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Author Topic: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card  (Read 36789 times)

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GeoLib

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #25 on: February 18, 2014, 10:24:33 pm »
+2

On one hand, you don't want Workshops because there's only a need at the start of the game to get 4s;

This dubious claim made me realize you were this guy: http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/27685/ranking-the-dominion-cards-by-mechanics-part-i-the

Scout isn't worthless, but the problem is you have to buy or otherwise gain it and almost anything else would be better. Scout is underpowered. I maintain that if it gave +$1, it would probably be a decent $4 card. Not great, but not terrible like it currently is.

Wait. Oh my god. Is this for real? I was so sure. I just looked at the log search with rating "any." It looks like this is a real Goko username, but the only games have been adventures. I'm still not convinced that this isn't just a long-con trolling though based on the bgg post.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #26 on: February 18, 2014, 11:50:48 pm »
+3

On one hand, you don't want Workshops because there's only a need at the start of the game to get 4s;

This dubious claim made me realize you were this guy: http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/27685/ranking-the-dominion-cards-by-mechanics-part-i-the

Scout isn't worthless, but the problem is you have to buy or otherwise gain it and almost anything else would be better. Scout is underpowered. I maintain that if it gave +$1, it would probably be a decent $4 card. Not great, but not terrible like it currently is.

Wait. Oh my god. Is this for real? I was so sure. I just looked at the log search with rating "any." It looks like this is a real Goko username, but the only games have been adventures. I'm still not convinced that this isn't just a long-con trolling though based on the bgg post.

C'mon, dude. Is it that hard to believe that some guy starts getting into Dominion, plays a bunch of it, then wants to share his insights with the internet at large?
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GeoLib

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #27 on: February 19, 2014, 12:07:08 am »
0

On one hand, you don't want Workshops because there's only a need at the start of the game to get 4s;

This dubious claim made me realize you were this guy: http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/27685/ranking-the-dominion-cards-by-mechanics-part-i-the

Scout isn't worthless, but the problem is you have to buy or otherwise gain it and almost anything else would be better. Scout is underpowered. I maintain that if it gave +$1, it would probably be a decent $4 card. Not great, but not terrible like it currently is.

Wait. Oh my god. Is this for real? I was so sure. I just looked at the log search with rating "any." It looks like this is a real Goko username, but the only games have been adventures. I'm still not convinced that this isn't just a long-con trolling though based on the bgg post.

C'mon, dude. Is it that hard to believe that some guy starts getting into Dominion, plays a bunch of it, then wants to share his insights with the internet at large?

No, but it seems unlikely that someone would register here and on their first post write an article that uses the biggest f.ds in-joke. At least less likely than an existing member creating an alt for trolling. Robz obviously thought the latter would appear to be the most likely explanation
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JacquesTheBard

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #28 on: February 19, 2014, 12:24:36 am »
+2

This is backwards Poe's Law: someone is taking an opinion so unpopular that it is inevitably mistaken for parody. His claim here is not that Scout rocks, but merely that it's not bad, which is a very tricky thing to contest. We've all seen "nobody" cards like Chancellor be useful in one game out of 10 or so. And to be fair, Silverspawn's post about Lookout being the best 3-cost trasher was much sillier than this.

Our good arguer here is mistaken, naturally, but Scout's position as the weakest demonstrates, if anything, just how perfectly functional most of Dominion's cards are.

On an unrelated note, Workshop is beautiful. It's served me well as an engine payload in the past, it helps with lack of +buy... heck, the only thing I can say against it is that it's strictly worse than Ironworks, which isn't much of a criticism.
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A Drowned Kernel

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #29 on: February 19, 2014, 12:26:28 am »
+3

On one hand, you don't want Workshops because there's only a need at the start of the game to get 4s;

This dubious claim made me realize you were this guy: http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/27685/ranking-the-dominion-cards-by-mechanics-part-i-the

Scout isn't worthless, but the problem is you have to buy or otherwise gain it and almost anything else would be better. Scout is underpowered. I maintain that if it gave +$1, it would probably be a decent $4 card. Not great, but not terrible like it currently is.

At least he's caught on to the fact that Bureaucrat is one of the best cards in Dominion.
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KingZog3

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #30 on: February 19, 2014, 12:28:28 am »
+1

On one hand, you don't want Workshops because there's only a need at the start of the game to get 4s;

This dubious claim made me realize you were this guy: http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/27685/ranking-the-dominion-cards-by-mechanics-part-i-the

Scout isn't worthless, but the problem is you have to buy or otherwise gain it and almost anything else would be better. Scout is underpowered. I maintain that if it gave +$1, it would probably be a decent $4 card. Not great, but not terrible like it currently is.

At least he's caught on to the fact that Bureaucrat is one of the best cards in Dominion.

and that Adventurer is like Library.
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A Drowned Kernel

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #31 on: February 19, 2014, 12:31:22 am »
+2

And Moneylender is great for the late game.
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Robz888

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #32 on: February 19, 2014, 12:36:48 am »
+1

And Festival, when paired with Laboratory, is amazing.
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GeoLib

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #33 on: February 19, 2014, 12:47:52 am »
0

This is backwards Poe's Law: someone is taking an opinion so unpopular that it is inevitably mistaken for parody. His claim here is not that Scout rocks, but merely that it's not bad, which is a very tricky thing to contest.

What about this claim:

Quote
It interacts amazingly with +card cards.

And the subsequent contrived example.

Or

Quote
Interacts well with: ... Big Money...

Or

Quote
it is a pretty powerful one



Nik, I'm sorry for bashing your opinions (If you are a real separate person), but the combined experience of f.ds has concluded that Scout is one of the worst, if not the worst card in the whole game. It's not an arbitrary opinion. Many of us really wanted it to work. It's a cool idea. Unfortunately, it's just so very very extremely rarely useful. I can construct situations in which it would help to have a scout in hand, I can probably construct some boards in which it isn't even a bad thing to buy over silver, but the first set is small and the second set is going to be cherry picking like crazy (great hall, harem, nobles, mystic, wishing well,...) and so rare in all of the ~10^16 different possible boards that it hardly even matters. See some of the arguments above to understand why it just isn't very good.
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rrenaud

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #34 on: February 19, 2014, 12:48:27 am »
+4

C'mon, no one links to data?  Players who gain Scout when Crossroads AND Nobles are available win less than you'd expect them to at random (though within margin of error).

Data confirms it, even when scout has super friendly combos, it still kind of sucks.

http://councilroom.com/supply_win?&targets=Scout&interaction=Action%26%26Victory%2CTreasure%26%26Victory%2CCrossroads&nested=true&unconditional=true
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Davio

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #35 on: February 19, 2014, 02:22:12 am »
+3

Scout is not bad, it's just expensive.

I think it's clearly a $2 card, but somehow it costs more than Silver.

Or it could cost $4 but should have +1 Card on it.
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RTT

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #36 on: February 19, 2014, 02:30:15 am »
+7

Scout is not the worst card in Dominion... the worst card is Curse. I´d rather like to get a scout ambassadored then a curse.
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DStu

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #37 on: February 19, 2014, 02:59:56 am »
0

Scout is not the worst card in Dominion... the worst card is Curse. I´d rather like to get a scout ambassadored then a curse.
But Curse only costs $0, while Scout costs $4, and you can even gain it for free in tricking your opponents to play Witches...

I think most things have been said, but anyway:
Of course Scout is not completely useless, and of course you can lose a game by ignoring it because it is a 'bad' card.  In a game, you should never judge a card by if it's strong or weak on average, but if it fits your strategy.
Scout can clean up Apothecary and Scrying Pools, but as said, the main weakness (in contrast to Duchess) is that it usually takes a buy and $4 to be gained, and the situations where it's better than having nothing (let alone something else for $4) in the deck are very rare.  They exists, and situations where you have a spare $4gain also exists, but they are rare.
In contrast, Workshop gives you exactly this $4gain, which can be very very welcome in building engines, especially if you are on low economy thanks to strong trashing.
And Duchess does not have the problem of costing coins and a buy/gain, but they might come for free with Duchies.  Especially in slogs you have that Duchies are important and the filtering might be helpfull to you (maybe more than to your opponent if they don't mirror you), and an additional terminal Silver in the deck is welcome.  So I see a clear spot for Duchess in the game, in addition to all the niche usages one can think of (need terminal Silver for KC and nothing else on the deck, playing Scrying Pool with Fishing Villages and need terminal Silver, etc.pp.).
Scout in contrast only has these niche usages. Of course, if they appear, one should use it, but every scenario that seems generic for Scout (Alt-VP, XR) turns out to be usually better of without him.
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terminalCopper

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #38 on: February 19, 2014, 03:35:32 am »
+9

Scout is not the worst card in Dominion... the worst card is Curse.

That makes me think of a Card I would love to playtest - I think, at 3, it would be pretty decent:

Cynical Witch

+2 Cards

Each Opponent gains a Scout.

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timchen

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #39 on: February 19, 2014, 03:39:30 am »
0

Scout/Crossroads is a famous nombo. Scout is just as likely to pull green cars out of a future Crossroads hands than it is to pair green cards with Crossroads, and basically any point at which you could have bought Scout, you would actually just be better off buying another Crossroads.

Actually this point is not quite right. When you have two or more Crossroads/Scouts in hand, you would probably want to have exactly one of them being scout, as the first scout can draw you the number of green cards in the next 4 cards instead of the 3 or less non-Scout/Crossroads cards in hand which in average contains fewer green cards.

On the other hand, hands with no crossroads and scouts only would be pretty disgusting so I am not sure mixing the scouts is good in average. For the strategy to work in the first place you would probably need some other draw support anyway; in this case Crossroads is plainly better.
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Davio

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #40 on: February 19, 2014, 03:39:39 am »
+2

In order to have a useful Scout in your deck, I think you should use all aspects of it: The drawing of VP cards ánd the reordering, not one or the other. Imagine a Grand Market chain which gets clogged with the Provinces and Duchies you are now buying, you would love to have a Scout to draw your VP cards and put other stop cards at the end of the chain.

So there certainly are decks that benefit from a free Scout, but like DStu says: When do you buy it? I guess in my example if you hit $12 you might buy Province-Scout? The problem with these end-game cards is that you rarely have time to buy them.

Other end-game cards are useful earlier, like Salvager, the Remodelers, Death Cart, etc..
Crossroads is another end-game card, but it costs only $2 and that's a big difference.
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amalloy

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #41 on: February 19, 2014, 04:40:02 am »
0

Workshop is [...] strictly worse than Ironworks.

Edge case? You need to gain an Estate but are at the bottom of a shuffle you can't afford to trigger.
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Awaclus

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #42 on: February 19, 2014, 04:53:33 am »
+9

Workshop is [...] strictly worse than Ironworks.

Edge case? You need to gain an Estate but are at the bottom of a shuffle you can't afford to trigger.
Another edge case: you have $3 in your buy phase.
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RTT

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #43 on: February 19, 2014, 04:56:56 am »
0

Workshop is [...] strictly worse than Ironworks.

Edge case? You need to gain an Estate but are at the bottom of a shuffle you can't afford to trigger.
another edge case : you only have 3$ to spend.(no highways,Bridges,Princess or Quarry played :p)
then workshop is strictly better because you can afford it.

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Zappie

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #44 on: February 19, 2014, 05:38:23 am »
+1

I love how the op says contrasting things in his post in boardgamegeek, this one really stands out to me:

Workshop--Cost: 3 Type: Action Subtype: Other
Terrible. You generally only need 4s at the start of the game, so it is useful only for maybe the first three turns. 1/5

Throne Room--Cost: 4 Type: Action Subtype: Other
There is maybe one card that the Throne Room doesn't work well with. Otherwise, the Throne Room is just perfect. 5/5.

Though in a lot of other comments i can recognise myself in a long long time ago.
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Grujah

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #45 on: February 19, 2014, 06:03:32 am »
0

It's really helpful to realize that, in order for Scout to draw at least 1 card on average, you need to have 25% of your deck be VP cards. You start the game with only 30% VP of your deck as VP cards. Add just 3 non-VP cards to it and you're below 25%. In your typical game, once you reach 25% VP cards again, it'll be so late in the game that you'll probably want to gain Estate over Scout.

This is what seals it, really. Scout needs for your deck to be 50% Victory cards for it to be, on average, a Lab that draws only Victories. And that is NOT good, 98% of the time.
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Nik

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #46 on: February 19, 2014, 06:14:54 am »
+3

Guys, really, I'm really a person. I just haven't played Goko online, only done the adventures. I am, by the way, indeed DominionGuy.
It turns out, I've been wrong about a lot of things. I've come to like Adventurer. I've come to like Moneylender.
But my Scout opinion has not changed. Come on, let's make Scout the second worst card in Dominion!
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Zappie

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #47 on: February 19, 2014, 06:26:38 am »
+2

To make it the second worse card in the game i think you try and compare it adventurer, transmute or harvest
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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #48 on: February 19, 2014, 06:37:20 am »
+11

To make it the second worse card in the game i think you try and compare it adventurer, transmute or harvest
I think you would need to convince Donald X. to make the next promo really really really dreadful.


One of the testaments to how bad scout is is that it's very difficult to DESIGN a kingdom where it's a significantly better card than ruined village (i.e. it isn't just some random action that does nothing for you but might be nice for fairgrounds, vineyard, etc.) I'v seen a lot of people try, and then you play the game and... it turns out optimal strategy ignores scout still....

Nik

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Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card
« Reply #49 on: February 19, 2014, 06:37:53 am »
0

To make it the second worse card in the game i think you try and compare it adventurer, transmute or harvest
Adventurer is bad because it can hurt your next turn. (Discarding Actions.)
Transmute is only good if you turn up a Victory, otherwise it clouds up your deck.
And Harvest is okay, it just needs to be worth $3.
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