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[AdamH]

STATUS: this article is ready to publish. Comments and feedback are still welcome in all forms but I think it's ready to throw onto the Wiki and anywhere else people want to put it.


Jack of All Trades, Advanced


The original article can be found on the wiki and was written by theory in late 2011, right after Hinterlands was just released. The original article reflected the mentality of that time, which was that Jack was really strong for money, was overpowered to the point where it could only be beaten by the strongest engines, didn't really synergize with all that much, and wasn't interactive so it made games boring (sound familiar? I really hope this article can be written about Rebuild some day).

That article, while it can be enlightening to a beginning player, really needs to be updated. There are several things in the article that are misleading or just flat-out wrong. The original article says that Jack just doesn't work in engines. The wiki has a small blurb after quoting the original article that says "oh yeah some engines can get use out of Jack." There are things in the antisynergies section that I flat-out disagree with, and to not mention Spice Merchant as like the number one synergy with Jack (let alone not mention it at all) seems like a travesty to me. Jack is so much more. I mean it's SO much more. I mean seriously, Jack is amazing and I want to tell you all about it.

For Dominion in general, one can view strategies on a sort of scale with "money" at one end and "engine" on the other. Granted, there's a lot more to it than that, but I think that's a helpful model for understanding parts of Jack that are less-often considered. This article will be formatted along those lines with nods to other deck types along the way where they make sense. We'll start with Big Money.


BM + Jack, aka "DoubleJack"
We're probably very familiar with this strategy, because it's quite good. In a one-card kingdom with just Jack in it, you open Jack/Silver, get your second Jack ASAP and buy nothing but treasure cards until you green. For the longest time it was thought that this was too powerful and non-interactive and made Dominion more boring. Well that's just not true because if it was this article would end here, and as you can see, there's a lot more text for you to get through. Yes, DoubleJack is strong, but is it always going to be the strongest thing available? Of course not. Is it ever going to be the strongest thing available? Probably not.

Of course I should mention that Jack gets a lot worse in Colony games where Silver isn't the best card ever; only on the weakest Colony boards imaginable would I consider playing Jack+money with nothing else.


...But there's Jack
Jack does four things for you, each of which counters a certain type of attack. This is true, I'm not going to deny it, but let's take a step back here: Jack doesn't super-mega-ultra-hyper counter every attack ever made, it just counters the attacks (and in the case of Copper-junkers like Ambassador and sort-of-Mountebank, Jack is mostly ineffective). Assuming your opponent is going to go for Jack is not a reason to not go for those attacks. I mean, if you're both playing Big Money and one person goes for the attack and one doesn't it might be a close call, but don't decline to build an engine where it's important to attack your opponent every turn just because they can play Jack with money. They won't have a Jack in hand every turn, and even if they do it's not the worst thing ever if it marginally helps them every once in a while. Engines are better than Big Money, and Jack doesn't break that rule.


Enablers for Jack in a money deck

Let's talk for a moment about things that synergize with Jack:

Cantrips: Well Jack is dead draw, so putting cantrips in your Jack deck is a little like putting Peddlers in a Smithy deck (you don't draw as much as Smithy so it's actually better) -- you'd rather just have Silver. It's not the worst thing ever but I certainly wouldn't call it a synergy.

Kingdom Treasures: Just about any money deck can benefit from the list of Kingdom Treasure cards that we're all used do, and Jack is no exception. Venture, Hoard, Stash, and the like are the usual suspects here.

"Disappearing Cards": a really nice example is Oasis - you play Oasis and when you're done you have four cards in hand. Now when you play your Jack you'll draw right back up to five like before only you have this extra dollar! Wow! Dollars rule! This is great! We've found two cards that together are greater than the sum of their parts, so non-terminal stuff that decreases your handsize really synergizes with the draw part of Jack. Oasis, Minion-for-money, Candlestick Maker and the like are all cards that fit this bill, but let's go a step further:

Disappearing Villages like Festival, Fishing Village, and Squire are even better because now you aren't dead-drawing. Sifters like Hamlet and Warehouse are really nice because once the Estates are gone, they help you get past all those pesky Coppers and Provinces so you can continue to have nice hands when you draw back up to 5 cards.

My advice with these enablers is that since you're getting Silvers from your Jack anyways, you should really focus on buying lots of these enablers to get the most out of them, particularly the villages. On the other hand, if you're going to be playing Big Money and you aren't going to get a halfway decent amount of synergy out of your support, you may be better off just focusing on your Jack deck with treasures.

Copper trashing
You may notice I've left out an entire class of Jack enablers, which is Copper trashers. Of course Jack can't get rid of the Coppers for you, so with some way to trash all of your starting cards you seriously want to consider going for an engine. Usually with the presence of Jack and Copper trashing the most important thing for me is the presence of a village.

If there's no village, I focus on money because the number of terminals in my deck is limited, but going for Copper trashing is still worth it. Non-terminal Copper trashers like Forager, Spice Merchant, and Lookout are the best, obviously, because you can load up on them and still get your two Jacks, then Jack-trash the Copper trashers in the endgame if you want without losing too much pace. Even terminal Copper trashers like Moneylender have their use, but without a village I'd probably just skip it and get more Jacks. The exception here is Loan because with incoming Silvers from Jack you will have trouble lining it up with Coppers.

If there's a village on the board, though, you aren't limited in the number of terminals you can reasonably put in your deck, which leads us to....


Jack+Enablers, with an engine feel
What exactly am I talking about here? Well each of us probably has our own particular definition of what an "engine" is; since this is my article I'm going to use (the relevant parts of) my own definition.

An engine deck is one that focuses on playing actions and drawing cards. An engine deck has some kind of payload that usually focuses on playing cards together that can be greater than the sum of their parts.

So Jack does a lot of these things really well: Jack draws cards, is an action card that you can play, and has a lot of these types of synergies (draw-up-to-X cards do this) so naturally there are decks you can build that Jack can really shine in, and you can get much more value out of Jack (and your other cards) in these decks.

Take the simplest example I can think of: Jack, Forager, Festival. This is a pretty good deck and most people would build their deck around this synergy: Open Jack/Forager, thin Coppers and Estates while building economy with Jack, get a ton of Festivals, maybe trash some Silvers with Forager (which is a good thing!) and if you're thin enough it starts to feel a lot like Festival/Library (with strong trashing) only much faster to build and a slightly less explosive payload. Throw in a few Warehouses and you've got something really good.

Thanks for MarkowKette for help with this portion of the article
On the other hand, strong engines with Jack as your only draw are very rare. The reason for this is you need a lot of components to ensure good reliability. The "conventional wisdom" of Jack-in-an-engine actually does apply here, since the draw is pretty weak and Silvers are very bad for this type of engine; plus these engines stall very badly. So in order to make your engine reliable you need good sifting. If you want to make this engine you need: Jacks, Sifters, Silver trashers, payload cards, Villages and +buy. That's a lot of stuff, and getting all these in the right numbers usually takes too much time. Plus, most of these enablers are already great enablers for Jack in other ways and lead to strong Jack-with-money decks that are tough to compete with.

Here's an example that showcases the fact that Jack is pretty weak when it's your only source of draw (game log)

Let's be honest, this isn't really the greatest thing in the world. I mean, if you're looking at nothing other than getting full value out of all of your cards, then you're doing great! But if you're looking at potential in an engine it really isn't the best thing because you've built an engine that revolves around a card that really fits well into money decks. There, I said it: Jack is a Big Money card; so when people are thinking about building Jack-in-an-Engine, they tend to dismiss Jack as a money card if it isn't front-and-center, the star of the show dressed in sequins and with a big musical number.

If there's one thing I want you to take away from this article it goes like this.
Jack does not have to be the star of the show in order to play an important role in your engine.

OK, with most cards in Dominion, you have to be of the mentality that if the card doesn't fit in your engine just right, you have to really stop and think about including it at all, because it might just get in the way. But Jack is so amazing that you can break this rule. Jack does four things for you: FOUR THINGS! That's SO MANY THINGS! Don't dismiss it because you can only use three out of the four. Don't dismiss it because you can only use two! I mean, the spy-effect will be useful in every deck, and if you are using just one of the other things (draw, Estate-trashing, Silver-gaining) then Jack should be a part of your deck.

I've tried for quite some time to think of an engine deck that Jack doesn't make better, and out of 204 other cards there's only one (Remake) that can ever "outclass" Jack in an engine, and even then you still might want to add Jack. My point is, Jack is good enough that you don't have to be afraid of what you think of as "antisynergies," put Jack in your engine and just see how much better it is. Like with many strong trashers, it's possible for them to become dead cards in the late game: this is OK. Sometimes you have to stop playing Jack, and don't worry, he's not offended. He's just happy that you had what you had when you had it.

If you're going to have the best strategy on the board, and there's an engine present, and Jack is available, then odds are the best strategy is Jack-in-an-engine. I have to get really specific to think of cases where Jack can't be used at all, so let's just talk about a few things that have helped guide my thought process when building an engine with Jack in it.

All four of the things that Jack does are really good for Big Money, and every game your deck starts out as a Big Money deck, so the best time to get Jack is in the opening. You're essentially turning your Estates into Silvers while not losing very much pace with your buying power. I admit, this doesn't sound like the coolest thing ever, but let me tell you a secret.

It is.

Seriously, in two shuffles all of your Estates will be gone, you'll have a good economy, and you will have had like 4 or 5 buys, hopefully 3 or 4 of which were $5 buys, to buy good cards to put into your deck. Those other cards, in so many cases, will still have their positive impact on your deck: buy a Spice Merchant? Now you're thinning Coppers without losing pace. Buy a Warehouse? Now you're cycling past all of your coppers and you've sped up your building. Buy a Chapel? Your Coppers are still gone lightning fast and you don't have to worry about juggling your economy while getting components because you can literally gain and draw a Silver and trash your Chapel all in one turn. I mean, with certain draws Remake can do slightly better, but Jack is basically the coolest thing ever in this situation. I would say you need a very compelling reason to not open Jack.

Now let's talk about something else: drawing cards. Jack draws cards, which is a good thing for engines. It has long been thought that Jack doesn't synergize with other sources of draw. Well let me tell you another secret.

It does.

Yeah yeah yeah I realize that if you have already increased your hand size, Jack won't draw you as many cards as it otherwise would have and maybe that's what you're thinking of, but why do you have to focus so much on the negatives, man? I mean, Jack already helped you buy those three Catacombs or Margraves you already have, have you already forgotten? And really, if you already have eight cards in your hand, "Gain a Silver that you'll draw later this turn, but not early so you can't still line up your engine components, and also smooth out your draws a bit" is pretty darn good (lots of other draw helps you draw all those lovely Silvers your Jack is giving you!) And even in those dark times after your opponent's discard attack when you can't seem to find any of your other draw cards, in those early stages of your turn where it's the most crucial to just get cards into your hand so you can kick off? Jack will be there for you. Jack will always be there for you when you need him the most.

Don't be afraid of putting Jack in your deck with other sources of draw. Jack synergizes with other draw cards because other draw cards help to draw all the Silvers you gain from repeated plays of your Jack.

Jack is great with Wharves. Jack is great with Conspirators. Jack is even great with kids and he leaves the toilet seat down when he's done, just open up your heart. I mean, it's probably easier to talk about the engines that really can't get much use out of Jack, and I think it's really limited to super-tight megaturn engines, or maybe boards with no villages where you do all your cool stuff non-terminally and you want your one terminal per turn for something else. Anything else, you want a Jack and you want it soon.

Something I want to emphasize here again is that the presence of villages really really helps Jack. Like most amazing cards in Dominion, Jack is terminal, but it's not the kind of terminal that you can be happy making "the" terminal of your deck. You want villages and you want a lot of them.


Jack-with-money synergies:
Starting with the strongest first

- Villages that decrease hand size; such as Fishing Village, Squire, Festival, Hamlet, Plaza, Inn.
   - The strong synergy is that if these are drawn with a Jack in hand, you get the benefits from the village without sacrificing the card slot in your hand because of increased draw from Jack.
   - Not as much Native Village, because there isn't a huge benefit that you get from reducing your hand size with NV
   - Typically you want to spam these cards since your Jacks will be gaining you Silvers to boost your economy, and with a high concentration of these enablers the risk of dead drawing them with Jack is minimal.

- Non-terminal trashers; such as Lookout, Forager, Spice Merchant, Counterfeit, even Rats!
   - Copper trashing can be valuable in Jack games because of the Silver gaining.
   - Most of these trashers will reduce hand size, allowing for increased draw with Jack.
   - Most of these trashers provide a +Buy to take advantage of the increased economy you'll get from the Copper trashing they provide, even in a Big Money setting.
   - You don't want too many of these, probably just two or so, though as some of them become a liability in the late game, you can usually Jack-trash them without really losing that much pace.

- Non-terminal non-trashers; such as Oasis, Candlestick Maker, Minion, Mystic, Warehouse.
   - With the exception of Minion (in which case you aren't really playing with a money focus, are you?), you generally don't want to go too crazy with these because of the risk of dead draw; grab a few early and just hope they collide, but focus a touch more on money.
   - Be careful with your Mystic wishes if you plan to play a Jack later in the turn; don't wish for Provinces or other bad cards because you'd prefer to leave them on top of your deck so your Jack can discard them!

- Junking Attacks
   - Yes, Jack can trash the junk cards they give you, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't add them in. Jack+Mountebank beats either of the two on their own, so don't be afraid!

- Other sources of draw (Thanks to HiveMindEmulator and markusin for help with this)
   - Yeah it's true that Jack is terminal draw, and the conventional wisdom is that you don't want too many terminal draw cards in a money deck. On the other hand, though, think of it this way: if you haven't trashed your Coppers, then you're going to have a high concentration of treasures in your deck. Adding in other sources of draw can really help improve your economy in this case. It might be helpful to think of Jacks as non-drawing terminals you throw in your Big Money + draw deck.

- Cantrips (speculative)
   - This was talked about earlier: I wouldn't go so far as to say there is a synergy there, it's just a thing you can do.


Jack-in-an-Engine synergies:
Starting with the strongest first

- Fishing Village, Warehouse, Spice Merchant, Forager
   - The cream of the crop; these cards plus Jack will help you build up so quickly, and most of them are possible to open with on a 4/3 along with your Jack.

- Scheme, Villages, Copper trashing, big draw
   - Scheme can be very helpful for reliability in a deck with Silvers as its payload; you can top-deck your engine components and not worry about having a dud hand.
   - Villages are sort of necessary to form and engine with Jack in the mix, since you don't want your "one terminal per turn" to be just a Jack. Similar things can be said for Copper trashing, it's hard to call something and engine with so many treasure cards around.
   - If you want to continue playing your Jack past the first few shuffles, you'll want to have some way to draw all those Silvers; strong draw can really increase the payload of your engine so you can focus your buys on engine components and not worry about economy.

- Strong trashing, such as Chapel, Steward
   - Jack is great for building up given the deck we all start with, but a 1-card deck with just a Jack is quite strong as well. You can trash very heavily, and as long as you have a Jack you can build up much more quickly by gaining Silvers and drawing them on the same turn.
   - Remake, Ambassador, Mint, Forager, and Count can make their way onto this list as well, but only in limited circumstances.

- Attacks
   - Any deck that can play a lot of attacks every turn is going to do better than a deck that doesn't, even if that other deck has Jack.
   - Having Jacks yourself will certainly be useful a nonzero amount of the time when these attacks are played on you.

- Something to do with Silvers
   - I don't really want to go too much in-depth about this, since many people see this as a prerequisite for putting Jack in their engine, as opposed to a nice-to-have, so I'll just say this much and move on...
   - Spending Silvers is great, but if you can Remodel them into something else that's pretty cool too.

- Gainers (speculative)
   - Jack itself is a gainer, and the allure is that you hopefully never have to buy any treasures because Jack takes care of your economy. If this isn't enough, you *can* add gainers to your deck, but most of them are terminal and/or don't gain you $5-cost cards, so Jack doesn't exactly synergize with those things.
   - University and Ironworks deserve a mention as exceptions to this, though they still come with their caveats
      - With University you're struggling between opening Potion OR Jack. Sure, you can Uni-gain a Jack later but the soonest you could possibly play that Jack is after shuffling your deck three times, which is FOREVER on an engine board. Also, Jack doesn't fully mitigate the weakness of using Uni as your main source of Village-ness (doesn't draw a card) in practice nearly as much as it might seem in theory, so be very careful; you want other villages.
      - Ironworks can decrease your hand size, and can be useful for gaining Villages in mass; it can also gain you a Jack so it's a little easier to open with but still not the best thing ever.


Example Jack-in-an-Engine games
Game 1 video     Game 1 log
Game 2 video     Game 2 log
Game 3 video     Game 3 log
Game 4 video     Game 4 log

[jsh357]

It's a good outline to start with.  Would suggest removing the self-shaming intro--nobody reading the article for info wants to start off hearing that, and if you are capable of making solid reasoning about JoaT, you shouldn't have to make such a statement.  If your advice is wrong, you should rest assured people will reply and tell you as much.

For the record, I do agree with you that people limit their perspective on Jack (or at least, they did in the past).  To me, the only real weakness of the card is that it can't trash Copper, but if it could it would be bar none the best card in the game.  Jack is totally useful in engines, especially if other trashing is available.

[KingZog3]

I agree that it can be a very good engine card. Of course it's best if you can somehow put all the silver to a really good use, but it's strong in a BM/engine hybrid type deck.

[AdamH]

Would suggest removing the self-shaming intro--nobody reading the article for info wants to start off hearing that, and if you are capable of making solid reasoning about JoaT, you shouldn't have to make such a statement.

Everything above the title in the OP (as it stands right now) I plan to remove eventually. If my ideas are good then yeah for sure I'll take that out 

[DG]

1 - Prioritizing jack vs attacks.
2 - Multiplayer (see 1).

[AdamH]

1 - Prioritizing jack vs attacks.
2 - Multiplayer (see 1).

I wanna play some Jack games with you, then

[silverspawn]

I've found myself winning a lot more games with Jack by taking approaches with Jack that even the best players in the world are just ignoring.

man, if that's true, i wouldn't share it.

[markusin]

I'm looking forward to seeing how this article will unfold.

I've heard and seen glimpses of Jack-of-all-Trades being more than just a Big-Money card. I've noticed that even Double-Jack can make use of other cards such as Apprentice, Oasis, Warehouse and maybe even Necropolis. Jack in (or into) an engine is something I want to investigate but haven't tried in the game with Jack in it yet.

[soulnet]

I think TfB synergy, especially Salvager and Bishop (for their disappearyness), is something to include in Jack-in-an-engine. Also, Rats+Jack has everything (a bit of TfB, a bit of "disappearing" non-terminal trasher).

[Awaclus]

man, if that's true, i wouldn't share it.

We are aware that if there is something you know, you won't share it. No need to bring it up every now and then.

[HiveMindEmulator]

There's this that I wrote a couple years ago, if that's of any use. Mostly that was in response to people complaining that Jack ruined the game by being so boring, so it doesn't offer much detail about how to play it, but I don't know, maybe there's something useful in there...

[AdamH]

There's this that I wrote a couple years ago, if that's of any use. Mostly that was in response to people complaining that Jack ruined the game by being so boring, so it doesn't offer much detail about how to play it, but I don't know, maybe there's something useful in there...

Ah, this is awesome, I'll read this in more depth when I get a chance.

Just reading your statements about True/False, I agree with all of them except for one. You say that Jack is usually not the best opening for engines and I think it is almost all of the time. That will be a good discussion to have :-)

[JacquesTheBard]

What about Counterfeit and Jack? Like Spice Merchant, it clears coppers very well, but unlike Spice Merchant, it can be drawn "dead" with Jack and still do its job. Not to mention that when Spice Merchant cleans up excess silver, it treats them just like coppers, but Counterfeit gets extra mileage out of them.

[dondon151]

I wouldn't say that Jack is, like, awesome for engines. It's something you often want to open with as sort of like a Masq/Upgrade hybrid, just for the purpose of converting Estates into Silvers and cycling a little faster. A lot of engines don't want to be flooded with more than the 3 Silvers obtained from trashing Estates, and the ones that do want Silvers want to hold off until drawing power reaches a critical mass.

[Polk5440]

I think DA and Guilds boosted Jack's utility. Plaza, Candlestick Maker, Feodum, Knights, etc.

Jack is a great defense against Knights for the same reason Masterpiece is. They give you Silver "decoys" for the Knights to trash protecting your good cards. In fact, your opponent's knights can be good for you, if they are not careful. If Knights trash a silver every shuffle, then playing Jack just replaces it. You don't run into "silver bloat" nearly as quickly, so you get the other benefits of Jack for much longer, if not the whole game. Here's an example of that.

Here is a game which I think is a good example of the "one Jack engine." Usually you are not trying to draw your deck, and Silver is an ok card to draw.

[soulnet]

I just played this:
http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/static/logprettifier.html?20140328/log.5160dac4e4b05d3fb42496d8.1396027510044.txt

It has all the Jack friends for engine: TfB, discard for benefit, amassable +actions and good terminals, Ironworks. Hamlet is of course the star as far as Jack is concerned, but Bishop (yours and the opponent's) also shines and in this game I think the key is just play terminals and then Jack.

[AdamH]

The article has graduated from being an outline to being a draft. The OP has undergone many changes, so I encourage you all to re-read it if you were interested.

Almost all of what I want to say is in there, and feedback on what I have to say is appreciated, so please, let's hear it!

[2.71828.....]

While reading this article [draft] I kept thinking how awesome it would be for you to be narrating it on your twitch channel.  Especially parts like this: "Jack is even great with kids and he leaves the toilet seat down when he's done, just open up your heart."

As far as Jack itself goes, I would be careful about how much you discuss engine capabilities.  When Jack is used, I have found that it is usually going to be mostly BM, or some sort of partial engine.  Basically I agree with what dondon151 said

[eHalcyon]

As far as Jack itself goes, I would be careful about how much you discuss engine capabilities.  When Jack is used, I have found that it is usually going to be mostly BM, or some sort of partial engine.  Basically I agree with what dondon151 said

My impression from the outline (haven't read the new draft yet) is that Adam recognizes this particular mentality regarding Jack.  The purpose of the article is to give a more pro-engine perspective on Jack that is currently not widely known.  Adam's contention is that Jack's engine capabilities are vastly underestimated by players right now, and the article is meant to elucidate us.  It remains to be seen whether he is correct, but turning away from that claim would defeat the purpose.

[AdamH]

As far as Jack itself goes, I would be careful about how much you discuss engine capabilities.  When Jack is used, I have found that it is usually going to be mostly BM, or some sort of partial engine.  Basically I agree with what dondon151 said

My impression from the outline (haven't read the new draft yet) is that Adam recognizes this particular mentality regarding Jack.  The purpose of the article is to give a more pro-engine perspective on Jack that is currently not widely known.  Adam's contention is that Jack's engine capabilities are vastly underestimated by players right now, and the article is meant to elucidate us.  It remains to be seen whether he is correct, but turning away from that claim would defeat the purpose.

This is largely what I was going to say. I mean, the presence of Jack really implies that the payload of your engine will be, at least in part, treasures (namely Silver). If this means "partial engine" to you then we agree and we're just saying the same thing in different ways.

It could be worth mentioning that this is another reason Jack actually synergizes with draw, because you need some way to get those treasures into your hand.

[Polk5440]

In the disappearing villages section, you have to list Plaza. Plaza and Squire are two of the best Jack enablers because they each do something that Jack wants even when they are not drawn with Jack. Squire gains Silvers and Plaza banks coin tokens. 

In the engine section, I was hoping you would talk about when Jack's Silver gaining is less of a problem, because Silver-bloat is a big why people shy away from Jack in engines. I can think of two main reasons: 
1) As a defense against deck trashing attacks (Knights, Sab)
2) Trash for benefit (Butcher, Forager, Salvager, Apprentice, etc.)

If you only have one Jack, then after you achieve critical mass of silvers, that doesn't mean silver gaining is bad if you can remove them from your deck (or they are removed for you) as fast as they enter for some kind of benefit or defense. With one Jack, that means if you can get rid of one Silver a shuffle, then Silver gaining doesn't have to be detrimental to your deck. That's a pretty low threshold. We're not talking about the Coppers from Beggar, after all.

[AdamH]

In the disappearing villages section, you have to list Plaza. Plaza and Squire are two of the best Jack enablers because they each do something that Jack wants even when they are not drawn with Jack. Squire gains Silvers and Plaza banks coin tokens. 

In the engine section, I was hoping you would talk about when Jack's Silver gaining is less of a problem, because Silver-bloat is a big why people shy away from Jack in engines. I can think of two main reasons: 
1) As a defense against deck trashing attacks (Knights, Sab)
2) Trash for benefit (Butcher, Forager, Salvager, Apprentice, etc.)

If you only have one Jack, then after you achieve critical mass of silvers, that doesn't mean silver gaining is bad if you can remove them from your deck (or they are removed for you) as fast as they enter for some kind of benefit or defense. With one Jack, that means if you can get rid of one Silver a shuffle, then Silver gaining doesn't have to be detrimental to your deck. That's a pretty low threshold. We're not talking about the Coppers from Beggar, after all.

These can be good reasons for why you don't mind extra Silvers, but I think a more important reason (or at least a reason that applies more often) is that Silver is a good card for most engines. I think I mentioned trashing Silvers once (with Forager) in passing and the reason for this is because I wanted to try and get people over their fear of including Silvers in their engine.

If someone is thinking they *need* to have a way to trash a Silver *every turn* in order to even think about using Jack in their engine, they're going to shy away from it.

I mean, sometimes you're better off trashing them with Butcher or something, I suppose I can add something to that effect, but I'm really inclined to understate it; what do you think of that?

[theright555J]

The major question as I see it boils down to some form of "Is the gain of an additional treasure card (read: "stop card") enough of a deterrent to avoid using JoAT in an engine?"

It really depends on:
1.  The amount of village/draw there is on the board
2.  The rate at which you can get rid of or otherwise use the silvers (ie. trash for benefit, trashing defense)
3.  Presence of adequate other payload
4.  Ability to transition into Feodum bloat, etc.
5.  Probably more

This is a complementary discussion to that in the "engine payloads" thread...basically expressed concern that if one draws the whole deck without adequate payload that is tantamount to Village Idiot syndrome.  Drawing and using a bunch of silver can be a fine payload as long as there's enough draw and buy.  Or if the engine doesn't require drawing the whole deck every turn and is resistant to greening?  As my own engine building slowly improves and I'm dragged kicking and screaming into the "engine era" I can envision a well-built engine without JoAT being significantly faster than one with JoAT unless the silvers can be well dealt with and the attack counters are very important for that particular board.

[AdamH]

The major question as I see it boils down to some form of "Is the gain of an additional treasure card (read: "stop card") enough of a deterrent to avoid using JoAT in an engine?"

It really depends on:
1.  The amount of village/draw there is on the board
2.  The rate at which you can get rid of or otherwise use the silvers (ie. trash for benefit, trashing defense)
3.  Presence of adequate other payload
4.  Ability to transition into Feodum bloat, etc.
5.  Probably more

This is a complementary discussion to that in the "engine payloads" thread...basically expressed concern that if one draws the whole deck without adequate payload that is tantamount to Village Idiot syndrome.  Drawing and using a bunch of silver can be a fine payload as long as there's enough draw and buy.  Or if the engine doesn't require drawing the whole deck every turn and is resistant to greening?  As my own engine building slowly improves and I'm dragged kicking and screaming into the "engine era" I can envision a well-built engine without JoAT being significantly faster than one with JoAT unless the silvers can be well dealt with and the attack counters are very important for that particular board.

If your deck is so fragile that every stop card matters and a Silver hurts you more than it helps you, then you probably had some strong trashing card to begin with that is mostly dead in your hand now (Chapel is the easiest example, or maybe Remake or something). If you have a Jack in your deck already, just Jack-trash the other trasher and now you're no worse off than without the Jack, except now you have the option of playing this amazing card that does awesome things for you instead of just a completely dead card. Unless your deck is a megaturn deck, I'm sure you'll want to use this option at least once, and I'm also sure that Jack helped you build up to this point anyways.

I think people vastly overestimate the number of situations where Silver is a bad card for your deck. I also think that people are less inclined to use Silvers as an additional payload for their engine when there is another viable payload available -- why not both?

And your fourth point about transitioning into a Silver-flood, yeah that's really good. I mean, Silver is a really good card and it helps a lot in the endgame when decks are starting to bloat.

[Witherweaver]

I find:

STOP DOING THAT!!!

on it's own kind of confusing, because it's hard for me to figure out what "that" is.  Based on your previous sentence, it sounds like "that" is trying to use Jacks in engines.  Based on the subsequent paragraph, it sounds like "that" is thinking of Jack as a big-money only card.

That could just be me not reading carefully enough, but you're talking about two opposing things and giving some reasons that both of them have validity, so I think it makes the antecedent of "that" a little ambiguous.

[AdamH]

I find:

STOP DOING THAT!!!

on it's own kind of confusing, because it's hard for me to figure out what "that" is.  Based on your previous sentence, it sounds like "that" is trying to use Jacks in engines.  Based on the subsequent paragraph, it sounds like "that" is thinking of Jack as a big-money only card.

That could just be me not reading carefully enough, but you're talking about two opposing things and giving some reasons that both of them have validity, so I think it makes the antecedent of "that" a little ambiguous.

I like the delivery, but if it's getting in the way of my point then I should just get rid of it and re-word.

+1 that post if you agree, if it has any significant number of +1s then I'll change it. Thanks for your feedback! 

[Witherweaver]

I find:

STOP DOING THAT!!!

on it's own kind of confusing, because it's hard for me to figure out what "that" is.  Based on your previous sentence, it sounds like "that" is trying to use Jacks in engines.  Based on the subsequent paragraph, it sounds like "that" is thinking of Jack as a big-money only card.

That could just be me not reading carefully enough, but you're talking about two opposing things and giving some reasons that both of them have validity, so I think it makes the antecedent of "that" a little ambiguous.

I like the delivery, but if it's getting in the way of my point then I should just get rid of it and re-word.

+1 that post if you agree, if it has any significant number of +1s then I'll change it. Thanks for your feedback! 

I just think you should spell out what "that" is in the sentence.  Since it's bolded on its own line, the eyes are drawn to it, which discourages reading stuff around it.  So my suggestion would be to make the sentence self contained.

[soulnet]

I think people vastly overestimate the number of situations where Silver is a bad card for your deck. I also think that people are less inclined to use Silvers as an additional payload for their engine when there is another viable payload available -- why not both?

Usually, playing the terminal Attack every turn is priority number one of an engine for a long time, and Silver does not help. Getting to play Sea Hag, Knights or Saboteur is more important than the extra $2 most often than not, and of course playing the terminal Silvers or drawing Attacks is even better for the engine. If you gained a card that is no better than Silver for your engine, you are probably doing the wrong thing. If all your cards are better than Silver, then each Silver in your hand is there instead of a better card. You only want Silvers if you are overdrawing your deck anyway, or you are getting Silvers to replace something worse or to be replaced for something better in the future.

Of course, the number of times you can overdraw your deck is not that small. If you can alternate a Fishing Village and a Wharf gain every turn, a Silver per turn will be fine and add to your buying power. I guess FV+Wharf would be a good engine to add JoaT to.

[Polk5440]

I think people vastly overestimate the number of situations where Silver is a bad card for your deck. I also think that people are less inclined to use Silvers as an additional payload for their engine when there is another viable payload available -- why not both?

Usually, playing the terminal Attack every turn is priority number one of an engine for a long time, and Silver does not help. Getting to play Sea Hag, Knights or Saboteur is more important than the extra $2 most often than not...

I would argue this list of attacks (along with Rogue) are at THE TOP of the list of attacks in which you should strongly consider adding Jack to your deck at the start of the game. Rogue, Knights, and Sab because they are trashing stuff from your deck (hit that free Silver!) and Sea Hag because it reduces handsize (when you play it) and puts the curse on your deck for Jack to draw when your opponent plays it.

[popsofctown]

Unless you already have a dead card in your hand for Jack to hit, so then you discard the curse.

[flies]

There are many decks where you don't even want gold, where you wish that bandit camp were just a village.  "Silver's a really good card" and all, but sometimes it's basically junk.  Weak trashing is going to create this situation quite often, and of course there are decks that want no treasure at all, like minion. 

[AdamH]

I was under the impression that with only weak trashing available, decks that are so fragile that Silver gets in the way are much less viable. But even if you're going for that deck, Jack still helps you get there because whatever is trashing your Copper is almost certainly going to trash Silvers (and your Jack) when you don't need them anymore, while the Silvers have helped you buy your cool stuff.

I'm not trying to say that Jack is amazing in every engine; if you want to stop gaining Silvers then stop playing Jack, just like if you want to stop trashing cards you stop playing your trasher.

Minion+Jack is better than just Minion and just Jack. The game you linked seems to me like a Highway+MS+Minion deck which definitely doesn't want treasures.

I feel like I'm trying to say "the decks where you don't have any use at all for Jack in your engine are really rare, and much rarer than people think right now" and people are telling me "But what about the decks that don't have any use at all for Jack?"

Yeah they're there, but that's not my point. Am I not communicating this effectively?

[soulnet]

I think people vastly overestimate the number of situations where Silver is a bad card for your deck. I also think that people are less inclined to use Silvers as an additional payload for their engine when there is another viable payload available -- why not both?

Usually, playing the terminal Attack every turn is priority number one of an engine for a long time, and Silver does not help. Getting to play Sea Hag, Knights or Saboteur is more important than the extra $2 most often than not...

I would argue this list of attacks (along with Rogue) are at THE TOP of the list of attacks in which you should strongly consider adding Jack to your deck at the start of the game. Rogue, Knights, and Sab because they are trashing stuff from your deck (hit that free Silver!) and Sea Hag because it reduces handsize (when you play it) and puts the curse on your deck for Jack to draw when your opponent plays it.

I was arguing against how often Silver can hurt your deck. I agree with your previous point, if you are losing cards, it is good to have Silvers to defend, but you are assuming a mirror and I was just saying if MY deck is such and such, then Silver is bad to have around. If you are gaining Silvers to trash them to opponents Attacks or to TfB or fodder to Forager or Mercenary or any other thing, then its perfectly fine, because you are not really bloating your deck with it, just mantaining your deck.

[soulnet]

I feel like I'm trying to say "the decks where you don't have any use at all for Jack in your engine are really rare, and much rarer than people think right now" and people are telling me "But what about the decks that don't have any use at all for Jack?"

Maybe because in the article there is no mention to "stop playing Jack" or "when not to Buy jack" and it feels a bit like a praise to JoaT. I think you make very good points, so I am not trying to tear down your article, just think you are overselling a bit and defending the Silver gaining as something more useful in the long run than it actually is in many cases.

Let me put it this way: If Silver gaining was optional, Jack would be a LOT better for engines that cannot trash Silver effectively.

[theright555J]

I just watched the two linked videos. Both were very well played games!

But both also featured Spice Merchant, which was HUGE for copper and eventually silver trashing. How well do you think Jack works in the engine if SM is Moneylender instead, especially without shelters?

[AdamH]

I feel like I'm trying to say "the decks where you don't have any use at all for Jack in your engine are really rare, and much rarer than people think right now" and people are telling me "But what about the decks that don't have any use at all for Jack?"

Maybe because in the article there is no mention to "stop playing Jack" or "when not to Buy jack" and it feels a bit like a praise to JoaT. I think you make very good points, so I am not trying to tear down your article, just think you are overselling a bit and defending the Silver gaining as something more useful in the long run than it actually is in many cases.

Let me put it this way: If Silver gaining was optional, Jack would be a LOT better for engines that cannot trash Silver effectively.

Point taken. I should put something in the article about not playing Jack anymore.

But part of what I want to do is defend silver gaining as a good thing -- most people see Jack and say "I don't want Silver in my engine" a lot where either 1. Silver is actually good for them or 2. the benefits of having Jack to set up outweigh the costs of Silver being in the deck or having to trash it later.

I just watched the two linked videos. Both were very well played games!

But both also featured Spice Merchant, which was HUGE for copper and eventually silver trashing. How well do you think Jack works in the engine if SM is Moneylender instead, especially without shelters?

In the Wharf/Conspirator engine game, I never needed to trash Silvers and could have easily Jack-trashed whatever Copper trasher I used. No problems.

In the Minion game it would have been more complicated for sure, but in that game the fact that Moneylender is terminal would have really affected the way I built that deck, more so than the fact that it couldn't trash Coppers. It would have weakened the Minion stack a lot and made me want to go for Scrying Pool for draw, which means I probably still want Jack but I want to stop playing it much sooner.

[jomini]

One of the big things that helps with Jack is how quickly it makes just about any hand a consistent $5 or better. Take something like Lookout. Normally Lookout is utter crap as it nerfs your current hand and also prevents you from buying big cost cards. Jack can draw back the "lost" card, gets a better draw from Lookout's sifting, and adds silvers so you quickly hit $5 and $6 even with a Lookout/money hand. Virtually all non-terminal trashing works exceedingly well with Jack. Or take some of the weakest trashing, like Trade Route. Normally, Trade route is something like a -$1 to -$3 when you play it (e.g. could have been a silver, gives nothing until someone buys a green, and kills a copper), but with Jack and villages, you can trash out draw back up; as a bonus, you can power up your Trade route with a spare estate buy ... and kill the estate with the Jack who otherwise wouldn't trash a card. Jack allows you to mix in a lot of cares that tank the current hand's buying power without spending so long rebuilding your deck.

Weak sifters also get a huge leg up with Jack. Cellar typically costs 1 card in hand size and gives you poor odds of improving your hand. Warehouse gives you much better odds of improving your draw, but still costs a card. Storehouse, with a village, works great with Jack - sift for the Jack, discard for +coin, draw a fresh hand with Jack.


This is absolutely huge in strong mirror engine settings. Normally there is a tension between getting good hands now (say open Silver/Silver) during the big rush on Minions, Hunting Parties, Torturers, Wharves, etc. and having a thinner, better deck later (say using light trashing). Jack makes it a lot more viable to use really weak trashing and sifting and still hit $5. Partly this is because Jack really moves the average card value in the deck near $1.6 really quickly, and partly this is because its nature as an after the fact "Moat" allows it to offset card penalties (like smaller hands thanks to Lookout or top decked coppers thanks to Mandarin).

[Polk5440]

These can be good reasons for why you don't mind extra Silvers, but I think a more important reason (or at least a reason that applies more often) is that Silver is a good card for most engines. I think I mentioned trashing Silvers once (with Forager) in passing and the reason for this is because I wanted to try and get people over their fear of including Silvers in their engine.

If someone is thinking they *need* to have a way to trash a Silver *every turn* in order to even think about using Jack in their engine, they're going to shy away from it.

I mean, sometimes you're better off trashing them with Butcher or something, I suppose I can add something to that effect, but I'm really inclined to understate it; what do you think of that?

I would say that I agree in part and dissent in part. Basically, I agree with soulnet on the "overselling". Jack is so good, you don't need to oversell it.

Some engines do want silver for buying power. I agree. Wharf engines are a good example of where you usually need treasure. And it's better to gain it for free and not have to waste your precious coin on buying a Silver rather than a village or wharf.

But, Silver is usually only good up to a point.

This is how I am thinking about it:
1) If you want a Jack for engines, you usually want it ASAP. It's almost always bad to delay because you are worried about eventual silver bloat.
2) Many times, the game ends before you get too many free Silvers from Jack to worry about playing it.
3) However, if you reach the optimal number of silvers in deck before the game ends, that doesn't mean you should start worrying about them -- Silvers may be leaving your deck at the same rate (e.g. Knights, trash for benefit).
4) If you get too many silvers in your deck, sometimes it's worth playing for the other benefits, anyway.
5) Even if it's dead late and you can't play it, that doesn't mean Jack shouldn't be bought. It's a great early game card. A great comparison is Sea Hag. It's often dead late, but still often worth picking up early.

[AdamH]

All of the article in the OP has been written, with feedback incorporated. More feedback is welcome if desired but I think it's pretty close. The biggest revision is the addition of the Synergies section at the bottom -- if people feel strongly enough that it should be organized differently then I'll change it but I sort of like it this way.

I find:

STOP DOING THAT!!!

on it's own kind of confusing, because it's hard for me to figure out what "that" is.  Based on your previous sentence, it sounds like "that" is trying to use Jacks in engines.  Based on the subsequent paragraph, it sounds like "that" is thinking of Jack as a big-money only card.

That could just be me not reading carefully enough, but you're talking about two opposing things and giving some reasons that both of them have validity, so I think it makes the antecedent of "that" a little ambiguous.

With your post and three upvotes (not including mine  ) that's enough for me to change the wording. Thanks for letting me know.

[soulnet]

I have just read the current version (edited Today at 11:02:46 am). Now I get the idea much better than with the initial draft (was too initial for me).

Here are some remarks:

1. Jack is great with Conspirators? I am having a hard time believing that.
2. I think Jack as a counter of Attacks has some caveats worth mentioning, specifically with Copper junkers. I am looking at Mountebank and Ambassador (I don't think Noble Brigand or Jester present any kind of real menace). Jack is pretty lousy to counter Mountebank, because of the Copper junking and because Curse is not THAT bad a card with MB around. For Ambassador, it is not clear to me if Ambassador+Jack is a good opening, and how it may compare with double Amb for instance. I definitely think in most cases Jack will not be able to ignore Ambassador.
3. I think a comparison with Masquerade is worth it. I think Masquerade is the better Jack in many ways: You can trash Coppers and it does not gain Silvers or spy. Trash Coppers is usually more useful, and I can still use it as +2 Cards later without that mandatory Silver gaining. Of course, Silver gaining is good sometimes, but most often than not, it is not terribly good. And with a card that lets you buy stuff while you trash (unlike Chapel), taking care of the economy is not that important. You mention you have a hard time imagining kingdoms where you don't want Jack. I think in most Masquerade games, you want Masquerade and not Jack. On top of that, Masq is somehow a Copper junker, but you can use your opponent's Masqs to get rid of Coppers as well, so it probably evens out.

[AdamH]

1. Jack is great with Conspirators? I am having a hard time believing that.

Well that's why I put it in the article

Being serious, though (well I was being serious, I just wasn't addressing what you actually said) the point of that statement is that Jack is great with other engine payloads; I just chose Conspirator because it seems unlikely at first, plus one of my example games had Conspirator. Is that statement from the article not getting the point across? Should I re-word? Any suggestions on how I can make this clearer?

2. I think Jack as a counter of Attacks has some caveats worth mentioning, specifically with Copper junkers. I am looking at Mountebank and Ambassador (I don't think Noble Brigand or Jester present any kind of real menace). Jack is pretty lousy to counter Mountebank, because of the Copper junking and because Curse is not THAT bad a card with MB around. For Ambassador, it is not clear to me if Ambassador+Jack is a good opening, and how it may compare with double Amb for instance. I definitely think in most cases Jack will not be able to ignore Ambassador.

I agree with what you're saying, and I tried not to say anything in the article that would imply that the attacks are ignorable because of Jack, but rather that usually the best thing is to go for Jack *and* the attack.

Do you think Copper-junkers deserve a special mention? Do you think anything I said was misleading?

3. I think a comparison with Masquerade is worth it. I think Masquerade is the better Jack in many ways: You can trash Coppers and it does not gain Silvers or spy. Trash Coppers is usually more useful, and I can still use it as +2 Cards later without that mandatory Silver gaining. Of course, Silver gaining is good sometimes, but most often than not, it is not terribly good. And with a card that lets you buy stuff while you trash (unlike Chapel), taking care of the economy is not that important. You mention you have a hard time imagining kingdoms where you don't want Jack. I think in most Masquerade games, you want Masquerade and not Jack. On top of that, Masq is somehow a Copper junker, but you can use your opponent's Masqs to get rid of Coppers as well, so it probably evens out.

(emphasis mine)

I mean, I agree with most of what you're saying, except for a couple of key things:

Masq and Jack serve very different purposes in building decks, and you highlight a lot of these differences. It's because of these differences that I *don't* think a comparison is worth it in the article. The only comparison I would really want to make would go something like this:

"Both Masq and Jack are the most powerful cards in Dominion at their price point. To not open with a copy of either one of these cards, when available/possible, requires a very compelling reason."

You might also be able to say that they both counter a lot of attacks (which contributes to their power) but I think that's a little bit of a loose connection.

I think if you're building an engine you probably want both of them, yeah? Of course I can see situations where you want one and not the other but that depends on so many other things that I think it's a little specific to include in an article that's already pretty long.

And that bolded part, man. You make it sound so bad! "Of course, Silver gaining is good a lot of the time, but sometimes it's not what you want." is what I'd be more inclined to say instead. It's the same sentiment but less hyperbolic and Jack just wants us all to open up our hearts to him.

[HiveMindEmulator]

- Cantrips (speculative)
   - Jack is dead draw, so putting cantrips in a deck with dead draw isn't the best thing ever. Sometimes it can be the right move, but just be careful and think of your Jack like a Smithy or something in this case.

- Other sources of draw (anti-synergy)
   - Now we've gotten down to the bottom; would you put a Lab in a BM+Smithy deck? I'd prefer a Silver, myself.
   - Terminal Draw? Well Jack itself is terminal draw and this has been simulated pretty well -- just get your second Jack on the second shuffle and that's really all the terminal draw you need. Anything else is just getting in your way.

You have this blurb in Jack + money, and I can't say I agree. Jack isn't really "dead draw". Unless you have some form of hand-size decreasing, you're only drawing 1 card per Jack per time through the deck, which is potentially bloated a bit from Silvers. That's nothing, certainly not comparable to Smithy. The chances of you drawing whatever card dead are really small, so if it provides basically any benefit, it's better than Silver.

And terminal draw is like the BEST thing to go with Jack in a money deck, not the worst. One Jack eliminates the Estates from your deck and adds in Silvers. Then Smithy is going to buy you a Province most of the time. In a deck with only 1-2 VP cards and all Copper/Silver, it's not hard to have $8 in 7 cards. Smithy is better than a second Jack if you're trying to race down Provinces. Now if your opponent is going for something really slow and you want to empty the Provinces yourself, then you might prefer a second Jack so you can have enough Silver to buffer against having 6-7 VP cards in your deck, but not if your goal is just 5 Provinces.

[markusin]

Adding a cantrip to a Jack deck is not like adding a Peddler to a terminal-draw Smithy deck. As HME said, Jack will only draw 1 card without handsize reducers. Not only that, it spies on the top card first. If it's an action you'll draw dead, at least you can skip it for what will likely be a non-action in a primarily money deck. If the top card isn't an action, you can leave it on top if you're worried about drawing one of your actions dead. Deck tracking helps here.

[AdamH]

Hmm, what you're saying makes sense -- that means there really isn't much interaction to note with Jack and Cantrips/other terminal draw. My inclination is to just remove those sections entirely, but maybe I should say something? I'm not sure what I would say regarding that.

[HiveMindEmulator]

You should definitely not remove the sections. It's useful information for the reader if they haven't thought about it.

I think you should say just what we're saying about cantrips: there's no real need to worry about drawing them dead since it's really unlikely: it has to be exactly the top card after you skipped something with your Jack, which isn't going to occur that often in a deck with the extra Silvers.

And about terminal draw, I think you should say what I said: It depends on what your opponent is doing. Double Jack (or more Jacks) is better at getting all 8 Provinces faster than Jack + terminal draw (like 1 Jack into 2 terminal draw cards), but it's worse at getting to 4-5 (+Duchies).

[soulnet]

Being serious, though (well I was being serious, I just wasn't addressing what you actually said) the point of that statement is that Jack is great with other engine payloads; I just chose Conspirator because it seems unlikely at first, plus one of my example games had Conspirator. Is that statement from the article not getting the point across? Should I re-word? Any suggestions on how I can make this clearer?

I still think Jack and Conspirators is mostly an anti-synergy. They can still work together, of course, but I imagine that being due to good enablers of both being available (Hamlet being a primary candidate). Just saying "Jack and Conspirators" in the article I think will subtract credibility without really adding any useful information (I am thinking about someone reading the article on the wiki, for example, and not this thread).

Do you think Copper-junkers deserve a special mention? Do you think anything I said was misleading?

Yes and no, respectively. I would at least mention it in a one-liner, given that you are already talking about Jack's relationship with Attacks.

I mean, I agree with most of what you're saying, except for a couple of key things:

Masq and Jack serve very different purposes in building decks, and you highlight a lot of these differences. It's because of these differences that I *don't* think a comparison is worth it in the article. The only comparison I would really want to make would go something like this:

"Both Masq and Jack are the most powerful cards in Dominion at their price point. To not open with a copy of either one of these cards, when available/possible, requires a very compelling reason."

You might also be able to say that they both counter a lot of attacks (which contributes to their power) but I think that's a little bit of a loose connection.

I think if you're building an engine you probably want both of them, yeah? Of course I can see situations where you want one and not the other but that depends on so many other things that I think it's a little specific to include in an article that's already pretty long.

And that bolded part, man. You make it sound so bad! "Of course, Silver gaining is good a lot of the time, but sometimes it's not what you want." is what I'd be more inclined to say instead. It's the same sentiment but less hyperbolic and Jack just wants us all to open up our hearts to him.

Ok, that makes sense. Maybe it is better left out. But I still think double Masq or Masq/Silver is usually a better opening than Masq/Jack or Silver/Jack. Specifically, being the best $3 card means so much more than being the best $4 card.

Btw, I don't think Jack is the best $4. I do think it is top 5 and maybe even top 3, but I would put at least Tournament and Remake above Jack).

[AdamH]

Being serious, though (well I was being serious, I just wasn't addressing what you actually said) the point of that statement is that Jack is great with other engine payloads; I just chose Conspirator because it seems unlikely at first, plus one of my example games had Conspirator. Is that statement from the article not getting the point across? Should I re-word? Any suggestions on how I can make this clearer?

I still think Jack and Conspirators is mostly an anti-synergy. They can still work together, of course, but I imagine that being due to good enablers of both being available (Hamlet being a primary candidate). Just saying "Jack and Conspirators" in the article I think will subtract credibility without really adding any useful information (I am thinking about someone reading the article on the wiki, for example, and not this thread).

The point I'm trying to get across goes like this:

"Don't be afraid to put Jack and Conspirators in the same deck just because they don't fit perfectly together. There isn't a direct synergy there but including Jack in your deck shouldn't stop you from going for other engine payloads at the same time"

I think saying there's an anti-synergy is a little strong. Sure, you're not going to put them together in a money deck, but if you're building an engine with Jack in it, there's almost certainly a village, which is a great enabler for Conspirators so I don't think Jack is really any worse than a Chapel who has done its job for this purpose (unless you get careless and get so many Silvers that your whole engine falls apart).

It's worded the way it is in the article "...Jack is great with Conspirators..." so that I could throw in a funny one-liner. If I need to change the wording, I'll just have to think of another one-liner to put there instead...

"Jack is OK if he's not the only man in your life; you can go see other people [cards] and he'll still be there for you when you need him"

OK maybe it needs work.

But if people think I'm implying a synergy here then I should reword it to be more clear... Upvote soulnet's last post if you agree?

Btw, I don't think Jack is the best $4. I do think it is top 5 and maybe even top 3, but I would put at least Tournament and Remake above Jack).

Well yeah of couse that's a contentious statement. I personally had Jack as the most powerful $4 card when I did the card rankings and I don't expect everyone else to agree with me (apparently Sea Hag is. Ugh, whatever, I had it 8th and I thought that was pretty generous). FWIW I had Remake second and I didn't rank Tournament (but I certainly wouldn't put it above Jack or Remake; Ironmonger was 3rd for me and I would put Ironmonger above Tournament but again I didn't rank Tournament so don't take that to the Bank; Bank costs $7 so it shouldn't be on this list (see what I did there?))

[Mic Qsenoch]

Your example games need to include links to logs, I don't want to watch a 20 minute video to see an example of what you're discussing in an article.

[AdamH]

Your example games need to include links to logs, I don't want to watch a 20 minute video to see an example of what you're discussing in an article.

Good call. OP updated.

[theblankman]

Good article! 

I'm with soulnet, Polk and others in thinking the Jack-in-an-engine section could maybe say a little more about synergy with trash-for-benefit cards.  You mention Forager several times, but not Bishop, Salvager or Apprentice.  Jack seems especially suited for engines built around tfb, since he does two things you'd otherwise need to do separately, draw up after trashing, and gain more cards to trash. 

Granted, silver isn't the greatest thing to feed your Bishop or Salvager, but maybe you use some of that silver to buy bigger and better trash   And if Jack fills your deck with enough silver that you Apprentice one to draw three more, that's a non-terminal +$4, right?  Maybe not as sweet as Apprentice/Market Square, but speaking of that combo, opening MS/Jack would be a solid road to buying the Apprentices.  And if I saw Jack, Bishop and any village other than Fortress, I'd at least consider plodding to the win at 2VP/silver. 

[AdamH]

Good article! 

I'm with soulnet, Polk and others in thinking the Jack-in-an-engine section could maybe say a little more about synergy with trash-for-benefit cards.  You mention Forager several times, but not Bishop, Salvager or Apprentice.  Jack seems especially suited for engines built around tfb, since he does two things you'd otherwise need to do separately, draw up after trashing, and gain more cards to trash. 

Granted, silver isn't the greatest thing to feed your Bishop or Salvager, but maybe you use some of that silver to buy bigger and better trash   And if Jack fills your deck with enough silver that you Apprentice one to draw three more, that's a non-terminal +$4, right?  Maybe not as sweet as Apprentice/Market Square, but speaking of that combo, opening MS/Jack would be a solid road to buying the Apprentices.  And if I saw Jack, Bishop and any village other than Fortress, I'd at least consider plodding to the win at 2VP/silver.

It seems the only real synergy here is Apprentice, and it doesn't strike me as that strong -- I think it's a big deal that it's non-terminal, and it seems to me the main reason why you would want that is just to have some decent way to get rid of Silvers you don't want. Would you say that's accurate?

EDIT: typo

[markusin]

Good article! 

I'm with soulnet, Polk and others in thinking the Jack-in-an-engine section could maybe say a little more about synergy with trash-for-benefit cards.  You mention Forager several times, but not Bishop, Salvager or Apprentice.  Jack seems especially suited for engines built around tfb, since he does two things you'd otherwise need to do separately, draw up after trashing, and gain more cards to trash. 

Granted, silver isn't the greatest thing to feed your Bishop or Salvager, but maybe you use some of that silver to buy bigger and better trash   And if Jack fills your deck with enough silver that you Apprentice one to draw three more, that's a non-terminal +$4, right?  Maybe not as sweet as Apprentice/Market Square, but speaking of that combo, opening MS/Jack would be a solid road to buying the Apprentices.  And if I saw Jack, Bishop and any village other than Fortress, I'd at least consider plodding to the win at 2VP/silver.

It seems the only real synergy here is Apprentice, and it doesn't strike me as that strong -- I think it's a big deal that it's non-terminal, and it seems to me the main reason why you would what that is just to have some decent way to get rid of Silvers you don't want. Would you say that's accurate?

I don't think Apprentice's ability to trash Coppers, whose position in your hand can be replaced after playing JoaT, should be ignored. An early Apprentice should make a good addition to a JoaT deck.

[theblankman]

It seems the only real synergy here is Apprentice, and it doesn't strike me as that strong -- I think it's a big deal that it's non-terminal, and it seems to me the main reason why you would want that is just to have some decent way to get rid of Silvers you don't want. Would you say that's accurate?

Hmm... of the three cards I mentioned I'm sure Salvager has the weakest synergy and Apprentice likely has the strongest.  I guess my idea was that if you start with something like Hamlet/Jack or Festival/Jack and build up to playing 3 or 4 Jacks per turn, then you'll gain enough silver that you're happy to let Apprentice consume a few to draw the rest.  It would be an endgame-ish play, where if you have +buys, you'll want to draw as many of your silvers as possible and spend them on multiple VP cards.  I'm just speculating but it feels like there's potential to hit 13 or 16 a few times.  It definitely helps that Apprentice is non-terminal, and as markusin mentioned it's a copper trasher that fits nicely with Jack.  Maybe it won't work after all but reading your article has made me at least want to experiment with it. 

Re: Jack/Bishop, I think the planned endgame is a very thin deck with an equal number of Jacks and Bishops that trashes silver for points as fast as it gains them.  3 silver per turn keeps up with a province buyer, and gains ground when he misses $8, but that's 6 terminals, so if there's only one village then winning the split is absolutely necessary.  Also the engine would ramp up pretty slowly, and the opponent could play conventional double Jack with your Bishops trashing his copper.  So it's pretty questionable whether that deck can pull ahead before the opponent buys all 8 provinces, but I still might play around with it some time. 

Unrelated aside: I've played a few games where Jack's best friend turned out to be Inn.  As a disappearing village with a warehouse-like effect, it does two things Jack likes, and the on-buy effect lets you play Jack early and often.  I'm not sure if that warrants any special mention in your article, but I do think it's one of Jack's better village-y friends. 

[AdamH]

It seems the only real synergy here is Apprentice, and it doesn't strike me as that strong -- I think it's a big deal that it's non-terminal, and it seems to me the main reason why you would want that is just to have some decent way to get rid of Silvers you don't want. Would you say that's accurate?

Hmm... of the three cards I mentioned I'm sure Salvager has the weakest synergy and Apprentice likely has the strongest.  I guess my idea was that if you start with something like Hamlet/Jack or Festival/Jack and build up to playing 3 or 4 Jacks per turn, then you'll gain enough silver that you're happy to let Apprentice consume a few to draw the rest.  It would be an endgame-ish play, where if you have +buys, you'll want to draw as many of your silvers as possible and spend them on multiple VP cards.  I'm just speculating but it feels like there's potential to hit 13 or 16 a few times.  It definitely helps that Apprentice is non-terminal, and as markusin mentioned it's a copper trasher that fits nicely with Jack.  Maybe it won't work after all but reading your article has made me at least want to experiment with it. 

Re: Jack/Bishop, I think the planned endgame is a very thin deck with an equal number of Jacks and Bishops that trashes silver for points as fast as it gains them.  3 silver per turn keeps up with a province buyer, and gains ground when he misses $8, but that's 6 terminals, so if there's only one village then winning the split is absolutely necessary.  Also the engine would ramp up pretty slowly, and the opponent could play conventional double Jack with your Bishops trashing his copper.  So it's pretty questionable whether that deck can pull ahead before the opponent buys all 8 provinces, but I still might play around with it some time. 

Jack+Apprentice in this context seems like a worse version of Stables that only works on Silver and has to trash the Silvers instead of discarding them. It seems to me that the main reason you would want this is because you really want a way to get rid of the Silvers.

I can't back this up with experience, but my instinct tells me that the dream of Apprenticing a Copper then drawing back up with Jack isn't as awesome as we're making it out to be. Best-case it's pretty nice, but if you're desperate enough for Copper trashing to want to go with Apprentice, I bet it's going to be difficult to line this up and use it very much in a practical setting.

Jack/Bishop seems interesting. A lot of the time Golden Deck variants have trouble drawing and Jack really fits the bill nicely here. I sort of want to experiment with this.

Unrelated aside: I've played a few games where Jack's best friend turned out to be Inn.  As a disappearing village with a warehouse-like effect, it does two things Jack likes, and the on-buy effect lets you play Jack early and often.  I'm not sure if that warrants any special mention in your article, but I do think it's one of Jack's better village-y friends.

Ah yes, Inn. I've added this to the list of synergies.

[markusin]

The thing with Apprentice is that it's a really good win-while-you're-ahead card. Jack decks are pretty good at getting an early leaf. Once that happens, you can just trash Provinces or Golds or something to rush the game end. If your deck also has +buy, then there's a chance to double-Province after trashing a Province. Trashing Silver's with Apprentice is one of the worst ways to use Apprentice in this kind of deck, but you can do that if you're desperate.

During the really late game, Apprentice can even trash Jacks. It's worth experimenting with before any definitive conclusions are drawn about Jack/Apprentice.

[Awaclus]

Jack decks are pretty good at getting an early leaf.

Herbalist decks are also pretty good at that, and any decks when Sage is on the board.

[theblankman]

Jack+Apprentice in this context seems like a worse version of Stables that only works on Silver and has to trash the Silvers instead of discarding them. It seems to me that the main reason you would want this is because you really want a way to get rid of the Silvers.

I can't back this up with experience, but my instinct tells me that the dream of Apprenticing a Copper then drawing back up with Jack isn't as awesome as we're making it out to be. Best-case it's pretty nice, but if you're desperate enough for Copper trashing to want to go with Apprentice, I bet it's going to be difficult to line this up and use it very much in a practical setting.

If you're trying to maintain an engine that plays several Jacks per turn, I don't think it's "get rid of Silver" so much as "keep the right amount of Silver in your deck."  You want enough to consistently buy VP cards, but not so many that your engine pieces disconnect.  Since you can't avoid gaining Silver with Jack as your primary draw card, maybe Apprentice helps you smooth things out.  Or maybe I'm wrong and Stables is just better.  I do agree that paying $5 for a no-benefit copper trasher sounds bad, but if Apprentice on Silver is equal or better than Stables, then trashing copper becomes a nice side effect if you happen to draw the right hand for it.

Jack/Bishop seems interesting. A lot of the time Golden Deck variants have trouble drawing and Jack really fits the bill nicely here. I sort of want to experiment with this.

A 6VP/turn Golden Deck is certainly reachable, the question I haven't answered yet is whether you can get there quick enough to beat a Jack+whatever-else (opponent's Bishop?) that just buys all the provinces.  I suspect Golden Jack/Bishop is either excellent or not viable at all, with no in-between. 

It might be more viable in Colony games though, provided the board has a few village flavors so you can get enough actions to generate 10+/turn.  Jack doesn't speed up a Colony game as much, so there's time to trash down to your Golden Deck, and 4 Bishops is just enough to keep adding sets of village/Bishop/Jack after all your treasure is gone, so the deck can keep accelerating in its endgame. 

[AdamH]

Jack+Apprentice in this context seems like a worse version of Stables that only works on Silver and has to trash the Silvers instead of discarding them. It seems to me that the main reason you would want this is because you really want a way to get rid of the Silvers.

I can't back this up with experience, but my instinct tells me that the dream of Apprenticing a Copper then drawing back up with Jack isn't as awesome as we're making it out to be. Best-case it's pretty nice, but if you're desperate enough for Copper trashing to want to go with Apprentice, I bet it's going to be difficult to line this up and use it very much in a practical setting.

If you're trying to maintain an engine that plays several Jacks per turn, I don't think it's "get rid of Silver" so much as "keep the right amount of Silver in your deck."  You want enough to consistently buy VP cards, but not so many that your engine pieces disconnect.  Since you can't avoid gaining Silver with Jack as your primary draw card, maybe Apprentice helps you smooth things out.  Or maybe I'm wrong and Stables is just better.  I do agree that paying $5 for a no-benefit copper trasher sounds bad, but if Apprentice on Silver is equal or better than Stables, then trashing copper becomes a nice side effect if you happen to draw the right hand for it.

The other thing I forgot to mention is that I think the cases are very rare when you want to be playing several Jacks per turn. I've heard it's possible to make decks where Jack is your only source of draw but I'm very hesitant to build those decks and I think I'm someone with less fear of Jack-in-an-Engine than most around here.

Not saying it can't be done, but I'm saying it would be rare to see.

[theblankman]

Not saying it can't be done, but I'm saying it would be rare to see.

I agree.  I just think Apprentice might be one of those rare cases where you could spam Jack, because it helps you draw all that gained silver while also regulating how much silver stays in your deck.  Put it this way: if my main village is Festival or Hamlet, I'm not sure if I'd prefer a bunch of Smithys and a few Jacks; or a bunch of Jacks and a few Apprentices.  Of course, if the terminal draw card is Torturer, that's a different story  

[theblankman]

Okay, so I just tried Golden Jack/Bishop against Lord Bottington for the heck of it.  All my estates and treasures were gone by turn 16, which isn't all that slow if your opponent needs to buy all 8 provinces.  Plus I already had 30+ chips at that point, so I was actually in the lead (not sure if I would've been against a better player though).  Game ended on piles in 23 turns (one of the piles was Silver!).  I had 81 chips to the bot's 7 provinces and a duchy.  A real opponent certainly would've been a stiffer challenge but I still think the deck can win.  Lessons learned:

1) With a ton of terminals and only Jack for draw, I had to go full-on village idiot to minimize the chance of an all-terminal hand.  The concern wasn't just having enough action plays, it was making sure my first 5 cards contain at least one village.  I wonder if non-terminal draw/cycling like Lab/HP/Menagerie/Warehouse would help.  Absent those cards, I think two piles of villages are needed, and hand-size reducing ones like Inn and Hamlet are probably the best.

2) Get a Jack early for economy during buildup, but probably don't need more than 2 until you're mostly trashed and ready to chew up the Silvers they give you.  Not sure if it's better to open Jack or Bishop... it might depend on whether your 3 is a silver or a cheap village (opening village isn't necessarily bad since you need a ton of them, your engine pieces are cheap, and you'll gain Silver from Jack). 

3) Watch the Silver pile.  The deck stalls when it's empty because you stop gaining Bishop food.  At that point you need two other piles empty, or at least low enough that you can finish them by cannibalizing engine pieces for Bishop's coin. 

4) Be careful not to accidentally jack-trash a village you meant to play 

Overall first impression: Jack + Bishop + two village piles is rare, but when it happens the deck seems solid.  It gets an early chip lead unless the opponent also runs multiple Bishops, gets rolling in moderate time, and scores enough to beat Provinces overall.  I'm not sure about Colonies or big alt-VP like Vineyard, and I think it would be terribly outclassed by a Goons engine, but it's still something I will try again. 

[terminalCopper]

I really like your enthusiasm, but i think you go too far. Example given, if you appreciate to have two cards in your hand, it is not enough to call it a synergy. If it was, platinum would synergize with any other card, especially with itself.

[MarkowKette]

A few notes on my side to engines where Jack is your only draw.

First of all it suffers from the same problems all draw-up-to engines suffer from.
You need a lot more villages than jacks and not just (number of draw cards+1 which is a good estimate for other pure draw engines). Or you need really good sifting, like Inn, wandering minstrel, warehouse.
And drawing up to 5 Cards instead of 6 or 7 is a HUGE difference. So while Library is a really good draw card for like every engine that doesnt use treasures as payload because it also provides some of the needed sifting itself, Jack es really weak in that regard as you often have to connect 1-2 villages, a "silver-trasher", a silver and another Jack in the cards you draw with the Jack (and the villages, sifters you play afterwards).
Then obviously must have a way to get rid of those silvers and if that way is terminal you need another extra village.
Spice Merchant and especially Forager shine for that. Apprentice can be decent but it costs $5 and when trashing silvers increase your handsize like a Lab so are not stricktly bad for your draw up to engine but doesnt really synergize with it either.

So all in all i can say boards where you want to build such an engine are extremely rare and i think what you have to look out for if you want to build such are are A LOT of very CHEAP synergizing cards.
I only played one of those boards so far and that featured Jack, Forager and Wandering Minstrel.
All those cards are very cheap to get  and you only need 3 different cards here that deliver every component that you need.
Silver-trashing+ payload in forager, village and strong sifting in wandering minstrel.
Often the engine is there but it takes too long to get all needed components.
Example: (Jack,  Spice Merchant, Festival, Warehouse) here you find everything you need for such an engine but you need too many or too expensive components to set it up fast enough.

[Holger]

Jack of All Trades, Advanced

The original article can be found on the wiki and was written by theory in late 2011, right after Hinterlands was just released. The original article reflected the mentality of that time, which was that Jack was really strong for money, didn't really synergize with all that much, and was grossly overpowered and could only be beaten by the strongest engines (sound familiar? I really hope this article can be written about Rebuild some day).

I agree with most of this, but not with the "grossly overpowered" claim. theory only ever states that it's very strong for BM (as opposed to the initial impression mentioned of it being quite weak), and flat-out says that "DoubleJack isn’t unbeatable."  And the claim that Jack is one of the strongest BM card is still correct, I think, if you ignore stronger cards that were released later (Rebuild, Cultist).^* In Qvist's 2014 card list, it's still #4 among $4 cards, and none of the higher-ranked cards is good for BM. 
I really wish your Rebuild hope comes true, but even Donald X. has admitted that it's too strong for a one-card strategy, something he never had to do for Jack...

^* In the Dominiate simulator, it only loses to Wharf, Witch and (narrowly) Mountebank, but I think the latter two are due to suboptimal card implementation - Jack discards a Curse when it has none in hand, instead it should draw and trash it.
Edit: I was wrong, Jack seems to lose either way (although very narrowly against Wharf). In Province-Estate games, that is - Shelters may help Jack to win those match-ups, while Colonies are hopeless.

[Schneau]

   - Scheme can be very helpful for reliability in a deck with Silvers as its payload.

What does this sentence mean? To me, it reads that you're supposed to name Silver with Scheme, which isn't legal. So, I'm not sure what you meant.

[eHalcyon]

   - Scheme can be very helpful for reliability in a deck with Silvers as its payload.

What does this sentence mean? To me, it reads that you're supposed to name Silver with Scheme, which isn't legal. So, I'm not sure what you meant.

I still haven't read the draft, but I expect that Adam means you can use Scheme to put your engine components into your starting hands consistently, whereas otherwise the silver might get in the way.  You will usually prefer to draw the silver later by playing through the engine rather than having the silver in your hand to start.

[AdamH]

A few notes on my side to engines where Jack is your only draw.

First of all it suffers from the same problems all draw-up-to engines suffer from.
You need a lot more villages than jacks and not just (number of draw cards+1 which is a good estimate for other pure draw engines). Or you need really good sifting, like Inn, wandering minstrel, warehouse.
And drawing up to 5 Cards instead of 6 or 7 is a HUGE difference. So while Library is a really good draw card for like every engine that doesnt use treasures as payload because it also provides some of the needed sifting itself, Jack es really weak in that regard as you often have to connect 1-2 villages, a "silver-trasher", a silver and another Jack in the cards you draw with the Jack (and the villages, sifters you play afterwards).
Then obviously must have a way to get rid of those silvers and if that way is terminal you need another extra village.
Spice Merchant and especially Forager shine for that. Apprentice can be decent but it costs $5 and when trashing silvers increase your handsize like a Lab so are not stricktly bad for your draw up to engine but doesnt really synergize with it either.

So all in all i can say boards where you want to build such an engine are extremely rare and i think what you have to look out for if you want to build such are are A LOT of very CHEAP synergizing cards.
I only played one of those boards so far and that featured Jack, Forager and Wandering Minstrel.
All those cards are very cheap to get  and you only need 3 different cards here that deliver every component that you need.
Silver-trashing+ payload in forager, village and strong sifting in wandering minstrel.
Often the engine is there but it takes too long to get all needed components.
Example: (Jack,  Spice Merchant, Festival, Warehouse) here you find everything you need for such an engine but you need too many or too expensive components to set it up fast enough.

This is really good and well-put, I'm just not sure how to include it in the article, especially without adding a lot of length for something really specific. Not sure.

Jack of All Trades, Advanced

The original article can be found on the wiki and was written by theory in late 2011, right after Hinterlands was just released. The original article reflected the mentality of that time, which was that Jack was really strong for money, didn't really synergize with all that much, and was grossly overpowered and could only be beaten by the strongest engines (sound familiar? I really hope this article can be written about Rebuild some day).

I agree with most of this, but not with the "grossly overpowered" claim. theory only ever states that it's very strong for BM (as opposed to the initial impression mentioned of it being quite weak), and flat-out says that "DoubleJack isn’t unbeatable."  And the claim that Jack is one of the strongest BM card is still correct, I think, if you ignore stronger cards that were released later (Rebuild, Cultist).^* In Qvist's 2014 card list, it's still #4 among $4 cards, and none of the higher-ranked cards is good for BM. 
I really wish your Rebuild hope comes true, but even Donald X. has admitted that it's too strong for a one-card strategy, something he never had to do for Jack...

^* In the Dominiate simulator, it only loses to Wharf, Witch and (narrowly) Mountebank, but I think the latter two are due to suboptimal card implementation - Jack discards a Curse when it has none in hand, instead it should draw and trash it.

   - Scheme can be very helpful for reliability in a deck with Silvers as its payload.

What does this sentence mean? To me, it reads that you're supposed to name Silver with Scheme, which isn't legal. So, I'm not sure what you meant.

eHalcyon's response is what I meant by this ^

These have been clarified in the article. Thanks for the feedback!

[DG]

I've finally got round to reading through this. First of all, "double jack" isn't so special. It's not massively better than single jack in a head-to-head. Jack + cost 5 card(s) is often better, even unpopular cards like count, stash, and merchant ship. Perhaps it is obvious but you don't mention that kingdom treasures like stash, venture, and hoard work really well with jacks.

In multiplayer a jack is no longer single card defense. Your opponents can damage your hand/deck faster than a jack can repair it so you need to fit the jack into a new strategy, even if that just becomes "triple jack". Reaction defenses like moats and traders can become much stronger than jacks. On the other hand, full engines can become more difficult to build in multiplayer as each player gets a smaller share of key cards, so minion+jack or fishing village+jack can be a more realistic target.

In terms of engines, well I don't think that jacks are a good fit for engines generally. Engines often need to bring deck drawing under control, strict control. The jack is a always gaining a card and sometimes trashing a card so it is doing nothing to control the deck size. Buying and using other cheap cards to control the deck is usually better than buying and using the jack. Once an engine is established the jack can be good to gain silver but even then there is no choice, it gains only silver and you have to commit to working with that. Silver is an active impediment to the drawing of many engines with cards like apothecaries, tacticians, minions, scrying pools, menageries, etc.

Colony games could be mentioned. Silver is a mediocre card in colony games so using your terminal actions to gain more silver can be equally mediocre.

[AdamH]

I've finally got round to reading through this. First of all, "double jack" isn't so special. It's not massively better than single jack in a head-to-head. Jack + cost 5 card(s) is often better, even unpopular cards like count, stash, and merchant ship. Perhaps it is obvious but you don't mention that kingdom treasures like stash, venture, and hoard work really well with jacks.

Colony games could be mentioned. Silver is a mediocre card in colony games so using your terminal actions to gain more silver can be equally mediocre.

These have been added to the article. Thanks for pointing these out!

In terms of engines, well I don't think that jacks are a good fit for engines generally. Engines often need to bring deck drawing under control, strict control. The jack is a always gaining a card and sometimes trashing a card so it is doing nothing to control the deck size. Buying and using other cheap cards to control the deck is usually better than buying and using the jack. Once an engine is established the jack can be good to gain silver but even then there is no choice, it gains only silver and you have to commit to working with that. Silver is an active impediment to the drawing of many engines with cards like apothecaries, tacticians, minions, scrying pools, menageries, etc.

Well you're certainly not the first person to tell me stuff like this. Jack isn't the best thing in every engine imaginable, but a lot of the time the answer is just to stop playing jack at a certain point, and a lot of other times the answer is that Silver is actually good. Maybe not in all the cases you pointed out, but a lot of the reason I'm writing this article is because people say this all the time, where it implies that most of the time Jack gets in the way of your engine where I think most of the time Jack helps engines more than it hurts (I think it rarely hurts, myself).

[MarkowKette]

I will try to put my arguments together in a compressed way so you can maybe include it.
I think it is an important part(not because you often build such an engine) but to make clear that you often don't want to build such an engine even if it seems tempting and why.  Is the following ok for that?

Jack as your only draw:

Strong engines with Jack as your only draw are very rare. The reason for this is you need a lot of components to ensure a good reliability. You have a lot of "stop cards" and you only draw up to 5. Any victory cards are stop cards, Silver is a stop card when you draw it without a trasher, the silver-trasher is a stop card when you draw it without a silver(most of the time), any terminal actions(except the first Jack) are stop cards whenever you dont have 3+ actions remaining. So in order to make your engine reliable you need good sifting. If yount want to make this engine you need: Jacks, Sifters, Silver trashers, payload cards and Villages and +buy. Getting all these in the right numbers usually takes too much time. The few times you want to do this there have to be one or two really prime enablers ((cheap) cards that fullfill multiple of those tasks)
prime examples of such cards are: Forager ($3, silver trashing, payload,+buy, nonterminal), Hamlet ($2,Village, +buy, small sifting), Wandering minstres ($4, village , strong sifting), Fishing village ($3, very reliable village, small payload)

[AdamH]

I've re-worked the beginning of the Jack-in-an-Engine portion of the article (took out a lot of my babbling about the example and replaced it with this). Any thoughts?

[jomini]

I've finally got round to reading through this. First of all, "double jack" isn't so special. It's not massively better than single jack in a head-to-head. Jack + cost 5 card(s) is often better, even unpopular cards like count, stash, and merchant ship. Perhaps it is obvious but you don't mention that kingdom treasures like stash, venture, and hoard work really well with jacks.

In multiplayer a jack is no longer single card defense. Your opponents can damage your hand/deck faster than a jack can repair it so you need to fit the jack into a new strategy, even if that just becomes "triple jack". Reaction defenses like moats and traders can become much stronger than jacks. On the other hand, full engines can become more difficult to build in multiplayer as each player gets a smaller share of key cards, so minion+jack or fishing village+jack can be a more realistic target.

In terms of engines, well I don't think that jacks are a good fit for engines generally. Engines often need to bring deck drawing under control, strict control. The jack is a always gaining a card and sometimes trashing a card so it is doing nothing to control the deck size. Buying and using other cheap cards to control the deck is usually better than buying and using the jack. Once an engine is established the jack can be good to gain silver but even then there is no choice, it gains only silver and you have to commit to working with that. Silver is an active impediment to the drawing of many engines with cards like apothecaries, tacticians, minions, scrying pools, menageries, etc.

Colony games could be mentioned. Silver is a mediocre card in colony games so using your terminal actions to gain more silver can be equally mediocre.

On the other hand, you are selling Jack's ability to boot strap you into an engine a lot shorter here. Take something like Upgrade. Jack turns estates into Silvers for its first three plays, let's you quickly buy upgrades, and then let's you draw a full hand after killing coppers. Later on you can flip the Jack into an Upgrade (or whatever). Jack will get you 5's virtually every hand, very quickly, and even when facing attacks. For expensive engines, Jack works quite well. If your key price point really is $4 or $3, then yeah, Jack isn't as hot ... but for $5, $6, and $7 Jack allows you to get there quickly even if you are being hammered by attacks. I mean take something like Kc or Forge, it takes a good bit to get either of those, particularly if things like Cutpurse, Militia, or the like are kicking around. Jack gets them just about as fast as silver and helps you build action density in the process.

Or take a very strong synergy - Jack and the other guy's Bishop. Sure he will get a few more chips than you early, but he will have a lot of turns where the Bishop is a $0 and the rest will be for $1. Going for any sort of expensive engine off Bishop is a bit slow as you need an average of $1.3, 1.6 or $2 to nab a big component when you trash a card. Trashing off the other guy is great for Jack and lets you dip into the strong cards.

As far as Jack being weaker against attacks in 3er. Well sure ... against junking attacks. But most attacks don't stack well. Fortune teller is going to leave the same amount of crap on top. B-crat isn't likely to top deck yet another green. Virtually all the discards don't stack ... and if they do (Cutpurse, Torturer, Taxman) - you can just play the Jack for a full hand regardless. Deck inspection can be a bit worse - you have 2x the Spies going after you to discard strong cards - but how much does that really hurt? At worst they can leave one bad card on top for you and the only way you will consistently have multiple cards discarded from deck inspection is if you deck consistently has good cards on top. Aside from cursing and looters, what doesn't Jack stop just as well in 3er as 2er?

Even take something like Ambassador, sure you are going to be getting in on the Ambassador war ... but if you are trying to keep pace with the other guy's ambassadors you need to be returning 2 cards with each ambassador play. That means you have 2 other cards left for doing anything. Because Ambassador clears out three slots, this turns Jack into draw-3-cards and do other stuff when you can get village/Amb/Jack. Honestly, though in 3er, Jack is a pretty strong shot for a quick duchy rush. You can spam silver and copper isn't bad if you let the other guys play estate tennis and run down the pile for you. Pile out the duchies and you need to pile out one other thing before either of them hits more than half the provinces. Sure if its end up being two Jack players against one Amb, the Jacks lose ... but that isn't exactly an uncommon dynamic in 3er. There is a premium on being the odd man out.

[soulnet]

Rabble and Torturer are the two Attacks that really hurt Jack (when chained). That may be worth pointing out, given that Jack is usually pretty good against Attacks.

[jomini]

Actually I'd put both Rabble and Torturer as weaker against Jack. Rabble suffers from the problem that Jack kills the estates so you get less damage from it for a long time. If you are playing money Jack, you just have a ton of silver and it doesn't matter nearly as much when you reshuffle; you need to chain a LOT of Rabbles to top deck more than the one card Jack can just toss via inspection if you have 3 green in 20 cards. If you are playing engine, well presumably you are looking at double province turns so your window of vulnerability should be rather low. As an added bonus, a lot of Jack engines work really well with discard for benefit (Cellar, Warehouse, Inn, etc.) so you are even less likely to be stumped by green. In both cases, an opponent going Rabble should inform when you green and more importantly when to dip into the duchies ... but Jack is really good at making early Rabbles counter-productive (cycle faster) and making late Rabbles a crapshoot because of how thick the deck can get.

Likewise Torturer takes 3 plays to be painful against money-Jack and even then, it really is just "discard one card" effectively (presumably by the time you can chain 3 Torturers, the other guy's Jack has already crunched his estates so he can discard twice, gain a curse, and then trash it). Sure money-jack doesn't always have a Jack in hand ... but Jack into Torturer can work (particularly if the other guy doesn't have Jack to allow big draws and kill curses), particularly as it makes it really to hit 5 even while discarding 2 or even 4 cards. Jack-engine does need to keep around another card for the +action ... but you can still do pretty well with discard/gain curse/discard.

Frankly, there just are not that many cards which are stronger against stacked Rabble (sure Farming Village, Hunting Party, maybe Venture/Loan ...) than Jack. And against Torturer, sure Watchtower owns it and I guess Library and Scrying Pool (with possible options for things like Golem/Nv/Wharf/Tac) ... but if Torturer is quick and strong then it is going to beat just about everything. If it is weak, Jack is one of the best cards to say "skip it". Particularly in 3er where your opponents are beating each other up as well as you, Jack just seems to be among the best counters.

Now sure, Jack/Something else is normally your go-to, but even the stacking on Rabble and Torturer doesn't do much against Jack.

[amalloy]

In terms of engines, well I don't think that jacks are a good fit for engines generally. Engines often need to bring deck drawing under control, strict control. The jack is a always gaining a card and sometimes trashing a card so it is doing nothing to control the deck size. Buying and using other cheap cards to control the deck is usually better than buying and using the jack. Once an engine is established the jack can be good to gain silver but even then there is no choice, it gains only silver and you have to commit to working with that. Silver is an active impediment to the drawing of many engines with cards like apothecaries, tacticians, minions, scrying pools, menageries, etc.

On the other hand, you are selling Jack's ability to boot strap you into an engine a lot shorter here. Take something like Upgrade. Jack turns estates into Silvers for its first three plays, let's you quickly buy upgrades, and then let's you draw a full hand after killing coppers. Later on you can flip the Jack into an Upgrade (or whatever). Jack will get you 5's virtually every hand, very quickly, and even when facing attacks. For expensive engines, Jack works quite well. If your key price point really is $4 or $3, then yeah, Jack isn't as hot ... but for $5, $6, and $7 Jack allows you to get there quickly even if you are being hammered by attacks. I mean take something like Kc or Forge, it takes a good bit to get either of those, particularly if things like Cutpurse, Militia, or the like are kicking around. Jack gets them just about as fast as silver and helps you build action density in the process.

I played a game recently that I think exemplifies how Jack can help get an engine going fast, even if you may not want the Jack long-term. Sadly it was not on goko, so I can't use the Kingdom¹ Visualizer, but the kingdom was:

Menagerie, Village, Golem, Jack, Wandering Minstrel,
Council Room, Governor, Trading Post, Grand Market, Forge

My Jack opening let me buy engine pieces while thinning, without having to neglect my economy. I was able to get an early Council Room, and a Forge shortly thereafter. On turn 9 my deck was nothing but a ton of good cards, and I used Governor to exchange Jack for GM. I might even have been better off keeping the Jack, since Silver is decent for forging or remodeling, but either way Jack really helped kickstart this powerful engine. I'm sure I didn't play it optimally, but I would be a little surprised to hear that the optimal strategy doesn't involve Jack.

¹ I miss the Kingom Visualizer

[soulnet]

My Jack opening let me buy engine pieces while thinning, without having to neglect my economy. I was able to get an early Council Room, and a Forge shortly thereafter. On turn 9 my deck was nothing but a ton of good cards, and I used Governor to exchange Jack for GM. I might even have been better off keeping the Jack, since Silver is decent for forging or remodeling, but either way Jack really helped kickstart this powerful engine. I'm sure I didn't play it optimally, but I would be a little surprised to hear that the optimal strategy doesn't involve Jack.

Governor-Remodel really synergizes with Jack because it likes to have Silvers around to pick up $5s, and it reduces hand-size. Also, opponent's Governor-remodel synergizes with Jack as well.

[AdamH]

I've made one last pass through the article looking for small things like wording, punctuation, etc. I also wanted to trim down any areas that could have gotten more directly to the point.

This is sort of a long article, so I wanted someone to be able to just skim the article and read the bolded/obvious parts and get the main jist of the article. WW's Ambassador article has some great, concise takeaways ("Amb likes draw") and so many other articles are similar, so I wanted to have this effect too.

So with that, I think the article is finished and ready to publish! Again I want to thank everyone who provided feedback, even those who flat-out disagreed with large parts of what I said.

At this point I would put it on the wiki myself, but there is kind of an article already there and I don't want to just delete that one and put mine where that used to be. Does anyone have some advice on how to make the wiki page look in this situation?

[florrat]

Similar to the Rebuild-page, just have both articles on the page (I haven't read your article yet; if it is advisable to read the other article first, then put yours on bottom, if your article is comprehensive and covers everything, including the basics, put your article before the other one).

[soulnet]

I will read the whole article later, but as a general comment, for such a long article, more example games would be really nice, especially examples of particular things (like, an example per section or something).

I suggest this game I played for GokoDom, for instance: http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/static/logprettifier.html?20140412/log.505e9c9c0cf2ef979299a7c0.1397317303406.txt

It has everything that makes Jack good: No actions producing money, so you want the Silver, which also allows to concentrate buys on Villages and thus have a reliable engine despite all the Silvers. One thing I realize that is nice (maybe is already in the article) is that an engine that relies on Treasure for money is harder of course, but as an upside, it has some reward from dead drawing. Especially with sift-and-draw like Catacombs (in the example), but also Embassy, the hability to dead draw into extra money when you run out of +actions can be pretty nice.