Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: mandioca15 on February 15, 2020, 02:51:14 pm
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It does seem to make the game a lot easier than normal. You don't need to plan as much; having all those Villagers to hand makes it simple to play all your terminals whenever you want. I've won quite a few games with it in the Kingdom when my opponents include a player who I would consider to be a lot stronger than me.
Has anyone else found this?
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I've lost a game due to reading so much here about how great Recruiter is. The mistake was I was thinking of it as a drawer, and you can't do that. The +2 cards makes it so that the turn you can trash without losing hand size; same as Masquerade. But you still need other terminal draw to make it good.
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I've lost a game due to reading so much here about how great Recruiter is. The mistake was I was thinking of it as a drawer, and you can't do that. The +2 cards makes it so that the turn you can trash without losing hand size; same as Masquerade. But you still need other terminal draw to make it good.
It isn't a drawer, it's a cantrip that gains a lab.
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I've lost a game due to reading so much here about how great Recruiter is. The mistake was I was thinking of it as a drawer, and you can't do that. The +2 cards makes it so that the turn you can trash without losing hand size; same as Masquerade. But you still need other terminal draw to make it good.
It isn't a drawer, it's a cantrip that gains a lab.
it's also a village, right?
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I've lost a game due to reading so much here about how great Recruiter is. The mistake was I was thinking of it as a drawer, and you can't do that. The +2 cards makes it so that the turn you can trash without losing hand size; same as Masquerade. But you still need other terminal draw to make it good.
It isn't a drawer, it's a cantrip that gains a lab.
it's also a village, right?
Absolutely.
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I've lost a game due to reading so much here about how great Recruiter is. The mistake was I was thinking of it as a drawer, and you can't do that. The +2 cards makes it so that the turn you can trash without losing hand size; same as Masquerade. But you still need other terminal draw to make it good.
It isn't a drawer, it's a cantrip that gains a lab.
it's also a village, right?
Absolutely.
Unless you buy too many, as I did. By the end of my game, it was a Curse, because playing one would have meant forced trashing a card I wanted to keep.
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I've lost a game due to reading so much here about how great Recruiter is. The mistake was I was thinking of it as a drawer, and you can't do that. The +2 cards makes it so that the turn you can trash without losing hand size; same as Masquerade. But you still need other terminal draw to make it good.
It isn't a drawer, it's a cantrip that gains a lab.
it's also a village, right?
Absolutely.
Unless you buy too many, as I did. By the end of my game, it was a Curse, because playing one would have meant forced trashing a card I wanted to keep.
Trash one of the Recruiters that you have too many of.
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I've lost a game due to reading so much here about how great Recruiter is. The mistake was I was thinking of it as a drawer, and you can't do that. The +2 cards makes it so that the turn you can trash without losing hand size; same as Masquerade. But you still need other terminal draw to make it good.
It isn't a drawer, it's a cantrip that gains a lab.
it's also a village, right?
Absolutely.
Unless you buy too many, as I did. By the end of my game, it was a Curse, because playing one would have meant forced trashing a card I wanted to keep.
Trash one of the Recruiters that you have too many of.
I did; though I seem to remember having issues where they didn't line up also. I'm not saying Recruiter isn't strong or great. I'm just saying that you can screw yourself over by getting too many of them and thinking of the +2 cards as draw.
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well you can screw yourself over with chapel too.
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Recruiter is very, very good, but idk if I'd say it's too good. It's more like Chapel IMO, where it's obviously busted but it also makes the game more interesting.
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Very powerful cards are mainly bad if they are monolithic and decisions become automatic. Imagine like, +1 action, gain a Province. You'd just buy and play that card over and over. Powerful cards that work in the rest of the board, that can be played more than one way, and don't win the game by themselves? They're good for the game. That's Recruiter.
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Very powerful cards are mainly bad if they are monolithic and decisions become automatic. Imagine like, +1 action, gain a Province. You'd just buy and play that card over and over.
(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f8/Rebuild.jpg/373px-Rebuild.jpg)
but yeah recruiter just makes it a different, faster game, like Chapel / Remake / Donate / Goat
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Interestingly Rebuild, while being more wacky than Recruiter, actually leads to more subtle play with the Duchy bottleneck and so on.
I also think that you can skip Rebuild more often than Recruiter.
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Rebuild is not nearly as one-dimensional and automatic as people make it out to be. A very underrated benefit is as an unorthodox miller. You don't really care whether Rebuild hits Province or Duchy; your goal is to annihilate the Province pile. A very annoying way to bolster your lead, or to punish overbuilding.
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I also think that you can skip Rebuild more often than Recruiter.
You can skip Rebuild more often than not.
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Rebuild isn't as good as Recruiter for sure - but to say it has more strategic depth than Recruiter is laughable. There's not zero depth, sure, but almost all Rebuild strategies are highly monolithic. Recruiter plays very differently on different boards.
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Rebuild isn't as good as Recruiter for sure - but to say it has more strategic depth than Recruiter is laughable. There's not zero depth, sure, but almost all Rebuild strategies are highly monolithic. Recruiter plays very differently on different boards.
This was actually part of an article I was planning to write at some point, but I never got around to doing it.
Rebuild combos really poorly with most cards in Dominion, because Rebuild requires buying VP cards early. So Rebuild strategies are monolithic, but they also haven't gotten much better with expansions. Between more VP chips from Empires, more powerful cards from Renaissance, and better play in general, Rebuild has gotten worse relative to other options.
I still think the game would be better if Rebuild didn't exist though, it's pretty boring to play.
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So why exactly is Recruiter so strong?
- Masquerade showed us that drawing two cards before you trash is incredibly strong. In the early game, it makes you way more likely to find an estate which you usually want to prioritse trashing first, instead of having to find one in 4 other cards, you get to look at 6 other cards. So Recruiter is quite consistent at trashing the highest priority junk first.
- Drawing cards is one of the strongest effects a card in Dominion can have. While Recruiter isn't a draw card per se as your handsize does not increase, you're still cycling your deck, so you can use it and your newly purchased cards sooner and more often. You have better turns when you use the Recruiter, early on you'll have more coppers in hand to buy stronger cards, drawing 2 coppers is like the $2 you get from Priest plus cycling. Later on your engine becomes more consistent, as Recruiter isnt a stop card so even if you weren't looking to trash more, playing it anyway might save a turn from otherwise dudding. And playing Recruiter as a last-ditch attempt at saving your turn is way better than playing Masquerade in the same situation, as if the worst happens, you will be trading an OK card for some villagers, which is still pretty good, instead of giving it to your opponent, possibly in exchange for a worse card.
- Villagers are really good. Regular village cards rely on you drawing them first or at the same time as your terminals, but villagers dont have this problem. Early on you can think of Recruiter as a non-terminal Masquerade, which sounds super strong, but its actually even better than that. Recruiter can be better than a village. It can generate a lot of villagers, it can be beneficial to trash stronger treasures or even engine components over coppers so that you gain incredible consistency over your deck. Never be stuck being unable to play the cards you draw. Buy a Smithy then trash that silver you opened with, the coppers drawn by Smithy will give you equivalent economy and you can just focus on building more with no worries about drawing your actions dead. As the only village, Recruiter can work, but needs a gainer to provide fuel, and if your draw is terminal you might want tone down your grand aspirations for your deck a bit.
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Rebuild is not nearly as one-dimensional and automatic as people make it out to be. A very underrated benefit is as an unorthodox miller. You don't really care whether Rebuild hits Province or Duchy; your goal is to annihilate the Province pile. A very annoying way to bolster your lead, or to punish overbuilding.
I agree, Rebuild is often tricky to play, especially in those asymmetrical situations you mentioned ... and in multiplayer you gotta keep in mind what Victory cards the Rebuild-using players have in their deck which is mentally more tasking than a less interactive card like Recruiter.
Not that Recruiter cannot be tricky, e.g. if it is the only splitter, liquidating good stuff into Villagers well isn't always as straightforward as using it only to trash junk.
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Rebuild is not nearly as one-dimensional and automatic as people make it out to be. A very underrated benefit is as an unorthodox miller. You don't really care whether Rebuild hits Province or Duchy; your goal is to annihilate the Province pile. A very annoying way to bolster your lead, or to punish overbuilding.
I agree, Rebuild is often tricky to play, especially in those asymmetrical situations you mentioned ... and in multiplayer you gotta keep in mind what Victory cards the Rebuild-using players have in their deck which is mentally more tasking than a less interactive card like Recruiter.
Not that Recruiter cannot be tricky, e.g. if it is the only splitter, liquidating good stuff into Villagers well isn't always as straightforward as using it only to trash junk.
There's a difference between how hard a card is to play, and what kinds of play experiences it gives you. Rebuild relies heavily on deck tracking to be played well, but in the end you're still using it to run down Provinces almost all the time, with the exceptions being things like Duchy/Duke. Meanwhile, the heuristic of "trash Estate, then Copper, then trash something I don't need if I need more Villagers" may be less tricky for Recruiter, but the kinds of games you get out of it are more varied.
Basically, Rebuild games turn all your decisions into "how do I Rebuild", and Recruiter games turn some of your decisions into "how do I Recruiter", but also leaves lots of decisions for "okay, now how do I abuse all these Villagers I can get".