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[Schneau]

I realized yesterday that out of the official Dominion cards, diggers constitute some of the more poorly designed cards in the game. Here, a digger is a card that reveals cards from the top of your deck until meeting some stopping condition, and then doing something with one or more of the revealed cards.

Of course, "poorly designed" is very subjective. In general, many diggers have the problem of quickly cycling your deck, and therefore requiring reshuffles that are slow in real life. Additionally, many of the diggers are either overpowered or very weak. Here's my breakdown:

Overpowered
Rebuild - Largely considered too strong, leading to boring strategies.
Hunting Party - Not as bad as Rebuild, but pretty strong and can often play as a boring HP+X strategy.

Underpowered
Adventurer - One of the weakest cards per cost in the game.
Golem - Too expensive to be worth going for unless there are other Potion cards.
Sage - Maybe decent enough to not be considered underpowered. But, I've never seen anyone get too excited about it.

Probably Fine
Venture - "Fixed" Adventurer
Farming Village
Journeyman
Scrying Pool - Though fine, it can be slow to resolve.
Loan - Mostly weak, but decent enough to go here.


So, 4-5 out of 10 diggers being either OP or UP seems like a pretty high percent, considering the number of OP or UP cards in general. I wonder if there's something about diggers that makes them harder to design well?

[soulnet]

I'd say the only really bad designed card on your list is Rebuild. Maybe Adventurer because it should cost $5, but the mechanic is ok. Scryng Pool annoying spy-attack is as bad design as Adventurer's overcost. Only Rebuild's mechanic is really broken in my opinion.

Golem is fine as the only Potion card sometimes, possibly less often than the rest of the Potion-costs, but some card has to be. And it is usually pretty good with other Potion-cost cards. I think cards that vary a lot in power from one game to the next are the best, as they make strategy more important, and I enjoy that.

HP can be a monolithic strategy some times (especially if using cards pre-DA, otherwise is hard), but I don't think that is too awful. Sage is a fine card for me, I don't think is UP at all. Yes, it is so-so most of the time, but so are a lot of other cards.

[Tables]

I definitely agree with HP being on the list - not just because it's OP, but because it's one of the least fun cards to actually play IRL. It takes a long time to do and not anything really exciting, since you have to put your hand down, reveal cards from your deck, check them one at a time against your hand (and it can easily lead to a situation where you have 5+ different cards in your deck), then set them aside or put them in your hand, possibly end up shuffling at some point etc.

Golem and Sage I think are fine. Sage is pretty basic - it's not really underpowered, and it's usually pretty quick at digging, unless you buy it early or have a lot of junking. It's not very exciting but I don't really think there's anything wrong. Golem on the other hand is expensive, but very powerful and effective generally. I might only rarely buy Potion to get Golems alone, but when I already have the Potions, I'll usually take Golems on hands of 4P.

[DG]

If you move into three player games then I suspect that adventurer is a touch stronger (defense vs attack) and hunting party needs more support (once the pile is split 3 ways). Fortune teller is a digging attack and that's ok. I think the general mechanism is fine and Donald X would only be bothered about rebuild (too good solo) and scrying pool (too slow).

[LastFootnote]

The digging mechanic can be slow to resolve, but I think that's its only weakness. I think it's coincidence that some of what we consider to be the least balanced cards are digging cards. Rebuild uses the digging mechanic to be overpowered, but really almost any mechanic could be used for that. +20 Cards! It's just more subtle with Rebuild.

The amount of time the digging takes is important, though. Some cards (like Journeyman) use a fast digging mechanic and that's great. Even Scrying Pool itself would be fast to resolve without the annoying Spy attack on it. The two longest are Golem and Hunting Party. Golem gets a pass from me both because it's super cool and because in many decks it's fast to find two Actions that aren't Golems. Hunting Party is the biggest offender. First, it draws more of itself easily. Second, it takes significantly longer to check whether you already have a copy of a card in your hand than it does to check, for example, whether that card has a specific type. Online that's fast to check, but the fact that your hand keeps getting revealed and unrevealed still makes the card quite slow to resolve.

This thread made me go back and check how many cards in my own set have a digging mechanic. Luckily, only two as of now: a slightly slow one and a very fast one. I'm happy with that.

[soulnet]

I agree with HP being poorly designed because of its slowness IRL. I guess I mostly know about SP because is slow IRL and online.

[PSGarak]

If you count digging attacks, there's also Saboteur.

Digging-for-X is a tricky mechanic. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with it, and I don't think the list of Diggers is any more or less balanced than your average random 10 cards (aside from Rebuild being an outlier). However, I do think that designing digging cards takes extra design considerations, because there are some potential traps to it.

The thing with Diggers is, you don't get to pick which card is actually Dug. With a KC or a Throne Room you can choose any Action you have in hand, and you know exactly what it's hitting when you play it (edge case: chained TR/KC + draw cards). By contrast, with Golem, you don't know exactly what action it's going to hit in general. You don't get to pick that turn. They way you choose which action to play with Golem, is by being extra selective about what actions you acquire in the rest of the game.

And that's really the big issue surrounding Dig-for-X: They exert a disproportionate influence on the composition of the rest of your deck. Hunting Party is monotonous, because you can't just splash in a minor utility card because that makes HP choke. Golem is fine, but you have to be careful and not let the riff-raff in. Venture and Adventurer are both basically crap unless you can clear out your Copper. With other cards you have different ways of dealing with this. Like the aforementioned TR/KC, you can have some mediocre actions lying around and use sifting or draw to make sure you KC the action you want. Golem, there's no way to deal except exclusivity.

Personally, I don't there's a problem with how the digging mechanic works. I like the change-up in how you have to strategize your deck, and plan ahead to a larger extent than normal. If they were more common I might start feeling constrained, but as-is I don't have an issue. Hunting Party is the only card where I feel that Digging causes a problem, because it wants your deck to be monotonous. Golem, I think the card's issue is cost, and Digging is completely unrelated to it being underused. Rebuild, Digging ups the power but I don't think that it's central to the card's problem. Sage I think is under-rated, and Adventurer is situational but not bad.

[Awaclus]

Golem and Sage are definitely more powerful than Loan.

[LastFootnote]

It's interesting to me that Alchemy and Cornucopia have the highest percentage of digging cards by a fair margin. If they had been one set, digging could have easily been a sub-theme.

[SirPeebles]

Digging is also rather wordy, which is a con from a game design perspective.  In particular, it limits how wordy the rest of the card can be.

[dondon151]

I've never had a problem resolving a reasonable number of Hunting Parties in real life because:

1) I usually just lay out my hand for all other players to see and to free up both of my hands for going through my deck.
2) I track my deck well enough that I know what cards I'm going to stop on.

[ehunt]

Id move scrying pool to OP (because it would cost the same and be almost as dominant wihout the spy effect) and golem to reasonable.

[werothegreat]

These are diggING cards.  I got yelled at for trying to make the article about diggERS because "no one says that".

http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Digging

[werothegreat]

I'd also like to add that I think Journeyman is probably my favorite card from Guilds.  It's such a great terminal drawer!

[michaeljb]

I'd also like to add that I think Journeyman is probably my favorite card from Guilds.  It's such a great terminal drawer!

Some Estate trashing + naming Copper is so great

[LastFootnote]

I'd also like to add that I think Journeyman is probably my favorite card from Guilds.  It's such a great terminal drawer!

Some Estate trashing + naming Copper is so great

I've learned to appreciate it since I started naming Province.

[manthos88]

I disagree that Adventurer is weak. It can be totally fine on some big money boards and it also counters top-deck attacks. The key for Adventurer and Venture is to get rid of your initial coppers. If you can do that, both cards are decent, otherwise they 're not that good. Maybe Venture is a little better cause it's non-terminal, but Adventurer can be fine too.


http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20131219/log.50733066fca2ca7237ee9b77.1387453764964.txt

In this game, my double Count + Adventurer countered my opponent's chain of Rabbles.

We both opened Count and did some good trashing, but then i went straight up for Colonies, while my opponent chose to build up an engine instead. In the end, it was clear win for me, but when he got his engine running, his Rabbles were doing some decent job against my deck and if it wan't for the Adventurer i may had gone into serious trouble.

[ftl]

That one seemed as much bad play by your opponent than adventurer strength. After opening with Count, he did not buy his first colony until turn 20! A reasonable engine with Bazaar, Rabble, Count, Market, and Platinum should definitely be doing better than that. His final score was 50 points in 22 turns.

I just ran some sample games in Geronimoo's simulator of pure big money +colony (no actions), and on the very first one, the BMU player got 55 points in 22 turns (though that was a little better than average). So while your Adventurer did counter his rabbles, you were still facing an opponent that did barely better than big money plus nothing, even after a Count opening.

Adventurer is okay when you get rid of your coppers, but often times there are just so many *better* things to do if you can easily get rid of all your coppers. I think this board was an example of that situation, but your opponent just wasn't able to do it.

[Stealth Tomato]

Probably Fine
Scrying Pool - Though fine, it can be slow to resolve.

Scrying Pool is one of the worst-designed cards in the game, and at one point DXV cited it as the card he most regrets printing as-is. The attack portion of the card both overpowers it and causes games with it to become awful slogfests, even in online play. And in live play, repeated deck-checking of the opponent takes goddamn forever.

[ftl]

It's not as bad IRL, but only because you can bend the rules to make it work. Like, you can say things like "OK, you have an estate on top, keep that on top for the rest of my scrying pools this turn". Or, if the person has to shuffle or something, you can just play out your turn and when they're done shuffling you can say "ok you get scrying-pooled three times now". Or even if they don't need to shuffle, you can just let scrying pool counts accumulate and do the scrying in a batch at the end. All of which are not actually correct, and have edge cases where it matters, but IRL they're good enough.

But online, it really does have to ask you every single damn time if you want to keep or discard a card, even if it's the same damn estate over and over.

[LastFootnote]

Probably Fine
Scrying Pool - Though fine, it can be slow to resolve.

Scrying Pool is one of the worst-designed cards in the game, and at one point DXV cited it as the card he most regrets printing as-is.

I think Saboteur is actually that card, but he has indeed mentioned that he wishes he hadn't added the attack to Scrying Pool.

[Co0kieL0rd]

I noticed that Sage's Wiki article is missing some strategy part. I would like to add to that (or someone else chould). Most people seem to agree that Sage is not underpowered but jus fine for $3. Yes, it does sacrifice some economy but you might be willing to accept that for frequent plays of Sea Hag/Young Witch in the early game. What else is worth noting about Sage?

• Like Wandering Minstrel, it is a good addition to an engine and can help starting one (if your deck isn't flooded with Silver).
• If your deck contains powerful actions and Gold, Sage might enable frequent good turns for buying or playing actions in the mid-game.
• Sage can mitigate the lack of good trashers on the board since it skips over your Coppers, Ruins and Shelters.
• It also skips Spoils, Madmen and Mercenaries, all powerful cards you often want in your hand. So opening Sage/Marauder is questionable(?). Sage is obviously a bad addition to a deck that depends heavily on Spoils (although I'm not sure if anyone would keep relying on Spoils rather than Gold).
• Sage is a very good addition to a deck that depends on a power-house of a single card that you buy multiples of, e. g. Minion, Hunting Party; it also helps with Mystic (which wants other Mystics in your hand), although this card probably doesn't qualify as a power-card.

I would be glad to see comments and suggestions to this list so that we can give Sage the strategy article it deserves

[Donald X.]

I think Saboteur is actually that card, but he has indeed mentioned that he wishes he hadn't added the attack to Scrying Pool.

I think I have cited Saboteur as being the Dominion card least justified being printed, something like that. Some people hate it because it's a trashing attack; some people hate that it's an attack that produces no resources; for the people who do like it it's weak; it has lots of tiny text. The Knights are a much better take on the trashing attack premise.

Digging is problematically slow. Conversely "look at the top 1-3" is swingy. So I didn't stop doing digging once I worked out that the speed was an issue, although I toned it down and watched the cards.

In terms of power level I don't think it's a stand-out. There's nothing about "digging" that compels a card to be strong or weak. In terms of design, the slowness is an issue but that's it. It can be fun to dig for a card, that's why they exist.

In the early days my biggest mistakes were duds. Some of them aren't so bad for the game because everyone is new once, and buys up Thieves and Scouts and does not have a bad time. Still the main set could benefit a lot from a little extra variety due to replacing boring cards with more interesting ones. In later days I tried too hard to dredge every last bit of playability out of some cards, resulting in particular in some Hinterlands cards that I would make simpler if I were making them today.

[AdamH]

A couple of my opinions:

Scrying Pool is a pain to play with online, but 99% of the time I'm able to establish a rule for my opponents to follow for their attack portion so I don't even have to pay attention. That rule is mostly "discard actions, top-deck everything else" and when it's not that it's "top-deck green, discard everything else." I really don't have a big issue with SP, especially IRL.

Hunting Party, well I don't mind it online at all but playing it IRL is certainly a pain to deal with. I almost think that could have been the "online-only promo" that's been talked about.

...but as far as Hunting Party being OP/boring? Well I just don't think that's true at all. I'd go so far as to say that in 80% or more of all cases, Lab is just better than HP.

Sure, HP is one of those cards like Minion or Fool's Gold where you can't let your opponent get ALL of them or else you just auto-lose the game, mostly because with 10 Hunting Parties you don't really need a +X to win the game. But I've just found so few games where vanilla HP+X is best -- you use HP as draw to supplement whatever else you're doing and trounce the guy who's playing HP+Monument with only 5 HPs. And in so many of these games I find myself playing my turn around making sure HP actually draws that second card, where I'd get more flexibility if I just had a Lab instead.

[soulnet]

And in so many of these games I find myself playing my turn around making sure HP actually draws that second card, where I'd get more flexibility if I just had a Lab instead.

Well, HP is certainly more flexible than Lab and your example shows exactly that. Maybe you mean reliability or comfort to put your mind into other more significant parts of your play.