I disagree with the tactical remark that you don't want to add Shepherd to a deck that isn't Shepherd based to start with after greening begins. If you are ever at the point where your stop cards are minimal and the only stop cards you are adding are green cards, then Shepherd is convenient on a spare $4.I guess my point is, in this case you really should have gone for the Shepherd deck to begin with.
Shepherd is the strongest card in Nocturne.I recommend amending this to "one of the strongest". Some people are going to discount the rest of this article because there's some other Nocturne card they think is better.
I disagree with the tactical remark that you don't want to add Shepherd to a deck that isn't Shepherd based to start with after greening begins. If you are ever at the point where your stop cards are minimal and the only stop cards you are adding are green cards, then Shepherd is convenient on a spare $4.I guess my point is, in this case you really should have gone for the Shepherd deck to begin with.
-While handsize attacks hurt Shepherd decks, it's not clear to me that it hurts more than when playing a BM or village/smithy engine.
In my limited experience Shepherd is powerful non-terminal draw that takes some time to build up and is more volatile than ordinary draw engines.
If you play a village without having a Smithy it is just a cantrip and if you play a Smithy and draw into a village it is just one extra dead card. If your Shepherds and green don't match they are all dead.
in order to get started, you want to make sure to always start with a Shepherd in hand. Assuming a 5 card starting hand, that means that 20% of your deck should be Shepherds.It's simply not true that 20% of your deck being Shepherds means that if you draw 5 cards you're certain one will be a Shepherd. All you're certain of is that you'll average one Shepherd per five cards.
-> if you open Sheperd/Silver, you have an 89.4% chance to hit 5$ in T3/4.
I will take some time to revise this at some point. I do want to point out that:-> if you open Sheperd/Silver, you have an 89.4% chance to hit 5$ in T3/4.
This is actually worse than for a Silver/Silver opening I believe.
That's true, but if you trash your Estates later then Shepherd will become a dead card. (of course in your Upgrade example that's not bad as you can just turn it into something else)I will take some time to revise this at some point. I do want to point out that:-> if you open Sheperd/Silver, you have an 89.4% chance to hit 5$ in T3/4.
This is actually worse than for a Silver/Silver opening I believe.
It’s not that the odds are higher than Silver / Silver, it’s that you get to cycle a lot more, and in many of those cases you end up with a “clean” T5 rather than lingering cards. This speeds things up a fair bit. If your key $5 is like, Upgrade, this is a super way to start the game.
In addition to duration draw, which markus mentions, I would point out the strongest Shepherd enablers are cards that can guarantee that you have a Shepherd or two in your opening hand: Gear, Save, Haven, Cobbler, Scheme, Count, etc... When these cards are present, it's also more realistic to play Shepherd in an engine (you still need more green than in most engines, of course).You're right, it's probably a large enough group of cards to warrant a mention.
Well I think an article should be thought-provoking to some extent. I for one prefer to read an article that starts with a statement I disagree with to figure out what the reasoning behind it is.Shepherd is the strongest card in Nocturne.I recommend amending this to "one of the strongest". Some people are going to discount the rest of this article because there's some other Nocturne card they think is better.
-A pure Shepherd deck needs more green than Shepherds, so I don't agree that getting shepherds is "the more important thing to focus on".But your deck already starts with a decent quantity of green, and it starts with 0 Shepherds. I guess I might make clearer that you should of course not gain a lot of Shepherds above the 20% mark if you don't have the green, but if both green and Shepherds are below the ratio where you want them to be, in general it is better to get the Shepherd first.
-Shepherd is a good engine enabler.This is the strongest point of contention. I will definitely add more to the section. I don't think Shepherd is good in an engine due to its inherent unreliability. Engines like consistency which Shepherd usually cannot offer. It's more of a slog card really.
-It's not clear to me that you need to add a green card for every stop card you gain in a shepherd deck. And even if true, I don't see how this is worse than having to add a village/smithy pair for every two stop cards you put in a village/smithy deck.The difference of Village/Smithy compared to Shepherd/green is, a hand of all Villages is still good, but a hand of all green is not. Shepherd/green works more like Squire/Smithy, and that is hard to get to work without massive trashing.
-I fail to see how village + terminal draw is better for playing terminal payload than village + Shepherd.In the former case, Village is more flexible. You can play Village to enable your drawing, you can play Village to play more payload. You're going to have a bunch of Villages and almost always start with one in your hand. A Shepherd deck has no time to load up on that many Villages as they compete with Shepherd, green and payload.
-While handsize attacks hurt Shepherd decks, it's not clear to me that it hurts more than when playing a BM or village/smithy engine.If you have to discard 2 cards in Village/Smithy, you need to draw 2 extra cards drawn to draw everything. With Shepherd, it's very likely you'll have to discard a Victory card, and that means that in addition to the 2 cards you have less in your starting hand, each subsequent Shepherd played will draw about 2 cards less than it would otherwise.
-Adding a Shepherd to a deck when it starts greening is good in many situations when you're drawing most of your deck. It is not comparable to Scout.It may be okay sometimes. I'll look into maybe altering this.
The other important difference is that there is a limit to how many Crossroads you can play in a turn without other support.In my limited experience Shepherd is powerful non-terminal draw that takes some time to build up and is more volatile than ordinary draw engines.
If you play a village without having a Smithy it is just a cantrip and if you play a Smithy and draw into a village it is just one extra dead card. If your Shepherds and green don't match they are all dead.
Basically, a lot of the things that apply to Crossroads when it comes to the first Crossroads/green collision also apply to Shepherd/green collision. An important difference is that Shepherd has the Pasture heirloom, and Estates are worth extra VP so long as Pasture is around.
But this bit bugs me considerably:It's true that this isn't formulated clearly. Will fix.in order to get started, you want to make sure to always start with a Shepherd in hand. Assuming a 5 card starting hand, that means that 20% of your deck should be Shepherds.It's simply not true that 20% of your deck being Shepherds means that if you draw 5 cards you're certain one will be a Shepherd. All you're certain of is that you'll average one Shepherd per five cards.
Shepherd is a good Victory sifter that can level up to become nonterminal draw.I would rather say that Shepherd is a good nonterminal draw card that you might occasionally use as a Victory sifter.
How does Bureaucrat rate as an anti-Shepherd attack compared to other hand-size attacks?
How does Bureaucrat rate as an anti-Shepherd attack compared to other hand-size attacks?
If getting Shepherds leads your opponent into buying Bureaucrat then Shepherd is the real hand-size attack in this scenario.
How does Bureaucrat rate as an anti-Shepherd attack compared to other hand-size attacks?
If getting Shepherds leads your opponent into buying Bureaucrat then Shepherd is the real hand-size attack in this scenario.
Surely there's an edge case where it's a good idea. But yeah, probably only an edge case.
How does Bureaucrat rate as an anti-Shepherd attack compared to other hand-size attacks?
If getting Shepherds leads your opponent into buying Bureaucrat then Shepherd is the real hand-size attack in this scenario.
How does Bureaucrat rate as an anti-Shepherd attack compared to other hand-size attacks?
If getting Shepherds leads your opponent into buying Bureaucrat then Shepherd is the real hand-size attack in this scenario.
Actually I think there’s something to this, believe it or not, as long as you can deal with the Silver in some way. This really neuters a Shepherd start, and thus I think it’s gonna be viable a reasonable amount of time when playing against a deck primarily drawing with Shep.
How does Bureaucrat rate as an anti-Shepherd attack compared to other hand-size attacks?
If getting Shepherds leads your opponent into buying Bureaucrat then Shepherd is the real hand-size attack in this scenario.
Actually I think there’s something to this, believe it or not, as long as you can deal with the Silver in some way. This really neuters a Shepherd start, and thus I think it’s gonna be viable a reasonable amount of time when playing against a deck primarily drawing with Shep.
Thing is, if there's a deck that can consistently play a bunch of Bureaucrats and deal with all the Silver you're probably building whatever that deck is and ignoring Shepherd regardless of the presence of Bureaucrat.
Actually I think there’s something to this, believe it or not, as long as you can deal with the Silver in some way.
How does Bureaucrat rate as an anti-Shepherd attack compared to other hand-size attacks?
If getting Shepherds leads your opponent into buying Bureaucrat then Shepherd is the real hand-size attack in this scenario.
Actually I think there’s something to this, believe it or not, as long as you can deal with the Silver in some way. This really neuters a Shepherd start, and thus I think it’s gonna be viable a reasonable amount of time when playing against a deck primarily drawing with Shep.
Thing is, if there's a deck that can consistently play a bunch of Bureaucrats and deal with all the Silver you're probably building whatever that deck is and ignoring Shepherd regardless of the presence of Bureaucrat.
No? Shepherd is a real source of draw, it could be the only source on an otherwise strong board. It’s not just a cop out rush strategy.
How does Bureaucrat rate as an anti-Shepherd attack compared to other hand-size attacks?
If getting Shepherds leads your opponent into buying Bureaucrat then Shepherd is the real hand-size attack in this scenario.
Actually I think there’s something to this, believe it or not, as long as you can deal with the Silver in some way. This really neuters a Shepherd start, and thus I think it’s gonna be viable a reasonable amount of time when playing against a deck primarily drawing with Shep.
Thing is, if there's a deck that can consistently play a bunch of Bureaucrats and deal with all the Silver you're probably building whatever that deck is and ignoring Shepherd regardless of the presence of Bureaucrat.
No? Shepherd is a real source of draw, it could be the only source on an otherwise strong board. It’s not just a cop out rush strategy.
I don't think it's realistic that a Shepherd as the only draw deck is robust enough to play all those Bureaucrats, and if it is then it probably doesn't care about the Bureaucrat attack.
My point was supposed to be that in theory it could work, but in practise it never will because there'll just be something better to do. Feel free to prove me wrong though!
How does Bureaucrat rate as an anti-Shepherd attack compared to other hand-size attacks?
If getting Shepherds leads your opponent into buying Bureaucrat then Shepherd is the real hand-size attack in this scenario.
Actually I think there’s something to this, believe it or not, as long as you can deal with the Silver in some way. This really neuters a Shepherd start, and thus I think it’s gonna be viable a reasonable amount of time when playing against a deck primarily drawing with Shep.
Thing is, if there's a deck that can consistently play a bunch of Bureaucrats and deal with all the Silver you're probably building whatever that deck is and ignoring Shepherd regardless of the presence of Bureaucrat.
No? Shepherd is a real source of draw, it could be the only source on an otherwise strong board. It’s not just a cop out rush strategy.
I don't think it's realistic that a Shepherd as the only draw deck is robust enough to play all those Bureaucrats, and if it is then it probably doesn't care about the Bureaucrat attack.
My point was supposed to be that in theory it could work, but in practise it never will because there'll just be something better to do. Feel free to prove me wrong though!
What? This doesn’t make sense. If it’s powerful enough to do it as the only draw, then of course it cares about the Breaucrat attack! Those are contradictory premises, because then it can’t draw anything.
All I’m saying is, I’d probably throw a Bureaucrat and a Counterfeit in at least some instances.
A very simple yet efficient deck for Shepherd is to just add a single Silver, Shepherds whenever you hit $4 and the best green card available otherwise.
A very simple yet efficient deck for Shepherd is to just add a single Silver, Shepherds whenever you hit $4 and the best green card available otherwise.
Geronimoo has Shephard working in his simulator. This strategy as described loses to big money ultimate (39%-58%-3%). So, I am unconvinced about the claims in this article.
A very simple yet efficient deck for Shepherd is to just add a single Silver, Shepherds whenever you hit $4 and the best green card available otherwise.
Geronimoo has Shephard working in his simulator. This strategy as described loses to big money ultimate (39%-58%-3%). So, I am unconvinced about the claims in this article.
Yes, Pasture appears to be implemented properly. For example, from a sample game:If you add that Province should always be bought when possible, this increases Shepherd winrate to 58.27 %. I don't think it should be held against me that I didn't include this rather obvious bit in the OP.
Shepherd Simple(Plr 1) has 41 points and took 27 turns
32 cards : [6 Copper, 1 Silver, 10 Estate (10▼), 7 Duchy (21▼), 1 Pasture (10▼), 7 Shepherd]
Big Money Ultimate(Plr 2) has 59 points and took 28 turns
38 cards : [6 Copper, 10 Silver, 8 Gold, 4 Estate (4▼), 1 Duchy (3▼), 8 Province (48▼), 1 Pasture (4▼)]
Yes, there are simple Shepherd strategies that can beat BMU. Just not the one outlined in the OP. I quickly built one by buying Gold and Silver like I was playing Smithy-big money but using Shepherd instead for draw. Tweaking to buy Duchies/Estates earlier helped a little. But the results are nothing to write home about (loses to Smithy-big money quite handily). But I did not try too hard. There is space for OP to explore.
EDIT: Sorry, I saw that what I wrote in the article is not exactly what I implemented. The strategy should be:
- buy Province
- buy Shepherd if your deck contains < 20% Shepherds
- buy Silver if you have none
- buy Duchy
- buy Estate
Looking at a sample game (where Shepherd loses to BMU, so it's probably subpar), there is once a hand that cannot even buy an Estate.EDIT: Sorry, I saw that what I wrote in the article is not exactly what I implemented. The strategy should be:
- buy Province
- buy Shepherd if your deck contains < 20% Shepherds
- buy Silver if you have none
- buy Duchy
- buy Estate
How often does a Shepherd deck in these simulations get a completely dead hand?
Looking at a sample game (where Shepherd loses to BMU, so it's probably subpar), there is once a hand that cannot even buy an Estate.
It feels remiss not to mention Tunnel when talking about Shepherd. And not to mention Inheritance when talking about Pasture.
But this bit bugs me considerably:in order to get started, you want to make sure to always start with a Shepherd in hand. Assuming a 5 card starting hand, that means that 20% of your deck should be Shepherds.It's simply not true that 20% of your deck being Shepherds means that if you draw 5 cards you're certain one will be a Shepherd. All you're certain of is that you'll average one Shepherd per five cards.
As an example, if you have twenty cards, four of which are Shepherds, you only have a 72% chance of drawing a Shepherd.
That's not just mathematical nitpicking; it seems to me it strikes at the heart of the viability of a Shepherd engine. Especially as a hand with multiple Shepherds is also undesirable.