Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion Articles => Topic started by: KingZog3 on March 18, 2013, 06:06:03 pm

Title: Marauder
Post by: KingZog3 on March 18, 2013, 06:06:03 pm
     I'm not new to Dominion, just to the whole online community. This is my first article on a Dominion card, although I do like to think of myself as a decent writer in general. Before I got all the expansions, I had DA as one of my first and so I've played hundreds of games with those cards. So all in all I know a bit about them.

     I saw somewhere someone saying that Marauder is not a good card because "it's way too slow." I'd like to show that in fact, Marauder is not too slow to attack, and not too slow in gaining Spoils, and is in fact almost a must buy in many kingdoms without lots of attack cards.

Slow attack? I think not!
     
     Sea Hag is great as it can be bought in the first two turns and can deal Curses on top of other people's decks, putting the Curses "into play" very fast. While Marauder is the same $4 price as Sea Hag, it only gives Ruins and not on top of people's decks. Opponents will only get the ruins in their hands on their second reshuffle, which may seem like a long time away, but those ruins hurt more than you think. This is because Ruins, while still giving marginal benefits, are totally pointless in the early game. Great, I can play Ruined Market for +buy. Yay! (The exception being Abandoned Mine, since it can help players early on...ish). And without fast trashing, there is a good chance that the Ruins will stay around for quite a while. If they don't play the Ruins, it has the same effect as a Curse in their hand, which leads to the second point of why early Ruins are still very harmful.
     At the start of the game, playing those action cards you bought is very important to get Golds or $5 cards or whatever else they do. That leaves little time for playing ruins, even if they give you $1 extra to spend, or and extra buy to pick up...um... two Pearl Divers. Most of the time, Ruins are still just junk, so dishing them out early is a good thing. And Chapelling may get rid of them easily, but then your opponents are still left with Coppers or Estates that they didn't get to trash because of the Ruins.
     There are other attacks that hurt more at the start of the game (Militia, Sea Hag etc...), but this is only half the card.

But...Spoils is just a Gold...

   Yes, it is just a Gold, but it's not what Spoils is that matters, it's how you get it. There are two things which make gaining spoils from Marauder a great thing.
     Firstly they help boost your economy, possibly skipping Silvers. Unlike Bandit Camp, you can't rely on playing Marauder every time it comes up, so turning the Spoils into real Gold is essential. But if you buy Marauder on the first two turns, then play it as soon as it comes into your hand, you're looking at a Spoils in your second reshuffle. Is that slow? That's the same as if you had just bought the Gold (Which would require some luck in pulling up 6$ on the third or fourth turn). Sure the Spoils goes away, but just play Marauder again and it's back. Once it's replaced with a real Gold, you can trash Marauder. Now you've got a Gold and your opponent has a bunch of Ruins. Even if you only manage to give him 3-4, that's enough to slow him down for a while, especially without a cheap trashing card.
     Secondly, the "price" of the Spoils is important. Marauder costs $4 and gives you Golds. $4 Gold is a great deal! It costs you an action to keep the Gold, but it gives your opponent Ruins in the process. Just like Bandit Camp is a $5 Gold which gets delayed, Marauder is a $4 Gold that is delayed and costs you an action. It's just a price you pay for how cheap it is.

How to Counter it?

     The best way to counter the junk you'll get is heavy trashing. It's pretty lame I know, but other than Lighthouse or Moat, that's the best way to deal with Ruins so early in the game. You may want to keep some if you're going for a Gardens strategy, but in general you'll want to trash them. If there's no trashing, get a Marauder yourself. There is nothing more boring than playing a game with all 10 Ruins while your opponent uses his cheap Gold to buy the more powerful $5 and $6 cards. What I'm trying to say is don't look at Ruins and think "Oh, they're not that bad. They give me a little effect when I play them." Take them seriously, especially when they can be given to you so fast.

Quick Summary

     In the end, there are faster, better attack cards that can be bought at the start of the game. However, by buying Marauder you guarantee yourself a Spoils(Gold) in your second reshuffle, eliminating luck factor for getting $6, and you give (mostly) useless cards to your opponents. Sea Hag is better, but Marauder is up there in terms of starting cards. The important thing to lookout for is other Marauders, since then everyone will just have tons of Ruins and Spoils.

Works with
- Buying it early
- Counters action based cards like Wandering Minstrel and Golem
- Fast deck cycling
- Scheme or Sage (can skip the Spoils with Sage, but plays Marauder more)

Does not work against
- Other, better, 4$ attack cards
- Opponents Scrying Pools
- Heavy Trashing
- Your Bishops
- Your Rabbles
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: SirPeebles on March 18, 2013, 07:54:21 pm
Perhaps this comment would be better suited to a general article on Spoils, but Marauder and Bandit Camp both work well with Counterfeit.  Clearing Copper helps you play your Marauder more often, and then Counterfeiting a Spoils is just awesome since you would have lost it anyhow and it's conjured right back next time you play Marauder.  Pillage benefits slightly less, since you don't have that steady stream of Spoils and might not get them to line up with Counterfeit.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: HiveMindEmulator on March 18, 2013, 11:28:59 pm
I have commented about the slowness of Marauder. That doesn't make it not a good card. It's still a top 10 $4 card. Everything you said is true. Ruins are harmful (almost as bad as Curses early on). Spoils can be useful (though generally not as useful as a $5 card early on). But that doesn't take away from the fact that Marauder is slow. Sea Hag is slow too, and it's one of the best $4 cards in the game. Slow doesn't mean bad, but it's something that you have to watch out for. With slow attacks it's sometimes possible to build up your draw engine before the attack really bogs you down and then trash the junk as fast as it comes in. It's sometimes even possible just to speed toward half the Provinces with a strong big money strategy. So it's definitely something you need to be wary of.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: sandstorm on March 19, 2013, 12:50:13 am
Has anyone been able to simulate Marauder BM vs other BM strategies?  I'm curious to see the results.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: dondon151 on March 19, 2013, 02:38:02 am
I can imagine that cursing attacks will also ruin (heh) Marauder. In the endgame, the fact that Ruins will not create any sort of VP differential between an attacking and non-attacking player means that the attacking player needs to ease into a stronger catch-up strategy.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: lespeutere on March 19, 2013, 05:15:52 am
Maybe this is a little heretical, but anyway:
Everybody assumes, sea hag is superior to marauder. If there is sea hag, but no strong trashers around, it's probably THE example of a slog game. From my experience, it's most effective to buy money if you can.
In a game with marauder and sea hag, it seems like everybody would start sea hag (v.s.). Would it make sense to start marauder (and pick up sea hag on the 2nd shuffle? This is not backed up by any sims or anything, it just came to my mind that getting those spoils might enable you to get golds more easily than your opponent. As ruins are really bad, their effects just little shenanigan, an early gold may compensate for a 3-7 loss in curses (you'll probably win the ruins split, though).
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: RTT on March 19, 2013, 05:28:57 am
Maybe this is a little heretical, but anyway:
Everybody assumes, sea hag is superior to marauder. If there is sea hag, but no strong trashers around, it's probably THE example of a slog game. From my experience, it's most effective to buy money if you can.
In a game with marauder and sea hag, it seems like everybody would start sea hag (v.s.). Would it make sense to start marauder (and pick up sea hag on the 2nd shuffle? This is not backed up by any sims or anything, it just came to my mind that getting those spoils might enable you to get golds more easily than your opponent. As ruins are really bad, their effects just little shenanigan, an early gold may compensate for a 3-7 loss in curses (you'll probably win the ruins split, though).
if you are first player you will probably open sea hag because of the chance to discard your oponents sea hag. but I could see it as a smart reaction of the last player to go for Marauder
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: lespeutere on March 19, 2013, 06:14:57 am
So you're distinguishing between p1 and p2 on the base of this slight difference in probability?
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: Vapo on March 19, 2013, 09:41:19 am
Maybe this is a little heretical, but anyway:
Everybody assumes, sea hag is superior to marauder. If there is sea hag, but no strong trashers around, it's probably THE example of a slog game. From my experience, it's most effective to buy money if you can.
In a game with marauder and sea hag, it seems like everybody would start sea hag (v.s.). Would it make sense to start marauder (and pick up sea hag on the 2nd shuffle? This is not backed up by any sims or anything, it just came to my mind that getting those spoils might enable you to get golds more easily than your opponent. As ruins are really bad, their effects just little shenanigan, an early gold may compensate for a 3-7 loss in curses (you'll probably win the ruins split, though).

I've not had the opportunity to test it (only just got round to picking up Seaside and haven't coughed up for anything except DA on goko yet) but I've been wondering whether strong trashing could be another good reason to go marauder over sea hag - if the junk isn't going to be in your deck by the end of the game then the point difference is irrelevant and ruins become almost as bad as curses, and marauder can provide the start-up cash a trashed down deck needs to begin building up again without having to add in silvers or other unwanted extra cards.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: DG on March 19, 2013, 12:16:40 pm
Sea hag does seem stronger than marauder in a straight head to head game. Ruins and spoils have a bit of depth to them though and it's not easy to pick out the differences between sea hag and marauder without first going through ruins and spoils. For instance having two cards in your deck, a marauder and a spoils, is a bit different from one attack card that provides +2 coin.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: lespeutere on March 19, 2013, 12:36:48 pm
Maybe this is a little heretical, but anyway:
Everybody assumes, sea hag is superior to marauder. If there is sea hag, but no strong trashers around, it's probably THE example of a slog game. From my experience, it's most effective to buy money if you can.
In a game with marauder and sea hag, it seems like everybody would start sea hag (v.s.). Would it make sense to start marauder (and pick up sea hag on the 2nd shuffle? This is not backed up by any sims or anything, it just came to my mind that getting those spoils might enable you to get golds more easily than your opponent. As ruins are really bad, their effects just little shenanigan, an early gold may compensate for a 3-7 loss in curses (you'll probably win the ruins split, though).

I've not had the opportunity to test it (only just got round to picking up Seaside and haven't coughed up for anything except DA on goko yet) but I've been wondering whether strong trashing could be another good reason to go marauder over sea hag - if the junk isn't going to be in your deck by the end of the game then the point difference is irrelevant and ruins become almost as bad as curses, and marauder can provide the start-up cash a trashed down deck needs to begin building up again without having to add in silvers or other unwanted extra cards.

Well, strong trashing is already a good reason to skip sea hag. So, getting marauder or not is then definitely a question of needing spoils or not instead of a question of attack.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: Kirian on March 19, 2013, 12:42:44 pm
So you're distinguishing between p1 and p2 on the base of this slight difference in probability?

Why not?  Wasn't it Stef who did the article on why the P2 seat is all but required to take greater risks?

I'd love to see a sim of Sea Hag vs. Marauder.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: enfynet on March 19, 2013, 01:38:53 pm
Marauder, as I see it, can be a good defense against attacks like Militia as the Spoils it gives you immediately increase your buying power. Militia-Silver is pretty strong against itself, because at best your opponent will have 5 coin to spend (Militia-Silver-Copper) while Marauder-Silver gives you the chance to discard down to 6 coin (Spoils-Silver-Copper)
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: KingZog3 on March 19, 2013, 03:27:39 pm
My view on Sea Hag vs. Marauder is that if Sea Hag is out, it's probably a better choice unless there is easy trashing. Otherwise, Marauder is better because it gives you a Spoils to counter opponent's Sea Hag or Marauder, or to make up for your loss of buying Marauder over the trasher card.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: Beyond Awesome on March 20, 2013, 01:21:05 am
Also, if Wandering Minstrel is out, going for Marauder on the first buy is a better choice because WM cycles through curses, but those Ruins pretty much turn WM into a basic village, maybe even worse since it is putting the ruins on top of the deck at the expense of other cards.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: sandstorm on March 20, 2013, 02:09:40 am
I thought I remembered Geronimoo doing some simulation on Marauder somewhere and I have found it.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=5843.0 (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=5843.0)

Marauder BM vs BMU = 60-32
Sea Hag BM vs BMU = 96-2

Now 60-32 is pretty terrible vs BM.  That is about the same as Bureaucrat BM vs BMU (Using the scripts on Geronimoo's simulator).  This obviously doesn't tell the whole story but it does give a reasonable benchmark.  I would like to see some sim results of Marauder BM vs other BM strategies but I would expect that Marauder gets beaten by a lot of them.  Marauder requires quite a bit of support to be good.  You need to have a good plan for it so you can play it frequently and be able to put those Spoils to use asap.  I think that Marauder will turn out to be generally a bad card to open with and should definitely be outside the top 10 4 cost cards.  A lot of BM strategies will simply be able to outrace it to Provinces.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: sandstorm on March 20, 2013, 02:39:37 am
One reason the BM results may be misleading is that BMU is impacted less by ruins than other strategies. This is because BMU has no action cards so its always able to play a ruins. Whereas ruins will often end up being dead cards to other strategies. I'm not saying that Marauder is in the same tier as Bureaucrat. Just that its nowhere near Sea Hag.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: lespeutere on March 20, 2013, 05:20:35 am
So you're distinguishing between p1 and p2 on the base of this slight difference in probability?

Why not?  Wasn't it Stef who did the article on why the P2 seat is all but required to take greater risks?

Fair enough. However, I was still questioning what's more risky.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: PSGarak on March 20, 2013, 11:53:19 am
One reason the BM results may be misleading is that BMU is impacted less by ruins than other strategies. This is because BMU has no action cards so its always able to play a ruins. Whereas ruins will often end up being dead cards to other strategies. I'm not saying that Marauder is in the same tier as Bureaucrat. Just that its nowhere near Sea Hag.
From later in the simulator thread:

I wonder how much worse Curses are than Ruins.  Is there an easy way to compare them in general?
The Ruins Witch wins 62-30 vs BM (Normal Witch is 94-4)
It seems that BMU can shrug off ruins surprisingly well.

It is important to note, however, that how both of those decks do against BMU isn't necessarily a great indicator of how those decks do against each other. Strategies in Dominion are highly non-transitive.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: SirPeebles on March 20, 2013, 12:04:28 pm
One reason the BM results may be misleading is that BMU is impacted less by ruins than other strategies. This is because BMU has no action cards so its always able to play a ruins. Whereas ruins will often end up being dead cards to other strategies. I'm not saying that Marauder is in the same tier as Bureaucrat. Just that its nowhere near Sea Hag.

This is an interesting point.  If the first Ruins BMU receives is Ruined Library, it's like not having a Ruins at all.  Abandoned Mine is pretty much just another Copper, which isn't so terrible.  Survivors is a dead card, but it's sifting has a chance of being quite useful.  While theoretically Ruined Market could be useful, in practice you won't want the +buy early on in BMU, since with $6 you'd probably take Gold over two Silvers -- and that's presuming that you manage to have $6 while one of your five cards in a Ruined Market.

So not only does Sea Hag's Curse effectively hit a turn earlier, but also there's a good chance the Ruins first time being drawn won't even be that painful. 
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: KingZog3 on March 20, 2013, 12:51:23 pm
So not only does Sea Hag's Curse effectively hit a turn earlier, but also there's a good chance the Ruins first time being drawn won't even be that painful.

I sort of thought this was obvious, since bad action cards will hurt engines more which needs specific cards to collide, especially early in the game. And it's more than a turn earlier, since they may have extra cards in their deck, like if they took Death Cart.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: sandstorm on March 20, 2013, 08:47:12 pm
I wonder how much worse Curses are than Ruins.  Is there an easy way to compare them in general?
The Ruins Witch wins 62-30 vs BM (Normal Witch is 94-4)
It seems that BMU can shrug off ruins surprisingly well.

What we need here is the results of Confusion Witch vs BMU.  This will give us a better idea of how significant the "BMU shrug off ruins effect" is vs how significant the 0vp instead of -1vp is.  I know someone has done Confusion Witch simulation before but all I can find is this.
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=2758.msg45036#msg45036 (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=2758.msg45036#msg45036)
This seems to indicate that the effect of going from -1vp to 0vp has a very strong effect.  This will account for a significant portion in the drop in winrate going from Witch to Ruins Witch vs BMU.

One other thing to notice is that a card (Ruins Witch) that
A) Costs more than Marauder
and
B) Only provides +2 cards instead of gaining a Spoils
is on par or slightly better than Marauder vs BMU.  This indicates that gaining a Spoils without any further benefit in a BM strategy is not very strong.

Also note that Cultist BM vs BMU has a win rate of 82-13.  This is on par with Wharf BM vs BMU.  So ruins aren't always weak against BMU.  Cultist does so much better than Marauder because it can dish out lots of ruins very quickly and cycle your deck at the same time.  It isn't a dead card in your hand for your current turn and it comes back around to you faster.  Marauder is just too slow without help.

What we also need are simulation results of Marauder BM vs other BM strategies besides BMU.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: HiveMindEmulator on March 21, 2013, 01:32:43 am
Now 60-32 is pretty terrible vs BM.  That is about the same as Bureaucrat BM vs BMU (Using the scripts on Geronimoo's simulator).  This obviously doesn't tell the whole story but it does give a reasonable benchmark.  I would like to see some sim results of Marauder BM vs other BM strategies but I would expect that Marauder gets beaten by a lot of them.  Marauder requires quite a bit of support to be good.  You need to have a good plan for it so you can play it frequently and be able to put those Spoils to use asap.  I think that Marauder will turn out to be generally a bad card to open with and should definitely be outside the top 10 4 cost cards.  A lot of BM strategies will simply be able to outrace it to Provinces.

Marauder BM being bad doesn't make Marauder bad. It's not uncommon for there to be something that helps cycle. BM strategies are only common in simulators, not in actual high-level Dominion play. My feeling is that Marauder is much closer in power level to Militia than to Sea Hag or Bureaucrat.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: sandstorm on March 21, 2013, 07:27:42 pm
Now 60-32 is pretty terrible vs BM.  That is about the same as Bureaucrat BM vs BMU (Using the scripts on Geronimoo's simulator).  This obviously doesn't tell the whole story but it does give a reasonable benchmark.  I would like to see some sim results of Marauder BM vs other BM strategies but I would expect that Marauder gets beaten by a lot of them.  Marauder requires quite a bit of support to be good.  You need to have a good plan for it so you can play it frequently and be able to put those Spoils to use asap.  I think that Marauder will turn out to be generally a bad card to open with and should definitely be outside the top 10 4 cost cards.  A lot of BM strategies will simply be able to outrace it to Provinces.

Marauder BM being bad doesn't make Marauder bad. It's not uncommon for there to be something that helps cycle. BM strategies are only common in simulators, not in actual high-level Dominion play. My feeling is that Marauder is much closer in power level to Militia than to Sea Hag or Bureaucrat.

I think I have been somewhat unclear over what I'm trying to portray and probably talked about BM too much so I will try to clarify what I'm trying to say.

1) I do not think Marauder is a bad card.  I would say it is average to slightly above average.
2) I am using the BM as a metric to compare it to other cards strength.  If you were to take every terminal's BM strategy and rank them in order of their winrate vs BMU, it would give you a reasonable ball park estimate of a cards power level.  Some would be too high (Courtyard) and some wouldn't make sense (Chapel, Coppersmith, etc.) but for the most part the rankings wouldn't be crazy.

I just really think this article understates how important cycling is for Marauder and how much tempo you lose by opening with it.  You kind of need to play it like you would play Saboteur (I'm not saying its as weak though).  You need to play it frequently and multiple times a turn if possible.  Its best when you can add it to an engine and play the Spoils the same turn you gain them.  You usually need to get the engine construction underway before buying the Marauder.  Unless there are cheap cards like Warehouse (possibly Sage) or all of the important engine components cost less than 5.

And yes, on boards without engine possibilities it is a bad choice most of the time.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: HiveMindEmulator on March 22, 2013, 01:52:50 am
2) I am using the BM as a metric to compare it to other cards strength.  If you were to take every terminal's BM strategy and rank them in order of their winrate vs BMU, it would give you a reasonable ball park estimate of a cards power level.  Some would be too high (Courtyard) and some wouldn't make sense (Chapel, Coppersmith, etc.) but for the most part the rankings wouldn't be crazy.

I would argue that this is a poor (and overused) metric. It causes people to overrate cards that are good in BM strategies compared to cards that are good in engines. Envoy BM does better than Lab BM. But is Envoy better than Lab? Probably not. It's not just trashers and megaturn cards that get underrated. There are general biases against non-cursing attacks, villages, things that work better in trashed decks, etc...
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: sandstorm on March 22, 2013, 03:06:29 am
2) I am using the BM as a metric to compare it to other cards strength.  If you were to take every terminal's BM strategy and rank them in order of their winrate vs BMU, it would give you a reasonable ball park estimate of a cards power level.  Some would be too high (Courtyard) and some wouldn't make sense (Chapel, Coppersmith, etc.) but for the most part the rankings wouldn't be crazy.

I would argue that this is a poor (and overused) metric. It causes people to overrate cards that are good in BM strategies compared to cards that are good in engines. Envoy BM does better than Lab BM. But is Envoy better than Lab? Probably not. It's not just trashers and megaturn cards that get underrated. There are general biases against non-cursing attacks, villages, things that work better in trashed decks, etc...

Well its like I said.  A ballpark estimate.  You definitely need to look at the list critically when talking about engines.  And BM results are almost meaningless when talking about non-terminals (such as Lab and Villages).  I am curious to know which cards you think are biased against because of BM results?  I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that Envoy is better than Lab before but maybe I've missed that.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: WanderingWinder on March 22, 2013, 07:02:02 am
2) I am using the BM as a metric to compare it to other cards strength.  If you were to take every terminal's BM strategy and rank them in order of their winrate vs BMU, it would give you a reasonable ball park estimate of a cards power level.  Some would be too high (Courtyard) and some wouldn't make sense (Chapel, Coppersmith, etc.) but for the most part the rankings wouldn't be crazy.

I would argue that this is a poor (and overused) metric. It causes people to overrate cards that are good in BM strategies compared to cards that are good in engines. Envoy BM does better than Lab BM. But is Envoy better than Lab? Probably not. It's not just trashers and megaturn cards that get underrated. There are general biases against non-cursing attacks, villages, things that work better in trashed decks, etc...

Well its like I said.  A ballpark estimate.  You definitely need to look at the list critically when talking about engines.  And BM results are almost meaningless when talking about non-terminals (such as Lab and Villages).  I am curious to know which cards you think are biased against because of BM results?  I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that Envoy is better than Lab before but maybe I've missed that.
Well, I think the point is that nobody rates them this way because nobody uses this metric. That everyone agrees lab>envoy is evidence against your metric rather than for it. Ad certainly, if this is the case an appreciable amount of the time (and every village says hello here), then you really can't use it as the basis of a justification for ANY card A>card B.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: sandstorm on March 22, 2013, 10:57:58 am
2) I am using the BM as a metric to compare it to other cards strength.  If you were to take every terminal's BM strategy and rank them in order of their winrate vs BMU, it would give you a reasonable ball park estimate of a cards power level.  Some would be too high (Courtyard) and some wouldn't make sense (Chapel, Coppersmith, etc.) but for the most part the rankings wouldn't be crazy.

I would argue that this is a poor (and overused) metric. It causes people to overrate cards that are good in BM strategies compared to cards that are good in engines. Envoy BM does better than Lab BM. But is Envoy better than Lab? Probably not. It's not just trashers and megaturn cards that get underrated. There are general biases against non-cursing attacks, villages, things that work better in trashed decks, etc...

Well its like I said.  A ballpark estimate.  You definitely need to look at the list critically when talking about engines.  And BM results are almost meaningless when talking about non-terminals (such as Lab and Villages).  I am curious to know which cards you think are biased against because of BM results?  I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that Envoy is better than Lab before but maybe I've missed that.
Well, I think the point is that nobody rates them this way because nobody uses this metric. That everyone agrees lab>envoy is evidence against your metric rather than for it. Ad certainly, if this is the case an appreciable amount of the time (and every village says hello here), then you really can't use it as the basis of a justification for ANY card A>card B.
Is everyone missing the part where I said terminals only?
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: eHalcyon on March 22, 2013, 12:53:27 pm
You already mentioned some exceptions that wouldn't tank properly by your metric - Chapel, Coppersmith - aligned but I think there are enough that the ranking vs BMU is not so helpful. Even among terminals there are plenty of cards that are much more suited to an engine strategy than BM. Using them in BMX and ranking against BMU won't account for that power.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: KingZog3 on March 22, 2013, 03:12:34 pm
Well its like I said.  A ballpark estimate.  You definitely need to look at the list critically when talking about engines.  And BM results are almost meaningless when talking about non-terminals (such as Lab and Villages).  I am curious to know which cards you think are biased against because of BM results?  I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that Envoy is better than Lab before but maybe I've missed that.

Quite simply, cards have different purposes. Using everything in BM means you are probably not using a lot of cards as intended. I agree it can be a start point for ranking some cards, but I don't think those results will be anywhere near a final result of a card's power.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: sandstorm on March 22, 2013, 09:30:14 pm
The BM ranking list is meant as a starting point for conversation and further analysis.  It is not meant to be an absolute rigid gospel.  Valuable insights can still be gained from the data when comparing cards of similar type.  Let me explain what I mean by using Marauder as an example.

Junking attacks are known to be quite strong in Dominion.  They make engine building difficult and are shown to be very strong in BM simulation.  Marauder is shown to be weak in BM simulation.  So the question arises "Why are junking attacks like Sea Hag, Witch, and Mountebank so much better at BM than Marauder?"  The answer to this question may also be important to engines (and in fact is) since it must be a specific property of Marauder.

An initial guess at this question would be "Perhaps it is because Marauder gives out ruins instead of curses".  However, when we look at Cultist we see that it does well against BM.  So what are the differences between Marauder and Cultist?

Marauder gains a Spoils while Cultist provides +2 cards and the ability to play another Cultist.  This shows us that Marauder provides a delayed economy boost while Cultist provides a cycling boost and the ability to possibly attack/cycle again.  Therefore, by looking at sample games we can conclude that Cultist will junk your opponents deck faster than Marauder and that this effect is stronger at defeating BM than gaining a Spoils.  This is important for engine building as well.  If you are building against Cultists you are going to be swarmed with junk faster than if playing against Marauder.  Marauder also gains a Spoils which further delays the time until the next Marauder play.

However, then the question kind of goes backwards.  "Sea Hag does not provide any cycling.  Why does it outperform Marauder against BM?"

The two reasons are that Sea Hag junks immediately to the top of an opponents deck and that curses are always dead cards as well as -1 vp.  The gaining of Spoils is not strong enough to compensate for these weaknesses in a BM match.  This is important when building engines.  Sea Hags attack often replaces a Copper with Curse during the early turns of the game.  This can prevent key purchases of 5 cost cards or force the purchase of nothing/2 cost card.  As we have learned from experience, the first few turns often have the biggest impact on the rest of the game.  Marauder can't possibly have any impact on an opponent until Turn 5 at the earliest and often it is later.  Even then, 2 of the 5 ruins (Abandoned Mine/Ruined Library) can be barely noticeable if they show up in a hand without other actions.  Survivors can be helpful early on as well.  As we have seen with Cultist, ruins are much more painful when they are given in large quantities causing them to behave more like Curses.  We begin to see Marauder as a card that takes some time to cause damage to opponents and, more specifically, does little harm to opponents during the critical early turns of the game.

The next thing we need to look at more closely is Spoils.  Simulation has shown us that gaining Spoils alone is not very powerful against BM.  So what is the best use of Spoils?  For the answer to this question I think about my experiences with another Spoils gainer, Bandit Camp.  Bandit Camp is great for draw your deck engines because it allows the spending power of gold without being worried that that gold will get in the way of starting the engine up on your turn.  Marauder can be used in much the same way.  In an engine you are able to play Marauder frequently, making it damaging like Cultist while also generating some solid spending money.  This is where Marauder becomes a true gem.

Based on this analysis I come to the conclusion that by opening with Marauder it is almost as if you have opened with a curse.  Your deck is not yet ready to use Marauder to its full capacity and the gaining of Spoils is too slow to help you get there.  Sea Hag's attack is powerful enough that it compensates for the early tempo loss.  Marauder's is not.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: DG on March 22, 2013, 10:17:04 pm
Since people are going deeper into the spoils/ruins thing I will as well.

The spoils is an extra card in the deck. This marginally slows down deck cycling for the marauder player. Maybe not important, but these things do add up in the long run. The marauder and spoils add variance to the deck income and usually you'd want to have the spoils buy an expensive card, costing 6 or more, rather than buy a silver equivalent card. Spoils are better when you have warehouse type cards to sift through the deck, taking quality over quantity, but if sifting cards are in the kingdom then looter attacks are going to be weaker. It's also worth remembering that sages and wandering minstrels from the dark ages set will both discard spoils.

Ruins are actually a low impediment to big money decks, as previously pointed out. However isolated ruins are actually a low impediment to most decks that have a treasure component. It's only when a deck has a lot of ruins that it suffers badly, when there are unplayed actions in most hands. The marauder cannot deliver ruins anywhere near as fast as cultists so it can take a while for the attack component to do serious damage, and that's without the points cushion that a cursing attack might provide.
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: eHalcyon on March 22, 2013, 10:22:40 pm
How much are ruins mitigated by an abundance of actions, e.g. FV spam (assuming you have other terminals that you also want to play)?
Title: Re: Marauder
Post by: SirPeebles on March 22, 2013, 10:34:27 pm
It's also worth remembering that sages and wandering minstrels from the dark ages set will both discard spoils.

This is true, but it's also worth noting that skipping a Spoils isn't as bad as skipping a Gold.  Assuming you still play your Marauder each shuffle, missing your Spoils one reshuffle means having two next reshuffle.  It would still usually be better to have it now, but you know.

Edit:  This is assuming that you wouldn't mind having a bit more high quality treasure in your deck.  Of course, there are engine decks that want to stick with a small carefully tallied amount of treasure, and these decks would prefer not to have an accumulation of Spoils.  This can be especially true for an engine relying on Bandit Camp as its village.