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[WanderingWinder]

but as usual the actual contents of the BM deck are pretty much irrelevant.

I don't know what this means, I wish you would explain this in little words so someone like me could understand it.

But in any case, the only trashers in the BM deck this game were Mint, Forge, and Expand. I mean, if Chapel was in there we'd be having a totally different discussion.

He means that there's almost always going to be something worth getting at some point, so you should just get it. I find it to be a grossly hyperbolic oversimplification.

[eHalcyon]

but as usual the actual contents of the BM deck are pretty much irrelevant.

I don't know what this means, I wish you would explain this in little words so someone like me could understand it.

But in any case, the only trashers in the BM deck this game were Mint, Forge, and Expand. I mean, if Chapel was in there we'd be having a totally different discussion.

Reading Stef's article about Black Market will probably help.  SCSN comments in that thread as well.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11896.0

I don't think this is on the wiki yet.

[dondon151]

He means that there's almost always going to be something worth getting at some point, so you should just get it. I find it to be a grossly hyperbolic oversimplification.

I think AdamH might not understand this because you didn't explain it to him as specified. Here, let me have at it:

He means that there's almost always going to be something worth getting at some point, so you should just get it. I find it to be a grossly hyperbolic oversimplification.

[Davio]

It is an oversimplification.

Some cards are only good early and you might get them too late.
And some cards that are good later on might come too early (and you might not be able to afford them).

Still, there usually is a card in there which offsets the usual balance.

But I usually go for Black Market because it's fun to dig something useful out of it and Rube Goldberg engines are the best!

[HiveMindEmulator]

The reason for that statement is that the main thing to look for in Black Market kingdoms is not the contents of the Black Market deck, but the cycling available in the kingdom. If you can cycle a lot, you can play the Black Market and the things you get out of it enough that it's good no matter what. And if you can't cycle fast enough, even if you get something good out, you won't be able to play it enough to make a big enough difference.

This is mostly true, except that without good cycling, there is some probability that you will get something good soon enough, depending on the contents, and you have to weigh this against the alternatives, so it's possible that you might want the Black Market even when you can't cycle that well.

[SCSN]

but as usual the actual contents of the BM deck are pretty much irrelevant.

I don't know what this means, I wish you would explain this in little words so someone like me could understand it.

What I mean is that in all the kingdoms I've played so far (and in almost all that I can imagine), me gaining (or not gaining) a first Black Market and the content of the BM deck are very close to conditionally independent given the rest of the kingdom. The content has some, but not a lot, of sway in my decision to gain a second one.

To give a simple example: I'm not saying that gaining a T3 Chapel from the BM deck isn't a big deal (it usually is), I'm saying that if opening BM was correct it almost certainly would have been correct had the BM deck not contained Chapel but a random other card in its place. Sure, one could argue that for a decent number of boards (but way less than you probably think) it's possible to hand-pick a 25-card BM-deck that makes it not worth getting, but that would be indulging in this forum's culture most harmful flaw: prefering painstaking veracity over practical usefulness.

To put it even simpler: if the content of the Black Market deck was hidden at the start and only discoverable by playing through it, this would affect only a tiny fraction of my BM related decisions.