| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/prosperity-counting-house.jpg) | #48 Counting House (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 45.78 / Median: 46 / Mode: 46 / Standard Deviation: 2.5 Highest Rank(s): #37 (1x), #41 (1x), #42 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #48 (6x) Counting House is the card with the lowest deviation. With only one rank above #40, there's no doubt, this is the worst card of all $5s. But comparing it to the other last cards, it has really few last places (6, as many as on #46). All $5s are really strong cards, but some shine more often than other ones. Counting House is one that shines very rarely. The best use may be countering Mountebank. With massive Copper in your deck, you have a high probability to get many Coppers in hand even if you're only half through the deck. Then you can easily buy a Province or a Colony with the use of this card only. It also has some really nice synergies with Coppersmith (make all Coppers worth a Silver) and Chancellor (discard all Coppers and put them in hand). But then you need a village to play Counting House and one of these cards in one turn and the probabilities to draw these 3 cards together are low in a deck full of Copper. The better alternative and only real combo is Golem. Buy many Golems and only one Counting House. The Golem will always find the Counting House and discard all other cards. With a Golem in hand, you are now guaranteed to get all Coppers. Instead you can buy many Warehouses, cycle through your deck discarding all cards right before the reshuffle and then play your Counting House. It has some other nice synergies, but are very difficult to pull off. For a Bank you need additional buys to be worth it. With no real supporters, this card is mostly not worth the effort. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/stash.png) | #47 Stash (Promo) Weighted Average: 44.18 / Median: 46 / Mode: 46 / Standard Deviation: 3.7 Highest Rank(s): #35 (1x), #36 (1x), #37 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #48 (5x) Stash has already a 1.6 point lead over Counting House, but the stats are only slightly better. It was 4 times over #40 and only has one last rank less. It has the fourth least deviation. You need 4 Stashes to get a Province after the reshuffle for sure and in Colony games it's almost useless. But a sure Province that you can get only after a reshuffle needs you to trigger the reshuffle as often as possible. This means you need supporter cards too. The most obvious ones are Golem (with max. one other action) or a few Chancellors, but sifters or other good cyclers can work too. But if the cyclers are good, you probably want more of them and Stashes are losing their value. In all other cases, you probably find stronger cards than Stash, although if you have $5 and want a Silver anyway, you can pick up a Stash unhesitatingly most of the times. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/explorer.jpg) | #46 Explorer (Seaside) Weighted Average: 43.78 / Median: 45 / Mode: 47 / Standard Deviation: 3.3 Highest Rank(s): #35 (1x), #38 (1x), #40 (4x) / Lowest Rank(s): #48 (3x) Explorer is slightly better although it has only two ranks above #40 and an even worse mode of 47 (6x). But it has only 3 last places and a better median. With the third least deviation its rank seems deserved. The problem with Explorer is: When you already have 2-3 Provinces and you have $5, you want a Duchy most of the times. When you have one or none, it only nets you a Silver in hand most of the times and then there are still other cards that are better getting you Provinces than just a Silver-generating machine. If you compare it to Jack of All Trades, it's better in the Silver-getting, but just worse on all the other parts. You want it in thin decks where you can draw it with a Province with high probability. Explorer/Chapel is therefore a #65 opening. And I forgot to mention, it's nearly useless in Colony games. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/saboteur.jpg) | #45 Saboteur (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 43.09 / Median: 44 / Mode: 48 / Standard Deviation: 5.3 Highest Rank(s): #30 (1x), #33 (2x) / Lowest Rank(s): #48 (4x) Here is a card that has a mode of 48; so its most frequent rank is last. But it's last still only 4 times and was 7 times above #40. This shows the higher deviation, although it's still the ninth least deviation of the $5 cards. Saboteur is the worst $5 attack. Why? There are similar reasons like Thief is bad. It trashes cards from your opponents deck without immediate benefit to you, so it's only destructive. And if you aren't able to play Saboteur in each turn at least one time, your opponent can catch up easily when he just continues and ignores it or re-buys the trashed card if it was essential. But, on the other side, it can lead to big outbursts if you play 1-2 Saboteurs each turn or if you can even play King's Court with it. In games with no mats and chips you are then able to trash the whole deck and all points from your opponent and can easily finish and win. But these cases are so rare, Saboteur is still a bad card for itself. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/cache.jpg) | #44 Cache (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 42.55 / Median: 44 / Mode: 45 / Standard Deviation: 5.4 Highest Rank(s): #20 (1x), #36 (2x) / Lowest Rank(s): #47 (1x), #48 (2x) With a really big outlier, Cache is still very consistent in the ranks: Again 7 times above #40, but only 2 last places. Cache performs differently in different kind of decks. In engine decks with few money (Scrying Pool etc) it's just horrible. In Big Money decks, it's most of the time superior than just a Silver (like Stash, see above). But it only shines in big decks (Gardens) with many green cards (Silk Road), simply said in decks where Copper isn't a so bad card after all. Also nice is Cache in combination with Trader for a Gold and 2 Silvers for only $5. And Cache is like Silver not very good in Colony games. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/prosperity-contraband.jpg) | #43 Contraband (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 41.42 / Median: 42.5 / Mode: 48 / Standard Deviation: 6.1 Highest Rank(s): #23 (1x), #29 (1x), #30 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #47 (1x), #48 (4x) Contraband already has a few outliers, it was 9 times above #40. Just like Saboteur the mode is 48 with 4 times being last. But some higher places made it possible not being in the worst 5, so the deviation got up to 6.1 Another treasure card and another cheap Gold treasure card. Contraband can be very trappy. Buying it can be a nice early Gold and the +Buy is very important for finding a substitution for the prohibited card. If there are many good cards on the board and you want Gold and a card with +Buy anyway this can be very good. But most of the times you embargo yourself. And in the late game this is a dead card because everybody knows you want that Province. If you buy it, buy only one, because two or more can really shut you down. And beware of Venture + Contraband! |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/mandarin.jpg) | #42 Mandarin (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 40.82 / Median: 41 / Mode: 45 / Standard Deviation: 5.7 Highest Rank(s): #27 (1x), #31 (1x), #32 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #47 (3x), #48 (2x) Mandarin has still 2 last places, so there are only 4 last places left. With one almost the half of all players ranking it above #40, it's the last card with an average worse than 40. Mandarin is again a cheap Gold, but you need an action to play it. What makes it better than the last two cheap Gold-alternatives? The drawback of this card is to put back a card on your deck. But this can be also very nice, because you can prepare your next turn just like Courtyard does it. So, if you have more money than you need or you have colliding terminals, just put back a card. But with colliding terminals, the other card is mostly stronger and you want to play that this turn. The on-buy effect can also be very nice. With a 5/2 opening you can buy the wanted stronger card next turn too and get an additional Mandarin. Mandarin/Hunting Party or Mandarin/Mint are very nice openings and it's not that bad in Double-Tactician games. In the late game where you miss $8 or $11 you can just play one Platinum or two Golds, buy the Mandarin and have a higher chance to reach it in the next turn. That can be very effective. But, still it's a cheap Gold and there are many better alternatives on the board most of the times. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/mine.jpg) | #41 Mine (Base) Weighted Average: 39.66 / Median: 40 / Mode: 42 / Standard Deviation: 6.3 Highest Rank(s): #23 (1x), #24 (1x), #25 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #46 (3x), #47 (1x) Mine is the first card with no last place and it is the first card with 3 times above #30. Mine is one of the first trash-for-benefit card you probably got to know. It has the disadvantage of being limited to treasures, so you cannot trash them later into victory cards. But it has the advantage to get the new card immediately in hand. But Mine is still slow. A Moneylender doesn't get you a card, but is at least worth a Silver in the turn you played it, whereas Mine is only worth a Copper. But in the long term Mine can be better. The more often you play the new treasure card, the more Mine was profitable. So, if you want Mine, you want it early. It gets so much better in Colony games. First, Colony games last longer and you will probably see your treasure card more often and Mine is a Silver if you trash Gold for Platinum. For a 5/2 opening Mine/Fool's Gold is a pretty decent opening. PS: Don't confuse Mine with Mint. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/outpost.jpg) | #40 Outpost (Seaside) Weighted Average: 39.33 / Median: 39 / Mode: 48 / Standard Deviation: 8.6 Highest Rank(s): #11 (1x), #21 (1x), #24 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #48 (4x) Outpost is the last card with last ranks and it even was last 4 times, so that the mode is 48 again. It's the first card with a pretty high deviation (13th) with one really big outlier and 4 values above #30. Outpost seems so nice for getting extra turns. But you only get a 3-card hand. It's like you Militia'd yourself, even worse, you cannot choose the 3 cards you want to keep. If you really need a +Buy Outpost can fulfill this need. But even in those cases it's not better than a Workshop, but it can work in Gardens/Silk Road/Duke games. If you want to use it to attack multiple times per turn, it can work, but still it is another terminal in your deck that can collide. It really can shine, in cases when you can guarantee a good card in your next hand. Treasury, Alchemist and Scheme are probably the best combos. Another case where your 3-card hand isn't that bad, may be with Minion, but this isn't very reliable too, because one of your 3 cards has to be one of your Minions. Another combo is Double Tactician/Outpost where you can get 8 cards. Generally it's pretty good with Duration cards, especially Wharf, Caravan and Haven. In all other cases you better skip Outpost. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/harvest.jpg) | #39 Harvest (Cornucopia) Weighted Average: 37.89 / Median: 38 / Mode: 38 / Standard Deviation: 4.6 Highest Rank(s): #29 (2x), #30 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #43 (2x), #45 (1x), #47 (1x) Harvest is the next card after a 1.4 point gap and has a really small deviation. With only 9 ranks below #40, it's clearly better ranked than the previous cards. Harvest is very swingy. In games with very few different cards and a coherent strategy, this is mostly a Silver and rarely a Gold and really no good card. And it can discard all your good cards you wanted to play in the next turn. In games with many attacks, especially Cursers, Harvest can be really a better card. You can then make your Curses to money without having them in hand and Harvest can easily be worth $4. It's therefore not remarkable that the only above-average Councilroom opening is Harvest/Lighthouse. Harvest has also a nice synergy with Tunnel. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/tribute.jpg) | #38 Tribute (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 37.69 / Median: 38.5 / Mode: 40 / Standard Deviation: 5.3 Highest Rank(s): #26 (1x), #27 (1x), #29 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #43 (2x), #44 (1x) Tribute hasn't a rank below #44, so it was only one time voted in the bottom 5 and it has only 7 votes below #40. Its deviation is pretty low again. Tribute is another swingy card and even depends on the opponents' deck. You can really bad luck, revealing the same card. Then Tribute is really bad. In action-heavy decks you get +4 actions what you only want if there isn't another village around (but then you probably don't want many action cards). All other combinations can really be nice, e.g. in BM games, giving you $4 most of the times and later in the game +cards). It only really shines in games with dual-type cards. Hitting a Harem and a Nobles and getting +4 Cards, +2 Actions and $2 with only one card is excellent. But the unreliableness still is Tribute's biggest problem. Forming your strategy around it not only depends on you, your opponent has to cooperate. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/royalseal.jpg) | #37 Royal Seal (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 35.10 / Median: 35.5 / Mode: 32 / Standard Deviation: 6.2 Highest Rank(s): #20 (1x), #21 (1x), #24 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #43 (1x), #44 (2x) Royal Seal is the first card after a really big gap of 2.6 points. It was 5 times above #30 and 6 times below #40. So, the deviation is still very low. I don't know if there's much to say about Royal Seal. It's another Silver with bonus card. You probably want it early in the game, as it will accelerate your strategy. It's strictly superior to Silver. So if you want a Silver anyway and have $5, you can pick it up unhesitatingly. But still it's very expensive for a $5 card and there are better cards for the same cost around most of the times. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/mint.jpg) | #36 Mint (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 34.27 / Median: 35 / Mode: 35 / Standard Deviation: 8.1 Highest Rank(s): #5 (1x), #23 (1x), #24 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #44 (3x) Mint is the last card before the biggest gap in this list. Just like Royal Seal, it was 6 times below #40, but was even 8 times above #30 with one really big outlier. Mint can duplicate a treasure card in hand. The problem still is, you need that Gold or Platinum in hand, so you really need to draw most of your deck with a good engine or need a small deck to accomplish this regularly. In the first case you probably don't want Mint because you don't want to many treasure cards. But for the latter case, Mint itself helps. Most of the time you buy Mint just to trash most of your Coppers. It really depends if you want Mint with your opening buy as you are now left with only 2 coppers, having no buying power. The only opening which is really powerful is Mint/Fool's Gold, currently #2 of all openings, because you have a small deck and get 2 Fool's Gold per turn most of the times. PS: Beware, don't confuse Mint with Mine. |
One thing to correct: Counting House is not Cornucopia but Prosperity
#36 Mint (my rank: #22) - Now this is something! Mint, the ultimate copper-trasher, that gives me a nice bonus afterwards? I mean, yes, it is better in BM-ish decks than in engines, but I think it is decent even when its targets are just Golds and Silvers and the fun starts with cards like Platinum, Harem, Hoard, Venture and IGG...That's maybe one of its problems: The Copper trashing is actually not that great in BM games, it helps way more in engine strategies. The other effect however is way more useful in BM games, whereas it sometimes becomes a dead card in big action chains.
#42 Mandarin (my rank: #34) - Mandarin is strong as an opener (if there is anything else for $5 on the table) and very good in the endgame (for reasons Qvist said). And in the mid-game - what is wrong about a terminal Gold? The ability helps about the same number of times it hurts so I think Mandarin is a pretty decent card...of course the competition at $5 is very good, but Mandrin has so many uses that I think it deserves a higher place.I'm still not really warm with Mandarin. Someone once said the correct way to play Mandarin is "not" (until reaching level 30 or something). I still think it's true, I have somewhat 2 games where I thought the Mandarin was the right buy, and one of it was where I had $16 of treasure with 2 buys to guarantee a second Colony the next turn. And I really like Courtyard, so I think I know the value of putting the one card back.
Counting House is one that shines very rarely. The best use may be countering Mountebank.I totally disagree.
One big issue of Mandarin is that it "anticycles" your deck and slows you down somewhat when you ought to accelerate instead.#42 Mandarin (my rank: #34) - Mandarin is strong as an opener (if there is anything else for $5 on the table) and very good in the endgame (for reasons Qvist said). And in the mid-game - what is wrong about a terminal Gold? The ability helps about the same number of times it hurts so I think Mandarin is a pretty decent card...of course the competition at $5 is very good, but Mandrin has so many uses that I think it deserves a higher place.I'm still not really warm with Mandarin. Someone once said the correct way to play Mandarin is "not" (until reaching level 30 or something). I still think it's true, I have somewhat 2 games where I thought the Mandarin was the right buy, and one of it was where I had $16 of treasure with 2 buys to guarantee a second Colony the next turn. And I really like Courtyard, so I think I know the value of putting the one card back.
Outpost is also very good with Caravans.
Outpost is also very good with Caravans.
That's right. I generally forgot to mention Duration cards (Caravan, Wharf) in my article. I think I'll add this.
Trashing is not so powerfull in BM-decks, but it is more because it slows you down on the turns you have to use it and then it's a dead card. Here you use it just once and then it is a superb card...I agree that BM doesn't mind having the Coppers, but it doesn't mind not having them either...#36 Mint (my rank: #22) - Now this is something! Mint, the ultimate copper-trasher, that gives me a nice bonus afterwards? I mean, yes, it is better in BM-ish decks than in engines, but I think it is decent even when its targets are just Golds and Silvers and the fun starts with cards like Platinum, Harem, Hoard, Venture and IGG...That's maybe one of its problems: The Copper trashing is actually not that great in BM games, it helps way more in engine strategies. The other effect however is way more useful in BM games, whereas it sometimes becomes a dead card in big action chains.
Outpost is also very good with Caravans.
That's right. I generally forgot to mention Duration cards (Caravan, Wharf) in my article. I think I'll add this.
Outpost is also great in strategies where you need very few cards to draw most of your deck. Scrying Pool/Outpost can be deadly.
QuoteCounting House is one that shines very rarely. The best use may be countering Mountebank.I totally disagree.
Counting house is better than most people think. Yes, Counting house shines rarely, but when it shines, it really shines.
The best use is countering mountebank ? No... the best use is obviousy the awesome combo Inn/Chancellor/Counting house. But, Warehouse, Coppersmith and Golem are really good also.
Of course, Counting house is very situational. But here it's underrated.
Mint seems underrated to me. In a straight Province BM game, sure, it's not going to do much good. It's very nice in Colony games, though, where Coppers and even Silvers are undesirable and Platinums are hard to amass. It also plays well with alternative treasure cards. Mint/Fool's Gold was mentioned. Mint/Venture is also very nice.Silvers are NOT undesirable, even in colony games, for BM. Like, ever!
QuoteCounting House is one that shines very rarely. The best use may be countering Mountebank.I totally disagree.
Counting house is better than most people think. Yes, Counting house shines rarely, but when it shines, it really shines.
The best use is countering mountebank ? No... the best use is obviousy the awesome combo Inn/Chancellor/Counting house. But, Warehouse, Coppersmith and Golem are really good also.
Of course, Counting house is very situational. But here it's underrated.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned Counting House as a complement to Goons in Village-free games.
Very reasonable list. I only had two cards lower than any of these (Rabble at 36 and Merchant Ship at 38), and I'm pretty sure I just got those wrong.
The $5 cards are really good for the most part. This batch is so-so, but basically every card above this is almost always a strong positive in a deck and most have game-changing potential in the right circumstances.
Pretty good list. The only card missing from my bottom third is Library.:o
Someone correct if I'm wrong, but I really don't see it.I'm surprised no one's mentioned Counting House as a complement to Goons in Village-free games.
I was going to ask if that was a viable strategy...is it? Because it popped into my head as an obvious complement to a goons deck.
Very reasonable list. I only had two cards lower than any of these (Rabble at 36 and Merchant Ship at 38), and I'm pretty sure I just got those wrong.
The $5 cards are really good for the most part. This batch is so-so, but basically every card above this is almost always a strong positive in a deck and most have game-changing potential in the right circumstances.
I agree with Merchant Ship, but Rabble??? Rabble is strong! Very strong! Isn't? Guys, what do you think of Rabble? :)
Basically what Library needs is cards that reduce hand size AND cards that produce money (so you get some benefit from discarding and drawing new cards) AND plenty of villages. Otherwise, it's not better than smithy. And unlike smithy-types, it can't ever really draw your whole deck, because the the second library will usually not be able to draw so many cards unless you can make the other cards disappear. Of course there are decks in which you can do this, but they need multiple support cards which makes them both uncommon and slow. So it kind of fits in with the rest of the cards in this bottom third.Pretty good list. The only card missing from my bottom third is Library.:o
Warehouse + Library
Fishing village + Library
Hamlet + Library
Shanty town + Library
Minion + Library
Golem + Tactician + Library
Festival + library
Village + any action silver + library
...
The merchant ship is pretty underrated. Not so powerful, but like Harvest, a terminal gold/4$ is not really attractive but quite good.
Yeah, like I said, I was just wrong on Rabble and Merchant Ship. I would still strongly disagree with Rabble as a top-15 card, though. The top of the $5 cards is really, really good.ackack said "between 15 and 20, not top 15" and I agree with him. There are definitely 15 really sick strong $5 cards that require less support than Rabble, but there's probably not 20.
Wow, so much discussion going on. You just can't wait for the next rankings, am I right? ;D
I hope to post the next part on Thursday and we'll see if and where Library, Merchant Ship and Rabble will be.
Stash second worst five cost card? Wow. Seems like there is a massive under appreciation of draw management. A treasure that's always superior to silver, occasionally better than gold, can create its own unique strategies, well that should deserve better.Basically any card can create it's own unique strategies, and "always superior to silver" is not that important since it's mostly competing with other $5 cards. And usually at least one of the other available $5 cards is better than silver. Second-to-last may be a little low, but it's hard to see it making it out of the bottom 5...
"always superior to silver" is not that important since it's mostly competing with other $5 cards.
Outpost is also great in strategies where you need very few cards to draw most of your deck. Scrying Pool/Outpost can be deadly.
Wow, so much discussion going on. You just can't wait for the next rankings, am I right? ;D
I hope to post the next part on Thursday and we'll see if and where Library, Merchant Ship and Rabble will be.
And Venture, please.
But in those situations, where you are buying stash late just because it's a treasure that's at least as good as silver, it's not a huge impact card. Buying stash over silver in those situations might increase you win probability by 1% or something, but probably within the margin for noise. I'd be surprised if you were able make a merchant ship + stash bot that beats merchant ship (without stash) by more than 1%.Quote"always superior to silver" is not that important since it's mostly competing with other $5 cards.
It is important since once you've bought your merchant ship and bought your jester you'll then buy the stash. It does not compete directly with actions cards. The majority of decks have a mix of treasure and actions and the majority of them would be improved by buying a stash/royal seal rather than overloading on terminal actions.
Someone correct if I'm wrong, but I really don't see it.I'm surprised no one's mentioned Counting House as a complement to Goons in Village-free games.
I was going to ask if that was a viable strategy...is it? Because it popped into my head as an obvious complement to a goons deck.
You need to spend $5 to get some junk for your deck that only becomes useful insofar as you are also adding a bunch of other junk to your deck. And if you draw it at the end of a shuffle. And if you don't draw it in a hand with a Goons. And the best it's likely to get you is one Province, which is nice but isn't crazy good. The only way I could see it being useful is if you think there's a decent chance you will have a cantrip +buy so that you might be able to actually get something really good if you happen to drag 18 coppers into your hand or something.
Simulator says smithy + stash > smithy + merchant ship > smithy. That's the right situation to use a stash and we all do it without appreciating the stash very much.So my point was that the fact that late stashes are non-harmful is not a good reason to value stash on this list, which is not really addressed by this sim.
Of course Stash benefits from frequent shuffling and as well as terminal draw or Chancellor, is also nice when you or your opponent cause you to discard from deck, cycling more quickly (e.g. Harvest, Navigator, Envoy, Warehouse, ...). I dunno, I like the card, and was surprised to see it rated second worst.Certainly Stash is not a bad card. It seldom hurts, and on some boards it's definately the dominating strategy (not only with Chancellor, also with Warehouse or Cellar it should be considered). However, those board are usually weak boards, they appear not that often, and even then the strategy is very predictable and not flexible at all.
Wow, so much discussion going on. You just can't wait for the next rankings, am I right? ;D
I hope to post the next part on Thursday and we'll see if and where Library, Merchant Ship and Rabble will be.
And Venture, please.
If there are 13 cards in each section, I might expect to see Venture just narrowly eek out of Part 2 make it to Part 3.
Sadly I agree. Not because that's where I think the card should be, but because people over-rate the card so much that I fear it could actually end up at the completely wrong end of the list. I mean... It's a $1 treasure that costs $5. Yeah, it's got a magical power tacked on, but it really isn't that great.Saying it's a $1 treasure is selling it quite a bit short, like calling mountebank a terminal silver that has a "magical power tacked on". That "magical power" is like the main part of the card. Provided you aren't already drawing all your treasures, it effectively nets you at least $2, often more with any sort of copper trashing, and sometimes waaaay more (when you can get a chain going or have platinums). Plus it keeps you pretty green-immune and doesn't use an action, so you can add in any actions you want to supplement it. It's only borderline top third, but I really can't see it being much outside that. Where do you rank it?
41. Its magical power is not much different to Farming Village's, which barely made it into the top half of the $4 cards. However, I believe Farming Village's version is much better, as it allows you to directly counter top-of-deck attacks without limiting yourself to non-drawing actions. Then when we compare the non-magic parts of the card's, we're comparing Copper vs. Village. A free card vs. a $3-cost. To me, Farming Village is superior in almost every way, yet it costs $1 less than Venture (and we're talking the biggest $1 gap in the game, $4-$5) AND it still only made it half way up the $4 list. What does that say about Venture?
Edit: Just realised a couple of flaws with this comparison, but I'm late for work so I'll sort it out later. I still think Venture vs. FV is a pretty good comparison, although it's not as extreme as this post states. FV is still better.
41. Its magical power is not much different to Farming Village's, which barely made it into the top half of the $4 cards. However, I believe Farming Village's version is much better, as it allows you to directly counter top-of-deck attacks without limiting yourself to non-drawing actions. Then when we compare the non-magic parts of the card's, we're comparing Copper vs. Village. A free card vs. a $3-cost. To me, Farming Village is superior in almost every way, yet it costs $1 less than Venture (and we're talking the biggest $1 gap in the game, $4-$5) AND it still only made it half way up the $4 list. What does that say about Venture?So, so wrong. That is NOT the point of venture. The point of venture is to give you the next treasure in your deck, plus a bonus. The cycling is virtually irrelevant (unless you have some way of re-ordering your deck) over the long haul. Whether venture or FV is better is a question of deck, (if I'm building an engine, FV is gonna be better, sure), but generally venture is the much better card, as you'd expect given its cost.
Edit: Just realised a couple of flaws with this comparison, but I'm late for work so I'll sort it out later. I still think Venture vs. FV is a pretty good comparison, although it's not as extreme as this post states. FV is still better.
Let's have a look at the "money density" talked about by WW in his article. If you add a venture to your deck you are adding one coin to the total value. You will (typically) be adding no more cards to the bottom line since the venture will draw a replacement for itself into play. So far this is no different to adding a bazaar or market. You will also however skip all the non-treasure cards before the next treasure card and this is where the additional value comes.
Let's have a look at the "money density" talked about by WW in his article. If you add a venture to your deck you are adding one coin to the total value. You will (typically) be adding no more cards to the bottom line since the venture will draw a replacement for itself into play. So far this is no different to adding a bazaar or market. You will also however skip all the non-treasure cards before the next treasure card and this is where the additional value comes.That's a great way of thinking about it, but let's be clear that the "additional value" is huge. Most importantly, it allows you to green earlier than you otherwise would in Big Money, because you know that the "dead card" losses will be much lower.
If you are playing BM against heavy cursing, maybe. But Venture can also skip right over your key action cards, which FV doesn't do. The real value in Venture comes from chaining them, which generally requires decent trashing (of coppers at least), minimal silver purchases and multiple ventures.Venture cycles you around faster, with some randomness. It can also skip a bunch of dead cards and lead you to your key action faster.
41. Its magical power is not much different to Farming Village's, which barely made it into the top half of the $4 cards... Then when we compare the non-magic parts of the card's, we're comparing Copper vs. Village. A free card vs. a $3-cost.Wrong. It's Peddler vs Village. You're double-counting the drawing power of farming village, while counting the draw power of venture only once.
If you are playing BM against heavy cursing, maybe. But Venture can also skip right over your key action cards, which FV doesn't do. The real value in Venture comes from chaining them, which generally requires decent trashing (of coppers at least), minimal silver purchases and multiple ventures.
No, a venture is better than a market 1) with terminal card draw, and 2) when your next treasure is better than your next card, provided 3)the buy that market gives you isn't as significant as the first two points.QuoteIf you are playing BM against heavy cursing, maybe. But Venture can also skip right over your key action cards, which FV doesn't do. The real value in Venture comes from chaining them, which generally requires decent trashing (of coppers at least), minimal silver purchases and multiple ventures.
That's the intuitive thinking, however you can say exactly the same thing about markets and labs. The more rubbish you trash and the smaller the 'logical' size of your deck, the more benefit you get from a market or lab. A venture can only ever be better value than a market when the top card of your deck is not a treasure (excepting banks, whatever). A venture can draw another venture and play that, however a market could draw another market and play that too.
I'm kind of curious to see how base set staples like Festival, Lab, and Market will rank, especially given Smithy's performance.
I strongly disagree on Inn. It has a few combos where it works well, but I think that many players vastly overrate it. The primarily reason to purchase it is for the "on gain" ability, and even that is quite situational as far as timing. I simply see Inn as a somewhat weak cycling card.
"quite situational as far as timing" : You should pay attention to the reshuffle. Simply.
There is a difference between a card that is almost always good (like laboratory), and a tricky card that can make incredible things (like Inn).The difference is that Laboratory is almost always good, while Inn is often not good at all. That's why Laboratory is a (much) better card.
There is a difference between a card that is almost always good (like laboratory), and a tricky card that can make incredible things (like Inn).
Horn of plenty (need different cards) and highway (need good source of +buy) are more situational than a mountebank, but sometimes they are just awesome.
So I wouldn't be surprised to see Inn at #35 after Mint, because it's just too difficult to rank it.
Oh additionally I was looking over my list and already can predict one outlier of mine: I had Vault at #3. Now, I tend to like Big Money-ish decks, and Vault is a great card for fast province games, but in retrospect that seems over the top...something I'd put in the top third, but definitely not the top 3.Wow... which curse-giver did you think it was better than?
I think the real distinction is between 'curse-giver' and 'everything else' at almost every price point. There's very few things that can deal with curses effectively (other cursers, ambassador, masq, and... that's about it reliably. Actually, I should make a call for games where cursers are beat without these, because it's very few). And the other attacks may be good, but not more so than just strong cards really. Militia ~= monument, for every minion there's a hunting party, etc. So I mean, most of the other attacks are strong, but not like on another level.
Let's have a look at the "money density" talked about by WW in his article. If you add a venture to your deck you are adding one coin to the total value. You will (typically) be adding no more cards to the bottom line since the venture will draw a replacement for itself into play. So far this is no different to adding a bazaar or market. You will also however skip all the non-treasure cards before the next treasure card and this is where the additional value comes.
This discussion is interesting to me because I was wondering whether the $5's distinction I made on the blog between Attacks and Non-Attacks is meaningful any more. (Yes, yes, I know, I haven't done the $4's yet. That's coming up.) Mountebank / Witch still dominate, and IGG can probably sneak in as a quasi-attack. But Hunting Party and Wharf and etc. are so strong that I would probably rank them over Minion and Torturer and Rabble. At the same time, you can't build a HP engine when Village/Torturer is on the table. So is ranking them separately avoiding apples & oranges comparisons or just a copout?
Are we certain hunting party with a nice terminal like salvager doesn't beat village torturer? Taking the curses seems just fine for the hunting party.
No, it isn't. Witch is better.This discussion is interesting to me because I was wondering whether the $5's distinction I made on the blog between Attacks and Non-Attacks is meaningful any more. (Yes, yes, I know, I haven't done the $4's yet. That's coming up.) Mountebank / Witch still dominate, and IGG can probably sneak in as a quasi-attack. But Hunting Party and Wharf and etc. are so strong that I would probably rank them over Minion and Torturer and Rabble. At the same time, you can't build a HP engine when Village/Torturer is on the table. So is ranking them separately avoiding apples & oranges comparisons or just a copout?
Personally I like the distinction between attacks and non-attacks. It's difficult to say which is better between Hunting party and Witch...
Personally I like the distinction between attacks and non-attacks. It'sFixed. Wrong spelling of "Witch" :Pdifficulteasy to saywhichWitch is better between Hunting party and Witch...
I think the real distinction is between 'curse-giver' and 'everything else' at almost every price point. There's very few things that can deal with curses effectively (other cursers, ambassador, masq, and... that's about it reliably. Actually, I should make a call for games where cursers are beat without these, because it's very few). And the other attacks may be good, but not more so than just strong cards really. Militia ~= monument, for every minion there's a hunting party, etc. So I mean, most of the other attacks are strong, but not like on another level.
Mountebank and Witch are the only curse-givers which are actually this effective. Hag and YW have a number of counters above and beyond the usual suspects (e.g. Lookout, or if the Bane is any decent at all), and Familiar can sometimes be too slow to set up if there's a fast strategy that can deal with junk.
I do think Tribute is a tiny bit overrated (I tend to dislike cards with unreliable benefits that the opponent can block with smart play, Tribute shares this problem with Smugglers), and Outpost is actually a bit underrated (good players know it's usually a horrible buy, but it can be just so powerful in the right engines). I also had Harvest a couple spots higher; I don't see much daylight between it and Merchant Ship. They thrive in different sorts of decks, but they mostly fill the same function about as effectively. (You should normally count on Harvest giving you $3, which is roughly equivalent to Merchant Ship given the Duration penalty). Merchant Ship tends to be better in BM, whereas Harvest is better with Action chains, and best with Thrones, Kings... and as a Tunnel enabler, too.
I also had Harvest a couple spots higher; I don't see much daylight between it and Merchant Ship. They thrive in different sorts of decks, but they mostly fill the same function about as effectively. (You should normally count on Harvest giving you $3, which is roughly equivalent to Merchant Ship given the Duration penalty). Merchant Ship tends to be better in BM, whereas Harvest is better with Action chains, and best with Thrones, Kings... and as a Tunnel enabler, too.
You can also buy more MS than Harvest, generally.I also had Harvest a couple spots higher; I don't see much daylight between it and Merchant Ship. They thrive in different sorts of decks, but they mostly fill the same function about as effectively. (You should normally count on Harvest giving you $3, which is roughly equivalent to Merchant Ship given the Duration penalty). Merchant Ship tends to be better in BM, whereas Harvest is better with Action chains, and best with Thrones, Kings... and as a Tunnel enabler, too.
I think the real benefit of merchant ship over harvest is that you can buy merchant ship a lot earlier. Opening MS is great, harvest ...not so much. And the extra early income from MS leads to earlier better buys like golds and whatnot.
Generally tribute is at its best (hybrid cards aside) in mirror matches. It's brilliant in BM (where $2 and 2 cards, $4, or 4 cards are all GREAT, and $2 or 2 cards isn't the worst thing ever), and it's pretty consistently gonna give you some actions if your opponent is going for an engine. But it is somewhat weaker in engines, and for super action decks, 4 actions is plain terrible (because if you really needed all those actions, an action chain wouldn't be possible in the first place).I do think Tribute is a tiny bit overrated (I tend to dislike cards with unreliable benefits that the opponent can block with smart play, Tribute shares this problem with Smugglers), and Outpost is actually a bit underrated (good players know it's usually a horrible buy, but it can be just so powerful in the right engines). I also had Harvest a couple spots higher; I don't see much daylight between it and Merchant Ship. They thrive in different sorts of decks, but they mostly fill the same function about as effectively. (You should normally count on Harvest giving you $3, which is roughly equivalent to Merchant Ship given the Duration penalty). Merchant Ship tends to be better in BM, whereas Harvest is better with Action chains, and best with Thrones, Kings... and as a Tunnel enabler, too.
I very much agree. I'm not sure I'd actually bought Harvest more than once or twice... until yesterday, where it came up in two different Kingdoms that made good use of it. In the second game, my opponent went Pirate Ship. Given Native Villages, I was free to load up on Harvests as a great source of non-Treasure coin. I think every Harvest I played save for one gave me +$4, and my deck wasn't, like, purposefully diverse or anything.
Of course, there's a lot of competition at the $5 level, and even Merchant Ship will probably appear pretty quickly on the next list. So I don't know that I would have moved Harvest very far. But it's certainly better than Tribute. +4 Actions, hurray!
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/library.jpg) | #35 Library (Base) Weighted Average: 30.19 / Median: 31 / Mode: 31 / Standard Deviation: 8.6 Highest Rank(s): #8 (1x), #14 (1x), #18 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #39 (2x), #41 (1x), #47 (1x) So after this 4.1 point gap, Library is the first middle-ranked $5 card. Its weighted average is 5 points higher than its rank, showing the high density of the following cards. With a few outliers on both ends, it has a above-average deviation. Library's best use may be countering discarding attacks as it may even set other actions aside and therefore increase the probability to draw treasures. But it's also very useful for engines with villages that don't increase your handsize, like Festival or Hamlet (that decrease it). |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/merchantship.jpg) | #34 Merchant Ship (Seaside) Weighted Average: 29.29 / Median: 32 / Mode: 37 / Standard Deviation: 8.7 Highest Rank(s): #10 (1x), #14 (1x), #15 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #38 (1x), #39 (1x), #42 (1x) Merchant Ship only has one rank below #40 and 6 ranks above #20. It has the highest deviation so far. Its unweighted average is on #32, new players seem to overrate it. Merchant Ship is a very simple card. Still it is ranked very differently. While Harvest is a not guaranteed $4, this now is a guaranteed $4, just split over two turns. It's good for Big Money games as it increases the probability to have $8 early as you only need $6 in hand in the following turn. And if you manage to play one each turn, this is basically $4 every turn. The probability of colliding Merchant Ships is also lower because of the Duration effect. For all other strategies than Big Money other $5 cards are mostly stronger. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/inn.jpg) | #33 Inn (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 28.95 / Median: 30.5 / Mode: 27 / Standard Deviation: 7.2 Highest Rank(s): #11 (1x), #14 (1x), #19 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #40 (3x) The consensus on Inn is higher; most of the following cards have higher deviation. It's the first card with no rank below #40. Inn's main effect is pretty simple too. It's a Young Witch with no attack effect, but +2 Actions instead. So it's a village that doesn't increase handsize, but has a filter effect. This is nice but not great. More important is its on-buy effect. Shuffling action cards into the draw pile is great when you time it right, especially when there are (nearly) no cards in the draw pile. Decks with high action density love Inn, so you can prepare a Scrying Pool mega-draw for example. If you manage to have enough money and at least an extra-buy with your actions, you can buy a Inn from the extra-buy and won't see your bought victory cards so fast, especially in combination with Chancellor. Even if you don't necessarily have a high action density and miss $8, buy a Inn for getting all your nice actions in the next turn. You can even easily set up a King's Court/Bridge hand. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/duke.jpg) | #32 Duke (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 28.89 / Median: 33 / Mode: 38 / Standard Deviation: 11.4 Highest Rank(s): #8 (2x), #9 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #42 (1x), #43 (1x), #45 (1x) Duke is the best example for my statement "Victory cards are difficult to rank". It has the highest deviation of all $5 cards with 3 times above #10, 5 times above #20 and 6 times below #40. If we take the unweighted ranking into account it would be on #34, but experienced players saved 2 ranks. It was close though, only 0.06 points are between Duke and Inn. Duke is similar to Silk Road and Gardens Rushes as you need to get the Duchies and Dukes as fast as you can. So you need similar good supporter cards which help getting $5 even if you're already greening, like Vault, Hoard, Duchess, Horse Traders to name a few. Duke can be very strong as it can easily be worth 6-8 VP if your opponent doesn't deny your strategy and is better than Province in those cases. 3-piling isn't that hard afterwards as there are 2 piles already gone. The problem is to realize when a board is a good Duke board. With good attacks (Curser and Handsize-Reducer) you probably want those attacks instead and ignore Duchies/Dukes and go directly for Provinces. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/market.jpg) | #31 Market (Base) Weighted Average: 28.49 / Median: 28 / Mode: 27 / Standard Deviation: 6.2 Highest Rank(s): #13 (1x), #15 (1x), #22 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #34 (2x), #38 (1x), #45 (1x) After Duke with the highest deviation follows Market, the card with the lowest deviation of all middle-ranked cards. It was only 2 times above #20 and one time below #40. You probably pick up Market at least once in most of the games, but it is no super strong card. You want it most of the times because of the cantrip +Buy as an addition to your main strategy, because +Buy cantrips are rare and you may already have stronger terminal cards. And it is also superior to Silver in all but Big Money games as you draw a card and get an additional $1. The non-terminal +Buys is very important in some combos too, like a Highway+Market chain. Market usually is no good opener, but Market/Chapel is very strong and is on #41 of the best openings. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/horn-of-plenty.jpg) | #30 Horn of Plenty (Cornucopia) Weighted Average: 27.85 / Median: 30 / Mode: 32 / Standard Deviation: 9.0 Highest Rank(s): #3 (1x), #10 (1x), #15 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #39 (2x), #40 (1x), #44 (1x) Horn of Plenty is another card with high variance. It has a really big outlier on #3 and it was 4 times above #20. Horn of Plenty is one of the cards that are very hard to master. On average boards it's similar to Ironworks and just too slow. But if you can build a decent engine with several different cards involved (and that is the hardest part), then HoP is very powerful. With one Horn of Plenty and a good engine the game can end in 3 turns. Turn 1: Gain another HoP, Turn 2: Gain another 2 HoPs, Turn 3: Gain 4 Provinces from the HoPs and buy the 5th Province with the rest of your money: Basically "Game Over". The problem is to build such an engine and prepare the Mega Turn before the opponent gets a too big Province lead. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/councilroom.jpg) | #29 Council Room (Base) Weighted Average: 27.59 / Median: 28 / Mode: 25 / Standard Deviation: 7.4 Highest Rank(s): #11 (1x), #14 (1x), #17 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #39 (2x), #41 (1x) Council Room is really mediocre, the consensus was pretty high and only 4 ranks were above #20. Council Room is really strong per se, but don't underestimate the extra card for your opponent. If he draws a Gold or the much needed village for his own Council Room, he may even profit more from your play than you do. It really only shines on boards with discard attacks like Militia or Goons. With such cards you take back the profit from your opponent and have a really big hand and even a +Buy. Its drawing power and +Buy makes it a good Level 3 opener combined with Fool's Gold. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/treasury.jpg) | #28 Treasury (Seaside) Weighted Average: 26.88 / Median: 25 / Mode: 24 / Standard Deviation: 9.1 Highest Rank(s): #7 (1x), #12 (2x) / Lowest Rank(s): #39 (2x), #47 (1x) Treasury has a deviation with big outliers on both sides: #7 and second last. It was 6 times above #20. Similar to Market, it's a "Copper that doesn't hurt", this time without the +Buy but with top-decking ability. As you can only use this ability until you're going green, you want Treasuries very early. Of course Treasury/Chapel is even better than Market/Chapel on #18 of the best openings. With 2-3 Treasuries you can keep buying good cards every turn. This comboes well with Outpost. But Treasuries are very slow, too slow on most boards. They're therefore better in Colony games and in all other games that tend to be slow. But beware of discarding attacks if you have more than 3 Treasuries. Treasury is especially good in greenless games like with Bishop or Goons. You can then keep top-decking them even until the late game. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/tradingpost.jpg) | #27 Trading Post (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 25.95 / Median: 24.5 / Mode: 36 / Standard Deviation: 7.2 Highest Rank(s): #13 (1x), #14 (1x), #16 (2x) / Lowest Rank(s): #36 (3x) It has the "best worst rank" so far with no-one ranking it worse than #36. And this is even its mode with being voted on #36 3 times. Trading Post is another card in the category "Good opener, but afterwards". The deviation is surprisingly low for that. Maybe because it costs $5 and is only a important opener in about 1-(5/6)^2 ~ 30% of all 2-player games. But with 10 openings in the Top 100 of all openings (with Trading Post/Lighthouse on #9 and Trading Post/Haven on #11), that still shows its strength. If you compare its ability with Mine as a opener: It can trash 2 instead of one card and it can trash all card types and isn't limited to treasures. But Trading Post has fiercer competition in the $5 list, so its downside of getting weak soon was taken more into account by all of you. And of course its a little bit weaker in Colony games. |
The only card I had down here that wasn't listed already is Duke, which IIRC I placed at #39. So likely that's going to be an outlier. But even so, I really don't like Dukes; I'm not a big fan of most Kingdom Victory strategies anyway, and Dukes feel especially easy to block and hard to make work. I buy them rarely and tend to lose when I do buy them; once in a while a dedicated Duke strategy can steamroll, but most of the time I find they tend to be a desperation play, much like Saboteur. I also had Harvest a couple spots higher; I don't see much daylight between it and Merchant Ship. They thrive in different sorts of decks, but they mostly fill the same function about as effectively. (You should normally count on Harvest giving you $3, which is roughly equivalent to Merchant Ship given the Duration penalty). Merchant Ship tends to be better in BM, whereas Harvest is better with Action chains, and best with Thrones, Kings... and as a Tunnel enabler, too.
- When I open 4/3, I (almost) never but trading post. Is this a mistake ?
You buy a treasury. Most of the time, you buy it in turns 3-4. You reshuffle and get to your treasury eventually, in one reshuffle or two (turns 5-6). You top deck the said treasury once... twice... And then often you hit your first province on turn 8-9 like you normally would. What happens then is simple ; you either run late on provinces because of that 1$ you don't want to discard, or you buy a province and there... 3 turns with 1$ more and the effect is worn out. I get that you can King's court it just like any other form of action-money, but to me it's as stupid as a "walled market" less the all important buy.If that's how you're using Treasury then yeah, it's not a very good card. Treasury is best in engine-decks where the goal is to construct mega-turns. It is particularly useful to spam valuable $6 cards like Goons or (especially) Grand Market. It's also a great enabler for cards that depend on actions (like Conspirator).
See, the difference is that I don't think that Inn is particularly helpful in pulling off incredible things. At its best, it's a somewhat weak cycler/action concentrater. Decent and helpful in lubricating and action heavy deck without trashing? Sure. However, that fact that it's best case kind of deck, engine decks that aren't thin, isn't one of the stronger broad strategies weakens my assessment of the card as a whole.
The one that confuses me is Bazaar apparently being significantly ahead of Market. Is +action really that much better than +buy? Same goes for Highway. In many circumstances I'd rather have a real Market than a fake one.
The primary problem that I have with using Bazaar is that it's hard to get when you're building an engine. Assume that there's a strong $5 cost drawing card in the kingdom. If you draw $9 with 2 buys, then you can't get $5 card + a village if the only village is Bazaar. And it seems to me, at least, that early in the engine building stage, it's really difficult to get to $10 and above because your deck just doesn't quite have that power yet.If all your draw cards AND all your villages are at $5, and there's not some really good trashing, you probably shouldn't be building that engine.
Inn is useful in a much wider variety of situations than you imagine- basically any deck that can find a use for Village OR Warehouse is a plausible candidate to be helped by Inn, and it is in fact able to do "amazing things". Check out Turns 17 and 20 here: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111227-234108-ab14a34b.html
Maybe some of you will argue that [Treasury] wouldn't deserve second to last since it doesn't hurt your deck, but I would argue that it certainly does since you're paying for a cantrip copper that lasts 3 turns on average with 5$. There is that exception where you have decks you do not green ever, but mosts boards don't have such a setting."cantrip copper" is a really bad way to put it. The thing that makes copper bad is not that it produces $1, it's that it wastes space in your hand. Cards with +$ +Action +Card or "peddler-types" are way better than copper because they provide an invisible coin that doesn't waste space. I think all the peddler-types (market, highway, treasury, bazaar) all belong around the same neighborhood in the high 20s to low 30s.
I'm also surprised Cartographer hasn't shown up yet. I'm not saying it's bad. I just haven't really used it too much yet as it didn't jump out to me as super powerful, and I haven't really seen it used in any spectacular fashion, so I figured it would land around this part of the rankings (the lower half of the middle).
And does actually nothing for you but sift. Pretty darn weak in BM decks (like warehouse-ish type power, I think), decent in engines, but usually you've got something better to do on $5 in engines. Overall I'm pretty meh.I'm also surprised Cartographer hasn't shown up yet. I'm not saying it's bad. I just haven't really used it too much yet as it didn't jump out to me as super powerful, and I haven't really seen it used in any spectacular fashion, so I figured it would land around this part of the rankings (the lower half of the middle).
I rated it very high myself. A cantrip that can skip over five crappy cards is an invaluable addition to any engine deck. It helps you sift through coppers and estates in the early game, mitigates the effects of greening in the late game, and mitigates the effects of cursers in games with no trashing.
Duke is the only card here I thought was particularly overrated by the crowd. It's probably the card I have the single worst grasp of in all of Dominion, but even if I were to double the efficacy of my Duke play I'd still be confident it's a marginal strategy most of the time, easy to block and hard to execute. You just need *so much* green, and not particularly cheap green either, unlike Gardens/Silk Road.
I still think you are all wrong. I always thought the opposite about this card : easy to execute, hard to block.
You need 6 duchies and 5 dukes so that they are worth as much as eight provinces. Not much, it's only three dead cards more, for the total cost of 55$ (64$ for provinces).
And man, it's so easy to get 5$ each turns ! a simple silver helps a lot. Obviously, a card like Horse traders or feast is also good… but even without…
And, if the province player can grab some duchies/dukes, the duke player also, can easily take one or two provinces. But actually, the duchy or duke doesn't really help the province player.
Also, the duke does not need 3-pile ending, unlike gardens or silk road. Because, as I said, it's easy to get more than 48 point : the maximum for provinces.
You tend to compare the Duke to gardens. it has nothing to do.
If you could set up KC-KC-Feast-Feast-Feast in Duke-Duchy without your opponent realizing what you're up to, I imagine that would be pretty satisfying. I did something similar in a Gardens game once.
Sort of beside the point, but I've observed that going for Duke is very much a losing strategy in 3-player games.Really? I imagine you just need to adjust how you're playing it...
Sort of beside the point, but I've observed that going for Duke is very much a losing strategy in 3-player games.All alternative VP strategies have a tendency to be stronger in 2-player since if you ignore provinces, your opponent has to get 8 of them to end the game rather than 2-3 opponents having to split 12.
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/city.jpg) | #26 City (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 24.57 / Median: 23 / Mode: 22 / Standard Deviation: 9.2 Highest Rank(s): #2 (1x), #9 (1x), #12 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #36 (2x), #41 (1x), #42 (1x) After a 1.4 gap the next card in this list is City. It has some really high rankings with one second place and also two times below #40. So it has the second highest deviation in this list so far and is #7 in the deviation ranking of this list. City is highly dependant from the board. That may explain the high deviation. On many boards you just spend $5 for a mediocre $3 Village. But with Cursers where the Curses are likely going out, this can be very strong. When activated, a Level 2 City is already a combined Laboratory and Village, so basically a ~$6 card. A Level 3 City is a combined Laboratory, Market and Village and would normally cost ~9$. In non-cursing games this is often a trap card. If one player goes for Cities to run this pile out, he's just buying Villages and doesn't build up his economy. Then you do much better not buying any City and try to end the game as fast as you can. In longer lasting games (especially Colony games) Cities are much stronger, but you really have to consider, if you really want so many Villages. In 3+ player games any pile can deplete faster and Cities are therefore much stronger. And if you have won the City Split and have Level 3 Cities, you have to just be sure that you don't lose on a 3-pile ending. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/highway.jpg) | #25 Highway (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 24.34 / Median: 23 / Mode: 28 / Standard Deviation: 8.4 Highest Rank(s): #4 (1x), #6 (1x), #10 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #33 (2x), #34 (2x) Highway has two outliers in the upper regions, but none in the lower regions, making it the card with the "best worst rank" so far. The unweighted average has it on #22, new players seem to overrate it. Highway is highly dependant for supporter cards to make it useful. One vanilla Highway is really bad and even worse than Market or Treasury, it's just a Peddler, so basically only worth $4. It seems similar to Bridge, but in fact it isn't. You can use it as a cantrip Bridge, but most of the times this isn't worth it, because you need +Buy and either need a small deck to play multiples or big drawing power what also means you need villages. So that is really slow. The only real combo is Highway/Market in a small deck. But you can do things with Highway what would be very difficult with Bridge. It combos nice with Remodel/Farmland/Expand, so you can replace Coppers with Provinces. It can combo also with other trash-for-benefit cards, but most of the times they "anti-synergize". Its best use may to use it with cards with fixed cost in the card text like Saboteur, Smugglers, Feast, Ironworks, Horn of Plenty, etc to gain (or trash) Provinces with these cards. As Highway is good in small decks, Highway/Chapel is a #56 opening. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/cartographer.jpg) | #24 Cartographer (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 23.73 / Median: 23 / Mode: 21 / Standard Deviation: 9.3 Highest Rank(s): #7 (1x), #10 (1x), #12 (2x) / Lowest Rank(s): #35 (3x), #40 (1x), #44 (1x) Cartographer is the next Hinterlands card with the second highest deviation so far and #5 overall. It has two pretty low outliers. Cartographer is useful in all decks (maybe except Big Money decks). It reminds of Navigator, but hasn't the problems of being terminal and you can choose for each card separately to discard or to put back. It also draws a card, although you often wish to top-deck first and draw afterwards. Basically it is a 4 times more powerful Spy (except the attack). You can also compare it to Warehouse. While Warehouse only makes this turn better, you can use Cartographer to either prepare your next turn (mitigating draw luck) or to prepare the cards you want to draw with either a second Cartographer or any other card that draws cards. So it combos very nice with many cards, especially cards that draw and are non-terminal, like Wishing Well and most importantly Scrying Pool and is also not bad against strong top-decking attacks like Ghost Ship or Rabble (although you draw one card first). With all the good points, Cartographer is still no good card for itself, it's just an addition to your deck and makes your engine stronger and more stable and is nearly never a dominating card on the board. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/haggler.jpg) | #23 Haggler (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 22.77 / Median: 22 / Mode: 28 / Standard Deviation: 7.0 Highest Rank(s): #8 (1x), #13 (1x), #14 (2x) / Lowest Rank(s): #33 (2x), #37 (1x) Haggler is the third Hinterlands card in a row and has a very low deviation for a card ranked here, it has only 4 ranks below #30. Taking the unweighted average into account, it would rank on #21. Haggler is very good for building up engines with multiple components. It adds the Border Village effect to any card you wish and also gives $2, so you can be pretty sure to get two good cards if you play Haggler. And in the middle to end game you can use it as a pseudo Hoard to get a Gold for a Province or even a Platinum on Colony boards. With Haggler you don't necessarily need +Buys early, you even have to beware that you don't use your additional buy for a low-cost card, so you have to get an additional Copper. It is a good starter for any good engine, for example Hunting Party, so you can get one more Hunting Party for every bought Province. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/rabble.jpg) | #22 Rabble (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 22.50 / Median: 22.5 / Mode: 19 / Standard Deviation: 8.8 Highest Rank(s): #9 (2x), #13 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #39 (1x), #40 (1x), #43 (1x) Rabble is the second worst $5 attack. It was below #40 once and below #30 8 times. Newer players seem not to appreciate it: It would rank on #25 taking the unweighted average into account. One Rabble may even worse than a Fortune Teller, as it can't guarantee to hit. It's not a very good opener, especially with good trashers, but gets stronger and stronger in the late game. Rabble is stronger the more you play in one turn. If you build up a (Village-Smithy-like) engine and need good drawing power, Rabble is the way to go, because if your opponent goes green too early, he gets bad hands pretty soon and you may crush him. Your Rabbles can hit him even stronger than any other discarding attack, because he has at best only 2 good cards in hand. But beware of Farming Village, which is a very effective counter. And if you don't need the drawing power, you can skip over Rabble, because one Rabble isn't that strong per se. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/festival.jpg) | #21 Festival (Base) Weighted Average: 21.98 / Median: 20 / Mode: 30 / Standard Deviation: 7.7 Highest Rank(s): #6 (1x), #7 (1x), #11 (3x) / Lowest Rank(s): #30 (4x), #41 (1x) Festival has a big outlier in the lower ranks, being the only rank below #30. #30 itself was voted 4 times, the most voted rank. Newer players overrate it, the unweighted average has it listed at #18. Festival is a simple card and is like a combined Village and (Grand) Market without the draw. The lack of draw is really the only downside of this card. Still it is good in any engine, giving the money and actions you need and if you have "draw up to ..." cards like Watchtower or Library, it's really great. In any Non-Big-Money game Festival is strictly superior to Silver. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/bazaar.jpg) | #20 Bazaar (Seaside) Weighted Average: 21.84 / Median: 21.5 / Mode: 19 / Standard Deviation: 7.7 Highest Rank(s): #5 (1x), #10 (1x), #13 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #36 (1x), #38 (2x) Bazaar was voted 3 times below #30, but still has the same deviation as Festival. It also has a very high rank with being #5 once. Bazaar is similar to Festival's use. You buy it if you are building an engine, because you need additional money and +2 Actions. But you get +1 card instead of +1$ and +1 Buy. It really depends on your engine which of those two is better. Not much more to say for me here, as it is a fearly simple card. Uncommon for a Village, Bazaar has a very high opening with Bazaar/Chapel on #25. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/jester.jpg) | #19 Jester (Cornucopia) Weighted Average: 21.60 / Median: 22.5 / Mode: 26 / Standard Deviation: 8.3 Highest Rank(s): #6 (1x), #9 (1x), #12 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #35 (1x), #37 (1x), #42 (1x) Jester is the third worst attack of all $5 cards. It was voted 5 times below #30, but has also 2 ranks above #10. Newer players heavily seem to underrate it. The unweighted ranking has it at #23. Jester is a very swingy attack. You can deal out Curses, you can spam Coppers. If your opponent and you are going for the same strategy, you can get very good cards from your Jester. If not, you have a really hard decision if you want that action card in your deck or give your opponent another free card. If you have a good running engine with any spying attack (like Scrying Pool), Jester is very good. In 3+ player games Jester is even stronger, because you can gain multiple good cards per turn. In all other cases you have to rely on your luck to hit the right cards. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/upgrade.jpg) | #18 Upgrade (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 20.51 / Median: 21 / Mode: 28 / Standard Deviation: 8.5 Highest Rank(s): #6 (1x), #9 (1x), #10 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #32 (1x), #37 (1x), #46 (1x) Upgrade has a really big outlier on the third last position. It was 3 times below #30 and twice above #10. Non-terminal trashers or trash-for-benefit-cards are really strong. No surprise that Upgrade costs $5 so you can't open with it most of the times. With Upgrade you can trash your Coppers and Curses or turning your Estates into Silver without spending an action and keep playing all your other valuable action cards. This may also its best use. Spamming Upgrades and upgrading all other cards slowly to better cards seems nice, but is very slow. But Upgrading an Upgrade into an early Grand Market can be very strong. I like to add, that Upgrade is indeed a cantrip, that doesn't hurt your deck early on. But like Lookout, if you have a deck with a high quality density later on, this may be a dead card in your hand, when you don't want to trash a card from your hand. It's still no surprise Upgrade has some very high ranked openings, the best being Upgrade/Chapel on #18. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/venture.jpg) | #17 Venture (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 20.08 / Median: 18.5 / Mode: 18 / Standard Deviation: 9.5 Highest Rank(s): #2 (1x), #5 (1x), #10 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #32 (1x), #41 (1x), #42 (1x) Venture has the third highest deviation of the $5 cards, having two big outliers on each side. It is the best middle-ranked card before the next gap to the good $5 cards. Venture is very similar to the "+1 Card, +1 Action, +$1, +Bonus" cards like Market, Treasury or Highway. It draws a card, gives $1 and doesn't cost an action. What is the +Bonus of Venture? Being a Treasure Card, it can't be drawn dead. And it has a Filter effect finding another Treasure Card. So you're guaranteed $2 when playing a Venture, making it another "Strictly Superior to Silver $5 Treasure Card". The filter effect allows you to go green earlier, because you can discard the green cards with Ventures. This effect reminds of Adventurer (and the name of course). While an Adventurer in a Copper-free deck gets you to at least $4 and Venture only to $3, Venture is still superior, because it's $1 cheaper and doesn't cost an action and is therefore chainable. Ventures are great if you have multiples and as few other Treasure Cards as possible. If you manage that, they are even superior to Gold. I like to add, that the multiple Ventures stacking effect is no additional bonus, just the result of the two above mentioned bonuses (Multiple Markets in a thin deck would have the same effect). |
Ok. I agree overall, but I'm surprised for Jester and Upgrade.Jester is not like mountebank at all really. If you look at it that way, you're looking at it wrong. You don't want to deal out bad things with the Jester. You want to gain good things with it.
Jester is like a bad mountebank, I like it but it seems for me way too high.
Upgrade is nice, but risky, and so slow... it's a good trasher for curses or coppers, good counter for sea hag,
Also, it's good to trash cards that become useless, like chapel or moneylender, but otherwise it's never a great addition for your deck.
Highway combos with a LOT more than just market, and it doesn't actually combo all that great with market - you need a lot of trashing, and some other help, usually. But it combos with gainers, grand market, bascially anything with plus buy or gain, and you are able to play many in a turn. pretty decent addition to already-working engines. Still way overrated.
Cartographer works in BM. Often not as well as in engines (though, depending on the engine, Cartographer can be pretty unnecessary). Also feel that this card is way way way overrated.
Uh, festival's a little high, city's a bit high, haggler's a little low, but not too too bad.
Ok. I agree overall, but I'm surprised for Jester and Upgrade.Jester is not like mountebank at all really. If you look at it that way, you're looking at it wrong. You don't want to deal out bad things with the Jester. You want to gain good things with it.
Jester is like a bad mountebank, I like it but it seems for me way too high.
Upgrade is nice, but risky, and so slow... it's a good trasher for curses or coppers, good counter for sea hag,
Also, it's good to trash cards that become useless, like chapel or moneylender, but otherwise it's never a great addition for your deck.
No, I'm trying to say the stuff in your post is wrong.Highway combos with a LOT more than just market, and it doesn't actually combo all that great with market - you need a lot of trashing, and some other help, usually. But it combos with gainers, grand market, bascially anything with plus buy or gain, and you are able to play many in a turn. pretty decent addition to already-working engines. Still way overrated.
Cartographer works in BM. Often not as well as in engines (though, depending on the engine, Cartographer can be pretty unnecessary). Also feel that this card is way way way overrated.
Uh, festival's a little high, city's a bit high, haggler's a little low, but not too too bad.
Maybe I'm misreading your post, but it seems you want to add stuff to my articles, but basically repeat what I wrote.
Market/Highway is no great combo, but probably the best "Bridge-like" combo. I said you need help, like a thin deck. I only set it up twice and it worked out really nice, though not great. Game 1 (http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111220-134041-e204cc47.html) Game 2 (http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111220-134041-e204cc47.html)Uh, those go to the same game, which was played quite badly. 18 turns for 27 points with no attacks is just really weak. Like, BMU will beat that more often than not (though it would be close).
And I definitely mentioned gainers and +Buys.I'll give you that, but you're very wishy-washy.
Cartographers work in BM, but not as good and it depends on the supporter card. That's why I wrote "maybe".The way you've written it (and I realize this is a nuance you might not get not being a native English speaker) implies pretty heavily that it's not good in BM.
Sorry if I misunderstood you.
So you're guaranteed $2 when playing a Venture, making it another "Strictly Superior to Silver $5 Treasure Card".
City is only that low because it is ranked by people competing mainly in 2 player games. If this was a 4 player community then the ranking would be a little different.
In the absence of other trashers, I think that Estate -> Silver is a strong move (that's $2 that you wouldn't have had otherwise), and that trashing Copper is a weaker move unless you can play Upgrade a lot and you need the Copper trashing for a slick engine. Most often if there's a strong drawing engine available, I'll build up my drawing power first before buying an Upgrade to make sure that my deck doesn't choke; I'm not sure if this is the right play, though.I think late upgrade is usually bad (which is in agreement with councilroom.com (http://councilroom.com/win_weighted_accum_turn.html?cards=upgrade) data). The best part about upgrade is the estate=>silver(or other $3 card), which is much harder to land, and much less impactful, late in the game. Removing estates, particularly in the early-going is just as useful in avoiding choking as building up your drawing power.
City is pretty close to just being straight up bad in my book. It should be significantly lower imo. I feel like Haggler and Venture probably should be higher too, but I'd need to see the rest of the list before I decide :)
City is often a trap card, but that's not the same as being "bad"; and furthermore it's a trap in the same way Alchemist is a trap, not the way Pirate Ship is. Though it does share with Pirate Ship the quality of being much, much better in multiplayer. Barring corner cases where you're so desperate for a Village that you'd pay $5, it's only worth it in games where at least one pile is going to run out before the end. But those games are pretty common! Most Curse matches, for instance, or games with spammable engine stacks like Minion, or University/HoP... or even just the presence of Colonies, which lengthens the game to the point that Level 2 Cities are likely to pay off. And, hey, City is a Prosperity card, so you have a better chance of playing with those Colonies. I mean, yes, it's a card you can often avoid, but (again like Alchemist) there are frequent situations where you have no choice but to go for it.I agree with you on City. I had it a bit higher as well, because while you can ignore it sometimes, you can ignore most of the cards at these levels sometimes. But there are actually a lot of times you simply can't ignore it. But bazaar is not even close. It's good for adding terminals to a big draw engine like scrying pool, but not much else. I'm not sure bazaar/wharf is more likely to be good than village/wharf. I would think the opposite is true. Wharf+money is so good that if you can't quickly add in the villages on the cheap (with +buy or gain), you're going to have a hard time competing. And while bazaar/smithy is better than village/smithy, it's only marginally better than smithy/money most of the time. All-in-all, it seems like one of those cards that's nice to have, but rarely plays a major role in defining a strategy, something that the top 20 $5 cards should do, imo.
As for Bazaar and Festival... Festival was for a long time my favorite card in Dominion and one of these days I'm going to write an article on it. With Bazaar, everyone keeps saying that its initial cost makes it hard to pair quickly with a $5 terminal draw card, and if you're trying to set up a Torturer chain ASAP then yes Bazaar isn't the best choice. But... really that's it. Two Bazaars in your deck is a Silver you don't need to buy early on, which can be a huge difference when you're starting to green and you might otherwise not be able to kick off to hit all your key cards: and especially if said key cards are inexpensive, you can get another one of them instead of Silver. Bazaar might work especially well on engines with cheaper drawing parts (Smithy, Watchtower, Conspirator, Pools, etc.); more expensive parts (Nobles!); engines where you don't need a lot of +Card parts (double-Tac), but honestly it's a strong option even with many $5 +Card terminals. Bazaar/Rabble is slow-developing but that's A-OK in a Rabble game; Bazaar/Wharf is, unlike Village/Wharf, actually worth pursuing most of the time. There are a wide variety of boards where you want both a Village-effect and disappearing cash, and the fact that Bazaar rolls both functions into one makes it a worthwhile buy even at its high price.
Venture is a card I'm glad to see didn't make it into the top third, even if my placement was about the same: I do think it's overrated, and if I was making this list again would probably have ranked it even lower. The problem is that Venture really only shines in well-trimmed Big Money decks, but why are you trashing aggressively if you're not going to chain actions to begin with? I have the same problem with Venture that toaster had with Inn, and since I prefer Action decks to begin with, you can guess which of those two cards I dislike. I actually buy Venture pretty rarely, and do better without it.
No, I'm trying to say the stuff in your post is wrong.Highway combos with a LOT more than just market, and it doesn't actually combo all that great with market - you need a lot of trashing, and some other help, usually. But it combos with gainers, grand market, bascially anything with plus buy or gain, and you are able to play many in a turn. pretty decent addition to already-working engines. Still way overrated.
Cartographer works in BM. Often not as well as in engines (though, depending on the engine, Cartographer can be pretty unnecessary). Also feel that this card is way way way overrated.
Uh, festival's a little high, city's a bit high, haggler's a little low, but not too too bad.
Maybe I'm misreading your post, but it seems you want to add stuff to my articles, but basically repeat what I wrote.QuoteMarket/Highway is no great combo, but probably the best "Bridge-like" combo. I said you need help, like a thin deck. I only set it up twice and it worked out really nice, though not great. Game 1 (http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111220-134041-e204cc47.html) Game 2 (http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111220-134041-e204cc47.html)Uh, those go to the same game, which was played quite badly. 18 turns for 27 points with no attacks is just really weak. Like, BMU will beat that more often than not (though it would be close).QuoteAnd I definitely mentioned gainers and +Buys.I'll give you that, but you're very wishy-washy.QuoteCartographers work in BM, but not as good and it depends on the supporter card. That's why I wrote "maybe".The way you've written it (and I realize this is a nuance you might not get not being a native English speaker) implies pretty heavily that it's not good in BM.
Sorry if I misunderstood you.
Or it could hit nothing at all, if you've drawn all the treasures in your deck. /pedantic nitpic #2
That's true, yes. But if these are really corner cases in my opinion. I would still call it strictly superior to Silver.QuoteSo you're guaranteed $2 when playing a Venture, making it another "Strictly Superior to Silver $5 Treasure Card".
Strictly speaking, it could hit a Potion, making it less than a Silver, or, possibly, it could hit a Philosopher's Stone in a really tiny deck, or it could hit a Horn of Plenty, although that would at least make the Horn of Plenty a Silver. /pedantic nitpick
Qvist - the link in your sig for $3 cards part 1 goes to the wrong place.Thanks for the hint. I'll change that. Another copy that didn't work.
Thanks for all these lists Qvist, it's great to see what other people think about the cards.Thanks for that.
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/stables.jpg) | #16 Stables (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 18.38 / Median: 16.5 / Mode: 15 / Standard Deviation: 7.4 Highest Rank(s): #2 (1x), #7 (1x), #10 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #32 (1x), #33 (1x), #34 (1x) After a 1.7 point gap we are now in the top third. Stables has a big outlier on the second rank and with a relatively high consensus for this region, it has no outlier in the lower ranks and was only 3 times below #30. When you try to evaluate Stables, the comparism to Laboratory is very obvious. Both give you an action and a hand with one card more. In games with no trashing a few Stables can even be stronger, because you get an additional Warehouse-like cycling effect. Just discard your Coppers and you'll see you valuable cards more often. If you buy Stables and don't play Big Money, then your action density increases and the chances that you draw no treasure cards with Stables in hand increases too. Then Stables may be a dead card in hand. Especially in cursing games Stables is weaker. And even if your only treasure card is a Gold it highly depends on your deck if you really want to discard the Gold for 3 new cards. But a few Stables, Silvers and a +Buy card like Horse Traders can make pretty good Hunting-Party-like deck. An early Stables is great and superior to Laboratory on a board with no trashing, but with more Action Cards, Victory Cards or Curses, Stables is getting weaker, so just don't buy too many. Just compare a hand of 5 Laboratories and 5 Stables. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/governor.jpg) | #15 Governor (Promo) Weighted Average: 17.54 / Median: 15.5 / Mode: 11 / Standard Deviation: 9.6 Highest Rank(s): #3 (1x), #5 (1x), #6 (2x) / Lowest Rank(s): #31 (1x), #36 (1x), #43 (1x) Governor is the newest of all cards. That may explain the second highest deviation of all $5 cards. It was listed 7 times in the Top 10 and has a really high mode, but still has 2 big outliers in the lower regions. In the unweighted ranking it would be on #14. The different options make it difficult to play. And depending on what you choose it can a really bad card or a great one. That may also explain the high deviation. Like Council Room, the +1 card may pretty huge for your opponent if you choose +3 cards. And if you even choose that multiple times in a row, you give your opponent a great hand too. So either do that only if you a) play a discard attack afterwards, b) can end that game in a mega turn or c) possess your opponent afterwards. In all these 3 cases Governor is really powerful. The remodel effect is bad in the early game, you're helping your opponent even more for letting him trash his Coppers or get a Silver for an Estate, you can use it in the end game to remodel your treasure card in respective Victory card. The best option without above mentioned supporting cards may be the Gold gaining. The Silver can be really bad for your opponent in a Colony game or if he builds a deck with high action density. And you can pick up Governors over Golds because you can get Golds with Governor later. That leads to a state where Governor can combo with itself. Gain many Governors, choose the gain Gold option every time. With many Governors and Gold in your deck use a few Governors for +3 cards and the rest to remodel your Gold into Provinces in a mega turn. Its power in a thin deck shows the rank #6 in the best openings for Governor/Chapel. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/embassy.jpg) | #14 Embassy (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 16.91 / Median: 16 / Mode: 10 / Standard Deviation: 9.3 Highest Rank(s): #1 (1x), #5 (1x), #8 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #34 (2x), #36 (1x), #37 (1x) Embassy is another card with a really high deviation. It's the first card with a first place and was above #10 3 times. And its mode is really high with being #10 4 times. Embassy is a great Big Money card. An early Embassy is so good that your opponent gets a Silver for free. The mix of a terminal drawer and a Warehouse-like filter makes it that powerful. Yes, basically it's only +2 cards, but every time you play it, you can choose the best 6 cards out of 9 cards. Similiar to Envoy: If you have 5/2 and have the luck to draw it on turn 3, you may draw it in turn 4 and 5 again and will probably have already a huge lead, due to quick cycling. But it is also good in engines if you can guarantee to draw it with an action card. So just like Wharf it combos well with Fishing Village. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/margrave.jpg) | #13 Margrave (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 14.50 / Median: 14.5 / Mode: 15 / Standard Deviation: 9.5 Highest Rank(s): #3 (1x), #4 (1x), #7 (2x) / Lowest Rank(s): #31 (1x), #32 (2x) Here's another big gap of 2.4 points. And Margrave is another card with high deviation, the third highest, shared with Venture. It was 8 times above #10. Terminal drawers with +Buy are very strong as they tend to let you have many money in hand, more you often need for a Province. Council Room has the drawback of give your opponent another card, but Wharf is still to come in this list. Margrave gives you an additional discard attack. The discard attack itself is not as strong as Militia's or Goons' discard attack because your opponent may draw a card first. But the discard attack is still very strong. It's just like you play Council Room+Militia or Governor+Militia. Margrave is another good Big Money card. With $11 you can buy an additional Silver to your Province. And terminal draw and +Buy is all Fool's Gold needs. No surprise Margrave/Fool's Gold is the best opening on #198. It's also a good addition to your engine, but you have to be careful to add not too many Margraves to your engine, because every time you play a Margrave your opponent has another chance to draw a hand like 2 Golds and a Silver to buy a Province himself. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/vault.jpg) | #12 Vault (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 14.01 / Median: 14 / Mode: 15 / Standard Deviation: 8.4 Highest Rank(s): #3 (1x), #5 (1x), #6 (2x) / Lowest Rank(s): #29 (1x), #35 (1x), #41 (1x) Vault was 6 times above #10 and has 2 big outliers in the lower regions, the only 2 ranks below #30. The +2 Cards that make the difference between Secret Chamber and Vault are very important to make Vault a good card and Secret Chamber a weak one. With every play of Vault you are guaranteed a Gold or even better a Grand Market. And if you have a Gold in hand or draw one you can buy a Province for sure. This makes Vault a great counter to cursing attacks and is still great after you've gone green. No surprise your opponent has the chance to make his hand better too, because this effect is very strong. This effect makes it also a good card for Duke. Like Secret Chamber it's also good if you can draw your whole deck for example with Scrying Pool, discard all actions for a lot of money, just to draw all actions again with another Scrying Pool. Similar to this, it's great in Double Tactician decks. The downside of this card is that it's very vulnerable to discarding attacks. Although it shines in big decks with a lot of junk the #12 opening Vault/Chapel shows its strength if you are able to play it every turn. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/apprentice.jpg) | #11 Apprentice (Alchemy) Weighted Average: 13.21 / Median: 14 / Mode: 15 / Standard Deviation: 6.5 Highest Rank(s): #2 (1x), #3 (1x), #4 (2x) / Lowest Rank(s): #23 (1x), #24 (1x), #27 (1x) Apprentice is the first card after a while with a really low deviation. It was above #10 8 times and it's the first card with no rank below #30. And it was only 4 times below #20 too. If we declare Ill-Gotten-Gains as an Attack Card, this is the 5th best non-attack $5 card. Although you can use an early Apprentice to trash your Coppers, Apprentice epitomizes (just like Salvager) Trash-for-Benefit cards; because the benefit is huge. If you don't hesitate to trash e.g. a Gold to get 6! cards and draw at least a card with +Buy or a Gainer you can really fasten the game. With Apprentice+Hoard or Apprentice+Haggler you can buy a Province nearly every turn. It combos also nice with Border Village. And as being one of the strongest Trash-for-Benefit cards, I especially mention the danger in Possession games. Your opponent won't hesitate to trash a Province or even a Colony for drawing nearly your whole deck. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/laboratory.jpg) | #10 Laboratory (Base) Weighted Average: 12.78 / Median: 11 / Mode: 8 / Standard Deviation: 6.1 Highest Rank(s): #1 (1x), #2 (1x), #5 (1x) / Lowest Rank(s): #21 (1x), #22 (1x), #30 (1x) Now we're in the Top 10. Laboratory is the second card which reached the first place and the first with a mode better than 10 with being on #8 4 times. It was above #10 11 times and below #20 only 3 times. It's the 4th best non-attack $5 card. Unlike Stables, like mentioned above, Laboratory is a good card in nearly every deck. It increases the hand size by one which is a often underrated benefit. And if you have multiple Laboratories in your deck you have a consistent Village+Smithy engine in your deck where it isn't possible to draw dead. So, it's a engine on its own and you best begin early to build it. Therefore it's no surprise Laboratory/Chapel is on #34 in the openings list. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/ghostship.jpg) | #9 Ghost Ship (Seaside) Weighted Average: 10.59 / Median: 9 / Mode: 8 / Standard Deviation: 8.4 Highest Rank(s): #1 (1x), #3 (1x), #4 (2x) / Lowest Rank(s): #27 (1x), #31 (1x), #36 (1x) Ghost Ship is the third card with a first place. It was below #20 5 times, resulting in a higher deviation. It was below #10 only 13 times. Ghost Ship is very strong because it's a discard attack in which you don't have to discard, you have to top deck. So this messes up this turn and the next turn. You have then to choose to get 2 mediocre turns or a bad turn and hopefully a better next turn if you aren't getting "ghostshipped" again. This results in really slow games in which it takes long until you reshuffle and see the newly bought cards the first time. The difference to all other strong attack cards is you don't want to play as many as you can in one turn, you just want to constantly play it each turn. That's the reason why Ghost Ship with Schemes can be devastating. If there are no good defense cards / counters, you are in a pin you aren't likely to get out soon. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/tactician.jpg) | #8 Tactician (Seaside) Weighted Average: 10.13 / Median: 10 / Mode: 12 / Standard Deviation: 5.0 Highest Rank(s): #2 (1x), #3 (3x) / Lowest Rank(s): #17 (2x), #20 (1x), #21 (1x) High consensus here. Tactician was below #20 13 times with no big outlier and #21 being a really high worst rank. It's the 3rd best non-attack $5 card. Tactician makes use of the phrase "One big turn is better than 2 mediocre ones". So in deck in that you can't guarantee a Province each turn, with Tactician it's still very likely to get 2 Provinces each 2 turns. This applies especially to cards that take profit of big hand sizes like Forge, Bank or Tournament+Province. It's also great to get key cards like King's Court early or as a defense against discarding attacks (0/8 is definitely better than 3/3). And in combination with Black Market or Action cards that let you gain virtual money like Vault/Secret Chamber, Baron or a bunch of Festivals/Conspirators/Grand Markets you can even setup a Double Tactician strategy. You can play your second Tactician in your Tactician turn and still have enough money to buy something and get another 10 card hand in the next hand. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/ill-gotten-gains.jpg) | #7 Ill-Gotten Gains (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 9.32 / Median: 7 / Mode: 4 / Standard Deviation: 8.7 Highest Rank(s): #2 (2x), #3 (4x) / Lowest Rank(s): #18 (2x), #31 (1x), #41 (1x) Ill-Gotten-Gains has two very big outliers in lower regions and has still a pretty high deviation. But it only was below #10 8 times. It has a really high mode, it was #4 4 times. If we count it as an Attack, it's the 5th best. I remember reading Ill-Gotten-Gains the first time and it seemed not that strong. You have only a one-shot curser to get a better Copper? The high deviation shows that many players still may think about it that way. But that's not like it is. A Ill-Gotten-Gains Rush is really strong. Just buy Ill-Gotten-Gains every time you get to $5. The optional extra Copper make that possible. With a 5/2 opening it's even possible to deal out a Curse before the opponent's first reshuffle, especially for the first player. When the IGGs are gone, the Curses are gone too, so you just have to empty the Duchy pile to win the game and IGGs give enough money to accomplish this. Often you are even able to pick up a Province in between. But you have to be sure to hit your opponent. While these Curses are nearly unstoppable, not even with Moat or Lighthouse (making IGG even stronger), with Trader or Ambassador on the board the Curse pile won't be empty if you empty the IGG pile and your opponent may have enough time to pick up enough Provinces before you empty 2 piles. The same applies with other Cursers on the board. But in all other cases when IGG is on the board, a IGG rush is probably the dominant strategy. It has currently the highest per gain win rate of all kingdom cards (1.2), even higher than Grand Market or any alternative victory card. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/torturer.jpg) | #6 Torturer (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 8.56 / Median: 6.5 / Mode: 6 / Standard Deviation: 7.8 Highest Rank(s): #3 (4x) / Lowest Rank(s): #20 (1x), #26 (1x), #39 (1x) Torturer is the 4th best Attack Card. It was below #10 only 9 times. But it has still 4 big outliers on #18 or below. It was 5 times on rank #6. The relative high deviation may result from that a single Torturer is not that great. You can choose to take a Curse in hand or discard. Taking the Curse in hand is not that great as getting it onto your discard pile or even on top. If you have a Forge or a Jack of All Trades in hand, a Curse in hand doesn't hurt you th at much. In all other cases it's just a Militia-like discarding attack. But multiple Torturers can really torture you, especially because you have a choice, but still are between the devil and the deep blue sea (I hope the phrase is right). So Torturer highly depends from Villages; especially with Border Villages or Fishing Villages a Torturer Chain is definitely the way to go. The first one that gets this set up is likely to win. When the Curses are gone, Torturers are no danger anymore. But the Curse split is likely highly in your favor and you already have a good running engine to maybe pick a few more treasures and then go green. Only with direct Cursers you may still skip them, because until you've set up this chain, there are few Curses left. Torturer/Chapel is a #42 opening and the next best ones are those paired with any $2 village like Native Village, Hamlet or Crossroads around #200. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/minion.jpg) | #5 Minion (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 8.23 / Median: 6 / Mode: 6 / Standard Deviation: 6.3 Highest Rank(s): #2 (1x), #3 (3x) / Lowest Rank(s): #20 (1x), #25 (1x), #29 (1x) Minion is the 3rd best Attack Card, the next one from Intrigue. It was only 6 times below #10 and only 3 times below #13 - 3 really big outliers. It was 5 times on rank #6. Minion's discard attack can hit even stronger than any other discard attack. You have one card more than with Militia, but against Minion you cannot choose which card to keep. The non-terminal $2 is great in every engine and the discard option helps you to cycle faster. Those two benefits make it a self-working engine. If you win the Minion split, you can play the first Minions in your hand to get $2 and the last one to get the next 4 cards, then just proceed. And every non-terminal card with virtual coins and/or a non-terminal trasher fit very well in a Minion deck. Yes, there has to be some requirements: You are playing a 2-player game and have a thin deck and don't play with Colony, ... to name the major issues. But then a Minion deck is super strong. Minion/Chapel is the #17 best opening. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/hunting-party.jpg) | #4 Hunting Party (Cornucopia) Weighted Average: 6.12 / Median: 6.5 / Mode: 7 / Standard Deviation: 4.1 Highest Rank(s): #1 (3x) / Lowest Rank(s): #13 (2x), #19 (1x) After another big gap we reach the Top 4, so they are definitely the best cards. The stats of Hunting Party prove that. Its the first card with more than one first rank and it was below #10 only 3 times with none being below #20. It has the 5th lowest deviation. It's the 2nd best non-attack $5 card. After Stables and Laboratory, Hunting Party is the best non-terminal hand-size increasing $5 card. The advantage is the even better filter effect than Stables to get the cards in hand you really need. It's also an engine on its own, just have one Gold and at least a Silver and a good terminal action which gives you at least $2, like Goons, Monument, Horse Traders, Haggler or Baron. With at least 5-6 Hunting Parties you are almost guaranteed a Province each turn because you only have few different cards in your deck and get those all in hand. Going green doesn't hurt you much (only Duchies) and with Cursers you only need a Hunting Party more to filter Curses. It's not strictly better than Laboratory if there are no different cards left in your deck, but that mostly occurs only if you already have a very strong deck or you have a heavily trimmed deck what you don't need when you go for Hunting Parties. The only thing you have to watch out in such a deck is when to trigger the reshuffle so you get at least a Hunting Party in the next hand again. Hunting Party/Chapel is the #24 best opening. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/wharf.jpg) | #3 Wharf (Seaside) Weighted Average: 4.89 / Median: 5 / Mode: 5 / Standard Deviation: 2.5 Highest Rank(s): #1 (2x), #2 (3x) / Lowest Rank(s): #9 (2x), #10 (1x) Wharf is the best non-attack $5 card. There is no doubt, it's the only card with no rank below #10, so it has the lowest deviation of all $5 cards too (shared with Counting House). It was #5 6 times. What makes it so strong? +2 Cards are mostly weak. The benefit you get in this turn is pretty weak too. But the duration effect of +2 Cards without playing an action is like 2 Caravans or if you played 2 Laboratories at the start of your next turn. And Laboratory is already a #10 Card of the same cost. If you have 2 Wharves and you play them alternating each turn, you start each turn with 7 cards and basically each Wharf is a Council Room without the drawback of giving your opponent an additional card. And as already mentioned the +Buy for a terminal draw is really nice too, you need it with so many cards in hand. You can use Wharf for Big Money with less probability of colliding (because of the duration effect) or you can build an engine. In combination with Fishing Village you are almost guaranteed big hands (like you're playing Double Tactician) and even have enough Actions left for Attacks. No matter if you're going Big Money or build a engine with it, Wharf is so strong that those games are over very quick. Wharf's draw and +Buy is also good for Fool's Gold, making Wharf/Fool's Gold the #44 best opening. But Wharf/Chapel is even better on #27. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/witch.jpg) | #2 Witch (Base) Weighted Average: 3.75 / Median: 2 / Mode: 2 / Standard Deviation: 4.3 Highest Rank(s): #1 (3x) / Lowest Rank(s): #12 (2x), #15 (1x), #17 (1x) It was very close, but Witch is only #2. With 16 second places (more than the half) there is no doubt about such a high rank. Still it has a few outliers, 4 below #10 and two times on #7, but all other ranks were between #1 and #5. Cursers are the strongest cards in the game, I think everyone agrees. There are only 5 guaranteed Cursers, one gives you no benefit and only costs $4, another one is a one-shot and ranked #7 on this list, the third one has Potion in its cost and the fourth is a Prize Card. So Witch is a guaranteed Curser with no drawback and definitely one of the strongest cards in the game. Not only you can curse your opponent, you get 2 additional cards. Have you ever played your King's Court with Witch? This is basically "Game Over" for your opponent. The defense with Witch on the board is mostly to get it for yourself, faster than your opponent and play it more often. Witch/Chapel is the #5 best opening, but it is good with every 5/2 split. It is in the Top 100 14 times, even Witch/nothing is on #53. |
| (http://www.dominiondeck.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/cards-large/cards/mountebank.jpg) | #1 Mountebank (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 3.53 / Median: 1 / Mode: 1 / Standard Deviation: 5.2 Highest Rank(s): #1 (19x) / Lowest Rank(s): #11 (1x), #19 (1x), #22 (1x) As already said, the decision was close, even if nearly two third of all players ranked Mountebank on #1. Because if someone hasn't voted it on #1, it was mostly considerable lower. So Mountebank has even bigger outliers and a higher deviation. Witch already is very strong, but Mountebank managed to beat it. Yes, it cannot deal out curses guaranteed, but dealing out 2 junk cards per play is really strong and if the opponent has a Curse in hand, he is mostly behind in the Curse split anyway. So, it's stronger in the beginning where junk hurts you more. Your deck can get clogged up so fast. Then it may not hit every time in the middle game, but when the Curse pile is empty, you can still deal out Coppers, that's another advantage. While $2 is mostly weaker than +2 cards (especially in Colony games), there's no big difference in Cursing games as your deck has more junk and it's more difficult to get a money average of $1 per card at the start anyway. So, it really depends on the board which card is stronger, but mostly it is Mountebank because it hurts more. Just beware with Trader on the board or you may be giving your opponent 2 Silvers. Another reason for Mountebank being first is the opening list. Mountebank/Chapel is the overall best opening. Mountebank is 14 times in the Top 100 too, with Mountebank/nothing even on #29. |
Now, for the real drama. Are we going to see a unanimous #1 vote, or perhaps a unanimous #14 vote, on the $6-plus list? It strikes me as a real possibility, given how obvious (I think) the best and worst cards are, but even Chapel didn't earn that honor, so who knows!#1 I seriously doubt. People will vote for GM. People will vote Goons. Last place... maybe. It's SO clear. But somehow I doubt it.
Yeah if Chapel doesn't win out on $2 compared to whatever card was placed higher, there's no way Goons beats GM on every list.Well, it's $6+ iirc, so it should be KC pretty easily....
[Vault...] and for BM, most every other terminal card draw that costs at least $3 is better.... Actually, they're better for engines too. So vault strikes me as a pretty big overrate here.
Oh it was? Can't remember anything obviously :)
Anyway, uhm.. isn't Goons better than KC? Like, by a huge margin?
KC's only really ignorable if all the other actions suck. i.e. on big money boards. Otherwise, if you skip KC and your opponent buy it they can do whatever you're doing three times as much.
KC's only really ignorable if all the other actions suck. i.e. on big money boards.This is in fact not true. And much as I dislike and misuse KC and LOVE goons... I can't see goons being better than KC on average. Specific boards, yes.
Qvist, I'm curious - what's the lowest card on the master list that got #1 on anyone's list?
My mind is blown. KC over Goons? Is this after you account for it being more expensive, too? It's ignorable so often compared to Goons, I don't understand :) Looking at councilroom data, I see people buy it 84% of the time, which is why more than I do (68%), and seems way way high to me.
Now, for the real drama. Are we going to see a unanimous #1 vote, or perhaps a unanimous #14 vote, on the $6-plus list? It strikes me as a real possibility, given how obvious (I think) the best and worst cards are, but even Chapel didn't earn that honor, so who knows!#1 I seriously doubt. People will vote for GM. People will vote Goons. Last place... maybe. It's SO clear. But somehow I doubt it.
Now, for the real drama. Are we going to see a unanimous #1 vote, or perhaps a unanimous #14 vote, on the $6-plus list? It strikes me as a real possibility, given how obvious (I think) the best and worst cards are, but even Chapel didn't earn that honor, so who knows!#1 I seriously doubt. People will vote for GM. People will vote Goons. Last place... maybe. It's SO clear. But somehow I doubt it.
Am I missing something? I would rank Farmland as the worst 6$ card (though I didn't rank), but I know there's a ton of adventurer-hate on this forum (I would still rank it second worse even though I think it's underrated; it's frequently ignored when it's a better buy over gold).
Now, for the real drama. Are we going to see a unanimous #1 vote, or perhaps a unanimous #14 vote, on the $6-plus list? It strikes me as a real possibility, given how obvious (I think) the best and worst cards are, but even Chapel didn't earn that honor, so who knows!#1 I seriously doubt. People will vote for GM. People will vote Goons. Last place... maybe. It's SO clear. But somehow I doubt it.
Am I missing something? I would rank Farmland as the worst 6$ card (though I didn't rank), but I know there's a ton of adventurer-hate on this forum (I would still rank it second worse even though I think it's underrated; it's frequently ignored when it's a better buy over gold).
Adventurer could be underrated and it'd still be the worst 6-plus by a huge, gaping margin. Not only does this forum dislike Adventurer, isotropic at large hates it too, buying it less often than every card save Chancellor, Counting House, Navigator, Stash, and Harvest. And its win stats really aren't any better than those cards either. Okay, sometimes it's a better buy than Gold: those "sometimes" are like ten percent of the time. Farmland is no great shakes either, but at least it's always something you need to watch ot for in the endgame.
http://councilroom.com/win_rate_diff_accum.html?cards=Cost%3D%3D6 is a pretty stark depiction of what I'm talking about. By and large, Adventurer just doesn't belong in this cost tier.
Well chwhite, if winrates are any indication, my win without KC is 1.66 (with=0.61) and yours is -0.17 (with =-0.22). You win a full 6.5% more games with Goons on the table than KC, over a significant sample size, that's an enormous difference.
Now I want to see the $6+ list! This $5 list has been discussed to death and been dragged out way too long as it is, anyway, and I'm curious how Goons is doing. I usually don't disagree very strongly with the best players on here, but I really feel this is just wrong. Some more councilroom data:
(All players)
Goons gained 87.4%, KC gained 84.1% (too much!)
Goons winrate with 1.04, winrate without 0.77 (!) KC winrate with 1.02, winrate without 0.92
http://councilroom.com/win_rate_diff_accum.html?cards=Cost%3D%3D6 is a pretty stark depiction of what I'm talking about. By and large, Adventurer just doesn't belong in this cost tier.
http://councilroom.com/win_rate_diff_accum.html?cards=Cost%3D%3D6 is a pretty stark depiction of what I'm talking about. By and large, Adventurer just doesn't belong in this cost tier.
that graph is a little unfair to Adventurer. He's not alone in the negative slope of cards costing 6+:
http://councilroom.com/win_rate_diff_accum.html?cards=Cost%3E%3D6%20%26%26%20Action
(All players)Which is pretty irrelevant overall. You can't use these stats to say A>B for many many reasons (but that would deserve its own thread). However, you're general that KC is more often ignorable than goons. Just, that doesn't make it better.
Goons gained 87.4%, KC gained 84.1% (too much!)
Goons winrate with 1.04, winrate without 0.77 (!) KC winrate with 1.02, winrate without 0.92
For all WW's support of KC, looking at his stats is even more telling than mine:As in 'I dislike and misuse KC'? Yeah, I think it's stronger. That doesn't mean I use it better (though, there too...).
Gain KC 54.6% (!), winrate with is 1.10, winrate without is 1.34 (!) Sample size 551 games.Yeah, so a) I don't gain it often enough. For a looooong time I've been playing BM virtually every game, which is just a mistake. And KC is bad in BM. Further, I'm worse at the engine games where I do buy KC than in average games. I'm also worse in Platinum and colony games. Check out my stats on those - doesn't mean they're bad cards. I also have a bit of a thing with KC, sorta like Amb, where I try to prove it's possible to play without it whenever I can.
To sum up, Goons is much better than KC according to any reasonable'ish definition of "better" I can think of.
It was surprising to me you didn't change your mind about the card after seeing 193 - 57 record of yours. That's a lot of success from not bothering with a slow, but powerful, card (hi Possession!) imo.
Well I mean, you certainly seem to have done well (77% wins) when ignoring King's Court and going straight BM or whatever in those ~250 games. Having a 193 - 57 record with BM vs lots of KC opponents speaks volumes imo. Those games where your winrate is 77% obviously doesn't have to do with misusing KC, too, since they're not in your deck.That's 67%, not 77%. And I think it's more telling of my style than of objective strength.
The "more powerful" distinction, I feel like we did in some thread recently, didn't we?. King's Court is "more powerful" than Ambassador, Chapel, Silver, Festival, Goons, etc. It's not "better" than all those cards. The above is also true for Possession, which usually is close to the bottom on the Potion cards list. Making a list where you rank cards on power level seems really unfair for lists where cards have different costs; it's pretty clear to me we're after the "best" cards on this list, no? Otherwise Possession should be close to the top of any list, which it never is.
To sum up, Goons is much better than KC according to any reasonable'ish definition of "better" I can think of. If we're not after which card is "better", but something else, I guess I've misunderstood the purpose of these lists, as have the people who rank Possession (I think you're a pretty outspoken anti Possession guy too right?).
It was surprising to me you didn't change your mind about the card after seeing 193 - 57 record of yours. That's a lot of success from not bothering with a slow, but powerful, card (hi Possession!) imo.
Adventurer is the worst card in the game, relative to price point. And I don't think there's really any competition.Oh, I do. Transmute? Outpost? Thief? These are probably the worst three for me... and then adventurer.
I thought about Transmute. Outpost, no way - it's usually bad but can be quite useful in a reasonable number of games. Same with Thief, which also at least is much better once you go past two-person games.Adventurer is the worst card in the game, relative to price point. And I don't think there's really any competition.Oh, I do. Transmute? Outpost? Thief? These are probably the worst three for me... and then adventurer.
Adventurer is the worst card in the game, relative to price point. And I don't think there's really any competition.Oh, I do. Transmute? Outpost? Thief? These are probably the worst three for me... and then adventurer.
Okay, +2 cards is better than +$2 in general, except when your deck is going to be very low valueWhy is that?
I'm not sure I agree with Witch > Mountebank, as some people are saying now. Okay, +2 cards is better than +$2 in general, except when your deck is going to be very low value, like... in cursing games for example. Well, even then it's still probably going to be pretty even. But even if +2 cards has the edge it's a small one. Then the cards actual effect. Mountebank hits harder. It can be blocked, but it's pretty unlikely until the opponent has about ~3 curses. I just don't think Witch's higher reliability makes up for that.Cards is still better than money here, the coppers are fairly irrelevant in the cursing game, and the huge huge huge effect is that the curses can be blocked by others. It's absolutely massive.
+2 cards>$2 because in general, your average card value is better than $1, you cycle a little, and if you have extra actions you might chain into more actions you can play. But if your deck is low in value, well, generally getting $2 now is going to help more. I'd expect.But in heavy cursing games your average card value might possibly be less than $1.
Um, vault strikes me as a pretty big overrate. Only really good in BM or a few choice situations (w/tactician, scrying pool), and for BM, most every other terminal card draw that costs at least $3 is better.... Actually, they're better for engines too. So vault strikes me as a pretty big overrate here.Vault is actually really really good for BM, not because it's faster than other BM cards (though it is faster than most, particularly on a 5/2), but because it's better at forcing the game to be fast. A lot of times, you can beat these BM strats by building a sick engine while the BM player stalls out. With vault, that's much harder to do, because it doesn't really stall out. So I don't think it's massively overrated, though I do have it a few slots lower (16).
I have to admit I'm pretty sure I underrated governor when I ranked it. It's really quite a strong card, not always dominant, not without it's flaws, but quite good. Better than Lab.This is kind of funny, because you argued in the other thread that it should be in the bottom 5 :). Governor has grown on me a lot too. I now have it much higher than I did when I made my list, but not higher than it sits on the composite list right now.
I mostly don't agree with WW on which cards are too low or too high, but he's totally right about Lab. I had it just above Stables, because it's useful in a wider variety (read: Treasure-light) of decks, but really the two are almost identical in power.I've made a couple of complaints about cards being too far ahead of similar cards(farming vs walled village, bazaar vs market), but I can understand lab and stables being reasonably far apart. They are not really the same power level. Stables is much worse, because even though it's similar in a lot of situations, it's worse in the kinds of decks where you most often want non-terminal draw -- trimmed engine decks. Sure stables may be better in decks with lots of money, but neither card is particularly good in these situations. That's not to say stables is a bad card, but it never really shines the way lab does.
I mostly don't agree with WW on which cards are too low or too high, but he's totally right about Lab. I had it just above Stables, because it's useful in a wider variety (read: Treasure-light) of decks, but really the two are almost identical in power.I've made a couple of complaints about cards being too far ahead of similar cards(farming vs walled village, bazaar vs market), but I can understand lab and stables being reasonably far apart. They are not really the same power level. Stables is much worse, because even though it's similar in a lot of situations, it's worse in the kinds of decks where you most often want non-terminal draw -- trimmed engine decks. Sure stables may be better in decks with lots of money, but neither card is particularly good in these situations. That's not to say stables is a bad card, but it never really shines the way lab does.
Regarding the Witch vs Mountebank discussion:
Mountebank is better when there is a chance to trash your way into an engine despite the curses, because that's when the copper actually hurts. But Witch is better in basically all other curse situations, since it can't miss, and copper is not so bad. The situations in which Witch is better are far more plentiful. While Witch may be ignorable more often, it's not ignorable that often (certainly not TWICE as often as mountebank). So I'm in the Witch camp.
I also think the biggest miss in the top 16 (besides maybe the omission of Haggler) is that IGG is too low, which I'm sure is an artifact of the newness. I'm pretty sure it belongs at #3, behind only Witch and Mountebank. Sure it's ignorable more often than Wharf, but it's simply more game-warping.
Actually, I find lab to be not that great in treasure decks. Like, just Lab+BM is dreadful. And with terminals, it lets you play them more, except... then you need to buy fewer. And so you'd almost prefer to have the terminal in a lot of cases. And in some cases, you actually would.I mostly don't agree with WW on which cards are too low or too high, but he's totally right about Lab. I had it just above Stables, because it's useful in a wider variety (read: Treasure-light) of decks, but really the two are almost identical in power.I've made a couple of complaints about cards being too far ahead of similar cards(farming vs walled village, bazaar vs market), but I can understand lab and stables being reasonably far apart. They are not really the same power level. Stables is much worse, because even though it's similar in a lot of situations, it's worse in the kinds of decks where you most often want non-terminal draw -- trimmed engine decks. Sure stables may be better in decks with lots of money, but neither card is particularly good in these situations. That's not to say stables is a bad card, but it never really shines the way lab does.
Regarding the Witch vs Mountebank discussion:
Mountebank is better when there is a chance to trash your way into an engine despite the curses, because that's when the copper actually hurts. But Witch is better in basically all other curse situations, since it can't miss, and copper is not so bad. The situations in which Witch is better are far more plentiful. While Witch may be ignorable more often, it's not ignorable that often (certainly not TWICE as often as mountebank). So I'm in the Witch camp.
I also think the biggest miss in the top 16 (besides maybe the omission of Haggler) is that IGG is too low, which I'm sure is an artifact of the newness. I'm pretty sure it belongs at #3, behind only Witch and Mountebank. Sure it's ignorable more often than Wharf, but it's simply more game-warping.
What dings Lab in my eyes is that it's not actually that great of a +Card source in trimmed engine decks. I much prefer cards like Menagerie, Scrying Pool, Minion, Hunting Party, Tactician, etc etc. I mean, it'll do fine, but there are other options that are cheaper, or potentially more powerful, or come with other benefits. So I'm rarely excited to use Lab in big engines. While it will function in these setups, I find its most frequent and best use to come in treasure-heavy decks instead. So that really minimzes its big advantage over Stables. Mind you, I did have Lab higher, but only by two spots.
Also, Bazaar and Market are not particularly similar. They have some commonalities, sure, but much different uses.
I think minion is overrated. A pure minion strategy is nice, but not so easy to pull off. I don't understand why it's higher than Ghost ship, which is a very strong attack.
Not really. The attack is pretty good. And if your opponent doesn't contest minion, you're in very good shape.I think minion is overrated. A pure minion strategy is nice, but not so easy to pull off. I don't understand why it's higher than Ghost ship, which is a very strong attack.
I think you're right about minion. The pure minion deck is fun and amazing when you can pull it off but it needs strong enablers (chapel, lighthouse) on the board. It's just too slow otherwise to keep up with standard BM + X play especially if you have no good way to consistently gain minions.
Not really. The attack is pretty good. And if your opponent doesn't contest minion, you're in very good shape.I think minion is overrated. A pure minion strategy is nice, but not so easy to pull off. I don't understand why it's higher than Ghost ship, which is a very strong attack.
I think you're right about minion. The pure minion deck is fun and amazing when you can pull it off but it needs strong enablers (chapel, lighthouse) on the board. It's just too slow otherwise to keep up with standard BM + X play especially if you have no good way to consistently gain minions.
My top 5, if I did the list right now, would be
Witch
Mountebank
Wharf
IGG
HP
+2VP in the endgame is "rarely significant"? Yikes man.
Farmland chains are indeed generally terrible, and certainly not how Farmland should generally be played. Overall, Farmland is a fine if slightly undewhelming card you often buy once or twice (in the right situations, hopefully). Adventurer, you pretty much never buy.
Farmland is a card that is almost always a factor, on every board.+2VP in the endgame is "rarely significant"? Yikes man.
Farmland chains are indeed generally terrible, and certainly not how Farmland should generally be played. Overall, Farmland is a fine if slightly undewhelming card you often buy once or twice (in the right situations, hopefully). Adventurer, you pretty much never buy.
+2VP is not insignificant until you put it in the context of essentially needing 6$+Gold. If it's a BM deck with 2-3 Golds, you're making a mistake with an early gold trash in the first few provinces and you're either looking very good (because you have a superior deck) or very bad (because you got a bad shuffle) if you get 6+Gold after 4 provinces are gone.
I'm not saying Farmlands can never be bought advantageously, but I would made the analogy that Adventurer:Farmland::Saboteur:Stash. Saboteur is a worse card head-to-head in most decks, but it can be crucial in certain situations. Stash, on the other hand, has Chancellor (analogous to BV for Farmland, I guess) which makes it great and is barely, barely better than a silver in other games.
Not sure why Fairgrounds would not be ranked below Farmland (and for that matter Adventurer). In non-Colony, non-Tournament game, the best Fairgrounds can do is 3 - VP (10 kingdom, 3 treasure, 3 victory, plus curse). Might as well buy Duchy and build the engine I want to.Yeah. You're counting only half the VPs of fairgrounds. It's TWO per 5 kinds of cards.
Am I missing something?
I'd swap out Outpost for Philosopher's Stone, which I find worthwhile even less often than Transmute. Other than that I agree.
<player name="Philosopher's Stone/Herbalist"
author="Geronimoo"
description="Get a bunch of Stones and Herbalists and they'll do beautiful things together. ">
<type name="Fun"/>
<type name="BigMoney"/>
<type name="Combo"/>
<type name="Bot"/>
<type name="TwoPlayer"/>
<type name="Province"/>
<type name="UserCreated"/>
<buy name="Province"/>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Philosopher$s_Stone"/>
<buy name="Gold"/>
<buy name="Potion">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Potion"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Herbalist"/>
<buy name="Silver"/>
<buy name="Copper"/>
</player>
King's Court is slower than most cards, wouldn't you agree?
Phil Stone and Herbalist are hilarious together.
Not really. The attack is pretty good. And if your opponent doesn't contest minion, you're in very good shape.I think minion is overrated. A pure minion strategy is nice, but not so easy to pull off. I don't understand why it's higher than Ghost ship, which is a very strong attack.
I think you're right about minion. The pure minion deck is fun and amazing when you can pull it off but it needs strong enablers (chapel, lighthouse) on the board. It's just too slow otherwise to keep up with standard BM + X play especially if you have no good way to consistently gain minions.
Phil Stone and Herbalist are hilarious together. I think it's even a viable strategy if you have to open $5/$2 without decent $5s. The likely optimal play for this combo is very interesting:Try telling it to buy two Apothecaries first, and then prioritize Phil stone after that. :) That combo is just begging for it.
-open Potion/Herbalist (and you'll only want one Potion)
-buy Phil Stones over Gold
-buy as many Herbalists as you want (over Silvers!)
-buy Coppers with your leftover buy (!)
-buy Duchies extremely early
this should beat a player going Smithy/- on a $5/$2 opening!! Here's a bot:Code: [Select]<player name="Philosopher's Stone/Herbalist"
author="Geronimoo"
description="Get a bunch of Stones and Herbalists and they'll do beautiful things together. ">
<type name="Fun"/>
<type name="BigMoney"/>
<type name="Combo"/>
<type name="Bot"/>
<type name="TwoPlayer"/>
<type name="Province"/>
<type name="UserCreated"/>
<buy name="Province"/>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Philosopher$s_Stone"/>
<buy name="Gold"/>
<buy name="Potion">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Potion"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Herbalist"/>
<buy name="Silver"/>
<buy name="Copper"/>
</player>
The Herbalist will always put Gold back over Phil Stone so in your current version of the simulator this bot will not beat Smithy (there will be a fix in the next release of the simulator).
I think everyone here agrees that Goons is more often a must buy. But KC apparently changes the game much much more drastically.I'm not convinced that KC actually changes the game more than Goons. Goons provides a source of points that is independent of provinces which is actually a really fundamental change. And the attack slows the game down to a Goons kind of pace. KC is a really strong card, enables strategies that delay provinces longer than usual, and makes for some of the craziest turns, but that's not really changing the game the same way that Goons can. You can of course argue that in some other way KC changes the game more, but "much much more" sounds like a pretty big stretch to me.
Here is a possible claim that might illustrate what it would mean to "change the game more." I'm not sure if this is true, but intuitively I'm inclined to think it is.It sounds to me like the way you worded it should strongly favor Goons. If you remove KC from a KC deck, you have a deck that can't get mega-turns, but still has all the pieces to do something. If you remove Goons from a Goons deck, you have absolutely nothing...
Imagine that we can construct ideal decks for a given set of kingdom cards. (Is that well defined? Almost certainly not, as what your opponent does will often suggest minor modifications. Nevertheless I think people will know what I mean here.) Now imagine comparing the ideal decks for two kingdoms where the only difference is the second kingdom is missing one card. I would claim that if you remove KC, on average the change in ideal decks is quite substantial - without KC to superpower them many engine strategies become void. By contrast, Goons can often be a small change to an ideal deck. It may offer a considerable improvement, but it doesn't change the strategy in the same way.
It sounds to me like the way you worded it should strongly favor Goons. If you remove KC from a KC deck, you have a deck that can't get mega-turns, but still has all the pieces to do something. If you remove Goons from a Goons deck, you have absolutely nothing...
What matters is still the amount of time it's actually useful, no?
I think "game warping" is a reasonable (part of) measure of a card's strength, and (unfortunately) not entirely easy to properly define. Cards that are really game warping (Ambassador ~90%, Chapel ~90%, Sea Hag ~80+%) tend to be pretty damn strong. I would suggest Goons is game warping maybe.. 60%? And KC is game warping.. 40%? 50%? Bridge type cards, cursers (given that you get to KC before the curses start to run out).. that kind of thing. To me it's just silly to say KC is game warping in a lot of games where you're "just" racing to Provinces. Unless you routinely play with Colony as a required card, that includes A LOT of games.
It's not like I'm trying to, or want to, start a fight here, but honestly the entire post just seems like it's reaaaally stretching. Am I alone here, really? Why are we ranking a card's strength based on how good it is given it's already in the deck (hi Possession)? What does it matter how unique a card's function is when determining how strong it is (hi Saboteur, hi Counting House)? Why is 4. not simply some function of 1.? A card that "can" combo really well, but only 1% of the time, is still a card that combos 1% of the time. What matters is still the amount of time it's actually useful, no? If KC synergizes (combos) with other cards so much better than Goons, why is it a card you want to get on ~75% of the boards you want to get Goons? More importantly, why does it matter?I have to say I am not stretching my argument at all. It is just that we are having quite different opinions I guess.
As far as the last paragraph goes, it doesn't sound like an attempt at a real argument to me. Let's assume all Dominion kingdom cards suddenly costs $2 more, what happens? Well for starters, BM just got a lot stronger. Apart from other obvious stuff, like cheaper cards being hurt more (a 67% increase for Ambassador hurts a lot more than a 29% increase for KC), I don't know what conclusions we're supposed to draw from this thought experiment while still being useful in real life. Why aren't we evaluating the actual cards rather than hypothetical similarish cards, anyway?
I would suggest Goons is game warping maybe.. 60%?
Another way of thinking about it is this. Imagine you play a bunch of Dominion, and every time you randomly ban a card for your opponent. He cannot use the banned card, but you can. Then you compute how much your win rate changed as a function of the banned opponent card. Assuming perfect play, when you sort by that change in win rate, you have a nice objective measure of the strength of the cards.This is pretty-much exactly what I think the best criteria for "best" cards is. And I think Goons is better than KC. If you can't buy KC, you can try to out-race it to half the VPs. You might still lose 55-60% of the time or something, but you still have a fighting chance if you get lucky. It's much harder to outrace Goons for 2 reasons: (1) Goons is an attack that slows you down, and (2) Goons has access to an unlimited source of points in VP chips, so you can't just race to half the available point.
I don't think you two really disagree that much. If you had a Dominion oracle (which tells you the perfect play for any move), then you can get objective numbers. Fabian and Tim both realize this, but Fabian cares more about it (because of principle), while they both know it's impossible to actually achieve, and so Tim disregards it.
Another way of thinking about it is this. Imagine you play a bunch of Dominion, and every time you randomly ban a card for your opponent. He cannot use the banned card, but you can. Then you compute how much your win rate changed as a function of the banned opponent card. Assuming perfect play, when you sort by that change in win rate, you have a nice objective measure of the strength of the cards.