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[AHoppy]

What do you guys think of using butcher to trash a copper and get 1 coin token back?  (assuming there is no poor house on the board of course)

Because Butcher has you gain a card costing up to the cost of the trashed card + the number of coin tokens spent, you're still forced to gain a Copper/Curse/Ruin if you spend one coin token. Otherwise it would often be an excellent play.

Oh right... I forget that every time and then get sad...

[blueblimp]

I define an engine as a strategy which (theoretically, with an infinite supply) could (almost surely) produce exponential VP in the number of turns. Then again, I'm a mathematician.

Nice. This is good for a start although it's a little too narrow. This would cover any engine that's building up to multi-Province turns, as well as any engine playing multiple VP token generators per turn.

There are other reasons to build an engine though, such as in Colony games where hitting $11 is awkward with treasure strategies, so an engine can be worth it even if you're not expecting to multi-Colony. Another common reason to build an engine is to play an attack each turn, like Militia, or Knights.

[Warfreak2]

Well, you don't have to aim for exponentially much VP, just the strategy is capable of it. The goal is to exclude alt-VP Gardens/Silk Road/Duke/Vineyard slogs (quadratic VP), combos like Hermit/Market Square (also quadratic), golden deck gimmicks (reliable but linear VP), &c. The thing to me that distinguishes an engine is that it can use its buying power to increase its buying power ready for the next turn, only bounded by the size of the supply and the problem of having to actually win. If the engine produces $x this turn, and buying power can be purchased at an efficiency of $2/$6 (e.g. Grand Market), then it produces $(x * (1 + 2/6)) next turn, and therefore $(x * (4/3)^n) after n turns.

[SCSN]

Well, you don't have to aim for exponentially much VP, just the strategy is capable of it. The goal is to exclude alt-VP Gardens/Silk Road/Duke/Vineyard slogs (quadratic VP), combos like Hermit/Market Square (also quadratic), golden deck gimmicks (reliable but linear VP), &c. The thing to me that distinguishes an engine is that it can use its buying power to increase its buying power ready for the next turn, only bounded by the size of the supply and the problem of having to actually win. If the engine produces $x this turn, and buying power can be purchased at an efficiency of $2/$6 (e.g. Grand Market), then it produces $(x * (1 + 2/6)) next turn, and therefore $(x * (4/3)^n) after n turns.

I like the idea but it would exclude an engine like the one Stef builds in this video, which is not what you want.

Edit: and also this game from my previous post.

[Warfreak2]

Stef's strategy, I would call it Scrying Pool/Goons/BM. Yours is more of a three-card combo, Oasis/Tunnel/Butcher - I wouldn't say that adding Double-Tac makes it into an engine.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Stef's strategy, I would call it Scrying Pool/Goons/BM. Yours is more of a three-card combo, Oasis/Tunnel/Butcher - I wouldn't say that adding Double-Tac makes it into an engine.

Scrying Pool/Goons/BM is crazy talk. Stef's deck is clearly an engine. He has trashed most of his low quality treasure, is chaining a large number of actions together to draw his entire deck in order to reliably play an attack and a small number of high value treasures (Plat). It doesn't resemble a BM deck at all. Scrying Pool/BM is almost an oxymoron.

I don't think your definition works at all. Engines don't have to scale up in the manner you're describing, for VP or buying power or any other measure. Engines are decks that play a large number of actions with the goal of producing a somewhat reliable outcome each turn. Lots of times that reliable outcome is something like "play at least one Ghost Ship and draw enough to produce $8, buy one Province". This goal can be exactly the same as what a BM Ghost Ship deck wants, but if I play multiple Villages, several Peddler variants for cash, other terminal draw or whatever, then its an engine.

[Warfreak2]

I think we have different ideas about what the necessary features of an engine are.

It's worth noticing that Stef's deck at some point exhibits the feature I described - he uses all the buying power in his deck, buys a Platinum, and then next turn uses all the buying power in his deck (now including that Platinum). If there were Villages then he'd have been able to build more, so it sort of fails "in the limit", but I think I'm OK with that.

[Mic Qsenoch]

I think we have different ideas about what the necessary features of an engine are.

It's worth noticing that Stef's deck at some point exhibits the feature I described - he uses all the buying power in his deck, buys a Platinum, and then next turn uses all the buying power in his deck (now including that Platinum). If there were Villages then he'd have been able to build more, so it sort of fails "in the limit", but I think I'm OK with that.

I think the property you describe is a feature of some engines, but if you read game reports, ask people for examples, and generally evaluate the usage of the word "engine" in this community you will find that your definition is too restrictive to describe all the decks that are typically labelled engines. Which makes it a bad definition, but definitely an interesting observation about what engine behavior sometimes looks like.

[markusin]

Stef's strategy, I would call it Scrying Pool/Goons/BM. Yours is more of a three-card combo, Oasis/Tunnel/Butcher - I wouldn't say that adding Double-Tac makes it into an engine.

Scrying Pool/Goons/BM is crazy talk. Stef's deck is clearly an engine. He has trashed most of his low quality treasure, is chaining a large number of actions together to draw his entire deck in order to reliably play an attack and a small number of high value treasures (Plat). It doesn't resemble a BM deck at all. Scrying Pool/BM is almost an oxymoron.

I don't think your definition works at all. Engines don't have to scale up in the manner you're describing, for VP or buying power or any other measure. Engines are decks that play a large number of actions with the goal of producing a somewhat reliable outcome each turn. Lots of times that reliable outcome is something like "play at least one Ghost Ship and draw enough to produce $8, buy one Province". This goal can be exactly the same as what a BM Ghost Ship deck wants, but if I play multiple Villages, several Peddler variants for cash, other terminal draw or whatever, then its an engine.

Also, consider the Apothecary engine, that doesn't want any more copper than it needs to get to Province and maybe an extra apothecary each turn. Theoretically, such a deck can be exponential if you keep adding coppers and other engine pieces to maintain the action density (say Stables, or more Apothecaries). In practice, Apothecary engines aren't looking to get much more than 8 copper. They may get more cards to increase the reliability of the deck, but not the buying power.

[terminalCopper]

I don't think your definition works at all.

That's too harsh. I agree that Warfreaks definition doesn't cover all possible engines, but it covers many of them; and the other way round, whenever exponential growth is possible, a deck can be called an engine. Thus, the definition is not complete, but a good point to start with.

[Mic Qsenoch]

I don't think your definition works at all.

That's too harsh. I agree that Warfreaks definition doesn't cover all possible engines, but it covers many of them; and the other way round, whenever exponential growth is possible, a deck can be called an engine. Thus, the definition is not complete, but a good point to start with.

If I said the definition of a tree was "a plant that grows to over 30 feet tall" I would be giving a property that includes many trees and is a god-awful definition.

The point being, that a definition should be general enough to describe the features that are common to all (or nearly all) the things in the class.

edit: Anyway, none of this matters, I will stop arguing and being rude, engines can be whatever the heck you want them to be. I only spoke up because I had read the log of Stef's game the other day and when Warfreak called it Scrying Pool/Goons/BM I thought "that's crazy".

[blueblimp]

Maybe "an engine is a deck that plays at least two action cards on a majority of turns"?

[Awaclus]

It's an engine if it feels like an engine.

/arguing

[sudgy]

How about this definition:

"An engine is a deck that has a small amount of Treasures (or other sources of money) and a lot of Actions to draw the Treasures (or other sources of money)."

[blueblimp]

How about this definition:

"An engine is a deck that has a small amount of Treasures (or other sources of money) and a lot of Actions to draw the Treasures (or other sources of money)."

Then a Minion engine wouldn't be considered an engine, since every Minion is potentially a source of coin.

[WanderingWinder]

Engines draw lots of cards most turns - or at least on the critical turns near the end of the game when they're "firing".

It's worth noting that they don't need to KEEP all these cards, the important bit is that they're looking at them.

[DG]

Is Graverobber-throne-throne-bishop an engine deck?

[SCSN]

Is Graverobber-throne-throne-bishop an engine deck?

No, that's called a suicide deck.

[DG]

That's true actually. Where's an obscure pointless deck when you need one? How about King's Court, King's Court, Bishop, Explorer, Mine?

[liopoil]

That's true actually. Where's an obscure pointless deck when you need one? How about King's Court, King's Court, Bishop, Explorer, Mine?

that's awesome. 12 VP a turn using two of the worst 5$s? sweet.

[Kirian]

That's true actually. Where's an obscure pointless deck when you need one? How about King's Court, King's Court, Bishop, Explorer, Mine?

I don't think this is really an engine either, not in the standard sense.  It's a combo--a rather insane once-in-a-lifetime combo, but nonetheless a combo.

[Schneau]

That's true actually. Where's an obscure pointless deck when you need one? How about King's Court, King's Court, Bishop, Explorer, Mine?

Note that you can replace Mine with Province, making this a 3 card combo instead of a 4 card combo.

[blueblimp]

That's true actually. Where's an obscure pointless deck when you need one? How about King's Court, King's Court, Bishop, Explorer, Mine?

Note that you can replace Mine with Province, making this a 3 card combo instead of a 4 card combo.

And not only that but a 3 card combo using just two expansions (Seaside and Prosperity), so if you randomize from just those two expansions then you're pretty likely to see it eventually.

[PSGarak]

A good definition of Engine should also include bad ones. This seems dumb, but a deck doesn't have to be successful to be considered an engine. It can be bad and an engine, it's just a bad engine.

I think of an Engine as a deck that tries to play lots of cards. Usually actions, but some engines are built to draw money by playing lots of draw cards, and some engines have alt-treasure or alt-VP components, so I wouldn't exclude them either. Just, lots of cards. Lots of them. So many cards.

So, I define "Engine-ness" as the fraction of your deck that you expect to see on a turn, on average. You will note this is not binary, it's a spectrum. I think that's a good thing. (N.B. this directly corresponds with "how often does this deck reshuffle." This definition is less intuitive, but easier to calculate from game logs.)

As a benchmark, take a boring BM+X deck. It probably buys one card a turn, so on turn 15 it's got 25 cards. If it just plays money, it sees 5 cards, for an Engine-ness of 20%. If it plays a Smithy, it sees 8, for 32%. On average, a BM+Smithy deck gets an engine-ness of <30%. So we'll say an Engine has to beat that considerably.

On the other end, a deck that draws itself has an engine-ness of 100%. In fact, it's technically possible to get over 100% through heavy use of sifting cards, like a Minion deck that cycles itself more than once--I consider a card "seen" if it passes through your hand, even if you don't play it. We would call this an engine, even if it's not doing anything useful. It's not a good engine unless it's hitting at least $8, but it's still an engine. (A deck of 0 cards shall be christened "the trivial engine.")

And now let's take a look at cards that score in the mid-range, around 50%. One way to do this is with a deck with 20 cards, that goes through 10 cards a turn. This would describe a deck that on turn 15 has bought one card per turn, has trashed half its starting cards, and expects to play two villages, one smithy, and probably one or two more non-drawing terminals. That sounds middling-ly enginerific to me. Another deck that scores a 50% is one that is similarly 20 cards, and plays 5 cantrips per turn plus a terminal. That's an ok-not-great Conspiracy engine.

Either of these decks could edge up their engine-ness to 60-70% by trashing 3-5 more cards, or by gaining 5-ish cantrips, or by gaining two warehouses to sift through more of their deck. These activities are generally considered to be part of playing an engine, and possibly defining it.

[florrat]

I think you want to add something to your definition of engine about minimal deck size. I don't want to consider a golden deck an engine (but maybe you would). And if your deck is 5 Curses (and nothing else), that's certainly not an engine (and probably you have to try pretty hard to get a deck of 5 Curses).