Dominion Strategy Forum
Archive => Archive => Dominion: Nocturne Previews => Topic started by: Donald X. on October 23, 2017, 03:01:26 am
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It's always the same dream. I'm working in a factory, making giant marshmallows. When I wake up, I have an extra pillow. And also it's time to post a Dominion preview. Or am I still dreaming? Well I'll just get the preview posted, and worry about that later.
Nocturne has five themes, and there are five weekdays, so that's all going to work out neatly. Today: Night.
Night is a new phase. It comes after the Buy phase, and in it you can play any number of Night cards. That's all there is to it. We get right to the point here in Dominion-land.
(http://i.imgur.com/16ZuTSh.png)
One trick Night cards can do is, they can care about what happened during the turn. Devil's Workshop is an example: it cares how many cards you gained this turn. You can skip buying stuff to get a Gold from it; you can try to get multiple cards so that Devil's Workshop gets you an Imp.
Nocturne is a 500-card set. There are 33 kingdom cards, which take a lot of space, but still leave space for a bunch of other things. One of those things is Imp. It's a nifty Lab variant that only lets you play an Action you don't have in play. However diverse your deck is puts a limit on how many Imps you want. It says "Spirit" on the bottom and well we will figure out what that's there for later. You can't buy an Imp, you can just get one from Devil's Workshop, or maybe some other ways.
(http://i.imgur.com/RzobGd0.png)
Raider also cares about your turn. Anything you have in play becomes fair game for your opponents to discard. Early on you just want to make sure you hit something; later you may try to make Raider hit harder by say not playing that Copper you drew. Raider is a Duration card and well that is a thing about Night cards; some of the game's resources only make sense during the day part of the turn, and Duration lets Night cards provide those resources. Nocturne didn't start out planning to have a Duration card theme but there are several of them.
(http://i.imgur.com/sgiPugS.png)
Ghost Town does another trick: it goes straight to your hand. Since the Buy phase is ahead of the Night phase, you can buy it and play it the same turn. There are several of these. Do you think you'll need a village next turn? Here you go.
LastFootnote will be posting additional one-card previews at forum.dominionstrategy.com each day; they will show up in the morning, USA time.
Finally, online Dominion (https://dominion.games/) will have the preview cards (both the ones I preview and the ones LastFootnote does), at around 6 pm UTC each day. To play with them, pick the special matchmaking option that mentions Nocturne. You will get eight random cards plus two of the four previewed cards (my three and LF's one); later in the week you will get six random cards plus four previewed cards (two from that day, two from earlier days). This will last through the weekend and then disappear; the full set will show up online when the physical set hits stores.
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Impressive! These cards exceed my expectations. But, man, Raider, wow! That card seems very, very scary.
NVM, I misread Raider. It only discards hands with 5 or more. I missed the 5 or more part.
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Wow, these cards are really cool!
Raider seems like it could be incredibly brutal, though, especially in games with dominant strategies (like a Rebuild game, or one in which both players buy lots of Labs).
Can your opponent discard a Raider to your Raider?
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Previews posted before morning (USA time)!? How fitting.
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Can your opponent discard a Raider to your Raider?
Yes, yours is in play at that point.
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Raider seems more like a payload card that might happen to really hurt the opponent sometimes but usually not so much.
Devil's Workshop is flexible, I like it a lot. Imp is incredibly good. Holy cow.
Ghost Town is fantastic.
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Ghost Town is going to be great.
Devil's Workshop also looks solid. Imp is a good draw card.
I like how we have a gold expansion symbol.
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Ghost Town is going to be great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0248pUAteWk
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Those cards look awesome!!! Cant wait till later when they are playable...
Forager + Devils Workshop opening... Mmmmmh sounds good! Trashing, gaining gold, gaining 4 coin cards, having buys, gaining imps sounds just nice :) and that all without the fear of crashing action cards o.O
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Devil's Workshop seems pretty weak actually, I mean it's a Workshop without mid-turn gain. It's kinda like Talisman, but without providing economy. And Imp isn't a super strong card, it could probably work out as a normal $4. I guess it's nice if Imp is the only good draw, but not much else. Also, notice how you cannot even play multiple Devil's Workshops a turn for multiple Golds. On the other hand, opening this + trasher seems rather decent, since both collision and non-collision scenarios will work out in your advantage.
Raider kinda makes me wonder why it's not a Treasure? Except for theme of course. At this point I think that Night cards are mostly a new mechanic in order to not confuse casual players by having cards with Treasure type that don't provide money. All of what we've seen here could easily be implemented using existing mechanics for Treasure cards.
Ghost Town is interesting... mechanic-wise, it should be called Fishing Villa. It has the substantial advantage of drawing a card the next turn, but that comes at the cost of no economy (which is fine) and no Village effect the turn you play it (more problematic). I guess overall slightly weaker, but of course Fishing Village is super good, so this is probably still quite good.
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By the way, how many Imps are there? I guess 10 as usual?
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Guesses that will probably be wrong:
* Devil's Workshop is weird but will be pretty good - a card you usually want. It will be easy to gain too many Imps if you aren't careful, forcing different names is actually a pretty big restriction. But money decks will love that Devil's Workshop always gains a Silver or Gold, and that you can never draw it dead. And engine decks will like that it starts by gaining actions that cost < $4, then gains Imps later on.
* You will basically always buy Raider over Gold. If you can get away with playing fewer Treasures, your Raiders become more powerful, and delayed money is pretty good. If you do buy Gold, it's only after the first few Raiders.
* Ghost Town will be like Villa - you don't want a lot in your deck but sometimes you'll get the effect anyways. (Edit: actually, changed my mind: this seems pretty good early on because you get to play it immediately, and although it's clunky the turn you play it, it should help with consistency. I think you still don't want a lot of them, but this could be a common buy to make over Silver.)
It's worth emphasizing that you can play any number of Night cards and they don't take an action - I missed that the first time and it changes how they play by a lot.
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These cards really need skill. Surprised when finding Raider has no connection with Raid.
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Interesting that Imp costs 2 even though it isn't in the supply.
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Interesting that Imp costs 2 even though it isn't in the supply.
This is the same with Travellers, though there the cost is directly tied to their function. I wonder if the Spirit thing requires Imp to have non-zero cost.
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Raider kinda makes me wonder why it's not a Treasure? Except for theme of course.
There's a pretty obvious difference - if it were a treasure, you could play it before you play your other treasures (e.g. copper) and force the discard of a better card. Also, theme is a real thing.
At this point I think that Night cards are mostly a new mechanic in order to not confuse casual players by having cards with Treasure type that don't provide money. All of what we've seen here could easily be implemented using existing mechanics for Treasure cards.
Devil's Workshop obviously doesn't work as a treasure either - it has to be played after your buys. Similarly, Ghost Town doesn't work because you'd be unable to play it the same turn you buy it. I don't see an elegant way to do these concepts without the Night type.
Overall I find the idea of Night cards being for casual players hilarious. The last few Dominion expansions have been manna from heaven for hardcore players, and probably way too much for casual fans. This one looks to be the same.
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I specifically find it interesting that if you open $4/Ghost Town, you'll have a 6 card hand t3 and a 5 card hand t4, guaranteeing you see the $4 card in one of those turns. Likely weak (since Ghost Town is not very exciting in your deck at that point) but perhaps worthwhile if your other buy is strong enough.
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By the way, how many Imps are there? I guess 10 as usual?
There are 13.
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At this point I think that Night cards are mostly a new mechanic in order to not confuse casual players by having cards with Treasure type that don't provide money. All of what we've seen here could easily be implemented using existing mechanics for Treasure cards.
Devil's Workshop obviously doesn't work as a treasure either - it has to be played after your buys. Similarly, Ghost Town doesn't work because you'd be unable to play it the same turn you buy it. I don't see an elegant way to do these concepts without the Night type.
Devil's Workshop could easily have a "when you discard this from play" clause. Ghost Town could have "when you gain this, play it" instead of its current text. I grant you that Raider would be somewhat stronger as a Treasure.
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At this point I think that Night cards are mostly a new mechanic in order to not confuse casual players by having cards with Treasure type that don't provide money. All of what we've seen here could easily be implemented using existing mechanics for Treasure cards.
Not really, since its possible with some cards to play treasures midturn (storryteller, Black Market, Villa)...
I wondered what is happening if a card like vassal or golem reveals a night card?
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Overall I find the idea of Night cards being for casual players hilarious. The last few Dominion expansions have been manna from heaven for hardcore players, and probably way too much for casual fans. This one looks to be the same.
I have not found Night to be overly confusing for casual players. It's as easy as A B N C!
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I wondered what is happening if a card like vassal or golem reveals a night card?
Golem looks for Action cards, and skips other cards. Similarly Vassal only plays Actions.
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Devil's Workshop could easily have a "when you discard this from play" clause.
Mock it up! It will not compare favorably.
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Ghost Town seems like an ok Village, but I'd rather have Coin of the Realm. It's a next-turn Village and a blind Haven, which is sort of cool I guess, but not necessarily amazing. I guess you'd have to play half of them every turn if you're drawing your deck with terminal draw every turn, so that could take some care to set up (i.e., you can't play all of them the first time you draw your deck, or it's a combo breaker).
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I sill do not quite understand Raider: I play it during Night phase. My opponents need to discard all cards that I played before (during Day) and all cards I played during night. So if I played [Village, Smithy Mountebank, Copper, Gold] before the night phase and then I play Raider and Devil's Workshop - how is it determined which cards my opponents need to discard? He probably has a 5 card hand at that time, so he only needs to discard 1 card, right?
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Interesting that Imp costs 2 even though it isn't in the supply.
Following this quote from the preview I assume that there is at least one card which summons a Spirit of a cost to x.:
You can't buy an Imp, you can just get one from Devil's Workshop, or maybe some other ways.
In addition, costs are important for attacks, i.e. Knights or Swindler.
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I sill do not quite understand Raider: I play it during Night phase. My opponents need to discard all cards that I played before (during Day) and all cards I played during night. So if I played [Village, Smithy Mountebank, Copper, Gold] before the night phase and then I play Raider and Devil's Workshop - how is it determined which cards my opponents need to discard? He probably has a 5 card hand at that time, so he only needs to discard 1 card, right?
He discards one of Village, Smithy, Mountebank, Copper, Cold, Raider, Devil's Workshop.
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So that's why my guess for "Imp" as a card name failed.
As mentioned before, the night cards can't be drawn dead.
Ghost town, when you redraw it after gaining it, is a shelter that becomes a Lost City next turn (ignoring the -1 in cycling compared to Lost City). Having a couple of those seems good anyway, but you can gain them at moments where you really want the duration effect next turn in particular.
Raider is kinda like Gold with an attack, except it can miss the shuffle more and applies next turn, so mid-turn gains of Raider aren't as great if you need the money now.
Devil's Workshop has the ability to gain Gold in a way that reminds me of Quest. The first few Imps are nice, but then they start getting in the way, and you can't choose to gain a $4 instead of you gained 2+ cards in the turn. Sadly, the night cards cannot be played with Summon. The first few Imps are nice, but then they start getting in the way, and you can't choose to gain a $4 instead of you gained 2+ cards in the turn. You can choose not to play the Devil's Workshop at least, and it's done good work for you if you gained 3-4 Imps with it.
If Imp is not an Action Supply pile, then an Adventures token cannot be moved to its pile, so that's sad too.
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DX: is the night phase something you have had in mind for awhile now or is it something newer?
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Raider is kinda like Gold with an attack, except it can miss the shuffle more and applies next turn, so mid-turn gains of Raider aren't as great if you need the money now.
And buy phase gains of Raider aren't as great if you need the money next turn.
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I thought Ghost Village looked really bad, then I realized it doesn't cost an action to play. Nice.
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I love love love the way Night cards look, especially the Durations!
Don't go into the Haunted Woods at night...
These cards really need skill. Surprised when finding Raider has no connection with Raid.
They're both expansion-specific non-terminal handsize attacks that are played after your action phase.
Oops, that's Relic. Well, still most of that stands.
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I skimmed this thread and couldn’t find the answer, though I’m sure it’s there and I’m not awake yet. Do Night cards take up Actions, or are all of them effectively non-terminal?
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I skimmed this thread and couldn’t find the answer, though I’m sure it’s there and I’m not awake yet. Do Night cards take up Actions, or are all of them effectively non-terminal?
Just the very first post...
Night is a new phase. It comes after the Buy phase, and in it you can play any number of Night cards.
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I like what's being done with the Night Phase. Cool stuff!
It looks like cards that care about specific types (e.g. Ironmonger, Ironworks) aren't as good with Night cards, but Courtier will love the Night cards with multiple types, because they'll stay in hand and don't require an action to play.
Devil's Workshop and Imp are weird, and I'm not going to even try to evaluate them before playing with them some.
Raider is slow non-terminal money. Setting up a Raider each turn will usually better than Gold, if you can tolerate the turn delay. Nice art.
I think Ghost Town compares reasonably with Coin of the Realm (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Coin_of_the_Realm): you trade a coin up front and an action down the road for a card at the beginning of your next turn. And then: Coin of the Realm can be saved, and Ghost Town has the strong on-gain ability. I expect to use Ghost Town a bunch for reliability; don't sleep on it.
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Very exciting previews !
Devil's workshop seems weird : all 3 effects have very different uses, and the $4 gaining would be most of the time the worst of the 3, which means you either want to play a lot of action cards or none. And imp has no obvious mechanical link with it.
I'm not very fond of those cards with a lot of different unrelated abilities, like that one or travelers, hermit, etc. It's hard to memorize instantly and I think it makes the game less fluid. Of all 4 new cards, that's my only disappointment. But I can change my mind by playing, it already happened more than once :D
Raider's attack is very interesting, though it can be very brutal and luck-dependant sometimes.
I love how ghost town is another village that exploit the expansion's new mechanism. I have absolutely no idea of how powerful it could be. But it can mitigate the risk of early terminal collision.
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I have not found Night to be overly confusing for casual players. It's as easy as A B N C!
Don't forget the Start of the turn, for reserve cards and the like.
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I have not found Night to be overly confusing for casual players. It's as easy as A B N C!
Don't forget the Start of the turn, for reserve cards and the like.
That's within the Action phase! It matters for stuff like Summoning a Crown (after cost reduction).
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I love that Devil's Workshop depends on how idle you were during your turn.
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Devil's Workshop seems pretty weak actually, I mean it's a Workshop without mid-turn gain.
It is non-terminal so it is more similar to Ironworks. As you pointed out a bit worse as you don't gain the card mid-turn but also a bit stronger as you can gain Gold or a Lab variant.
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Ghost Town is interesting... mechanic-wise, it should be called Fishing Villa. It has the substantial advantage of drawing a card the next turn, but that comes at the cost of no economy (which is fine) and no Village effect the turn you play it (more problematic). I guess overall slightly weaker, but of course Fishing Village is super good, so this is probably still quite good.
I'm surprised you're the only one so far to mention Fishing Village. This is exactly how you should think of this - it's slightly weaker on the current turn (since it doesn't village you), but it's much more powerful on the following turn. Starting a hand with six cards is powerful. Starting your next hand with six cards on the hand after you buy it is very powerful.
It doesn't improve your average cards in hand, but it fizzles itself in your current hand in order to add to your next hand, and one should never forget that unbalancing your hand strengths is VERY powerful.
Then again, maybe this is basically Haven with a Village effect and I should chill out a bit. (Credit to Minotaur, who mentioned this but I didn't notice on my first read.)
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Devil's Workshop seems pretty weak actually, I mean it's a Workshop without mid-turn gain.
It is non-terminal so it is more similar to Ironworks. As you pointed out a bit worse as you don't gain the card mid-turn but also a bit stronger as you can gain Gold or a Lab variant.
Workshop can also gain Lab variants: Advisor, Secret Passage, Herald etc. One other problem is that once you start doing good stuff with your deck, chances are you cannot gain anything but a Lab variant. Talisman is also non-terminal and it's really most similar to that.
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Devil's Workshop seems pretty weak actually, I mean it's a Workshop without mid-turn gain.
It is non-terminal so it is more similar to Ironworks. As you pointed out a bit worse as you don't gain the card mid-turn but also a bit stronger as you can gain Gold or a Lab variant.
Workshop can also gain Lab variants: Advisor, Secret Passage, Herald etc. One other problem is that once you start doing good stuff with your deck, chances are you cannot gain anything but a Lab variant. Talisman is also non-terminal and it's really most similar to that.
Well, if it were better than Ironworks it would be dubious for a price of 4. I like the Cornucopia-esque Imp, it is trickier to play than mass-cards like Advisor and so on (and not being able to play duplicates is not such a big deal if you play with 3+ players).
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Ghost Town is interesting... mechanic-wise, it should be called Fishing Villa. It has the substantial advantage of drawing a card the next turn, but that comes at the cost of no economy (which is fine) and no Village effect the turn you play it (more problematic). I guess overall slightly weaker, but of course Fishing Village is super good, so this is probably still quite good.
I'm surprised you're the only one so far to mention Fishing Village. This is exactly how you should think of this
I don't see the similarities. Fishing Village is degenerate, it doesn't draw.
When you gain Ghost Town you get a Lost City next turn, otherwise it is fairly similar to a delayed village. It is a bit weaker as it is not a cantrip this turn (i.e. you'd usually rather have +1 Card +1 Action; at the start of your next turn: +1 Action than +1 Action; at the start of your next turn: +1 Card +1 Action ) and a bit stronger as you can play it after having drawn it and being out of Actions.
This might have been inspired by Sauna-Avanto, a card combo which also enables you to do what you normally can't: first play the terminal draw and then the village.
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Some thoughts:
Night is going to completely change the opening. A phase without limited actions (I know that isn't quite right. Night cards aren't actions, but close enough.) means you don't have to worry about collision. It's going to take some adjustment to not count spare action slots wrt night cards.
Ghost Town seems great for reliability, but would struggle to be the only draw for a deck, kind of like using Hireling as your only draw. But play two of those at the end of each turn and start turns with 7 cards and 3 actions.
Raider seems like it will be selectively brutal. Those unreliable village smithy engines with no trashing just got much harder. Raid a village every turn and watch your opponent slowly start to contemplate murder as they keep having dud turns.
A couple of the comments here seem to underrate Imp I think. An almost-Lab that you can get with a gainer is super awesome. You need some variety to pull it off, but Menagerie decks work, so I imagine these will too. On the other hand, you can't chain imps with imps. So maybe they will just work as support, not as the main draw for a deck.
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Previews time, excellent!!
Devil's Workshop + Scheme seems like a decent combo. Gain Schemes with DW, then Scheme Imps and action cards you play for the next turn.
Raider seems like it's really good for mirrors where you're first player.
Ghost Town looks really good for stacking your actions and having Tactician-like hands. But without the +Buy. But with more actions!
Thanks for the preview, Donald!
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These cards are brilliant, and I love the art too, especially Ghost Town.
Raider looks like it hurts the most if you have a deck with a lot of green/purple, because you usually can't discard those. Otherwise, it doesn't seem to hurt too much.
Ghost Town is different from either CoTR or Fishing Village, because it only gives one extra action every two turns. When Ghost Town is the only +action, it may be difficult to build an engine.
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Raider kinda makes me wonder why it's not a Treasure? Except for theme of course. At this point I think that Night cards are mostly a new mechanic in order to not confuse casual players by having cards with Treasure type that don't provide money. All of what we've seen here could easily be implemented using existing mechanics for Treasure cards.
It's true! These Night cards could have instead been awful, wordy messes filled with tracking issues. Boy howdy.
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Devil's Workshop is already giving me unpleasant flashbacks to Treasure Hunter and truly not remembering how many cards I'd gained on my previous turn, but I guess 0-2 isn't much of a range and I have more incentive to keep track of the number if it's for my benefit, not my opponent's.
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Raider kinda makes me wonder why it's not a Treasure? Except for theme of course. At this point I think that Night cards are mostly a new mechanic in order to not confuse casual players by having cards with Treasure type that don't provide money. All of what we've seen here could easily be implemented using existing mechanics for Treasure cards.
It's true! These Night cards could have instead been awful, wordy messes filled with tracking issues. Boy howdy.
Wow. No need to get touchy. It wasn't meant as criticism.
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Raider kinda makes me wonder why it's not a Treasure? Except for theme of course. At this point I think that Night cards are mostly a new mechanic in order to not confuse casual players by having cards with Treasure type that don't provide money. All of what we've seen here could easily be implemented using existing mechanics for Treasure cards.
It's true! These Night cards could have instead been awful, wordy messes filled with tracking issues. Boy howdy.
Wow. No need to get touchy. It wasn't meant as criticism.
Sorry! I wasn't actually angry. But seriously, I have trouble remembering to use my Schemes at end of turn (IRL), and my Treasuries are often just Peddlers. Having delayed effects like that is great to avoid whenever possible.
And mostly cards can't just be "When you gain this, play it" due to Watchtower, etc. Because even if you hijack the card and move it elsewhere so it doesn't go into play, the on-play effect still happens. And for Durations that means that there's a next-turn effect but nothing to track it.
Plus it's a cool new phase! So it's got that going for it.
EDIT: Oh, and for Raider specifically, if it were a Treasure, you could Herbalist/Mandarin/Mint it, and then there'd be nothing tracking the next-turn effect. In general this makes Treasure-Durations hard to pull off.
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Devil's Workshop is already giving me unpleasant flashbacks to Treasure Hunter and truly not remembering how many cards I'd gained on my previous turn, but I guess 0-2 isn't much of a range and I have more incentive to keep track of the number if it's for my benefit, not my opponent's.
Also, remembering how many cards you just gained so far on this current turn is a little easier than remembering how many cards your opponent gained on their last turn.
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Devil's Workshop is already giving me unpleasant flashbacks to Treasure Hunter and truly not remembering how many cards I'd gained on my previous turn, but I guess 0-2 isn't much of a range and I have more incentive to keep track of the number if it's for my benefit, not my opponent's.
Well, it's probably a lot easier to track what you've gained this turn vs. what you'd gained on your previous turn, especially since you should be already planning to gain a specific number of cards to begin with, to get the card you want out of Devil's Workshop.
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Is there a rule for when a Night Phase exists in the game? Does it exist in any game where at least 1 Night card is in the game? Or is it just always there, and doesn't do anything in most games? The distinction matters only for teaching I suppose.
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Dang, these are cool. I like the grey background for Devil's Workshop.
Man, I can't think of what to say about these cards. Dominion Previews are like meeting your crush; you think of what it will be like and what you will say, but when it happens you can't think of anything insightful or clever.
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I sill do not quite understand Raider: I play it during Night phase. My opponents need to discard all cards that I played before (during Day) and all cards I played during night. So if I played [Village, Smithy Mountebank, Copper, Gold] before the night phase and then I play Raider and Devil's Workshop - how is it determined which cards my opponents need to discard? He probably has a 5 card hand at that time, so he only needs to discard 1 card, right?
* Your opponent discards a copy of a card you have in play. Their choice. (I can guess this with 99% confidence from previous experience with Dominion rulesheets. "The player to your left eats a donut" always mean they go to the Donut box, choose a donut if there are any left, and if so, eats it. If you had to choose which donut for them, the card would specify explicitly.)
* You don't just throw all your cards on the table at once. You play them one at a time. If you play Raider before Devil's Workshop, then the opponent does not have the choice to discard Devil's Workshop, and instead chooses one of the other five cards or another Raider. If you play Devil's Workshop and then Raider, then they may choose any of the seven cards you now have in play. If you play a second Raider, then this one does nothing unless you increased your opponent's handsize, such as by playing Council Room or gaining a Lost City or if they had bought Expedition.
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I wonder if there will be a card that lets you play other action cards as Night cards for a turn. Kinda like a Villa/Mission mash up.
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I wonder if there will be a card that lets you play other action cards as Night cards for a turn. Kinda like a Villa/Mission mash up.
I think the problem with that is that a large majority of action cards would do nothing if you play them during the Night phase. +Buy, +(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f7/Coin1.png/16px-Coin1.png), and +Action are worthless. +Card is mostly worthless unless you draw more Night cards with it. Gaining and attacking are mostly the same, but even most of those cards still rely on some vanilla bonus to be worth playing.
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Nocturne didn't start out planning to have a Duration card theme but there are several of them.
Sure makes for some themely Halloween card frames!
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I wonder if there will be a card that lets you play other action cards as Night cards for a turn. Kinda like a Villa/Mission mash up.
I think the problem with that is that a large majority of action cards would do nothing if you play them during the Night phase. +Buy, +(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f7/Coin1.png/16px-Coin1.png), and +Action are worthless. +Card is mostly worthless unless you draw more Night cards with it. Gaining and attacking are mostly the same, but even most of those cards still rely on some vanilla bonus to be worth playing.
Maybe if it played the action at the start of your next turn, though...
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I was wondering: How does Devil's Workshop work with Donate? With T2 donate, it would be (in a 4/3 opening):
T1: Buy Devil's Workshop
T2: Buy Donate ($5 debt remaining)
T3: Play $0, buy nothing, gain Gold ($5 debt remaining)
T4: Play $3, buy nothing, gain Gold ($2 debt remaining)
T5: Play $6, get two cards costing up to $4, or buy nothing and gain Gold
So your deck can be 2 golds, two $4 cards and a Devil's Workshop at T5. Sounds like a really strong Golden Deck enabler if Bishop is available.
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I wonder if there will be a card that lets you play other action cards as Night cards for a turn. Kinda like a Villa/Mission mash up.
I think the problem with that is that a large majority of action cards would do nothing if you play them during the Night phase. +Buy, +(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f7/Coin1.png/16px-Coin1.png), and +Action are worthless. +Card is mostly worthless unless you draw more Night cards with it. Gaining and attacking are mostly the same, but even most of those cards still rely on some vanilla bonus to be worth playing.
Right, we've seen some of the things people speculated would be part of a Night phase (gaining, attacking, setting up your next hand), but the main four resources don't make sense. I bet there's at least one Night card that can trash in-play cards.
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Raider is slow non-terminal money. Setting up a Raider each turn will usually better than Gold, if you can tolerate the turn delay. Nice art.
It's my favorite art of the cards we've seen so far, but I'm struggling to predict how strong this card will be. It's Swamp Hag's bonus (but free to play) with what seems like a pretty weak attack.
I think it will often be worse than Gold.
It's also worth noting that, unlike Swamp Hag, it can't be Throned (although it's possible we've got a Night-Throne card coming), and unlike Gold, it can't be Crowned or Counterfeited.
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Raider kinda makes me wonder why it's not a Treasure? Except for theme of course. At this point I think that Night cards are mostly a new mechanic in order to not confuse casual players by having cards with Treasure type that don't provide money. All of what we've seen here could easily be implemented using existing mechanics for Treasure cards.
Another reason why making them Treasure cards is not such a hot idea: Treasure cards are supposed to give you Coins. Horn of Plenty is the exception, but I actually think it's pretty clunky that it's a Treasure that gives $0; it would be better as a Night card I think. (Charm can also give you $0, but it can also give you $2 and has to be a Treasure.) Anyway, my point is that adding a bunch of new Treasures that never give any Coins, even if it works rules-wise, would just dilute the whole consept of Treasures. Especially for new/casual players.
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Devil's Workshop + Villa enables you to return to the Action phase from Night phase (at most twice?).
Or not.
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Devil's Workshop + Villa enables you to return to the Action phase from Night phase (at most twice?).
No, night phase is not buy phase.
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Devil's Workshop + Villa enables you to return to the Action phase from Night phase (at most twice?).
No, night phase is not buy phase.
Oh, you're right. Ha! I forgot there was that qualifier on it. I suppose initially that qualifier was important for distinguishing your turn from your opponent's, but now it's more important.
I'm still holding out hope for a card that lets you jump back from Night to "Day".
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Ghost Town sounds awesome! Think of all those times when Summoning a random cantrip is worth it just for the Village effect. Well, now it only costs $3, and you can still get bonus actions out of it later on.
How does Ghost Town, Smithy compare to Village, Smithy? Can someone math for me? Seems like it'll be great simply because of the increased starting hand size coupled with the starting actions.
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While Ghost Town looks awesome, the fact it is a stop card on the turn you draw it could be a significant downside. I predict it will be a card that's easy to overbuy but will be pretty good if you have a few of them. I wonder if you can fall into a trap where the extra draw helps you draw... more Ghost Towns, so you don't really improve your draw at all (but are getting extra actions so that's good). Honestly all these cards seem hard to guage right now, which is awesome. More to figure out through play!
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It's as easy as A B N C!
hey that's my favorite jackson 5.8 song
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Ghost Town gives the same card draws as Village over two turns,
and doesn't miss the shuffle like a Duration. Starting your turn with extra draw is usually very good, so to me it seems better than Village. Especially considering the fact that it also effectively does its thing as a when-gain effect.
EDIT: Doh, forgot that it actually is a Duration. That might be its biggest weakness and the reason it might not be better than Village. But it also means it's even harder to over-invest in Ghost Towns.
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Ghost Town gives the same card draws as Village over two turns, and doesn't miss the shuffle like a Duration.
Huh? Ghost Town is a Duration.
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DX: is the night phase something you have had in mind for awhile now or is it something newer?
The idea of adding a phase was old; what I would actually get out of it, I didn't find out until I tried it for this set.
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Is there a rule for when a Night Phase exists in the game? Does it exist in any game where at least 1 Night card is in the game? Or is it just always there, and doesn't do anything in most games? The distinction matters only for teaching I suppose.
I will try not to let this ever matter, and let's say, it's only there if you have Night cards in the game.
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I sill do not quite understand Raider: I play it during Night phase. My opponents need to discard all cards that I played before (during Day) and all cards I played during night. So if I played [Village, Smithy Mountebank, Copper, Gold] before the night phase and then I play Raider and Devil's Workshop - how is it determined which cards my opponents need to discard? He probably has a 5 card hand at that time, so he only needs to discard 1 card, right?
He discards one of Village, Smithy, Mountebank, Copper, Cold, Raider, Devil's Workshop.
To clarify, I think each other player must discard one card that matches one of the cards you have in play, and, as usual, if there is more than one that they could discard, they get to choose.
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Big thanks to Stef for putting these cards up!
Raider is a good counter to mirrors. It's great in Sauna and Avanto, you can trash all your coppers then make your opponent discard a Raider, Sauna, Avanto, Silver, or Gold. Rebuild games also come to mind. Just with the vanilla boni it's already a pretty good card.
Ghost Town doesn't seem as bad in multiples as I thought it would. But the on gain is sweet and it helped me spike (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/6/6f/Coin6.png/16px-Coin6.png) early one game. If you have good deck drawing generally it seems to even out, you play about as many as you played the last turn.
Devil's Workshop is just great. Chapel/DW is a killer opening. It's nice it's non-terminal so it reminds me of ironworks, but it's hard to spam. Imps are good card though, but also hard to spam.
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I just played with Devil's Workshop online, tons of fun! Though in an attempt to pile out I took the last Imp as my third pile but the game didn't end. Is that a bug or something different with Spirits?
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Imps are not in the supply. Only supply piles trigger the end of the game.
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After streaming for 4 hours with the 4 new cards, my first impressions:
-Devil's Workhop is pretty solid, not sure how well it compares to Ironworks or Armory, being forced to take the option makes is really tricky
-If Ghost Town is the only village, it is just so important as the +Actions are very limited, if it isn't just just get it for the on gain effect to get reliability similar for when you want to buy Villa
-Raider is just very bad so far, it doesn't do anything great in the early game and is not at all that impressive in the later game, pretty weak card
-Crypt is just bonkers good in every game so far. Being able to get lots of treasures out of the deck is so good in every game. You can get Terminal Draw + Crypt and if they line up you got rid of so many treasures allowing you to build the deck you want. But it is also very good in money strategies, making this a must buy on like most boards. And I indeed did play a Crypt+Capital board and that was the most fun board I have played in a while.
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While Ghost Town looks awesome, the fact it is a stop card on the turn you draw it could be a significant downside. I predict it will be a card that's easy to overbuy but will be pretty good if you have a few of them. I wonder if you can fall into a trap where the extra draw helps you draw... more Ghost Towns, so you don't really improve your draw at all (but are getting extra actions so that's good). Honestly all these cards seem hard to guage right now, which is awesome. More to figure out through play!
I was wrong, Ghost Town is great. Getting the extra draw and extra action both at the start of the turn is worth having a stop card in the middle of your turn, it's so much better. Consistency!
But like, it's still first and foremost a $3 village. It was never going to be mind-blowingly spectacular, but villages are awesome anyway. You know, because they're villages.
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I wonder whether anyone has noticed so far that Donald X has presented the new cards for the first time at night (US time).
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Previews posted before morning (USA time)!? How fitting.
I did!
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I wonder whether anyone has noticed so far that Donald X has presented the new cards for the first time at night (US time).
I feel like I've done midnight previews before, though it would be work to find out.
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I wonder whether anyone has noticed so far that Donald X has presented the new cards for the first time at night (US time).
I feel like I've done midnight previews before, though it would be work to find out.
I’m relatively certain you haven’t. At least not for Hinterlands or thereafter.
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Imp is pretty wacky with BoM/Overlord. You can just always play them, right?
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Imp is pretty wacky with BoM/Overlord. You can just always play them, right?
Except for those few weird edge cases where they don't wind up copying something - so Enchantress, and when there's no valid target. But otherwise, yes loading up on Imps and Bom/OLs seems pretty sweet.
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Can we play the preview cards online yet? I don't understand how time zones work.
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Why do Imps cost $2? Why not $0* like all other non-Supply things, or even $2*?
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Why do Imps cost $2? Why not $0* like all other non-Supply things, or even $2*?
Imp does cost $2*. It's right there in the image.
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Can we play the preview cards online yet? I don't understand how time zones work.
NVM, figured it out!
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Well it's obvious that Night cards would have combo'd with Scout. Scout is also best use during a specialty game phase that never actually existed before.
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i'm getting really excited about filling my deck with night cards without fear of collisions.
apparently night is a great time to be productive, because your subjects aren't getting on your case with their petty business?
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Dominion Nocturne: For people who spend their Nights not getting any action... and couldn't care less.
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Well it's obvious that Night cards would have combo'd with Scout. Scout is also best use during a specialty game phase that never actually existed before.
Devil's Workshop! Now you can gain 2 scouts per turn!
Imp! If you've played all the actions in your hand but scout, you get a free scout play!
Crypt! Set aside all your treasures and draw all your green!
Raider! You don't need to worry about your opponent discarding scouts because they won't be smart enough to buy any!
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I'm noticing a distinct "cards in play" sub-theme in some of these previews - Raider and Imp both look at what you have in play to determine what they do, and Crypt lets you save Treasures that are in play. Ghost Town is a little different, although it can be played the turn it's bought which is almost related.
EDIT:
Also, an interesting strategic thing I'm discovering is that Raider encourages you to play cards you might normally withhold. For example, suppose you draw a King's Court without another Action to play with it. By playing it, you might force your opponent to discard theirs on a turn where they could match it with something good.
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Also, an interesting strategic thing I'm discovering is that Raider encourages you to play cards you might normally withhold. For example, suppose you draw a King's Court without another Action to play with it. By playing it, you might force your opponent to discard theirs on a turn where they could match it with something good.
While this certainly might be true, I think the opposite will be way more common, meaning that you don't play cards that you would normally play, like Treasure cards, especially Copper.
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It is a bit weaker as it is not a cantrip this turn (i.e. you'd usually rather have +1 Card +1 Action; at the start of your next turn: +1 Action than +1 Action; at the start of your next turn: +1 Card +1 Action ) and a bit stronger as you can play it after having drawn it and being out of Actions.
No! You wouldn't rather have the +1 Card on the current turn. We learned this from Tactician - decreasing your current hand strength to improve your next hand strength is a powerful effect. I would argue that's the defining feature of this card.
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It is a bit weaker as it is not a cantrip this turn (i.e. you'd usually rather have +1 Card +1 Action; at the start of your next turn: +1 Action than +1 Action; at the start of your next turn: +1 Card +1 Action ) and a bit stronger as you can play it after having drawn it and being out of Actions.
No! You wouldn't rather have the +1 Card on the current turn. We learned this from Tactician - decreasing your current hand strength to improve your next hand strength is a powerful effect. I would argue that's the defining feature of this card.
Tactician is terminal and you gotta differentiate between terminals and non-terminals.
Caravan is worse than Lab so +1 Action; at the start of your next turn +1 Card, +1 Action is worse than +1 Card, +1 Action; at the start of your next turn +1 Action which is again worse than Village. Delayed effects are nearly always worse than immediate effects with terminal draw (Tactician, Haunted Woods, Enchantress) being the only potential exception that comes to mind.
Furthermore, if your argument were correct Ghost Village would be better than Village in several ways whereas in fact it is better in some ways (the quasi-Summon effect, the possibility to play this after having played a terminal draw and not having any actions left) and worse in others (worse than a delayed village).
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So with Ghost Town, you have to draw an extra dead card at any point during your current turn. Then it (barring edge cases) guarantees a free Lost City play at the start of your next turn.
I'll have to play around with it some more, but I'm thinking this is way better than a vanilla Village on average. In general with Dominion, you want cards that don't care when in your turn you draw them, and you want things that boost the start of your next turn.
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Caravan is worse than Lab so +1 Action; at the start of your next turn +1 Card, +1 Action is worse than +1 Card, +1 Action; at the start of your next turn +1 Action which is again worse than Village. Delayed effects are nearly always worse than immediate effects with terminal draw (Tactician, Haunted Woods, Enchantress) being the only potential exception that comes to mind.
You're missing the reason why Caravan is worse than Lab. It's not that the draw is delayed. It's that Caravan is unavailable next turn because it's a Duration. You need twice as many of them to get the same number of cards, which is also part of the reason so many old-school games opened with Caravan races. You needed lots of them. You didn't need lots of Labs, what the hell are you doing, there are better ways to spend $5, get some
If you had a Lab that was a Duration, where the Duration effect did nothing but keep it on the table an extra turn, it would be more similar to Caravan then to the current Lab. I presume it would be slightly less powerful.
You're gonna need lots of them, since they do get stuck in play like Caravans, but that's why the on-gain effect is really cool. There's not a huge penalty to buying lots of these, you get the instant reward of a larger hand.
Furthermore, if your argument were correct Ghost Village would be better than Village in several ways whereas in fact it is better in some ways (the quasi-Summon effect, the possibility to play this after having played a terminal draw and not having any actions left) and worse in others (worse than a delayed village).
I do think Ghost Village is stronger than Village in several ways and weaker only in the fact that it's a Duration (which makes it less available to your deck), but that's the sort of thing we'll have to find out for ourselves. Well, mostly you. Because I don't play anymore, I just look at the shiny new stuff and talk strategy. There was a time back on Isotropic where there were two names at the top of the leaderboard and then my name, and that didn't last very long but I'm still dang proud of it. After a long time, I learned that those two names were always going to be above me and maybe the correct thing to do was go get better at something else instead. Anyway, that's my life story. This is fun. I had to look up Haunted Woods and Enchantress because I've never played with them, they're after my time. You kids don't know how good you have it, or something.
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You're missing the reason why Caravan is worse than Lab. It's not that the draw is delayed. It's that Caravan is unavailable next turn because it's a Duration.
This is a feature of all Durations and I fail to see what is has to do with the actual issue, whether you want the effect that a non-terminal card provides rather now than later.
You need twice as many of them to get the same number of cards
How many Caravans you need to achieve the same net draw power as x Labs is highly dependent on the Kingdom so this generalization is false. All you can say in general is that Caravan is worse than Lab as you a) get the extra card next turn instead of now and b) because Caravan might miss the shuffle.
A) is the reason why getting the extra card of the two hypothetical Duration villages now instead of next turn is preferrable.
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Night cards are interesting with Haunted Woods.
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Echoing Stealth Tomato, the weakness of Duration cards is that they're unavailable the next turn. If you're not drawing your deck, that means they occasionally skip the shuffle, and that's okay. But if you're drawing your deck, they always skip a shuffle.
Here's how you evaluate a duration card in the context of a deck-drawing engine: Sum up all the costs/benefits you get over the whole time it's in play. Divide by the number of turns it's in play. For example, Lighthouse gives -1 card +2 money, so it's kind of like silver. But since it's out for 2 turns, you need 2 Lighthouses to get the benefit of one silver. Another example, Haunted Woods gives -1 action, +2 cards, so it's kind of like smithy. But since it's out 2 turns, you need 2 Haunted Woods to get that benefit.
The major advantage of duration cards is that you get some of the benefits before paying the opportunity cost. With Haunted Woods, you get +3 cards at the beginning of the turn, and then you later pay the cost of -1 card -1 action. With Ghost Town, you get +1 card +1 action at the beginning of the turn, and then you later pay the cost of -1 card. With Caravan, the only opportunity cost is that of finding the Caravan in the first place, which is nothing special.
I'd argue that Caravan would be stronger if it gave no cards on the first turn and 2 cards on the second turn.
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The major advantage of duration cards is that you get some of the benefits before paying the opportunity cost. With Haunted Woods, you get +3 cards at the beginning of the turn, and then you later pay the cost of -1 card -1 action.
You got the timing messed up. Haunted Woods is dead on the turn you play it and provides the card draw next turn.
What you meant is something like Wine Merchant or Capital: get something great now and pay for it later.
About Caravan, it is an invisible card on the turn you play it but unlike Lab it draws the good stuff later instead of now so it is worse than Lab. Due to the same logic +1 Action, at the start of your next turn +2 Cards would be worse than Caravan.
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The major advantage of duration cards is that you get some of the benefits before paying the opportunity cost. With Haunted Woods, you get +3 cards at the beginning of the turn, and then you later pay the cost of -1 card -1 action.
You got the timing messed up. Haunted Woods is dead on the turn you play it and provides the card draw next turn.
What you meant is something like Wine Merchant or Capital: get something great now and pay for it later.
About Caravan, it is an invisible card on the turn you play it but unlike Lab it draws the good stuff later instead of now so it is worse than Lab. Due to the same logic +1 Action, at the start of your next turn +2 Cards would be worse than Caravan.
I fully stand by my statements. Go test the Caravan variant for yourself and tell us how it went.
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I fully stand by my statements. Go test the Caravan variant for yourself and tell us how it went.
Imagine a Tactician that still stayed out for an extra turn, but got all of its bonuses on the current turn. So…
FastTactician: Action-Duration, $5
Discard your hand. If you discarded any cards, +5 Cards, +1 Action, and +1 Buy.
(This stays in play an extra turn.)
Tell me to my face that that's weaker than Tactician.
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About Caravan, it is an invisible card on the turn you play it but unlike Lab it draws the good stuff later instead of now so it is worse than Lab. Due to the same logic +1 Action, at the start of your next turn +2 Cards would be worse than Caravan.
I fully stand by my statements. Go test the Caravan variant for yourself and tell us how it went.
As do I. The existence of Lab and its superiority over Caravan makes playtesting an inferior version of Caravan unnecessary.
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I fully stand by my statements. Go test the Caravan variant for yourself and tell us how it went.
Imagine a Tactician that still stayed out for an extra turn, but got all of its bonuses on the current turn. So…
FastTactician: Action-Duration, $5
Discard your hand. If you discarded any cards, +5 Cards, +1 Action, and +1 Buy.
(This stays in play an extra turn.)
Tell me to my face that that's weaker than Tactician.
I don't know how it compares to Tactician, but it compares unfavorably to Minion.
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So we all know that Caravan is worse than Lab. What we're disagreeing about is why. trivialknot is saying it's because you don't get to discard it, and josh56 is saying it's because the drawing is later.
Thought experiment: keep Caravan exactly the same except add a clause "this gets discarded during cleanup on the turn you played it".
Now how does that compare to Lab? I can see a lot of situations where it would be significantly better than a Lab (even if it cost $5).
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I fully stand by my statements. Go test the Caravan variant for yourself and tell us how it went.
Imagine a Tactician that still stayed out for an extra turn, but got all of its bonuses on the current turn. So…
FastTactician: Action-Duration, $5
Discard your hand. If you discarded any cards, +5 Cards, +1 Action, and +1 Buy.
(This stays in play an extra turn.)
Tell me to my face that that's weaker than Tactician.
FastTactician lets you play treasures whereas Double Tactician does not. Your proposed variant is complicated and difficult to analyze. Also I was explicitly talking about the context of a deck-drawing engine and it's hard to see how that would fit in.
Before you edited your post, you suggested trying a simulation. I do not think a simulation would resolve the question. Again, I was explicitly talking about the context of a deck-drawing engine. Presumably the simulation would just try money + Caravan, and I'd have to think about whether the Caravan variant would also be better in that situation. I don't think it would be, because there is no benefit to getting the card at the beginning of your turn and paying it off later in the turn. In a big money deck, all that matters is your money at the end of the turn. In an engine, the benefit is improved reliability.
Of course, you often aren't playing many Caravans in a deck-drawing engine. That I grant.
@josh56, if you don't want to test the card you don't have to. Life's too short to waste time resolving f.ds arguments.
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Thought experiment: keep Caravan exactly the same except add a clause "this gets discarded during cleanup on the turn you played it".
Now how does that compare to Lab? I can see a lot of situations where it would be significantly better than a Lab (even if it cost $5).
No disagreement here, being a Night card instead of a plain non-terminal Action is an asset:
It is a bit [...] stronger as you can play it after having drawn it and being out of Actions.
This might have been inspired by Sauna-Avanto, a card combo which also enables you to do what you normally can't: first play the terminal draw and then the village.
But drawing the card next turn instead of now is a liability.
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I fully stand by my statements. Go test the Caravan variant for yourself and tell us how it went.
Imagine a Tactician that still stayed out for an extra turn, but got all of its bonuses on the current turn. So…
FastTactician: Action-Duration, $5
Discard your hand. If you discarded any cards, +5 Cards, +1 Action, and +1 Buy.
(This stays in play an extra turn.)
Tell me to my face that that's weaker than Tactician.
I don't know how it compares to Tactician, but it compares unfavorably to Minion.
Are you certain? It draws you an extra card and gives +1 Buy. You can't mindlessly spam it in the way you can spam Minion, but it's arguably better than Minion on board where Minion is strongest.
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Delayed drawing to the start of turn with Durations is especially useful due to it's help with consistency. Traditional immediate drawing is useful because, well, I don't think this can possibly be a mystery. Neither is "better" than the other in a general sense, often you want some of both, most often you are just taking whatever draw the board has and being glad about it.
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Thought experiment: keep Caravan exactly the same except add a clause "this gets discarded during cleanup on the turn you played it".
Now how does that compare to Lab? I can see a lot of situations where it would be significantly better than a Lab (even if it cost $5).
No disagreement here, being a Night card instead of a plain non-terminal Action is an asset
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But drawing the card next turn instead of now is a liability.
I don't think so. The easy situation to see how the delayed draw is better is in any draw-your-deck situation. The modified Caravan and a Lab will both draw you the same number of cards each turn. The Caravan+ gives them to you all at the beginning of your turn though, whereas you have to actually find the Labs to get the extra cards. So theoretically you'll draw the same either way, but you're way way more likely to kick off with a 10 card starting hand (assuming an even Caravan+ split).
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Thought experiment: keep Caravan exactly the same except add a clause "this gets discarded during cleanup on the turn you played it".
Now how does that compare to Lab? I can see a lot of situations where it would be significantly better than a Lab (even if it cost $5).
No disagreement here, being a Night card instead of a plain non-terminal Action is an asset
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But drawing the card next turn instead of now is a liability.
I don't think so. The easy situation to see how the delayed draw is better is in any draw-your-deck situation. The modified Caravan and a Lab will both draw you the same number of cards each turn. The Caravan+ gives them to you all at the beginning of your turn though, whereas you have to actually find the Labs to get the extra cards. So theoretically you'll draw the same either way, but you're way way more likely to kick off with a 10 card starting hand (assuming an even Caravan+ split).
So you wanna seriously argue that you would buy Caravan over Lab (it is the same difference as between what you label Caravan+ and Caravan) in this situation?
And even if this were the case, Lab would still be on average better than Caravan.
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I don't understand the confusion about the value of durations.
The fact that you can only play them every other turn is sometimes a drawback and sometimes a significant advantage. And in both cases, it has to do with what you're getting from it.
If it's a "terminal" duration that gives you something good now and something good later, but never gives an action, you can actually think of it in terms of it taking 1/2 an action to play, requiring fewer extra actions. That's what makes Wharf so great. An entire 14-card deck can, theoretically, be drawn every turn with 4 Wharves and only a single Village! (two from last turn, two on this turn, repeat.) It takes one Village to play two terminals, but it will play 4 terminal durations.
Fishing Village, on the other hand (also a great card) even though it gives you both an extra action now and an extra action later, doesn't double the number of terminals you can run because it stays out for a turn. Two Fishing villages still only plays three Smithies, no matter how you stack them. But precisely because they stay out, you can think of them as drawing 1/2 a card. They cost a card draw the turn you play them, but the next turn they don't.
It takes six Caravans to draw a deck of 11 cards every turn. It takes three Labs to achieve exactly the same thing. What could anyone possibly be arguing about? The best thing about Caravan is being below the $4 magical gainer price point.
So, think of Ghost Town as drawing 1/2 a card and giving you 1/2 an action. If it was the only Village, it would take four Ghost Towns in order to run 3 Smithies. Two Villages, theoretically, do the same job.
My prediction is that it will be absolutely outstanding as an engine support card in kingdoms...but mostly with other villages. Get two. Start every turn with an extra card and an extra action so that you can start your engine chain with a big draw card first; that's huge! But in kingdoms where it's the ONLY source of +actions, I see it as a potential trap unless you can build an engine with a very small number of terminals.
Why am I talking like engines are the only deck type that exist? Because we're talking about a Village variant. How many villages do you buy when you're playing BM or points rushes?
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(sees thread)
"Hey, lots of new replies. I wonder what new thoughts people have on these Nocturne cards."
(opens thread, sees spirited argument on Caravan variants)
(Abe simpson gif)
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One more thought about Night cards:
It looks to me like many of them should be evaluated thusly: How would you feel about it if it was an action card that just had +1 action written on it? Because that's a large part of what they are. The only difference with Raider, for example, is that it cares what treasure you played, which is actually a drawback if you play copper! (seems weak.)
And if you've ever watched someone overbuy Festivals and not used many actions or buy, or buy Mystics without a peeker, or too few Minions and used them only for cash, well, you've seen someone buy expensive Silver. Whenever anyone asks me "why don't you like (card X)?" I usually answer "Because it doesn't draw." Stop cards are death.
So, that said, I love me a +action gainer. I like that Devil's Workshop encourages you to buy/gain different action cards for your Imps, particularly because it's a gainer itself. And I love the idea of Ghost Town starting every engine turn with 6 cards and 2 actions. It's like Princing an Oasis! For two $3 buys! (I say Oasis instead of generic cantrip because you do ultimately have to play another Ghost Town from your hand, costing you a card.)
It's going to be interesting to play with these, though I'll probably end up scolding my playgroup a few times. The number of times I've seen things like players buying a second or third Horse Trader and I ask them why and they say "Because I keep not drawing my Horse Trader." "Then you need more draw, not more Horse Traders! Argh!"
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And I love the idea of Ghost Town starting every engine turn with 6 cards and 2 actions. It's like Princing an Oasis! For two $3 buys!
At the cost of a dead card in the previous turn, unless you gained Ghost Town in the previous turn.
The net draw of Ghost Town is zero except for the turn after you have gained it.
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And I love the idea of Ghost Town starting every engine turn with 6 cards and 2 actions. It's like Princing an Oasis! For two $3 buys!
At the cost of a dead card in the previous turn, unless you gained Ghost Town in the previous turn.
The net draw of Ghost Town is zero except for the turn after you have gained it.
That's why JThorne said Oasis, right? The net draw of Oasis is also zero.
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And I love the idea of Ghost Town starting every engine turn with 6 cards and 2 actions. It's like Princing an Oasis! For two $3 buys!
At the cost of a dead card in the previous turn, unless you gained Ghost Town in the previous turn.
The net draw of Ghost Town is zero except for the turn after you have gained it.
That's why JThorne said Oasis, right? The net draw of Oasis is also zero.
The net draw of Oasis is -1.
Back to Ghost Village, I think that it is a pretty good village and could reasonably cost 4. But it is not the utterly brilliant card that some people claim it is, being dead on the turn you play it is a serious disadvantage over a cantrip that provides an action next turn.
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The net draw of Oasis is -1, the net draw of Princing anything is +1 so it adds up to 0.
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I like JThorne's 4 Wharf - 1 Village example, so here's a comparison of what that would look like if you replaced Village with Ghost Town. I'm defining a "dud" turn as not drawing your deck every time.
Village - 14 cards total.
You only need 1 Village to play the Wharves.
Your initial hands will have 9 cards and 1 action.
You have a 5/14 chance of a dud turn because of not starting with your Village.
You could dud if your Wharves are near the bottom of your deck.
Ghost Town - 14 cards total.
You need 2 Ghost Towns to play the Wharves.
Your initial hands will have 10 cards and 2 actions.
You will never dud because of not having enough actions.
You could dud if your Wharves are near the bottom of your deck.
The two big discrepencies here are that you don't have to buy 2 Villages, but you're much more likely to dud in that situation. So maybe it's more fair to give the first example a second Village. Then it's more reliable, but there's still a dud chance (how do you calculate that? 5/15 * 4/14 or something?) But then double Village would have one spare action.
So my overall analysis is that Village gives you more raw +actions, but overall Ghost Town is way better for being able to draw your deck every turn.
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Why do Imps cost $2? Why not $0* like all other non-Supply things, or even $2*?
Imp does cost $2*. It's right there in the image.
Ah, just noticed the OP has it; ShiT must just not have it yet? And still, why doesn't it cost $0*?
(https://i.imgur.com/wfXtWCo.jpg)
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So my overall analysis is that Village gives you more raw +actions, but overall Ghost Town is way better for being able to draw your deck every turn.
In terms of not dudding, that's true, which is why I love the idea of using it as a support card, but not as your primary source of +action.
The reality is that most engines aren't made of Wharves. Try to make the same deck out of Torturers and Smithies, and suddenly you need 6 Ghost towns to play 4 terminal draw cards, compared with 3 villages! That starts to sound far less appealing.
One other clarification on the "net draw" question. When I said that I would think of Ghost town as drawing half a card, it's more like imagining that it reads "+1/2 card." That is to say, if you include the cost of playing the card itself, then every time you play it is an average "net" minus 1/2 card. So if you start every turn with a GT and a GTown at the end of every turn, it's a net -1 card for those two cards, just like any other single card that doesn't draw.
Yep, two Ghost Towns sounds like the right number. Like the number of copies of King's Court/Haunted Woods you want; exactly two to start every hand with 14 cards. Duration engines can be pretty sweet.
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Why do Imps cost $2? Why not $0* like all other non-Supply things, or even $2*?
Imp does cost $2*. It's right there in the image.
Ah, just noticed the OP has it; ShiT must just not have it yet? And still, why doesn't it cost $0*?
(https://i.imgur.com/wfXtWCo.jpg)
What surprises me more is, why does it not cost $2*?
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What surprises me more is, why does it not cost $2*?
Imp does cost $2*. It's right there in the image.
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I dreamt about a Village, which you can never draw dead - and here is Ghost Town. Ghost Town + final drawer (e. g. Smithy) will outclass Village + final drawer in most cases.
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I haven't read all the discussion, but someone saying just 2 Ghost Towns is the right number means that something's gone wrong. You want more Ghost Towns than other Villages, not less.
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I dreamt about a Village, which you can never draw dead - and here is Ghost Town. Ghost Town + final drawer (e. g. Smithy) will outclass Village + final drawer in most cases.
I haven't read all the discussion, but someone saying just 2 Ghost Towns is the right number means that something's gone wrong. You want more Ghost Towns than other Villages, not less.
These statements are flatly not true, for the extremely specific reasons I've already mentioned: It's a duration that confers no benefit the turn you play it, meaning it takes twice as many Ghost Towns as it does Villages to play the same number of terminals. Or is playing 3 Smithies suddenly better than playing 6 Smithies? Or, more to the point, 3 Smithies and 3 Goons, or whatever other terminal is important? Spamming Ghost Towns is a trap that will make Village Idiots look like geniuses. (unless there are NO other +actions.)
If you're in an engine kingdom and you have a choice between GT and another Village Variant, get two GTs and fill out the rest of your engine with Village/Walled Village/Worker's Village/Port/Whatever. Even if you let your opponent get the rest of the GTs; you'll be playing twice as many terminals in your engine while they're spinning their wheels.
I would be happy to see simulator results or reasoned arguments to the contrary if I've missed some important consideration.
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Geronimoo did post a simulator result on Discord indicating that Ghost Town/Wharf beat Village/Wharf pretty badly, but that might be too simple a strategy to say too much.
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Why do Imps cost $2? Why not $0* like all other non-Supply things, or even $2*?
Imp does cost $2*. It's right there in the image.
Ah, just noticed the OP has it; ShiT must just not have it yet? And still, why doesn't it cost $0*?
(https://i.imgur.com/wfXtWCo.jpg)
Shuffle iT does not yet have asterisk-in-cost technology - hopefully soon!
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I dreamt about a Village, which you can never draw dead - and here is Ghost Town. Ghost Town + final drawer (e. g. Smithy) will outclass Village + final drawer in most cases.
I haven't read all the discussion, but someone saying just 2 Ghost Towns is the right number means that something's gone wrong. You want more Ghost Towns than other Villages, not less.
These statements are flatly not true, for the extremely specific reasons I've already mentioned: It's a duration that confers no benefit the turn you play it, meaning it takes twice as many Ghost Towns as it does Villages to play the same number of terminals. Or is playing 3 Smithies suddenly better than playing 6 Smithies? Or, more to the point, 3 Smithies and 3 Goons, or whatever other terminal is important? Spamming Ghost Towns is a trap that will make Village Idiots look like geniuses. (unless there are NO other +actions.)
Okay this is really confusing to read because it looks like:
1. Jeebus says "You want more Ghost Towns than other Villages, not less."
2. JThorne says that is "flatly not true," denying (1).
3. JThorne says "it takes twice as many Ghost Towns as it does Villages to play the same number of terminals," which looks like it's in agreement with (1).
Eventually I puzzled out what the contradiction was—there are two interpretations of point (1):
1a. If your deck contains Ghost Towns and other villages, you want more Ghost Towns than other villages.
1b. If the villages in your deck are Ghost Towns, you want more of them than if the villages in your deck are something else.
JThorne is affirming (1b) and contradicting (1a), but since (1) has both possible meanings, it sounds like JThorne is affirming and denying the same sentence.
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Ghost Town is going to be great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0248pUAteWk
I like how the building they're walking away from looks kind of like something from Dominion. :D
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Eventually I puzzled out what the contradiction was—there are two interpretations of point (1):
1a. If your deck contains Ghost Towns and other villages, you want more Ghost Towns than other villages.
1b. If the villages in your deck are Ghost Towns, you want more of them than if the villages in your deck are something else.
JThorne is affirming (1b) and contradicting (1a), but since (1) has both possible meanings, it sounds like JThomas is affirming and denying the same sentence.
Yes, I was in fact referring to kingdoms with no other villages. Early on somebody was talking about how having too many Ghost Towns could hurt you, and that is not true. If Ghost Town is the only village, you want more of them than you would another village. If you draw your deck, you get more +actions from other villages. But still, the benefit of starting your turn with extra draw (and actions) is pretty big for consistency, so I wouldn't rule out getting more than 2.
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Not sure if this has been noted yet, but Devil's Workshop can pair nicely with certain events. I ended up in a game that had Expedition and was able to buy that and use DW to gain a Gold, all for just $3. Other events would work in the same way, providing you a nice bonus for your coin, then rewarding the non-gain of cards with a Gold.
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There's a little bit of conflating want with need. You need twice as many GTs in order to play the same number of terminals. Does that make you want them more?
Early on somebody was talking about how having too many Ghost Towns could hurt you, and that is not true.
Well, I have to admit, I was leaving out an important implication, but I'll state it explicitly now: Opportunity cost. Too many Villages also cannot hurt your deck. However, taking many turns buying nothing but Villages, while it doesn't hurt your deck, does hurt your game, and there's even a name for a player who does that.
You always have to factor in how many of something you're going to need to kick off, and how long it's going to take to get it. Peddler is a great card, but only in kingdoms with +buy where you can pick up two or three of them at a time, or pick them up for free along with your other buys. Getting several cantrips or sifters and then buying Peddlers one at a time is too slow to be useful. So there's the "want" issue again. Sure, you want as many Peddlers as you can get. But you have to get them somehow.
Likewise, GTs may be cheap, but you still have to get them. If you have to buy 6 GTs for an engine that would kick off just fine with 3 Villages, where are those extra 3 gains coming from? It's more money, more buys/gains, and potentially more turns to get them. So "having" too many GTs doesn't hurt, but the process of getting them could.
In fact, I'm willing to bet that's the whole reason for the gain-to-hand mechanic. Perhaps it was originally playtested without that mechanic and found to be too slow and needed some acceleration?
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However, taking many turns buying nothing but Villages, while it doesn't hurt your deck, does hurt your game, and there's even a name for a player who does that.
Can confirm. GT - Big Money is equally effective as Village - Big Money.
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Well... GT big money has to be just a tiny bit better than regular big money since it could be used as a mini expedition in the late game, which is probably almost never good, but also the best option in a tiny number of scenarios.
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Well... GT big money has to be just a tiny bit better than regular big money since it could be used as a mini expedition in the late game, which is probably almost never good, but all the best option in a tiny number of scenarios.
That's what I was originally thinking. But those 2-3 extra cards you draw? Yeah, they end up being your other Ghost Towns.
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Well... GT big money has to be just a tiny bit better than regular big money since it could be used as a mini expedition in the late game, which is probably almost never good, but all the best option in a tiny number of scenarios.
That's what I was originally thinking. But those 2-3 extra cards you draw? Yeah, they end up being your other Ghost Towns.
It's still a little bit better because you don't pay the penalty until you draw those Ghost Towns and you would use the mini expedition at the end of the game where there's some chance of never doing that. It will be some tiny improvement, but you could sim it up and you would increase the odds of winning with the right buy rules.
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Well... GT big money has to be just a tiny bit better than regular big money since it could be used as a mini expedition in the late game, which is probably almost never good, but all the best option in a tiny number of scenarios.
It really depends how your Ghost Towns are distributed throughout your deck. If they are all clumped together, you'll get a mini-Tactician effect. If they're spaced out uniformly, they will be very similar to Vanillages.
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I fully stand by my statements. Go test the Caravan variant for yourself and tell us how it went.
Imagine a Tactician that still stayed out for an extra turn, but got all of its bonuses on the current turn. So…
FastTactician: Action-Duration, $5
Discard your hand. If you discarded any cards, +5 Cards, +1 Action, and +1 Buy.
(This stays in play an extra turn.)
Tell me to my face that that's weaker than Tactician.
Of course that's weaker than Tactician.
Tactician can be very strong in Platinum games with no or limited non-terminal action money. FastTactician is worthless in those games because you're just discarding a four-card hand of treasures in favor of a five-card hand of treasures that you would have anyway without FastTactician taking up extra space.
I don't think so. The easy situation to see how the delayed draw is better is in any draw-your-deck situation. The modified Caravan and a Lab will both draw you the same number of cards each turn. The Caravan+ gives them to you all at the beginning of your turn though, whereas you have to actually find the Labs to get the extra cards. So theoretically you'll draw the same either way, but you're way way more likely to kick off with a 10 card starting hand (assuming an even Caravan+ split).
So you wanna seriously argue that you would buy Caravan over Lab (it is the same difference as between what you label Caravan+ and Caravan) in this situation?
And even if this were the case, Lab would still be on average better than Caravan.
You're gonna fizzle more often with Labs. A five-card hand is more likely to contain no Labs than a seven-card hand is to contain no copies of Caravan+.
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I fully stand by my statements. Go test the Caravan variant for yourself and tell us how it went.
Imagine a Tactician that still stayed out for an extra turn, but got all of its bonuses on the current turn. So…
FastTactician: Action-Duration, $5
Discard your hand. If you discarded any cards, +5 Cards, +1 Action, and +1 Buy.
(This stays in play an extra turn.)
Tell me to my face that that's weaker than Tactician.
Of course that's weaker than Tactician.
Tactician can be very strong in Platinum games with no or limited non-terminal action money. FastTactician is worthless in those games because you're just discarding a four-card hand of treasures in favor of a five-card hand of treasures that you would have anyway without FastTactician taking up extra space.
That sounds like a really poor use case for Tactician.
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I fully stand by my statements. Go test the Caravan variant for yourself and tell us how it went.
Imagine a Tactician that still stayed out for an extra turn, but got all of its bonuses on the current turn. So…
FastTactician: Action-Duration, $5
Discard your hand. If you discarded any cards, +5 Cards, +1 Action, and +1 Buy.
(This stays in play an extra turn.)
Tell me to my face that that's weaker than Tactician.
Of course that's weaker than Tactician.
Tactician can be very strong in Platinum games with no or limited non-terminal action money. FastTactician is worthless in those games because you're just discarding a four-card hand of treasures in favor of a five-card hand of treasures that you would have anyway without FastTactician taking up extra space.
That sounds like a really poor use case for Tactician.
I've been out of the game for a long time, so I went ahead and simmed it. Made it simple: Colony game with Big Money vs. Big Money that buys one Tactician at priority just above Silver. Tactician wins (edit) 75%+. That's a pretty solid edge, and the deck doesn't necessarily play Tactician effectively (possibly discarding a big-money hand it should keep) or make use of other cards that Tactician might strengthen.
Of course, maybe the Tactician is just winning the long slogs, I'm not sure default Big Money in the web simulator is very well optimized for Colonies.
edited because I didn't sim enough games the first time.
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I fully stand by my statements. Go test the Caravan variant for yourself and tell us how it went.
Imagine a Tactician that still stayed out for an extra turn, but got all of its bonuses on the current turn. So…
FastTactician: Action-Duration, $5
Discard your hand. If you discarded any cards, +5 Cards, +1 Action, and +1 Buy.
(This stays in play an extra turn.)
Tell me to my face that that's weaker than Tactician.
Of course that's weaker than Tactician.
Tactician can be very strong in Platinum games with no or limited non-terminal action money. FastTactician is worthless in those games because you're just discarding a four-card hand of treasures in favor of a five-card hand of treasures that you would have anyway without FastTactician taking up extra space.
That sounds like a really poor use case for Tactician.
I've been out of the game for a long time, so I went ahead and simmed it. Made it simple: Colony game with Big Money vs. Big Money that buys one Tactician at priority just above Silver. Tactician wins (edit) 75%+. That's a pretty solid edge, and the deck doesn't necessarily play Tactician effectively (possibly discarding a big-money hand it should keep) or make use of other cards that Tactician might strengthen.
Of course, maybe the Tactician is just winning the long slogs, I'm not sure default Big Money in the web simulator is very well optimized for Colonies.
edited because I didn't sim enough games the first time.
Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, um in this very contrived case, where you have no better shot at hitting $11 reliably, Tactician can be good. Because Colony is so much better than Province. But I mean really you have 9 other Kingdom cards, and usually there will be something much better than BM-Tactician.
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A five-card hand is more likely to contain no Labs than a seven-card hand is to contain no copies of Caravan+.
A seven card hand with two Caravan- (more appproriate label as the card it is worse than Caravan) is as good as Lab is on the current turn. That's not just semantics, in order to get to this seven card hand you gotta play a dead card in the previous turn. I'd rather draw just one net card for the current turn than transfer my resources into a future that might never come. And Caravan being priced at a lower cost than Lab kinda proves that point.
We can go over all kind of exceptional situations (just because you sometimes might want a Curse in your deck, e.g. to ambassador it, doesn't imply that Curses are in general a great part of a deck) in which a delayed effect is better than an immediate effect. But in general the opposite is true, you want your good stuff immediately; be it in Dominion or in real life. In general Lab is better than Caravan and Caravan is better than Caravan-.
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Hey instead of arguing over hypothetical Caravan variants, now we can argue over whether The River's Gift is better than The Sea's Gift. Isn't Nocturne wonderful?
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Imagine a Tactician that still stayed out for an extra turn, but got all of its bonuses on the current turn. So…
FastTactician: Action-Duration, $5
Discard your hand. If you discarded any cards, +5 Cards, +1 Action, and +1 Buy.
(This stays in play an extra turn.)
Tell me to my face that that's weaker than Tactician.
I wouldn't call it weaker, but FastTactician is much closer to Minion than it is to real Tactician and hence a totally different card. Like Minion, it's often good in situations where Tactician isn't and vice versa.
E.g. it's worthless with cards that like a big hand-size like Mint, Forge, Madman, City Quarter, Bank and Fortune; it doesn't combo as well with Outpost; it can't be used for money spikes (whether it's in a slog where you'd happily give up a terrible turn for a decent next one, a Colony game where you want to spike Platinum early or Colony+something late, or engine game where you use it to get an early Forge/Expand or your first KC) and it's much poorer at making weakly trashed engines reliable.
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I'd agree from my own experience that where Tactician shines (other than double-Tac and similar tricks) is in trading one average turn for one bad turn and one good.
There are lots of circumstances in which you want to reach for something expensive as early as possible. I've used an early Tactician to buy a Province for my Tournament, a King's Court, an Inheritance, a Platinum...
Tactician is also really good at making things collide. Province and Tournament, again. Treasure Maps. Trashers and their trash. The synergy with Conspirator is immense.
FastTactician no doubt would also have its strengths, but it's not obvious to me that they'd compensate fully for its weaknesses.
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So I think we mostly all agree that FastTac is simply a different card and not a good way of evaluating this concept. Also, people want to discuss the new cards in these threads, not random variants of old cards.
So I made a new thread for a "delayed effect" conversation: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=17789.0
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It's always the same dream. I'm working in a factory, making giant marshmallows. When I wake up, I have an extra pillow.
"Those aren't pillows!"
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I've been thinking about Ghost Town a lot, and there's one aspect I've been missing so far. The bonus cards next turn don't actually help you at all. I mean, obviously drawing cards is a good thing, but on average, the extra card you're going to be drawing is literally just another one of your Ghost Towns. Assuming an average distribution of cards, you're always going to end up with a starting hand of some Ghost Towns along with the same 5 card hand you would have had if you never bought a GT in the first place. (I'm ignoring the on-buy bonus for all this.) I've been thinking of a larger starting hand as automatically increasing reliability, but since the extra GTs you draw don't help you on that turn, the larger starting handsize doesn't actually make your deck more reliable at all.
The extra action, on the other hand, is where the value of this card comes from. It's great to start off every turn of a terminal-draw engine knowing that you will be able to play your actions even if you don't draw that Village initially.
So yeah, pick up two most games to add action reliability and compliment your other villages (which are your real source of +actions). Or buy them all if it's the only village and you want to play a bunch of terminals.
Edit: where "a bunch" apparently means a maximum of 5 per turn. :)
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The bonus cards next turn don't actually help you at all...pick up two most games to add action reliability and compliment your other villages...Or buy them all if it's the only village and you want to play a bunch of terminals.
Thank you! Yes, that's what I've been saying. "A bunch" seems optimistic, but sure.
Many engines are forgiving in the action department because they've got some Stables/Labs/Governors/Minions/Wharves, but if you're relying on drawing deck with terminal draw-3 cards (which are quite numerous) beware the Ghost Town trap. Many great payload cards are terminals; if you're hoping to play a bunch of terminal draw and still have actions for payload, you could be in trouble. I do like the idea of putting a couple in a non-terminal engine, though, so I can stick a couple of terminals last, like Militia and Catapult or something.
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I would like to point out that Imp is not strictly worse than Laboratory (barring the standard exceptions)
Here’s an edge case:
- You have one action left
- Your hand: Throne room, Develop, Silver, ?
- You don’t have any other card
- There’s Militia in the kingdom
- Your goal is to play a Militia this turn
With an Imp as ?, you can do this, with Labs it’s impossible.
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That's only relevant when Throne/Golem variants are around, but sure.
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Is Prince a Throne variant?
To generalize my edge case, the advantage of Imp vs Labs is that it allows you to insert an action play in situations where you would normaly had to resolve a chain of effects before being allowed to play the action.
A common chain of mandatory effects happens „at the beginning of a turn”. It involves durations and similar. We can create an example showing that it might be advantageous to Prince an Imp instead of a Labs.
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Is Prince a Throne variant?
To generalize my edge case, the advantage of Imp vs Labs is that it allows you to insert an action play in situations where you would normaly had to resolve a chain of effects before being allowed to play the action.
A common chain of mandatory effects happens „at the beginning of a turn”. It involves durations and similar. We can create an example showing that it might be advantageous to Prince an Imp instead of a Labs.
Like the fact that Imp costs less than 5$ :p
But yeah, I got your point.
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Is Prince a Throne variant?
To generalize my edge case, the advantage of Imp vs Labs is that it allows you to insert an action play in situations where you would normaly had to resolve a chain of effects before being allowed to play the action.
A common chain of mandatory effects happens „at the beginning of a turn”. It involves durations and similar. We can create an example showing that it might be advantageous to Prince an Imp instead of a Labs.
It's a stretch, but I suppose this can be the case. Say, you have Princed Imp play Workshop before your Caravans/Wharves draw and cause a reshuffle.
That still makes it an edge case though. Generally, Lab is going to be better except for things that care about cost e.g. Will-o-Wisp can draw Imp but not Lab.
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Is Imp a throne variant?
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Ghost Town seems terrible to me. The delay in the effect is almost always going to be worse than just a Vanillage, and the on-gain bonus isn't nearly enough to make up for it. Honestly, I think this would be balanced at $2. Can someone tell me why this is $3? What am I missing here?
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Is Imp a throne variant?
Does it matter?
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Ghost Town seems terrible to me. The delay in the effect is almost always going to be worse than just a Vanillage, and the on-gain bonus isn't nearly enough to make up for it. Honestly, I think this would be balanced at $2. Can someone tell me why this is $3? What am I missing here?
Getting extra actions and cards at the start of your turn is the best time to get them, because it ensures that your deck can "kick off."
I've been thinking about Ghost Town a lot, and there's one aspect I've been missing so far. The bonus cards next turn don't actually help you at all. I mean, obviously drawing cards is a good thing, but on average, the extra card you're going to be drawing is literally just another one of your Ghost Towns. Assuming an average distribution of cards, you're always going to end up with a starting hand of some Ghost Towns along with the same 5 card hand you would have had if you never bought a GT in the first place.
Suppose you have a Ghost Town effect from the previous turn and another Ghost Town remaining in your (newly shuffled) deck of N cards. Now you start with 6 cards in hand and there's a 6/N chance that one of your cards is a Ghost Town. So as long as your deck is more than 6 cards, you start with an average of more than 5 non-Ghost Town cards in hand.
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Is Imp a throne variant?
Does it matter?
It does not.
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Is Prince a Throne variant?
To generalize my edge case, the advantage of Imp vs Labs is that it allows you to insert an action play in situations where you would normaly had to resolve a chain of effects before being allowed to play the action.
A common chain of mandatory effects happens „at the beginning of a turn”. It involves durations and similar. We can create an example showing that it might be advantageous to Prince an Imp instead of a Labs.
It's a stretch, but I suppose this can be the case. Say, you have Princed Imp play Workshop before your Caravans/Wharves draw and cause a reshuffle.
That still makes it an edge case though. Generally, Lab is going to be better except for things that care about cost e.g. Will-o-Wisp can draw Imp but not Lab.
Well a similar situation can arise with Ghosted cards and half of the games that Imp is available Ghost is too, same with Will-O'-Wisp and the cost thing so it might come up a little more often then you'd expect. You'll want Labs to go with your Imps anyway though so it doesn't really matter much in an actual game!
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From the way I've been using the term, a "throne variant" is anything that tells you to/lets you play another card. So yes, Ghost and Imp are both throne variants.
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To me a Throne Room variant is a card that lets you play another card twice or more (immediately). The significance of this is that a card will end up having been played twice (or more) even though there is just one copy of it in play. Cue the old rule about which abilities on the card happen on-play and which don't (Goons is the classic example).
The other significance is that these cards stay in play along with a Duration they played.
Neither of these two things apply to Prince, Golem, Herald, etc...
Throne Room variants are therefore: Throne Room, King’s Court, Counterfeit, Procession, Disciple, Royal Carriage, Crown and Ghost.
Of course I'm looking at this from a rules perspective. From a strategy perspective, I see the need for a term for cards that let you play other cards in general. I really don't think that term should be "Throne Room variant" though, to avoid confusion.
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To me a Throne Room variant is a card that lets you play another card twice or more (immediately). The significance of this is that a card will end up having been played twice (or more) even though there is just one copy of it in play. Cue the old rule about which abilities on the card happen on-play and which don't (Goons is the classic example).
The other significance is that these cards stay in play along with a Duration they played.
Neither of these two things apply to Prince, Golem, Herald, etc...
Throne Room variants are therefore: Throne Room, King’s Court, Counterfeit, Procession, Disciple, Royal Carriage, Crown and Ghost.
Of course I'm looking at this from a rules perspective. From a strategy perspective, I see the need for a term for cards that let you play other cards in general. I really don't think that term should be "Throne Room variant" though, to avoid confusion.
There is already a term for cards that let you play other cards, it's "forced". For example, King's Court is a forced village. Imp is a forced non-terminal. I don't think anyone other than Elanchana has ever used it though, which might be because there isn't actually a need for that term.
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If I use Devil's Workshop during a Possessed turn, will I only ever get Gold?
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If I use Devil's Workshop during a Possessed turn, will I only ever get Gold?
If you use Devil's Workshop while possessed, you won't get anything. You're possessed!
If you make another player use Devil's Workshop while possessing them, they have not gained any cards this turn, so they would gain a Gold, except then you gain it.
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If I use Devil's Workshop during a Possessed turn, will I only ever get Gold?
If you use Devil's Workshop while possessed, you won't get anything. You're possessed!
If you make another player use Devil's Workshop while possessing them, they have not gained any cards this turn, so they would gain a Gold, except then you gain it.
Yes, that's what i meant. Thank you!
I was looking for a way to trigger the 1-gain effect (up to 4-cost card) on DW multiple times on a turn to successfully gain multiple cards, but it seems like it's impossible (currently).
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Gain one thing, then for each subsequent gain reveal Trader with an empty Silver pile.
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Gain one thing, then for each subsequent gain reveal Trader with an empty Silver pile.
Right. That triggers the second effect, but doesn't successfully gain you a card.
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Ghost Town seems like an ok Village, but I'd rather have Coin of the Realm.
Definitely. It takes twice as many Ghost Towns as Villages to play the same number of terminals. It would take 8 Ghost Towns to play 5 terminals every turn. Yuck. It only takes 4 Villages or 4 Coins of the Realm to do the same thing, and Coins have the advantage of being optional.
I predict Ghost town will really shine in kingdoms with plenty of extra terminal space, such as cantrip engines like Conspirator or Peddler, engine cards that grant actions like Stables, Crossroads, (Lost) City, etc., and will allow some extra terminal payload cards, along with granting a bit more consistency and early-game acceleration from the on-buy effect. But if you're planning on playing gobs of Torturers or Wild Hunts or Catacombs or any of the other star draw-3 cards, if Ghost Town is the only source of +Action that's going to be a significant limiting factor. It would sure make Goons or Bridge payloads sad, as well.
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I predict Ghost town will really shine in kingdoms with plenty of extra terminal space, such as cantrip engines like Conspirator or Peddler
No, those cards most definitely prefer a village with Type: Action.
The main use of Ghost Village has already been discussed, having 2 around makes it less likely for future hands to stall. This effect is similar to Caravan, Fishing Village, Enchantress -- cards we already understand.
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Ghost Town seems like an ok Village, but I'd rather have Coin of the Realm.
Definitely. It takes twice as many Ghost Towns as Villages to play the same number of terminals. It would take 8 Ghost Towns to play 5 terminals every turn. Yuck. It only takes 4 Villages or 4 Coins of the Realm to do the same thing, and Coins have the advantage of being optional.
That's under the assumption you can draw your deck. I guess this is relatively often the case for 2P games, but the more players, the more likely is it that Ghost Town will be just as good as Village in that respect. Which in turn gives the card's other abilities (never drawn dead, planning ahead to spike next turn) more room to shine.
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If I use Devil's Workshop during a Possessed turn, will I only ever get Gold?
If you use Devil's Workshop while possessed, you won't get anything. You're possessed!
If you make another player use Devil's Workshop while possessing them, they have not gained any cards this turn, so they would gain a Gold, except then you gain it.
Yes, that's what i meant. Thank you!
I was looking for a way to trigger the 1-gain effect (up to 4-cost card) on DW multiple times on a turn to successfully gain multiple cards, but it seems like it's impossible (currently).
Outpost and mission but that's technically two turns.
Duplicate can let you get two of the gained card, but that's not triggering the 1-gain effect.
As far as I know there's no way to un-gain a card. Trashing it with a watchtower or something doesn't change the fact that you gained it.
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If I use Devil's Workshop during a Possessed turn, will I only ever get Gold?
If you use Devil's Workshop while possessed, you won't get anything. You're possessed!
If you make another player use Devil's Workshop while possessing them, they have not gained any cards this turn, so they would gain a Gold, except then you gain it.
Yes, that's what i meant. Thank you!
I was looking for a way to trigger the 1-gain effect (up to 4-cost card) on DW multiple times on a turn to successfully gain multiple cards, but it seems like it's impossible (currently).
Outpost and mission but that's technically two turns.
Duplicate can let you get two of the gained card, but that's not triggering the 1-gain effect.
As far as I know there's no way to un-gain a card. Trashing it with a watchtower or something doesn't change the fact that you gained it.
I think revealing Trader with an empty Silver pile "un-gains" the card and lets you trigger the 1-gain effect of Devil's Workshop multiple times (not a rules expert so I might be wrong) , but unfortunately doesn't let you get multiple 4 costs.
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That's under the assumption you can draw your deck.
At the risk of sounding like Awaclus, if you're not drawing deck, is it really an engine, or just a BM-variant?
I guess this is relatively often the case for 2P games, but the more players, the more likely is it that Ghost Town will be just as good as Village in that respect. Which in turn gives the card's other abilities (never drawn dead, planning ahead to spike next turn) more room to shine.
I'm still not buying the "just as good as Village" or even "better than Village" arguments when it's granting half as many +actions, which is Village's primary benefit. (Also, I definitely whiffed on the Conspirator/Peddler comment. Right. Not an action. Night card. That's going to take some getting used to.)
I can definitely see the scenario you're describing, in which it's behaving a bit more like a Caravan or mini-Tactician, but at that point, it's non longer being used as an engine card and starts being a BM card, where you're oscillating between good/bad turns, spiking price points, and strategizing around an average coins/actions/points per turn. That's BM. And multiplayer games definitely fall into the BM category more often than 2P games, so that would fit your observation.
But again, even in a multi-player game, if Ghost Town is the only source of +Action, that's going to absolutely strangle the available terminal space and will restrict the way terminals are played far more than Villages would. Ghost Town might end up being the first Village variant that tilts some kingdoms away from engines and towards BM.
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That's under the assumption you can draw your deck.
At the risk of sounding like Awaclus, if you're not drawing deck, is it really an engine, or just a BM-variant?
That doesn't depend on whether or not you are drawing your deck, it depends on how you are playing it. Some BM variants can draw the deck and some engines can't.
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I'm still not buying the "just as good as Village" or even "better than Village" arguments when it's granting half as many +actions, which is Village's primary benefit.
How is "lose 1, get 2" more than "lose 0, get 1"?
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I'm still not buying the "just as good as Village" or even "better than Village" arguments when it's granting half as many +actions, which is Village's primary benefit.
How is "lose 1, get 2" more than "lose 0, get 1"?
He’s not referring to the literal number of actions on the card, but that you can only play Ghost Town every other turn. A deck that draws itself would alternate between Ghost Towns and end up with about half of the terminal space vs a Village deck.
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I'm still not buying the "just as good as Village" or even "better than Village" arguments when it's granting half as many +actions, which is Village's primary benefit.
How is "lose 1, get 2" more than "lose 0, get 1"?
He’s not referring to the literal number of actions on the card, but that you can only play Ghost Town every other turn. A deck that draws itself would alternate between Ghost Towns and end up with about half of the terminal space vs a Village deck.
I already referenced his assumption of the deck being drawn every turn.
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Ghost Town front-loads the draw, which is good. Ghost Town also has a higher chance to miss the shuffle when you are not drawing your deck, which is bad. All in all, it is appropriately costed. The on-gain is a big selling point.
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I already referenced his assumption of the deck being drawn every turn.
Then again, all anti-terminals get weaker the less likely you are to draw your deck every turn.
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Then again, all anti-terminals get weaker the less likely you are to draw your deck every turn.
Definitely. I've watched plenty of players buy village-variants in BM kingdoms and thought to myself: You're not going to get any use out of that. Most of the time, its going to draw one card and your turn will be over. Sometimes a Village idiot is someone who buys any villages at all.
But the on-buy opens up really interesting possibilities for GT, even in BM kingdoms. It has favorable interactions with top-deckers like Harbinger, Scavenger and Courtyard so that you can top-deck a big draw card, buy a Ghost Town and ensure that your next turn starts with a non-terminal big draw. Cool tricks like that actually stop working once you start drawing deck (though turns like that could also be helpful accelerators during engine-building, or after a stall.)
On the whole, I really like Ghost town. I just think comparisons with Village, while inevitable, are a combination of overselling it's ability to generate actions and underselling it's real situational power. For such a simple concept, I suspect it will be a real skill-tester.
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Hmm. Ghost Town will synergise quite nicely with Guide, won't it?
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Hmm. Ghost Town will synergise quite nicely with Guide, won't it?
Ghost Town and Guide: When you really, really, really don't want to stall. I'm not sure they synergize; they both want to do the same thing: make sure future hands are good.
In fact, there's a bit of an asterisk if you use them together. If you don't like the 5-card hand you got, you can trigger the Guide first and get a new five-card hand, then trigger the GT and get the sixth card. But it may be that the original 5-card hand would have been great with that sixth card, but if you trigger the GT first, don't like the six-card hand and Guide it away, you lose the extra card. You have the same dilemma with any duration draw like Caravan, Wharf or Haunted Woods; you have to make the Guide decision based on the original 5 cards.
Where Guide really shines is handsize-reduction durations or reserves, or to go back to a full hand after a discard attack like Militia or Goons. Guiding after an Outpost gives you a 5-card hand. Guiding after calling Ratcatchers to trash junk replenishes a full 5-card hand. Guiding after a second-turn Amulet trashing also goes back up to a 5-card hand.
What specifically are you seeing in a Guide/Ghost Town synergy?
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What specifically are you seeing in a Guide/Ghost Town synergy?
a) Timing: you can buy Ghost Town when you have a Guide in Reserve to be sure you get both effects together.
b) The combination of the hand you want, and an extra action to play it with.
I wasn't focusing so much on Ghost Town's extra draw, though that's obviously also good to have.
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I was thinking Devil's Workshop/Imp would synergize with a Gainer that removes itself from play like Feast. The gain helps you get Imps. Removing itself from play allows it to be played again if you manage to play more than one Imp. What do you think?
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I was thinking Devil's Workshop/Imp would synergize with a Gainer that removes itself from play like Feast. The gain helps you get Imps. Removing itself from play allows it to be played again if you manage to play more than one Imp. What do you think?
Well, the intersection of the two sets "Gainers" and "Removes itself from play" is pretty barren.
Feast (which is awful, even considering D'sW gains), Market Square (ish), Engineer (once), Wish (once), Mountain Pixie (stretching it), and then what?
Also, given that you already have a gainer in D'sW, I don't think you want many more. A diverse deck rich in nonterminal actions and fielding a couple of Buys seems to be the ideal with Imps.
Nonterminal cards that remove themselves from play are definitely a neat interaction, though, even better if they can be gained with D'sW. But that set is also very restricted. Reserves don't work if you've called one, Raze works, Island is terminal, getting two Death Carts is madness (but hey Ruins turn Imp into Unforeseeable Pawn), and on the spot I can't think of anything else.
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Obviously an Imp can be less terminal with cards that remove themselves from play, and that's nice. But your gains are more likely to come from something other than that specific card, like a second buy or just playing two Devil's Workshops.
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This may have already been discussed in this thread and I missed it, but if Ghost Town is your only village, you probably want to balance them evenly every other turn.
I had a game in which I had 6 GTs and several Wild Hunts; before I got smart I fell into a pattern of 4 GTs one turn/2 the next. I did better once I opted against playing one of the 4 and went to 3/3.
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This may have already been discussed in this thread and I missed it, but if Ghost Town is your only village, you probably want to balance them evenly every other turn.
I had a game in which I had 6 GTs and several Wild Hunts; before I got smart I fell into a pattern of 4 GTs one turn/2 the next. I did better once I opted against playing one of the 4 and went to 3/3.
Isn't this mostly true about all Duration cards?
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This may have already been discussed in this thread and I missed it, but if Ghost Town is your only village, you probably want to balance them evenly every other turn.
I had a game in which I had 6 GTs and several Wild Hunts; before I got smart I fell into a pattern of 4 GTs one turn/2 the next. I did better once I opted against playing one of the 4 and went to 3/3.
Isn't this mostly true about all Duration cards?
I think so, but I think it's more important with Ghost Town than it is with say, Fishing Village.
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Is raider really swingy? or have you guys been making decks that only have very strong cards?
seems like every other time it comes out, it just grabs a wisp or something similarly underwhelming.
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Is raider really swingy? or have you guys been making decks that only have very strong cards?
seems like every other time it comes out, it just grabs a wisp or something similarly underwhelming.
I haven't played with it a ton but Raider seems pretty weak to me. It's often just a delayed Gold-Cutpurse. And it doesn't feel stackable because it's junk in your hand and you can't get rid of them for, say, Menagerie. Idk, I'm sure there are some cool things you can do with it like forcing your opponent to discard good cards, but I just haven't seen that much yet. Maybe it's good in big money?
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I think it's pretty good whenever you can trash all Coppers, and even more so when you can't trash estates.
Never get more than two. Technically it's also slightly better than Gold at spiking high costs, but I've never gotten it for that reason alone - being a duration is a big disadvantage.
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Is raider really swingy? or have you guys been making decks that only have very strong cards?
seems like every other time it comes out, it just grabs a wisp or something similarly underwhelming.
I haven't played with it a ton but Raider seems pretty weak to me. It's often just a delayed Gold-Cutpurse. And it doesn't feel stackable because it's junk in your hand and you can't get rid of them for, say, Menagerie. Idk, I'm sure there are some cool things you can do with it like forcing your opponent to discard good cards, but I just haven't seen that much yet. Maybe it's good in big money?
It feels weak to me, too.
I wish the hand-size restriction was 4 cards instead of 5.
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Is raider really swingy? or have you guys been making decks that only have very strong cards?
seems like every other time it comes out, it just grabs a wisp or something similarly underwhelming.
I haven't played with it a ton but Raider seems pretty weak to me. It's often just a delayed Gold-Cutpurse. And it doesn't feel stackable because it's junk in your hand and you can't get rid of them for, say, Menagerie. Idk, I'm sure there are some cool things you can do with it like forcing your opponent to discard good cards, but I just haven't seen that much yet. Maybe it's good in big money?
It feels weak to me, too.
I wish the hand-size restriction was 4 cards instead of 5.
That's how Donald originally had it, for like one game. It just destroyed turns, I believe.
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That's how Donald originally had it, for like one game. It just destroyed turns, I believe.
I suspected that might have been the case. I'm probably underestimating how strong its "targeted" attack is if used carefully.
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I find Raider strange, if you can't trash Copper then it's just a big Cutpurse thing, but if you have trashed your Coppers then your deck is often in a state where discarding 1 card doesn't do much either and it hurts about as much as Urchin. I can see a small window where your deck is starting to kick off but you still have a few Coppers/Estates left where the attack could be devastating, but things would have to line up right and I'm not sure how often I'd want to spend a $6 buy on a stop card at that stage. I guess it can punish early greening maybe?
It seems better than the first 1 or 2 Golds in Big Money, but that's only come up for me once so far and my Raiders missed the shuffle a few times so it didn't work out well on that occasion. But if they don't miss it's clearly better than Gold so I assume that was just a bad game, small sample and all that.
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Sometimes Urchin is a good card. Raider is that with a delayed Gold effect (but maybe you need 2).
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Sometimes Urchin is a good card. Raider is that with a delayed Gold effect (but maybe you need 2).
Not really; the times when Urchin shines is mostly when you make your opponent draw big hands with Governor/Council Room, and then have them discard down to 4. Raider can't do that.
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Raider sucks lol
Like, “sucks” in dominion is relative, there’s still times you’ll buy it, there’s still boards for it, and if it kills a turn once it was probably worth it. But damn it’s expensive and hard to make work for a payoff greater than forcing a Copper discard. Buying two cards to force a discard attack every turn that seems to miss more easily than Militia, a card you only need one of... and having those cards cost $6... Ugh.
At least it’s competitive with Gold once an engine is consistently set up. And if you are lucky and careful enough to force a Village discard its awesome.
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out of the 8 or so times I've seen it played, it completely wrecked someone's turn twice.
i'm so glad it's a duration, and I don't have to face the same one every turn.
Never get more than two.
Any particular reason? It seems like a card that stacks decently well, since you could get a weak card on the first discard, and then force a strong discard.
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out of the 8 or so times I've seen it played, it completely wrecked someone's turn twice.
i'm so glad it's a duration, and I don't have to face the same one every turn.
Never get more than two.
Any particular reason? It seems like a card that stacks decently well, since you could get a weak card on the first discard, and then force a strong discard.
Only if they had more than 5 cards in their hand in the first place.
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Raider sucks lol
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At least it’s competitive with Gold once an engine is consistently set up.
So what would a fair price be for a Night-Duration card that was just "At the start of your next turn, +$3"?
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Raider sucks lol
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At least it’s competitive with Gold once an engine is consistently set up.
So what would a fair price be for a Night-Duration card that was just "At the start of your next turn, +$3"?
5$, I'd say. It wouldn't be great compared to other 5$ s that give +3$, simply because in the very early game it's worse than those and in the midgame you could have Gold instead, but I don't see it at 4$, honestly. Some people will say 4$ is enough, but I'd rather give such a card a little extra boost, or some slight additional downside to make it work for 4$.
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$4 or $5 is my instinct, too.
Costing an extra $1 or $2 and incorporating an attack that will usually be vexatious and situationally pretty nasty seems fair enough to me.
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There is a benefit of damaging the current turn while boosting the next one, and of not taking an Action slot. Otherwise, you could wonder how Den of Sin is $5 while Moat is $2, or while Enchantress is $3.
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It varies, right? When the turn you damage buys a 2$ card that'd you'd happily spend 4 on, then shoots your next turn that would have been a 3$ turn to a 5 or six, that's sweet. But if it sends you from 5$ to 8$, and you don't have a +buy and it's early, you probably don't gain that much (probably you buy the Province anyway, but it's not really a powerful pickup too early).
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Your first example hints at an early Encampment/Gold gambit.
You cannot foresee the next hand exactly, but a conclusion would be that you can make a mediocre turn a bad turn but not a bad turn a visit to Baths, as your next tern will already be good enough.
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There is a benefit of damaging the current turn while boosting the next one, and of not taking an Action slot. Otherwise, you could wonder how Den of Sin is $5 while Moat is $2, or while Enchantress is $3.
Den of Sin is $5 because it's an Expedition the turn you buy it.
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Ghost town should cost more. It's basically a lost city.
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Ghost town should cost more. It's basically a lost city.
The delayed effect is a Lost City, but the delay comes with a price (mostly by missing reshuffles/being effective only every 2nd engine turns). Lighthouse is not a Peddler, Caravan is not a Laboratory.
The question is if there should be a penalty to being a Night card as opposed to a cantrip +action duration action card. Action card can be trashed for benefit by Sacrifice and Zombie Apprentice, they are not skipped by Wandering Minstrel, they don't interrupt a series of cards drawn by Scrying Pool, can be Advanced, can be played before Tactician and before Haunted Forest takes effect, deliver a +Action to Ironmonger and so on. The on-buy effect of some of these Night cards should balance this out, so I would agree that Ghost Town would be bought at $4 too.
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Ghost town should cost more. It's basically a lost city.
The delayed effect is a Lost City, but the delay comes with a price (mostly by missing reshuffles/being effective only every 2nd engine turns). Lighthouse is not a Peddler, Caravan is not a Laboratory.
The question is if there should be a penalty to being a Night card as opposed to a cantrip duration action card. Action card can be trashed for benefit by Sacrifice and Zombie Apprentice, they are not skipped by Wandering Minstrel, they don't interrupt a series of cards drawn by Scrying Pool, can be Advanced, can be played before Tactician and before Haunted Forest takes effect, deliver a +Action to Ironmonger and so on. The on-buy effect of some of these Night cards should balance this out, so I would agree that Ghost Town would be bought at $4 too.
In most games I would buy it at five
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Ghost town should cost more. It's basically a lost city.
The delayed effect is a Lost City, but the delay comes with a price (mostly by missing reshuffles/being effective only every 2nd engine turns). Lighthouse is not a Peddler, Caravan is not a Laboratory.
The question is if there should be a penalty to being a Night card as opposed to a cantrip duration action card. Action card can be trashed for benefit by Sacrifice and Zombie Apprentice, they are not skipped by Wandering Minstrel, they don't interrupt a series of cards drawn by Scrying Pool, can be Advanced, can be played before Tactician and before Haunted Forest takes effect, deliver a +Action to Ironmonger and so on. The on-buy effect of some of these Night cards should balance this out, so I would agree that Ghost Town would be bought at $4 too.
In most games I would buy it at five
You'd also buy Tunnel at five tho
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Ghost town should cost more. It's basically a lost city.
Ignoring the more detailed discussion, it's not basically a Lost City, even in the simplest terms.
When you play a Village, you end up with 1 more action than you started with (playing Village costs an action and removes a card from your hand, then you draw another card and get 2 actions).
When you play a Lost City, you end up with 1 more action and 1 more card than you started with.
When you play a Ghost Town, you end up with 1 more action than you started with (playing it removes a card from your hand but doesn't cost an action, then you draw another card and get an action). That makes it very firmly a kind of "village". not a kind of "laboratory".
I think Ghost Town is a good card, in the sense that it adds interest to the game rather than that it's mega strong. Compared with vanilla Village, it has a series of upsides and downsides which make it play very differently in practice:- You can play it the turn after you buy it, without waiting for a reshuffle
- It can't be drawn dead
- It gives its benefit at start of turn, when it's most valuable
- It's in play for two turns, so shuffles through more slowly and can only be played at most once every other turn
- It's no help to you on your current turn
- It's not an action, so interactions fail with all sorts of things (throne rooms, Adventures tokens, Vassal/Herald/Golem, Ironworks/Ironmonger, and so on.)
Is it better or worse than a normal Village? That's hard to tell, and very situational. $3 seems a fair price, and in any case how often will you ever have the choice between the two?
(In any case, Ghost Town has lovely art. (-8 )
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I think Cursed Village is a good card
That irritated me a lot.
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That irritated me a lot.
Sorry - fixed.
Am I the only person who finds it really hard to remember which is which? Two thematically-similar Night villages in the same set.
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That irritated me a lot.
Sorry - fixed.
Am I the only person who finds it really hard to remember which is which? Two thematically-similar Night villages in the same set.
Cursed Village isn't Night...
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Ghost town should cost more. It's basically a lost city.
The delayed effect is a Lost City, but the delay comes with a price (mostly by missing reshuffles/being effective only every 2nd engine turns). Lighthouse is not a Peddler, Caravan is not a Laboratory.
The question is if there should be a penalty to being a Night card as opposed to a cantrip duration action card. Action card can be trashed for benefit by Sacrifice and Zombie Apprentice, they are not skipped by Wandering Minstrel, they don't interrupt a series of cards drawn by Scrying Pool, can be Advanced, can be played before Tactician and before Haunted Forest takes effect, deliver a +Action to Ironmonger and so on. The on-buy effect of some of these Night cards should balance this out, so I would agree that Ghost Town would be bought at $4 too.
In most games I would buy it at five
You'd also buy Tunnel at five tho
I'm surprised you'd actually remember me saying that but that one I take back. I would buy tunnel at 4. But I would still buy ghost town at five.
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Ghost town should cost more. It's basically a lost city.
Ignoring the more detailed discussion, it's not basically a Lost City, even in the simplest terms.
When you play a Village, you end up with 1 more action than you started with (playing Village costs an action and removes a card from your hand, then you draw another card and get 2 actions).
When you play a Lost City, you end up with 1 more action and 1 more card than you started with.
When you play a Ghost Town, you end up with 1 more action than you started with (playing it removes a card from your hand but doesn't cost an action, then you draw another card and get an action). That makes it very firmly a kind of "village". not a kind of "laboratory".
I think Ghost Town is a good card, in the sense that it adds interest to the game rather than that it's mega strong. Compared with vanilla Village, it has a series of upsides and downsides which make it play very differently in practice:- You can play it the turn after you buy it, without waiting for a reshuffle
- It can't be drawn dead
- It gives its benefit at start of turn, when it's most valuable
- It's in play for two turns, so shuffles through more slowly and can only be played at most once every other turn
- It's no help to you on your current turn
- It's not an action, so interactions fail with all sorts of things (throne rooms, Adventures tokens, Vassal/Herald/Golem, Ironworks/Ironmonger, and so on.)
Is it better or worse than a normal Village? That's hard to tell, and very situational. $3 seems a fair price, and in any case how often will you ever have the choice between the two?
(In any case, Ghost Town has lovely art. (-8 )
I'm pretty sure we all know that you love the art for ghost town. Personally it's not my favorite art, farmlands the best