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[mischiefmaker]

       

Fortune Teller is, to be clear, one of the weakest attacks in the game. Early on, especially with any trashing, it can provide a Chancellor effect to your opponent, cycling through his deck and dumping it in the discard if it doesn't find any Victory cards, and thus helping him get to his new, more powerful cards quickly. And unlike other weak attacks (Bureaucrat, Cutpurse, Torturer to some degree), it improves not at all from playing multiple ones per turn, as the net effect to your opponent is the same.

If Native Village is on the board, Fortune Teller becomes even weaker. Each time you draw Native Village, if your opponent plays Fortune Teller, you can safely squirrel away a Victory card to your mat. Like the Apothecary/Native Village combo, when you begin greening, each play of Fortune Teller is another opportunity for you to clean out some green from your deck and keep it moving along; this is especially true in multiplayer games, where more than one person might have purchased a Fortune Teller. Also, if you're fairly certain a Fortune Teller will be played, you can be more aggressive about buying green, since you know you'll be able to clear it out of your deck.

Granted, Fortune Teller's attack is so weak that you might just ignore it. But if your strategy would be happy to incorporate a Native Village or three, it's a great way to turn Fortune Tellers from a nuisance into a key part of your deck construction.

Also might work to counter other cards that influence the top of your deck: Ghost Ship, Spy, Sea Hag, Scrying Pool. (I haven't tested this, so will need to verify/get other people's thoughts.)

[Geronimoo]

If you want to use the NV as a defense against Fortune Teller, you'll only be able to use it as storage so it won't help your strategy all that much (unless the +2 actions is enough and you don't need the cards from the mat to get big turns).

[DG]

Yes this is workable strategy, especially vs sea hags. Generally you want to keep the cards on the native village mat as long as possible, even if you lose a good card or two. If you can manage to do that you often find that your deck is full of recently bought cards that are good, while the mat is mostly full of curses, copper, and estates. Having less cards in your deck also cycles your sea hags faster.

A wharf or caravan in play will mess up this defence since they will draw the cards from the top of your deck at the start of the turn, just as they did in the game I played this evening.

[greatexpectations]

you can add attacks like bureaucrat and rabble to the list. and for that matter, cards like courtyard or navigator.

ive done the trick a few times myself. it is not a fantastic counter, but it can be a difference maker in a close or long/drawn out game.

[brokoli]

...and you can add Ghost Ship.

I don't agree about Fortune Teller, it's an attack like rabble, maybe even better if played one time. And for the low cost of 3$, it's a reasonable card.

[Thisisnotasmile]

...and you can add Ghost Ship.

I don't agree about Fortune Teller, it's an attack like rabble, maybe even better if played one time. And for the low cost of 3$, it's a reasonable card.

Ghost Ship's already in the list at the bottom of the article.

Rabble's attack is relatively weak unless stacked (to make sure you get more than one bad card on the deck) and in that case it's powerful not only because of the attack but also because you have a huge draw engine going. Fortune Teller cannot stack in this way. It will leave a maximum of one bad card on top of your opponent's deck no matter how many times you play the attack.

However, I agree that Fortune Teller is slightly underrated. It is a bad card, but it is nowhere near the bottom 5 $3 cost cards where a lot of people seem to place it.

[brokoli]

Ghost Ship's already in the list at the bottom of the article.

Oh yes, sorry. And you're right about fortune teller.

Another great counter to fortune teller and others : Farming Village...

[Fangz]

If you want to use the NV as a defense against Fortune Teller, you'll only be able to use it as storage so it won't help your strategy all that much (unless the +2 actions is enough and you don't need the cards from the mat to get big turns).

Yeah, I'm pretty skeptical about it for this reason. And if you don't make use of the +2 actions, and use the NV only once as a counter, you've merely shifted the bad card hand from one turn to another. You've basically gotten yourself the world's lamest lookout.

[jomini]

I would dispute that multiple fortune tellers are useless. Yes, it doesn't stack, but you can get multiple uses out of it. For instance, fortune/swindle/fortune/swindle is extremely strong late game (after you have the engine to build it out) as a duchy, duke, garden or noble killer. Chaining fortune/sab can also be vicious late game. Another decent combo is tribute/fortune/tribute, particularly against mixed type victory cards which make for strong mega turns. A last shot is with minion. Here you can leave your opponent with a hand of 3 + a green and have their next hand (4 or 5) start with a green by playing fortune/minion/fortune.

Yeah, none of these are earth shattering and they all require either luck or a good external source of + action, but they can work and more importantly be highly amusing (gardeners will swear if you can hit a garden every turn ... and buy a province).

[Kirian]

However, I agree that Fortune Teller is slightly underrated. It is a bad card, but it is nowhere near the bottom 5 $3 cost cards where a lot of people seem to place it.

Council Room Graph: Five Worst vs. FT

Well, in the early game it's slightly better than the "Five Worst," but mid-to-late game it's actually worse than all of them but Chancellor.  Better than Silver in the midgame of course, but Theory's been calling that for a while.

I think it easily falls below Village and Wishing Well in the "Worst" category though, so unless you can think of something else even worse, I'd put it in with the bottom 5.

[chwhite]

However, I agree that Fortune Teller is slightly underrated. It is a bad card, but it is nowhere near the bottom 5 $3 cost cards where a lot of people seem to place it.

Council Room Graph: Five Worst vs. FT

Well, in the early game it's slightly better than the "Five Worst," but mid-to-late game it's actually worse than all of them but Chancellor.  Better than Silver in the midgame of course, but Theory's been calling that for a while.

I think it easily falls below Village and Wishing Well in the "Worst" category though, so unless you can think of something else even worse, I'd put it in with the bottom 5.

Develop, Smugglers, and Black Market are, like, worse than Chancellor-level bad.  Fortune Teller is probably bottom 10 but no way it's bottom 5; Wishing Well and especially Village are decent cards that didn't belong anywhere near that list to begin with. 

[biodiesel]

Develop, Smugglers, and Black Market are, like, worse than Chancellor-level bad. 

What?  Explain, please.  Smugglers is a frustrating card in the hands of my opponents.  Develop may be situational, but worse than Chancellor?

[chwhite]

Develop, Smugglers, and Black Market are, like, worse than Chancellor-level bad. 

What?  Explain, please.  Smugglers is a frustrating card in the hands of my opponents.  Develop may be situational, but worse than Chancellor?

First off, Chancellor is better than you probably think it is (this is not to say it's actually good of course).  Smugglers is overrated because people remember all the time they bought a Gold and it was immediately Smuggled, but they forget all the times Smuggler was a dead card because Province, Potion-costers, or nothing was bought; or it was something that doesn't actually help their deck much (Gold in a Minions deck, or Silver, always Silver); or all the times they drew Smugglers-Silver-Copper-Copper-Estate and they end up taking two Silvers instead of the Gold they would have had if the Smugglers was a Silver.  And of course if you're building a deck that wants to pummel your opponent with attacks, hopefully you wouldn't get anything good out of the Smugglers anyway!

Smugglers is useful sometimes- it's pretty good in Minion mirror matches, for instance- but in the end it's a terminal gainer like Workshop that gives you even less control, and that's no good.  Only five cards have a worse "win rate without" on isotropic.  (Black Market and Silver are two of them.)

[ackack]

Smugglers, Black Market, and Chancellor are all situational cards. That said, I can think of more situations where I want Smugglers or Black Market than Chancellor. And in terms of Council Room data, Black Market has gotta be one of the ones where the data is least believable to me. It's swingy as hell, but I think played correctly it's often an outright good/important card when it's out there.

[chwhite]

Smugglers, Black Market, and Chancellor are all situational cards. That said, I can think of more situations where I want Smugglers or Black Market than Chancellor. And in terms of Council Room data, Black Market has gotta be one of the ones where the data is least believable to me. It's swingy as hell, but I think played correctly it's often an outright good/important card when it's out there.

I agree that Black Market is much better than its CR data indicates; while most people massively overbuy it (myself included), it does have the potential to be a game-changer. 

As for Chancellor and Smugglers... I actually buy Chancellor more often, and think I'm right to do so.  Believe it or not!  I do better when Smugglers are around, though this is mostly because a) ignoring the Smugglers trap has been worth quite a few games, and b) often times the situations where Chancellor is the right buy are situations where you're likely to lose anyway, as Chancellor increases your chances of victory from tiny to still less than 50 percent.  The canonical example of this being a Chancellor/Silver opening against a player who was able to get that Turn 1 Mountebank.

[Kirian]

However, I agree that Fortune Teller is slightly underrated. It is a bad card, but it is nowhere near the bottom 5 $3 cost cards where a lot of people seem to place it.

Council Room Graph: Five Worst vs. FT

Well, in the early game it's slightly better than the "Five Worst," but mid-to-late game it's actually worse than all of them but Chancellor.  Better than Silver in the midgame of course, but Theory's been calling that for a while.

I think it easily falls below Village and Wishing Well in the "Worst" category though, so unless you can think of something else even worse, I'd put it in with the bottom 5.

Develop, Smugglers, and Black Market are, like, worse than Chancellor-level bad.  Fortune Teller is probably bottom 10 but no way it's bottom 5; Wishing Well and especially Village are decent cards that didn't belong anywhere near that list to begin with. 

Hm, I hadn't thought about Smugglers and Develop, but the graphs disagree with you on Black Market, as does basic sense.  Both BM and FT are terminal silvers, but BM cannot have a downside, whereas partial Chancellor of your opponent's deck is almost always a downside.

I'd put exactly zero stock in the "Win Rate Without" column.  By that standard, Develop is comparable to Festival and City, and Throne Room is a terrible card...

I think this would leave FT in the "Honorable Mention" slot, then, for me.

[WanderingWinder]

These graphs tell you nothing about how often you should buy the cards. What they tell you is how good they are when bought, and when bought by people buying them, rather than when they actually should be.