F^#@ Hold me closer Snowy Dancer

New character review for Snowflake/Snow Dancer

Frosthaven character review.   All picture taken from this character guide  .

General Overview

The Snow Dancer is nearly a 100% support character.   Variety of ways :  Healing, forced enemy movement, movement buffs, allied attacks, strength buffs, and wards.  If there's a way to make your friends better, Snow Dancer can provide.

Theoritically, you can pitch in on damage.  Dancer's spread a lot of hazardous terrain that you can force bad guys into.  I found this situational at best, and the optimum build relied heavily on the support cards.

But, oh, the support.  After 3 missions I started calling her "everybodies friend".

Decent hit points allows Snow Dancer to take a round of hits, possibly multiple rounds.  10 card hand sounds like a lot, but there's quite a few permanents that totally thin the hand.  Snowdancer is also crazy fast on initiatives, almost always beating the monster attack actions.

Healbot 9000

Two cards launch the Healbot 9000.  

The gathering force top guarantees you'll almost always have the magic you need for the following...

A permanent heal 2, so long as friends stay reasonable close.

There's also 3 more Level 1 heal cards and 5 more oppurtunities as you level.  There's a lot of healing.

Downsides?

The one space reduction of forced movement from Gathering Force cripples the forced movement build (more on that later).   A non-trivial amound of these cards are only 1 space.

Also, this is actually a pretty boring play style.

Hazardous Terrain?

The other thing Snow Dancer does a lot of is drop/move hazardous terrain and, possibly, push-pull monsters into that.

Only 1 card in the initial deck creates hazardous terrain, and there's oppurtunities to get 4 more as you level.

If the players intention is to maximize damage, you'd play Chilling Impact as a permanent and attempt to force move monsters lots.

Healbot vs. Controlled Movement Damage

I found these 100% incompatible.    First off, 3 permanents out simultaneously makes quick turns before rests.  Second, if you're spending magic on healing it's likely not available for damage, and finally the magic generator penalty makes quite a few of your forced move cards irrelevant.

Efficacy?

I do not see any campaign where going with the controlled move build is anywhere close to as effective as the healing build.  Making the push/pulls work is tricky while healing is easy and gives a better outcomes anyways.

Noteworthy Cards

Birds in a Tempest is the signature card of the Snow Dancer.

This card is so good, that the entire adventuring party made mental notes of the initiative immediately after my first time playing it.  It's impossible to down play how useful the additional move and manueverability is.   I nicknamed this card Speed Boost, and not only were turns built around this card, but entire deck cycles.

And it's not like the owls are an awful summon.  But they only ever came out in the final room for XP, or I think once to take some this against a boss.

Cross Winds pairs exceptionally well with Speed Boost.  If your ally has a top and bottom attack chain deployed you use Cross Winds to get him into position.

The attack is a weird throway and I'm not sure I ever used it.  The bottom grant a move turned out more useful than I thought, but the card is in the deck because it's a usefull 11 initiative.

A really good versatile card.   The suffer damage top was situationally great for dealing with high shield guys, and the heal + strengthen always goes over well.  There's other play with hazardous terrain cards, but they all work similarly. :  if you catch a monster in them they suffer damage.

 Never played the bottom, but this was my favorite non-Healbot 9000 healing card.  I acquired an amulet that allows you to add a target to any multi target power, a bunch of allies get wards.  If you have a summoner in the party, he'll love you.

Perks and Masteries

I went all in on support, so rarely attacked.  My modifier deck is almost completely irrelevant, so the first perk I took was the entire room starts muddled (everybodies friend!).  I took the rest perks as well and those were less useful.

There are summons you can use to attack, and if that's the direction you, the heals and wards and strengthens are all great.

The masteries are 'force an opponent move every turn' and 'first one attacked always has a positive condition applied'.  Both of these are doable if challenging.  For the 2nd, you'll likely need Storm Wall on your tank

I didn't bother to try.  I wasn't motivated by 'completion' and practically speaking, since I never attacked there wasn't much use in improving the mod deck.

Verdict

I actually quite enjoyed playing Tiny Dancer.  Yes, the Healbot 9000 is boring.  But you know what isn't?  Having a consistent, positive impact on the party.   The healing, the strengthens, the grant moves, the enhanced moves, all of those proved quite effective (and dare I say, in escape scenarios Tiny Dancer was the most important character in the game).   If this character ever gets re-designed, I'd lean harder into the non-healing buffs, maybe add in some targetted muddle debuffs too.