EDIT: I've made a couple of clarifications and added a section at the end since posting this originally; with the intent of making this more like an "article" and trying to make it more valuable seeking article-ness from this post (even though that wasn't originally my intention). Hopefully this helps.Let's talk about Golem.
First of all, "Gollum" is not a Dominion card; it is a character from a book/movie series. That is not what I would like to talk about.
Second of all, I don't think I'm all that great with Golem. I don't really think it's a very good card and many other people do. Frequently I am beat by someone who goes for it when I didn't think it was worth it. Frequently I go for it and am beat by the guy who didn't because I'm just too slow. I'm starting to come around but I'm hoping to generate some discussion about the card so I can understand it better.
And now to kick things off, here are some thoughts about Golem.
What is Golem?1. Golem is
expensive!! This thing costs $4P, which means it's "more expensive" than $6. Not only does it compete with Gold for price, but it's even worse than that because of the potion. There's such a large opportunity cost for getting this card, you really want to be sure that it's going to pay off for you. Going for Golem can easily be the most difficult strategic decision you make on a certain board, so it's a good thing to know what goes into making that decision.
2. Golem is kinda like Herald. Sure, it's WAY more expensive, but you use them sort of similarly. When they work out they are very close to "+2 Cards, +2 Actions" except Herald guarantees that at least one of your actions is like a cantrip, and then sometimes you just don't get the second one. I think Herald is way better than Golem, myself, and it's always puzzled me why Golem costs SO MUCH MORE than Herald.
3. Golem is "+2 Cards, +2 Actions". Well, let's be honest, I'd probably be more inclined to pay $4P for "+2 Cards, +2 Actions" than I would for Golem. Sure, this is the obvious comparison to make, right? But it's the differences between Golem and "+2 Cards, +2 Actions" that make it so difficult to judge. In a nutshell, you give up flexibility for when you want to play your actions in exchange for not having to (being able to) have your actions in hand when you play Golem. Golem isn't really a village. Golem isn't really draw. Hey, wait, this is the "What is Golem?" section, I should do this right quick:
What is Golem not?1. Whew, I feel better now. Don't you? Golem is not a village. I mean, Golem can allow you to play multiple terminal actions in a turn, so there is that, but you can't draw your deck with Golem+Smithy. Using Golem as a village works a lot differently than buying and playing a card that says "+2 Actions" on it somewhere.
2. Golem is not draw. When I say "draw" I'm talking about a way to increase the number of cards in your hand. So technically Golem can be used as draw, because it can have the same effect as putting two action cards from your deck into your hand and then playing them. But you aren't really going to draw your deck using a Village+Golem engine. You need something else.
You need something elseWell of course you do, silly.
BM+Golem is something I make fun of Banker Bot for playing, you know? But what is it that you need? Well, I'm going to make my best attempt at this...
1. Other action cards. Let's start with the low-hanging fruit here. Without action cards not named Golem in your deck, there's no point. Progress!
2. Non-terminal actions. It's a little bit silly if you have a bunch of Golems in your deck so that you can play two terminals and then not do anything else. What could those two terminals possibly be that's just so great that you went for Golem? Maybe two Possessions? Goons+Masquerade? Scavenger and Counting House? Maybe Golem+Possession is a thing, but this other stuff, man I just feel like Big Money beats the pants off of it. Maybe I'm off-base here, but I think you need a pretty explosive payload to justify the huge opportunity cost of going for Golem and two terminals just isn't going to cut it. You need to have non-terminals for your Golem to hit.
How much non-terminal actions?
3. ALL the non-terminal actions! OK well maybe not ALL of them but A LOT of them for-sure-sies. There is nothing that makes me more mad than my Golem hitting two terminals and now my turn is over. That's no fun, man. Since You Make Your Own Shuffle Luck™, it stands to reason that if you want to play a lot of action cards and Golems and do lots of stuff, you're going to want a LOT more non-terminals in your deck than terminals, so they need to be available, preferrably cheap, and there needs to be +Buy or a gainer or some way to get a million billion billion of them in your deck. Another way to look at this is that Golem makes you give up flexibility on when you play your actions, and when a bunch of your actions are non-terminal (cantrips especially), you're less likely to care about the order you play them in. EDIT: This section is not universally agreed uponSo what's Golem good for, again?This is where I start asking questions that I'm not quite sure I'm on the right track towards answering. It seems to me that most of the time Golem is good is when there are already the components to make your engine without Golem. If there's an engine and I can make it without Golem, wouldn't I be better off just ignoring Golem and being more focused on my engine?
Sure, if Golem is the only way to play multiple terminals in a turn and/or increase hand size and there are a bunch of non-terminals around, and the whole point of the engine is to play a Militia, a Haggler, and a couple of Bridges every turn, then yes Golem is the star of the show. But where's the middle ground? I'm having trouble coming up with anything but the extreme case like this where Golem is worth going for.
What's Golem not good for?This is easy, just look up all of the game logs with me playing and Golem in the kingdom; you'll find lots of examples! OK, more seriously, I've screwed up a lot trying to play with Golem so I can tell you lots of stuff that doesn't work, and I like to sum it up like this:
Golem is not good for nasty surprises.
You know how you leave for the weekend or for a long vacation and you forget to take out the kitchen trash before you left? Then you come back home and you're so glad to be back until you take your first big breath? That's what it's like when you play a Golem and all of a sudden you're faced with the unpleasant reality that Golem is terrible.
Golem+Tactician is not a thing. SURPRISE! Your turn is over now! Hope you had fun! You'll get 'em next time, cap'n! I know you can do it! But for now, have a big whiff of those meat scraps that have been rotting in your house for a week! Mmm, mmm, good!
You don't want your Golem to uncover an action that makes you do something you don't want to do: forced trashers and forced discarders are the big offenders here; and why did you want to trash so badly in a Golem deck anyways? I thought that was the good part about Golem.
But having too many terminals in your deck has the same effect: Golem reveals two Moats. SURPRISE! Tell him what he's won, Johnny! You're the lucky winner of FOUR DEAD ACTION CARDS!!!! Dead Action Cards™: The Best Type of Action Cards!™ The Action Cards the Professionals use!™ Guess what you have to spend with your hand full of dead action cards: $1 and a potion?! WOW! Your friends must be jealous!
Is Golem better than this?I admitted up-front that Golem is a card I don't like, and that I'm not very good with. Most people see Golem in a more optimistic light than I do, so please help me shine some light on this.
Some pearls from the ensuing discussionAfter talking about this for a bit and trying to ask some helpful questions and get advice from smart people, I'd like to post a list of short quotes that have helped me personally in my understanding of some of the questions raised here.
I feel that when attackers are on the board and your opponent has a Golem and you don't, it always feels like you're getting hit by the attack a lot more often.time.
One 'unseen' benefit of Golem is its cycling power--sometimes it can skip 20 cards and get you back to playing Golem or another key card faster.
In some cases, especially if you want to use Golem as a splitter in a tight engine, you do want cheap non-terminals for the net +action. In these cases, it doesn't matter what Golem finds; it only matters that Golem finds things.
In other cases where you just want to play a subset of Action cards, then having cheap Actions is bad because Golem will play those instead.
That's why deck tracking is important. Not only deck composition, but which cards you've seen this turn and how many Actions are remaining in your deck, need to be monitored.
I should add that Golem is one of my least favorite cards. Buying it is swingy, its effect on deck cycling is swingy, and the quality of turns that it yields is swingy, especially if you made a mistake in deck tracking.
If the engine is so fragile that it doesn't survive without Golem... it will still be pretty fragile when you have Golem.
I don't know. I know it's not a truly bad card, since it does a lot of good for you when you have it. But the cost is crazy.
I'd like to add here something I think I've learned about Golem recently: if Golem isn't going to be
really good in your deck, then you're probably better off without it.
Question: Is there any card that you would want to play every turn so badly that you'd build a Golem+Scheme+X deck?
The only thing I can think of is possession...
Edit: and with mountebank, I'd prefer to just buy more mountebanks or schemes rather than get a Golem