Investments: worth the investment?

Me thinks Aaron knows too much of the ways of the Financial Origami Wizard...

"First you take four crappy loans, fold them together with special finance wizard folds and then presto you have one REALLY GOOD Loan right???"

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Me thinks Aaron knows too much of the ways of the Financial Origami Wizard...

"First you take four crappy loans, fold them together with special finance wizard folds and then presto you have one REALLY GOOD Loan right???"

No, I just listen to a lot of NPR*

Financial Origami Wizard.
Unique mage ally.
3 pool.
1 life, 0 strength, 1 bleed. The Financial Origami Wizard may dodge once per combat as a strike. As a +1 stealth action, the Financial Origami Wizard may place one collateralized instrument counter on himself. He may not take this action if the number of collateralized instrument counters he has is equal to or greater than the number of locations in play. Each Methusaleh burns X pool during his or her untap phase, where X is the number of collateralized instrument counters. A Methusaleh may avoid this damage once per turn by burning a location he or she controls.
"flavor quote forthcoming"

*National Public Radio, kind of like BBC programming, for those of you not from the U.S.

Investment-card issues could be made somewhat moot by just rewording all "Investment" to "Investment, trifle". They'd at least be *playable* then, because they'd gain you an instant pool.

It's small changes like this that can *easily* be made, *easily* explained, and other than actual card text, have *zero* downside.

Making them trifles brings the pool-per-MPA up to 1, on par with Ascendance. It's a step in the right direction but I still wouldn't call them playable at that point.

Dorrinal wrote:

Making them trifles brings the pool-per-MPA up to 1, on par with Ascendance. It's a step in the right direction but I still wouldn't call them playable at that point.

The 'pool-per-MPA' might be 1, but the card-slot-per-pool would be 3-6, not 1 as Ascendance, so they'd be totally playable (not "good", but playable).

I love investment cards myself. I realize they're not the most *competitive* thing but they're very flavorful and fun, especially with Alan Sovereign and Wall Street Night. Anything that could be done to make them better while not overpowering them I'd be in favor of.

How about this:

Hedge Fund
Unique Master. Investment.
Whenever another Methuselah gains the Edge, put a counter on this card. You may burn X counters from this card to move X counters from an investment card you control to your pool as a master phase action.

This works for me both in terms of game mechanics and in terms of flavor - it boosts up the power of other investment cards while actually working somewhat on its own, although a little more slowly.