Harry Potter Card of the Week
with Alex Rockwell

03.05.02  Seamus Finnigan

For this week's Card of the Week, I have had several requests to look at the following card:

Seamus Finnigan
Wizard - Gryffindor - Unique
Once during each of your turns, you may discard 2 cards from your hand to
get 1 more Action.

My original thought is that Seamus is not good enough to use as a starting character, primarily because he doesn't provide a lesson, which seems to be the distinguishing feature of the best characters, such as Flitwick, McGonagall, and Hooch. (Snape also, but his lesson is less useful, since use still need to put potions in your deck to be able to discard them) Nevertheless, there may be decks in which Seamus could be very good. Obviously, you are going to want to be able to use this extra action to maximum effect. The only good way I can think of to use it would be in 
combination with Bravado. If you can use Bravado and Seamus together, you could cast two big spells for cheap. This is promising. However, the spells that you would really want to cast (remember its spells, so no items or creatures, which limits our options), the spells we really want are things like Potions Class Disaster, Obliviate, Out of Control, or Potions Exam. We need to be able to DESTROY our opponent with the card we use with Bravado. Otherwise, it just wont be worth it, and certainly wont be worth using Seamus as our character and discarding two more cards!!!

So I would play Seamus with Bravado, Potions Class Disaster and Exam, and Obliviate, and try and get off a powerful turn where I destroy my opponent's hand and then their cards in play. The problem with Seamus is that by not giving us another lesson, 1) we are slower, and 2) We cant use as many types of spells. It is not realistic to try and include three or more types of lessons and expect to draw them all quickly. We will only draw a couple types. And its very bad to draw different lessons than the spell types that you draw. So probably, we can only use potions and charms in this deck and expect to draw them consistently.

I think the primary problem with these types of decks is that it is hard
to make them consistent. If you depend on Bravado to have your deck work,
then you tend to lose a lot when you don't draw it. You don't want a deck
that could win really big sometimes, but often just loses bad. At best,
that kind of deck will only be okay. We need a good deck! And that means
something that plays well consistently and always has a decent chance of
winning.

However, if one were going to try and make Seamus work, it would be
important to be able to draw lots of cards, both to get the Bravado and
big spells needed, as well as to have cards to discard. For that reason,
I would recommend playing Human Chess Game. One could get out some
lessons and items like a wand and cauldron, pretty quickly. Then play a
human chess game and have both players draw for several turns. By that
time, hopefully you would have the cards you need and could play Bravado,
use Seamus' ability and play an Obliviate to destroy their (now large)
hand, and a Potions class Disaster to kill their cards in play.

The problem with this deck is that its not consistent. It will win
sometimes, when you get the right cards, but other times will lose badly.
Nevertheless, I think it's the best try at making Seamus good. In
general, I try to avoid this type of deck, because I like decks that can
do well consistently. If you an find a way to get this deck to be
consistent however, then it could be quite good. However, I think that
you would need more cards, as in, a new set releasing helpful cards, to
make it work. Specifically, you would need cards allowing you to look
through your deck and take a card or cards of your choice. The one's we
have all either only get a specific card that doesn't really help much, or
only work if your opponent lets you, like a couple of the adventures.

Comments on card of the day:

I think the new card of the day section is really cool, getting quick
thoughts on a new card each day from up to 7 different people. I thought
it was very cool that everyone gave Fouled! a 5, since I definitely think
it deserves it. The fact that everyone agrees just shows how powerful
that card is. Also interesting was how everyone either gave Vanish a 2 or
a 4, with no in-between. Obviously, there are two differing schools of
thought on that card. I generally think that because there are better
cards, which either do the same thing for cheaper, or do something much
better for only 1 more cost, like diffindo.
I look forward to seeing the card of the day's continue!

Thanks everyone for reading!
-Alex