YMMV / Res Arcana

• Better Off Sold: Any artifact card in your hand can be discarded for one gold or two normal essences. While there are situations where you're willing to discard anything to get the essences you need, the following cards are very likely to get discarded instead of played:
  • In the base game, Windup Man is considered near useless because it ties up a lot of resources and is almost always too slow to provide any real benefit, even if you play it in round 1. As a result, it's almost always discard fodder outside of beginner games (which are slow enough that using it can work out) and those rare games where (1) you're sure it'll go to 5 rounds (which makes it more likely to pay off), (2) you have a use for the few essences you have left after paying Windup Man's cost and putting an essence on it, and (3) you have no better options.
  • The Dragons, which are Awesome, but Impractical if you don't have dragon synergies.
  • The Dancing Sword's income ability is underwhelming, and its infinite protection is situational (especially at low player counts).
  • The Possessed Demon Slayer has two powers, both of which are useless if no opponent has any demons. At that point its only redeeming quality is that it has the Demon type, but even that's useless if you're not going for a Demon strategy. It is worth a Victory Point, but at an effective cost of ~6 essences, playing it for that is not worth it unless you have some spare essences and no other way to convert them, or you can use the Homunculus's discount to decrease the effective cost to a more reasonable ~3 essences.
  • The Hypnotic Basin and the Treant rely on their powers that "leech" of of an opponent's supply of respectively Elan or Death to make a profit. If no one is using those essence types (and you can't get much value out of Treant's Creature tag), these cards are not great.
  • The Sea Serpent and Wind Dragon are big, expensive Awesome, but Impractical dragons. This gives them the interesting property of being excellent discard fodder for the Sacrificial Dagger, which cares about a card's cost. (The Philosopher's Stone is also good discard fodder for the Dagger, but it's a very good card in and of itself.)
  • The 2-essence artifact Hand of Glory is often discard fodder because it's a Low-Tier Letdown in general. It can be tapped each round to give you 2 Death, but since it also gives a Death to each opponent, it's more like a net gain of 1 essence. If you're in a four-round game — what you can normally expect — even playing it in round 1 is merely breaking even compared to just discarding the thing for any two essences. If the game goes to round 5, it's still only netting you one essence. There's rarely a reason to play it.
  • The Mermaid is a Creature can be turned to put one of your Calm, Life or Gold essences on a Place of Power for a Victory Point. Unfortunately, it'll probably end up being discarded instead because this power is so restrictive: six PoPs can't make any use of its power or Creature tag, ten have dubious synergies that are rarely or never worth the trouble, and only two work relatively well with it. It doesn't even benefit much from the Beastmaster, who boosted the other underwhelming Creatures. Why? Beastmaster can turn itself and a Creature to gain 2 essences. That cost is fine on most Creatures, which have weak or situational turning powers if any at all... but Mermaid is dead weight if you can't make use of its power. Its main saving grace is that the Druid lets you use its power an additional time per round.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • Among the Places of Power, the Dragon's Lair and the Catacombs of the Dead both draw a lot of ire because they can be tapped for points every turn, allowing their user to largely or entirely ignore artifacts. These strategies are samey and hard to beat. Both are particularly annoying if combined with the Witch, whose ability can untap them for even more points.
  • The Philosopher's Stone has similar issues of leading to samey strategies that are hard to beat — in this case, you just make a bunch of one essence, convert it into gold with the Stone, and buy as many Monuments as possible for a ton of points. This strategy was nerfed in Lux et Tenebrae, which (among other things) made it easier for opponents to buy up enough Monuments to keep you from winning through those alone. Perlae Imperii's increased score requirement made this strategy even less reliable, since you're unlikely to reach 13 points in Monuments alone.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Windup Man is considered almost completely useless in the base game, as it's just too slow to pay off in games with experienced players. The expansions make it somewhat more usable, however.
  • The Hand of Glory is usually considered the worst artifact when both expansions are used. It costs 2 essences and can be tapped each round to give you 2 Death, but since it also gives a Death to each opponent, it's more like a net gain of 1 essence. If you're in a four-round game — what you can normally expect — even playing it in round 1 is merely breaking even compared to just discarding the thing for any two essences. If the game goes to round 5, it's still only netting you one essence. There's rarely a reason to play it.
  • A common complaint about the game is that the Dragons are underwhelming. While they're useful as combo pieces, they're almost never worth playing on their own — their attacks are too easy to defend against (especially for the comparatively cheap dragons), and they're too expensive for what you get. This impression is exacerbated by how people would expect that fire-breathing dragon to be a real threat, not something you usually play to have it hoard gold in its lair.
• That One Rule:
  • The Illusion item◊ can react as you use a power to turn and be treated as a demon, creature or dragon for that power only, with the last part of that not being clear from the card design. This has led to a lot of rules questions about how exactly it interacts with effects that care about these card types and when you're allowed to use it. Can you sacrifice it to the Sacrificial Pit?^note No, it's a magic item and can't be destroyed. Can you turn it to get an extra Victory Point with the Dark Cathedral?^note Yes, as you're using the Cathedral's react power. Can you straighten it with powers that straighten these specific card types?^note No, as it has stopped being a creature/demon/dragon at that point. Last but not least, can you use it to gain extra points from Places of Power that count how many cards you have of a specific type?^note This is where it gets messy. If you turn Illusion to use it as a Demon for the Dark Cathedral, it doesn't also count as a Demon for the Place of Power that counts your Demons. If you don't do anything like this, you can only turn it to get points from a Place of Power if you actively used a "check victory now" power to trigger the victory check.
  • Pearls can be converted as Out-of-Turn Interaction... but with the unintuitive restriction that you can only do it when using a React power or responding to a React power condition (such as being attacked by a Dragon). This means that only some attacks let you convert Pearls to essences (the one you need for a Dragon's ignore clause or just Life) right before the attack to limit the damage.