Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion Articles => Topic started by: axlemn on May 29, 2012, 10:51:57 pm
-
Here's a bold statement: Counting House is underused.
Since it's a 5-cost, it makes sense that Counting House is not a good buy most of the time since other 5-costs are just so good. Strategies that revolve around Counting House, however, always seem to be discounted immediately. It's almost never used in a serious game. That seemed suboptimal.
So why do people ignore Counting House so often?
First is that there is no easy baseline to compare the card to. Here are a few games I played of Counting House against Smithy-Big Money with colonies game. Since Smithy-Big Money is weaker when it needs to pick up plats, and the ease of skipping from gold to plat makes counting house stronger, this seems to be a decent starting point.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/18/game-20120518-175523-7d768fa8.html
Counting House keeps up surprisingly well for much of the game, though it still loses.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/15/game-20120515-211525-21ecbcaa.html
Trying again, Counting House loses to Smithy, again, by only a narrow margin.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/15/game-20120515-212817-a8347a96.html
On occasion, Counting House can narrowly win.
**Note about game logs.
The verdict of about 10 games is that Counting House will lose to Smithy-BM and all the like. Perhaps with some more enabler micromanagement it can win more frequently, but so far it looks like a washed-up Wishing Well: usually too much effort for such a small reward. While you probably could use Counting House in a deck that's having trouble hitting 9 and treat it like a mostly used-up Moneylender, it's likely that a second of whatever other Big-Money enabler you're using would be better and cheaper.
So: if you're just using Counting House for the occasional very high +coins, you see it will fail in nearly every common decktype.
With Big Money, almost any decent, smithy-style enabler will do better.
With an Engine, you're better off trashing those coppers.
With Big Draw, it does absolutely nothing.
If you're trying to use it in a game while also trying to rush for duchies, it will fail.
There are some extremely rare exceptions to these principles, which are mentioned later.
So how can we ever use Counting House?
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/19/game-20120519-074816-fc6e07f4.html
With the 4 best enablers for counting house, you can somewhat consistently grab 4 colonies by turn 14-16, and often 8 by turn 19. In long games, with worker's village or pawn support, you can sometimes double-colony to make up for early round dead turns.
Here's a real-game example.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/29/game-20120529-101631-cef8810b.html
The House works as a centerpiece. It's a deck type all on it's own. And like Outpost, it can be a card that can win you the game if you recognize when to use it.
Playing the House - The Enablers
You'll either need to spend turns buying coppers, get +buys, or gain them.
A Counting House-centric deck functions best by utilizing early-round +buys to get Coppers (or more Houses) as often as possible. The reason for this is that if you draw 2-3 plus buy cards in the first turns of a round, that is, before you draw most of your Counting Houses, you've increased the value of every Counting House in the rest of the round by 3-4, assuming you used your regular buy on copper as well. Sacrificing one turn and gaining coppers for an entire improved round? That's like a beefed-up Tactician.
With a deck large enough to prevent you from having to reshuffle again, you can then buy a Colony, or sometimes even two, for every Counting House that remains in your deck.
Hamlet, Worker's Village, and Pawn are the best sources of +buy if all you care about is getting more +buy. You really don't care about boosting your average money when playing the House. You care more about boosting your decksize to reduce reshuffles, and increasing the average number of buys you'll get before drawing your Houses. And you care a lot about making double-colony turns possible.
The first few rounds you'll want to obtain as many +buy cards as is possible.
The problem with Gardens-type cards like Woodcutter and Bridge is that they are almost all terminals. They look helpful- and they are- but not late-game. When you get them early on in a round, you can't get more than one +buy from it. This means you will never be able to get a +buy on a Counting House turn if they are your only source of +buy, which means no double-colony.
Double-colony not only feels good, but often it's necessary to lock down a game. You almost need a double colony turn at least once, or at least a colony-province turn, to make up for the fact that on some turns, potentially even your second-to-last turn, your buys might just be a handful of Copper.
However, while woodcutter and the like shouldn't be massed, they remedy the hardest part of using Counting House with something like Hamlet: reliably reaching 5. In an absolute worst case scenario, you can buy a single silver and wait, or if you're really gutsy, you can just buy coppers and enablers for 4-5 rounds. With enough coppers and careful enough reshuffling, you're mathematically guaranteed to hit 5 after about 6(?) such turns. Also note that because hitting 6 is completely unhelpful, any number of turns spent buying silvers instead of an enabler should probably hurt more than help.
Learning to Count
The other major problem with Counting House is figuring out how to use it. Counting House has a lot of variability, and if you aren't careful about when you trigger your reshuffles and or don't track the number of houses you have left in your deck, you can lose valuable turns when your coppers are high-powered by triggering reshuffles too early. (One reason why Cellar is better than Warehouse for this kind of deck.) Will playing that worker's village for the extra copper this round will mean you'll miss the colony next hand?
Be sure to keep track of how many 5-card hands you will end up drawing before the reshuffle.
The Warehouse Question
I'm going to change gears now and talk about commonly thought-of strategies for Counting House. And most of them boil down to: how hard should you try to skip through the initial dead turns of a Counting House deck?
I believe the answer to this is that you shouldn't try to at all. Unfortunately, the dozens of games I played aren't nearly as good as simulator data, but if you listen to my logic, you'll see why reshuffling often is a bad idea.
Warehouses might help you skip a dead turn now, but they'll also introduce the next one faster. They increase the total number of reshuffles over the span of the game and these always are followed by a bad turn.
If your need to power up your Counting House by the extra $1 by discarding and replacing coppers (opportunity cost versus silver) is so great at any given point in the game, you've probably already lost. If you need to avoid a bad turn so badly, you've also probably already lost.
In my experience, you'll often find yourself usually discarding the 2 colonies in your hand and a single copper and replacing that with 1-2 more coppers. This is effectively a silver in exchange for having less control over your reshuffle and taking a huge risk: often you will discard a house that would have been amazing next turn, but is now completely useless because you haven't spent this turn's +buys. The situations it does help in are so minor when playing dedicated Counting House, that often even Copper would be better. That's not to even mention the opportunity cost versus other enablers. ... You're not considering using Warehouse your only enabler, right?
But axle, you say. What if I can move through my entire deck?
A similar story holds true for Hunting Party and the multiple-Golem-only-1-Counting-House strategy. These cards can discard your deck and still allow you to play Counting House, and aren't always able to draw your deck. It takes too long to set up. More subtly, you now have to spend precious turns to buy each copper since buying any other enablers will interfere with your main strategy. If the game is slow enough for this to be feasible, odds are there are cursers, and if they are fast cursers in two player, you'll want to compete for those, not solely rely on Counting House. If you are facing a bad Ghost Ship player, Counting House is likely better than Big Money, but worse than getting your own Ships.
In sum, speed through combos or particular cards doesn't work for a Counting House deck, with the possible exception of the extremely cheap, more flexible Cellar.
The House would like to be more consistent, but only one card can do that reliably.
Scheme
This is the second most useful card to use with Counting House. After copper.
Scheme
>allows you to never have bad shuffle luck and have all of your houses in the first turn of a round.
>reduces the number of houses you need to buy to 2.
>is relatively inexpensive, and you don't want silvers anyway.
>enables the House in province play because of how consistent the House becomes
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/18/game-20120518-235237-ff28bef3.html
>A game versus RomaNorgy. Provinces are out by turn 14, even though neither of us were playing even near perfectly. RomaNorgy thanked me after for the new strategy (which I got from O, so here's passing on the thanks).
Here's another Counting House / Scheme game that O posted:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120508-135528-9f887547.html
Edited in, a month later.
I spent time tearing down Warehouse because the principles behind buying it with Counting House are usually lousy. However, if you can combine it with something like Hunting Party, or you use Cellar instead of it, Counting House is almost feasible. There exist a very select handful of games that allow you to draw only your power cards, no money, and yet still be able to have exactly your entire deck discarded. And this also has to be a game without trashing and without Apothecary. To give you a idea of what kind of synergy you need to make such a deck, warehouse seems perfect for the job, yet can't do it. Perhaps you could try Cartographer, if you aren't buying any other 5-cost... oh.
There are even fewer such games when the House is actually around as an option, but in these exceptionally rare cases, it offers +7. If you're extremely careful and you know that you can support it, the House is one of the most powerful cards for pure +coin / cost. And in this case, you might even want to try comboing with Bank and Coppersmith...
Attacks
After dismissing the idea of a 'Counting House + Coppersmith combo', the second thing people notice about Counting House is that it seems like it shouldn't be hurt much by certain attacks.
Here are games with ambassador, sea hag, sea hag, and mountebank respectively.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/18/game-20120518-191154-73b4b0fd.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/19/game-20120519-081553-b4ff8016.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/19/game-20120519-105915-881e827a.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/29/game-20120529-101631-cef8810b.html
If you're careful enough, the House will be able to face off against the cards we imagine it should. It doesn't have a 100% winrate (see game 4), but it does hold advantage.
If there's nothing else going on or the only attack on the board is militia, goons, sea hag, or mountebank, Counting House might be a good choice. The House benefits from slow environments where the number of good turns matters more than the average of turns. It can pick up 4's, since otherwise it'll just be getting more +buy cards. Many attacks don't hurt counting house nearly as much as they hurt Smithy-BM type decks.
Notably, Ghost Ship will actually help a player going Counting House-Scheme.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120528-154743-b7ef5852.html
When you're playing Counting House, you are also going to have a lot of turns where you'll have 4, and this means that you can use things like Militia and Cutpurse with essentially no drawback. They will help you hit the 5s you so desperately need, and avoid the 6 that temps you into buying golds. Unfortunately, I don't have solid statistics, and if anyone would like to run some, I would use them to revise this discussion.
Summary:
Counting House is situational, but when the situation fits, it's amazing. Looking to make it work every turn without scheme isn't very likely, but aiming to get it to explode when you play it can pay off. An enabled Counting House is a card well worth considering.
Works well with:
Scheme
Pawn / Hamlet / Worker's Village
Bridge / Woodcutter / Nomad Camp (requires careful management, decks will be more Counting House heavy)
Talisman / Ironworks / Workshop (gaining extra enablers easily is very helpful)
Ill-Gotten Gains (only if Scheme is present to reduce the number of Houses you need)
Mountebank (you can buy one too. once the curses are out, they have to choose: give you a free copper, or miss their +2.)
Feast
Gardens (rush the gardens, but don't help your opponent rush anything else. the goal is to province or colony to seal a lead.)
Things that can return a Counting House into your deck (Develop, Inn, Watchtower)
See all posts in this thread by jomini for excellent explanations of how Cellar, Haven, Develop, Multiplayer Attacks, Spy, and Cache all can help.
Conflicts with:
Trashing (of note: Moneylender)
+Draw Engines
Big Money games
Lack of Colonies
Action Chains
Gold
King's Court
Possession
**Note about game logs:
I played most of these games against myself, but this should not matter since I always played optimally (playing Smithy-Big Money is pretty easy. As is Sea Hag-Big Money.) All the more complicated games are real ones, so are are the Ambassador and Mountebank ones.
-
Nice article, but I don't think you give Warehouse a fair shake. If you're going to scoop your Coppers back out of the discard, Warehouse is essentially a double-lab.
-
Edited to add the following:
If your need to power up your Counting House by the extra $1 (opportunity cost versus silver) and to avoid a bad turn is so great at any given point in the game, you've probably already lost.
You'll often find yourself usually discarding the 2 colonies in your hand and a single copper and replacing that with 3 more coppers. In exchange, Warehouse brings you closer to the reshuffle, which is almost always bad thing for a Counting House player since each reshuffle means 1-2 dead turns. In Counting House, drawing greens isn't bad.
Also, 2 labs in a deck full of coppers and colonies is worse than a silver.
-
Hm. I've just realized something. This is only tangentially on topic, so pardon the ramblings...
The way to think of Counting House in terms of power level is as a terminal source of money. If Counting House was just straight up terminal +$3 for $5, it would get played a ton. Terminal $3 on a card is really strong. Anyone who has played Mandarin will know what I mean. Terminal $2 is just terrible, and terminal $4+ is bonkers.
So, Counting House starts getting interesting when your expected # of Coppers in the discard is >2, preferably >3. If you want CH to be good, then you need some way of getting up to that point. Right now I don't have the time to do detailed analysis on Counting House odds based on # Coppers in deck and # total cards in deck, but what I do know is that the starting 7 is definitely not enough.
Hence the +buy to pick up Coppers.
So, about Warehouse: the question is, does Warehouse on average improve the expected # of Coppers in your discard?
I think it does: you dig further into the deck, and if you would trigger a reshuffle by playing it, you wouldn't play Warehouse anyways.
Does it improve it by enough? You have to consider that in an ideal Counting House deck (the only treasures are Coppers, CH is played with regularity), Warehouse might as well read as "Discard the top 3 cards of your deck", because you don't care whether Copper is in your hand or in the discard. And assuming about half the deck is Copper (check the game logs, this is a little generous), Warehouse is adding +$1.5. Which is okay, but it's still less than a Silver...
There's a lot of other factors involved too, but I'm starting to get convinced that Warehouse is nice for finding Counting House rather than improving it's power. If you already have consistency, it doesn't look as good.
-
So, Counting House starts getting interesting when your expected # of Coppers in the discard is >2, preferably >3.
Not quite. It's not so much about the expected value, since you can't buy fractional cards. The difference between $10 and $11 total is a lot bigger than between $3 and $4 or between $13 and $14, for example. Thus the expected utility is not linear in the expected number of coins you pick up.
So, about Warehouse: the question is, does Warehouse on average improve the expected # of Coppers in your discard?
I think it does: you dig further into the deck, and if you would trigger a reshuffle by playing it, you wouldn't play Warehouse anyways.
Does it improve it by enough? You have to consider that in an ideal Counting House deck (the only treasures are Coppers, CH is played with regularity), Warehouse might as well read as "Discard the top 3 cards of your deck", because you don't care whether Copper is in your hand or in the discard. And assuming about half the deck is Copper (check the game logs, this is a little generous), Warehouse is adding +$1.5. Which is okay, but it's still less than a Silver...
You can come to this conclusion if you fall into the fallacy of counting expected value. The truth is, you care about big turns -- turns where you draw CH late in the deck. Warehouse can allow you to spend more time late in the deck than early in the deck. (If you don't need to play warehouse, don't). So while it may be a small improvement in expected coin count, it's a bigger improvement in expected utility.
You'll often find yourself usually discarding the 2 colonies in your hand and a single copper and replacing that with 3 more coppers. In exchange, Warehouse brings you closer to the reshuffle, which is almost always bad thing for a Counting House player since each reshuffle means 1-2 dead turns. In Counting House, drawing greens isn't bad.
Also, 2 labs in a deck full of coppers and colonies is worse than a silver.
Closer to the reshuffle is a good thing. Just after a reshuffle is a bad thing. You're somehow assuming you're only drawing the warehouse late in your deck along with your CH. But what about when you draw it without CH or early in the shuffle? When you draw warehouses early in the deck, you can more quickly cycle toward later in the deck. And late game, when your deck is completely bloated, having "double-labs" to find your CHs is really useful. A CCCCS hand for $6 in the late game is not better than a CCCCW hand. Even if you draw nothing useful with the warehouse, the difference between $4 and $6 is small enough that you'd risk missing out on the Duchy to have a shot at finding your CH from a Colony.
-
Another facet of Counting House, which I think is quite hard to quantify, is its ability to let you add non-highest green to your deck without disrupting the deck's ability to work too much. In that, its a bit like Philosopher's Stone or Venture, in that its all about getting the card in your five card hand, rather than about what cards you draw during a turn.
That is to say, once you've got the heap of coppers, and you hit $8, you can probably grab that province without much slowing your progress towards Colonies, while the Smithy + BM player knows that each of those green cards he buys reduces his chances of a Colony-grabbing hand to a greater relative degree.
Obviously this holds less true if you're relying on a mini-engine to get the Counting House working (as in multiple enablers played on the same turn as Counting House), and the dilution does slightly increase the time between getting to the Counting House, but happily Warehouse (the best enabler of all for Counting House, IMHO) nicely helps move past green cards as well, and keep close to being in that critical second half of the deck.
-
You can use a watchtower or royal seal to put counting houses on top of the deck at the right time. This opportunistic use of the counting house, guaranteeing one big turn and accepting later failures, can be worth it. Inns can work similarly.
-
A few other points:
1. Counting house works much better against attacks in multiplayer. CH vs witch in 2er means that you forego attacking the other guy and have a 10-0 split in the curses. The loss of punishment for your opponent is a very high opportunity cost. CH vs witch vs witch means that you end up with a 9:6:5 curse split and you can spend you terminal 5 an a card that give you a duchy or province most of the time you play it in the late game. The opportunity cost is now only 4 curses, not 10.
Likewise if everyone else in 4er goes for ghost ship, you can count on them all playing 3 card hands (most of which will spend an action on +2 cards) and you can go for CH as you don't care about hand size. Opportunity cost here is even lower. Once you get into the attacks that CH anti-synergizes with (noble brigand, jester, mountebank), you find that the opportunity cost of CH just isn't all that high.
2. Cellar/CH is strong if you can pick up +buy and +actions. Cellar allows you to dump coppers into the discard until you hit the CH which let's you draw them all back. With a village (WV preferred), you can village -> CH -> Cellar -> and draw your whole deck a lot of turns. In general, I think cellar, due to its price and its unlimited cycling, can be better than warehouse - if you are discarding coppers you don't care that you lose a card and if you have a +buy it is easier to hit CH + cellar or Colony + cellar than either with warehouse. Further, because cellar does not have a static draw, you can use it to perfectly time your shuffles - if your CH is your last card in deck - just discard one copper to the cellar and a busted turn becomes a maximum yield turn. If you track your CHs and Cellars you can be assured that you will virtually never miss a shuffle with a CH.
3. Another huge helper card is haven. You can use it to convert two 4 coin hands into a 3 (haven or copper) and a 5 (CH). You can also bounce back CHs to a turn later in the shuffle. You can also smooth out your shuffles with havens (play/don't play) to better ensure that your CHs are played for effect.
4. Spy is better in CH games. Discarding a copper or a green is pretty close to drawing it. Spy comes close to being a 4 coin lab.
5. Develop. In a game without other trashing, you can sometimes make some killer turns by developing a 4 late in the shuffle. Top decking a CH/silver can be an auto province. This suffers from the need to have develop in your deck for some other reason as CH is not enough to warrant its play. I've done it after getting it swindled into my deck; I think it might be viable in a no trashing vine yards game.
-
OK, first off, I'm not trying to accuse you of anything dastardly, but were those two Sea Hag vs. Counting House games played against yourself? You have a bunch of Counting House-heavy games against chouse, who has only played 10 games, all of them against you.
Secondly, I'm not saying that building a deck around Counting House can't work, but it seems to me that it isn't Counting House's main function. There are lots of cards that you can and should build a deck around. Even Coppersmith is a good example. Titandrake is right on the money with his assessment that Counting House is basically a terminal source of coins. There are two other terminal Actions that we can compare it to which also provide a random number of coins: Adventurer and Harvest. Each of these three cards works best in different situations. Harvest works best when you have many differently-named cards. Adventurer works best when you've trashed your Coppers and bought several expensive Treasures. Counting House works best in bloated decks where you're gaining Copper incidentally through Ambassador, Cache, Mountebank, etc.
I'm not saying you should never buy Copper for it, but I've found that trying to build a deck centered around Counting House to be unreliable and generally ineffective. It seems to me like a supplement to certain other kinds of decks. When was the last time you built an Adventurer deck or a Harvest deck?
-
OK, first off, I'm not trying to accuse you of anything dastardly, but were those two Sea Hag vs. Counting House games played against yourself? You have a bunch of Counting House-heavy games against chouse, who has only played 10 games, all of them against you.
chouse
c house
counting house
very likely.
-
OK, first off, I'm not trying to accuse you of anything dastardly, but were those two Sea Hag vs. Counting House games played against yourself? You have a bunch of Counting House-heavy games against chouse, who has only played 10 games, all of them against you.
chouse
c house
counting house
very likely.
Ah. Yes, I completely missed that.
Anyhow, there's nothing wrong with example test games like that, but they're not as convincing as actual games against opponents that are trying to beat you.
-
I always wanted to do some CHouse math, but I ain't great at is, so could somebody check if this makes sense?
Let's say that instead of 5 by 5, we draw cards 1 by 1.
Cards are uniformly distributed. so, chouse would, on average case, be in the middle of the deck, with c/2 = 3.5 coppers in discard and 3.5 copper still in deck. (assuming starting c=7 coppers).
But we don't, we draw 5 by 5. I guess that means we need to subtract number of coppers in hand. So, if n is number of cards, and c number of coppers, you would have, on average, 5/n * c coppers in hand, and chouse would be worth (c - 5/n * c)/2. with 20 cards and 7 coppers its worth 2.65.
But thats assuming you don't have any card drawers or sifters. If you do.. I'm just not that smart :D
-
Yes, I did play against myself. I don't hide that - the names are really obvious on purpose.
It would be terribly strange that half of those games that I posted were lost by the person going Counting House if I were trying to rig it.
More importantly, it would also mean that at some point I've played sub-optimally. That would be pretty hard to do when playing Smithy-Big Money. Or Sea Hag-Big Money for that matter.
Grujah, I guess I was unclear. I'll edit again to add the following:
The point of the +buy cards is that if you draw 4 plus buy cards in the first few turns of a round (before you draw your Counting Houses), you've just spent those turns increasing the value of every single Counting House in the rest of the round by 4. Do this often enough, with late enough houses (which will occur if you get 3-4 houses or have Scheme), and 11 is surprisingly easy to hit.
-
In addition, if you're just using Counting House for +coins, you see it fails in every single function. With Big Money, with an engine, with trashing, or with Big Draw. The ONLY function Counting House really has is as a centerpiece, or for a small chance at an initial plat.
-
Thanks everyone for the replies. I'm recognizing what I've forgotten to say here and there. Keep the questions coming.
Anyone who reads this once should probably skim this again in a week or so to see it in a more final, proper form. Apologies! Hopefully this discussion will be interesting for anyone looking to write articles in the future because of this step-by-step editing. It will be for me.
-
Yes, I did play against myself. I don't hide that - the names are really obvious on purpose.
It would be terribly strange that half of those games that I posted were lost by the person going Counting House if I were trying to rig it.
More importantly, it would also mean that at some point I've played sub-optimally. That would be pretty hard to do when playing Smithy-Big Money. Or Sea Hag-Big Money for that matter.
Grujah, I guess I was unclear. I'll edit again to add the following:
The point of the +buy cards is that if you draw 4 plus buy cards in the first few turns of a round (before you draw your Counting Houses), you've just spent those turns increasing the value of every single Counting House in the rest of the round by 4. Do this often enough, with late enough houses (which will occur if you get 3-4 houses or have Scheme), and 11 is surprisingly easy to hit.
Thats all fine, didn't mean to say you are wrong on anything, I was just curious about average chouse worth without optimization like Scheme and filling your discard with coppers before you draw them and so.
-
Yup. If I don't defend myself, there are those who will take that the wrong way. Sorry to get defensive, I take no offense.
-
Look, dude. I'm sorry, but this article is just one big mistake from beginning to end. I think I understand how you feel. I think Counting House is a really cool card, too, and I also want to discover all the situations in which it can really shine. But this article is just so, so premature.
First of all, I wasn't trying to say that by playing games against yourself that you were attempting to rig anything. I'm just saying that it's not very useful data. For one thing, the sample size is tiny, which is why most people use simulators for this sort of thing. Secondly, even if Counting House plus Pawn/Hamlet/Worker's Village does beat Big Money plus Sea Hag, real games aren't played in a vacuum like that.
On the subject of real games, I dug through the logs of all the games against actual opponents in which you've bought Counting House (using your axlemn username).
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120120-192856-f514fe4c.html
This is the only game in which you have ever bought both Counting House and Warehouse, and you lost. If your opinion about Warehouse/Counting House is based primarily on this game, then no wonder you think it's a poor enabler. The strength of Warehouse/Counting House is that you draw good cards and discard Copper. With the exception of three measley Conspirators, your deck didn't have any good cards to draw.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111224-221208-c2aa822d.html
Likewise here, except replace 'Warehouse' with 'Cellar'.
All told, there are exactly three real games in which you play your Counting House + Pawn/Scheme/Hamlet/Worker's Village deck (the only way Counting House is to be played, you claim) and win. Here they are:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120529-101631-cef8810b.html
This is the Mountebank game you linked to. Your opponent for some reason forsakes Gold for Nobles in a Mountebank game with no trashing.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120518-191154-73b4b0fd.html
Here's the Ambassador game you linked to. Your opponent goes for Ambassador on a board with no engine potential and Counting House as the only $5 card. You win by a single point.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120528-154743-b7ef5852.html
In this game, your strategy works perfectly. Congratulations!
Your 'Effect With' for Counting House is -0.33. Your win rate with it is 1.01 ± 0.14, the fourth lowest of any card.
Now look me in the eye and tell me that you think writing this article was a good idea.
-
Look, dude. I'm sorry, but this article is just one big mistake from beginning to end. I think I understand how you feel. I think Counting House is a really cool card, too, and I also want to discover all the situations in which it can really shine. But this article is just so, so premature.
First of all, I wasn't trying to say that by playing games against yourself that you were attempting to rig anything. I'm just saying that it's not very useful data. For one thing, the sample size is tiny, which is why most people use simulators for this sort of thing. Secondly, even if Counting House plus Pawn/Hamlet/Worker's Village does beat Big Money plus Sea Hag, real games aren't played in a vacuum like that.
On the subject of real games, I dug through the logs of all the games against actual opponents in which you've bought Counting House (using your axlemn username).
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120120-192856-f514fe4c.html
This is the only game in which you have ever bought both Counting House and Warehouse, and you lost. If your opinion about Warehouse/Counting House is based primarily on this game, then no wonder you think it's a poor enabler. The strength of Warehouse/Counting House is that you draw good cards and discard Copper. With the exception of three measley Conspirators, your deck didn't have any good cards to draw.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111224-221208-c2aa822d.html
Likewise here, except replace 'Warehouse' with 'Cellar'.
All told, there are exactly three real games in which you play your Counting House + Pawn/Scheme/Hamlet/Worker's Village deck (the only way Counting House is to be played, you claim) and win. Here they are:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120529-101631-cef8810b.html
This is the Mountebank game you linked to. Your opponent for some reason forsakes Gold for Nobles in a Mountebank game with no trashing.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120518-191154-73b4b0fd.html
Here's the Ambassador game you linked to. Your opponent goes for Ambassador on a board with no engine potential and Counting House as the only $5 card. You win by a single point.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120528-154743-b7ef5852.html
In this game, your strategy works perfectly. Congratulations!
Your 'Effect With' for Counting House is -0.33. Your win rate with it is 1.01 ± 0.14, the fourth lowest of any card.
Now look me in the eye and tell me that you think writing this article was a good idea.
How rude!
The irony is that in each of the games, the opponent played better than someone with rank 27 probably would (yes, even my terrible Amb game where Masquerade is more effective)
In the Mountebank game Nobles is a very reasonable buy due to the possibilities of a 3-pile
In the cellar game.. seriously? You seriously think he thinks it's competitive against Wharf-Governor-Goons, and not that he was just testing out its speed?
Warehouse game: Replace warehousex2 open with warehouse-remodel and its a much tougher call.
His effect with: He experiments with warehouse to find useful situations even when he doesn't expect to win with it. Your introduction of this stat is meaningless.
-
How rude!
The irony is that in each of the games, the opponent played better than someone with rank 27 probably would (yes, even my terrible Amb game where Masquerade is more effective)
Look, man. I may be a lowly rank 27. I don't play nearly as much as I used to and I've definitely dropped a bit from my peak rank of 36. But the fact is that I'm not the one who submitted a candidate for this site's Counting House article; an article which claims that there is one and only one effective way to play Counting House without really backing up that assertion. If axlemn had named this article, "Combo: Counting House + Pawn/Hamlet", I wouldn't have batted an eye. But DominionStrategy.com is likely only going to ever have a maximum of one official Counting House article, and I strongly believe it deserves a better one than this.
So I'm sorry for my rudeness, axlemn. I really, really mean that. I tried to ask questions and give constructive criticism in my first post and was met with extreme defensiveness. Granted, there is a lot of middle ground on the politeness spectrum between my original post and my later one, and it was wrong of me to skip over it. For that I apologize.
In the Mountebank game Nobles is a very reasonable buy due to the possibilities of a 3-pile
In the cellar game.. seriously? You seriously think he thinks it's competitive against Wharf-Governor-Goons, and not that he was just testing out its speed?
Warehouse game: Replace warehousex2 open with warehouse-remodel and its a much tougher call.
His effect with: He experiments with warehouse to find useful situations even when he doesn't expect to win with it. Your introduction of this stat is meaningless.
OK, so you've defended axlemn's honor and picked all my arguments apart. Are we all square now? Everyone's feelings equally hurt? Good.
You're certainly correct that it's only reasonable for his rankings to have taken a dip while he experimented with different strategies. That being said, I think it would have been nice to see his claims proven out a bit more before submitting a candidate for the site's Counting House article. During that proving-out period, his 'Effect With' and 'Win Rate With' should have risen quite a bit.
-
This article presents a specific interesting idea—using Counting House with something like Worker's Village as the centrepiece of a deck powered by Copper—and discusses some of the relevant issues. I'm happy to accept it on that level. In depth discussions of any card tend to end up on the Articles board, and hardly any of them end up being published on the blog. Posting something here shouldn't be seen as a bid to make something official.
-
This article presents a specific interesting idea—using Counting House with something like Worker's Village as the centrepiece of a deck powered by Copper—and discusses some of the relevant issues. I'm happy to accept it on that level. In depth discussions of any card tend to end up on the Articles board, and hardly any of them end up being published on the blog. Posting something here shouldn't be seen as a bid to make something official.
I agree 100%. But this post uses language and formatting that clearly indicates it is meant to be a comprehensive Counting House article. Yes, the post centers around one specific Counting House-centered strategy, but it also claims that this is the only way to make Counting House effective.
What does this tell us? Counting House is NOT to be used for Big Money.
You could use Counting House in a deck that's having trouble hitting 9 and treat it like a mostly used-up Moneylender, possibly, but at this point, it's likely a second of whatever other Big-Money enabler you're using will be better.
Counting House is also obviously NOT to be used in an engine deck.
Or a deck built around trashing.
Or a rush deck.
Or a +draw deck.
Maybe with attacks, but I'll put that aside for now.
Some of this is just plain wrong. The OP himself has played at least a few successful IGG rush games with Counting House.
It even includes a 'Works Well With/Conflicts With' section at the bottom. So if this wasn't intended to be a comprehensive Counting House article suitable to be posted to the blog, I think you'll at least agree that it was reasonable to assume it was.
-
Yes, I'd be very happy it if this were to become official. No, from all the responses I'm getting, if popularity is the indicator, it's not going to happen. And no, I didn't assume it would. I decided to stop lurking and share one of my favorite strategies. All the nay-sayers are making me half-wish I'd never bothered... If you're trying to learn and talk about Dominion, calling a full 9-10 hours of work trash is not a good way to go about it.
Dear all,
I don't care if you don't think my data is effective. I am the first to admit that it isn't. Because of the sample size. After all, 5 straight hours of testing means nothing compared to a full simulations.
Unfortunately, no simulator can play Counting House well, so this is the best we have as of yet. I've played 6-7 games of every type I mentioned. I am not being sarcastic when I say that Counting House is a complicated card whose nuances are hard to get. I pose it as a challenge to you to test your own theories! Post the results here, and then we'll discuss. Remember that JOAT will smash your face in if you only theorycraft.
Dominion is a strategy game that requires thought and removing of assumptions to improve. I assumed Warehouse was a good enabler, and I found it slowed me down. If you find more than 7 games which hint otherwise, then please share, that would help the discussion.
tl;dr : Don't believe? Try it for half and hour or so, then come back with that data. Really. It would help us all understand the House that much better. Trolls are NOT welcome here.
-
@axelmn, Understand that there is a huge self-selection bias where people who disagree are far more likely to post than those who agree. i.e. don't read a single person's dismissal as any sort of large sub-segment of the community. In general, on these forums, articles get critiqued fairly strongly, still, for the vast majority of articles, I would argue they are far more accurate than inaccurate.
-
I've played IGG Counting House. Not in what I would consider "rushes". Even if your opponent does try to rush Duchies, if you are not rushing Duchies, then you are not rushing. If you do rush Duchies as well, then your Counting House becomes useless. To use it properly, now you're now playing for Colonies in the same way a proper Counting House deck would. Just with a ticking timer.
-
putting together an article is hard work, and it is made even more challenging because of the high quality of posts that have been generated in the past. i would not be so offended at any criticism though. even forum regulars and great players like jonts26 and WanderingWinder have taken criticisms for articles they posted in the past. that being said, i think there are a couple key problems with your article.
- the blog has a pretty nice format and average length for these sorts of posts. try your best to stick pretty close to that formatting. i think your post was a touch long and a little unorganized.
- you listed a bunch of cards that CH works well with or conflicts with. i would recommend avoiding listing cards and instead listing groups of cards. your "works well" list could be simplified to say plus buys, cheap gainers, sifters, and a reaction to bloated decks.
- you failed to make mention of a few very key cards and combos. inn and coppersmith are both fantastic combos for the card. golem+CH and chancellor+CH are both combos you will see tossed around alot.
- counting house is a card that has been around for a few expansions now, and there has already been some forum discussion on the card. the "What is the worst card in the game? (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1692.0)" and "Create a kingdom that makes CH as useful as possible (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=2580.0)" threads come to my mind. consider a detailed search (https://www.google.com/search?q=site:forum.dominionstrategy.com+counting+house) to look through some of the other discussions on the card. you can find both some good ideas to discuss and some competitive game longs to borrow from.
-
i think your post was a touch long and a little unorganized.
Gotcha.
- - you failed to make mention of a few very key cards and combos. inn and coppersmith are both fantastic combos for the card. golem+CH and chancellor+CH are both combos you will see tossed around alot.
I have stated that most of these combos do not work in practice, or are usually suboptimal. Inn is a very good addition that I missed.
-
I don't believe you addressed another popular combo idea: cache/CH. make your first 5 a cache, make a CH buy after that. Cache both adds coppers and gives you cheap goldr so that even on non-CH turns you can hit 5 (early on this can mean more CH or Caches, late this is good for duchies). If you can follow your deck well, you can add cache buys to add +2 coin to a CH coming up next turn in the shuffle.
Another shot mentioned is top decking the CH. If you already have a card that will top deck the CH when you have or are about to have a bunch of copper in the discard, then you can selectively grab CH late in the shuffles to use as a one-off plat (or better). For instance, let's say I have apothecary/university/watchtower deck without trashing. Late in the shuffle I can play something like univeristy (gain CH/top deck with WT) -> WT (careful not to trigger a reshuffle) -> CH (+5 coin). Develop, watchtower, and royal seal can all make this a viable late game gambit; of course like most late game 5 coin gambits, you really have to weight the opportunity cost of just taking the duchy, but it can work.
A combination of cache, WT, and CH would be interesting. You could use the WT to top deck the cache itself and let the coppers fall into the discard for +coin this shuffle for every CH after the CH. Late in the shuffle you could top deck CHs (before the reshuffle will hit, of course). This might be viable in a colony game. I'd be interested to see how it compares to other options (like WT/Cache & trash the coppers).
-
Colony game with IGG and Counting House.
— Geronimoo's turn 25 —
Geronimoo plays a Counting House.
... putting 24 Coppers from the discard pile into the hand.
Geronimoo plays 24 Coppers.
Geronimoo buys a Colony.
(Geronimoo reshuffles.)
(Geronimoo draws: 2 Curses, 2 Counting Houses, and a Silver.)
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/28/game-20120628-105759-f47373ed.html
I won because my opponent went for CH too late.
-
Yes... yes, he did.
-
I know this is reviving an old thread, but I'm new to Dominion and fascinated by some of the card interactions and strategy; a friend introduced my wife and I to the game a couple of months ago.
To start off at home, I went for the Big Box set (base, Prosperity, Alchemy) as a birthday gift to my wife a couple of weeks back.
We haven't tried any Alchemy games yet, but mixing in Prosperity cards is proving to make the game far more exciting than just the base set. Counting House, in particular, fascinated me because it is one of those cards that forces a totally unorthodox strategy to make it effective. We had it out in a couple of games and zero were purchased. So last night, with it back on the table, I determined to try it and see if I could make it effective.
Kingdom was a Province game with: (2) Cellar | (3) Chancellor, Village, Watchtower | (4) Bureaucrat, Feast, Talisman | (5) Counting House, Market, Mine
Three of us were playing. I opened Talisman, Chancellor (I think Talisman, Cellar would have been better), and proceeded to use the Talisman to grab a couple of Feasts (to turn into CH, Markets), along with plenty of Coppers and, another Cellar, a pair of Villages, another Talisman, a second CH, and five more Markets.
None of us have played much, so I don't think anyone's play was optimal. Both other players were using bureaucrat to add silvers to the deck; my wife was mining her deck up into big money; our friend was using chancellor/village for the extra coins to add golds and fast cycle through his deck.
When the greening rush started, I was quickly down 18 points to each of the other players. Held off on greening to pick up extra markets, and finally hit a half decent turn and grabbed two provinces... had a couple of dud turns (did grab one duchy) while I watched more greens get picked off. Got to me with one province on the table and half the duchies remaining... Used village/village/chancellor/counting house/cellar to move my deck to discard, pull 22 coppers into my hand then discard 16 to draw my entire deck, where I could then village/markets/chancellor/counting house to pull all the coppers back in. Markets+other actions+22 coppers hit 34 coins across seven buys... went 5 duchies and a province to finish out the game. Was a fantastic feeling to have the CH hit.
I'd never imagined a turn that drew 22 cards, discarded 16 cards, drew 16 cards, drew 16 cards... I've seen engines cycle through much smaller hands before, but nothing that could fully turn through--AND DRAW--a deck of 46 cards into hand at once.
My wife and I ended up tying at 39 points each, but I was 2nd player, she was 3rd, so she took the victory. Still, it made me think that, played a little better, or with a slightly more accommodating kingdom (Worker's Village instead of Mkt/Village; Colony board instead of Province board), CH would have the potential to be a dominant card.
Regardless, trying to play a CH strategy was probably the most fun I've had with a game of Dominion. It's the outlier strategies and crazy ways cards work together that are making this such an addicting game. Of course, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but just glad to join you. Thanks.
-
Registering to make a post about Counting House, you must be a fan.
I think people's main grievance with CH is its unreliability. Sometimes you draw 2 Coppers with it or even 3 and you're like meh not really worth the 5 I paid for it. And sometimes you can pull 7 of them and have a €16 hand with one buy.
I would have loved to see +Buy on CH so you can use it optimally the turns it does pull a lot of Coppers and even use it to buy more Coppers. It would smoke Mountebank even more.
-
Adding a +buy to Counting House could be interesting. I can't see it making that much better, but it would help make it parts of more boards as opposed to essentially never being bought.
-
Adding a +buy to Counting House could be interesting. I can't see it making that much better, but it would help make it parts of more boards as opposed to essentially never being bought.
+buy would make Chou vastly better. Chou needs bloat to do anything crazy, however if you do anything crazy then you really can't play more than one terminal at time, and often not even a non-terminal and a Chou. This hard caps Chou at a Province or colony a turn. Likewise, getting enough coppers to quickly hit 16 coin is pretty hard without a +buy. Worse, if you don't win the province split you have almost zero chance of coming back as you can't buy double duchy. With a +buy you could add 2 coin to next Chou even with a busted early Chou draw. With 3 Chou plays in a shuffle you may well hit a bust first (though you can add two coin to the next Chou), a province next (adding another coin to the next), and two provinces on the last one.
-
Heck, you could even use Counting House as a better Ruined Market in that case.
-
I must admit that I was mistaken, and you guys are right. Still, I still don't see it being superb. It'll still have inconsistencies, and the bloated deck makes for few plays of Counting House. Those problems don't go away.
-
Yeah, I'm hooked.
And I expect that the outlier cards are generally going to be the ones I enjoy most, because they make the game fun -- not only for me, but (and more importantly) for the people I'm playing with.
I don't know if others of you are in this boat, but the people I'm most likely to play Dominion with (i.e. my wife and a few other friends) aren't people who are highly competitive, nor are they people who quickly adapt to the new strategies required by each kingdom. I've quickly learned that I am likely to win if I try to win... but I've also learned that taking the most aggressive, highest-odds strategy in a kingdom, I'm likely to win--and then regret winning. Because it means I'm less likely to have willing Dominion players the next go around.
I've got friends and family in other states who are much more strategic/competitive, and with them, I think no-holds-barred Dominion would be optimal, but with the immediate group I'm likely to play with, I'm better off looking for slower, more circuitous routes to success, with lower odds at victory. In other words, I have to consciously make the decision to play for fun rather than play to win. So the harder the outlier strategy is to execute (and the less it involves strong attack cards), the more I'm likely to try it... makes for some fun games.
Anyone else in the boat of trying crazy stuff for fun to lower their win-ratio to keep their friends/family interested in the game?
-
Yeah, I'm hooked.
And I expect that the outlier cards are generally going to be the ones I enjoy most, because they make the game fun -- not only for me, but (and more importantly) for the people I'm playing with.
I don't know if others of you are in this boat, but the people I'm most likely to play Dominion with (i.e. my wife and a few other friends) aren't people who are highly competitive, nor are they people who quickly adapt to the new strategies required by each kingdom. I've quickly learned that I am likely to win if I try to win... but I've also learned that taking the most aggressive, highest-odds strategy in a kingdom, I'm likely to win--and then regret winning. Because it means I'm less likely to have willing Dominion players the next go around.
I've got friends and family in other states who are much more strategic/competitive, and with them, I think no-holds-barred Dominion would be optimal, but with the immediate group I'm likely to play with, I'm better off looking for slower, more circuitous routes to success, with lower odds at victory. In other words, I have to consciously make the decision to play for fun rather than play to win. So the harder the outlier strategy is to execute (and the less it involves strong attack cards), the more I'm likely to try it... makes for some fun games.
Anyone else in the boat of trying crazy stuff for fun to lower their win-ratio to keep their friends/family interested in the game?
I guess I don't see how to play Dominion both funly and at less that your highest ability. Sure, if a card like Witch isn't fun for your group, you can simply not have it in the kingdom... but including it in the kingdom, but then not buying it because you're the "better player" doesn't help anything. I mean sure, you can play a board trying to go for Philosopher's Stone to counter Mountebank and maybe lose... but that still isn't suboptimal play of the game, that's just picking a strategy that has a less chance of winning. So I guess, if you're saying you find picking poor strategies fun, I can agree that it can be, but playing a strategy poorly I think is bad. My two cents.
-
Yeah, I'm hooked.
And I expect that the outlier cards are generally going to be the ones I enjoy most, because they make the game fun -- not only for me, but (and more importantly) for the people I'm playing with.
I don't know if others of you are in this boat, but the people I'm most likely to play Dominion with (i.e. my wife and a few other friends) aren't people who are highly competitive, nor are they people who quickly adapt to the new strategies required by each kingdom. I've quickly learned that I am likely to win if I try to win... but I've also learned that taking the most aggressive, highest-odds strategy in a kingdom, I'm likely to win--and then regret winning. Because it means I'm less likely to have willing Dominion players the next go around.
I've got friends and family in other states who are much more strategic/competitive, and with them, I think no-holds-barred Dominion would be optimal, but with the immediate group I'm likely to play with, I'm better off looking for slower, more circuitous routes to success, with lower odds at victory. In other words, I have to consciously make the decision to play for fun rather than play to win. So the harder the outlier strategy is to execute (and the less it involves strong attack cards), the more I'm likely to try it... makes for some fun games.
Anyone else in the boat of trying crazy stuff for fun to lower their win-ratio to keep their friends/family interested in the game?
Yes. The "best" strategy is not always the "fun" strategy (assuming we know what is the "best", and everyone have a different definition of "fun"). In Iso/Goko, we care about the ranking so we almost always go for the best strategy from our view, even though it might result to some boring Jack or HP games (winning is "fun" afterall). But when playing casually with friends, often the fun of beating them is not as much as trying out some exotic combo (that may or may not work out)
-
I usually play for fun - rather than trying to work out the absolute best strategy on the board, I'd rather look for the most interesting combination of cards and see how hard it is to make it work (King's Court-Scheme-Golem-Counting House for a guaranteed Province every turn but requiring most of the game to set up? I'm in!)
-
Anyone else in the boat of trying crazy stuff for fun to lower their win-ratio to keep their friends/family interested in the game?
o/
For me, Dominion is all about circuitous paths to occasional victory.
The least enjoyable games for me are those where I take the obvious route and win easily. I am much more interested in trying out contrived strategies and trying to make uncommonly purchased cards shine. It is the enjoyment of discovering something new, versus repeating something learned to be effective. I usually play with new players at board game parties or relatives/significant other who are non-competitive. I am sure that my circle of Dominion players would be much narrower if I only played to win.
-
I've got friends and family in other states who are much more strategic/competitive, and with them, I think no-holds-barred Dominion would be optimal, but with the immediate group I'm likely to play with, I'm better off looking for slower, more circuitous routes to success, with lower odds at victory. In other words, I have to consciously make the decision to play for fun rather than play to win. So the harder the outlier strategy is to execute (and the less it involves strong attack cards), the more I'm likely to try it... makes for some fun games.
You have patient family. The even bigger problem for me is that my friends would not want to wait 3 min for my engine turns while they chose the BM/draw strategy requiring playing X and counting treasures only (if having X in hand at all).
-
Getting back to Counting House, to me it feels a bit similar to Harvest with bigger deviations. Harvest might give close to 3 on average and anything between 1 and 4. Counting House could average the same with anything between 0 and 7 if you're not actively building a deck for it.
But Counting House can't be Throne Roomed making it even less viable.
-
Adding a +buy to Counting House could be interesting. I can't see it making that much better, but it would help make it parts of more boards as opposed to essentially never being bought.
I think that would make it way too strong. The +buy does too many good things for Counting House. It lets you get more Coppers; it lets you use the excess money; and it can allow you get a lot of Counting Houses. Seems like it will stack far too well. It's on the weak side now, but I don't think a +buy is a good fix. That pushes it too far the other way. It's fine how it is.
Getting back to Counting House, to me it feels a bit similar to Harvest with bigger deviations. Harvest might give close to 3 on average and anything between 1 and 4. Counting House could average the same with anything between 0 and 7 if you're not actively building a deck for it.
But Counting House can't be Throne Roomed making it even less viable.
The big problem with Counting House is that the deviations are generally bad. When you get $5+, you usually can't use it all, so it still ends up being more like $0-4 than $0-7.
-
Just a friendly reminder that's bad cards add to Dominion as well! You never get the cool experience of winning in a clever way with a card which is usually terrible unless there are some cards which are usually terrible.
-
Adding a +buy to Counting House could be interesting. I can't see it making that much better, but it would help make it parts of more boards as opposed to essentially never being bought.
I think that would make it way too strong. The +buy does too many good things for Counting House. It lets you get more Coppers; it lets you use the excess money; and it can allow you get a lot of Counting Houses. Seems like it will stack far too well. It's on the weak side now, but I don't think a +buy is a good fix. That pushes it too far the other way. It's fine how it is.
What if Counting House had a clause: "While this is in play, you may not buy Copper." ? Now you can still make use of all your money, but you still need a plan to get your extra Coppers.
-
Adding a +buy to Counting House could be interesting. I can't see it making that much better, but it would help make it parts of more boards as opposed to essentially never being bought.
I think that would make it way too strong. The +buy does too many good things for Counting House. It lets you get more Coppers; it lets you use the excess money; and it can allow you get a lot of Counting Houses. Seems like it will stack far too well. It's on the weak side now, but I don't think a +buy is a good fix. That pushes it too far the other way. It's fine how it is.
What if Counting House had a clause: "While this is in play, you may not buy Copper." ? Now you can still make use of all your money, but you still need a plan to get your extra Coppers.
Counting House has a bit of the "Pilosopher's Stone problem" that way.
As you increase your deck size by bloating it with Coppers, you will see your Counting Houses less often. And even if you buy lots of them, you can only effectively play one per turn to get all the Coppers. You could play the rest for buys though.
Counting House's main problem is that you either undershoot your target, which is bad, or overshoot by a lot and that seems like a waste. We're still talking about a $5 here, a highly competitive price point.
We can't judge precisely how adding a +Buy would effect the number of boards on which Counting House is an interesting choice, but I think it's good to increase this number. We already have 5's that are way way dominant over other 5's so closing this gap seems like a worthwhile effort.
-
How about adding this:
You may discard 3 coppers. If you do, +action.
I think that would increase the power of the Counting House tremendously, while keeping it interesting. The extra action will seriously increase combo-ability; not just Coppersmith, but also e.g. cellar to find your village (scoop up all the coppers, discard 3 to be able to play the cellar, dump the rest of the coppers, hey, there's my village/smithy combo, my engine just fired!), you can play a terminal +buy card, etc. There is no self synergy, because you could of course play another CH to scoop those 3 coppers back up, but that has no net effect.
I'm not sure whether 3 is the right number to discard, it might need to be higher or lower to find the balance between "irrelevant" and "totally overpowered".
Also, I really think adding any kind of +buy (even with discarding of a number of coppers) will make the card too powerful; or at least boring. (i.e. I would expect it to be: "buy province, counting house or copper, whichever you can afford with each buy. Standard BM rules for buying Duchies apply." Perhaps a cap on the number of counting houses.)
-
To be clear, my suggestion was to give it the +Buy but disallow its use to buy Copper. That way you eliminate the instances where it overshoots without making it easy to bloat on copper.
-
Counting House has a bit of the "Pilosopher's Stone problem" that way.
As you increase your deck size by bloating it with Coppers, you will see your Counting Houses less often. And even if you buy lots of them, you can only effectively play one per turn to get all the Coppers. You could play the rest for buys though.
The "Philosopher's Stone problem" has to do with the Potion cost. Since you can only buy them when you draw a Potion, you can only get N every time through your deck, where N is the number of Potions you have. If the large deck causes you to cycle slowly, you just can't get enough P.Stones to have it be worth it. It would be a lot stronger if it had a non-potion cost (like $7 or something). At only $5, it shouldn't be hard to buy 3-4 Counting Houses in one time through the deck once you already have a couple. And then you will usually have one to play every turn, even in a bloated deck.
-
Man, Counting House is fine. It's not that good, but it has its niche, and it's too elegant in its design to add weird balancing clauses.
-
Counting House has a bit of the "Pilosopher's Stone problem" that way.
As you increase your deck size by bloating it with Coppers, you will see your Counting Houses less often. And even if you buy lots of them, you can only effectively play one per turn to get all the Coppers. You could play the rest for buys though.
The "Philosopher's Stone problem" has to do with the Potion cost. Since you can only buy them when you draw a Potion, you can only get N every time through your deck, where N is the number of Potions you have. If the large deck causes you to cycle slowly, you just can't get enough P.Stones to have it be worth it. It would be a lot stronger if it had a non-potion cost (like $7 or something). At only $5, it shouldn't be hard to buy 3-4 Counting Houses in one time through the deck once you already have a couple. And then you will usually have one to play every turn, even in a bloated deck.
Which is where herbalist comes in. Use the Herbalist to use the potion multiple times to by multiple P Stones, then use the Herbalist to use the P Stones multiple times.
(At least in theory, like communism)