| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/c/cc/Wharf.jpg/200px-Wharf.jpg) | #1 =0 Wharf (Seaside) Weighted Average: 95.8% ▲3.7pp / Unweighted Average: 92.7% (1) / Median: 97.6% ▲0.3pp / Standard Deviation: 17.7% Chris is me: Wharf ends up on top once again in the rankings, as the consistency and reliability of start-of-turn draw is incredibly valuable for consistency. While newer cards like Den Of Sin cut into Wharf’s niche somewhat, the combination of draw on the turn you play it and the +Buys make Wharf a card that improves basically any deck. As more and more methods for dealing with the harshest of junking attacks pop up, Wharf’s more consistent value keeps it on top. tracer:Wharf is amazing but shouldn’t be #1 because it has this problem where other cards are more essential to not losing. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/8/89/Mountebank.jpg/200px-Mountebank.jpg) | #2 ▲1 Mountebank (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 95.1% ▲5.2pp / Unweighted Average: 91.3% (3) / Median: 99.2% ▲0.1pp / Standard Deviation: 20.6% tracer: Along with Cultist one of the cards that can blow up an otherwise nice board, Mountebank certainly deserves its high ranking. That said, I would have it below Cultist since draw tends to be more valuable than terminal coin once you are cleaned up a bit, which has become easier to do the way the game is played today. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/1/18/Cultist.jpg/200px-Cultist.jpg) | #3 ▲1 Cultist (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 94.6% ▲4.8pp / Unweighted Average: 91.0% (4) / Median: 97.6% ▲2.1pp / Standard Deviation: 19.8% xyrix: While Mountebank remains a consistent threat to your opponent’s deck, Cultist threatens to send out 10 junk cards at unparalleled speed. Its ability to serve as moderately strong draw makes Cultist important on many boards where junkers would otherwise be ignored. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/a/a2/Governor.jpg/200px-Governor.jpg) | #4 ▲1 Governor (Promo) Weighted Average: 93.0% ▲3.6pp / Unweighted Average: 91.9% (2) / Median: 96.8% ▲4.1pp / Standard Deviation: 10.5% xyrix: Governor is perhaps unfairly penalized for not being as strong without support as Mountebank and Cultist; as one of the best non-terminal cards it is rarely ignorable. Even on boards where another method of gaining Provinces is faster (e.g. Horn of Plenty), Governors offer very strong draw on the final turn. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/a/af/Recruiter.jpg/200px-Recruiter.jpg) | #5 Recruiter (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 91.4% / Unweighted Average: 86.2% (5) / Median: 96.0% / Standard Deviation: 19.9% tracer: I expect Recruiter to rise 4 spots next year to #1. It is one of very few cards that can claim to help you be faster in multiple ways, being great both as a trasher and as a village. While it may not define a board as much as those cards above it, it helps tremendously with anything you want to play. Chris is me: Recruiter is the best tempo card in Dominion; it’s somehow underrated despite debuting at #5. It’s a Masquerade that’s also a source of +Actions! Villagers are most valuable early on when your deck otherwise lacks consistency, and Recruiter provides an abundance of them. xyrix: Given how new cards are generally severely underrated in these rankings, Recruiter ending up at #5 is effectively a statement that it’s the #1 $5 cost to me. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/4/4c/Sentry.jpg/200px-Sentry.jpg) | #6 ▲2 Sentry (Base) Weighted Average: 88.7% ▲0.2pp / Unweighted Average: 85.0% (6) / Median: 89.5% ▼0.5pp / Standard Deviation: 14.7% Chris is me: While there are arguably better $5 trashers, Sentry is unique in being both an excellent low-risk trasher with a good chance of trashing multiple cards, while also being a good mid to late game utility card. Sentry has no negative effects on your tempo / economy the turn you play it, without being as fuckle as other top-of-deck trashers like Lookout or Doctor. It loses to Recruiter in its lack of immediate benefit to your turn and struggles with trashing the last couple junk cards in your deck. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/0/06/Margrave.jpg/200px-Margrave.jpg) | #7 ▲5 Margrave (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 87.1% ▲4.9pp / Unweighted Average: 81.9% (7) / Median: 88.9% ▲0.9pp / Standard Deviation: 19.4% Chris is me: Margrave has been steadily climbing the ranks over the years. The combination of draw and +Buy alone is already quite potent and powerful (see: Wharf), but the addition of a handsize attack lets Margrave accomplish so much in the space of just one terminal Action. That kind of functional density is really hard to beat. Of the many, many options for $5 “Smithy-plus” cards, Margrave accomplishes more than any of them. The slight nerf of the attack with repeated use can be a bummer, but it’s not enough to keep this card out of the top 10. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/a/a9/Torturer.jpg/200px-Torturer.jpg) | #8 ▲2 Torturer (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 86.3% ▲1.0pp / Unweighted Average: 81.7% (9) / Median: 88.9% ▲0.7pp / Standard Deviation: 20.7% tracer: Terminal draw cards that happen to do something bad to your opponent are easy to like, and Torturer’s high ranking reflects this. While often frustrating to play against when played in multiples, compared to similar cards below it Torturer’s attack lacks some potency in the presence of trashing and is generally weaker when terminal space is very limited. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/0/0a/Ghost_Ship.jpg/200px-Ghost_Ship.jpg) | #9 ▲9 Ghost Ship (Seaside) Weighted Average: 83.9% ▲6.6pp / Unweighted Average: 81.2% (11) / Median: 85.6% ▲4.7pp / Standard Deviation: 16.4% xyrix: Attacks that draw cards are the big winners of this year’s $5 cost list, perhaps on the heels of the addition of Villagers to the game, and Ghost Ship sees the biggest rise. Unlike Torturer, a single Ghost Ship can effectively shut an unprepared opponent out of the game, so there’s an argument that the Ship could rise even higher. Chris is me: As an attack, when Ghost Ship is good, it’s as paralyzing and crippling as they come. With the right components on the board (mostly trashing) it is relatively easy to play against, but in the right conditions this attack’s ceiling is sky high. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f3/Witch.jpg/200px-Witch.jpg) | #10 ▼3 Witch (Base) Weighted Average: 83.8% ▼4.7pp / Unweighted Average: 81.9% (8) / Median: 92.9% ▼0.7pp / Standard Deviation: 16.4% xyrix: Witch is the first card on this list to not just absolutely beat you over the head with how obviously good it is. There just aren’t that many cards that unconditionally hand out Curses. It’s fallen in the rankings a significant amount as trashing continues to get stronger and could probably stand to fall a bit more. It’s a good card but if something is a top 10 $5 cost I should at least be excited to buy it more often than not. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/e/ed/Butcher.jpg/200px-Butcher.jpg) | #11 =0 Butcher (Guilds) Weighted Average: 82.7% ▼0.6pp / Unweighted Average: 76.8% (16) / Median: 86.4% =0.0pp / Standard Deviation: 21.8% tracer: After a significant rise last year, Butcher stayed put in these rankings this year although I would argue it should be higher. Few cards provide the versatility that Butcher does: it fits into nearly any deck and provides utility throughout the entire game. Not gaining Butcher is considered a nearly automatic loss in high-level play, and the unweighted ranking 5 below the weighted one seems to show that this idea has not caught on at the lower levels. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/0/00/Vampire.jpg/200px-Vampire.jpg) | #12 ▲14 Vampire (Nocturne) Weighted Average: 82.5% ▲11.4pp / Unweighted Average: 81.6% (10) / Median: 84.9% ▲12.2pp / Standard Deviation: 13.8% Chris is me: Vampire was quite underrated last year for all it accomplishes in one set of cards - trashing, gaining, attacking. But perhaps there has been a bit of an overcorrection here, as evidenced by its higher unweighted ranking. In very high-tempo games, Vampire ends up being a bit slow, especially if you have to rely on Bat as your primary trashing. It’s an extremely effective card in many decks, but it’s important to acknowledge this slight limitation. xyrix: If Bat is the only trashing, then you probably aren’t in a very high-tempo game. I like Vampire a lot, a non-terminal $5 gainer with an attack is just crazy. The Bat does slow it down a bit but I think a top-10 position would be justified. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/c/c2/Junk_Dealer.jpg/200px-Junk_Dealer.jpg) | #13 ▼10 Junk Dealer (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 82.5% ▼7.5pp / Unweighted Average: 78.5% (12) / Median: 90.3% ▲1.2pp / Standard Deviation: 25.8% Chris is me: Junk Dealer has plummeted from the Top 10, and honestly the main fault I can find in J-Dizzle is that there’s so much competition for great $5 costs, especially trashers. It is still an excellent trasher that conserves tempo with the economy boost it gives on-play. It is the first trasher on this list that eventually reaches a point where you can no longer play it, though, and perhaps that is Junk Dealer’s undoing versus cards like Sentry and Recruiter. $5 gain opportunities are really valuable in fast paced, high level play, so it makes sense that JD, while still a great trasher, loses out to cards with more staying power throughout the game. xyrix: I’m glad we can close the book on the dark year where Junk Dealer was ranked as the #2 $5 cost. It’s killer off the 5/2 opening but otherwise you often need 2–3 to get clean in a reasonable timeframe, which is just too slow to justify passing up good trashers at the sub-$5 cost level. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/a/ab/Hunting_Party.jpg/200px-Hunting_Party.jpg) | #14 =0 Hunting Party (Cornucopia) Weighted Average: 81.4% ▲0.2pp / Unweighted Average: 78.5% (13) / Median: 85.7% ▲1.1pp / Standard Deviation: 18.7% tracer: The finest non-terminal draw card Dominion has to offer stays appropriately high year after year. Early on Hunting Party makes you see your key cards more often, and later it helps to keep turns going by picking out what is lacking in your hand. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/77/Bridge_Troll.jpg/200px-Bridge_Troll.jpg) | #15 ▲1 Bridge Troll (Adventures) Weighted Average: 80.4% ▲1.1pp / Unweighted Average: 75.1% (18) / Median: 84.1% ▲2.3pp / Standard Deviation: 18.5% xyrix: Bridge Troll is unique in that with only a village you can do an 8 Province megaturn even without any draw on the board. Granted, it’s not very likely if you don’t also have trashing but it is possible. Anyways, cost reduction is broken, Bridge Troll gives you the +Buy you need to exploit that and it’s much easier on your terminal space and draw than Bridge is. The attack even hurts a decent amount if your opponent tries to go for some sort of money strategy. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/28/Counterfeit.jpg/200px-Counterfeit.jpg) | #16 ▼1 Counterfeit (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 80.0% ▼0.7pp / Unweighted Average: 77.9% (15) / Median: 81.0% ▼1.7pp / Standard Deviation: 16.6% xyrix: Counterfeit is better than Upgrade and at least the list reflects that now. Maybe next year it’ll also pass Junk Dealer. It’s a nice tempo trasher that gives +Buy and can continue to be useful throughout the whole game. Notably, if you take more Silvers in the opening than you’d otherwise like because you need to get to Counterfeit, it provides a nice way to get rid of them later. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/d/d3/Upgrade.jpg/200px-Upgrade.jpg) | #17 ▼8 Upgrade (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 79.3% ▼8.1pp / Unweighted Average: 73.7% (21) / Median: 84.1% ▼4.1pp / Standard Deviation: 23.1% tracer: A big loser along with the similar Junk Dealer, as a trasher Upgrade similarly suffers from being expensive and somewhat slow. Contrasting with Junk Dealer, Upgrade is typically worse for your deck early as it does not allow expensive buys but can be more useful later gaining components or points. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/9/9a/Lost_City.jpg/200px-Lost_City.jpg) | #18 ▲2 Lost City (Adventures) Weighted Average: 79.2% ▲3.5pp / Unweighted Average: 78.1% (14) / Median: 84.8% ▲2.1pp / Standard Deviation: 19.2% Chris is me: Draw and Actions together in one gain and one card are always going to be useful. Dominion may offer many other ways to build an engine, but few are as gain-efficient as Lost City, and the on-gain penalty is really no big deal compared to the utility of the card. It’s a bit too vanilla of a card to get any higher on this list, but it’s simple and effective. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/29/Highway.jpg/200px-Highway.jpg) | #19 ▲2 Highway (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 78.3% ▲2.7pp / Unweighted Average: 76.0% (17) / Median: 78.7% ▲1.4pp / Standard Deviation: 18.1% Chris is me: Cost reduction without taking up any terminal space is still uniquely powerful, and extra gains to exploit Highway with are more common than ever. The card will never be useful on absolutely every board, as it is completely dependent on extra gains, but it doesn’t take much for the Highway split to be game-deciding. Bridge Troll offers stiff competition lately, as even though it is terminal, the Duration effect means it doesn’t take as much terminal space. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/36/Avanto.jpg/200px-Avanto.jpg) | #20 ▼7 Avanto (Promo) Weighted Average: 77.2% ▼5.0pp / Unweighted Average: 75.0% (19) / Median: 79.4% ▼2.4pp / Standard Deviation: 18.0% tracer: Although dropping seven spots, Avanto still seems high for what it is. With Sauna often questionable as a gain, Avanto is not available in many games and even when it is, a simple +3 cards that helps Saunas not be terrible does not compare favorably to the more exotic effects of the closely ranked cards. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/9/9a/Knights.jpg/200px-Knights.jpg) | #21 ▲10 Knights (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 74.1% ▲6.3pp / Unweighted Average: 71.7% (23) / Median: 73.0% ▲3.0pp / Standard Deviation: 16.6% xyrix: Knights have gone from underrated from pure gentility dissuading their purchase, to probably overrated as people are often too eager to buy the top Knight even when it’s bad. A lot of the Knights are bad! There is an absolute chasm between Bailey and Jo. Chris is me: Even so, losing the Knight split can be a major disadvantage, as it essentially puts a timer on how long your deck will keep working while components are sapped away. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/33/Groundskeeper.jpg/200px-Groundskeeper.jpg) | #22 ▲1 Groundskeeper (Empires) Weighted Average: 74.1% ▼0.5pp / Unweighted Average: 72.1% (22) / Median: 80.0% ▲12.4pp / Standard Deviation: 21.2% xyrix: Personally I always find beating someone who has 7 Provinces by buying 8 Estates very satisfying, but “most satisfying” is only one dimension of “better”. Groundskeeper is hard to rate because it’s both staggeringly powerful at the top end and often crushingly slow. tracer: Groundskeeper is super dependent on having draw or very good thinning, but with draw is usually essential. It may be slow to set up but can score a lot quickly when needed and is so much better for a deck than victory cards. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/20/Horn_of_Plenty.jpg/200px-Horn_of_Plenty.jpg) | #23 ▲12 Horn of Plenty (Cornucopia) Weighted Average: 73.7% ▲8.6pp / Unweighted Average: 67.9% (31) / Median: 76.2% ▲6.2pp / Standard Deviation: 24.3% tracer: One of the large risers on this list, Horn of Plenty is one of the best gainers around. Given some amount of draw there is usually a way to make it able to gain Provinces, and before that big turn it will non-terminally gain all the things needed to make it happen. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/0/0e/Old_Witch.jpg/200px-Old_Witch.jpg) | #24 Old Witch (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 73.5% / Unweighted Average: 70.5% (25) / Median: 75.4% / Standard Deviation: 20.6% Chris is me: Old Witch is a bit better than it is rated here, I think. The thing about Old Witch is that it recognizes that Cursing attacks are already (usually) temporary. The long-term drawing potential of +3 Cards makes up for the drawback of sometimes letting the opponent trash a curse, and in my opinion it’s often better for an engine than Witch. That extra card draw is really nice. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/b/b4/Outpost.jpg/200px-Outpost.jpg) | #25 ▲25 Outpost (Seaside) Weighted Average: 73.0% ▲17.0pp / Unweighted Average: 70.2% (27) / Median: 73.8% ▲25.8pp / Standard Deviation: 19.5% Chris is me: It’s taken the greater Dominion community quite a while to catch on to the rather simple idea that doubling the amount of turns you take is really, really good. Outpost is one of the biggest winners on this list, rocketing up 25 spots! Given some way to improve your deck reliability (thinning or sifting, really), it’s basically just trading an Action for an entire turn. Even if you whiff once or twice, you just burned one Action on a potential extra turn. My rule of thumb is to buy it a shuffle earlier than I think I should. tracer: Outpost has possibly the most exotic effect in the game (Possession currently doesn’t exist in most people’s worlds) and for that effect should be higher despite its drawbacks. It is the most important card on far too many boards to be so low. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/4/48/Wild_Hunt.jpg/200px-Wild_Hunt.jpg) | #26 ▼1 Wild Hunt (Empires) Weighted Average: 72.9% ▼1.5pp / Unweighted Average: 70.4% (26) / Median: 72.2% ▼6.0pp / Standard Deviation: 15.9% tracer: Wild Hunt remains one of the higher terminal draw cards on this list. Playing like a beneficial version of Torturer, stringing Wild Hunts together allows you to get points from the normal run of an engine, but when played in singles is fairly unimpressive. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/4/47/Minion.jpg/200px-Minion.jpg) | #27 ▼7 Minion (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 72.4% ▼3.8pp / Unweighted Average: 74.0% (20) / Median: 78.6% ▼3.2pp / Standard Deviation: 22.1% xyrix: Minion plays badly with conventional draw cards and doesn’t handle green very well, but at the end of the day it says +1 Action something something +4 Cards on it. That’s pretty good. Also the attack is decently strong and can offer a potent psychological edge. Chris is me: In general, Minion has been getting weaker and more awkward with time, but in the advent of Villagers things might start to turn around a little for this card, as it’s that much easier to sneak in some other Action plays. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/c/cf/Royal_Carriage.jpg/200px-Royal_Carriage.jpg) | #28 ▲1 Royal Carriage (Adventures) Weighted Average: 72.1% ▲2.0pp / Unweighted Average: 68.5% (29) / Median: 70.6% ▼3.0pp / Standard Deviation: 19.5% xyrix: I’m really not sure what this is doing here above Crown; usually I’d rather have a plain $5 Throne Room than a Royal Carriage. Not being able to play RC on RC is a crushing drawback, rendering all your RC-RC-Margrave hands sadly dead. OK you can save them between turns, which is occasionally useful, but then you’ve bought a card that does nothing on half your turns. tracer: I agree with having Royal Carriage above Crown. One of the major advantages of Royal Carriage is the ability to triple or quadruple actions given enough of them, which in decks that otherwise function is often better for both power and consistency. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/20/Apprentice.jpg/200px-Apprentice.jpg) | #29 ▼3 Apprentice (Alchemy) Weighted Average: 71.9% ▼0.6pp / Unweighted Average: 67.3% (33) / Median: 70.4% ▼1.4pp / Standard Deviation: 19.9% tracer: Apprentice slides down a few slots and could probably stand to slide down a few more. As an early game trasher it is fairly slow and expensive with a weak benefit so compares unfavorably to other trashers. Apprentice is also difficult to use as draw later in the game as more expensive cards are often good enough that you don’t want to trash them and they are hard to gain back. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/4/4b/Seer.jpg/200px-Seer.jpg) | #30 Seer (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 71.6% / Unweighted Average: 65.9% (37) / Median: 76.2% / Standard Deviation: 25.4% Chris is me: Seer is a very interesting card, that is quite high variance - both in performance and in players’ opinions of it. Seer’s unique ability to draw cards in that $2-$4 category of weaker engine components makes a lot of cards more viable than they otherwise would be. Seer usually requires the board to cater to it a little bit, but if conditions are right it is a fierce drawing card. Plus it makes Silver gainers really good. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/c/c9/Cursed_Village.jpg/200px-Cursed_Village.jpg) | #31 =0 Cursed Village (Nocturne) Weighted Average: 70.5% ▲0.4pp / Unweighted Average: 67.2% (34) / Median: 69.1% ▲0.9pp / Standard Deviation: 18.6% Chris is me: Probably my favorite card on this list, Cursed Village is probably the best Draw-To-X variant in the game. The fundamental issue with a lot of terminal draw-to-x is that you need to either have nonterminal payload or multiple Villages per draw so you can dump some of that terminal payload between draws. Cursed Village sidesteps all of that, all with only the small cost of an on-gain Hex that is usually a non-issue. On many boards, it’s really just Lost City with a higher ceiling, though less flexible on boards with limited trashing or better draw. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/9/91/Crown.jpg/200px-Crown.jpg) | #32 ▼8 Crown (Empires) Weighted Average: 70.3% ▼4.5pp / Unweighted Average: 70.6% (24) / Median: 72.2% ▼2.0pp / Standard Deviation: 14.0% tracer: Crown drops a number of spots and while the reason for this drop is unclear, I agree with it (although Royal Carriage should have dropped too). While powerful, Throne-variants suffer in decks where their village effect is unnecessary as a second copy of an engine component offers more consistency than attempting to double it. xyrix: I have to disagree with tracer on this one; decks where the village effect is unnecessary are pretty rare. Usually I’m happy to buy as many Crowns as my deck can handle instead of villages and you’re happy to have that extra efficiency. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/d/d7/Den_of_Sin.jpg/200px-Den_of_Sin.jpg) | #33 ▲1 Den of Sin (Nocturne) Weighted Average: 70.1% ▲2.7pp / Unweighted Average: 65.9% (38) / Median: 69.6% ▲3.5pp / Standard Deviation: 17.0% xyrix: I was one of the people who was initially underwhelmed by Den of Sin, but duration draw and gaining to hand are just so, so nice. It’s a pretty uncommon board where you don’t want any. Chris is me: Den of Sin is seriously underrated on this list. I think a lot of newer players think of it as like a weird Lab variant or something, but the important thing is start of turn draw is so much better than conventional draw! The gain to hand thing is just a bonus; the consistency it offers without even using terminal space is basically unmatched. It’s more comparable to Wharf than people want to admit. xyrix: I don’t think the gain to hand thing is “just a bonus:” without it Den would be worse than Caravan, and a $5 Caravan isn’t sniffing the top half of this list. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/35/Stables.jpg/200px-Stables.jpg) | #34 ▲1 Stables (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 69.8% ▲2.4pp / Unweighted Average: 66.0% (36) / Median: 70.6% ▲0.6pp / Standard Deviation: 17.6% xyrix: Stables is perennially underrated because people trash too many treasures and then are sad that they dud. It’s +3 Cards +1 Action, having to discard a Copper is a small price to pay to see your good cards! The combination of sifting and draw makes Stables very strong, and I think close to Hunting Party in power. Chris is me: I mean it’s clearly worse than Hunting Party, and I’m a little shocked it ended up above Lab, but the extra cycling in the early to mid game is really nice. Keeping Treasures around when you didn’t otherwise want or need to can be really frustrating, but as long as you’re honest about the needs of a Stables deck it won’t let you down. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/a/a1/Count.jpg/200px-Count.jpg) | #35 ▼6 Count (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 69.6% ▼1.1pp / Unweighted Average: 67.7% (32) / Median: 73.0% ▼0.2pp / Standard Deviation: 18.8% tracer: Like last year dropping in rank after large gains the years before, Count’s main claim is as a trasher that can do something somewhat useful afterwards. However, it is often outclassed by more selective trashers that allow turns to be more productive afterwards, and the non-trashing benefits are often too weak to bother gaining Count if not for the trashing. Chris is me: “Trasher that isn’t useless afterwards” is a niche that Count is quickly losing, but it’s still a neat little utility card. There’s a bunch of tricks it can do that are useful when you need them, but ultimately I think it’s falling due to its clunkiness. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/0/0c/Laboratory.jpg/200px-Laboratory.jpg) | #36 ▲2 Laboratory (Base) Weighted Average: 68.8% ▲5.4pp / Unweighted Average: 68.5% (30) / Median: 73.8% ▲4.7pp / Standard Deviation: 17.9% Chris is me: Lab is a card new players get very excited about before realizing using $5 gains on a handsize increase of 1 isn’t always the best you can do, but it’s still a dependable, reliable card, sort of the quintessential $5 cost card. With more ways to gain $5 cost cards in the past couple of expansions the opportunity cost for spamming Lab is getting lower, so it makes sense that it’s being held in higher regard. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/5/54/Haunted_Woods.jpg/200px-Haunted_Woods.jpg) | #37 ▼1 Haunted Woods (Adventures) Weighted Average: 68.3% ▲1.8pp / Unweighted Average: 66.5% (35) / Median: 68.3% ▲1.9pp / Standard Deviation: 17.7% Chris is me: Haunted Woods, much like Enchantress, is a set-up-next-turn card with an attack that is only occasionally relevant. But that’s fine since setting up your next turn is great, and you really don’t even need that many Haunted Woods plays to draw a substantial amount of your deck. Two pairs of HW is almost like double Tactician without all the hassle of not using any Treasures. Taking up terminal space while not immediately doing anything is really the main drawback of this card, and probably why it isn’t rated much higher. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/9/96/Haggler.jpg/200px-Haggler.jpg) | #38 ▼6 Haggler (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 68.3% ▼1.0pp / Unweighted Average: 65.1% (39) / Median: 74.2% ▲6.9pp / Standard Deviation: 21.1% tracer: Haggler’s drop is curious to me as it is very strong. The ability to gain multiple engine components with one buy as well as continue to build through greening should put Haggler higher than this. Additionally, playing multiple Hagglers offers very strong pile control to give an edge in ability to end the game. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/d/d9/Academy.jpg/320px-Academy.jpg) | #39 Academy (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 66.9% / Unweighted Average: 64.3% (40) / Median: 74.2% / Standard Deviation: 27.5% xyrix: Academy is basically $5 Champion. If you disagree with that statement, you should buy Academy earlier and/or more often. Easily a top 10 $5 cost. tracer: It’s not quite Champion and considering the top of the list maybe not quite top 10, but should do better than halve its ranking next year. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/e/ee/Summon.jpg/320px-Summon.jpg) | #40 ▲5 Summon (Promo) Weighted Average: 64.7% ▲4.7pp / Unweighted Average: 57.8% (46) / Median: 56.4% ▼2.6pp / Standard Deviation: 25.8% xyrix: Summon is $5 for a one-shot Lost City effect and a card costing $4 or less. Sometimes that’s really good if you wanted the card anyways, other times Summoning as much as you can is a trap by comparison to buying some of the other wonderful $5 cost things on this list. tracer:More often buying things for $5 rather than Summoning is the trap. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/6/6a/Storyteller.jpg/200px-Storyteller.jpg) | #41 ▲14 Storyteller (Adventures) Weighted Average: 63.9% ▲9.9pp / Unweighted Average: 60.6% (42) / Median: 61.1% ▲4.1pp / Standard Deviation: 17.3% tracer: This is one of the larger jumps on this list and deservedly so. Storyteller is one of the strongest draw cards available, with decks able to be drawn with only a few plays. The only thing keeping it from being higher is a consistency issue, where the treasures which fuel its draw making it difficult to see Storytellers at the start of turn when they are needed. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/c/c9/Triumph.jpg/320px-Triumph.jpg) | #42 ▲8 Triumph (Empires) Weighted Average: 63.2% ▲5.2pp / Unweighted Average: 57.5% (49) / Median: 59.2% ▼1.8pp / Standard Deviation: 26.9% Chris is me: Triumph is surging in rank for good reason; on any strong engine board it basically just gives the win to whomever ends the game. Tying points to card gains is a terrific way to score while building or to set up large scoring turns fully separate from the Province pile. Combine that with Triumph’s utility in slogs or combos with things like Beggar, and you have a very useful scoring method on your hands. Weaker players continue to heavily undervalue Triumph, leading to a much lower weighted rank and standard deviation, and a lot of easy wins for top players. tracer: Triumph is often bonkers but the number of boards where it is unimpressive is a bit too high for me to see it rising much further. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/8/87/Treasurer.jpg/200px-Treasurer.jpg) | #43 Treasurer (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 63.2% / Unweighted Average: 63.9% (41) / Median: 65.9% / Standard Deviation: 21.1% Chris is me: Treasurer has a lot of tricks for what might look like a $5 Moneylender at first glance. It offers strong economy throughout the whole game, with neat Treasure-recycling properties useful with trash-for-benefit, and I guess sometimes the Key matters a little bit. You can confidently grab it with your first $5 knowing that you’ll definitely hit $5 again soon. tracer: Treasurer deserves at least this ranking just because of how good Moneylender is. Key might be a bit overhyped. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/27/Replace.jpg/200px-Replace.jpg) | #44 ▼3 Replace (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 62.3% ▲0.4pp / Unweighted Average: 57.8% (47) / Median: 61.1% ▲1.1pp / Standard Deviation: 20.8% tracer: Replace mysteriously drops from an already too low position. It is the second strongest card of the Remodel family behind Butcher and almost always features prominently in games where it is present, both for the cursing attack and the ability of topdecking to continue the current turn or better future ones. Chris is me: Topdecking remains the most undervalued ability in Dominion, and Replace’s ability really improves early game deck tempo by a lot. Those Curses can be essential in pileout victories as well. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f8/Rebuild.jpg/200px-Rebuild.jpg) | #45 ▼24 Rebuild (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 61.6% ▼16.4pp / Unweighted Average: 69.0% (28) / Median: 72.0% ▼8.9pp / Standard Deviation: 26.3% xyrix: lol Rebuild. It’s managed a precipitous drop in the rankings as people realize that good money decks can beat Rebuild almost as well as engines. It could still stand to fall another 50 or so slots. Chris is me: Rebuild is a relic of the past. There’s almost always either something faster possible or other ways to score points that make its ability to melt Duchy less scary. tracer: lol Rebuild |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7c/Spices.jpg/200px-Spices.jpg) | #46 Spices (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 60.4% / Unweighted Average: 60.5% (43) / Median: 57.9% / Standard Deviation: 18.2% xyrix: The strength of Spices was one of the biggest surprises for many people as they began to figure out the Renaissance cards. It has a lot going for it, but to me one of its best attributes is its elegant solution to the “$11 Herbalist problem:” it lets you add a non-terminal +Buy to your deck while saving some of the excess money you might have had that prompted the addition of a +Buy to your deck. It’s hard for me to say that it should continue to rise further, but it’s earned this relatively lofty position among non-attack payload cards. tracer: Spices has started way overrated. It performs well in money and at the ends of games but other +buy is still most often preferable. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f7/Bazaar.jpg/200px-Bazaar.jpg) | #47 ▼4 Bazaar (Seaside) Weighted Average: 59.0% ▼2.5pp / Unweighted Average: 56.6% (51) / Median: 56.4% ▲1.8pp / Standard Deviation: 11.4% tracer: Bazaar is a village and villages always have a place towards the high end of these rankings. In particular, Bazaar is valuable for providing coin that doesn’t require additional draw, which means higher than usual consistency for the large amount of buying power decks with Bazaar typically have. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f1/Rabble.jpg/200px-Rabble.jpg) | #48 ▲3 Rabble (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 58.9% ▲0.9pp / Unweighted Average: 55.5% (52) / Median: 57.1% ▼1.9pp / Standard Deviation: 17.8% Chris is me: Rabble’s attack can occasionally really, but more than anything its place here on the list is because it draws three cards for you. That’s always nice. I really don’t think it’s better than Patrol, which has essentially double the search space for added reliability, but whatever. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/30/City.jpg/200px-City.jpg) | #49 ▼3 City (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 57.5% ▼2.5pp / Unweighted Average: 56.7% (50) / Median: 57.6% ▼0.4pp / Standard Deviation: 18.5% Chris is me: There are more boards than ever with quick pile runs, so you would think City has more merit than it does, but it still suffers from the fundamental problem of delayed payoff combined with the first-mover disadvantage caused by being the player to empty a pile at the end of a turn. It definitely warps the game a lot more than other cards on this list just on how it changes behavior on that second pile draining. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/d/db/Swamp_Hag.jpg/200px-Swamp_Hag.jpg) | #50 =0 Swamp Hag (Adventures) Weighted Average: 57.3% ▼1.7pp / Unweighted Average: 59.0% (45) / Median: 60.3% ▼3.7pp / Standard Deviation: 20.5% tracer: Swamp Hag feels low, but it is difficult to see it much higher, which speaks to the strength of the upper tier of 5 cost cards. Being able to play Swamp Hags consistently can make using multiple or even any buys awkward, which can lead to drawn out games as players try to avoid taking curses. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/c/cd/Catacombs.jpg/200px-Catacombs.jpg) | #51 ▲5 Catacombs (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 57.3% ▲2.3pp / Unweighted Average: 55.4% (53) / Median: 59.2% ▲6.2pp / Standard Deviation: 15.2% xyrix: Catacombs is ranked as the best “Smithy + reliability.” In comparison with Patrol, it offers additional sifting vs. Patrol’s additional draw and topdeck ordering. The on-trash benefit is easy to ignore but has some combos (Procession, Lurker). tracer: Catacombs being ranked so differently from the similar cards (Journeyman, Patrol) is bizarre. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/29/Fleet.jpg/320px-Fleet.jpg) | #52 Fleet (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 56.5% / Unweighted Average: 53.3% (56) / Median: 58.7% / Standard Deviation: 24.8% xyrix: Fleet is a tricky card to rank. It functions effectively as alt-VP, but unlike other alt-VP sources it can’t be used to claw back from a serious deficit (unless perhaps your opponent blunders and skips Fleet). It’s a must-buy in a close game, but overall I haven’t found it to change the outcome of the game all that often. Chris is me: Much like City above, the main thing Fleet actually does is make your head hurt, as all your pileout math goes out the window. You basically buy it around when you would get your first Duchy, as it is really rare that you will score less than 3 points on that last turn. More than anything its insurance against your opponent pulling a fast one on you and executing some elaborate pileout where they win with their one Estate or something. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/d/da/Plunder.jpg/200px-Plunder.jpg) | #53 ▲10 Plunder (Empires) Weighted Average: 56.4% ▲7.4pp / Unweighted Average: 59.0% (44) / Median: 52.7% ▲5.7pp / Standard Deviation: 17.8% tracer: Plunder’s most important use is probably keeping Encampments at a price less than that of Gold, although in similar strength decks the additional points from having extra Plunders can be important. I would consider this rise unwarranted, though you don’t want to be losing the split by more than one. Chris is me: This probably speaks to my scrub-like playing tendencies more than anything but I really value those extra points from the Plunder split. In drawn-out games it can absolutely decide the match. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Capitalism.jpg/320px-Capitalism.jpg) | #54 Capitalism (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 54.9% / Unweighted Average: 57.6% (48) / Median: 53.2% / Standard Deviation: 18.8% Chris is me: There is an odd degree of consensus on the ranking of this very strange card, but I think it is slightly underrated. Sometimes it just makes your payload nonterminal, but other times it enables all sorts of craziness that just wouldn’t be possible without something that so fundamentally bends all the rules. It can really be a $5 Champion sometimes, or it can breathe life into interesting-but-weaker cards like Navigator. tracer: How exotic this project is probably has it placed higher than it deserves. There are some instances where it is obvious to use, but it rarely helps decks work that otherwise wouldn’t. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/4/46/Swashbuckler.jpg/200px-Swashbuckler.jpg) | #55 Swashbuckler (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 54.3% / Unweighted Average: 52.6% (58) / Median: 50.8% / Standard Deviation: 16.4% Chris is me: +3 Cards and also another thing is cool, but it’s actually reasonably hard to activate Swashbuckler. The Gold thing is really a gimmick, and the Coffers are just some nice candy on top of what is otherwise a perfectly normal draw card. I’m very surprised it got the nod over Patrol and Journeyman. xyrix: I like Swashbuckler a lot, I think it’s usually worth building your deck a little bit differently (adding an extra Cellar or Workshop, say) so that you can activate it. The Treasure Chest is better than it looks since you always have the possibility to get Swashbucklers to draw that Gold. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/c/c8/Patrol.jpg/200px-Patrol.jpg) | #56 ▲3 Patrol (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 53.7% ▼2.3pp / Unweighted Average: 49.8% (66) / Median: 52.0% ▼4.0pp / Standard Deviation: 16.5% tracer: Patrol seems to go less appreciated by weaker players with an unweighted ranking 10 spots below the weighted one. Of the non-attacking terminal draw cards at $5, I think Patrol is a clear third behind Wharf and Wild Hunt due to the reordering ability and so should be relatively higher on this list. Chris is me: What people don’t really internalize about the reordering ability is that, assuming a drawing Village is used, you get seven cards to find your next Patrol (by reordering it onto the top). This is huge for reliability, and way better than like, getting a Coffer when you draw after having whiffed the previous turn. xyrix: It’s important to remember that the reordering only really benefits you if you started your turn with a village and a Patrol in hand already. It’s a little bit of added reliability but it isn’t nearly as good as duration draw at ensuring you can kick off every turn. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/8/82/Journeyman.jpg/200px-Journeyman.jpg) | #57 ▼5 Journeyman (Guilds) Weighted Average: 53.4% ▼5.6pp / Unweighted Average: 52.1% (59) / Median: 47.6% ▼10.4pp / Standard Deviation: 17.7% xyrix: Journeyman shines on boards where you have Estate trashing but not Copper trashing or vice-versa. Its ability to skip payload cards can also be important. However, its sifting ability often declines in power significantly upon greening, so I think it is somewhat overrated still. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/4/4b/Werewolf.jpg/200px-Werewolf.jpg) | #58 ▼7 Werewolf (Nocturne) Weighted Average: 52.3% ▼6.7pp / Unweighted Average: 54.5% (55) / Median: 57.1% ▼2.9pp / Standard Deviation: 18.2% xyrix: Gaining more Smithies that you need so that you can dole out a weakish attack is not usually a great move, so Werewolf is arguably the most vanilla of the Smithy variants. I think it’s significantly overrated. Chris is me: The one thing worth noting about Werewolf is that if the opportunity cost to gain them isn’t too high, playing multiple nonterminal Hexes a turn can actually start to hurt a little. It’s also nice to be rewarded for being responsible and not triggering a bad shuffle. But it really doesn’t do a whole lot more than Smithy most of the time. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/1/15/Forum.jpg/200px-Forum.jpg) | #59 ▼3 Forum (Empires) Weighted Average: 52.3% ▼4.7pp / Unweighted Average: 48.8% (67) / Median: 51.1% ▼3.9pp / Standard Deviation: 19.2% tracer: Eight spots lower in the unweighted ranking, Forum should be higher than its weighted ranking puts it. Forum is easy to gain and since it filters without decreasing handsize is good at enabling engines without draw while still being a great consistency measure when draw is present. xyrix: +3 Cards +1 Action something something +1 Buy. Forum is a good card. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/26/Archive.jpg/200px-Archive.jpg) | #60 ▲1 Archive (Empires) Weighted Average: 51.1% ▼1.9pp / Unweighted Average: 51.2% (61) / Median: 53.4% ▲3.4pp / Standard Deviation: 18.5% Chris is me: Archive is a really flexible way to deal with any imperfect Dominion board - shrinking your deck without trashing, increasing handsize without really drawing, etc. It will always have that ceiling of just not being very good on those really thin boards, but those are far less common than people think. xyrix: I’m surprised to find Archive this low; I think it’s stronger than the non-attacking Smithy variants. Unless there is very strong trashing, it’s usually the first draw card I’ll buy. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/29/Tragic_Hero.jpg/200px-Tragic_Hero.jpg) | #61 ▲26 Tragic Hero (Nocturne) Weighted Average: 50.7% ▲15.5pp / Unweighted Average: 50.6% (63) / Median: 48.4% ▲19.7pp / Standard Deviation: 18.4% Chris is me: Another awkward card that rewards you if you can handle its quirkiness, Tragic Hero is somewhere between a draw-to-x card and a weird way to cycle and pop some payload into your deck at once. When you can’t have good control over its effect, it can be very tricky to work with, but 3 cards and 1 buy is too strong to pass up most of the time. xyrix: Tragic Hero is amazing (especially if there’s a Treasure better than Gold on the board) and I’m very happy it took a huge jump this year. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/0/01/Artificer.jpg/200px-Artificer.jpg) | #62 ▲2 Artificer (Adventures) Weighted Average: 50.4% ▲0.4pp / Unweighted Average: 47.6% (71) / Median: 50.0% ▲4.0pp / Standard Deviation: 16.2% tracer: Artificer is another card much lower in the unweighted rankings than the weighted ones. This is probably a result of Artificer being more able to be taken advantage of in better decks with massive amounts of draw, where it can be an effective gainer. Topdecking even allows saving turns with whatever component is needed. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/e/ed/Tactician.jpg/200px-Tactician.jpg) | #63 ▼16 Tactician (Seaside) Weighted Average: 50.3% ▼10.7pp / Unweighted Average: 54.5% (54) / Median: 58.7% ▼6.3pp / Standard Deviation: 23.5% xyrix: Tactician is good at two things: spiking big price points (which usually isn’t important) and playing Double-Tac. Double-Tac is a lot of fun but it is often a struggle to get to double-Province turns just from non-Treasure payload. Innovation-Tactician is a new combo which is worth being aware of. tracer: Tactician deserves this drop. It turns out that 2 good turns are usually better than one mediocre one and one great one with what a good turn means now. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/e/ee/Sculptor.jpg/200px-Sculptor.jpg) | #64 Sculptor (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 50.2% / Unweighted Average: 48.8% (68) / Median: 54.8% / Standard Deviation: 23.5% xyrix: In my opinion the best Workshop variant, Sculptor is a valuable addition to any deck. The ability to gain the needed card to hand is strong on its own; the additional facilitation of this ability from a stored Villager really puts Sculptor over the top as an excellent card. Even on boards where the options at $4 or less are limited, Sculptor’s Silver gain helps ensure that the $5+ price point continues to be hit. Severely underrated. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/d/d3/Relic.jpg/200px-Relic.jpg) | #65 ▼2 Relic (Adventures) Weighted Average: 49.3% ▼2.7pp / Unweighted Average: 50.1% (65) / Median: 50.8% ▲1.8pp / Standard Deviation: 15.0% tracer: Relic is a fairly strong attack against any deck which is easy to play and should probably be higher than this. A consistent -card token against a money strategy is brutal while against engines it has the potential to force unfortunate duds. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/4/43/Bandit_Camp.jpg/200px-Bandit_Camp.jpg) | #66 ▲2 Bandit Camp (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 48.9% ▲0.9pp / Unweighted Average: 52.6% (57) / Median: 50.8% ▲4.9pp / Standard Deviation: 16.3% Chris is me: Bandit Camp offers strong economy… sorta, at the cost of cycling later. It cancels out to a card that’s a little better than Festival, really. Those Spoils can really get in the way if you have to stack a lot of these, but they can also let you avoid investing in other economy if you have a consistent enough deck. Definitely a middle of the pack card. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/6/64/Legionary.jpg/200px-Legionary.jpg) | #67 ▼3 Legionary (Empires) Weighted Average: 48.7% ▼2.3pp / Unweighted Average: 50.9% (62) / Median: 46.8% ▼7.2pp / Standard Deviation: 21.2% Chris is me: Legionary’s discard attack is downright vicious, but it’s held back from being a top tier attack by how damn long it takes to get set up. Consistently lining it up with Gold is not easy, and by the time you pull that off, you’ve both probably reached a point where a 2 card hand is at least not an automatic dud. If you get an early lead Legionary can downright bury an opponent, kinda like Ghost Ship does, but less so. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/c/c6/Bustling_Village.jpg/200px-Bustling_Village.jpg) | #68 ▲3 Bustling Village (Empires) Weighted Average: 48.0% ▲2.0pp / Unweighted Average: 44.6% (74) / Median: 47.2% ▲6.2pp / Standard Deviation: 21.2% tracer: Bustling Village has a great effect on play and despite being the bottom card of a split pile is seen fairly often due to the non-offensiveness of Settlers. If anything is holding its ranking down, it should be that for consistency purposes +3 actions is often in excess: for the number of villages needed to have one at the start of a turn, +2 actions would be sufficient. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/d/dd/Scepter.jpg/200px-Scepter.jpg) | #69 Scepter (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 47.9% / Unweighted Average: 50.3% (64) / Median: 48.8% / Standard Deviation: 20.1% xyrix: Scepter is some sort of unholy union of Royal Carriage and Crown which combines the drawbacks of each. There are occasionally more creative ways to use it but mostly it’s an expensive Throne Room which you can only use on payload. Sometimes you get it anyways though because Throne Room is a really good card. Chris is me: I think the potential of Scepter isn’t fully realized yet. That doesn’t mean it’s actually an amazing card, but there’s some situations where a board might otherwise be uninspired but for Scepter letting you get a bunch more payload plays in without consuming Actions. tracer: Scepter really is terrible and super limited in use. It should and will see a pretty big drop next year. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/0/01/Soothsayer.jpg/200px-Soothsayer.jpg) | #70 ▼20 Soothsayer (Guilds) Weighted Average: 47.7% ▼12.3pp / Unweighted Average: 51.5% (60) / Median: 51.6% ▼6.4pp / Standard Deviation: 21.1% xyrix: Soothsayer gives you a Gold and your opponent a Curse. Sometimes there is a huge difference in utility between Gold and Curse and sometimes there isn’t. tracer: Seeing Soothsayer fall so far is satisfying - maybe the unweighted ranking will catch up next year. The card it draws your opponent means that it pretty commonly gives them more pace than it gives you. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/e/e0/Council_Room.jpg/200px-Council_Room.jpg) | #71 ▲2 Council Room (Base) Weighted Average: 46.6% ▲0.6pp / Unweighted Average: 47.8% (70) / Median: 46.8% ▼1.2pp / Standard Deviation: 17.9% tracer: Council Room tends to be one of the more consistently underrated cards on this list due to the fear of drawing the opponent cards. A large amount of draw with a +buy is fantastic, with the drawback something to be careful about in non-mirrors but not something that should make you shy away from the card. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/a/af/Merchant_Guild.jpg/200px-Merchant_Guild.jpg) | #72 ▼4 Merchant Guild (Guilds) Weighted Average: 46.0% ▼3.0pp / Unweighted Average: 45.9% (72) / Median: 43.7% ▲0.7pp / Standard Deviation: 19.0% Chris is me: Megaturns that take two turns to actually work are still pretty awkward. Merchant Guild is held back by its speed more than anything; it takes time to build into and it doesn’t really give immediate returns on the way up. But I mean as long as the card says +Buy on it, it can’t be that bad, right? tracer: Merchant Guild is one of the terminals that you’ll try really hard to make an engine work for. It should be higher on this list for the amount it warps games. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/71/Guildhall.jpg/320px-Guildhall.jpg) | #73 Guildhall (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 45.5% / Unweighted Average: 45.5% (73) / Median: 36.3% / Standard Deviation: 24.5% Chris is me: Guildhall is actually really good when it’s good. It’s just a matter of timing it, and also buying it on a board where you get a fair number of Treasures, which isn’t an every game thing. But once you have it you’ll notice your economy just accelerating in a way you didn’t initially expect, much like Spices. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/e/ec/Festival.jpg/200px-Festival.jpg) | #74 ▼2 Festival (Base) Weighted Average: 45.0% ▼2.0pp / Unweighted Average: 48.2% (69) / Median: 46.8% ▲4.8pp / Standard Deviation: 18.8% tracer: Providing a village, coins, and a buy, Festival gives everything you want except for a card. While I think this is not enough to justify such a low position relative to similar cards, it is certainly reasonable to have it towards the bottom of the villages. Chris is me: The lack of draw would be easily forgiven if it wasn’t competing with all those other $5 cost cards. it’s hard to have an essential component be this expensive and not even cycle. xyrix: It’s a fancy Shanty Town. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/e/e3/Piazza.jpg/320px-Piazza.jpg) | #75 Piazza (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 43.1% / Unweighted Average: 41.2% (78) / Median: 41.3% / Standard Deviation: 19.7% xyrix: In Action-dense decks, Piazza offers some additional draw, Actions, and reliability. In Action-sparse decks, you can still get pretty lucky. The comparison of Piazza to Herald is somewhat overly flattering to Piazza as Herald is a card with strong self-synergy. I think it’s pretty accurately ranked. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/2e/Scholar.jpg/200px-Scholar.jpg) | #76 Scholar (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 42.0% / Unweighted Average: 41.9% (79) / Median: 34.9% / Standard Deviation: 21.4% xyrix: Playing with Scholar makes one realize how valuable Library’s sifting function is. Uh it’s somewhat valuable, at least. I think that Scholar is a small but significant amount worse than Library and am confused as to how it ended up this far ahead of it. Neither is very strong in my opinion. Chris is me: Scholar stacks a little more nicely than Library does. With Library if you have some Treasure you’re stuck with whatever you drew the first time; with Scholar you can re-roll if you want. I don’t think it makes it That Much Better though? |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3e/Distant_Lands.jpg/200px-Distant_Lands.jpg) | #77 ▼4 Distant Lands (Adventures) Weighted Average: 40.7% ▼6.3pp / Unweighted Average: 43.9% (77) / Median: 40.5% ▼4.5pp / Standard Deviation: 18.7% tracer: A friend for an engine player against someone who scores prematurely, when both players play correctly the delayed scoring of Distant Lands is often too slow. The split can be essential on boards with limited gains or unstable decks. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7e/Market.jpg/200px-Market.jpg) | #78 ▲5 Market (Base) Weighted Average: 40.7% ▲0.7pp / Unweighted Average: 44.0% (76) / Median: 42.1% ▲3.1pp / Standard Deviation: 17.2% Chris is me: Market has +Buy. That’s still good, right? Sure it’s really boring, but economy and +Buy without taking up card or terminal space is neat, especially if you’ve got cheap stuff to amass. On a lot of boards it remains pretty low impact, which isn’t always what you want in a $5. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/d/df/Ball.jpg/320px-Ball.jpg) | #79 ▲15 Ball (Adventures) Weighted Average: 40.4% ▲6.5pp / Unweighted Average: 36.7% (90) / Median: 41.3% ▲18.6pp / Standard Deviation: 17.4% Chris is me: Ball was criminally underrated last time, so I’m glad to see it getting a bit more traction here. It’s not always worth writing home about, but smart application of Ball can lead to accelerated engine building or sneaky pileouts, particularly if you can manage to buy it more than once in a turn. The -Coin token is awkward early on but mostly ignorable later. tracer: Ball should be higher than this. It is fairly common for 2 sub-5 costs to be more important to add to your deck than a 5 cost once you get going. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/d/de/Charm.jpg/200px-Charm.jpg) | #80 ▲7 Charm (Empires) Weighted Average: 40.1% ▲1.1pp / Unweighted Average: 41.4% (80) / Median: 40.4% ▲5.4pp / Standard Deviation: 13.8% tracer: In its worst case Charm is a non-terminal +buy, but when used for gaining can act as +4 or +5 coins rather than +2, which provides massive pile control when in high quantity. For this reason, its rise this year seems justified and I could see it rising even more in years to come. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7c/Courtier.jpg/200px-Courtier.jpg) | #81 ▲5 Courtier (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 39.7% ▲0.7pp / Unweighted Average: 44.2% (75) / Median: 42.9% ▲2.9pp / Standard Deviation: 18.5% xyrix: On some boards Courtier is a very strong payload card, on others you buy it mostly to play it as Ruined Market. Usually you’re pairing it with a 2-type card and it’s flexible but not amazing. I’m not feeling super inspired by its rise. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f4/Pooka.jpg/200px-Pooka.jpg) | #82 ▲15 Pooka (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 39.7% ▲6.8pp / Unweighted Average: 40.4% (82) / Median: 31.0% ▲3.7pp / Standard Deviation: 22.9% xyrix: Pooka has risen but remains appallingly underrated. +4 Cards is good, trashing a Copper is good, certainly the combination is very good. In my opinion Pooka suffers in the rankings from its pairing with Cursed Gold, which causes builds to be generally much slower and more complicated. Additionally, the synergy between Pooka and Silver is often neglected. An early Silver helps ensure that the big hands off of a Pooka play can buy something nice, and prevents needing to play the Cursed Gold later to rebuild economy after the Coppers are thinned. You shouldn’t be afraid of getting more Silvers than you usually would, as Pooka provides an excellent TFB option for them. Chris is me: The trick to Pooka is accepting that you don’t get to play other terminals for a couple of turns after you buy it early on, which makes its +4 cards less accelerating than it might seem. But as long as you’re aware of this and buy Silvers to take advantage of the big economy turns, it’s adequate, I guess. tracer: As you can see, it’s fun to pretend that Pooka is good. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/fe/Emporium.jpg/200px-Emporium.jpg) | #83 ▲10 Emporium (Empires) Weighted Average: 38.9% ▲3.9pp / Unweighted Average: 39.7% (84) / Median: 38.9% ▲9.8pp / Standard Deviation: 14.1% tracer: A big riser on this list, Emporium’s effect on play is fairly unimpressive as just a Peddler. However, the on-gain effect of +2 vp is significant later when looking to win the game and the cost plays nicely with Patrician, which must be out there for Emporium to be available. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/d/df/Seaway.jpg/320px-Seaway.jpg) | #84 ▲1 Seaway (Adventures) Weighted Average: 38.8% ▼1.2pp / Unweighted Average: 39.2% (85) / Median: 42.1% ▲10.1pp / Standard Deviation: 20.6% Chris is me: This feels too low, but I’ve been saying that the past couple of cards, so maybe there are just too many good $5’s. Anyhow throwing a ton of +Buy into your deck without making space for it is just really good, and it barely has any real cost at all as long as there’s a $4 you already wanted. One of the better pile control cards. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/b/b9/Baker.jpg/200px-Baker.jpg) | #85 ▼8 Baker (Guilds) Weighted Average: 38.5% ▼5.5pp / Unweighted Average: 41.4% (81) / Median: 37.3% ▼5.7pp / Standard Deviation: 15.5% Chris is me: I think now that coffers are less novel and rare, people are starting to get that Baker isn’t all that amazing. Coffers are great, yeah, but I mean, if you’re just using them the same turn you get them you’re not getting as much value out of them as you should be. Token hoarding strategies require time to work that most decks just don’t have anymore. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/9/91/Ill-Gotten_Gains.jpg/200px-Ill-Gotten_Gains.jpg) | #86 ▲4 Ill-Gotten Gains (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 38.2% ▲1.8pp / Unweighted Average: 40.0% (83) / Median: 38.9% ▼5.7pp / Standard Deviation: 22.6% tracer: This slight rise is somewhat mysterious to me as I expected Ill-Gotten Gains to have a massive fall like the last 3 years, although space is running out to fall. Despite the classic strategy with IGG being a “rush,” the junking is often somewhat slow and easy to overcome even without strong curse trashing. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/1/1f/Inn.jpg/200px-Inn.jpg) | #87 ▲1 Inn (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 37.4% ▼0.6pp / Unweighted Average: 34.9% (95) / Median: 36.5% ▲2.5pp / Standard Deviation: 17.3% xyrix: This feels somewhat underrated; the on-gain can be very nice if you can get it at the right moment. Its placement at the moment reflects about where I’d rank it without the on-gain. Chris is me: Inn is not entirely defined by the on-gain but it can absolutely save a turn situationally, and sometimes it enables some really wacky golden decks (https://dominionstrategy.com/2019/01/03/kingdom-analysis-1/). It seems just a bit underrated. tracer: Having a village this low is weird. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/36/Trading_Post.jpg/200px-Trading_Post.jpg) | #88 ▼7 Trading Post (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 35.9% ▼4.1pp / Unweighted Average: 35.4% (94) / Median: 33.3% ▼1.7pp / Standard Deviation: 19.5% xyrix: It’s good if you get it on your first two turns and very underwhelming otherwise. Even in the opening there are much better $5 trashers and I think this could fall further. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/9/9d/Trade.jpg/320px-Trade.jpg) | #89 ▼10 Trade (Adventures) Weighted Average: 34.8% ▼7.2pp / Unweighted Average: 35.6% (93) / Median: 32.0% ▼11.0pp / Standard Deviation: 19.5% tracer: Trade sees a large fall after two years of rising. While useful in making some of the fastest money strategies, even those are usually not fast enough. Trade is difficult to incorporate into engines where you would much rather be rid of cards than have them become Silvers and $5 is usually better used for a component. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/2f/Embassy.jpg/200px-Embassy.jpg) | #90 ▼6 Embassy (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 34.8% ▼5.2pp / Unweighted Average: 36.8% (89) / Median: 37.3% ▼6.7pp / Standard Deviation: 15.4% Chris is me Embassy’s rapid fall is mostly consistent with the fall of terminal draw big money, which is all it was really ever good for. It has a large search space but frustratingly doesn’t increase your handsize by much. tracer: Embassy does slightly increase handsize, and given enough terminal space can be valuable as a supplement to other draw. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/79/Idol.jpg/200px-Idol.jpg) | #91 ▼13 Idol (Nocturne) Weighted Average: 34.7% ▼8.3pp / Unweighted Average: 37.8% (86) / Median: 34.9% ▼13.1pp / Standard Deviation: 16.4% Chris is me: The novelty of nonterminal Cursing as long as you have some draw wore off really fast. This card is absolutely plummeting in the rankings, as the Boons are awkward to deal with if not outright harmful, and the Cursing just takes awhile to get going. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/b/bc/Mint.jpg/200px-Mint.jpg) | #92 ▲10 Mint (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 34.3% ▲3.3pp / Unweighted Average: 37.2% (88) / Median: 32.8% ▲3.2pp / Standard Deviation: 22.0% tracer: Mint looks great as a quick trasher with one buy able to thin a number of Coppers at once and then after this can increase payload either through treasure gaining or trash-for-benefit. Its rise is warranted but it is difficult to see it going much higher since drawing a bunch of treasures to trash early without having economic problems is difficult. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/0/07/Tormentor.jpg/200px-Tormentor.jpg) | #93 ▲15 Tormentor (Nocturne) Weighted Average: 34.0% ▲6.4pp / Unweighted Average: 34.2% (97) / Median: 31.0% ▲12.8pp / Standard Deviation: 19.7% xyrix: A big riser, Tormentor is one of the cards that’s helped the most by the presence of Villagers. The main issue with Tormentor is that Tormentors, Hexes, and Imps all see declining returns as you add more of them. However, the first Tormentor is usually a strong addition to the deck. tracer: I’ll suggest that the second Tormentor is also usually a pretty strong addition. Stacking Hexes really hurts. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/b/b2/Wine_Merchant.jpg/200px-Wine_Merchant.jpg) | #94 ▲6 Wine Merchant (Adventures) Weighted Average: 33.3% ▲1.6pp / Unweighted Average: 37.6% (87) / Median: 28.6% ▼0.5pp / Standard Deviation: 21.4% xyrix: Do you need buys? Wine Merchant has a +Buy! +Buy is pretty underrated in card rankings so it makes sense that this is rising. The higher unweighted ranking might reflect that +$4 is a very shiny thing, but asymptotically approaching it by buying more Wine Merchants is often not smart. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/1/1b/Jester.jpg/200px-Jester.jpg) | #95 ▼13 Jester (Cornucopia) Weighted Average: 32.6% ▼7.4pp / Unweighted Average: 36.2% (91) / Median: 29.4% ▼16.6pp / Standard Deviation: 22.3% tracer: Jester is rarely a good buy. It tends to be weak as a junker and weak as a gainer without some sort of support, and being a terminal Silver is not enough to make you buy it for the secondary effect. The massive fall for the second straight year pleases me, and it could stand to drop even more next year. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3a/Sacred_Grove.jpg/200px-Sacred_Grove.jpg) | #96 =0 Sacred Grove (Nocturne) Weighted Average: 32.1% ▼1.1pp / Unweighted Average: 33.2% (98) / Median: 29.4% ▼3.3pp / Standard Deviation: 15.7% Chris is me: Kind of similar to Wine Merchant, except with those Boons that really end up helping your opponent a lot more than you, particularly because they can decline those Boons. You really only get this card because it’s got +Buy, but it’s a bit of an awkward and inconsistent source for that. tracer: Playing Sacred Groves before you have your deck drawn is an often effective way to get as much of the Boons as your opponent. Also pretty decent in money. Could be higher. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/5/51/Band_of_Misfits.jpg/200px-Band_of_Misfits.jpg) | #97 ▲2 Band of Misfits (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 32.0% ▲0.1pp / Unweighted Average: 35.8% (92) / Median: 34.7% ▲2.0pp / Standard Deviation: 19.4% Chris is me: Occasionally there’s some cheap trasher you really don’t wanna keep around that long, and then there’s also some other card you can harmlessly play this as later, and I guess you draw $5 instead of $4 and it’s like “sure I’ll take one of those”. But really it’s just not that efficient most of the time. All of the good stuff is at the $5 price point, and if there are multiple cheap good options you’d rather focus your efforts on figuring out how to gain multiple cheap cards instead of one expensive clone. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/4/4c/Giant.jpg/200px-Giant.jpg) | #98 ▲7 Giant (Adventures) Weighted Average: 30.0% ▲0.9pp / Unweighted Average: 31.7% (100) / Median: 26.2% ▼5.3pp / Standard Deviation: 18.1% tracer: Giant rises after falling for two straight years. While slow, the attack is brutal and the high number of coins is not to be ignored when considering payload. That said, it is strange to have Rogue below it considering how much faster that attack can be without a mostly dead first play. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f8/Windfall.jpg/320px-Windfall.jpg) | #99 ▲8 Windfall (Empires) Weighted Average: 29.9% ▲2.3pp / Unweighted Average: 29.6% (104) / Median: 23.0% ▲0.3pp / Standard Deviation: 21.6% xyrix: Windfall is in strong competition with Pooka as the most underrated thing on this list. Windfall adds a big infusion of payload to your deck at exactly the time you need it, letting you explode from what would otherwise be an overtrashed or overbuilt state. In my opinion if it’s plausible to Windfall on a board, it’s usually a mistake to not build towards it. tracer: Windfall is really good for good decks, which might explain the slightly lower unweighted ranking as many of these players don’t see very many good decks. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/6/62/Vault.jpg/200px-Vault.jpg) | #100 ▼5 Vault (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 29.1% ▼4.4pp / Unweighted Average: 34.5% (96) / Median: 31.0% ▲0.1pp / Standard Deviation: 22.0% xyrix: Vault is a decent money enabler, and sometimes you are willing to buy a $5 Moat. You never really want a $5 Moat though, and I think Vault is a weaker money enabler than some of the cards below it, so it could stand to fall further. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/22/Treasure_Trove.jpg/200px-Treasure_Trove.jpg) | #101 ▼3 Treasure Trove (Adventures) Weighted Average: 28.5% ▼3.9pp / Unweighted Average: 30.2% (103) / Median: 29.4% ▲0.3pp / Standard Deviation: 16.4% tracer: Like Trade, Treasure Trove has a reputation of enabling strong money strategies, but even strong money strategies are not strong enough most of the time. The Copper gains and buy phase gaining make Treasure trove problematic as payload expansion in engines, so its low rank is justified. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/9/98/Library.jpg/200px-Library.jpg) | #102 ▲1 Library (Base) Weighted Average: 27.3% ▼3.6pp / Unweighted Average: 28.3% (105) / Median: 27.0% ▼2.6pp / Standard Deviation: 15.1% Chris is me: I feel kind of bad for Library. It really tries to make terminal draw to X work by letting you avoid wasting draw slots on payload you’re not ready to play. Problem is, when the key component of an already fickle strategy costs $5, it’s just going to take so damn long to get it ready to go even if you do have all the support it needs. Villagers probably make it a bit better, but it’s really rare that this is going to give you better draw performance than any other Smithy plus. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/5/51/Cobbler.jpg/200px-Cobbler.jpg) | #103 ▼23 Cobbler (Nocturne) Weighted Average: 27.3% ▼13.7pp / Unweighted Average: 30.2% (102) / Median: 23.8% ▼24.2pp / Standard Deviation: 17.5% Chris is me: Cobbler definitely has its problems and deserved to plummet from its surprisingly high rank before, but I think it’s not quite this bad. Even though it’s slow, it’s a nonterminal gainer that can get you the component you need right now in your hand, so it comes in handy a lot. Often ignorable, but when it’s not you’re glad you have it. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/4/46/Bandit.jpg/200px-Bandit.jpg) | #104 ▲2 Bandit (Base) Weighted Average: 27.2% ▼1.1pp / Unweighted Average: 32.0% (99) / Median: 27.8% ▼0.8pp / Standard Deviation: 17.5% tracer: A terminal Gold gainer has its uses, but the attack on Bandit is mostly ignorable if against a competent opponent. Among treasure gainers, all of which correctly fall low on this list for their limited use, I would place Bandit last for being strictly terminal with a weak secondary effect and gaining to the discard pile. Chris is me: They can’t all be Explorer, is what you’re saying. tracer: Yes Explorer is better than Bandit. Fight me. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/e/eb/Capital.jpg/200px-Capital.jpg) | #105 ▼16 Capital (Empires) Weighted Average: 26.0% ▼11.1pp / Unweighted Average: 27.1% (107) / Median: 25.4% ▼11.9pp / Standard Deviation: 15.6% xyrix: Some people really hate Capital, seeing it as a big shiny +$6 that conceals its true identity as a bad card. I am not one of those people! Taking debt off of Capital plays is often a smart way to gain tempo by increasing your payload. It also has a fairly high number of combos (Mandarin, Crown, Counterfeit, Crypt, Herbalist) and is of course very good on the last turn of the game. I’m not sure why Capital fell so much but I think it will rise again eventually. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/d/d6/Cartographer.jpg/200px-Cartographer.jpg) | #106 ▼2 Cartographer (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 25.0% ▼5.1pp / Unweighted Average: 28.0% (106) / Median: 23.8% ▼1.7pp / Standard Deviation: 15.7% xyrix: Cartographer isn’t bad in the way that some of the cards ranked above it are; most of the time you would be happy to receive free Cartographers. It just doesn’t quite do enough to justify a higher ranking. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/1/13/Graverobber.jpg/200px-Graverobber.jpg) | #107 ▲2 Graverobber (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 24.5% ▼1.8pp / Unweighted Average: 26.7% (108) / Median: 20.6% ▼4.9pp / Standard Deviation: 16.5% tracer: Graverobber’s low placement on these lists has always been somewhat perplexing to me. While it shouldn’t be above the components and power cards, with available actions Graverobber provides a fairly effective payload option being able to trash those components into points. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/fd/Treasury.jpg/200px-Treasury.jpg) | #108 ▼7 Treasury (Seaside) Weighted Average: 23.3% ▼8.2pp / Unweighted Average: 30.8% (101) / Median: 25.4% ▼1.9pp / Standard Deviation: 21.3% Chris is me: We’re at the really boring part of the list now. Treasury doesn’t actively harm you, but it doesn’t do a lot to really help. There’s a sorta narrow use case - where you hit $5, you need a consistent economy boost, you’re not drawing your deck, and the coin doesn’t go to waste. xyrix: I think Treasury is a little underrated. If the topdecking lets you see it twice in a shuffle where you’d otherwise only see it once, then you’ve effectively bought two Peddlers for $5, which isn’t a bad deal. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/8/84/Crypt.jpg/200px-Crypt.jpg) | #109 ▼18 Crypt (Nocturne) Weighted Average: 22.9% ▼12.3pp / Unweighted Average: 26.0% (109) / Median: 19.1% ▼19.1pp / Standard Deviation: 17.0% Chris is me: If only Crypt gained to hand, it would be a lot more of a neat utility card. But for now, it’s a really slow card, that you pick up in the kinds of games where you would really much rather have trashing, and because of that you have trouble lining it up with 3+ treasures at once in the first place. xyrix: Crypt is a bit odd in that it’s a draw card that only works if you have other draw cards, in which case do you really need the Crypt? |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f6/Rogue.jpg/200px-Rogue.jpg) | #110 ▲2 Rogue (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 22.4% ▲1.9pp / Unweighted Average: 25.7% (110) / Median: 16.7% ▲2.8pp / Standard Deviation: 23.6% tracer: While rising slightly, Rogue’s placement is very low for such a unique effect. On many boards, Rogue allows for slow stealing of opponent’s cards and can be a strong gainer in combination with trash-for-benefit. Comparing with the similar and also-lowly-ranked Graverobber, Rogue is easier to fit into a deck early due to the +2 coins. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/1/10/Duke.jpg/200px-Duke.jpg) | #111 ▼1 Duke (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 21.6% ▼4.6pp / Unweighted Average: 24.9% (111) / Median: 15.9% ▼5.0pp / Standard Deviation: 23.7% xyrix: Duke is potentially one of the strongest alt-VP cards on boards where it is plausible to continually hit $5, since if the Duchy pile is uncontested 6–8 VP Dukes are very strong. The problem with Duke is that a competent opponent pursuing a non-Duke strategy will happily slow down to take 3–4 Duchies and then go on to win on Provinces. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/74/Villain.jpg/200px-Villain.jpg) | #112 Villain (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 20.8% / Unweighted Average: 23.0% (113) / Median: 19.8% / Standard Deviation: 15.4% xyrix: One of the weakest attacks in the game, Villain whiffs early on Estates and late on Provinces. In the midgame discarding a payload card can hurt but it’s fairly rare for Villain to cause a dud. The +2 Coffers is nice but isn’t enough of an improvement on +$2 to justify the $5 price. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/37/Mystic.jpg/200px-Mystic.jpg) | #113 ▼1 Mystic (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 19.8% ▼4.4pp / Unweighted Average: 23.1% (112) / Median: 15.1% ▼3.0pp / Standard Deviation: 18.3% tracer: Mystic is appealing for its potential as a cantrip +2 coins, but is expensive and extremely inconsistent for this effect compared to Conspirator. The low ranking is appropriate, and the only thing stopping it from going lower is the exceptional terribleness of those cards below it. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f2/Road_Network.jpg/320px-Road_Network.jpg) | #114 Road Network (Renaissance) Weighted Average: 18.5% / Unweighted Average: 22.7% (114) / Median: 15.1% / Standard Deviation: 22.3% Chris is me: I’m gonna be honest this card is so boring I just don’t have anything to say. xyrix: It has fun interactions with Ambassador and Swindler, at least. tracer: It has some potential if you aren’t desperate for points and your opponent is, which might mean you’ve already won. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3a/Explorer.jpg/200px-Explorer.jpg) | #115 ▲4 Explorer (Seaside) Weighted Average: 16.1% ▲4.4pp / Unweighted Average: 17.4% (117) / Median: 11.1% ▲2.0pp / Standard Deviation: 18.3% Chris is me: Treasure gainers get a bit of a bad rap, and Explorer gaining to hand makes it so you can instantly use that Treasure as your TFB fuel or economy or whatever. The Province thing is kinda a distraction honestly, it’s just nice to put Silvers in your hand sometimes? But you can’t get it super early and it competes with a bunch of really good $5s for your attention. Still, it’s skipped more than it ought to be. (“Say the line, Chris!”) “They can’t all be the best $5 ever”. tracer: Explorer is one of the better treasure gainers for engines since it doesn’t require you to draw the gained card. This card is really underappreciated. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/74/Pillage.jpg/200px-Pillage.jpg) | #116 ▼1 Pillage (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 13.0% ▼2.3pp / Unweighted Average: 16.9% (118) / Median: 11.3% ▼1.4pp / Standard Deviation: 18.4% tracer: Pillage is awful and probably should be lower. While the attack is often devastating, only being one-shot makes it difficult to spend a gain on without falling behind and the secondary effect of 2 Spoils is weak and slow as you only see them 2 shuffles after the initial buy. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/9/92/Merchant_Ship.jpg/200px-Merchant_Ship.jpg) | #117 =0 Merchant Ship (Seaside) Weighted Average: 12.4% ▲0.5pp / Unweighted Average: 17.7% (116) / Median: 9.5% ▼0.5pp / Standard Deviation: 20.3% xyrix: I never even really consider Merchant Ship other than in decks with Tactician, City Quarter, or King’s Court where you just really want Action payload of some sort. Even then it’s not great with KC since your KC will just get stuck on the Merchant Ship. It could be ranked last and I wouldn’t think that was particularly out of place. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/e/ef/Venture.jpg/200px-Venture.jpg) | #118 ▼2 Venture (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 11.8% ▼1.4pp / Unweighted Average: 18.2% (115) / Median: 9.5% ▼0.5pp / Standard Deviation: 21.9% xyrix: Venture is better than Silver if you’re not drawing your deck. That’s all it has going for it. Chris is me: Dude Venture is awful. Venture is best in treasure heavy decks without much deck-drawing potential, where you also have extra buys to use all that money. This basically never happens. Venture is usually just a waste of a kingdom slot. tracer: My co-writers are being a bit harsh here I think. Sure Venture is bad but it has more of a place in the thinned down money decks that are more common these days than say, Merchant Ship, which takes an action to use. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/8/8e/Mine.jpg/200px-Mine.jpg) | #119 ▲5 Mine (Base) Weighted Average: 10.1% ▲2.1pp / Unweighted Average: 14.3% (119) / Median: 7.9% ▼0.3pp / Standard Deviation: 19.1% tracer: Mine is occasionally buyable, which isn’t saying much. Sometimes when it is the only trasher Mine can be better than doing nothing on that front, and frequent plays are sometimes the best way to build economy, but both of these cases are rare. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/d/dd/Royal_Seal.jpg/200px-Royal_Seal.jpg) | #120 ▲2 Royal Seal (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 7.9% ▼1.4pp / Unweighted Average: 13.5% (120) / Median: 7.1% ▼1.1pp / Standard Deviation: 20.8% Chris is me: The one thing I’ll defend Royal Seal with is that topdecking is a huge control and momentum booster. But not as much of a boost that it offsets skipping a critical $5 early to get what amounts to another Silver. tracer: Royal Seal is likely only this high due to its inoffensiveness, but I actually buy some of the cards below it. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/5/58/Contraband.jpg/200px-Contraband.jpg) | #121 ▼1 Contraband (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 7.1% ▼3.5pp / Unweighted Average: 12.4% (121) / Median: 5.6% =0.0pp / Standard Deviation: 19.6% Chris is me: Hey, you can buy events and projects with this, so it’s better than it used to be. Right? I mean, only kind of. It has +Buy so people will find ways to force it into decks it doesn’t belong in (which is almost any deck, really). Man, Prosperity had a lot of duds for being such a lauded set. tracer: People’s seemingly constant desire to use Contraband is amusing. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/8/89/Raid.jpg/320px-Raid.jpg) | #122 ▼4 Raid (Adventures) Weighted Average: 7.0% ▼4.4pp / Unweighted Average: 9.7% (122) / Median: 4.8% ▼4.3pp / Standard Deviation: 17.1% tracer: I would have liked to see Raid higher than this for being a more common buy than those cards surrounding it. Raid is often a decent buy in money strategies and is occasionally effective at expanding payload in engines with large amounts of draw, with a small attack too. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/6/68/Mandarin.jpg/200px-Mandarin.jpg) | #123 =0 Mandarin (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 5.8% ▼2.3pp / Unweighted Average: 9.4% (123) / Median: 4.0% ▼3.1pp / Standard Deviation: 17.8% xyrix: Mandarin/Capital is a thing. Mandarin/Horn of Plenty can also be a thing, although I’ve never seen it in the wild. Otherwise, there are situations where you might want a Mandarin but you don’t want to deal with having your Treasures topdecked so you don’t get one. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/5/5d/Counting_House.jpg/200px-Counting_House.jpg) | #124 ▼3 Counting House (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 5.3% ▼5.1pp / Unweighted Average: 7.6% (124) / Median: 4.0% ▼0.6pp / Standard Deviation: 16.8% xyrix: Counting House/Travelling Fair is gamebreaking and Counting House/Night Watchman is very strong. Otherwise, it’s very very hard to find boards where Counting House is worth gaining: you generally need a lot of Coppers, a way to manipulate the position of your Counting House within the shuffle, and something better than a Province to spend your big hand of Coppers on. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/6/66/Cache.jpg/200px-Cache.jpg) | #125 =0 Cache (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 5.0% ▼1.0pp / Unweighted Average: 7.3% (125) / Median: 2.4% ▼0.3pp / Standard Deviation: 16.9% tracer: It is rare for decks to want to buy a Gold and this one comes with 2 Coppers, but there are a few cases where those Coppers can be dealt with easily. Cache has a strong claim to the last spot on this list, and I think possibly a better one than the two cards below it, although the distinction is not really meaningful. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/1/1c/Harvest.jpg/200px-Harvest.jpg) | #126 ▲1 Harvest (Cornucopia) Weighted Average: 4.1% ▲0.3pp / Unweighted Average: 6.6% (126) / Median: 0.8% ▼0.1pp / Standard Deviation: 17.0% Chris is me: Harvest is so boring. I just don’t really have a lot to say, it’s an uneventful card. It might get a little use in some draw your deck engines as payload, if it didn’t require you to have a deck to get coin, but there’s shockingly few niches for this card. tracer: Harvest is one of the few cards where having a board where it can be used is a big deal. |
| (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/23/Stash.jpg/200px-Stash.jpg) | #127 ▼1 Stash (Promo) Weighted Average: 3.6% ▼2.1pp / Unweighted Average: 6.4% (127) / Median: 2.4% ▼2.2pp / Standard Deviation: 18.8% Chris is me: Stash is a bad card in almost all circumstances. But really it’s not at the bottom of the list because it’s actually worse than Cache or Harvest or whatever. It’s because you really don’t want to figure out the *optimal place for your Silvers* every time you shuffle. That’s so weird to do! How can you really know, really. Was the multiple $5 gains worth the analysis paralysis? No, it was not. |
Please reverse the order; this is backwards from all the other card lists; and opposite of how a countdown normally works.
I think Pizza is pretty accurately rated. It's basically an expensive Herald, which is fine because sometimes you pay $5 for a Herald even if the overpay doesn't help you.
Please reverse the order; this is backwards from all the other card lists; and opposite of how a countdown normally works.
The trick to Pooka is accepting that you don’t get to play other terminals for a couple of turns after you buy it early on, which makes its +4 cards less accelerating than it might seem.
As you can see, it’s fun to pretend that Pooka is good.
Isn't the fact that you can't play other terminals proof of how bad it is?
Isn't the fact that you can't play other terminals proof of how bad it is?
TIL a cheaper Hunting Grounds with an extra benefit added on top is bad.
Isn't the fact that you can't play other terminals proof of how bad it is?
TIL a cheaper Hunting Grounds with an extra benefit added on top is bad.
The trashing isn't necessarily a benefit. With Pooka you often have to choose between:
1. Getting it early, thus drawing all your terminals dead and running out of fuel when your engine is still in high gear
2. Getting it later on, thus forcing yourself to keep junk in your deck but then making it difficult to connect with the junk when you're actually using it.
Isn't the fact that you can't play other terminals proof of how bad it is?
TIL a cheaper Hunting Grounds with an extra benefit added on top is bad.
The trashing isn't necessarily a benefit. With Pooka you often have to choose between:
1. Getting it early, thus drawing all your terminals dead and running out of fuel when your engine is still in high gear
2. Getting it later on, thus forcing yourself to keep junk in your deck but then making it difficult to connect with the junk when you're actually using it.
You don't have to choose between those unless you overterminal yourself in the early game.
One of the weakest attacks in the game, Villain whiffs early on Estates and late on Provinces.
Pizza is most likely underrated.
Unless you want to play literally any terminal other than Pooka in the early game, you mean.
Because it also trashes a Peddler?Unless you want to play literally any terminal other than Pooka in the early game, you mean.
Why would I want to play any terminal other than a Hunting Grounds that gains me a free Lab every time I play it?
And puts you down $1 this turn.Because it also trashes a Peddler?Unless you want to play literally any terminal other than Pooka in the early game, you mean.
Why would I want to play any terminal other than a Hunting Grounds that gains me a free Lab every time I play it?
Please reverse the order; this is backwards from all the other card lists; and opposite of how a countdown normally works.
For some reason the standard way to post these is such that I need to scroll to the bottom and then read going upwards. If posting them in the way that doesn't bother me does bother you I suggest doing the same.
I feel like the longer these lists go on, the less they are useful for newer players. This is to be expected though, they're not the target audience. I've played hundreds of games, but still struggle to consistently assemble cohesive engines. For the vast majority of players, going for something like Treasure Trove BM is going to work out much better than attempting to make some kind of complicated Merchant Guild engine. Not a complaint; just an observation.
I feel like the longer these lists go on, the less they are useful for newer players. This is to be expected though, they're not the target audience. I've played hundreds of games, but still struggle to consistently assemble cohesive engines. For the vast majority of players, going for something like Treasure Trove BM is going to work out much better than attempting to make some kind of complicated Merchant Guild engine. Not a complaint; just an observation.
This is true... as someone who used to be really good (back in the Iso days), but has only played rarely since then, I read all these strategy posts and follow what all the "good" cards are supposed to be... and then when I do occasionally play in person, against other players who are not newbies but also who don't spend time reading this forum, I almost never win. I buy the right cards that are supposed to be good, but I don't have the practice or experience to put it all together correctly. (Most recently I lost a game where I bought Recruiter and my opponent didn't).
Unless you want to play literally any terminal other than Pooka in the early game, you mean.
Why would I want to play any terminal other than a Hunting Grounds that gains me a free Lab every time I play it?
Jeez, what do you people have against cursers
Unless you want to play literally any terminal other than Pooka in the early game, you mean.
Why would I want to play any terminal other than a Hunting Grounds that gains me a free Lab every time I play it?
Because Lab Big Money isn't really that dominant on its own, generally decks try to accomplish something else.
Well, the lists weren't ever really super useful for anyone. They are fun, that's the main point.
Well, the lists weren't ever really super useful for anyone. They are fun, that's the main point.
I disagree that they're not super useful. I have Qvist rankings open in the next tab when I play. If I'm split between buys or strategies, I check the Qvist rankings of each card to decide. Over time I memorize the community consensus and stop looking at the rankings so much, but that wouldn't be possible without the rankings.
Also I use them as a litmus test that the way I'm evaluating cards is correct. It happened very often that I thought a card wasn't strong, but Qvist rankings said it was. This forces me to think about what aspects of the card I'm undervaluing.
Well, the lists weren't ever really super useful for anyone. They are fun, that's the main point.
I disagree that they're not super useful. I have Qvist rankings open in the next tab when I play. If I'm split between buys or strategies, I check the Qvist rankings of each card to decide. Over time I memorize the community consensus and stop looking at the rankings so much, but that wouldn't be possible without the rankings.
Also I use them as a litmus test that the way I'm evaluating cards is correct. It happened very often that I thought a card wasn't strong, but Qvist rankings said it was. This forces me to think about what aspects of the card I'm undervaluing.
Are you sure you want to give the guy who voted Chapel last and Duchess first a say in the strategies you pick?
No idea why that person did that, but we did encounter software bugs that can mess up the rankings in ordered mode.I am going to guess, they just had their list backwards.
If the rest of that person's data is as bad as chapel and duchess, ideally I would like to exclude it as an outlier.Agreed; it's likely either a bug, an accidental submission in reverse order, or trolling. On that matter, would Chapel have kept its #1 position without this one outlier? Or did that person rank Page almost as badly as Chapel?
Well, the lists weren't ever really super useful for anyone. They are fun, that's the main point.
I disagree that they're not super useful. I have Qvist rankings open in the next tab when I play. If I'm split between buys or strategies, I check the Qvist rankings of each card to decide. Over time I memorize the community consensus and stop looking at the rankings so much, but that wouldn't be possible without the rankings.
Also I use them as a litmus test that the way I'm evaluating cards is correct. It happened very often that I thought a card wasn't strong, but Qvist rankings said it was. This forces me to think about what aspects of the card I'm undervaluing.
Well, the lists weren't ever really super useful for anyone. They are fun, that's the main point.
I disagree that they're not super useful. I have Qvist rankings open in the next tab when I play. If I'm split between buys or strategies, I check the Qvist rankings of each card to decide. Over time I memorize the community consensus and stop looking at the rankings so much, but that wouldn't be possible without the rankings.
Also I use them as a litmus test that the way I'm evaluating cards is correct. It happened very often that I thought a card wasn't strong, but Qvist rankings said it was. This forces me to think about what aspects of the card I'm undervaluing.
This doesn't seem like a good way to make decisions. It's better to gain cards based on what roles they fill and how they interact with each other. For the rankings to really be useful for in-game decisions, you'd have to encounter a choice between two cards that cost the same and perform the same basic function, a relatively (and increasingly) rare occurrence. And even then, the best choice is often because one card has a subtle interaction with another card in the kingdom that the competing card lacks, not because it happens to be higher in the rankings.
I fixed the order. Thanks GendoIkari for doing the work so I just had to copy/paste.
But every single other card list, both this year and years past, has been posted in the same way, so it seems really weird and bad to suddenly have one thread that is different than all the rest.They haven't all been posted the same way, unless you mean, eventually. http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=18150.0
I fixed the order. Thanks GendoIkari for doing the work so I just had to copy/paste.
I fixed the order. Thanks GendoIkari for doing the work so I just had to copy/paste.
No, now it's broken. Tracer, Chris is me and Xyrix had it that way, why can't they be allowed to display it the way they want to? One person has a problem with it (Gendo) and now it has to change? What?
I fixed the order. Thanks GendoIkari for doing the work so I just had to copy/paste.
No, now it's broken. Tracer, Chris is me and Xyrix had it that way, why can't they be allowed to display it the way they want to? One person has a problem with it (Gendo) and now it has to change? What?
I was clearly not the only person; given the other threads, other comments, and respect given on various comments. But like I said, it should be up to majority opinion. I’ve listed several reasons to think that the majority opinion is the same as mine; but I wouldn’t complain if that turns out to be wrong. My initial comment was never meant to complain or say I had a problem with it; only to point out that this wasn’t what people expect from these lists.
With Sauna often questionable as a gain
Also, I don't get why Sacred Grove is 53 spots lower than Treasurer?
- Sacred Grove (96) my list: 39
- Treasurer (43) my list: 34 (at least I had it higher than Sacred Grove)
The first three plays of Recruiter are a Lost City that trashes Estates - awesome! It then turns into a Moat that trashes Copper - less awesome. I think burning higher value cards into Actions is less useful than say, Salvager or Bishop, or even Apprentice.
It is also worth noting that while Recruiter gets less awesome in the later game, buying and trashing stuff for Villagers is still almost as cost-effective as Acting Troupe while being more flexible.The first three plays of Recruiter are a Lost City that trashes Estates - awesome! It then turns into a Moat that trashes Copper - less awesome. I think burning higher value cards into Actions is less useful than say, Salvager or Bishop, or even Apprentice.
Especially Apprentice. But see, Recruiter is better than a trashing Lost City when it trashes Estates, because maybe you don't need the villagers that turn. Remember those times where you trigger Shanty Town but have no use for those actions, well Recruiter saves those actions for later. You do need to be careful with the forced trashing. If you got two recruiters, consider trashing one to the other before you finish trashing all your junk.
Sorry. I got multiple requests to change it. I assumed that everyone did it countdown style - because all the other lists I had seen were like that - and assumed that these guys got it wrong.I fixed the order. Thanks GendoIkari for doing the work so I just had to copy/paste.
No, now it's broken. Tracer, Chris is me and Xyrix had it that way, why can't they be allowed to display it the way they want to? One person has a problem with it (Gendo) and now it has to change? What?
Sorry. I got multiple requests to change it. I assumed that everyone did it countdown style - because all the other lists I had seen were like that - and assumed that these guys got it wrong.I fixed the order. Thanks GendoIkari for doing the work so I just had to copy/paste.
No, now it's broken. Tracer, Chris is me and Xyrix had it that way, why can't they be allowed to display it the way they want to? One person has a problem with it (Gendo) and now it has to change? What?
I was mistaken. I won't do it again.
Sorry. I got multiple requests to change it. I assumed that everyone did it countdown style - because all the other lists I had seen were like that - and assumed that these guys got it wrong.I fixed the order. Thanks GendoIkari for doing the work so I just had to copy/paste.
No, now it's broken. Tracer, Chris is me and Xyrix had it that way, why can't they be allowed to display it the way they want to? One person has a problem with it (Gendo) and now it has to change? What?
I was mistaken. I won't do it again.
Yes, it was a conscious decision by my fellow authors and I, who agreed that we prefer to read the lists in that order. Since the alternative version is available courtesy of Gendo, I will revert the edits.
The first three plays of Recruiter are a Lost City that trashes Estates - awesome! It then turns into a Moat that trashes Copper - less awesome. I think burning higher value cards into Actions is less useful than say, Salvager or Bishop, or even Apprentice.
Then why did you start with the bottom third? If you prefer seeing the highest ranked card first, why didn't you start with the top third?
I really do not understand your preference. Building up to the top card is much more dramatic and interesting. With your way, it's just "oh that's the winner congrats wharf" and it's anticlimactic.
I made some rankings based on Markus' statistics (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M2L7hcY3sbA33OwuZhgPYJWVlMFgJYBdK8cnkbJHmbo/edit#gid=0), using the winner's gain percentage (or buy percentage in the case of projects/events), and I'm going to compare them to the Qvist rankings.
Forum - Qvist 59, Markus 13, 80% gain
Fleet - Qvist 52, Markus 81, 48% buy
Groundskeeper - Qvist 22, Markus 36, 69% gain
It would be awesome for a $3 card (essentially Masquerade with forced trashing), but not so much for $5.The first three plays of Recruiter are a Lost City that trashes Estates - awesome! It then turns into a Moat that trashes Copper - less awesome. I think burning higher value cards into Actions is less useful than say, Salvager or Bishop, or even Apprentice.
A Moat that trashes Copper is super awesome.
And so is a Hunting Grounds that trashes a Copper, for what it's worth.How do you get that from any of the cards mentioned?
He is reminding people that he likes Pooka.QuoteAnd so is a Hunting Grounds that trashes a Copper, for what it's worth.How do you get that from any of the cards mentioned?
It would be awesome for a $3 card (essentially Masquerade with forced trashing), but not so much for $5.The first three plays of Recruiter are a Lost City that trashes Estates - awesome! It then turns into a Moat that trashes Copper - less awesome. I think burning higher value cards into Actions is less useful than say, Salvager or Bishop, or even Apprentice.
A Moat that trashes Copper is super awesome.
He is reminding people that he likes Pooka.QuoteAnd so is a Hunting Grounds that trashes a Copper, for what it's worth.How do you get that from any of the cards mentioned?
He is reminding people that he likes Pooka.QuoteAnd so is a Hunting Grounds that trashes a Copper, for what it's worth.How do you get that from any of the cards mentioned?
Easy to see why, a Hunting Grounds that trashes a Copper is great, especially when it doesn't whiff when drawn with three Estates and a stubborn Heirloom.
I have plotted weighted against unweighted ratings.
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