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Author Topic: Scout is bad, not horrible?  (Read 39257 times)

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Roadrunner7671

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Re: Scout is bad, not horrible?
« Reply #125 on: June 07, 2015, 11:12:49 am »
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I've mentioned this before, but if you want to see scout be good, try playing the intrigue campaigns on goko. I feel like a lot of those kingdoms were designed to make scout good.
Once I work through Base Cards Act 2, I think I will do those for sure!
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polot38

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Re: Scout is bad, not horrible?
« Reply #126 on: June 13, 2015, 09:07:36 pm »
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I'm just going to come out and say it: I like Scout. It combos with a lot of things, and I personally do not think it's horrible.
1. It combos with Crossroads for a deck that can use Victory cards as draw.
2. It has a weak combo with Wishing Well.
3. Can defend against deck inspector attacks if they leave Victory Cards on top of your deck.
4. Can let you draw more cards with draw-to-x, and can control what those cards are.
5. Harem, Nobles, Great Hall, etc.
6. Can combo with discard cards like Oasis and Inn (you draw Victory cards then discard them).
7. Mystic, Mystic, Mystic!
That's my opinion, but I think a lot of these reasons make Scout a card that you could buy every once and a while, and benefit from it!

1. Crossroads+Victory cards is almost never a viable engine option. Scout doesn't change that.
2. So you play a scout, then a wishing well. Okay, most likely you end up neutral, besides knowing what the top 2 cards in your deck are. Occasionally, you will have a 2-card lab, but that is really weak for a 2-card combo, especially one that has a card that is more-or-less dead outside of the combo. And then there is the opportunity cost... which is far too high for something as bland as that.
3. That is still very weak, and scout could well miss the attack.
4. This reason is very confusing. You play a card that does nothing so that you can draw one more card? That doesn't actually help draw-to-x cards at all; if you hadn't had scout, you would have drawn that extra card anyways. Sure, it lets you reorder the things on top of your deck, but again, that marginal benefit is far too high given its opportunity cost and what happens in the event that you do not manage to couple scout with your library.
5. You need 1/4 of your deck to be these cards before scout is not a drag on your deck, which takes a lot of effort, and can stymy your engine building in other ways; you may feel the pressure not to buy other things like villages and such. The only thing listed there which could make scout even close to not being a drag on your deck is harem+scout, but that is going to be hard to set up, and by that point you probably have terminals in your deck and may not want to risk drawing scout, for example, with a smithy. And again, let us not forget; scout carries with it an opportunity cost, and merely not hurting your deck doesn't make it a worthwhile buy.
6. This is just not viable 95%+ of the time. Having upwards of 1/4 of your deck be victory cards hurts your engine too much for something like this to be viable.
7. You need to collide scout with at least 2 mystics for it not to just be an overpriced, 2-card silver. Even then, it is still just a 3-card grand market + silver, which is extremely weak, given that it can miss and has a lower effect than buying 2 cards that are actually at the same price as the mystics that you bought. In addition, the chance of colliding that much is far too low to be viable.


All in all, i would not hesitate to call scout the worst card in the game. Some people like to give the title to thief, but at least with thief there are some non-contrived situations in which it could be useful (if your opponent goes for gardens, for example).
« Last Edit: June 13, 2015, 09:09:20 pm by polot38 »
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Roadrunner7671

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Re: Scout is bad, not horrible?
« Reply #127 on: June 14, 2015, 12:33:27 pm »
+2

I'm just going to come out and say it: I like Scout. It combos with a lot of things, and I personally do not think it's horrible.
1. It combos with Crossroads for a deck that can use Victory cards as draw.
2. It has a weak combo with Wishing Well.
3. Can defend against deck inspector attacks if they leave Victory Cards on top of your deck.
4. Can let you draw more cards with draw-to-x, and can control what those cards are.
5. Harem, Nobles, Great Hall, etc.
6. Can combo with discard cards like Oasis and Inn (you draw Victory cards then discard them).
7. Mystic, Mystic, Mystic!
That's my opinion, but I think a lot of these reasons make Scout a card that you could buy every once and a while, and benefit from it!

1. Crossroads+Victory cards is almost never a viable engine option. Scout doesn't change that.
2. So you play a scout, then a wishing well. Okay, most likely you end up neutral, besides knowing what the top 2 cards in your deck are. Occasionally, you will have a 2-card lab, but that is really weak for a 2-card combo, especially one that has a card that is more-or-less dead outside of the combo. And then there is the opportunity cost... which is far too high for something as bland as that.
3. That is still very weak, and scout could well miss the attack.
4. This reason is very confusing. You play a card that does nothing so that you can draw one more card? That doesn't actually help draw-to-x cards at all; if you hadn't had scout, you would have drawn that extra card anyways. Sure, it lets you reorder the things on top of your deck, but again, that marginal benefit is far too high given its opportunity cost and what happens in the event that you do not manage to couple scout with your library.
5. You need 1/4 of your deck to be these cards before scout is not a drag on your deck, which takes a lot of effort, and can stymy your engine building in other ways; you may feel the pressure not to buy other things like villages and such. The only thing listed there which could make scout even close to not being a drag on your deck is harem+scout, but that is going to be hard to set up, and by that point you probably have terminals in your deck and may not want to risk drawing scout, for example, with a smithy. And again, let us not forget; scout carries with it an opportunity cost, and merely not hurting your deck doesn't make it a worthwhile buy.
6. This is just not viable 95%+ of the time. Having upwards of 1/4 of your deck be victory cards hurts your engine too much for something like this to be viable.
7. You need to collide scout with at least 2 mystics for it not to just be an overpriced, 2-card silver. Even then, it is still just a 3-card grand market + silver, which is extremely weak, given that it can miss and has a lower effect than buying 2 cards that are actually at the same price as the mystics that you bought. In addition, the chance of colliding that much is far too low to be viable.


All in all, i would not hesitate to call scout the worst card in the game. Some people like to give the title to thief, but at least with thief there are some non-contrived situations in which it could be useful (if your opponent goes for gardens, for example).
A lot of what you said has already been stated and it made me realize that Scout may be worse than I thought, but the one thing I have a problem with is Mystic. You only need one Mystic in your hand and one in the top four cards of your deck to already draw two cards, if you have a Scout. With some trashing and a pretty good Mystic density, that is pretty likely. You're already up to at least $4, but you will control what you draw with your Mystic that was in the top 4 cards, so you're probably up to at least $5, which is enough for another Mystic. More Mystics let you buy green cards, which you can just pull out of your deck with Scout.
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polot38

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Re: Scout is bad, not horrible?
« Reply #128 on: June 14, 2015, 06:43:18 pm »
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I'm just going to come out and say it: I like Scout. It combos with a lot of things, and I personally do not think it's horrible.
1. It combos with Crossroads for a deck that can use Victory cards as draw.
2. It has a weak combo with Wishing Well.
3. Can defend against deck inspector attacks if they leave Victory Cards on top of your deck.
4. Can let you draw more cards with draw-to-x, and can control what those cards are.
5. Harem, Nobles, Great Hall, etc.
6. Can combo with discard cards like Oasis and Inn (you draw Victory cards then discard them).
7. Mystic, Mystic, Mystic!
That's my opinion, but I think a lot of these reasons make Scout a card that you could buy every once and a while, and benefit from it!

1. Crossroads+Victory cards is almost never a viable engine option. Scout doesn't change that.
2. So you play a scout, then a wishing well. Okay, most likely you end up neutral, besides knowing what the top 2 cards in your deck are. Occasionally, you will have a 2-card lab, but that is really weak for a 2-card combo, especially one that has a card that is more-or-less dead outside of the combo. And then there is the opportunity cost... which is far too high for something as bland as that.
3. That is still very weak, and scout could well miss the attack.
4. This reason is very confusing. You play a card that does nothing so that you can draw one more card? That doesn't actually help draw-to-x cards at all; if you hadn't had scout, you would have drawn that extra card anyways. Sure, it lets you reorder the things on top of your deck, but again, that marginal benefit is far too high given its opportunity cost and what happens in the event that you do not manage to couple scout with your library.
5. You need 1/4 of your deck to be these cards before scout is not a drag on your deck, which takes a lot of effort, and can stymy your engine building in other ways; you may feel the pressure not to buy other things like villages and such. The only thing listed there which could make scout even close to not being a drag on your deck is harem+scout, but that is going to be hard to set up, and by that point you probably have terminals in your deck and may not want to risk drawing scout, for example, with a smithy. And again, let us not forget; scout carries with it an opportunity cost, and merely not hurting your deck doesn't make it a worthwhile buy.
6. This is just not viable 95%+ of the time. Having upwards of 1/4 of your deck be victory cards hurts your engine too much for something like this to be viable.
7. You need to collide scout with at least 2 mystics for it not to just be an overpriced, 2-card silver. Even then, it is still just a 3-card grand market + silver, which is extremely weak, given that it can miss and has a lower effect than buying 2 cards that are actually at the same price as the mystics that you bought. In addition, the chance of colliding that much is far too low to be viable.


All in all, i would not hesitate to call scout the worst card in the game. Some people like to give the title to thief, but at least with thief there are some non-contrived situations in which it could be useful (if your opponent goes for gardens, for example).
A lot of what you said has already been stated and it made me realize that Scout may be worse than I thought, but the one thing I have a problem with is Mystic. You only need one Mystic in your hand and one in the top four cards of your deck to already draw two cards, if you have a Scout. With some trashing and a pretty good Mystic density, that is pretty likely. You're already up to at least $4, but you will control what you draw with your Mystic that was in the top 4 cards, so you're probably up to at least $5, which is enough for another Mystic. More Mystics let you buy green cards, which you can just pull out of your deck with Scout.

So your scenario is getting to, for the cost of 3 cards, draw two cards and gain $4, and that if they miss, it hurts a lot? Here is what you could do for cheaper using cards that are generally weak-ish anyways; 2 markets+silver. At least with that there isn't a risk of a non-collision.

And besides, getting that many mystics isn't realistic; you'd need 2 mystics for every 9 cards in your deck for your scenario to be average. Considering that you need to get (probably) 2 starting silvers in such a deck, you'd need to get 4 mystics for it to be worthwhile to buy a scout. (Well, i understand that the scout can take victory cards if you get lucky, but by that point it is drawing less than 1 card on average, and mystic has a chance to draw something without a scout, and then there is the opportunity cost of buying scout (at least a silver), so if anything i am overestimating the utility of scout). Considering that you cannot expect more than 5 mystics, because your opponent can always go the much stronger route of mystic + silver, there really is almost no room for scout in your deck.

In a mystic game, you'd be probably be much better off buying silvers than scout.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2015, 06:52:59 pm by polot38 »
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