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[SCSN]

I'm surprised Adventurer/Transmute even made 7%. Like, really? I suppose ~1 out of 14 games is still pretty rare.

That's why the claim that involuntary gaining is negligible is nonsense (it's like saying that jackpot winners have a negligible share in the total lottery pay-outs because there are so few of them), at least when we're considering cards like this and not the usual powerhouses. If the hosting player has all the cards, ~4.4% of games containing Adventurer also contain Swindler, which makes for a surprisingly popular combo. You can also deduce from the sample sizes that a significant portion of the games are played with less than all the sets, and that Intrigue is the most popular one other than base, so that the Swindler/Adventurer combo will feature disproportionally often.

I wouldn't be surprised if Swindler alone accounts for as much as half of the Adventurer gains. Add Colony games, Fool's Gold, Horn of Plenty and Fairgrounds to your consideration, and Adventurer's popularity should be a bit less surprising.

I'd say Transmute gets bought mainly when you go for other Potion cards but miss and figure it's better than nothing.

[jsh357]

I'm rather surprised that Plaza is the most bought Guilds card.

Well, it's a village.  Fishing Village is bought more than Ambassador too!

[silvern]

So, does ordering a list based strictly on how often each card is gained really provide the most accurate definition of "best cards"? My thought is that some very high ranked cards on this list (a.k.a forager) are not actually that powerful, it's just that they almost never hurt (especially when they are often simply competing with silver).
EDIT: not that this list claimed to be the definitive best cards, but it provides some interesting context when comparing w/ the Qvist list.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Border Village > Goons is also really surprising to me. Both cards are really nice and likely to get picked up, but I find it hard to believe Goons is more skippable than BV. My guess is that when greening late game, people do BV -> gain Duchy on $6 and that skews it just enough to edge out Goons.

There are games in which you want BV but not Goons, but not vice versa.

[Jack Rudd]

I note with some amusement that the card whose gain rate is closest to 50% is Pearl Diver. A wonderfully average score for a wonderfully average cantrip.

[Beyond Awesome]

Thanks for doing this! It's always fun to see this kind of stuff!

One issue with this particular analysis at least in terms of comparing it to Qvist's lists is that how often you gain a cards is not the same as how good you think it is. For example, cards you buy in the late game, like VP cards you may buy in a lot of games, but for not much impact, since you never actually draw the card.

The couple obvious major trends I see are:
1. Villages are much higher than ranked. I think this is because people don't think of the villages as being that important. There are so many villages and they are all about the same. But really, they are really important most of the time they show up.
2. Some attacks are much lower than ranked. The attacks feel super important because they affect the way you approach the game, but a lot of the time, you don't actually need to buy the attack. It's role was really just to discourage certain strategies (in particular strategies that don't build enough before greening to withstand the potential attack).

I disagree with what you say on villages. The thing is that we have lots and lots of villages to choose from. Thus, when accounting supply and demand there is more than enough supply of villages to meet demand. Now, if villages were less common then yes, the villages should be ranked higher on Qvists list, but we have enough villages to choose from that the importance of any single village is negligible. With that said, a few villages are power players like Fishing Village, Plaza and Minstrel.

[Awaclus]

I wouldn't be surprised if Swindler alone accounts for as much as half of the Adventurer gains. Add Colony games, Fool's Gold, Horn of Plenty and Fairgrounds to your consideration, and Adventurer's popularity should be a bit less surprising.

And Procession.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Thanks for doing this! It's always fun to see this kind of stuff!

One issue with this particular analysis at least in terms of comparing it to Qvist's lists is that how often you gain a cards is not the same as how good you think it is. For example, cards you buy in the late game, like VP cards you may buy in a lot of games, but for not much impact, since you never actually draw the card.

The couple obvious major trends I see are:
1. Villages are much higher than ranked. I think this is because people don't think of the villages as being that important. There are so many villages and they are all about the same. But really, they are really important most of the time they show up.
2. Some attacks are much lower than ranked. The attacks feel super important because they affect the way you approach the game, but a lot of the time, you don't actually need to buy the attack. It's role was really just to discourage certain strategies (in particular strategies that don't build enough before greening to withstand the potential attack).

I disagree with what you say on villages. The thing is that we have lots and lots of villages to choose from. Thus, when accounting supply and demand there is more than enough supply of villages to meet demand. Now, if villages were less common then yes, the villages should be ranked higher on Qvists list, but we have enough villages to choose from that the importance of any single village is negligible. With that said, a few villages are power players like Fishing Village, Plaza and Minstrel.

That's the thing. If there were 30 kingdom cards, then sure we'd have a ton of villages. But there's only 10. A typical board won't have multiple villages, so whichever one shows up is really important.

[WanderingWinder]

So, does ordering a list based strictly on how often each card is gained really provide the most accurate definition of "best cards"?

No, but I don't think Forager is a good example of that. You're looking for some "doesn't hurt" cantrip, a la Great Hall or Pearl Diver.

[silvern]

So, does ordering a list based strictly on how often each card is gained really provide the most accurate definition of "best cards"?

No, but I don't think Forager is a good example of that. You're looking for some "doesn't hurt" cantrip, a la Great Hall or Pearl Diver.

Agreed, it just jumped out to me as a prime, abnormally high example--certainly I don't think it's better than Goons or Masquerade.

[blueblimp]

You could argue that people, on the whole, undervalue non-terminals... but I'd say it's just that non-terminals are easier to fit into more decks, and can be bought in larger quantities more easily.

Another way of putting this is that terminals in the same kingdom have to compete for the limited capacity of most decks for terminals (even in engine decks where you're less concerned about terminal collision), while non-terminals, especially those that draw, don't really compete with each other because if there are two that are both good, you can just buy a few of both.

This means a good terminal can be crowded out by an even stronger terminal, but that crowding effect is smaller for non-terminals.

[TheOthin]

Certainly, when terminals can end up undesirable for that reason while non-terminals are still plenty viable to add to a deck, that's a big point for non-terminals that may not have been given enough credit on the rankings.

One other thing that catches my attention is Sea Hag. It's not the biggest point change, but that kind of fall from first place is very striking.

[liopoil]

Do you have any data about win rates with/without gaining specific cards? This would suggest which cards are under/over rated.

[liopoil]

I don't know what the formula is.

Let's ask AI!

He wouldn't know! Because I'm talking about the formula Qvist uses to create his ranking list, he weights votes based on iso level.

Yes. AI is well known for having reverse-engineered the goko rating system which supposedly "can't be put into a formula". Awaclus is referencing that, saying that AI could reverse-engineer the formula Qvist uses to create his ranking lists. This is funny because one would not normally ask AI about Qvist's list; you would just ask Qvist. Now you can surely better appreciate Awaclus' joke because I have explained it to you.

These explanation "jokes" are worse than spam. But I do like Awaclus' post now that I get it.

Worse than spam when they helped you understand what Awaclus meant? When there isn't anyone who didn't get the joke of course they're silly, but when someone misses it they're at least helpful. I'd ask you if I need to explain why my post was funny, but I don't think my post was particularly funny.

[AdamH]

I just want to say that these numbers are super interesting. I'm glad you took the time to put this together.

There's probably a lot we can discover about biases we have when playing the game vs. biases we have when ranking the cards from this (terminal vs. non-terminal).

It makes me happy that Sea Hag took such a hit. I think it's very educational which cards have taken the biggest hits and which have gained the most. We should take into account terminal vs. non-terminal and other biases we find, of course, but the big outliers can probably tell us something about how we view these cards.

If I get a chance I'll take a look at these numbers and see if I can draw any relevant conclusions, but no promises on that; I may not come up with anything useful to say.

[ben_king]

I wouldn't be surprised if Swindler alone accounts for as much as half of the Adventurer gains. Add Colony games, Fool's Gold, Horn of Plenty and Fairgrounds to your consideration, and Adventurer's popularity should be a bit less surprising.

Since you made me curious, here are the top 20 forced gains from Swindler.  Surprisingly this explains at most about 10% of games where a top 100 player gains Adventurer.

1	Curse	5357
2	Estate	3115
3	Silver	1992
4	Duchy	1584
5	Gold	1383
6	Province	849
7	Copper	763
8	Swindler	591
9	Potion	467
10	Chancellor	164
11	Masterpiece	148
12	Loan	134
13	Doctor	130
14	Woodcutter	118
15	Lookout	115
16	Ruins	103
17	Develop	101
18	Platinum	95
19	King's Court	94
20	Mine	93
	...
31	Adventurer	67

[TheOthin]

Is it possible to distinguish between Province and Colony games in the data?

[SCSN]

I wouldn't be surprised if Swindler alone accounts for as much as half of the Adventurer gains. Add Colony games, Fool's Gold, Horn of Plenty and Fairgrounds to your consideration, and Adventurer's popularity should be a bit less surprising.

Since you made me curious, here are the top 20 forced gains from Swindler.  Surprisingly this explains at most about 10% of games where a top 100 player gains Adventurer.

Damn you! Sorry fellow conspirators, I did what I could to prevent the public from finding out that Adventurer is the key to the top 100

[ben_king]

for games with 2 top 100 players, did you count both?

Yes, if there are two top-100 players, then each kingdom card is counted as being available once for each player.

How many different kingdom cards are bought on average? Looks like 5 or 6. Also looks like only about say 15% of boards are BM boards, given the frequency that cards that are always bad in BM are bought.

Not sure if this is exactly what you're asking, but 9.85 differently named cards (modulo me grouping the Ruins and Knights together) are gained per player per game.

Do you have any data about win rates with/without gaining specific cards? This would suggest which cards are under/over rated.

Maybe I'll do this next.  It should be pretty straightfoward.

Is it possible to distinguish between Province and Colony games in the data?

Yeah, I can just look at whether Colony is in the supply.  What did you have in mind?

[Gherald]

For the Colony question, I'd imagine breaking those out into a separate set of data and looking at how all your tables vary compared to the Colony-less games

[AJD]

I'm surprised Adventurer/Transmute even made 7%. Like, really? I suppose ~1 out of 14 games is still pretty rare.

I wouldn't be surprised if Swindler alone accounts for as much as half of the Adventurer gains. Add Colony games, Fool's Gold, Horn of Plenty and Fairgrounds to your consideration, and Adventurer's popularity should be a bit less surprising.

Also sometimes you just need to buy a card, and Adventurer's the one that's there. I played a game a couple days ago in which I bought an Adventurer because I wanted something I could draw with Scrying Pool and then trash with Bishop.

[JacquesTheBard]

Grsbmd, thank you for compiling this data. Something I don't think we've commented on yet is the most surprising thing of all to me: comparison of different cards with similar functions. For example, Walled Village greatly exceeds Procession on the $4 list, Shanty Town (my least favorite card) ranks above Village, and the $6 list puts Farmland above Fairgrounds. I understand a village rising in the rankings compared to a terminal, but for one village to excel against a better village is baffling. Certainly Walled Village has reliability over Procession, but Village also has reliability over Shanty Town. I can sort of understand Farmland's rise due to the use it has in the endgame (although that makes Stonemason's lower rank pretty unusual) but Fairgrounds is one of the most respected alt-VP cards on the forum. These are just the major examples to me, but does anyone else see reversal of ranks between cards with similar effects?

The $3 trashers look like another area for this.

[HiveMindEmulator]

^
Procession is really situational, and not really a village, so it doesn't really compare to real villages.

Regarding Village vs Shanty Town: Imagine a board in which you go for Village. Now suppose Shanty Town is there instead. Most of the time, you go for the same strategy, but with Shanty Town instead. However, there are boards in which Shanty Town is useful and Village is not.

[c4master]

^
Procession is really situational, and not really a village, so it doesn't really compare to real villages.

Regarding Village vs Shanty Town: Imagine a board in which you go for Village. Now suppose Shanty Town is there instead. Most of the time, you go for the same strategy, but with Shanty Town instead. However, there are boards in which Shanty Town is useful and Village is not.

And Shanty Town is a better opener than Village. So if both are available, you might still get both, even though later on Village becomes stronger.

[TheOthin]

I wonder what would be the odds of Village having at least as many different boards where it's worthwhile, yet Shanty Town getting picked up more often because of its boards randomly showing up more often.

Shanty Town may also just be more distinctive. It seems like either one is probably going to get bought if it's the only cheap village, so when won't they be bought? For Village, other villages can often take on its same purpose but better. For Shanty Town, on the other hand, its potential handsize increase is not shared with the other villages, so it can stay prominent. The effect seems worse than a reliable +1 Card, but not if you have an excess of Actions, either through other villages or just the board being filled with non-terminals. And those are precisely the situations where Shanty Town's village status would be least likely to guarantee it a spot in your deck. With that in mind, it really does make sense that it's a card you'd want to pick up a solid majority of the time it's available, doesn't it?