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[werothegreat]

Hunting Grounds has the highest draw without penalty in the game, and a cost to match.  Along with that, it has an on-trash ability that can give you an edge in points in the right kingdom.

How does it compare to other terminal draw cards? The baseline here is Smithy.  To increase my hand by 6 cards (and still have Actions left for other things), I'd need to play 3 Villages and 3 Smithies.  I can get the same effect with 2 Villages and 2 Hunting Grounds.  However, Hunting Grounds' cost means that you (normally) can't open with it, and if there's a cheaper draw card in the kingdom, it's perfectly reasonable to go for those first and get Hunting Grounds later.  In some games, you may find yourself picking up HG after you've already set up your engine to ensure its reliability as you start to green.  Also, just because Hunting Grounds draw *more* than other cards, doesn't mean you can get by with *less* of them.  Hunting Grounds has the same chance to line up with a Village as every other draw card in a 5-card hand, and 3 Villages + 3 HGs means I've increased my hand by *9* cards.

Note that Hunting Grounds high cost makes it ill-suited to big money and slogs.

What about the on-trash ability?  Trash-for-benefit cards love Hunting Grounds.  If you're at a point where you're trashing Golds and engine pieces for Victory cards anyway, Hunting Grounds is a prime target, since it nets you 3 more points every time.  In fact, you might pick up extra HGs in the mid to late game just to stock up on fodder; if you have an engine that relies on other draw cards, you should consider picking up HG just to trash, as long as the right TfB cards are in the kingdom.  Whether to go with the Duchy or the three Estates will depend on the game state and the kingdom; taking the Estates can help empty another pile, so be on the lookout for that.

When should I start trashing HG?  As close to your last turn as possible, preferably on your last turn.  While you may want to start trashing Golds to TfB cards as you move from mid to late game, HG's draw is usually much more useful to you until the very end of the game.

Other interesting interactions:
* Hermit can trash HG from the discard, so you don't have to ponder trashing it or drawing with it
* Silk Road loves the Estates gain
* Farmland a HG for an 11 VP swing
* Graverobber can both trash (for benefit) and regain HG, sometimes on the same turn

[liopoil]

Trashing HGs for the three-pile on estates is common enough to be mentioned. Also just remodeling it in the endgame is powerful.

[werothegreat]

Trashing HGs for the three-pile on estates is common enough to be mentioned. Also just remodeling it in the endgame is powerful.

Hmm.  Was not aware of that.  Will mention.

[pubby]

I thought HG big money was actually slower than Smithy BM, but I could be wrong. Either way, it's nothing special. I think HG is more suited towards engines than money.

Also, Farmland is probably worth mentioning. Farmland-ing a HG is an 11 point swing.

[werothegreat]

I thought HG big money was actually slower than Smithy BM, but I could be wrong. Either way, it's nothing special. I think HG is more suited towards engines than money.

Also, Farmland is probably worth mentioning. Farmland-ing a HG is an 11 point swing.

Literally added that just as you posted this.

[werothegreat]

http://logs.prod.dominion.makingfun.com//20150315/log.505c6195a2e6c78ad2ed5a99.1426435997545.txt

4th Province on turn 15, though I probably got distracted by Royal Seal.  Got my Hunting Grounds on turn 3 after a Silver/Silver open.

EDIT: I also explicitly ignored Quarry, to see how well Hunting Grounds fared without.

[WanderingWinder]

I don't know why people think Hunting Grounds is good in BM. It's just about the worst Smithy variant for that. It's so, so much better in engines.

[-Stef-]

My favorite hunting grounds article would be just an image of the card. Nothing to add.

but since you're not going to do that anyway:

• +4 draw in stead of +3 draw is very significant in engines, where you want to draw your deck. It's HGs best case scenario, and the only one where it shines.
  3 x Village + 3 x Smithy - draws 6 cards - costs $21.
  2 x Village + 2 x Hunting Grounds - draws 6 cards - costs $18.
  In the comparison between hunting grounds and any other draw card, this is Hunting Grounds worst case scenario.
  If the village costs more then $3, the "Smithy" more then $4, or the village doesn't draw - it only gets better.
• end game: mention hermit
• I don't get the anti-synergy with +buy at all. In fact I would reverse it - I get this card more often if buys are restricted.

[liopoil]

Hunting Grounds is almost never the best BM card on the board. Its price conflicts with gold, and you have a reasonable chance of spending your first ~5 turns buying 5 silvers. As others said, it's just really bad. Its a great engine card, but since you will have fewer of them than you would have a cheaper draw card it can sometimes be harder to kick off.

[werothegreat]

My favorite hunting grounds article would be just an image of the card. Nothing to add.

but since you're not going to do that anyway:

• +4 draw in stead of +3 draw is very significant in engines, where you want to draw your deck. It's HGs best case scenario, and the only one where it shines.
  3 x Village + 3 x Smithy - draws 6 cards - costs $21.
  2 x Village + 2 x Hunting Grounds - draws 6 cards - costs $18.
  In the comparison between hunting grounds and any other draw card, this is Hunting Grounds worst case scenario.
  If the village costs more then $3, the "Smithy" more then $4, or the village doesn't draw - it only gets better.
• end game: mention hermit
• I don't get the anti-synergy with +buy at all. In fact I would reverse it - I get this card more often if buys are restricted.

Added some caveats to the BM portion (would it be better to simply take it out entirely?), added Hermit, emphasized engine play more.  As for the +Buy, in a good Hunting Grounds engine, you're making more than $10 a turn.  All that extra is wasted if you don't have Buys, so what was the point in going for it in the first place?  I understand that lack of +Buy would encourage you to go for fewer, more expensive cards, but once you have those more expensive cards, you still need a better plan than just throwing away money.

[Jack Rudd]

Does Haggler count as a synergy here? Hunting Grounds looks as if it could be a lot more powerful if you can pick up a Festival/Bazaar/City for free with it.

[WanderingWinder]

Let me put it this way: if I were writing this article, I wouldn't have a lot to say, but what I would say is that it is a bad card for Big Money. It will almost never be the best BM on a board, and because it is good in engines, it will encourage engines. Actually, about the only other thing I would add is that its effect is closer to 50% better than smithy than the 33% it looks like. I mean, basically, it draws. It does what draw cards do.

I think Stef's point isn't that it's good with NO +buy, but if there isn't much - the reason for this is, if +buy is plentiful, you are more likely to be fine with getting lots of cheap components, it doesn't so much matter if you have one big one. But without much, you need to make the most of your +buy economy, so Hunting Grounds does work.

Cost reducers have no particular synergy with this card. Having other actions make coin also has no real synergy here. Sure, it may be good together, but there's no particular synergy.

[Awaclus]

Does Haggler count as a synergy here? Hunting Grounds looks as if it could be a lot more powerful if you can pick up a Festival/Bazaar/City for free with it.

You'll also get a lot of value out of Province buys when you Haggle HGs.

[werothegreat]

Got rid of the BM paragraph, added a paragraph directly comparing HG/Smithy and talking about the type of +Buy it's good with.

[DG]

I think the trashing for vp is a important feature of hunting grounds. Since the card is at cost 6, it is expensive to buy and cannot usually be gained with altar or workshop type cards. It is however still accessible with 'trash and gain' type cards such as remodel, procession, stonemason, and those cards will not only help you gain the hunting grounds but also help you to trash it for vp in the last turn.

Furthermore, when you're building an engine you ideally add scoring capability while you are adding the components. Providing you can trash it, the hunting grounds does that for you.

[WanderingWinder]

I think the trashing for vp is a important feature of hunting grounds. Since the card is at cost 6, it is expensive to buy and cannot usually be gained with altar or workshop type cards. It is however still accessible with 'trash and gain' type cards such as remodel, procession, stonemason, and those cards will not only help you gain the hunting grounds but also help you to trash it for vp in the last turn.

Furthermore, when you're building an engine you ideally add scoring capability while you are adding the components. Providing you can trash it, the hunting grounds does that for you.

I have to agree. A play pattern I often find in games with HG and Trash for Benefit is that you should very very often overbuild with extra Hunting Grounds as the game comes close to the end - it increases the reliability of your engine, and then when you get through your deck, the extra ones are payload and/or pile control.

[werothegreat]

Made some more changes.

[blueblimp]

Actually, about the only other thing I would add is that its effect is closer to 50% better than smithy than the 33% it looks like.

There's even an argument for the effect being about twice as good as Smithy's. Suppose we say 1 action and 1 card are worth about the same, which is very rough, but captures how Village, Smithy, and Laboratory all net you +1 after including the -1 action -1 card that you spent to play it. (Village nets +1 action, Smithy nets +2 cards -1 action, Laboratory nets +1 card. Village and Smithy cost about the same amount, while Lab costs more because it's more reliable.) Hunting Grounds, on the other hand, nets you +2 via +3 cards -1 action, which is twice as much. The reason you only see a 50% better effect is that there's no super-village to pair it with (which would be something giving you +3 actions +1 card when you play it).

[werothegreat]

Any other critiques on the article as it stands?

[Mic Qsenoch]

You seem to write from the perspective that the things that matter are how much money you can generate in a turn and whether you have buys to use that money. This just doesn't make sense for an article about an engine card. This is a card drawer - it restores your hand size after you've been Militia'd, it pairs your Steward with your Curses, it puts that Mountebank in your hand, it lines your Remake up with your Fortresses etc. etc. etc. Please don't write these things into the article.

There's some weird brain thing where people seem to prefer strategies which are superficially "efficient". Like they would rather get $8-9 every few turns to buy a Province than "overbuild" to a consistent deck which "wastefully" produces $12 a turn or something.

I think it's wrong to describe Hunting Grounds as competing with Gold. It makes people think "gee I've got $6 better buy Gold or Hunting Grounds." More likely Hunting Grounds is competing with Catacombs or Smithy or Border Village or it's not competing with anything.

The little commentary about your view on card pricing and Council Room is really out of place in an article about Hunting Grounds.

Hitting $6 isn't a big issue, but your article seems fixated on it. Just buy some Silvers or Silver equivalents. The price point is also a store of value, costing $6 is not always a negative and Hunting Grounds offers even more benefit for trashing. It is an expensive engine card though, so yes it loves all those things that make games longer: discard attacks, alt-VP etc. etc. etc.

So Hunting Grounds is quality for money, and that one extra card is more than it would at first seem.  As such, Hunting Grounds is best when your source of +Buy is on the more expensive end - Market, Festival, etc.  If there is cheap +Buy - Candlestick Maker, Market Square - you're more likely to be interested in spamming cheap engine parts than investing in a few quality cards.

I don't think the expense of the +buy is relevant to deciding about Hunting Grounds. The other kingdom cards are going to have a lot more impact on whether I am getting HG or spamming cheap engine parts. Stef's point (I think) is just that Hunting Grounds is good with restricted buys because it takes fewer gains to reach similar levels of draw, the on trash ability is extra VP gaining, and the estate can be a 3 pile thing.

There's no special synergy with "engine pieces that produce coin" and I don't really think Procession is worth singling out either.

It's really weird to say it antisynergizes with megaturn decks. Megaturn decks are just engines with really explosive payloads, there's no reason Hunting Grounds can't act as the draw that puts Bridges/HoPs/whatever into your hand.

I wouldn't say "Most often, you'll want to gain the Duchy." I think this would be empirically false for my games, but that's just my guess. Either way, whether you take Estates or Duchy is really context dependent and I wouldn't stand by any of the generalizations you make in this section.

Please don't add random bits from this post to your article, much rather see anything I criticized removed than anything added.

[Robz888]

In an engine, it is imperative to pick up engine parts that field coin, like Fishing Village or Market or even Oasis.  Otherwise, you just won't have the buying power to snag that Hunting Grounds.  Other options are cost reducers like Bridge or Highway, though Quarry would be king here.  Procession can also be a blessing, as long as you're willing to sacrifice a $5 to get your draw, and really any Remodel-style card that trashes upward can help get Hunting Grounds into your deck.

Some problems here. Look, it's definitely *good* when engine parts give coin, but I don't think you're really explaining why that's the case, and why that's the case with respect to Hunting Grounds. The explanation you're missing, I think, is that engines abhor stop cards--i.e., cards that don't draw more cards. Treasures, unfortunately, are stop cards. So you have this dilemma where you need to buy Treasures to add to your purchasing power, but you don't want to add more stop cards. So money baked into the engine pieces, your Peddlers and Fishing Villages, etc., helps you avoid this. But it's not really *imperative* to have engine pieces give coin, if you are adding enough draw to absorb terminal sources of coin. So it's kinda board dependent, and doesn't have much to do with Hunting Grounds itself.

On a related note, cost reducers are not like particularly great for Hunting Grounds, or at least not better than they are for any other card. In a sense, cost reducers are actually *worse* when you're going after a pricey card (compared to going after a cheap card), because cost reducers can more easily reduce cheap cards to $0, at which point they become free contingent on buys. It takes more work to make Hunting Grounds free. I mean, it's not particularly hard to hit $6 by just buying Treasure... you can open Silver/Silver and have some chance of getting there Turn 3. You make it sound like this is an impossible price point.

And I don't understand the Procession shout out, either. I mean, that's a fine way to get Hunting Grounds, but not a noteworthy one.

Hunting Grounds is in most respects a fairly straightforward card. The part that's not straightforward is the on-trash ability, which is very relevant but kinda just glossed over here. I mean, you talk about that in an unsophisticated way, i.e., "buying Farmland adds 11 points," etc., and say to consider cashing in when you get closer to the end of the game. Which is fine advice, but not really earth shattering. Here's the advice you should give here: Hunting Grounds (with a trash-for-benefit) allows you to trade-in your engine piece for VP and value at the endgame, essentially conserving points and delaying your need to green, which is huge in an engine. So, like, say you're drawing your deck (but not like super overboard drawing it) and you are producing enough for Province+. So you don't have to full-on green now, you can buy a Hunting Grounds, which will convert to points later, and in the meantime keep your deck in tact. Remember, you don't want stop cards: Victory Cards are stop cards, Hunting Grounds that become VP later are not.

[Donald X.]

$6+ cards are the least common Kingdom cards (aside from Potion cards), and for good reason: they directly compete with Gold.

It's possible that you're saying this because I said something similar back when. Sorry about that. The fact that you can buy Gold for $6 adds competition at $6, I mean there it is, you could have Gold instead, but $5's compete with Gold in like every game of Dominion. Competing with Gold is not really an issue, except for cards very similar to Gold.

I am trying to think of the real reason that there aren't many $6's. Since Gold costs $6, there's no obligation to provide something at $6. I want to provide cards costing $2-$4 and cards costing $5 in every game; I don't need something for $6. So, just not needing it means there will be less of it. Similarly there's always a push to have enough cards for $5; a card concept better serves the game at $2-$5 than at $6.

I think that must be it. Prosperity had a greater number of expensive cards specifically because Platinum/Colony made them more relevant more often. However it's not like cards costing $6-$7 are just duds without Colonies. They just aren't filling an important role via the cost. It's nice to have one sometimes as a mild kind of variety, and then I leaned on them in Prosperity both because of Platinum/Colony and because it was flavorful, just having a bunch of expensive cards.

So: "$6+ cards are the least common Kingdom cards (aside from Potion cards), and for good reason: there don't need to be cards that cost $6. There can be though and Hunting Grounds is one of them."

[Awaclus]

Actually, Hunting Grounds is pretty good at dealing with some stop cards. A few Silvers in your deck isn't a problem at all, you probably won't even want to trash them later.

[SCSN]

Please don't add random bits from this post to your article

No need to be coy Mic, we know you pine for a part in this kaleidoscopic collage of community contributions as much as the rest of us.

[werothegreat]

Heh.  Looks like I have a bit of work to do.

[werothegreat]

Okay, I trimmed quite a bit, and didn't quote Mic Qsenoch at all.

[-Stef-]

I think Mic did a great job finding a balance between providing some constructive feedback and trying to get the article shorter.
Wish I was that subtle.

I thought about giving you a writers assignment to rewrite the article from scratch but with a very restrictive maximum number of words. But I don't think this becomes a happier place when people start handing out assignments to others, so why not give it a try myself. Just to show where it could lead - I do tend to do this when I write stuff myself, it helps me keep the text focused when I start expanding it.

10: Play in deck drawing engines. Overbuild when you can trash.

20: For deck drawing engines this outclasses smithy variants. Overbuild when you can trash it. BM probably has better alternatives.


If I wanted to turn those 20 words into an actual article, I'd probably babble on a bit about why it outclasses smithy, try to figure out by exactly how much, and why you should overbuild. Give some example game state where you would start to green if this was another draw card, but keep building because it's Hunting grounds.

[Asper]

A nitpick: The article claims that $6+ cards were the only ones you couldn't open with, when the same is true for Potion costs.

[werothegreat]

A nitpick: The article claims that $6+ cards were the only ones you couldn't open with, when the same is true for Potion costs.

Goddammit.  Tweaked that sentence.

[RD]

I have to agree. A play pattern I often find in games with HG and Trash for Benefit is that you should very very often overbuild with extra Hunting Grounds as the game comes close to the end - it increases the reliability of your engine, and then when you get through your deck, the extra ones are payload and/or pile control.

Do you find yourself thinking a lot about reliability with HG, in general? Of course if you're getting more power from fewer cards, you're at more risk of bad draws. Is HG a decent argument for, say, Band of Misfits (where the latter offers some mid-grade drawing option?)

[werothegreat]

I have to agree. A play pattern I often find in games with HG and Trash for Benefit is that you should very very often overbuild with extra Hunting Grounds as the game comes close to the end - it increases the reliability of your engine, and then when you get through your deck, the extra ones are payload and/or pile control.

Do you find yourself thinking a lot about reliability with HG, in general? Of course if you're getting more power from fewer cards, you're at more risk of bad draws. Is HG a decent argument for, say, Band of Misfits (where the latter offers some mid-grade drawing option?)

The problem is that since HG draws more, you don't need as many to draw your entire deck (when compared to Smithy), but having fewer of them in your deck lowers the chance of actually drawing them with a Village.  It's a balance you have to find.

EDIT: Which is pretty much exactly what you said.  Man, I'm tired.

[iguanaiguana]

FWIW, I just read the article currently on the main post and thought, wow, what a coherent, helpful article. I had no clue it was such a community effort until reading the rest of the thread. Also, I really like Stef's 20 summation. I wonder how many cards you could do that with.

[werothegreat]

FWIW, I just read the article currently on the main post and thought, wow, what a coherent, helpful article. I had no clue it was such a community effort until reading the rest of the thread. Also, I really like Stef's 20 summation. I wonder how many cards you could do that with.

I like doing articles like this because I feel I'm a better writer than Dominion player, and posting these makes all the good players come out of the woodwork and tell me how wrong I am.

[ehunt]

FWIW, I just read the article currently on the main post and thought, wow, what a coherent, helpful article. I had no clue it was such a community effort until reading the rest of the thread. Also, I really like Stef's 20 summation. I wonder how many cards you could do that with.

I like doing articles like this because I feel I'm a better writer than Dominion player, and posting these makes all the good players come out of the woodwork and tell me how wrong I am.

I find this is true of more or less everything. You write it down and somehow you learn.

[werothegreat]

If there are no objections, I'll put this up on the wiki?  Think it's in good shape now.

[Seprix]

I think Mic did a great job finding a balance between providing some constructive feedback and trying to get the article shorter.
Wish I was that subtle.

I thought about giving you a writers assignment to rewrite the article from scratch but with a very restrictive maximum number of words. But I don't think this becomes a happier place when people start handing out assignments to others, so why not give it a try myself. Just to show where it could lead - I do tend to do this when I write stuff myself, it helps me keep the text focused when I start expanding it.

10: Play in deck drawing engines. Overbuild when you can trash.

20: For deck drawing engines this outclasses smithy variants. Overbuild when you can trash it. BM probably has better alternatives.


If I wanted to turn those 20 words into an actual article, I'd probably babble on a bit about why it outclasses smithy, try to figure out by exactly how much, and why you should overbuild. Give some example game state where you would start to green if this was another draw card, but keep building because it's Hunting grounds.

I'd love a thread where Stef gives his thoughts on all dominion cards in 20 words or less.

[WanderingWinder]

If there are no objections, I'll put this up on the wiki?  Think it's in good shape now.

I don't know if I exactly object, but I still don't think the article is, uh, very helpful? I'd actually prefer either of Stef's versions.

[Seprix]

If there are no objections, I'll put this up on the wiki?  Think it's in good shape now.

I don't know if I exactly object, but I still don't think the article is, uh, very helpful? I'd actually prefer either of Stef's versions.

I have no objections. Stef helped proofread it along with the rest of the community, after all.

[hvb]

If there are no objections, I'll put this up on the wiki?  Think it's in good shape now.

I don't know if I exactly object, but I still don't think the article is, uh, very helpful? I'd actually prefer either of Stef's versions.

I like the article as it is. Yes, you always can do better, but its definitely a good article with a lot of useful information. Don't forget the most players are not L40+ (including Wero) and haven`t played thousands of games.

I felt like the feedback was quite harsh partially and also felt a little bit ashamed when i saw that some better players were making fun of this article in a stream chat. In my eyes this is a little bit disrespectful to Wero, who made an effort with this article.

[WanderingWinder]

If there are no objections, I'll put this up on the wiki?  Think it's in good shape now.

I don't know if I exactly object, but I still don't think the article is, uh, very helpful? I'd actually prefer either of Stef's versions.

I like the article as it is. Yes, you always can do better, but its definitely a good article with a lot of useful information. Don't forget the most players are not L40+ (including Wero) and haven`t played thousands of games.

I felt like the feedback was quite harsh partially and also felt a little bit ashamed when i saw that some better players were making fun of this article in a stream chat. In my eyes this is a little bit disrespectful to Wero, who made an effort with this article.

I'm really not trying to be mean to Wero here - I am sure he has put effort into it, and I don't want to belittle that. That does not, however, mean that the article is good. That's not at all meant to be an assault on him, but what do you want me to do? Say that I think it is good when I don't? He specifically asked for opinions, and I gave mine.

I mean, first of all, there's some stylistic fluff (e.g. "It's a smithy on steroids") which I don't think adds to anything, but that is really rather irrelevant, and I don't find it necessarily detracts from the article. But there are other things. For instance, saying that getting one is tricky seems misleading - it's not harder to get than any other $6. His explanation for how to get to $6 is not what you want to do, perhaps even more than half the time. It's pretty important to note, I think, that you dodn't need to blitz for the card. You can usually build up the rest of your deck, and then once you are making $6 naturally, start thinking about getting the card. Going very far out of your way to get to $6 for this is almost certainly wrong. Furthermore, you don't care at all whether that money is coming from action cards or engine components or whatever. It's more about building a deck which will function well, and when you do that, the money will come easily, as you're always going to be able to find some source or other.

Next thing he says is that after you have one Hunting Grounds, it makes the next one much easier - well, maybe true, but this is true of most cards which aren't green, since your deck is improving - saying you'll be drawing most of your deck. Well, one Hunting Grounds simply won't draw most of your deck unless you've trashed down, and while you can be drawing most of your deck by then anyways, that will again be mostly due to whatever else you're doing, not becuase you've gotten this oen golden card like the article implies. This is *A* draw card, pretty much like any other. There's not a particular qualitative difference.

After this, he says that you don't want as many Hunting Grounds as you do Smithies. I actually don't think that's true. Yes, sometimes you will get fewer Hunting Grounds because you need to do other things right now, the game is ending, or what have you. But the thing is, my gut tells me that instead of skimping on these, you actually just want to use the extra cards to build up more payload. More actual draw cards gives you more reliability, as you're less likely to stall out. He gives a "quantify this" example of 3 Village and 3 Smithy vs 2 Village and 2 Hunting Grounds, seemingly concluding that the Hunting Grounds route is better. However, I have the feeling that the Smithy route is actually better here quite a significant percentage of the time. More villages and smithies means you are more likely to get what you need together. And though the overall cost is $3 more, it's probably actually easier to get the villages and smithies, if you are starting from the beginning of the game. Hunting Grounds will often be the better option once you have gotten to the point you're drawing your deck anyway, and are picking up payload and need to still have the ability to draw all these extra cards you're getting.

Next, he talks about when you should trash it. He starts off by saying that "more than any other card, Hunting Grounds can be turned into VP". First of all, I don't think this is true - Platinum is basically always scoring you more, for one - but it also misses the point. There are two things about the on-trash benefit. One is, I am ending the game right now (not "think I can", but KNOW I can because I have calculated), and getting 3 estates helps me chug through that pile really quickly. The other is, I have built an engine which is nice and trim and drawing itself, I have some trash-for-benefit (Salvager, Butcher, and Apprentice really come to mind), and I am running out of fuel for that trash-for-benefit. Getting this extends my fuel more than most other cards would, because I can trash this, get $6 of benefits, then trash the duchy, get $5 more of benefits. Making some kind of value play of grabbing points with this is not terribly where you want to be - it's not about the points - especially if the game is going on longer. When you build an Hunting Grounds deck, it's usually the deck that doesn't want to be clogged with green cards, especially while getting rid of your draw at the same time. So the whole "about to shuffle" thing just gets people thinking about entirely the wrong thing - if you are "about to shuffle", you probably shouldn't trasht he HG at all. Of course this is all general, and there are lots of exceptions. The specific examples of cards to use with this also don't do anything special - Stonemason usually leads to pile endings, where gaining 3 duchies is usually not going to be as much of a thing as piling out - which makes me want to look at 5 estates as the real threat. Of course 3 duchies may well come up, too, but without a plan to end the game, this can be really disastrous. Remodel and Farmland are not the trash-for-benefit cards which really accentuate the trash ability of HG; you can score a random extra 3 points, but you don't do that as a strategy, just as a 'oh hey I can score 3 more on the turn I end the game by emptying provinces' since you probably don't want to do that before. And Hermit wanting to trash this is DEFINITELY not worth mentioning - Hunting Grounds decks are going to have the HG in the discard SUPER rarely, and you are getting no benefit at all from trashing it other than the 3 points. This really is one of the worst as well as the most unlikely cases.

Finally, I am not a fan of synergy and anti-synergy sections in general nowadays, but on top of that a little, I really dislike the "engines with coin-producing pieces" note. It's not even clear that what he means by this is that the cards which give +action and draw are also producing money, but that is irrelevant if it is what he's going for - again, it doesn't matter where the money comes from - and if he just means you need money of some sort anyway, well, almost any engine has that, and the ones that don't will be perfectly happy with Hunting Grounds, jsut like any other. Also, "Remodelers" is just worse than "Trash for Benefit", since the trash for benefit cards which aren't Remodel variants are generally even a little better for Hunting Grounds than the ones which are. But beyond this, I don't think I would include that, because it seems to me that it implies that you really want to use the trash benefit of Hunting Grounds for it to be worth it as a card, which isn't true - it is really predominantly a draw card.

[pacovf]

Polk hvb wasn't ashamed of the "This article is wrong because X" feedback, he was ashamed of the "This article is laughably useless" feedback.

As of late, some of the comments of the high-rated players about the wiki/articles have been quite out of place.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Polk

Napoleon has fooled us again.

[werothegreat]

Re: WW's massive block of text.

I like my stylistic fluff.  Get used to it.

What are the main noticeable things about HG?  It costs $6, and it gives VP when you trash it.  That higher cost is actually important - there are some decks, particularly early trashing decks, where you most likely will not see a $6 hand for quite a while - say you're playing the First Game setup and you open Remodel/Silver to load up on Villages and Smithies.  You're perfectly happy getting $3/$4 hands, because the cards you're aiming for are at that price level.  There are many engines where you invest in the cheap things first.  When there are more expensive cards out, you have to remind yourself "yeah, I should pick up some more Silvers", because otherwise your deck is just not going to produce enough coin early enough.  And sure, HG isn't Goons, but you still want them as early as you can get them.  I'm just saying that some playstyles lend more easily to getting $6 early, and that's just something you should take into account.  Just because it's "just like getting any other $6 card" doesn't mean it's not worth mentioning.

And how about next time, instead of just kind of sulking and saying "yeah it's okay", you actually come up front with this sort of criticism while I'm still writing the article?  I don't mind criticism - I want to know what needs to be improved - isn't that why we're all here?  What I *don't* want is this sort of tongue-clicking and eye-rolling and implied "man, what a moron".  That's not exactly a friendly atmosphere that encourages continued posting.

[-Stef-]

First and foremost, I want this to be a supportive community. But when reading the first draft of this article, I was overwhelmed by how bad I thought it was, and somewhat blanked. Apparently that leads to even worse results then just saying it, so here we go:

It draws four cards - that's awesome!  It costs $6 - that's... not so awesome.  Hunting Grounds is a powerful card, and as such, it's pretty expensive - but is it worth it?

What does it do?

Draws four cards.  It's a Smithy on steroids, so if you know how to play terminal draw, you'll know what to do with this once it's in your deck.  It also has a neat little ability when you trash it, which we’ll get to in a bit.

To me, this is an insulting start of the article. I would feel equally insulted when I wasn't actually any good at dominion. I already know it draws 4 cards! I already know it costs $6! I want to know what the implications for the game are.

How do I get one?

That's the tricky part.  $6+ cards are the only cards (outside of Baker and Potion games) that you can’t open with.  There are some games where you won’t see a $6 hand for quite a few turns; there are others you might see one on turn 3.  The key is to balance coin production with engine parts (Hunting Grounds is very much an engine card), and the easiest way to do that is cards that do both, like Fishing Village or Market or even Oasis, though a couple Silvers can work as well.  Once you do have that Hunting Grounds in your deck, it makes getting the next one so much easier, since you'll be drawing most of your deck.

This section has nothing to do with hunting grounds. It should not be in here.

Because of its sheer drawing power, you won't want as many Hunting Grounds as you would Smithies...

This is the first sentence I'd like to actually see in the article. Here it might get interesting...

, leaving you with more room for other terminals in your engine, but you'll still definitely want more than one, to ensure that at least one lines up with a Village. 

but unfortunately the rest of the sentence doesn't make sense.

Let’s quantify that a little: if I play three Villages and three Smithies, I've increased my handsize by 6, and spent $21 getting them into my deck in the first place.  If I play two Villages and two Hunting Grounds, I've achieved the same effect (handsize increase of 6), but only spent $18.  So Hunting Grounds is quality for money, and that one extra card is more than it would at first seem.

Suggestion to replace with:

Because of its sheer drawing power, you won't need as many Hunting Grounds as you would Smithies. If you think Hunting Grounds is only 4/3 better then a Smithy, you're not taking into account the village you need to play them. For example, in order to support 6 payload cards, you'd need 3 times village+smithy, but only 2 times village + hunting grounds, so that's 1.5 times better. If we replace the village by a Festival the Hunting Grounds is actually twice as good as Smithy.

When should I trash it?

Gaining a/some Victory card(s) when Hunting Grounds is trashed can at first seem like more of a consolation prize than anything else - the sheer drawing power seems much more useful.  This is missing an important point: more than any other card, Hunting Grounds can be turned into VP as the game ends.  This is in part due to its cost, but mainly due to its ability to gain a Duchy or three Estates. 

As examples, Stonemason can gain three Duchies from a Hunting Grounds, Remodel can gain a Province and a Duchy, and buying a Farmland with Hunting Grounds in hand can give you a swing of 11 points.  Hermit also works well for this, since you don't have to worry about losing the draw power from Hunting Grounds if it's in your discard pile already anyway.  Just think about whether you'll get more benefit from keeping the Hunting Grounds, or taking the Victory cards; as you get closer to the end of the game, the latter will become more and more useful. 

Choosing whether to go for the Duchy or the Estates will depend on the board and the current game state.  If you’re about to shuffle, probably better to get the Duchy.  If you think you can end the game on piles, gaining the Estates can help you do that.

If the right trashing cards are in the Kingdom, it can often be a worthwhile tactic to start picking up more Hunting Grounds than your engine really needs.  This serves two purposes: it makes your deck just that much more reliable as you green, and it gives fodder for trash-for-benefit cards as the game ends.

This is a very long section that could be replaced with one sentence: You should only trash it on your final turn.

The interesting question is: Under what circumstances should I buy this card purely for the on-trash. How/when do I prepare for that final turn? That question actually does deserve a paragraph but is now missing.

[WanderingWinder]

Re: WW's massive block of text.

I like my stylistic fluff.  Get used to it.

While you say later on that you "don't mind criticism", "Get used to it" seems like a very defensive response to it.

What are the main noticeable things about HG?  It costs $6, and it gives VP when you trash it.

While this is true, it is what people notice, I think these things are actually quite a bit less important than the simple "draw four cards". That's a big deal, and the other stuff, while not irrelevant, is not that important. In fact, you might sum up what I feel the main thing people are trying to say critically about this article is that: You are focusing too much on the cute things, when the raw blunt "draw four cards" is WAY more important, and this COMPOUNDS the problems that a lot of new players will have - they focus too much on unique things, when it's the vanilla things which are often more important.

That higher cost is actually important - there are some decks, particularly early trashing decks, where you most likely will not see a $6 hand for quite a while - say you're playing the First Game setup and you open Remodel/Silver to load up on Villages and Smithies.  You're perfectly happy getting $3/$4 hands, because the cards you're aiming for are at that price level.  There are many engines where you invest in the cheap things first.  When there are more expensive cards out, you have to remind yourself "yeah, I should pick up some more Silvers", because otherwise your deck is just not going to produce enough coin early enough.

But that's the thing - you shouldn't really pick up more silvers. Going out of your way like this will actually tend to make your deck worse, not better. Beyond that, I think it's incredibly obvious to someone when they're in this situation that they need more money - you see it at the end of your turn, oh, you don't have enough money, better get some so I should have it next turn. Doesn't need to be written in an article.

And sure, HG isn't Goons, but you still want them as early as you can get them.  I'm just saying that some playstyles lend more easily to getting $6 early, and that's just something you should take into account.  Just because it's "just like getting any other $6 card" doesn't mean it's not worth mentioning.

I disagree. I think people can see that for themselves. Saying "it costs 6, take that into account" is really an insult to their intelligence. How much else do we need to spell out? "It tells you to draw four cards. This means that when you play it, you get to take four cards from the top of your deck, and put them into your hand - unless you don't have four cards left in your deck, in which case you can only draw as many as you have left." I actually, genuinely think my second sentence here is no less helpful than the first.

And how about next time, instead of just kind of sulking and saying "yeah it's okay", you actually come up front with this sort of criticism while I'm still writing the article?  I don't mind criticism - I want to know what needs to be improved - isn't that why we're all here?  What I *don't* want is this sort of tongue-clicking and eye-rolling and implied "man, what a moron".  That's not exactly a friendly atmosphere that encourages continued posting.

I DIDN'T SAY IT'S OKAY. People kept telling you things to change, you would make some changes to the article, but you didn't really address the problem. Eventually we stopped suggesting things, because it wasn't really going anywhere. The article is not very much better for it, it's still missing the point. And we didn't apparently feel like putting in the effort to write the article ourselves. That doesn't mean we feel like it's in a good spot. To continue to try to tell you what's wrong with it both seemed a little mean and a lot pointless to me. I can't actually speak for anyone else. But when it seems like the advice is annoying, *that* is what leads to people making jokes. And I've spent way more time on this than I'd like this morning, but I have been starting to get a bit fed up with you insisting that you take criticism without actually taking it as well as the rather mean-spirited jokes from others. I can understand both perspectives - it's very easy to naturally get defensive, and it's very easy to get frustrated when someone is being stubborn and not listening. I think everyone - myself included - needs to grow up a bit.

[werothegreat]

Alright.  I'm going to start the article over from scratch.

[Seprix]

Oh my god. Calm your tits people! We are friends, not enemies. Correct with kindness, not with harsh criticism, even if the article is not up to your standards.

[WanderingWinder]

Oh my god. Calm your tits people! We are friends, not enemies. Correct with kindness, not with harsh criticism, even if the article is not up to your standards.

The tone you're using here is not helping the situation.

[Seprix]

I just don't like fighting in general if it can be avoided. I know there will be disagreements, but there's nothing here worth fighting over. It's a game. I love this community and I would love for it to continue to be a great community. People make mistakes sometimes, and I think others tend to forget that.

[pacovf]

tits

Theory move this thread to RSP kthnxbai.

[werothegreat]

Okay, how's this?

Hunting Grounds has the highest draw without penalty in the game, and a cost to match.  Along with that, it has an on-trash ability that can give you an edge in points in the right kingdom.

How does it compare to other terminal draw cards?  The baseline here is Smithy.  To increase my hand by 6 cards (and still have Actions left for other things), I'd need to play 3 Villages and 3 Smithies.  I can get the same effect with 2 Villages and 2 Hunting Grounds.  However, Hunting Grounds' cost means that you (normally) can't open with it, and if there's a cheaper draw card in the kingdom, it's perfectly reasonable to go for those first and get Hunting Grounds later.  In some games, you may find yourself picking up HG after you've already set up your engine to ensure its reliability as you start to green.  Also, just because Hunting Grounds draw *more* than other cards, doesn't mean you can get by with *less* of them.  Hunting Grounds has the same chance to line up with a Village as every other draw card in a 5-card hand, and 3 Villages + 3 HGs means I've increased my hand by *9* cards.

Note that Hunting Grounds high cost makes it ill-suited to big money and slogs.

What about the on-trash ability?  Trash-for-benefit cards love Hunting Grounds.  If you're at a point where you're trashing Golds and engine pieces for Victory cards anyway, Hunting Grounds is a prime target, since it nets you 3 more points every time.  In fact, you might pick up extra HGs in the mid to late game just to stock up on fodder; if you have an engine that relies on other draw cards, you should consider picking up HG just to trash, as long as the right TfB cards are in the kingdom.  Whether to go with the Duchy or the three Estates will depend on the game state and the kingdom; taking the Estates can help empty another pile, so be on the lookout for that.

When should I start trashing HG?  As close to your last turn as possible, preferably on your last turn.  While you may want to start trashing Golds to TfB cards as you move from mid to late game, HG's draw is usually much more useful to you until the very end of the game.

Other interesting interactions:
* Hermit can trash HG from the discard, so you don't have to ponder trashing it or drawing with it
* Silk Road loves the Estates gain
* Farmland a HG for an 11 VP swing
* Graverobber can both trash (for benefit) and regain HG, sometimes on the same turn

[Robz888]

When should I start trashing HG?  This will depend on how many HG you have, and how much you rely on them for draw.  If they're expendable, trash them whenever you'd consider trashing Gold for benefit.  If they're not, wait until the Province pile is low, and the extra VP is worth more than the draw you'd get.

As an example, say you have Stonemason and HG in hand, and 1/2 Actions left.  If there's only 1/2 Provinces left, and you're nowhere near a reshuffle, you might be better off feeding the HG to the SM and taking the three Duchies.

Other interesting interactions:
* Hermit can trash HG from the discard, so you don't have to ponder trashing it or drawing with it
* Silk Road loves the Estates gain
* Farmland a HG for an 11 VP swing

This is wrong. "Consider trashing them whenever you'd consider trashing Gold for benefit." But it's not really a related case... Gold doesn't draw for you, so it has a different place in your deck than HG. You might trash Gold sooner than you'd trash HG. Generally if you're trashing HG, you're doing it on like your last turn, so your deck does't fall apart. Not "whenever it is expendable."

Also, the continued mentioning of Hermit makes no sense. There is no special interaction with Hermit here. Being able to trash HG out of the discard is not really a worthwhile benefit, particularly in the kind of deck that wants HG--one where you draw everything.

[werothegreat]

end game: mention hermit

[Robz888]

end game: mention hermit

I don't know why. Stef?

[Seprix]

I think mentioning Hermit as a way to trash HG that you don't draw on the final turn is acceptable, since Stef has said that the only turn you want to cash in your chips is on the last turn. You gain a +4 Estate swing with Hermit, which is not insignificant piles wise.

[werothegreat]

If you're getting extra HG's just to trash them, you'll probably want to start trashing them a little before your last turn.  But I get what you're saying about not as early as you would start trashing gold.

[Seprix]

If you're getting extra HG's just to trash them, you'll probably want to start trashing them a little before your last turn.  But I get what you're saying about not as early as you would start trashing gold.

Nah, bro. You want to trash your TfB cards on the last turn that ends the game if you can, unless you know for sure your opponent can end it himself unless you do something pointswise.

[Awaclus]

Oh my god. Calm your tits people! We are friends, not enemies. Correct with kindness, not with harsh criticism, even if the article is not up to your standards.

I like harsh criticism a lot more than kindness though. It's nice to receive harsh criticism. When you receive harsh criticism, you learn how to improve whatever it is that you're working on, and when you've finally managed to do a great job and receive positive feedback from the same guys, you know that they're not just trying to be polite, but your work was genuinely good. Then you'll have more confidence in the future when you're doing more of that stuff, which helps you make better decisions and get better results.

When your work sucks and you receive feedback from people who are trying to be kind, you don't learn anything useful, your work will continue to suck, you'll keep making more bad works in the future, and you'll never improve yourself until someone breaks it down for you. In the worst case scenario, you have something else to blame for your mediocrity (such as, not being the best Dominion player ever, not having the most expensive top-end equipment for whatever it is that you're doing, etc), and then the wishy-washy feedback makes you think that you're doing a good job, but the other stuff is holding you back from creating excellent works, and then you just "accept" that your works can never be as good as the works by people who don't have the other stuff holding them back, or maybe you'll start trying to improve the circumstances in hopes of getting rid of your imaginary obstacles, but it will never happen because you're not fixing the main problem which is yourself. I have totally suffered from people trying to be overly kind to me in this way, and it sucks.

So yeah, if you want to be helpful, offer harsh criticism. If you want to be harmful, offer kindness. If you don't want to be harsh or harmful, just do what I've done here for the most parts and shut up.

[werothegreat]

You can give harsh criticism without being rude.

[GeoLib]

Oh my god. Calm your tits people! We are friends, not enemies. Correct with kindness, not with harsh criticism, even if the article is not up to your standards.

I like harsh criticism a lot more than kindness though. It's nice to receive harsh criticism. When you receive harsh criticism, you learn how to improve whatever it is that you're working on, and when you've finally managed to do a great job and receive positive feedback from the same guys, you know that they're not just trying to be polite, but your work was genuinely good. Then you'll have more confidence in the future when you're doing more of that stuff, which helps you make better decisions and get better results.

When your work sucks and you receive feedback from people who are trying to be kind, you don't learn anything useful, your work will continue to suck, you'll keep making more bad works in the future, and you'll never improve yourself until someone breaks it down for you. In the worst case scenario, you have something else to blame for your mediocrity (such as, not being the best Dominion player ever, not having the most expensive top-end equipment for whatever it is that you're doing, etc), and then the wishy-washy feedback makes you think that you're doing a good job, but the other stuff is holding you back from creating excellent works, and then you just "accept" that your works can never be as good as the works by people who don't have the other stuff holding them back, or maybe you'll start trying to improve the circumstances in hopes of getting rid of your imaginary obstacles, but it will never happen because you're not fixing the main problem which is yourself. I have totally suffered from people trying to be overly kind to me in this way, and it sucks.

So yeah, if you want to be helpful, offer harsh criticism. If you want to be harmful, offer kindness. If you don't want to be harsh or harmful, just do what I've done here for the most parts and shut up.

This is not quite accurate, I think. It really depends on who you're talking to. Things vary by person, but in general when people are just getting into something, it's good to focus on what they're doing well so that they feel encouraged to keep working at it. When someone is already pretty good at something, it's much better to help them find mistakes so they can continue improving. I recall reading a study in which novice and experienced musicians were told to either focus on their strengths or on their weaknesses. Novices improved more with the former and experts more with the latter.

I do in general agree with you that honesty is better, but being mean or rude rarely helps.

I think part of the problem here is that it doesn't really seem like there's that much to say about HG. I mean, it draws a ton, is expensive, and has a TfB effect. It works pretty much how you'd expect such a card to work. I think the most interesting things I've seen are Stef's comments that you may want to overbuild a little more in the presence of TfB and that its close to twice as good as smithy.

[Seprix]

I think part of the problem here is that it doesn't really seem like there's that much to say about HG.

This is true. I tried writing a joke article about Village yesterday, and the only thing I could think of was just posting the picture.

[qmech]

Maybe the problem is single card articles.  There's obviously something to be said about Village, but the best place for it is probably a general introduction to the principles of Dominion.  There's very little you can say about Village in isolation, and the same goes for Vanilla terminal draw.

[Seprix]

Maybe the problem is single card articles.  There's obviously something to be said about Village, but the best place for it is probably a general introduction to the principles of Dominion.  There's very little you can say about Village in isolation, and the same goes for Vanilla terminal draw.

That's a good idea!

[Eevee]

If you ask me, we need a lack of civility on the articles board thread.

[Seprix]

If you ask me, we need a lack of civility in the artics-section thread.

Huh? I don't understand.

[Awaclus]

If you ask me, we need a lack of civility in the artics-section thread.

Huh? I don't understand.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=64.0

[Seprix]

If you ask me, we need a lack of civility in the artics-section thread.

Huh? I don't understand.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=64.0

Oh... That. Let's not.

[werothegreat]

So... any other thoughts on the new article?  Is it even worth trying to do an article on Hunting Grounds?  Or should I just wait another week for the previews so I can unload all the theorycrafting I've been mentally mulling over for the new cards?

I guess that might be the problem with my thoughts on strategy - I tend to find more enjoyment thinking through what a particular card can do rather than sitting through endless games actually putting that card into practice.  I figured out Rats by sitting and thinking about it, not by playing so many games with Rats.  Maybe I was over (or under) thinking HG, maybe not every card needs an article.

Eh.

[Asper]

So... any other thoughts on the new article?  Is it even worth trying to do an article on Hunting Grounds?  Or should I just wait another week for the previews so I can unload all the theorycrafting I've been mentally mulling over for the new cards?

I guess that might be the problem with my thoughts on strategy - I tend to find more enjoyment thinking through what a particular card can do rather than sitting through endless games actually putting that card into practice.  I figured out Rats by sitting and thinking about it, not by playing so many games with Rats.  Maybe I was over (or under) thinking HG, maybe not every card needs an article.

Eh.

I think the fact that Hunting Grounds is better than 1.333 Smithies is worth pointing out. Also the fact that Estate gaining helps three-pile. Hermit and Silk Roads are relevant synergies to list.

So yes, i think an article makes sense. It might still be useless for the best Dominion players, but Wikis tend to be useless if you know all they have to say. I personally wasn't aware of the points i listed before this discussion, at least.

[ehunt]

So... any other thoughts on the new article?  Is it even worth trying to do an article on Hunting Grounds?  Or should I just wait another week for the previews so I can unload all the theorycrafting I've been mentally mulling over for the new cards?

I guess that might be the problem with my thoughts on strategy - I tend to find more enjoyment thinking through what a particular card can do rather than sitting through endless games actually putting that card into practice.  I figured out Rats by sitting and thinking about it, not by playing so many games with Rats.  Maybe I was over (or under) thinking HG, maybe not every card needs an article.

Eh.

i say go ahead and post -- it's a wiki ! if people don't like the article, they can edit it.

[iguanaiguana]

I for one will be happy to edit back in the phrase 'smithy on steroids' as soon as it is posted. That way, you don't need to take the heat for it. But seriously, post the article. It was helpful to me.

[werothegreat]

I for one will be happy to edit back in the phrase 'smithy on steroids' as soon as it is posted. That way, you don't need to take the heat for it. But seriously, post the article. It was helpful to me.

What I'm talking about is the *new* article I wrote, up at the top of the page - not the one on the first page.

EDIT: Or, is that what you were talking about?  Blargh.

[iguanaiguana]

I'm talking about the new one. What I found helpful about both of them was mainly the comparison to smithy: one card more is actually a substantive improvement in card draw, not a marginal one. Many people may know that intuitively, I did not. FWIW, I read every single card page on the wiki before i read a single post on this forum, and used that info to break into competitive playing. It was particularly helpful for figuring out how to use cards on goko that i still do not own irl. So i imagine that a few paragraphs about this card that amount to: yes, it really is that much better than smithy will be helpful to someone who has little or no experience playing with it yet. And, those people absolutely are looking at the wiki in order to try to quickly catch up on a lot of info so that they can play competitive random games. So I guess to me that is enough reason to post it. Also, yes, the new one is better, because it gets to the point and doesn't have misinformation or get bogged down in edge cases.

[werothegreat]

Okay.  I'll replace the original post here, and the article on the wiki.

[Seprix]

I think that if there is any information that is not learned upon studying the rules and basic play, it should be published, as insignificant as it is. Knowing Hunting Grounds is better than Smithy (even if it's obvious) should be pointed out, even if it's a couple of sentences.

[werothegreat]

I think that if there is any information that is not learned upon studying the rules and basic play, it should be published, as insignificant as it is. Knowing Hunting Grounds is better than Smithy (even if it's obvious) should be pointed out, even if it's a couple of sentences.

The important part is that HG's betterness than Smithy is quantifiably higher than it might seem.

Also, added a line warning against BM/slog play for HG.

[-Stef-]

This is still a very awkward thread for me to read.

You can give harsh criticism without being rude.

Yes, that's a very good point. However, there is also another side. If people do provide you with feedback that is not burning you down completely, it's up to you to still do something with it.
And that is what is failing here.

So... any other thoughts on the new article?  Is it even worth trying to do an article on Hunting Grounds?  Or should I just wait another week for the previews so I can unload all the theorycrafting I've been mentally mulling over for the new cards?

Please, please, don't.

I guess that might be the problem with my thoughts on strategy - I tend to find more enjoyment thinking through what a particular card can do rather than sitting through endless games actually putting that card into practice.  I figured out Rats by sitting and thinking about it, not by playing so many games with Rats.  Maybe I was over (or under) thinking HG, maybe not every card needs an article.

Eh.

You did not figure out rats at all. You wrote an article on it, theory put it up on the main blog, and you put it on the wiki. I'm sorry, but that still doesn't make it any good. You never present any kingdom analysis, it always stops at card interactions. And you get the interactions all wrong; none of your "big three" actually belong in the top 3 cards to interact with rats (Remake, Watchtower, Vineyards/Butcher).

I like doing articles like this because I feel I'm a better writer than Dominion player, and posting these makes all the good players come out of the woodwork and tell me how wrong I am.

Here's a good thought - what you're doing here is part of a process that helps to get the knowledge out of some people that refuse to write about them and onto the forum / wiki.
However, that doesn't mean you should be the author of these articles. What you're doing now feels like you're in complete denial of what the leaderboard of dominion actually represents.
You're currently level 16. That implies there are very fundamental concepts about the game you're not grasping (yet). You writing an article and then changing some sentences based on feedback isn't really going to work. We (as in the community) have been working on it for 9 days now and it's still a bad article with lots of sentences in there that make absolutely zero sense. In fact, I'm going to stop providing feedback on it now and just try to write my own.

[werothegreat]

You're currently level 16. That implies there are very fundamental concepts about the game you're not grasping (yet).

Or it means that I don't play online very often.

You writing an article and then changing some sentences based on feedback isn't really going to work. We (as in the community) have been working on it for 9 days now and it's still a bad article with lots of sentences in there that make absolutely zero sense.

There seems to be some disagreement on that point.

In fact, I'm going to stop providing feedback on it now and just try to write my own.

Have a blast.

[-Stef-]

Engines
Hunting Grounds sheer drawing power makes it an excellent card for engines, and more specifically the kind of engines where you draw your entire deck every turn. If you think Hunting Grounds is only 4/3 better then a Smithy, you're not taking into account the village you need to play them. For example, in order to support 6 payload cards, you'd need 3 times village+smithy, but only 2 times village + hunting grounds, so that's 1.5 times better. If we replace the village by a Festival the Hunting Grounds is actually twice as good as Smithy.

There are many exceptions but you could start with these rules of thumb:
Festival + Moat -> You'll never draw your deck.
Village + Moat / Festival + Smithy -> requires superb trashing to start drawing your deck.
Village + Smithy / Festival + Hunting grounds -> requires light trashing to start drawing your deck.
Village + Hunting Grounds -> Requires no trashing at all to drawing your deck.

Payload
Drawing your deck every turn is off course great but only worthwhile if your deck also actually does something. As in every engine, you need some kind of payload. Hunting Grounds leaves you a lot more space in your deck though, and therefore you have options that you wouldn't have with other cards. Gold and even Silver could be the payload of your engine! This is a very nice recent example game between Seprix and Heisnberg, that you can also see on stream at 55:00. Would Hunting Grounds be any other draw card you'd certainly want some Bakers and Golds in your engine. But with Hunting Grounds the baker gets completely outclassed by the silvers Trader provides.

BigMoney
This is in general a bad plan. If you would play a 1-card kingdom with Hunting Grounds then sure you'd buy some. But if you add any other draw card it's better to buy a few of those and use your $6 hands for Gold. Gold can't cause terminal collision and even if you don't collide it's by no means guaranteed that the +4 cards will provide you with $3 . If you're playing with Colonies it's more reasonable because then the +4 cards could let you draw your platinum.

Trashing, Overbuilding
Hunting Grounds also has that sneaky on-trash ability that lets you gain 3 points, maybe even piling out estates. You should only trash your Hunting Grounds on your very last turn or when you're certain it's the winning move. If you can trash your own Hunting Grounds, you should generally build a little longer. In this game I've lost the Grand Market split 7 to 3, but by buying another bazaar+oracle in my next-to-last turn I set myself up for drawing Trading Post and 2 Hunting Grounds together for a sneaky 3 pile.

[werothegreat]

Okay.  If people like yours better than mine, I'll put it up on the wiki instead.

[-Stef-]

Okay.  If people like yours better than mine, I'll put it up on the wiki instead.

I'm not that much into the wiki I must admit. I don't think what I just posted should be seen as final any more then what you wrote before it.

What I'm really interested in is a smoother path to get from "apparently a lot of people are willing to put some effort into it" to "hey, now we have a nice article on card X".
Preferably one where nobody gets insulted on the way. If anyone has some feedback for me on how I could contribute to that more/better, please do tell me - either here or by PM.

[werothegreat]

Okay.  If people like yours better than mine, I'll put it up on the wiki instead.

I'm not that much into the wiki I must admit. I don't think what I just posted should be seen as final any more then what you wrote before it.

What I'm really interested in is a smoother path to get from "apparently a lot of people are willing to put some effort into it" to "hey, now we have a nice article on card X".
Preferably one where nobody gets insulted on the way. If anyone has some feedback for me on how I could contribute to that more/better, please do tell me - either here or by PM.

Honestly, I find I spend more time on the wiki than playing Dominion.

Maybe instead of having articles (ostensibly) written by one person, we could have a sort of "card of the week" where we all discuss a card and give strategic advice about it, and someone compiles it into a coherent article.

[RobertJ]

The thing about Hunting Grounds that struck me most from this discussion is this comment of WanderingWinder:

A play pattern I often find in games with HG and Trash for Benefit is that you should very very often overbuild with extra Hunting Grounds as the game comes close to the end - it increases the reliability of your engine, and then when you get through your deck, the extra ones are payload and/or pile control.

(I'm sure others have said similar things too.)

This idea is present in Stef's article but not particularly prominently.

If you can trash your own Hunting Grounds, you should generally build a little longer.

I wonder if this sentence could be expanded a little. In fact looking again it seems as if Stef is talking about overbuilding generally while WW's point is about specifically overbuilding with more Hunting Grounds.

Other than that tiny point, Stef's article seems succinct and informative to me.

For context, this is from the point of view of a moderate player (around level 30 iso).

[theright555J]

This is mainly a vestige of dominionstrategy.com when it first came out and was somewhat of an alternative, as it were, to boardgamegeek.  Much of the early discussion about Dominion on BGG was pretty darn dismissive of the game and basically boiled down to "big money is unbeatable, Dominion is solved, Dominion is over-hyped" etc.

So as a real cadre of decent Dominion players emerged, thankfully Theory gave us a better alternative for discussion!

The front page had things like combo of the day, counter of the day, and specific card articles which at first were updated nearly daily.  So the attempts at individual card articles really point back to the early days of the site.  Thinking of the game more in toto is a a new level of play that the high ranking players have discovered in the evolution of the game.  Perhaps the time has come to stop individual card articles and move on to topical articles (e.g. general kingdom types that encourage going for Alt-VP, maximizing deck speed and game tempo in the early/mid/endgame)?

It is also certainly possible that the only way to really study Dominion at this point is individual case study, in which case stream highlights with commentary would be close to ideal.

[jsh357]

Okay.  If people like yours better than mine, I'll put it up on the wiki instead.

I'm not that much into the wiki I must admit. I don't think what I just posted should be seen as final any more then what you wrote before it.

What I'm really interested in is a smoother path to get from "apparently a lot of people are willing to put some effort into it" to "hey, now we have a nice article on card X".
Preferably one where nobody gets insulted on the way. If anyone has some feedback for me on how I could contribute to that more/better, please do tell me - either here or by PM.

Honestly, I find I spend more time on the wiki than playing Dominion.

Maybe instead of having articles (ostensibly) written by one person, we could have a sort of "card of the week" where we all discuss a card and give strategic advice about it, and someone compiles it into a coherent article.

I have suggested this idea in the past and I still think it's a good idea.  Could even make it a prolonged, more thought-out version of the Qvist rankings, where justification must be presented for scores and debate must be had for the community to settle on a score/ranking for each card.  Scores aren't entirely meaningful, mind you, but they are fun to debate.

[werothegreat]

Okay.  Shall we consider Hunting Grounds to be our first topic?  I'd be more than happy to start the thread each week, but please, please, can someone else volunteer to do the write-up on this one?

It is also certainly possible that the only way to really study Dominion at this point is individual case study, in which case stream highlights with commentary would be close to ideal.

I don't think so.  There's certainly a place for looking at a specific game, but I think the point of the articles has always been (and should be) "what's so good/bad about this card?"

[nate_w]

Guys, as someone new to the forums (I just signed up the other day to hopefully participate in League play), I loved this whole discussion!  I read the original article and thought to myself, "Huh, some of this sounds good, some sounds a little off, but what the heck do I know?"  I found the responses from MicQ, Stef, and WanderingWinder much more illuminating, but a REASON they were so illuminating is that they had something to respond to. 

A lot of times I think high level comments like Stef's write-up above are less accessible unless you are already quite good because the reasoning is not always obvious. Having them have something specific to respond to was pretty valuable for me to read.  Being able to give them a launching point from which to discuss the topic.  Let's be honest, the top players in Dominion just have a fuller understanding of the game than I do, and so hearing why they have a different take on something is valuable.   

I think it's possible that having people post analyses with the express purpose of having a high level player correct them might be very valuable, not just to that player, but the entire community.  It was for me in this case at least!  I think it could be done not just with cards, but with sample boards and openings, end game moves, etc. 

Rather than Stef posting an opening board and saying, "Think to yourself, what would you open on a 4/3, with a plan for what follow-up?" and then answering question in hidden text telling you what the right answer was, perhaps it would be more valuable for a random idiot like me (level 37 or so) to post an opening board and say, "Hmmmm, I think on a 4/3 you should open _____ with a follow up of _____" and then having WW, MicQ, SCSN, etc come tell me WHY I was wrong and what I maybe didn't consider. 

[JW]

For example, in order to support 6 payload cards, you'd need 3 times village+smithy, but only 2 times village + hunting grounds, so that's 1.5 times better.

Why is this "in order to support 6 payload cards"? If you play Village + Hunting Grounds twice, you end up with 6 more cards in hand than you started with. But you start with 5 cards in hand so at that point you have 11 cards in hand.

I'd word it more like:
If you play 3 Villages and 3 Smithies, you increase hand size by 6 cards. Playing 2 Villages and 2 Hunting Grounds also increases hand size by 6 cards. So each pair of Village + Hunting Grounds is 1.5 times better at increasing hand size than Village + Smithy.

[Seprix]

This is a very nice recent example game between Seprix and Heisnberg, that you can also see on stream at 55:00. Would Hunting Grounds be any other draw card you'd certainly want some Bakers and Golds in your engine. But with Hunting Grounds the baker gets completely outclassed by the silvers Trader provides.

Cool, you've quoted my game there. Due to Twitch being stupid, that link will disappear in 5 days. As a result of this, I am currently uploading a video onto YouTube to where I will give out the link once it is finished. Any video that educates anyone (including me) is something I highly support, and will make easier to access if possible.

EDIT:

Link is here. I believe watching this now that I have played the game somewhat suboptimal. I could have gained more HG where I gained Duchies, and bought more Foragers as well.

[WanderingWinder]

Wero: I think your latest article is much better than the ones before it. I still think it's focusing too much on tangential aspects of the card and not enough on the straight card draw. The thing is, if I am a new player reading this article, I see myself seeing all those things as the important features of the card. And while those seem the most unique, the bulk of what the card does is draw four.

Stef: Your second sentence needs a 'probably', but that's minor. The next sentence, you want to put parentheses around village+smithy and village+hunting grounds, because right now, it can easily read as e.g. 2 villages but only 1 HG. But I'm actually more concerned about the substance of this section. I don't like couching it in terms of the number of villages - I want to relate it to the straight-up drawing power (though I will grant that there is potentially a point about villages, if in the kingdom that happens to be squeezed for +actions); at the very least, if you are going to explicitly mention the number of villages, you would also want to explicitly mention the number of draw cards. I also don't understand why you are assuming exactly 1 terminal in the group of payload. The big issue here, though, is that saying HG is 1.5 times as good as smithy and 2 times as good as it in the presence of Festival is HIGHLY misleading. The logic here would be that it takes 150% as many cards to do the same thing with smithies, 1.5 times as good. But that presumes that each card is equally easy to get, when this is very much not true. Moreover, 3xvillage+3xsmithy is actually just far better than 2xvillage+2xHG. Sure, if you get to play them all, it works out the same. But you're way, WAY more likely to dud with on the HGs. I also really dislike the rules of thumb in this section, because not only are there tons and tons of exceptions (to the point where I already wouldn't think it's worth mentioning), it's also incredibly vague and/or wrong. You can definitely draw your deck in the situations you say it's hard, it just takes longer (the first case, you need trashing, but if you can get down to fewer dead cards than you have in your starting hand, Festivals and Moats excluded, you can get there). What that means... well, it's entirely dependent on the kingdom. It definitely feels slower in those cases, but it's all a matter of degree, and slower in a vacuum means just nothing, because you are never in a vacuum. So the whole thing is actually pretty meaningless. I would like it much better if you just pointed how many cards you are netting out of each combination, e.g. Village+Moat => you have one more card in hand than when you started.
I don't understand why the payload section is there. It's not about Hunting Grounds. The only HG-centric point you make here is actually just a rehash of the same thing you said in the previous section.

Your last section, yes, you should very rarely trash HG before you're ending the game, but you are too strong here. There's the situation, at least, where you need the points or you'd surely lose on your opponent's next turn. Or the situation where you have a lean deck and Trash-for-benefit going on, but you desperately need more fuel, and trashing HG can give you that pretty efficiently. These are by no means common situations, but they're not nearly as rare as you're making it out. And they can definitely be good plays sometimes, even when they aren't certain to win.



Card of the Week might be interesting, and a good discussion to have, but I don't think it's a good way, in general, to write an article. You end up with tons of different little ideas hodge-podged in together, and lose the clarity and focus (and logical progression) which a single author gives.

[AdamH]

Finally the discussion is getting to a place where I'm not afraid to chime in. 

It is also certainly possible that the only way to really study Dominion at this point is individual case study, in which case stream highlights with commentary would be close to ideal.

I don't think so.  There's certainly a place for looking at a specific game, but I think the point of the articles has always been (and should be) "what's so good/bad about this card?"

Of course I'm biased, because my main contribution to the community has been through video and live streams, but I think there's a ton of value in this kind of stuff. I know there's been value for me and I know several people have commented on my videos or messaged me saying how much they've learned from watching me. I've been toying with different ideas for different types of videos I could make, but that's another thread.

I'm not saying video is the only thing, but it certainly has its place for many people. Finding out new ways to have Dominion content might be something worth trying in the near future.

[Seprix]

Finally the discussion is getting to a place where I'm not afraid to chime in. 

You offend me.

[WanderingWinder]

My take:

Hunting Grounds

This is a card with a lot of little things going on. The most important thing about it, by far, though, is that the top of that text box lets you draw four cards (without penalty). This is the most powerful, relevant, overall the most significant ability of the card by far. Let’s break it down.


Level One: Big Money
One of the earliest strategies people often learn is Big Money/Draw: you get a very small number of a terminal draw card, lots of the most efficient treasure you can, provinces when you’re able. This strategy is, in general, not very flexible or resilient, which makes it not great. Hunting Grounds is actually even worse than normal though. Why? Well, there are a few reasons. The fourth card doesn’t do a ton here, since the turns you are drawing three are usually quite good anyway – similar to how Courtyard is better than Smithy in this kind of strategy. And drawing four means you can’t play as many Hunting Grounds as you would with other terminals. Finally, it costs 6, which not only makes you slower to get to it, but also means it’s competing with gold. Sure, the first Hunting Grounds is definitely better than the first Gold, so if you do end up in this strategy, take it. But the reason this is really a problem is that you are losing out on some of the upside of hitting 6 and effectively wasting your 4- and 5-coin hands, which is pretty bad in a big money strategy. Long story short, this is a better strategy than straight-up big money, but there will almost always be another action card on the board which is better for this than big money – and Hunting Grounds itself will tend to push you more towards engines. Which brings us to…


Level Two: Engines
Engines are generally pretty strong anyway, but Hunting Grounds accentuates this. The biggest reason is the sheer drawing power. In order to get your deck drawn, you simply need raw drawing power – the number of cards your deck can draw needs to be at least the number of actual cards in your deck (minus your starting hand-size). The typical rate on draw cards is that you get three and a bonus for a cost of 5 coins – Rabble, Catacombs, Journeyman, Margrave, Smithy (bonus is costing 4), etc etc. I want to stress , first and foremost, that Hunting Grounds is not all that different from those cards. If you play like you would for those, you won’t be that far off.
There are a few wrinkles though. Compared to those cards, this draws one more. In some sense, this is 4/3 as much raw power – however, practically speaking, it’s usually going to be more than that, since it takes a card slot in your deck itself (there’s also some consideration to the number of villages you’ll need being lessened with this, which can really be relevant if you’re pinched for +actions).  What can you do with more drawing power per draw card? Well, in some sense, there are two main options: You can either do the same amount with less of these, or you can get the same amount of these, and do more.

Let’s take these options in order. Having less of these would generally be beneficial because it would theoretically be faster to set up than the other draw cards. There are two problems with this: first, Hunting Grounds costs 6, which is going to make it a little bit tough to be much faster than the cheaper cards. Second, this Hunting Grounds-based deck is going to be a lot less reliable than the others. Not only are you missing out on the bonus those other cards give you beyond simply drawing 3 (a bonus which most often is going to help you be consistently drawing your draw cards, at least to some extent, which is what you need to do to draw your deck), but having fewer overall drawing cards makes it much more likely that you’re going to be missing out on one of those key components and have a ‘dud’ hand where your engine ‘misfires’ and you can’t draw your deck for a turn. So while sometimes you do want to go with les and be faster, you are more often going to want to just do more. What ‘doing more’ entails is going to vary wildly from kingdom to kingdom, but essentially it lets you have a more powerful and explosive late game, because you can load up on more payload. I will note that this doesn’t really solve the reliability issue. For that, you will probably need to build to overdraw, a bit more here than you would with most of your other draw cards. And in general, if there is other draw available in the kingdom, you are going to be mixing and matching, some Hunting Grounds for their raw power, some of the other draw for reliability and cheapness. And of course, you are going to want to build the engine essentially as normal, focusing on thinning and getting your draw up first and foremost. One of Hunting Grounds real strengths is to be added as the extra draw to an already-functioning engine, which simply needs more draw cards to keep up with any green or non-drawing payload.


Level Three: Tricks and Nuances
Honestly, the above really is the vast majority of what you want to do with the card. If you focus too much on fancy gimmicks and subtleties – like what I’m going to talk about below – while neglecting the basic bread-and-butter of draw-four, you’re doing yourself a disservice (if your goal is winning, anyway). Having said that, let’s dive in for an extra few percent, which can really make the difference at high levels.

Having some way to mitigate the potential reliability problems I discuss above is nice. Scheme can do this. Perhaps more straightforwardly, sifting cards like Cellar, Warehouse, and Inn can help to find your Hunting Grounds, and the Hunting Grounds’ sheer power can overcome the card which those cards leave you down. Alternatively, you can look to use flexible cards which can either draw for you if you need to find Hunting Grounds or be payload after you have drawn your deck. Those let you continue to build with somewhat less risk than having only a few draw cards while still having more oomph than you would get from buying lots of over-draw.

There’s this on-trash clause I haven’t mentioned yet. It doesn’t come up a lot. When it does, it’s almost always being used for trash-for-benefit, and it’s almost always being used at the end of the game. Turning a draw four into quite-bad-for-engines-green-cards is just not a deal you want to make earlier. Given that, it often won’t matter whether you get duchy or estates; when it does, it’s usually because you are emptying a pile. The on-trash “benefit” synergizes a bit with solving the consistency problem noted above – simply get some extra Hunting Grounds, perhaps without even the actions to play them all. You won’t need the last one or two, but they still give your engine reliability. And then at the end, you can cash them in for points. Certainly in engines with trashing, this is better than just buying duchy (except on the turn you’re ending the game), if you can spare the extra $1 and this doesn’t kill you on piles. Occasionally, you’ll get a very thin deck with trash-for-benefit cards where you’re a bit desperate for more fuel – Hunting Grounds can be your friend there. You can potentially try to use the trash ability as a source of points, perhaps with alternate VP, but in general, this isn’t a very good idea, because the decks that want this aren’t usually the same decks that want a draw 4. The on-trash can also be a drawback, if you for some reason need to trash this before the end of the game – Swindler maybe. Almost none of this stuff comes up much, though.

[Seprix]

I think Stefs was a bit better.

[XerxesPraelor]

I know WW's is a lot more understandable as a newbie, regardless of whether it's more correct.

[nate_w]

Stef's is more succinct, but both offer good insight.  I think if I were a newer player I would prefer WW's although I think Stef's comparison of different village+draw combos is very useful food for thought for people deveolping.

[werothegreat]

How about this:

WW's is essentially saying what I eventually was trying to say, but better (with a few grammar/spelling bits I can fix on the wiki), and I think it would do well as an intro level article.  -Stef-, would you be willing to go *more* advanced with your article?  Kind of like how with Rebuild, my article is just basic "what Rebuild does", and then ragingduckd's goes into detail about mirror matches?  Then I would put both of yours up on the wiki.

[theright555J]

Why not just put both up on the wiki and let the readers themselves decide?  I really like both and get slightly different flavors from them, which enhances my understanding of the card.

[-Stef-]

How about this:

WW's is essentially saying what I eventually was trying to say, but better (with a few grammar/spelling bits I can fix on the wiki), and I think it would do well as an intro level article.  -Stef-, would you be willing to go *more* advanced with your article?  Kind of like how with Rebuild, my article is just basic "what Rebuild does", and then ragingduckd's goes into detail about mirror matches?  Then I would put both of yours up on the wiki.

WW and I just have very different writing styles, and I don't necessarily think one of them should be classified as "more advanced" then the other.
Also I don't think I could really go deep into game analysis for Hunting Grounds a la Rebuild, because the card is far less dominating.
Rebuild mirrors all are kind of similar, but Hunting Grounds is a supportive card that can go into a wild variety of decks. If you want to say more, that should probably be about "deck drawing engines" but I don't think it should be in a Hunting Grounds article.

I will do some edits to my text, but not with the intention of making it "more advanced". I just haven't redacted it all that much yet (Usually I take at least a week between initial draft and actual post). Also some people provided feedback:

For example, in order to support 6 payload cards, you'd need 3 times village+smithy, but only 2 times village + hunting grounds, so that's 1.5 times better.

Why is this "in order to support 6 payload cards"? If you play Village + Hunting Grounds twice, you end up with 6 more cards in hand than you started with. But you start with 5 cards in hand so at that point you have 11 cards in hand.

I'd word it more like:
If you play 3 Villages and 3 Smithies, you increase hand size by 6 cards. Playing 2 Villages and 2 Hunting Grounds also increases hand size by 6 cards. So each pair of Village + Hunting Grounds is 1.5 times better at increasing hand size than Village + Smithy.

I wrote "in order to support 6 payload cards" because that's how I think about the game during the game. I don't buy draw cards or villages because I want them. I buy them because they allow me to play other cards. But maybe I should not mention that here - your text is cleaner in the sense that it tries to say only 1 thing in stead of 2 things at once, which I generally prefer.

...But I'm actually more concerned about the substance of this section. I don't like couching it in terms of the number of villages - I want to relate it to the straight-up drawing power (though I will grant that there is potentially a point about villages, if in the kingdom that happens to be squeezed for +actions); at the very least, if you are going to explicitly mention the number of villages, you would also want to explicitly mention the number of draw cards. I also don't understand why you are assuming exactly 1 terminal in the group of payload.

I don't understand your feedback which probably means my original text was too vague and misunderstood. I will rewrite it.

The big issue here, though, is that saying HG is 1.5 times as good as smithy and 2 times as good as it in the presence of Festival is HIGHLY misleading. The logic here would be that it takes 150% as many cards to do the same thing with smithies, 1.5 times as good. But that presumes that each card is equally easy to get, when this is very much not true. Moreover, 3xvillage+3xsmithy is actually just far better than 2xvillage+2xHG. Sure, if you get to play them all, it works out the same. But you're way, WAY more likely to dud with on the HGs.

Here we simply disagree. I think you still underestimate Hunting Grounds and stating it's much better then Smithy isn't misleading at all.

I also really dislike the rules of thumb in this section, because not only are there tons and tons of exceptions (to the point where I already wouldn't think it's worth mentioning), it's also incredibly vague and/or wrong. You can definitely draw your deck in the situations you say it's hard, it just takes longer (the first case, you need trashing, but if you can get down to fewer dead cards than you have in your starting hand, Festivals and Moats excluded, you can get there).

I don't know exactly what you're expecting after a paragraph starts with There are many exceptions but you could start with these rules of thumb:, but this is what you get.
I think they are very useful rules of thumb, just not for you as a lvl 50 player. And about the festival moat thing... yes in theory it's possible. I even was foolish enough to try and make it work sometimes. But I can't remember a single game where it actually worked. I do remember some of the (very rare) games where I made village + moat work.

I don't understand why the payload section is there. It's not about Hunting Grounds. The only HG-centric point you make here is actually just a rehash of the same thing you said in the previous section.

The payload section is there because it's what most people don't (fully) grasp, even on very high level.

Your last section, yes, you should very rarely trash HG before you're ending the game, but you are too strong here. There's the situation, at least, where you need the points or you'd surely lose on your opponent's next turn. Or the situation where you have a lean deck and Trash-for-benefit going on, but you desperately need more fuel, and trashing HG can give you that pretty efficiently. These are by no means common situations, but they're not nearly as rare as you're making it out. And they can definitely be good plays sometimes, even when they aren't certain to win.

I don't think it's too strong. Trashing your hunting grounds because you may lose on the next turn sounds like you're trading off a maybe loss on the next turn for a certain loss in a few turns. I know there are exceptions where you've already seen your opponents hand and then you just have to - but they're extremely rare and if you're good enough to realize it's happening now you probably also won't let a line in an article you read somewhere stop you.

Trashing your hunting grounds just because you need payload now is in theory possible. The $6 + duchy might come in handy, although probably only in kingdoms without +buy. I remember one game where I used that but can't find it now.

[Seprix]

If village moat is your only draw, in a vacuum, isn't it better to just go BM?

[Burning Skull]

If village moat is your only draw, in a vacuum, isn't it better to just go BM?

Depends on the board.

[Seprix]

If village moat is your only draw, in a vacuum, isn't it better to just go BM?

Depends on the board.

In a vacuum. Like, BM vs Village Moat as draw. No other cards.

[Awaclus]

If village moat is your only draw, in a vacuum, isn't it better to just go BM?

Depends on the board.

In a vacuum. Like, BM vs Village Moat as draw. No other cards.

That's not how you should think of engines. The thing that you build your engine around is your payload, not your engine components — Village and Moat are just a means to an end, and it's pointless to debate how strong the means is without knowing how strong the end is. Sure, if your payload is basic Treasures like in that "vacuum" of yours, then it's probably worse than Moat/big money, but in a kingdom with other cards, the questions you should be asking is not "how good this is", but "does this work" and "do I have enough time to make it work". The answer to the first question is yes, and the answer to the second depends on how fast the other strategies are, how strong your payload is, and how well you can get rid of your junk cards and deal with Attacks.

[Asper]

If village moat is your only draw, in a vacuum, isn't it better to just go BM?

Depends on the board.

In a vacuum. Like, BM vs Village Moat as draw. No other cards.

The other cards are Scout, Ruined Scout, Masterscout, Pirate Scout, Philosopher's Scout, Secret Scout, King's Scout and Scout of Plenty.

[-Stef-]

If village moat is your only draw, in a vacuum, isn't it better to just go BM?

Depends on the board.

In a vacuum. Like, BM vs Village Moat as draw. No other cards.

yes Village-Moat clearly loses to Moat-BM.
also Village-Smithy loses to Smithy-BM.
even Village-Hunting Grounds loses to Hunting Grounds-BM.

If you add Woodcutter, the last one is the only one that changes. But most kingdoms provide more then just a woodcutter.

[werothegreat]

If village moat is your only draw, in a vacuum, isn't it better to just go BM?

Depends on the board.

In a vacuum. Like, BM vs Village Moat as draw. No other cards.

The other cards are Scout, Ruined Scout, Masterscout, Pirate Scout, Philosopher's Scout, Secret Scout, King's Scout and Scout of Plenty.

Masterscout: You may overpay for this.  For each $1 you overpay, gain a Scout.

[Seprix]

Yeah, I suppose it's an exercise in futility to compare village draw with BM.

[AdamH]

yes Village-Moat clearly loses to Moat-BM.
also Village-Smithy loses to Smithy-BM.
even Village-Hunting Grounds loses to Hunting Grounds-BM.

If you add Woodcutter, the last one is the only one that changes. But most kingdoms provide more then just a woodcutter.

I feel like poking a bee hive right now.

Is this supported by simulation or some other kind of evidence, or is this just based on one of the best Dominion guts in the world?

[WanderingWinder]

yes Village-Moat clearly loses to Moat-BM.
also Village-Smithy loses to Smithy-BM.
even Village-Hunting Grounds loses to Hunting Grounds-BM.

If you add Woodcutter, the last one is the only one that changes. But most kingdoms provide more then just a woodcutter.

I feel like poking a bee hive right now.

Is this supported by simulation or some other kind of evidence, or is this just based on one of the best Dominion guts in the world?

Well, I know the first two are indeed trivially supported by simulation, from ages and ages ago. I assume that Hunting Grounds case is also, uh, not close. The only thing I'm not easily sure of is that Hunting Grounds + Village + Woodcutter beats HG/BM. I would expect that's reasonably close, but I can easily believe Stef when he makes his claim.

Most kingdoms giving more than woodcutter is something I would assume he hasn't actually got 'hard evidence' for, but on the other hand, it's almost trivially correct, don't you think?

[LastFootnote]

If village moat is your only draw, in a vacuum, isn't it better to just go BM?

In a vacuum, sure. I feel it's worth mentioning that actually building a Village/Moat engine makes you highly resistant to Attacks, which can sometimes be worth it.