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Author Topic: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn  (Read 16530 times)

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werothegreat

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CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« on: May 19, 2015, 09:35:30 pm »
+5

My, how the time flies!  This week we're taking a look at... Inn!


Starting questions:
* Do you ever not shuffle in all Actions in your discard pile?
* When is the best time to gain an Inn?
* How does it compare to Lost City?
* Who wants to spend a weekend in that picture?
* Overall, is it an inn-teresting card?  *winks obnoxiously*
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eHalcyon

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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #1 on: May 19, 2015, 09:55:02 pm »
+3

Quote
* Do you ever not shuffle in all Actions in your discard pile?

Of course.

Quote
* When is the best time to gain an Inn?

When there are a bunch of actions in the discard that you want to stack in your deck.  This will usually be just before the next reshuffle, when most of your deck is in your discard.

Quote
* How does it compare to Lost City?

It's not really a useful comparison.  LC is a powerful village with an on-gain penalty.  Inn is a weak village with an on-gain benefit.

Quote
* Who wants to spend a weekend in that picture?

brokoli

Quote
* Overall, is it an inn-teresting card?  *winks obnoxiously*

:|



Other notes:

Inn's on-gain is less useful if you already have a strong, reliable engine.  If you are playing everything anyway, it doesn't put anything into your deck.  OTOH, it can be critical if you just need that one perfect turn to close out the game.  Timing is key though.

After it's in your deck, it's pretty weak as a village because it lowers your hand size.  It can still be useful if you don't mind (or actually want) the lower hand size, or if you need a splitter and there is no other, or if there are key cards that are worth sifting for.
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belugawhale

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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #2 on: May 19, 2015, 10:44:56 pm »
+2

Inn general (pun intended), you will buy/gain Inn for its on-gain effect, since its on-play effect is weak for its cost (think Nomad Camp). I personally haven't played much with Inn, but it is useful for sifting and as a village. Beware reshuffles, because I have misused its effect to shuffle my half-built engine into my deck, and caused a reshuffle with all of my engine parts in my hand. :(
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Awaclus

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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #3 on: May 19, 2015, 10:49:08 pm »
+13

(pun intended)

Would you say that it was inntentional?
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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #4 on: May 19, 2015, 11:22:55 pm »
+1

If Inn is your only splitter, you might want to use its on-buy effect before you reach the end of your deck. Otherwise Inn will send back to the discard all those juicy Action cards it just stacked for you.
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RobertJ

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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #5 on: May 20, 2015, 05:34:17 am »
0

As eHalcyon already said, the on-gain effect is less useful if you already have a strong, reliable engine. Given that you don't have this, Inn is particularly useful on boards where you want to play multiples of some action in a turn. For example in a sloggy Goons kingdom, Inn may be the best way of getting a few multiple Goons turns.

A couple of tactical points (both rather obvious but they have caught me out before):   

- If you are buying Inn and other actions in the same turn then you probably want to buy the Inn last so you can shuffle your other actions in;
- Since Inn reduces your handsize, playing too many of them in a turn can be dangerous. In particular, be careful not to use your Inn to shuffle in too many Inns unless you've got some draw to go with them.


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brokoli

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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #6 on: May 20, 2015, 06:24:04 am »
+3

Inn used to be a good avatar.
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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #7 on: May 20, 2015, 07:36:47 am »
0

In my shitty opinion, the best way to think about Inn is that Inn is always best in decks when you have to line up particular Action cards with each other. This is obviously true for its on-gain effect, but also with how it plays as a sifting village.

On-gain, obviously you want to buy it near the end of a shuffle if possible, and you want to shuffle in Actions that you want to play together. You don't always want to shuffle all of them in; you want a good mix of each of the Actions you want to combine with each other, you want about one Village per terminal, etc. This is usually just common sense though.

Once it's in your deck, it king of plays like Warehouse, but it enables combos. You use it to find the cards you *must* pair together to make your deck work; maybe the King's Court and the Bridge, or maybe you can sift to a Smithy to get a larger hand size. It's a pretty bleh regular Village, since it reduces your hand size, so you can't just have a ton of Inn (unless the Inns themselves are the targets of the discard effect), but it is functional in decks with slight Trashing and good draw, or no trashing and great draw. It's essentially like you played Village, then a Dungeon. Not the worst two things in the world to combine into one card, but the hand size reduction does hurt.
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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #8 on: May 20, 2015, 09:37:18 am »
0

Good with/against junking attacks so you see your good cards more often. Bad against the militia family.
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jomini

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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #9 on: May 20, 2015, 09:52:03 am »
0

The big thing with Inn is that it can shave a number of turns off where your engine might hit, but is not yet assured. I get the most mileage out dumping engine components once or twice into the top deck (even at the expense of getting a better $5 village like Bazaar). As such it tends to be a bit better when I already have a lead and I want to tamp down variance. Things like shuffle up Inn/Village/Smithy/Steward are quite powerful at cycling the deck and getting stuff trashed faster.

Inn is also better than a second Curser or Looter in the mid-game. Winning the Curse split 6-4 is a pretty big thing with limited/no trashing and absolutely huge if that is coupled with no +buy/+gain. A 2 VP swing when you can't gain more than one VP card a turn is effectively a duchy that cycles (which is not bad at all in mucked up decks like those circumstances). The question of do I get a second Witch or Inn the first one up twice is a bit difficult. If you can manage an engine, Inn is normally better, but if you can't somewhere around Curse 4 it tends to be better to go for the the Inn. Definitely if you only will use the curser once more, Inn is better and depending on setup, it might be better even if you expect to curse just twice more. Rarely is Inn a good call if you expect to curse 3 more times.

As a village itself, it gets better with stuff that likes cycling and makes draw have a low opportunity cost. Shuffing Lib/Inn to the top lets you draw a lot of good cards and have very high odds of pulling cards currently in play (like say an Expand) next turn as you Lib/Inn will let you have a search space of 11(9). Inn drop in hand size is actually beneficial when you really want its on gain ability (early engine setup where you need to cycle to power cards) and draw is cheap. If you can just spam simple draw (like Smithy) cheap, Inn isn't bad either. 2 Inns/2 Smithies will draw draw 10 and leave you with 7 cards; you can do quite well at quickly setting up an engine with Workshop/Inn/Smithy and quickly draw all cards.

Inn, like all cards with on-gain bonuses, gets better with scaling TfB. It makes excellent Remodel/Bishop/Apprentice fodder as it is a card costs $5, but doesn't play at $5 value (Inn without on-gain should definitely be sub-$5).

Inn has a rare niche in allowing you to set up an "engine" or combo deck in the midst of otherwise impossible bloat. Like all attempts at this (Wt, Scheme, etc.) this is normally weak. But something like University/Rabble/Inn can allow you to use a $5 to place half your Unis/Rabble into an empty top deck, play them and then gain an Inn to top deck the other half. Yes this means you need 2x as many components ... but it can allow you to go for some engine combo after your deck has been bloated (e.g. Ambassador in 4er). Inn is also good at enabling Countinghouse engines. Inn + Chouse + Cellar + 2 other actions means that you can ensure every turn begins with a bunch of copper bloat in the discard, you can draw 15 cards with Chouse, and then draw your real cards without too much trouble. Inn also helps in that its discard ability allows you to seed your discard with the cards you need for your next turn for this sort of thing. Yes it costs $5 (via a buy or a gain) to do this, but that isn't that bad if you can't make a strong "engine" any other way.

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ipofanes

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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #10 on: May 20, 2015, 10:13:37 am »
0

The use as a village, when drawn from an action-card enriched pile, is not to be underestimated.

Having to discard two possibly useful action cards at the start of the combo pours some water into the wine, of course.
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werothegreat

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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #11 on: May 21, 2015, 06:37:07 pm »
0

So just played a Skype game with AHoppy that had both Inn and Lost City, as well as Giant and Bridge Troll and Relic and Royal Carriage and Expedition... suffice it to say neither of us bought an Inn.  I considered it a couple times, but there was never a point where I had a bunch of Actions in my discard pile with my deck low, since I was drawing pretty much my entire deck every turn.
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swedenman

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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #12 on: May 22, 2015, 01:16:42 am »
+1

Starting questions:
* Do you ever not shuffle in all Actions in your discard pile?
* When is the best time to gain an Inn?
* How does it compare to Lost City?
* Who wants to spend a weekend in that picture?
* Overall, is it an inn-teresting card?  *winks obnoxiously*

Unless it's like 2 or 3 actions, you should pretty much always take the time to think about which ones you want to reshuffle. Maybe if all of them are Labs or something then maybe, but I mean you still don't want to make them all miss the shuffle.

The best time to gain an Inn? Sometimes you just get it when you need a village, sometimes you just get it when you need a sifter. If you want it primarily for the on-gain effect, it's usually best towards the end of your shuffle, as you're more likely to draw all of those actions together and pull off a monster turn. Just be careful that you don't make them all miss the shuffle and get stuck a billion bad turns in a row. I've on a number of occasions bought an Inn towards the end of the game as a means to setting up a game-ending turn.

It doesn't really compare to Lost City except in the sense that they can both be used as villages. Overall I'd say Lost City is a much better card, but Inn's on-gain ability can be game-changing.

Sure, I'd spend a week there. I love how isolated it looks. Pretty spooky.

Overall, I think it's a super innteresting card. It's (I'm pretty sure) the only village-sifter, and I think that's a neat concept. I also really love the on-gain effect. Knowing how to use it properly has made the difference in quite a few games that I've played. Really neat card.
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ConMan

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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #13 on: May 22, 2015, 02:06:43 am »
0

Overall, I think it's a super innteresting card. It's (I'm pretty sure) the only village-sifter, and I think that's a neat concept.
Depends on if you count Hamlet, although Inn is obviously a better sifter in exchange for the lack of flexibility that Hamlet offers.

If I'm buying Inn for its on-gain, then I would typically be picky about what cards I shuffle back in. Ideally, I'd do it such that I'm near-guaranteed to get a hand that will start a strong engine turn (so best case is having an empty deck and putting a couple of Inns and a couple of strong drawing cards back).
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pedroluchini

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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #14 on: May 22, 2015, 04:25:42 am »
0

How much would Inn cost if it didn't have the when-gain ability?
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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #15 on: May 22, 2015, 04:38:33 am »
+1

How much would Inn cost if it didn't have the when-gain ability?

$4. It didn't have the on-gain ability for a long time and that's how much it cost.
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swedenman

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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #16 on: May 22, 2015, 10:50:13 am »
0

Overall, I think it's a super innteresting card. It's (I'm pretty sure) the only village-sifter, and I think that's a neat concept.
Depends on if you count Hamlet, although Inn is obviously a better sifter in exchange for the lack of flexibility that Hamlet offers.

Oh yeah, I'd count Hamlet.
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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #17 on: May 22, 2015, 11:04:25 am »
0

Hamlet is not a sifter, it only draws 1 card.
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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #18 on: May 22, 2015, 11:16:31 am »
+3

Please let's not have that debate again.
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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #19 on: May 22, 2015, 12:56:31 pm »
0

Hamlet is not a sifter, it only draws 1 card.

So it sifts 1 card. Warehouse sifts 3, Inn sifts 2. They all reduce handsize, and they all let you switch out some number of cards for others. What exactly is your definition of a sifter?
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werothegreat

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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #20 on: May 22, 2015, 01:05:34 pm »
+2

Hamlet is not a sifter, it only draws 1 card.

So it sifts 1 card. Warehouse sifts 3, Inn sifts 2. They all reduce handsize, and they all let you switch out some number of cards for others. What exactly is your definition of a sifter?

A sifter that sifts one card is not a very good sifter.  Additionally, Hamlet is really more of a discard-for-benefit card, especially since the discard is optional.
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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #21 on: May 22, 2015, 01:08:05 pm »
+1

Hamlet is not a sifter, it only draws 1 card.

So it sifts 1 card. Warehouse sifts 3, Inn sifts 2. They all reduce handsize, and they all let you switch out some number of cards for others. What exactly is your definition of a sifter?

The hamlet doesn't give any improvement in the cards drawn, even compared to not having the hamlet at all.
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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #22 on: May 22, 2015, 01:19:43 pm »
+1

It's still a useful comparison to make, though: Hamlet sifts one card compared to Necropolis or Shanty-Town-that-you-never-intend-to-trigger. This effect can help you choose between Hamlet and these other cards when both are available.

It's not the biggest deal in the world, yeah. It's not the most useful comparison in the world to make, yeah. But to say it isn't there and that it can't be viewed as sifting is incorrect and will be misleading in these circumstances. I won't be buying Hamlet just for the sifting ability because that's not actually good, but that doesn't make it worth not talking about or not categorizing it correctly.
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Awaclus

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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #23 on: May 22, 2015, 01:24:44 pm »
+2

Hamlet is not a sifter, it only draws 1 card.

So it sifts 1 card. Warehouse sifts 3, Inn sifts 2. They all reduce handsize, and they all let you switch out some number of cards for others. What exactly is your definition of a sifter?

Sifter is a card that, most importantly, helps you have your good cards in your hand more often. In that regard, it is similar to a trasher, but the main difference is that trashers remove the bad cards from your deck permanently while sifters keep them around and just skip over them. It is also similar to a drawer, but the main difference is that sifters remove bad cards from your shuffle by putting them into your discard pile while drawers put them into your hand. It's worth noting that Stables is both a drawer and a sifter.

Hamlet is not a sifter because it doesn't help you have your good cards in your hand more often. Combining Hamlet with terminal draw essentially results in a sifting effect (typically in addition to a drawing effect), though.


Another way of thinking of it is that sifting replaces bad cards in your hand with good cards. Hamlet doesn't replace bad cards in your hand with good cards, it replaces itself with a good card and then you get to discard the bad cards in your hand for other benefits.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2015, 01:26:47 pm by Awaclus »
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Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
« Reply #24 on: May 22, 2015, 02:01:45 pm »
0

It's still a useful comparison to make, though: Hamlet sifts one card compared to Necropolis or Shanty-Town-that-you-never-intend-to-trigger.

Where were you when we were talking about Wandering Minstrel?  :P
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