode from melee it is nice that you could be playing in a party and you know maybe you started off with a more balanced party and then as folks kind of retire and put in new characters uh maybe you suddenly have just a really busy front line uh the fact that you can switch into doing a ranged kind of character or there are a couple scenarios where enemies are maybe kind of behind obstacles or things like that and having this additional flexibility there is nice but I don't tend to think that this card is as good as putting crushing weight into play and uh just kind of leaning on that and because you can kind of manage by pushing your tokens backwards I think putting both Precision aim and crushing weight into play going both melee and range is probably little bit of Overkill a little bit unnecessary so I'm not convinced that that is a valuable way to spend your time that being said the bottom of this ability is respectable a move to move one of your persistent abilities back it's not a far move but it just kind of slides you around if you're doing melee combat and a little bit of additional value there is always something that we like about those characters a lot of little edges that you acquire over time I haven't commented on this but you'll notice that the basketball cards that I've played are low initiative The Drifter is an amazing class I think very powerful but it sucks that initiative this class just trundles along it's something that you need to be aware of that most of your allies are going to be going better than you I will say one of the advantages of playing with the bone shaper is another very slow class is that we are kind of synced up very much in terms of what our strategies are going to be there unbreakable is a nice best friend for Relentless which is the retaliate one and crushing weight which is the melee one you're going to be up in the Mix A Lot so having some additional Shields that you can kind of throw in your bottom here can be pretty advantageous having six additional like preemptive Health that you could play from the beginning of the scenario is pretty nice it is worth a lost card it's a pile of experience that you get along the way you are going to get hit six times so this this card is going to generate its value throughout the course of the scenario anyway I've already talked about the top ability of this kind the moving two tokens back um so you have my sense of that I think this card is well worth it I do think that this card is maybe cuttable later on depending on kind of what's your strategy what your approach is uh but you know I say that and now I'm like what do I really want to cut it for I you have so many cards because you have 12 cards um options that you can bring with you there's a good chance you're gonna be taking this with you for a while even if you're rocking the ranged build um because you are a class that has the heavy hit points you've got the fighter hit points right 10 at first level uh you should be taking some hits and the ability to kind of flex and take a few extra hits even if you're kind of in range mode is valuable it's just important to recognize that this is a lost card and you know I haven't mentioned this with the others but let's comment on the fact that like we've got six of these and we've put all six into play we're only really left with a six card hand so we should be cognizant of that um let's talk about the bottom here first the next six move abilities add plus two for some scenarios this is absolutely crucial The Drifter is not good at moving and you can look at the layout of the map at the beginning and pretty quickly after playing this character two or three times you say I am going to need to cover some extra ground here to make sure that I am getting to where I need to go throughout the course of this scenario uh in that case the bottom of this cart is just absolutely invaluable the other thing that I like about sustained momentum is that this is a card that you might actually not put up in the first room unlike a lot of the other sustainabilities you kind of put them up and then you'll be shooting people and pushing the tokens back this is a card that actually is extremely respectable to put up in the middle of a scenario that might be because you're basically moving every turn in this game and the first room might be something where the enemies are right there you're going to engage with them very quickly and then by the end of the first room maybe you've done kind of like a reshuffle of your deck and you go into the second room or before you go into the second room you put this card into play to get that additional Mobility that you need and so that means that on your first playthrough of your cards you might use the top of this ability and then attack two move a persistent ability back is a fine but if you've put crushing weight into play and this is an attack four move the persistent ability back then this basically reads attack four right because you can just push the ability back on the plus two that you just use from the crushing weight and just a base attack four is a completely respectable card all on its own so respectable top paired with a sometimes invaluable bottom um I think it's really valuable you also find that in Frost Haven there are a couple scenarios where you don't need to move that much if that's the case cut this card all right continuous health is my least favorite of the cards as I mentioned before that's because I just don't think that there are going to be six times that you're guaranteed to be doing that healing and also sometimes you end up overhealing like you want to heal someone for a little bit or maybe they have a poison token on them so really they're only gonna be taking one healing anyway there's just enough instances where this additional healing ends up being kind of a dud instead of a value that also might be because my partner and I played this when we were lower levels when you're higher levels and you got bigger you know blocks of hit points that plus two healing might come into play more often so maybe at higher levels this becomes a more valuable card and I could see shifting out maybe that Shield one the bottom six abilities for this if you have the healing cards to play in there or frankly if your party has no support whatsoever and you want to play that role in a given encounter this card can can do the work here but of these six cards that we talked about this one is kind of I think the one that ended up being the least commonly used the least useful one that is least likely to get you your full three experience points or maybe more that being said on the other hand the top of it is is one of the best ones right the fact that you've got arranged ability that does this attack and push a slot backwards does make this one of the more flexible top abilities of these different classes so I think that there's kind of an implication here that the um the healing and the ranged build sort of go together um this this sort of combo of precision aim and continuous health is maybe a little bit of a more friendly with each other sort of mode than the kind of other uh you know crushing weight mode which really benefits actually from all three of its friends you want to have some additional move if you are get my face and Screen here you want to have that additional move if you are getting into melee a whole bunch you want to have those Shields you want to have those retaliates so I think sort of the the top two here pair most nicely and the bottom four here pair most nicely with each other now let's just briefly talk about the fact that you know like I mentioned if you use all six of these cards you have just put too many things into play and there were plenty of scenarios where my partner went for the full four Trifecta right the the crushing weight the retaliate The Shield the move which makes you into just a giant Behemoth but it also turns you into an eight card class and you had to spend four of your actions probably earlier in the scenario kind of getting these things up now that being said three of those are bottom abilities so if you're already engaged in melee from the beginning that's pretty sweet I think one of the hardest things about this class is that in order to get your damage put up there you really need to start the first round by putting Precision aim or crushing weight into play and unfortunately that means on turn one you're kind of one of the most paltry classes um but what's the what's nice about these other kind of persistent cards is that they're all bottoms and so once you sort of put your starting sort of what my violence type is going to be in this scenario into play and you are in position already you can then use those bottom abilities to to decide how you're going to run the rest of the scenario while using your tops to actually do some damage so um this this class is one that sort of takes a round to get going but really it is only around and I think folks maybe would make the mistake of thinking that the Drifter takes longer to get set up and get going I think really it only takes the one turn to do that all right so those were our six of our 15 possible starting cards right the one and the x's and what we're going to talk about next are the melee cards the support cards and the range cards um there's roughly kind of three of each of them although you can kind of read each card a little bit differently and uh I think that's kind of a good way to look at it is there's a good chance you're gonna take five ish maybe all six of the cards that I just showed you into scenario and then you might take three melee and three support cards or three melee and three range cards or three range and three support cards and that can be a way that you can kind of set up your build kind of knowing what you're gonna do as you're heading into the scenario you might do a little bit of a different you know only take uh four of the persistent cards right because you know those are the ones that you're gonna put into play and then take some combination of eight of these nine cards that I'm about to show you that's the kind of thing that I think you're thinking about in advance and unlike a lot of other classes you can can and I think should if you're maximizing this class decide what mode you're going to from Scenario to scenario based on a your party composition in that moment which might change and B what the scenario is demanding of you I think the most important question you can ask yourself when you move into that scenario is how much movement I'm gonna need here because that's going to impact when I need to put that move card into play or if I even need to bring it with me since I like Melee build best we're going to start with melee cards violent inheritance violent yes violent inheritance here um is a totally fine mediocre Workhorse card at the top that doesn't attack and some loot uh you know this has come up uh this came up in my last video with bone shaper where I was dunking on the bone Shapers loot card my partner and I just don't value the loot action very much we trundle on to loot tiles as much as we can like I like collecting loot a lot more than my partner does um but we tend to pick it up as it goes and in a two-player game you tend to have less gluts of enemy loot together so loot actions only wind up picking you up usually about two treasure along the way anyway um so I'm gonna continue dunking on Luke cards I don't think this card's that great it doesn't really do a whole lot for me and while the bottom loss here is totally respectable a pretty good move which you sometimes really need because this class sucks at moving um with a ranged attack on it is nice and actually is really great for breaching doors so primarily I think this bottom ability is great for moving into the final room of a scenario but that scenario probably has been going well for you already because you are a 12 card class but you've probably used two three or even four if you're feeling greedy of your persistent abilities and if you're getting near the end of the scenario losing another card really might become a problem for you so if you're in good shape this bottom feels really good but if you're in bad shape then losing a card kinda isn't great anyway so I don't love violin inheritance it's okay your mileage may vary let me know if you find something better about it in the comments I do want to really put some respect on how good this bottom ability is at breaching rooms though the ability to go in do an attack and then have a top action with that is pretty incredible so I do want to respect this card for that reason I just don't like the idea of putting more losses into a deck that already has a fair amount of losses going for it all right this is your other kind of like weird hyper melee card this card is strange I mean first of all it's one of your lowest initiative cards so it needs some respect for that alone but both the top and the bottom are loss abilities and they attack a pile of enemies at once I suspect this card is a whole lot better in a four player game than it is in a two-player game because your enemies are more likely to pile up in such a way that you're going to get value out of attacking all of them I just talked about how much I don't like losing cards on this class though because you already lose a number of cards even though you start with 12 of them but if you can set up a situation where you're attacking three four five enemies go for it I mean that's amazing that's that's very well worth it especially an attack fives becomes really really nasty along the way here and you know this bottom ability like has an attack there that's range two that's that is a really strong bottom attack ability um I think that it is respectable if you think this card is going to come in handy later in the scenario to take it and just use it for its base move twos and its base melee twos along the way this is the best class at using cards for their default base 2 abilities so if you like the idea of possibly hitting someone with this big Wombo Combo this is the class to do it with they are the only ones that can get away with it because you can turn those move twos and to move fours those attack twos into melee fours uh and I actually can't even remember if uh I know gloomy Haven has cards that improve base abilities I'm not sure that Frost Haven does I haven't played with them if we have or we haven't found them one or the other would you believe that I went through the entire rest of this guide uh without recording and accidentally paused when I was not supposed to pause and unpause when I wasn't supposed to pause so that's why it's darker and my face is a little bit more illuminated right now I'll just have to bear with me bloodletting is the last of the melee cards at level one and it is the best of them by a fair margin first of all I love this bottom ability if you've watched my other videos you know how much I value uh wound really highly I like it more than most people perhaps at an unhealthy level but this bottom ability can be an attack three with a wound which is a bottom ability it's just very very nice and the top ability can be a big hit that immediately refunds your uh your your token that slides over so I think bloodletting is a pretty nice melee card does a lot of work for this class let's move into the ranged cards although actually we're gonna start off with a card that is a hybrid fortitude can be a ranged card or it can be a melee card um there are times when you just need something to be two spaces and away so you don't have to move or you can keep your bottom ability there and this can slot into a melee build a range build fortitude is a card that you will take with you if enemies have Shields and you won't take with you if your enemies don't have shields in most instances I think the bottom ability on this card is not very good it is hard to control when you kill an enemy I think two-player parties only have so many monsters and in a four player party there's just so much chaos that you can't kind of count on how many folks you're gonna you're gonna end up flying throughout the the course of the scenario I just think that the lost card for this is not necessarily worth the amount of pushbacks that it gives you I think there are other cards that do this kind of thing but a little bit better and doesn't cost you you know one of the card slots for losing cards that you can do so I'm not a big fan of the bottom I think this card basically fills its role if you need something to pierce draining arrows is the payoff card I think for the ranged build being able to very quickly fire off plus one damages at three range and muddling people um Can can do a fair amount um I don't know that that makes sort of the range build viable in my opinion I don't think this is a very exciting card in its base it's nice to model a handful of people but range two three Target is as unlikely as basically the ability top here is not great that being said you'll probably take this card with you into every scenario for a while because 23 is one of your more respectable initiative numbers and a move three is one of your more respectable moves um further the bottom ability is very easy to manipulate very easy to get a move backwards on your token so the bottom of this card an initiative alone are well worth it ignoring sort of the top part of the range deadly shot is exactly the same story a respectable initiative that bottom move four is the only move four that you have without essentially playing your upgraded move card at the beginning of the scenario so um you need it you need it just for that reason alone and bumping that up to move six doesn't hurt either I do think that the top range attack is is a nice little role player pinging someone and putting some poison on them can be can be really advantageous it was a special advantageous with the bone shaper because you know I've got extra Minions that can take advantage of that poison and they hit for little weenie shots anyway so we do like that but you're just gonna be playing the bottom part of this card so often that the ranged part of it ends up not mattering so much um we're moving into kind of the more support cards at this stage and no remorse is an interesting card in that I think on paper this card's not that great heal 3 is a top ability is like okay I mean it'll come into handy here and there and then the bottom of this card can make you move a huge amount of distance if you if you're set up for it it's gonna make you move nine spaces which is a lot um and and do an attack the 20 initiative is very nice um I think the one thing that I kind of most like about this card is for the times when you have finished clearing a room you long rest your allies are maybe not already on the long rest cycle you're just kind of off cycle with each other and you have one of those turns where you want to set up before you go into the door of the next room um you can heal yourself or heal an ally for a little bit extra of what they need and then also sort of this is maybe the ideal time before you're finishing the first room to put sustained momentum into play to get those extra moves that get you kind of really pushed past that breach uh into the second room there so it feels a nice timing role in some ways um and if your party doesn't really have any heels or if you're playing the support role you're gonna play the card but otherwise I don't think that it is necessarily the most exciting card brooder preparation I think is one of the most complex cards for The Drifter because on paper this isn't a card that I normally like all that much um I don't really like the Bruiser classes that have these like Shield ones retaliate ones they just don't feel worth it compared towards like making an attack usually the best kind of Defense in those two best defenses in the Haven games one is killing the enemy flat out and two is moving away from the enemy this doesn't do either of those things and so I don't tend to love these kinds of things but if you stack this up with your other retaliates and your other Shields you can suddenly have a lot of shield and a lot of retaliate and if you have a bunch of enemies that are attacking at a small amount of damage you can kind of really end up punishing them so I saw my partner actually put this card to pretty nasty use the bottom ability is also like fine and respectable little like pinging heel at some range allows you to like throw poisons and wounds off of people or just kind of give a little bit of bolstering extra Health uh the other thing is that this card also just has its base melee to and it's base move too and you're like well of course all cards have that but the reason that I need to mention that with prudent preparation is that it is a 14 initiative and it is your best initiative card I think maybe across all of your cards um I think there is actually no level where you get a card that is better than an initiative 14. so this is the fastest you are ever ever going to go yeah I'm correct with that and so for that reason this card is worth it because it's got four different okay modes that let you go first or at least let you go near enough to First depending on the enemies that you're fighting Supreme preparation I think is well worth it and then finally we've got vile assault I think vile assault is a great card on the top of this card can do a lot of damage if you've got crushing weight and still got space on it this is an attack four poison followed by an attack four which the enemy has poisons so really kind of an attack five and wound which is like another point of damage so this is like 10 points of damage that you can do if you have crushing weight set up for it which is a brutal finisher and the bottom of this card does what you wanted to do you trundle a little bit and heal yourself which is nice if you're in melee mode um it's just nice if it's incidental for really any class Moving Two is not that great but both of these things are supported by your various other persistent abilities and so I think vile assault is is a great card you're going to take with you into just about any scenario along the way all right let's dive into talking about some of the higher level cards as we move up in levels all right my partner took Shockwave which I really agree with that top ability is a little weird um and came into play less than I think maybe anticipated uh because you need enemies to be adjacent to each other it's niche it needs it needs kind of a specific setup but it does at least cut through Shields and things like that which is nice but really you're taking this card for its 17 initiative and it's move three Shield one which is a really nice ability to have on a tanky class um Shockwave I think is just just for the bottom of this card you take some scissors and snip off that top half of that card is worth it entirely in and of its own ever forward is a mediocre ranged attack that also lets you put rejuvenate on yourself it's a little funky because you gotta make sure you don't get hit between now and the next round the bottom ability there if you have absolutely no support or healing in your party is a nice way to just plink off a bunch of poisons or wounds from your fellow players I just don't think ever forward is is comparable to Shockwave unless you're really not committed to doing melee ever to me level three is a little weird and not terribly exciting as a level up option dual bow here um is a fine enough attack I guess um two for two Targets is not the most exciting thing you expect to see that at first level for some characters and don't bring it into scenarios with you the bottom of this card however I've been thinking about for a while and I'm actually quite coming around to it because if you've got two cards in play that you're going to use a lot of this is two-thirds right four slots two-thirds of those cards and if you like those two cards it's four thirds of a card right two times two-thirds four thirds so in essence this can take your base persist abilities and be a little bit more than that so I actually kind of like the bottom of dual bow that being said my partner ended up taking a fierce barrage here for the top ability alone just having the ability to attack two enemies for four damage it seemed interesting enough um to her and it worked out just fine sometimes it was useful sometimes it wasn't I think the bottom of this ability is really weird you don't have that many range to attack abilities anyway and the ones that you do have tend to have multi targets already and so I I really don't love the bottom of this card I don't think that first barrage is worth it third level I think is not the most exciting of the levels um but I think I maybe have talked myself into trying out dual boat if I end up playing Drifter on the other hand level four is pretty cool we do like level four so chunk of flesh is the card that my partner ended up taking and it does a lot of work just the top of that card does all the little role player things that you want some melee some healing uh moving your your persistent abilities is great and then the bottom there is just a strict upgrade from one of your original cards that gives you Shield one which is I think maybe a little bit okay depends on the scenario but Shield two six times is suddenly very very good I would say twice as good um chuckle flesh is well well worth it I think top and bottom and you can play the top ability and then put the bottom into into play kind of later in the scenario depending on how things are going really work hard gift of prey has a fine role player attack on the top and a good move on the bottom this is just like a totally decent solid card made better by the fact that you are The Drifter and the ability to get your tokens back so if you're going kind of the more range build you might take this card if you just don't like putting Shields into play maybe you'll take it as the melee build for the move or trying to avoid take putting that move card into play the the unstable unstable momentum um but I think chunga flesh just strikes me as the better card of these two level five is really cool for The Drifter I'm gonna talk about breakthrough which is the card that my partnered up choosing choosing um breakthrough is just great it's on the right enemies and attack eight right because it's four plus two for crushing away plus two for the piers um and you get to maybe use another resource to to throw a wound on does a lot of work there and the bottom is a move forward which is a thing that you know we really value we like to have and a pretty easy way to move one of our our slots backwards breakthrough is just a great card and the one that I think you probably should take that being said survivalist is awful fun and Wiki wacky um the next six heals give Ward and Ward does half takes half damage from enemies and against the right enemies that can be a lot of additional preventative damage um the bottom of this card is also pretty cool you know I don't normally like loot that much but if it's move two and then loot you can pretty much guarantee you're gonna pick up two Treasures maybe even three and put a lot of healing on yourself obviously it's a pretty garbage initiative I would still take breakthrough in this instance but I could definitely see building towards survivalist it's pretty interesting level six is wild this I think is the stage where we ended up retiring so we're moving in totally Uncharted Territory for me consumed stamina is a wacky card and if you have gone for the range build and ignored my advice about going for the melee build this is your payoff card because the ability to do an attack 3 range five two Targets if you've done all the things um and then take those attacks and turn them into healing because it does specifically say suffered by targets of the attack ability then that is big that's basically a lost card ability but in a repeatable card and if you had some stamina-based way of returning this card to your hand it could do even more work I think consume stamina can is is literally a build around card really interesting really exciting the bottom here is weird to me I mean it's good on the melee build I suppose um 21 is a little bit slower than you want to put a retaliate up but it's okay uh but the top is the range ability and the bottom is the melee ability I kind of I find a little funky even in the melee builds I think I take consume stamina because the bottom is solid enough and a way to kind of slide your tokens back because enemies just need to be near you when they're dying um it doesn't even need to die from your retaliate which is nice to point out and maybe in some instances you want to do a consume stamina even at a lower amount like attack two heal two is like okay if you're kind of stuck not the right situation I also just don't love accurate strikes that much the ability to have kind of like these additional pierces here like we have already some ways to put pierces into play not a ton but a couple and I just it's going to be good in some scenarios and totally useless in other scenarios so that means that in those other scenarios you're using it for the bottom of its ability which is nice gain you know advantage on your attacks this round move two is like okay I think they caught probably could have rubbed a little bit more respect on this card and just straight up giving you strengthens so you get two rounds of uh Advantage but maybe they just found that that was too good or something I'm gonna go with consume stamina at level six level seven seems like a no-brainer to me but please tell me in the comments if I'm wrong unending fight is uh a totally solid card that you know if you look at those as plus twos as uh attack four move five attack four repeatable card pretty dang good and I already talked about how I sort of was appealed to dual bow earlier I think this is a little worse than dual bow because having three abilities that you're moving back three slots requires a more specific setup on your part that being said if you've got it set up where you have like your move your Shield or retaliate and your melee in play and you slide all those back or if you're even going kind of the range support build you've got your heel and your ranged and you're ranged in play and you slide three of those back three spaces that's nine slots which is one and a half cards worth of lost cards so um pretty respectable uh bottom ability on unending fight with a good initiative as well like the wind is weirder and I don't like it uh please tell me why I'm wrong about that but after you heal you get to jump somewhere I don't get that it's not a lot of instances where I'm thinking like ah if only I could heal and then proceed to jump immediately afterwards um but this card lets you do that uh I'm sure you can find users for it but just not going to be persistently that helpful the bottom of this ability is good you know move around and get some pretty easy ways of moving your persistent abilities backwards a slot I just think the card's really weird and super super Niche I'm going to be taking on an ending fight I think on any build on the other hand level eight is really exciting and I have a hard time choosing between these cards we're gonna start with inevitable conclusion um I really I respect the tinkerer from gloomhaven which is commonly considered to be one of the weakest classes in the game but I really liked net shooter and that and inevitable conclusion is just a really really big net shooter you get to do a big pile of damage to people that are from you like in front of you if you hit a lot of targets with it and immobilize them if they're the right kind of enemies they might end up doing nothing at all so that's a pretty good lost card there that does a lot of work but the bottom of this card is also deeply respectable I love my bottom attacks if you can kind of move into melee and then you're just pounding on enemies which is often what you're going to be doing this is a great way to just pile on some extra damage uh inevitable conclusion is good on both halves and you like to see a card with a very very solid bottom with kind of a huge payoff as a lost card on the top so inevitable conclusion is cool but Against All Odds is also really Nifty I think this is treated as as a melee attack even though it says all enemies within two hexes and so you could set up a situation where you have crushing weight and you attack five enemies and an attack three and then it goes down and goes all the way back up you get a bunch of experience and you get to like continue using the card it's a lot of setup for it I'm not sure that it's worth the setup for it but it's kind of cool when it does work that way and then the bottom ability is just unique something different that we haven't seen from The Drifter before this essentially setting for charge where they can move at you and then they take damage from moving next to you by the time you're level eight that's probably not knocking down enemies wholesale just as they come up to you this would be much nastier obviously at lower levels uh but still it's it's unpreventable damage that is just gonna come along the way there so I think it's pretty valuable I think I'm leaning towards inevitable conclusion but I could see both these cards being pretty exciting as with most classes level nine is just Bonkers we're gonna start with use every part um the card on the left because it's just a very very solid card that you're going to use over and over and over again and attack and a heel in the top a move and an attack on the bottom uh Modified by your persistent abilities probably just does a lot of work an 18 initiative is about as good as it's going to get for you so use every part it was just a really really solid functional card all the time very very happy to add it to the retinue at first I didn't get Everlasting because it has four circles instead of six and then I was like oh of course it's a persistent ability which makes this card potentially insane in certain scenarios um you could just sort of nearly infinitely be immune to four or less damage if you've managed it correctly and that just seems wild to me so Everlasting seems very very cool and the bottom of this card is actually quite good also being able to Target multiple allies with healing and rejuvenate and strengthen or yourself even uh is is a pretty sweet bottom ability so you could use that for a few laps and then kind of throw Everlasting on yourself near the end and just kind of push through the tanking by time your level nine maybe not that many enemies are doing four or less damage but damage tends to accrue kind of like in chunks you know you don't tend to take 10 and 10 and 10 and then you go down um you know it's that you take ten and then three and then five and then two and being able to mitigate those smaller amounts of damage does really kind of make you feel a little bit more Everlasting so both these cards seem pretty good I I'm not good at evaluating level 9 Cards because I've almost never played level 9 characters so you have to let me know if any of you have tried to add them out they both seem deeply exciting we are getting to the end here as we're talking about The Drifter and we're not going to talk about items I don't like doing the spoilers for items I also might not have all the items in the game so I'm not big on talking about item builds but you can probably put two and two together I think you're pretty intelligent uh in terms of how you're gonna do this but let's quickly talk about perks here there are a lot of good ones I'm just going to kind of go a little bit out of order to show you the ones that I think are the ones that catch my eye the most so I always like when I'm playing melee characters to take these ignore item negative one effects the fact that it comes with a plus one card as well is one of the ones that I'm going to take earliest other people like ignore scenario effects more than I do but if it comes with an additional plus one card in it I'm pretty happy to take that card so these cards are or these perks are ones that I'm probably taking on the earlier side I really like the excitement of another kind of potential essentially a critical in my deck I'm gonna be putting this plus three card just because I like the variance of that this card also catches my eye bringing an additional handed item into each scenario depends on your kind of resource situation but I like I like the management of items gives you a lot of flexibility with your character so this is something that I uh would probably prioritize as well and you'll notice that I kind of talked about the ones that don't end up modifying your deck that much a bunch of them um so if you're just the kind of person that just wants to have a better attack deck The Drifter has a ton of options for doing that just improving your negatives to positives and so on so forth my partner also had a blast with this ability even though it actually technically weakens your attack deck the ability to constantly be using your persistent abilities and just incidentally be pushing them back you will always always find abilities to push backwards with this card so you're always happy to draw those plus zeros because they keep your persistent abilities in play and usually about 50 of the time end up netting you another experience point for doing so um I don't love these rolling modifiers with pushes and pierces I don't like you know those kinds of abilities are ones that are niched in specific moments and I might have planned or not planned around getting those and so I'm not a big fan of those cards I think this plus two pin or plus two immobilized card I call it pin um is much better if you're doing one of the range builds and it's okay if you're doing one of the normal builds I would be choosing one of these for melee rather than this but this is pretty neat I always like rolling modifier heels I think if you're playing a tanky version of this character it's these are just a solid role player it's kind of in the middle of my choice list but I'm happy to put these in my deck this perk I would probably never ever take uh if it's for me double perks need to be really good and do something impressive for me to want to do them maybe I'm just impatient and really like to get my benefits right now but this just doesn't do enough for me and I don't know how often I end up long resting in a scenario this character immediately can long rest more than other characters just because you have 12 cards so you can go on forever and ever and ever and ever but the benefit for the amount of times that I'm long resting is just I think not worth it at all and then this bottom one here is really funky super unique I don't think any other character has anything like this I think loot is in general pretty good to go fishing for extra random items is very nice I probably would only take this bottom one depending on my personal retirement goal if I'm the kind of person that likes to push towards retirement but I think there's just other perks that I'm more excited to take along the way and that pretty much brings us to the end here for The Drifter which I think is just a very exciting class it's straightforward but it gives you a lot of flexibility I think this is the kind of class that you feel very smart managing it's a very validating class um and and trying to run it well is satisfying I'll also point out that both of these masteries unlike a lot of other classes are legitimately viable at level one I think they're hard to pull off I think I've read enough stories online of people trying to go for masteries and tanking their party for it so be wary when you give them a shot and be kind of very cognizant of when you're doing that um but they're both viable at level one which is not true for a lot of the classes so that gives you an opportunity to get a couple of these extra perks along the way and improve your kind of game that way I hope you enjoyed this video about The Drifter we try to keep a little bit shorter than our last one and see how we did it when we finished with the editing but uh thanks for joining me today and I'll be back with more Frost saving content soon thanks everyone have a great time

Channel: Phoenicks

Views: 5,097

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Id: tnvCsn1nXlw

Length: 48min 12sec (2892 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023