I would prefer to change Skaggs to deal 3 damage, 5 if boosted instead. It removes the high variance of the card and makes him a good value removal. Raising his provisions and lowering his strength means he is a risky card and depends on good draw to get value. He did cost 9 provisions and had 2 strength in the beggining of HC and nobody took him.
Ohh, that's interesting.. I don't think the 5 damage idea is good. That's just not very good value. 8 for 8 is not a special card. It would not be what I would want for ST, and I don't even play ST.
Perhaps the supporting cards were not good enough when he was 9-2?
I dunno, I haven't played Skaggs, so I don't know how difficult he is to build, but my imagination says it's about the same difficulty vs value as Hubert Rijk.
Fully agree with Gyg. Sheldon is another high variance card, especially as the handbuff value gets doubled through the damage he does. High variance does not belong in a strategy game and I believe that's the root cause why several people don't like this card.
As solution, don't touch his provisions, but limit his variance. Let him do a max of 5 damage when buffed to 5 or higher. This makes him a 10 pointer for 8 provisions, or 8 pointer with 5 damage for 8 provisions when subtracting the 2 point buff from for example the Dwarven Agitator. That is balanced.
I think the reason people do not like this card is because it can do too much damage to large cards and it feels bad. But you (I also) did not really consider what it took to build it up, and the luck of timing etc that he could actually damage the large card you put out.
If he is buffed by another card it does not make Skeldon a 10 pointer for 8 provisions if he is facevalue 3 (boosted to 5 by ANOTHER card) and does 5 damage. That's 8 value for 8 provision. The other 2 is the value of another card actually.