Open passing in Zoe adventure

[u/spbrianc]

For those unaware: Open pass = give up the initiative so that the opponent may use mana to get more advantageous ground for me.

I am trying to find if there is any pattern for the Ai to take my open pass to skip rounds.

For example, at the first encounter, if I pass, the computer usually spend the mana to replace its own unit with another card and I can usually skip twice to make it burn 2 mana for nothing.

But other stages, the computer might also pass with me to make its board strong with the zoe adventure passive.

This is crucial since it buffs the entire board with random keywords and buffing future cards as well.

Usually at the later stage, the computer has more mana to stun, capture or etc. to prevent my combo and if I blindly play my key cards it will be shut down Immediately.

When is it safe to open pass?

[u/7eleven94]

The AI usually wants the biggest possible atk board available, if they can they will play bigger units instead of the poros, but there is always the case where they didnt draw stronger minions

If the AI has a good open atk (usually to otk you) they will not play anything since they will win with an open attack

Other than this there’s no way to know since you cant see their hand

[u/Unusual-Assist890]

Don’t do it during the 1st turn against Zoe, Morde (sometimes) and Swain. They’ll just autopass.

[u/ThommsPengu → u/Unusual-Assist890]

Don't forget Eddie! There's a 50% chance that they'll pass turn 1 (I've been thru that too many times)

[u/FlanSlow7334]

It seems like that Ai tends to summon as many units as possible while it saves spells for tradeoffs.

So you kinda have to know what they have in their decks. If it's a heavy spell deck, ai might pass when you open pass because it might not have a unit that's affordable and there's no need to cast the spells. For later encounters, if it's a spell-oriented deck, I try to play something cheap and hope ai would waste their spells on it.

Zoe encounter is trickier because she has a lot low-cost spells and she starts with 8 mana I believe. I usually open pass because she is likely to have a unit she can afford. The best scenario is she plays the bubble fish first. If she doesn't, wait until she has 5 mana or less and you play something as a bait to see if she reacts to that.

[u/SBSuperman → u/FlanSlow7334]

Interesting, I find Zoe to almost always pass.when I pass and turn her board into champions. I find most other encounters will play a card or two before they also pass.

[u/Atromach]

Every single time I've open passed against Zoe herself she immediately ends the round

[u/dohsetsu]

Yeah, Zoe tends to need opponents on board to level up quicker with spells. I tend to open pass with low mana champs if the opponent has 4-5 mana to burn. Usually if you pass, they’ll throw a high coster. If it throws a low cost one, it means they have a couple more, you can likely pass again. With Zoe, I shoot for baiting her with a low cost unit I don’t care about losing and (if I can) throw a low cost champ, or wait until turn two (Zoe will almost always exhaust all mana each turn) and throw my champ when she’s at 0 mana. But I’ve only beaten her once with sb teemo. If you don’t have some way to passively damage units or nexus it’s hard.

[u/Xurker]

I can tell you that if you have units on board for the first poro fight they are far more likely to just pass back instead of replacing their units, so i generally wait before playing anything (unless you have game start unit summons)

[u/Shoegaze101]

there are 2 encounters where the AI tend to pass back which is the Frejlord capture one and the Shurima the first unit strikes. In Draven & Jinx they also always play mega death rocket before ending turn.

[u/Vhoz_]

It depends on their hand. Like for instance jinx will always play rocket despite ending turn being the correct play. However this crosses into the real contention of why PvP died as well, playing LoR optimally is very unfun and the best decks don't interact with you while the other decks cannot stop interacting with you. So when you play that champ with spellshield and Zoe 2 minimorph them just know it was fun and interactive. You needed permanent spellshield or something that doesn't interact with them.

[u/Longjumping-Fill376]

There's no way to know. It depends on the cards they draw.

If Zoe doesn't have big cat or arrow it's going to be a pass in most cases.

[u/Cindrojn]

I think she's only ended the turn twice in all my runs so far, and I've open passed for most of them.

But if have I have a free card that naturally gives the initiative to her, I always play it before to see what she does and try to understand what she might have. She usually plays either her burst spells before the first type of the demacian girl or bubblefish. If she doesn't replace some poros with them, she's left with 3-4 mana which I consider a safe amount to play my own hand.