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Author Topic: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?  (Read 5832 times)

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ehunt

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To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« on: March 31, 2015, 04:41:15 am »
+10

This discussion is currently half-happening in the Adventures Preview thread but it might be more useful to separate it from that.

My general thought is: discard attacks make cantrips significantly worse, where significantly is vague but means something like "don't let it stop you from buying baker over silver, but let it stop you from buying pearl diver over nothing." However, it seems lots of people disagree. People who disagree: do you think there's a fallacy in the reasoning below, or am I just overestimating the impacts?

The argument is that the information of knowing what card the cantrip "would draw if you chose not to discard it" [which you trivially get by not buying the cantrip in the first place] is often more valuable than whatever the cantrip is doing for you.

You can construct lots of example scenarios, but just for one,

GreatHall NativeVillage Silver Silver Estate

If the top card is a smithy, you'd prefer to drop a silver. If it's a copper, you'd prefer to drop the native village. If it's another native village that you might draw with my Smithy next turn, you'd prefer to drop the great hall.

In all of these cases, just "not having that great hall in my deck so that I have a 100% chance instead of a 40ish% chance of guessing right" is probably worth more than 1VP at the end of the game.
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Awaclus

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #1 on: March 31, 2015, 05:24:55 am »
+3

The reason why cantrips are bad against discard attacks is that you want to discard your bad cards and keep your good cards. If your hand is full of mediocre cards (e.g. cantrips or Silvers), then you have to discard mediocre cards, which hurts you more than having to discard bad cards.

Engines are particularly good at dealing with discard attacks, because they can do powerful things with just a couple of good cards in the initial hand, and because they will redraw whatever cards they discarded anyway, so you don't even mind having to discard good cards to discard attacks. For that reason, it's much less harmful for an engine to have Pearl Divers in it than it is for, say, big money (even if it's not terminal draw/BM which obviously doesn't want PDs regardless of attacks), and you can safely buy them, even to the extent that you lose your ability to cherry pick your bad cards to discard — as long as you don't buy them to the extent that you lose your ability to keep your good cards in your hand, but you hardly ever get that many chances to choose between PD and nothing anyway.

Having your example hand hit by a discard attack is pretty bad, that's true. But the cantrip isn't the sole reason for it: you also have two Silvers and an Estate that are equally responsible for you not having any good cards in your hand that you can keep. In fact, the situation would be much worse if the Great Hall was another Silver, because then there would be no way you could have a good turn (unless you're fine with just a single $6 buy). And it would be much, much better if both Silvers were Pearl Divers instead (you even have control over what to set aside for NV that way!).
« Last Edit: March 31, 2015, 07:01:12 am by Awaclus »
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SCSN

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #2 on: March 31, 2015, 05:31:50 am »
0

Even an opponent's princed Militia wouldn't stop me from getting the Pearl Diver that I'd otherwise have wanted.

So whatever effect there might be in theory is, as far as I'm concerned, irrelevant in practice.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #3 on: March 31, 2015, 06:29:50 am »
0

The thing is, it's not that there aren't scenarios where I'd rather not have the cantrip in my deck because it makes me have a bad decision. Those exist. But there are equivalent scenarios where having the cantrip in my deck actually helps me against the discard attack - it just depends on how the draw turns out.

ehunt

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #4 on: March 31, 2015, 07:47:48 am »
+1

But there are equivalent scenarios where having the cantrip in my deck actually helps me against the discard attack - it just depends on how the draw turns out.

This is exactly what I can't figure out. Would you mind giving an example?
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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #5 on: March 31, 2015, 08:31:43 am »
+10

I think ehunt is just right in theory, but very much overestimating the impact.
I would not call cantrips "significantly" worse, but rather "a tiny bit worse".

Even an opponent's princed Militia wouldn't stop me from getting the Pearl Diver that I'd otherwise have wanted.

So whatever effect there might be in theory is, as far as I'm concerned, irrelevant in practice.

You don't specify why you want the pearl divers here so it's hard to argue. If your deck has heralds, sure you get the pearl divers.
If your deck has cartographers, still easily good enough to get pearl divers.
But if you have nothing to pair up with it, and it's just between $2 = nothing and $2 = pearl diver, I would skip it.
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DG

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #6 on: March 31, 2015, 08:55:27 am »
+3

I think the best example of this problem is an urchin/mercenary game. Lets suppose your opponent plays a mercenary and your hand is {urchin, great hall, silver, silver, copper}. Do you throw away your silvers and hope to draw a mercenary and trash? Do you keep the treasure to buy a 5 cost card, forgo the urchin attack, and slow down the potential trashing? Do you wish you hadn't bought the great hall? These are the difficult decisions you get. In a mercenary game these situations tend to be unavoidable but you can avoid them in other games.
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Kirian

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #7 on: March 31, 2015, 09:06:28 am »
+7

I think the best example of this problem is an urchin/mercenary game. Lets suppose your opponent plays a mercenary and your hand is {urchin, great hall, silver, silver, copper}. Do you throw away your silvers and hope to draw a mercenary and trash? Do you keep the treasure to buy a 5 cost card, forgo the urchin attack, and slow down the potential trashing? Do you wish you hadn't bought the great hall? These are the difficult decisions you get. In a mercenary game these situations tend to be unavoidable but you can avoid them in other games.

With Urchin available, I ask myself what I was thinking buying the GH.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #8 on: March 31, 2015, 02:45:18 pm »
+2

I think the best example of this problem is an urchin/mercenary game. Lets suppose your opponent plays a mercenary and your hand is {urchin, great hall, silver, silver, copper}. Do you throw away your silvers and hope to draw a mercenary and trash? Do you keep the treasure to buy a 5 cost card, forgo the urchin attack, and slow down the potential trashing? Do you wish you hadn't bought the great hall? These are the difficult decisions you get. In a mercenary game these situations tend to be unavoidable but you can avoid them in other games.

With Urchin available, I ask myself what I was thinking buying the GH silver.

FTFY. Because I am usually pitching two treasures here.

blueblimp

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #9 on: March 31, 2015, 08:28:55 pm »
+4

A hand of 5 do-nothing cantrips effectively converts Militia's attack from "discard 2 cards of your choice" to "discard 2 random cards", which is so much more damaging, like a super-Minion. That to me is a pretty big deal.

There are sometimes games where there's an opportunity to spam cantrips beyond the point where they're actually doing much for you. Pawn comes to mind: a small amount can be really nice for the +buy, but with a large number, they mostly will be played as do-nothing cantrips. If they are doing basically nothing for you beyond a certain point, why not hold off to lessen the effect of attacks? Sure it may be a very small effect, but might as well take that edge if it's available.
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AJD

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #10 on: March 31, 2015, 11:17:28 pm »
+6

A hand of 5 do-nothing cantrips effectively converts Militia's attack from "discard 2 cards of your choice" to "discard 2 random cards", which is so much more damaging, like a super-Minion.

Actually it becomes more of a "Ghost Ship 2 random cards", doesn't it?
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XerxesPraelor

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #11 on: April 01, 2015, 11:15:33 am »
0

That's basically the same thing.
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ehunt

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #12 on: April 01, 2015, 11:33:18 am »
+2

That's basically the same thing.

I disagree, ghost shipping two random cards is worse because it hurts cycling*. But I think this phenomenon is a little artificial, since it only applies when you have lots of cantrips in hand, and I think this phenomenon is different from the one in the original post in this thread (which I'm more interested in). But maybe it's the same and I'm just getting confused.

*(If you don't believe me, make an experiment deck with 5 cantrips and 15 whatevers below it, and militia yourself. Then make the same deck in the same order except without the cantrips on top, and militia yourself.)
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Chris is me

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #13 on: April 01, 2015, 06:55:43 pm »
+1

I'm in the "a little worse, but not nearly as bad as people make it out to be" camp. The effect of a cantrip is effectively "do something for free and get a random card to replace this". Neither of these things change in the presence of a discard attack. I don't really see a lot of games where I would buy a cantrip, but the presence of the discard attack persuades me to buy something else...

I think what people don't consider enough is that you can choose to discard the cantrip. In a Militia / Goons situation, two cards in your hand are going to be "dead" no matter what they are. You discard the cantrip if the expected value of the card drawn (avg. value of the rest of your deck) is better than the card you would otherwise be discarding. You can choose to take the risk with the drawn card, while reaping the benefit of the cantrip, or you can stick with what you have. Only when you have more than two cantrips in your hand are you really ever forced to take the risk and you're more vulnerable than you otherwise would have been.

Not saying "cantrips are only worse when you have more than 40% of your deck as cantrips", but I mean, I'm not going to buy Gold over Grand Market because there's a Militia on the board...
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XerxesPraelor

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #14 on: April 01, 2015, 09:54:23 pm »
0

That's basically the same thing.

I disagree, ghost shipping two random cards is worse because it hurts cycling*. But I think this phenomenon is a little artificial, since it only applies when you have lots of cantrips in hand, and I think this phenomenon is different from the one in the original post in this thread (which I'm more interested in). But maybe it's the same and I'm just getting confused.

*(If you don't believe me, make an experiment deck with 5 cantrips and 15 whatevers below it, and militia yourself. Then make the same deck in the same order except without the cantrips on top, and militia yourself.)

A hand of Pearl Diver*5 being Militia'd is basically the same as if that hand were Ghost Ship's - actually a little worse. Both are worse than a hand of 5 other cards getting Militia'd.
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LastFootnote

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #15 on: April 02, 2015, 12:14:31 am »
+1

That's basically the same thing.

I disagree, ghost shipping two random cards is worse because it hurts cycling*. But I think this phenomenon is a little artificial, since it only applies when you have lots of cantrips in hand, and I think this phenomenon is different from the one in the original post in this thread (which I'm more interested in). But maybe it's the same and I'm just getting confused.

*(If you don't believe me, make an experiment deck with 5 cantrips and 15 whatevers below it, and militia yourself. Then make the same deck in the same order except without the cantrips on top, and militia yourself.)

A hand of Pearl Diver*5 being Militia'd is basically the same as if that hand were Ghost Ship's - actually a little worse. Both are worse than a hand of 5 other cards getting Militia'd.

The way I think of it is: discarding two random cards is significantly worse than discarding your two worst cards. And if your hand is five Pearl Divers, it's basically five tickets for random cards from your deck.
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XerxesPraelor

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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #16 on: April 02, 2015, 08:18:32 am »
0

AI know - what I said was the same was Ghost Ship vs. Militia on a cantrio hand.
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Re: To what extent do discard attacks make cantrips worse?
« Reply #17 on: April 04, 2015, 05:46:36 pm »
+4

I think what people don't consider enough is that you can choose to discard the cantrip.

That doesn't avoid the problem. Choosing to discard a cantrip means essentially Ghost Shipping the card you would've drawn with it. It's difficult to tell whether you'd rather do that than discard a different card if you don't know what you'd draw. Furthermore, if the card is undesirable, then if you didn't have the cantrip in your deck you would've drawn that card instead and could've discarded it, which is preferable to leaving it on top.

None of this is a reason not to get cards like Grand Market that are actually desirable. It's just a reason why low-power cantrips like Pearl Diver and Pawn, which by default tend to be ineffective but harmless, might actually have a tiny bit of harm beyond the tiny bit of help they give and therefore not be worth buying even with no other options.
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