Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion Articles => Topic started by: DrFlux on June 14, 2012, 02:18:06 pm
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Hi all, this is my first attempt at an article. I am I level 30 player, I love dominion and I think my strategic grasp of the game is decent. I've really appreciated these forums as a place to think about interesting strategies.
I would love any feedback about Trader, I think it is an interesting card that is rarely discussed. When is Trader good enough to convince you not to buy a curser, for instance? Interestingly, Trader's silver giving ability dilutes the density of the Traders themselves, making sneaking curses in easier than one might expect.
Trader:
Trader is a strange card. Typically trashers are most useful in engine decks, where getting rid of estates and coppers will lead to drawing your combo pieces together. However, Trader is somewhere between mediocre and awful in these cases, as it only trashes one card, and the silvers you gain can be nearly as unwanted. Trader should NOT be thought of as a trasher, but as a way to flood your deck with silver. Who wants tons of silver? Money decks and only money decks.
The obvious place to use trader is in cursing games, as it is a clear case of a reaction that can actively punish your opponent for their cruel ways. It is important to realize that if you are attempting to beat cursers with trader, that flooding your deck with silver can be as important as the reaction ability. This leads to the second use of trader, which is in slow alternate victory card games, particularly Duke or Gardens. Duke/Trader plays as well as Duke/Horse-Trader. You buy two or three Traders on early turns, trash your estates, silvers, traders, and maybe a gold or even a province to flood your deck with silvers, so that all that victory chaff doesn't matter. Its important to note that terminal collision is not a big problem, as you can trash Trader to Trader. Since all you need is two silvers and a copper to buy duke/duchy, you should be golden.
The final place case where Trader can shine is with cards that give on-buy benifit, such as Border Village, Ill-Gotten Gains, etc. Its important to note that unlike more flexible "trash for benifit" options like remodel, you have to actually WANT lots of silver for this to be worthwhile.
It is difficult to provide stats on trader, as the simulators do not model it well AT ALL, as it is difficult to play correctly. Sometimes you want to trash silver or gold early to build up more silver, but when to skip this in order to buy something expensive is case dependent.
For this reason it is difficult to rank how different strategies rate against Trader. Trader-only stragies beat Sea Hag and Familiar consistently, as both of those cards are slow and provide little other benefit than cursing. With the strongest cursers -- Witch and Montebank, the games are a close slog, and I suspect Trader-Silver leading into eventually 2 cursers may be optimal. Interestingly, Trader's silver giving ability dilutes the density of the Traders themselves, making sneaking curses in easier than one might expect. Try to track your opponents Traders - if its turn five and they haven't played it, you may want to skip playing your Montebank if you can afford it. This is even more true with IGG-Trader boards, where you will typically want to buy something other than IGG if your opponent may have a Trader. IGG/Trader is very good for similar reasons as Duke/Trader. Here is a good example of a game featuring all three, and me trying to dance around my opponents Trader http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120302-160726-afbde46f.html (http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120302-160726-afbde46f.html). In general, Trader loves Duchies, and you can start buying them earlier than usual because of all that silver. Conversely, Trader hates Colonies, as it dilutes the density of those golds and plats that you need to by your Colonies.
The final use of Trader is in BM without any curses or interesting green cards. In this case is works like a much weaker Jack, trashing your estates and giving you silver, but not providing you the full 5 cards that Jack gives you to work with. For this reason, it is rarely the strongest BM option. Trader-Silver into a draw card like smithy is passable but swingy, as you really need to draw estates with your trader for it to be a worthwhile purchase.
This brings us to my biggest discovery during writing this article. Opening Trader+Courtyard is awesome. Much better than courtyard alone. Courtyard allows you to match up your Trader with your estates much more consistently, and its nice to be able to buy an extra courtyard if you have 2 left after Trader-ing. Playing solitaire, it can consistently get 4 provinces in 12-13 turns, with a lot of staying power due to all the silver in the deck. Courtyard-Jack works in a similar way and produces similar results, but you already knew Jack was good.
Other little combos with Trader include things that give you more copper, or more buys. Margrave+Trader is passible, as you can use your extra buy to get a silver in the case of terminal collusion. It gets 4 provinces in about 15 turns, with a lot of variance, mostly due to Trader hooking up with estates or not. Cache can be good if you are lucky enough to get Trader+$5. Finally, Wishing well can help you get Trader+Estate, and can be very likely to pick up extra silver later. Most of these last tricks are probably not enough to make you want to go trader by themself, but you should keep your eye out for them if other conditions are good for Trader.
As a final note, rare occasions do occur where you have an engine and are drawing your deck consistently, but you need more money. You risk killing your your combo in the long term, but you can use Trader provide yourself with a lot of money quickly, either with multiple buys or trashing.
Works with:
Courtyard
Cursing Games (especially slow ones like Familiar)
Ill-Gotten Gains
Alternate Victory Cards (Duke and Garden Especially)
Trashable cards (boarder village)
Cache, Wishing Well, Margrave, and extra-buys in general
Conflicts with:
Engine Games
Games where you need a "key" card like Tournament
Stronger Big Money Options
Colony games
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So, you spend a good teal of time saying sims don't understand trader very well, and they don't. But this line
In addition, the simulator never remembers the trick of buying copper in order to gain a silver, if you leave a Trader in your hand.
is wrong. The simulator will remember this, if you tell it to remember it, i.e. add in a buy rule for copper 'if count in hand trader>0'. I guess if you also want it to trash coppers for you, you need to also have the condition where you make sure it's not still in the action phase probably.
The big reason sims don't play it well is that they don't have a very good way of figuring out what to trash, or whether to trash anything at all.
As for trader overall, the thing is, you should NOT look at it as a trasher. You sort of dance around this, but I wish you'd say it more explicitly. It's very good against curse-givers, of course, but I don't think even that is the best way to think of it. You want to think of it as a silver-flooder. When is silver-flooding good? Money games money games, and only money games. The question of whether it helps BM strategies comes down to it being quite a slow thing - yes you get a billion silvers, but it takes you forever - you need to buy the trader (1 shuffle), trader the card for silvers (2 shuffles) and then get them. It takes a while for this to be faster than just buying, and you have this card floating around which is not so useful later.
Tradering silver may be the right play at some point, but you're almost never happy to do it. It costs you tempo right now, and it only nets two silvers, which isn't great.
You might also want to mention that it's a decent enough defense for a money deck against ambassador.
It combos with cache quite nicely, and gardens maybe even better than duke.
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The final place case where Trader can shine is with trash-for-benefit cards such as Border Village, Ill-Gotten Gains, etc. Its important to note that unlike more flexible options like remodel, you have to actually WANT lots of silver for this to be worthwhile.
I think you're using the term "trash for benefit" incorrectly here.
Trash-for-Benefit: Any card that gives a benefit at the cost of trashing a card. Apprentice draws additional cards, Salvager gives cash, etc.
(From the glossary (http://dominionstrategy.com/glossary/))
Trash-for-benefit refers to the card doing the trashing, not the card being trashed.
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@WanderingWinder:
I'll cut out the incorrect sim statement, I have not used the simulators extensively.
As for your other comments:
As for trader overall, the thing is, you should NOT look at it as a trasher.
I very much agree with this, that's what I was trying to get at with the first paragraph, I'll try to be more explicit.
I will add something about ambassador, gardens and cache.
Tradering silver may be the right play at some point, but you're almost never happy to do it. It costs you tempo right now, and it only nets two silvers, which isn't great.
Also agreed, that is why its so important early on to draw traders with Estates, in a similar way as salvager. You don't really want to be trashing silvers OR coppers, instead you'd rather trash estates or really expensive things. Trashing coppers is probably even worse than silvers, since you are going to be flooding your deck anyways.
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Couple things I'd mention:
1. the trader's best friend is the Envoy. It's awkward to know when to buy an envoy, but you are so happy if you can play him just twice, since he will almost certainly net you 4 money and will often net you 6. Trader also likes other terminal draw, but envoy is the most ridiculous. Which brings us to
2. the trader's enemy is the Colony. I know, I know, silver's not that bad in big money/colony - but it's not that good, either, and the trader's drain on the hand size is a much bigger deal in a colony game. An exception is if you can draw lots of cards, e.g. with envoy or embassy. A corollary of which is:
3. Traders love duchies. Once your deck is stuffed with silver, you may not reshuffle again more than twice. Buy duchy much earlier than you normally would. Don't be shy about taking a duchess, either - the only terminal she'll conflict with is a trader you don't want to be playing late game anyway. Plus, if you have 5 in hand and a trader, you can take a silver instead of a duchess.
EDIT: I am glad you wrote this article - I agree that trader really obsoletes some strong-seeming cursers, and that this isn't well-known or discussed enough! It's certainly an underrated four, probably because it's not very good as a pure trasher, which is the most obvious first use of it.
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Under "works with", you might want to give Cache a special mention: pay $5 with Trader in hand for two silvers and a gold-equivalent.
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[obligatory reference to blue dogs]
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One more thing - trader/chapel and trader/steward are pretty good openings, because the first time you draw them together, you can trash your junk and still gain a silver by buying a copper, and the second time you draw them together, you can trader the trasher. The downside is that trashers are better in games where you don't want silver-flooded decks, so this is generally only recommended if you anticipate getting use out of the trader's reaction ability.
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The final place case where Trader can shine is with trash-for-benefit cards such as Border Village, Ill-Gotten Gains, etc. Its important to note that unlike more flexible options like remodel, you have to actually WANT lots of silver for this to be worthwhile.
I think you're using the term "trash for benefit" incorrectly here.
Trash-for-Benefit: Any card that gives a benefit at the cost of trashing a card. Apprentice draws additional cards, Salvager gives cash, etc.
(From the glossary (http://dominionstrategy.com/glossary/))
Trash-for-benefit refers to the card doing the trashing, not the card being trashed.
Maybe "gain for benefit" is the correct term.
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Nice article.
You mention the advantage Trader gives you in a Cursing game, but I missed mentioning Trader as an especially good counter on Mountebank games. Just get a few Traders and your opponent feeds you with Silver... 2 silvers per play instead of 1 silver like any other curser.
The other combo with Cache I missed, WW already mentioned.
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Another very strong combo is trader/margrave. On a lesser scale, council room/trader also works. Early on, collisions mean that you play the draw and pick up a free silver. Later, once you have flooded the deck with silver, you can get the cards & buys to get duchy + province fairly easily or try to claw back a win by buying two duchies.
Trader can actually be a good surprise move for the final megaturn of an engine. Yeah, silver flooding kills the engine, but it can also provide an obscene payout for one turn. For instance, trader (trash peddler, gain 8 silver) -> mass draw will get you 16 coin to spend and you can buy an additional colony/duchy or 2 provinces that turn. If you have the setup for it (and I've haven't tried this enough to say I've ever won because of it), trader can add a huge amount of buying power and let you bang out mass points. For instance a chapel/festival/library/peddler setup can trash a peddler and then play a terminal library for 14 coin. For this to work you need to have the ability to overdraw your current deck by a lot, you need to have a big card that you can trader (6 coin or higher would be my guess, something like nobles, peddler, province, or maybe gold), and you need a big number of +buy.
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No mention of watchtower+trader opening?
It's pretty fun and defends particularly well against cursers.
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A couple more cards which trader benefits from. Not really the strongest things, but something to watch out for.
Wishing Well - Lets you pair up traders and estates early game and then has a high chance of wishing correctly for silver late game.
Grand Market - Silver flood lets you pick up a few of these early and the extra buy lets you pick up even more silver.
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Trader/Cache: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1740.msg27534#msg27534 (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1740.msg27534#msg27534)
Trader/Wishing Well: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1866.msg29718#msg29718 (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1866.msg29718#msg29718)
Both probably lose to good BM, but are fine options if nothing else in on the board :P
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Trader can actually be a good surprise move for the final megaturn of an engine. Yeah, silver flooding kills the engine, but it can also provide an obscene payout for one turn. For instance, trader (trash peddler, gain 8 silver) -> mass draw will get you 24 coin to spend and you can buy an additional 2 colonies or 3 provinces that turn. If you have the setup for it (and I've haven't tried this enough to say I've ever won because of it), trader can add a huge amount of buying power and let you bang out mass points.
(8 * 2 = ... ;)) but I have a game that's some sort of example of this:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120520-045510-a8eb6725.html (http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120520-045510-a8eb6725.html)
We both build a powerful engine with a lot of +buys and a huge drawing potential (hi mr. Apprentice), and then I need more money to actually be able to buy something. So I get a trader, buy 4 silvers for $0, apprentice a lot more and end the game with a megaturn where I trade for 4 more silvers and can indeed buy for 24$+. It felt like one of my better games back then.
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A lot of good suggestions, I will rewrite the article soon.
I'm not sure Grand Market is a good combo though, sure you can buy it, but if you have a silver flooded deck, you can't make the kind of use of it other decks can. In games where Trader shines: alternate victory and curse games, the Market won't be much better than a gold, and even gold is less useful than usual in a heavily silver flooded deck.
You mention the advantage Trader gives you in a Cursing game, but I missed mentioning Trader as an especially good counter on Mountebank games.
I'm also not sure Trader is better against Montebank than Witch, believe it or not. Because you are are flooding your deck, you will be less likely to have a curse or a trader in your hand, which means Double-Montebank will actually give you curses and coppers maybe even more often than if you didn't have the trader. And those coppers hurt quite a bit, I've definitely had games where I get silver-silver-silver-copper-curse turn after turn in the late game, when I NEED to be buying provinces.
In short, I do think Trader is useful against Montebank, but I don't think its a magic bullet.
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I just tried some solitare games, and opening courtyard-jack or courtyard-trader is awesome. Way better than playing double jack or double+ courtyard. In both cases I was consistently scoring 4 provinces by turn 12 or 13, and not slowing down at all. I think this is mostly due to courtyards awesome ability to allow trader to trash your estates, which is really what you want it to do in standard province BM games. Its also nice that with 2xestate-2xcopper-trader, you can still buy an extra courtyard, which you want 2-3 of over the course of the game.
I also tested out trader-margrave, which was a lot less consistent, grabbling 4 provinces by about turn 15, with a lot of variance (due to mostly trader hooking up with estates or not). You do have the extra benefit of the attack though, so I think you could beat something basic like Smithy-BM with this.
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I updated the Trader article at the head of this. Any other suggestions? Any game logs to suggest?
-DrFlux
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Tradering Golds can be very effective if done early:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120529-172516-064e2083.html
While this still isn't amazingly quick, it seemed good at the time :P
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Trader/chapel is very strong. The idea is to chapel everything, then build up your deck with trader. Here's an example which gets 8 provinces in 20 turns: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201208/05/game-20120805-160915-d1925c09.html
I buy provinces one reshuffle later than I need to(so I can get all 8 without stalling), but if you start earlier it's even faster. Playing around with some solo games, this is pretty consistent. You have to be careful about buying too much stuff early. You'll have a few hands of 3-4(sometimes 5) and you don't want to clog things up. Most cards don't help much, surprisingly.
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Why not take a free silver on turn six?
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Trader/chapel is very strong. The idea is to chapel everything, then build up your deck with trader. Here's an example which gets 8 provinces in 20 turns: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201208/05/game-20120805-160915-d1925c09.html
I buy provinces one reshuffle later than I need to(so I can get all 8 without stalling), but if you start earlier it's even faster. Playing around with some solo games, this is pretty consistent. You have to be careful about buying too much stuff early. You'll have a few hands of 3-4(sometimes 5) and you don't want to clog things up. Most cards don't help much, surprisingly.
I think you definitely get too much treasure in this game. http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201208/05/game-20120805-195008-4e1142a0.html (http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201208/05/game-20120805-195008-4e1142a0.html) I do basically the same strategy and get all 8 in 17. So quick!
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The discussion so far has centered on using Trader exclusively in Money games or as a defense against Curse-givers. I feel this doesn't fully capture some of the intricacies of this card. In particular, one item I think is absent from this discussion is trash-for-benefit cards. Apprentice clearly comes to mind. Other cards like Remodel, Upgrade, Expand, etc. can also be very strong in this regard. Particularly in a game without +Buys, Trader can combine with Remodel-esque cards to provide "virtual buys." The link below provides a nice example of such a game, in which I get behind early which can be deadly in a game without +Buys but am able to use Traders to trash 1 Silver for 3, and then use Upgrades to get Walled Villages and Envoys, which I then upgrade to Duchies in the endgame.
Here's the log:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201302/10/game-20130210-151345-e9e4946f.html (http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201302/10/game-20130210-151345-e9e4946f.html)
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And there's Feodum.
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Traders can be baggage by the end of the game when they provide no income on the final turns. This is worth considering since silver isn't so great in 5 card hands with some dead cards.
It could be worth mentioning that traders are one of the few reaction cards that do not provide a universal defense. Cards like secret chamber and horse traders do provide a good defense to most attacks. However traders are no use at all against fortune tellers, minions, spies, etc.
It could be worth mentioning that the trader leaves the original cards in the supply. This becomes relevant in multiplayer games where the players without traders can collect most of the curses/ruins (more than 10) and the players with traders can collect a lot of silver. All reactions can be much stronger in multiplayer and traders can gain an incredible amount of silver, so much that the silver pile certainly has the potential to run out.
The effect of curses and especially ruins can be quite minor in decks flooded with treasure. A few curses leaking past the defenses are not actually a big problem if you've trashed out your starting estates and are well prepared to buy provinces. So in this respect I think traders will be a good defense against mountebanks.
It might be worth mentioning that cards gained with trader go in the supply even though it is substituting for cards gained into hand (such as with beggar).
It might be worth mentioning that the trader doesn't provide a quick upturn in spending. The council room stats suggests it is a very bad partner for tournament and loses out to faster cards such as masquerade, jack of all trades, or remake. The council room suggest it works well with more vp in the kingdom, particularly at the 6 coin range that can be bought with silvers - duke, harem, nobles, fairgrounds, farmland.
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Of course I just log onto Goko and play a game where I can use highways to reduce card costs to zero, letting the trader trash everything out without gaining silvers. setting up a throne-nomad camp-highway finish. I'm guessing that isn't a common use for a trader.
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The discussion so far has centered on using Trader exclusively in Money games or as a defense against Curse-givers. I feel this doesn't fully capture some of the intricacies of this card. In particular, one item I think is absent from this discussion is trash-for-benefit cards. Apprentice clearly comes to mind.
Apprenticing Silvers is pretty weak sauce. It's like, wouldn't you rather have played a Lab or a Stables? Unless you really wanted to be rid of that Silver, but then why were you playing Trader in the first place? Lab and Stables are fine cards and all but it's not such a great day for Apprentice when it's outclassed by these.
Apprenticing your Trader after you've gotten some use out of it might be nice, but Silver bloat is likely to keep your Apprentice away from better targets (including the Trader) so is it worth it?
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Apprenticing Silvers is pretty weak sauce. It's like, wouldn't you rather have played a Lab or a Stables? Unless you really wanted to be rid of that Silver, but then why were you playing Trader in the first place? Lab and Stables are fine cards and all but it's not such a great day for Apprentice when it's outclassed by these.
Apprenticing your Trader after you've gotten some use out of it might be nice, but Silver bloat is likely to keep your Apprentice away from better targets (including the Trader) so is it worth it?
Not every kingdom has Lab, though; you have to use the tools you're given, and sometimes the only draw engine will be Apprentice.
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Apprenticing Silvers is pretty weak sauce. It's like, wouldn't you rather have played a Lab or a Stables? Unless you really wanted to be rid of that Silver, but then why were you playing Trader in the first place? Lab and Stables are fine cards and all but it's not such a great day for Apprentice when it's outclassed by these.
Apprenticing your Trader after you've gotten some use out of it might be nice, but Silver bloat is likely to keep your Apprentice away from better targets (including the Trader) so is it worth it?
Not every kingdom has Lab, though; you have to use the tools you're given, and sometimes the only draw engine will be Apprentice.
Indeed, Apprentice trashing Silver is only a +1 card net gain, but if the three cards you draw have an expected value of greater than $2, then you have a net gain.
Edit: I'm just suggesting that Trader has a place beyond a money game in some kingdoms.
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I'd also say trader works well on the remodeller cards, such as Upgrade, Remake, Develop.
I've found that the two problems with those cards is that sometime you don't have anything good at a $ level to move into, and that you often end up with hands of $2 or less. Trader helps both those situations.
One combo (which may be a nombo) I think might work on mid-strength kingdoms is Develop-Trader. I find Develops real weak point is when you Develop a $3 card, as you often end up having to stack an Estate. With Trader in there you could stack a Trader and a Silver, and Trade the Silver next turn, or if Develop and Trader don't collide, a Trader and Estate, and Trade the Estate next turn. Not sure how smooth this would be, but I reckon it could work.
I don't think its a complete strategy on its own, but if you start mixing in other decent cards to Develop into, it could start to click.
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I'd also say trader works well on the remodeller cards, such as Upgrade, Remake, Develop.
I've found that the two problems with those cards is that sometime you don't have anything good at a $ level to move into, and that you often end up with hands of $2 or less. Trader helps both those situations.
One combo (which may be a nombo) I think might work on mid-strength kingdoms is Develop-Trader. I find Develops real weak point is when you Develop a $3 card, as you often end up having to stack an Estate. With Trader in there you could stack a Trader and a Silver, and Trade the Silver next turn, or if Develop and Trader don't collide, a Trader and Estate, and Trade the Estate next turn. Not sure how smooth this would be, but I reckon it could work.
I don't think its a complete strategy on its own, but if you start mixing in other decent cards to Develop into, it could start to click.
You cannot stack a Trader and a Silver. You Develop a $3 card, gaining Trader and say Estate, topdecking them. If you reveal Trader to gain a Silver instead of an Estate, then the card will not be top-decked. So you only topdeck Trader, and the Silver you gain through Trader goes to your discard like any normal gain.
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Good point, hadn't thought of that.
Playing around on solo isotropic I have a lot of trouble making Trader/Develop work in any meaningful way. With no other cards going, it works out around 25 turns for 8 provinces, and 18-19 turns for 4 provinces, which seems pretty weak.
I think there might be room for Trader/Develop in the context of other good cards to develop to though, maybe a kingdom with Stables or Laboratory and no $2 card.
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The final place case where Trader can shine is with cards that give on-buy benifit, such as Border Village, Ill-Gotten Gains, etc.
While it does have some interesting effects with on-buy cards, I'm afraid only Farmland, Goons, Haggler, Hoard, Hovel, Mint, and Talisman yield any sort of effect from this "buy canceling."
Border Village and Ill-Gotten Gains incur their bonus when you gain them-- which you never do when you reveal a Trader.
Furthermore, Trader quite effectively shuts down Ill-Gotten Gains because if any other player avoids even a single Curse by revealing a Trader, piling-out Ill-Gotten Gains won't pile-out the Curses.
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The final place case where Trader can shine is with cards that give on-buy benifit, such as Border Village, Ill-Gotten Gains, etc.
While it does have some interesting effects with on-buy cards, I'm afraid only Farmland, Goons, Haggler, Hoard, Hovel, Mint, and Talisman yield any sort of effect from this "buy canceling."
Border Village and Ill-Gotten Gains incur their bonus when you gain them-- which you never do when you reveal a Trader.
Furthermore, Trader quite effectively shuts down Ill-Gotten Gains because if any other player avoids even a single Curse by revealing a Trader, piling-out Ill-Gotten Gains won't pile-out the Curses.
He's not saying to gain a silver instead. He's saying to trader your BV and gain 6 silvers later on.
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It combos with cache quite nicely, and gardens maybe even better than duke.
The combo with Embargo might be even better.
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I don't understand why you didn't mention the alternate Victory card "Feodum" from Dark Ages, with which Trader makes a MORE THAN obvious combination.... :D
What does Feodum want? A Deck full of Silvers. Is there any better card than Trader for this job?? I don't think so...
Also, consider using Trader to trash a Feodum for 7 Silvers.... WOW... :D
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I don't understand why you didn't mention the alternate Victory card "Feodum" from Dark Ages, with which Trader makes a MORE THAN obvious combination.... :D
Might have something to do with the fact that this was written before Dark Ages was released.