by loudwalrus
So a couple of points on that. First, while I agree that monitor can be very powerful, it also relies heavily on luck. Getting an epidemic in the first few cards of a "pile" not only means that you won't be able to use monitor to avoid an epidemic, but also that you have avoid using monitor because you would be burning known safe cards.Also, as I've pointed out elsewhere, the interesting thing about Hollow Men is that they don't necessarily make the game harder. While they do limit movement somewhat, and they do cause problems with population, they don't cause incidents. And incidents is what (usually) loses games. If I recall correctly, we had a similar experience to yours in August, where we removed two epidemics in a row via monitor. But when the third time came around, I think we deliberately took the epidemic rather than monitor it a third time. Because we wanted predictability in the epidemic draws (by returning the discards back to the deck) and also because we were willing to take a hollow man or two in order to relieve a little pressure on supplies and incidents.
And one other point I'll put in a spoiler block. Not so much because it's a spoiler, but because it's a strategic observation that has the benefit of hindsight:
[o]There's also the fact that monitor is such a limited action. I think we also didn't use our third monitor action because we were worried about using them all up in August. Monitor really is an OP action: it not potentially avoid epidemics, but it also adds (typically) a free risk-free extra card draw, and it also serves as a way to fish for the most valuable cards in the deck. The fact that the number of times you can do it is so limited means that it's best to save that ability for when you really need it.
Using it four times in August would indeed tend to make August easy, but at the cost of having being able to use monitor as many times in later months.
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