For those who don't know, the Colorful Philosphers event doesn't just offer you 3 cards from another class, it offers you 1 card of each rarity, meaning you're guaranteed to see 3 rare card options from your chosen color.

Players often make their decision in this event based on what cards they think the character generally has access to, but they probably should think specifically about the rare pools. Most of the commons/uncommons you see from other classes are better off skipped, but the right rare card can add a very strong element to your build.

The safest options across lower rarities are of course silent and ironclad since they don’t have any unique resources, and silent has the most likelihood of getting draw positive cards which everybody likes. When it comes to rares, however, it’s a different story:

• Ironclad: Amazing pool featuring [[Offering]], [[Juggernaut]], [[Unmovable]], [[Dark Embrace]], [[Aggression]]. Hardly any chance of 3 bad options. Huge winners here for literally everybody, especially Silent and Regent for exhaust/block gen.
• Silent: Inconsistent pool featuring [[Adrenaline]], [[Malaise]], [[Afterimage]], [[Tools of the Trade]], but that's it, most of the pool is awfully clunky and heavily dependent on sly/draw/poison synergies. Decent for soul gen Necro, but not actually very good for other classes. You mainly pick silent if you're desperate for draw.
• Regent: Worst pool by far, 12/26 cards use star/forge keywords, the only real picks are [[Arsenal]] for shiv Silent and 0-cost Defect, [[Royalties]] for win-more, or [[Heavenly Drill]] sometimes I guess. Arsenal only has a 12% chance to appear, don't go gambling and don't pick regent.
• Necrobinder: Surprisingly great pool! 10/27 cards require souls/osty/doom to function, but there are so many great consistent value cards to make up for it- [[Eradicate]], [[Undeath]], [[Demesne]], [[Neurosurge]], [[Call of The Void]], [[Transfigure]], along with some more niche but strong cards like [[Hang]] for a high-draw silent who needs damage, [[The Scythe]], or [[Shared Fate]] for Forge/Orb builds. Not nearly as many exclusive cards as you'd expect, and a ton of winners here.
• Defect: Very mid pool, unfortunately, 13/27 cards require orbs or status generation to function. The highs are high though, most classes can utilize [[Hyperbeam]], [[Meteor Strike]], [[Signal Boost]], [[Supercritical]], [[Genetic Algorithm]], [[Machine Learning]], [[Buffer]], and of course [[Echo Form]] to great effect. The new multiplayer exclusives [[One for All]] and [Imitation Learning]] are also very strong, but not sure if they can show up in this event in a multiplayer game. This is a solid pool for Regent/Necro if you don't have access to Ironclad.

Overall, the rare pools shake out very differently than the common/uncommon pools, with Silent being the biggest loser at the rare tier. Necro is the biggest winner IMO, and has a way better rare pool than most people expect along with strong defensive/soul gen options in the common/uncommon pools.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this event and what reliable synergies you see, not just the elusive Arsenal shiv combo.

Toasty Mittens are one of the most controversial relics in STS2, sometimes giving incredibly strong output and sometimes psychologically scarring players. To get a better perspective on the cost/benefit of this relic, I've done a lot of math for you all today.

TL;DR, >!this is a relic for gamblers.!<

To understand how it plays out, let’s analyze a good looking scenario for this relic across 5 and 9 turns. We’ll use a 25 card deck that has amazing synergy with mittens, getting 4 procs of it per turn, and only needs 3 key cards in order to solve a fight.

The benefit

In a deck with 4 “benefits” per turn, mittens offer some solid damage. These 4 benefits could be 1 sword boomerang and 1 strike, could be 4 shivs, who cares. Turns 1-5, mittens give you 4,8,12,16,20 extra damage for a total of 60 damage! That’s actually more impressive than I expected, and it only gets better as the fight drags on up to 180 total damage by turn 9.

For comparison, this shakes out to average 12 damage per turn by turn 5 and 20 damage per turn by turn 9, making it notably better than Stone Calendar and somewhere around 7 Mercury Hourglasses. Much better than an extra energy spent on strikes.

The cost

Exhausting a key card is the biggest risk, and it's why mittens do so much psychic damage to the player. With a 25 card deck and the standard 5 draw, it takes you 5 turns to see the bottom of your deck, and the way you exhaust and draw your deck looks like this, numbering the cards 1-25.

1. Exhaust (E) card 1, draw (D) cards 2-6
2. E7 D8-12
3. E13 D14-18
4. E19 D20-24
5. E25 Reshuffle D1-5

The odds of a single card not being exhausted by mittens can be understood as 24/25 on turn 1, 23/24 on turn 2, etc. and this leaves us with a roughly 80% chance that a single card "survives" the first deck cycle and is able to be played.

With just 3 key cards, your chance of all 3 surviving the first cycle is only 49.6%. Let's say those 3 key cards are a power and 2 multi-hit attacks, and we know those multi-hit attacks don't really ramp up until a few turns in. Your chance of having all 3 key cards survive the first cycle and 2 of those key cards survive the second cycle is only 34.8%, and your 2nd reshuffle happens on turn 8.

To sum it up,

• By turn 5: 60 extra damage, 50.4% chance to ruin your build make the player sad.
• By turn 9: 180 extra damage, 65.2% chance to ruin your build make the player sad.

What if I draw more cards?

If you can draw your bottom card on turn 4 instead of 5, then your odds of a single card surviving first cycle go from 80% to 84%, and the odds of all 3 key cards surviving go from 49.6% to 57.8%, a marginal improvement. Even if you draw your bottom card on turn 2, your chance of playing all 3 key cards is just 77%.

Isn't free deck thinning good?

Even if you kept all your basic cards, they make up only 40% (10/25) of the cards in your deck, meaning you have a 60% chance to exhaust a non-basic card and thin your deck in the wrong direction. Targeted deck thnning is good, random deck thinning is bad.

What if I bloat my deck?

Bloating your deck to protect key cards has the inherent side effect of diluting your synergies, increasing brick draw chances, and slowing down your access to those key cards, all while only marginally improving their safety from the fires of Toasty Mittens. The best solution is to add more key cards, which is easier said than done, but a backup Sword Boomerang is worth a lot more than packing your deck with junk.

What If I only need 1 card to win the fight?

I see you, Akabeko Chemical X Whirlwind+ into Decimillipede. Your chance that 1 card in a 25 card deck will be drawn go from 100% without mittens to just 80% with mittens, meaning you've got a 20% chance to scream at your screen while your wincon goes up in smoke.

That's it, I'm done.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this math helps you all better understand the impact of mittens in future runs! I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Edit - u/EuSouAFazenda has put together a lengthy response post. There are some malicious misinterpretations, but also some cool SpireBird statistics, so I would encourage y'all to check it out!

edit 2 - crossed out "ruin your deck" since it was probably too exaggerative and clearly the more important impact it has is on player psychology.