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Dominion General Discussion / Strength of Delayed Effects
« on: October 26, 2017, 11:35:05 am »
There was a big discussion in one of the Nocturne threads about how strong Ghost Town is. To illustrate its strengths and weaknesses, the discussion got derailed onto Caravan and Tactician variants (because, obviously). People looking to discuss the new cards don't want to see that stuff though, so hey, here's a new thread for it!
First an (arbitrary) definition. When I say "delayed effect", what I mean is an effect that triggers at the start of your next turn.
One side of the argument was that delayed effects are inherently weaker than an immediate effect. An easy example of this is comparing Lab and Caravan (we all agree Caravan is weaker than Lab). Each card gives you net +1 card, but Caravan waits until next turn to do it.
The counter argument is that Caravan is weaker, not because the draw is delayed, but only because the card has to stay out for 2 turns every time it's played.
After thinking about it, I tend to agree with the second opinion. An extra card drawn at the very start of your turn is much more valuable than an extra card at some point in the middle. To illustrate this, imagine a card called DiscardCaravan. The text is exactly the same as Caravan, except there's a new line that says "Discard this card during cleanup on the turn you played it." This means that in a draw-your-deck engine, you can play all of your DiscardCaravans every turn (and get a bonus from each of them at the start of each turn).
Now compare having 5 DiscardCaravans to 5 Labs. If you're drawing your deck, both situations would give you +5 cards per turn. The DiscardCaravan is way better though because you get your bonus cards right at the start of your turn rather than the middle, and it's pretty hard to dud when you're starting with a 10 card hand.
Obviously you will want different things in different situations, but this example clearly indicates that all things being equal, in a draw-your-deck engine, delayed draw is simply better than immediate draw.
What do you guys think? Are there holes in my analysis? Does any of this actually make a difference in how card strength is evaluated? Does it make any difference if the draw card was terminal or not? Do delayed +actions behave similarly to delayed +cards?
First an (arbitrary) definition. When I say "delayed effect", what I mean is an effect that triggers at the start of your next turn.
One side of the argument was that delayed effects are inherently weaker than an immediate effect. An easy example of this is comparing Lab and Caravan (we all agree Caravan is weaker than Lab). Each card gives you net +1 card, but Caravan waits until next turn to do it.
The counter argument is that Caravan is weaker, not because the draw is delayed, but only because the card has to stay out for 2 turns every time it's played.
After thinking about it, I tend to agree with the second opinion. An extra card drawn at the very start of your turn is much more valuable than an extra card at some point in the middle. To illustrate this, imagine a card called DiscardCaravan. The text is exactly the same as Caravan, except there's a new line that says "Discard this card during cleanup on the turn you played it." This means that in a draw-your-deck engine, you can play all of your DiscardCaravans every turn (and get a bonus from each of them at the start of each turn).
Now compare having 5 DiscardCaravans to 5 Labs. If you're drawing your deck, both situations would give you +5 cards per turn. The DiscardCaravan is way better though because you get your bonus cards right at the start of your turn rather than the middle, and it's pretty hard to dud when you're starting with a 10 card hand.
Obviously you will want different things in different situations, but this example clearly indicates that all things being equal, in a draw-your-deck engine, delayed draw is simply better than immediate draw.
What do you guys think? Are there holes in my analysis? Does any of this actually make a difference in how card strength is evaluated? Does it make any difference if the draw card was terminal or not? Do delayed +actions behave similarly to delayed +cards?