Garfield No Event cards may be played while Garfield is in play. Discard Garfield if you draw a card. Well, here is another of a relatively small group of anti-Special cards, joining the company of Honor Bound, Wargames West, Honor Bound, Renee Delaney, Charlie, and Turn of Events (CotW #17). Game mechanics first. Garfield is a pretty direct card. Exerting for cards is _not_ drawing cards, and does not remove Garfield. The "reshuffle" effect of Holy Ground/ME is not considered drawing either. The effects of cards like Holy Ground/SE, Master's Stratagem, Patience, Dr. Alan Neyman, Brenda Wyatt, and Quality Blade/ME _are_ considered to be drawing cards. If Garfield is Focussed, then you may draw cards at any time(s) during your turn without removing him. This includes if you are forced to draw cards, due to Holy Ground/SE. Since Garfield is Focussed, you can also play an Event. Garfield is an Ally. The first thing to remember when using Garfield is that he _only_ affects Events. All players may use Edges, Situations, Locations, and Objects despite Garfield's presence. On the other hand, there appear to be more "generic" Events. Not everyone uses Quality Blade, or Honor Bound, or Plots. However, there are very few decks that don't use Police/Remove Situation, or Watcher/Treatment, or Holy Ground, or Darius. Of course, Garfield will restrict your ability to play Events along with your opponent. Still, if you are playing an Event-light, Situation-heavy deck, Garfield has several benefits. If your opponent has to use Focus to deal with Garfield, he'll have fewer Foci for your other Situations. You can use Focus yourself to strategically play an Event _and_ draw cards so that Garfield isn't removed as a result. Garfield's primary use is in conjunction with the other anti-Special cards mentioned above. Garfield won't stop your opponent from playing Specials, but he nicely supplements cards like Wargames West and Turn of Events. He does in this in two ways. The first is that you can only have so many Renee Delaneys, and Charlies, and Wargames Wests, in your deck. Garfield isn't perhaps as effective as any of these cards. However, you can have up to six of him. The second, that his effect acts on _top_ of these cards, is better. If you have Wargames West and Garfield down, you can play an Object or Situation and your opponent _still_ can't play any Events on his next turn. He can play Objects and Situations. However, those typically don't let you heal damage (Watcher/Treatment), avoid attacks (Holy Ground) or remove Situations (Police Remove/Sit, Investigation, exempting Simple Mind and Plan Ahead). If you Focus Garfield in this case, you can even play an Event to do any of these yourself, and he will still be limited by Garfield if not by Wargames West. Playing Garfield with Honor Bound is probably not as good an idea. You will have to Focus both Garfield and HB if you want to play an Event. However, if you do want to use both, it isn't impossible. Get Garfield down first so you don't have to Focus HB to play him. When you want to draw cards, Focus Garfield. The combination of HB and Garfield makes it very difficult for your opponent to play any Specials, much less the critical Event ones mentioned above. A similar rationale applies to Turn of Events plus Garfield. Your opponent will have to Focus Garfield to play an Event. And even if he does, he still has to Exert. Either that, or burn two Focus cards. Meanwhile, if you built an Event-light deck, you won't really care, and can Focus Garfield when you want to draw. Garfield does work well with two other categories of cards. The first are those who let you raise your hand size above 15, so that you have a larger pool of cards in your Ability to use rather than drawing. Master's Endurance is useful here, and there are several cards in Watcher's Chronicles that can let you draw to a large amount of cards, which you then keep thanks to Master's Endurance. The second category is cards that relate to drawing or not drawing. These include Factory and Shadow of the Mind. The next question is which Personas should use Garfield. As noted above, any Situation-heavy deck can do so. There are two Personas who typically meet this criteria: Xavier and Nakano. Both have powerful Persona-specific Situations. Garfield can limit Nakano's special ability. However, the Sorcerer's ability is more of an emergency measure, and not one you build a deck strategy around. Garfield will let Nakano make it difficult for opponents to deal with cards like Master's Maneuvers, Mirror Image, Swords to Snakes, and Shadows of the Mind. The latter in particular is useful since Nakano doesn't want to draw cards when using that either. Xavier can hide behind the double anti-Event barrier of Forethought and Garfield, and he can use Plan Ahead as a non-Event way to remove his opponent's Situations. Xavier _does_ have to play an Event to complete most of his Plots, so he will either have to save his Foci or use Cat & Mouse. Who else should use Garfield? Any particular deck that relies mostly on Situations and Objects. The Kurgan is a good choice here: he can easily use a Situation-heavy Plot deck to wreck havoc on an opponent. He has the added advantage of Disguise: Garfield helps to protect Disguise from removal (since an opponent has to use two Foci to Police either card), and limits an opponent's ability to escape to Holy Ground against the Kurgan's attacks. One caution, however: for any Power Blow-oriented Persona (primarily the Kurgan, Slan, and Connor), Garfield is not a whole lot of help. A lot more people use Ancestral Blade rather than Continuity, and Continuity rather than Stamina. Garfield isn't going to stop your opponent from using Ancestral Blade or Continuity to thwart your Power Blows. Nefertiri decks are not necessarily Event-light. However, since she can draw up to her Ability multiple times, she gains additional advantage from using Focus + Garfield. Any anti-Special deck might benefit from Garfield, when used in conjunction with other such cards. Again, this tends to include Slan and the Kurgan (because they can inflict lots of damage without playing Specials), and Connor (thanks to his Master's Block/Lunge/Stance combination). So overall, Steve gives Garfield a _6_. He is not the best of the anti- Special cards: he's neither as reliable as Renee Delaney, or as persistent as Honor Bound. Unlike Turn of Events, however, he is an absolute barrier to Event play. And the Event-only clause means you can build a deck around him, while your unprepared opponent could be stuck with a large hand of Events they can't play at a critical moment. What Our Other Raters Say: Ben - I give it a 7 because it's a useful card, in the right deck. Admittedly, the deck in question is a lock deck, but Garfield is a real sleeper. A single Garfield on the table forms a lock that stops most attack decks, which rely on Events, but lets a Plot deck keep right on rolling. Jeff - Garfield is less useful than its promo relative Turn of Events (boy, where have I heard that before: Second Wind/Nexus? Continuity/Ancestral Blade?). However, it shares the same problems - namely, that it is all but useless against the majority of cheese decks since they are Katana. Tack on the fact that you can't draw up without Focus, and this one adds up to another overrated card. Rick - This card can be dangerous in Nefertiri's hands. Since she can draw up at any time, she can lock you out of Events but draw up to remove Garfield and then play her own Events the same turn. Hank - Less comprehensive than Honor Bound, and harder to keep in play. Drawing cards is important to almost any strategy. I could see it used with Factory and Focus in a Nefertiri deck, but the few times I've used it in other decks it's been fairly worthless to me. Alan - A good anti-cheese card (except against Katana, of course), but has a fairly big drawback, in my opinion (I *love* drawing cards at the end of my turn!). Nothing that a few Focii can't get around. Jim - Garfield is a good card for slowing down Event decks. It is especially useful against Lean & Mean direct damage cheese decks. Since Garfield goes away if you draw a card, it works well with Factory. I rarely use Garfield due to the limitation on drawing a card. I prefer using Quality Blade/ME which requires a card draw and Master's Stratagem which permits an optional draw. I use Honor Bound and War Games West to hamper cheese decks. I would only use Garfield in Lean and Mean deck with 6 Focus, to get a single one-turn delay, in which case Renee Delaney is a better card. Wayne - Garfield is a very useful card for someone with situation-heavy and/or attack decks. It's a good anti-cheese card and it helps prevents Police, Holy Grounds, or Watchers from being played. Its usefulness is somewhat diminished because you must have an ample supply of cards in your hand and you can't play Event cards yourself. I rarely use this card because of these reasons and Katana simply exerts to remove it. Ratings Overall: Steve 6 Ben 7 Jeff 4 Rick 7 Hank 5 Alan 7 Jim 4 Wayne 5 Average: 5.63 ------------------------------------------------------------------