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Author Topic: Cards you hate!  (Read 101503 times)

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SCSN

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #300 on: August 02, 2015, 06:30:42 pm »
+2

First of all, why introduce money at all if we just want to prove a point?

It's no longer about proving a point because it's already clear to me that you thoroughly misunderstand the card and are not open to changing your mind, so I just thought this bet would be fun. The money is to make it more exciting, make us more motivated to play that many unrated games, and give us an opportunity to actually back up the things we're saying, aka "putting our money where our mouth is".

It's ok to decline, I expected nothing less. It's just funny to know that despite Black Market being this terrible game-ruining crapshoot, it's apparently not enough of a game-ruining crapshoot to back it with a bet at 57-43 odds.

But I could have a thermometer which could distinguish between 70.05 and 70.00 while my body probably couldn't.

Speaking of fun things to know: the threshold of hearing in humans is about 20 micropascals. Assuming an ambient atmospheric pressure of 101325 pascals (standard unit), that means we can detect a 0.00000002% deviation from the background!
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Jeebus

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #301 on: August 02, 2015, 08:22:31 pm »
+1

It's ok to decline, I expected nothing less. It's just funny to know that despite Black Market being this terrible game-ruining crapshoot, it's apparently not enough of a game-ruining crapshoot to back it with a bet at 57-43 odds.

As I said, your whole argument with this bet rests on the assumption that I meant that each game with BM is 100% a crapshoot, or something like 90% of games (based on the odds). I haven't even remotely said that. I've said that it introduces significantly more luck than Swindler, on average. And I've said that playing to get the last Province and winning the game, is not the same thing as playing to get the important cards from the BM deck. Significantly, there is no way of the former happening after the first shuffle because of pure luck, that is before you've done anything remotely skilled-based. This one thing alone makes your whole argument nonsensical. Anyway, that's all I've said. Sorry to ruin your little fun time there.

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #302 on: August 03, 2015, 06:18:35 am »
+7

Even (or especially) if it was 100% luck, playing a game for money neither proves anything nor is not wanting to do it something you have to make up excuses for. Trying to force someone into a childish bet and claim it proves your point if he refuses is something i would expect from a toddler, not top dominion players.
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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #303 on: August 03, 2015, 08:23:30 am »
0

I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).

I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #304 on: August 03, 2015, 08:29:41 am »
0

I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).

I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.

Cultist+Big Money is not a simple strategy.
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Aleimon Thimble

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #305 on: August 03, 2015, 09:12:45 am »
0

I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).

I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.

Cultist+Big Money is not a simple strategy.

It isn't? How? I'm not an expert so I may be overlooking something, but it's just buying Cultist at 5 and other than that just Big Money, right? At some point you have to switch to Duchies but that's really the only difficulty I can think of...
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Awaclus

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #306 on: August 03, 2015, 10:01:18 am »
0

I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).

I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.

Cultist+Big Money is not a simple strategy.

It isn't? How? I'm not an expert so I may be overlooking something, but it's just buying Cultist at 5 and other than that just Big Money, right? At some point you have to switch to Duchies but that's really the only difficulty I can think of...

It's not. The decision between Cultist and Gold is trivial in the early game when most of the Ruins are still in the supply (you obviously get Cultist over Gold), but it becomes much harder as the Ruins pile keeps getting smaller, and you need to be pretty well informed about the state of your own deck/current shuffle and your opponent's deck/current shuffle to make the correct decision. It's also harder than usual to make the decision between Province and Gold/Cultist, and you need to consider the possibility of a 3-pile ending with Ruins, Cultists and Duchies running out. There's also a lot of reshuffle control decisions involved since you're playing so many Cultists every turn and might not always want to buy the most expensive card you can possibly get this turn. And since hitting $5 often in the early game is super important, there are sometimes interesting decisions regarding the other kingdom cards that help you hit $5 but are pretty bad later, and some cards can be surprisingly good at hitting $5 even though they don't look like that.

Basically, you need to consider all of the basic things you normally consider in regular engine games. It's certainly simpler than engines where you also need to consider card interactions (e.g. many Watchtower based engines) or engines where you have to make things work with less-than ideal components (e.g. using Procession as your only splitter), though.
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Roadrunner7671

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #307 on: August 03, 2015, 10:52:07 am »
0

I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).

I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
Chancellor actually isn't very weak, Thief has it's place in some decks, and even Scout isn't always 'too weak to bother with.'
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LastFootnote

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #308 on: August 03, 2015, 10:56:56 am »
0

I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).

I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
Chancellor actually isn't very weak, Thief has it's place in some decks, and even Scout isn't always 'too weak to bother with.'

Chancellor's effect may not be very weak for its cost, but it is weak for the Action it uses up. Unless you have a glut of +Actions (Fishing Village, Port, Champion) or there are no other terminal Actions on the board, you're better off spending your Actions on better terminal Action cards.

Thief has its place in some decks; those decks are exceedingly rare in 2-player games.
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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #309 on: August 03, 2015, 11:10:05 am »
0

I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).

I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
Chancellor actually isn't very weak, Thief has it's place in some decks, and even Scout isn't always 'too weak to bother with.'

Chancellor's effect may not be very weak for its cost, but it is weak for the Action it uses up. Unless you have a glut of +Actions (Fishing Village, Port, Champion) or there are no other terminal Actions on the board, you're better off spending your Actions on better terminal Action cards.

Thief has its place in some decks; those decks are exceedingly rare in 2-player games.
Chancellor/Stash immediately jumps to mind whenever someone says how weak Chancellor is. It's also good if you have a Gold in play and want to shuffle it in, or if it's a Bank, Counterfiet, Loan, or any other valuable treasure. Thief is almost always good on a Chapel board, unless there is tons of virtual money.
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Awaclus

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #310 on: August 03, 2015, 11:14:52 am »
+3

Chancellor/Stash immediately jumps to mind whenever someone says how weak Chancellor is.

Yeah, and that happens, like, once every 300 games or something like that.
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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #311 on: August 03, 2015, 11:15:56 am »
0

Chancellor/Stash immediately jumps to mind whenever someone says how weak Chancellor is.

Yeah, and that happens, like, once every 300 games or something like that.
What about using it to prevent your good cards from missing the shuffle?
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LastFootnote

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #312 on: August 03, 2015, 11:19:59 am »
+1

Chancellor/Stash immediately jumps to mind whenever someone says how weak Chancellor is.

Yeah, and that happens, like, once every 300 games or something like that.
What about using it to prevent your good cards from missing the shuffle?

Too often you have to choose between playing your good cards and playing Chancellor. That's the problem.
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Roadrunner7671

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #313 on: August 03, 2015, 11:28:05 am »
0

Chancellor/Stash immediately jumps to mind whenever someone says how weak Chancellor is.

Yeah, and that happens, like, once every 300 games or something like that.
What about using it to prevent your good cards from missing the shuffle?

Too often you have to choose between playing your good cards and playing Chancellor. That's the problem.
If you can trash down quickly, get a lot of villages or get draw cards with +actions, Chancellor can be a good part of your deck. Chancellor BM also beats straight up BM.
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AdamH

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #314 on: August 03, 2015, 11:47:32 am »
+1

I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).

I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.

I totally feel you there, bro, but I'll have to disagree with you on Jack.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #315 on: August 03, 2015, 11:51:05 am »
+2

If you can trash down quickly, get a lot of villages or get draw cards with +actions, Chancellor can be a good part of your deck.

If you trash down quickly, Chancellor gets a lot less valuable since you're likely shuffling every turn anyway.

Chancellor BM also beats straight up BM.

So does almost every terminal Action card in the game. Most of the other ones beat Chancellor BM, too.
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nate_w

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #316 on: August 03, 2015, 02:46:59 pm »
+6

I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).

I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
Chancellor actually isn't very weak, Thief has it's place in some decks, and even Scout isn't always 'too weak to bother with.'

So, I think this is becoming a repeat of that scout article you tried to write.  I'm not sure exactly where the disconnect is between what everyone else agrees to be true and what you believe about cards like these (although I'm more with you than not on Thief).  I THINK it might be that you are missing the idea of opportunity cost?

So, like you keep saying things along the lines of "chancellor's power is better than a silver by itself" which is quite clearly true, but I think misses the costs of buying chancellor over, at the very worst, a silver (although on most boards there will be another 3 or 4 cost you want more than both chancellor and silver, for varying reasons.  Let's walk through some of the problems of buying a chancellor instead of say, a silver.

- Problem 1: If you have any terminal draw in your deck, which you will quite often want (like, way more often than you want chancellor), you have a chance of drawing chancellor dead, lowering the value of that hand by $2. 

- Problem 2: Ok, so you recognize the nice benefit that chancellor provides of cycling you quickly, so that on turn 3, when you draw Chancellor, CopperX3, Estate, you can instantly shuffle in your 5-cost you really want in your deck (and you seem to get this, which is actually one of the more tricky concepts for a lot of people to get).

But now when your Mountebank or whatever your 5 cost is collides with your Chancellor, your Chancellor is again a dead card, lowering your hand value by $2 again.  In fact, this is a basic concept of not wanting terminals to collide.  Unless you will never be buying another terminal in the game, you probably don't want chancellor, because, ok, so that ability he has is nice, but not as nice as that other terminal you want. 

So, ok, you're aware that you might have a terminal collision so you add a couple villages to make sure that doesn't happen.  Well now you've spent 3 buys on a fancy silver.  Probably not the best use of buys/money.

- Problem 3: In any sort of engine board, you don't want stop cards.  Chancellor is a stop card.

So the basic problem is that if you plan on having any other terminals in your deck... ever, then chancellor is probably worse for your deck than silver, because it's benefit is worse than the cost.  Note that if you tweak it just a little into scavenger, it's suddenly much more useful in many more games, even at the higher cost.

But, ok, so yeah maybe the board is so weak that chancellor/big money is actually the best thing doing!  It's certainly possible.  So let's just see how often that happens.  Here's a list of my latest games where chancellor was on the board.  Let's just see if there are any other terminals in each game that I would want in each game, which might make it so I don't buy chancellor. 


Game 1 - Goons             Game 2 - Butcher     Game 3 - Ghost Ship         Game 4 - Vault if I'm going big money, probably no terminals if I'm not.    Game 5 - Goons         Game 6 - Nobles/Courtyard     Game 7 - Butcher     Game 8 - Cutpurse        Game 9 - Masquerade           Game 10 - Ambassador.

I mean, are there any of these games where you'd prefer chancellor in your deck to the card listed?  Mayyybe game 8?  The point is, when people say chancellor is weak, they mean that when they look at a board, it takes like 1 second to be decide that chancellor is completely ignorable because there is some other terminal they want more, so chancellor is worse than silver. 

The same goes with scout.  Ok, so you can come up with some contrived situations where you are not SUPER unhappy to have scout in your deck.  But it's very rare that there wasn't another card that you could have bought instead of scout that you want in your deck more.  Hope this helps.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2015, 02:50:06 pm by nate_w »
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Graystripe77

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #317 on: August 03, 2015, 04:58:17 pm »
+4

Scout. The only truly bad card in the game. Others may be subpar, but at least they don't require a ton of support just to be mediocre.
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Roadrunner7671

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #318 on: August 03, 2015, 08:25:24 pm »
0

Scout. The only truly bad card in the game. Others may be subpar, but at least they don't require a ton of support just to be mediocre.
Pearl Diver and Duchess, maybe Secret Chamber
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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #319 on: August 03, 2015, 08:26:43 pm »
0

I dislike cards that encourage simple strategies (only that card+Big Money, for example). Things like Cultist, Jack of All Trades, to a lesser extent Minion (it does function with a few other Action cards).

I'm also annoyed by cards that are simply too weak to ever bother with, such as Chancellor, Thief and Scout.
Chancellor actually isn't very weak, Thief has it's place in some decks, and even Scout isn't always 'too weak to bother with.'

So, I think this is becoming a repeat of that scout article you tried to write.  I'm not sure exactly where the disconnect is between what everyone else agrees to be true and what you believe about cards like these (although I'm more with you than not on Thief).  I THINK it might be that you are missing the idea of opportunity cost?

So, like you keep saying things along the lines of "chancellor's power is better than a silver by itself" which is quite clearly true, but I think misses the costs of buying chancellor over, at the very worst, a silver (although on most boards there will be another 3 or 4 cost you want more than both chancellor and silver, for varying reasons.  Let's walk through some of the problems of buying a chancellor instead of say, a silver.

- Problem 1: If you have any terminal draw in your deck, which you will quite often want (like, way more often than you want chancellor), you have a chance of drawing chancellor dead, lowering the value of that hand by $2. 

- Problem 2: Ok, so you recognize the nice benefit that chancellor provides of cycling you quickly, so that on turn 3, when you draw Chancellor, CopperX3, Estate, you can instantly shuffle in your 5-cost you really want in your deck (and you seem to get this, which is actually one of the more tricky concepts for a lot of people to get).

But now when your Mountebank or whatever your 5 cost is collides with your Chancellor, your Chancellor is again a dead card, lowering your hand value by $2 again.  In fact, this is a basic concept of not wanting terminals to collide.  Unless you will never be buying another terminal in the game, you probably don't want chancellor, because, ok, so that ability he has is nice, but not as nice as that other terminal you want. 

So, ok, you're aware that you might have a terminal collision so you add a couple villages to make sure that doesn't happen.  Well now you've spent 3 buys on a fancy silver.  Probably not the best use of buys/money.

- Problem 3: In any sort of engine board, you don't want stop cards.  Chancellor is a stop card.

So the basic problem is that if you plan on having any other terminals in your deck... ever, then chancellor is probably worse for your deck than silver, because it's benefit is worse than the cost.  Note that if you tweak it just a little into scavenger, it's suddenly much more useful in many more games, even at the higher cost.

But, ok, so yeah maybe the board is so weak that chancellor/big money is actually the best thing doing!  It's certainly possible.  So let's just see how often that happens.  Here's a list of my latest games where chancellor was on the board.  Let's just see if there are any other terminals in each game that I would want in each game, which might make it so I don't buy chancellor. 


Game 1 - Goons             Game 2 - Butcher     Game 3 - Ghost Ship         Game 4 - Vault if I'm going big money, probably no terminals if I'm not.    Game 5 - Goons         Game 6 - Nobles/Courtyard     Game 7 - Butcher     Game 8 - Cutpurse        Game 9 - Masquerade           Game 10 - Ambassador.

I mean, are there any of these games where you'd prefer chancellor in your deck to the card listed?  Mayyybe game 8?  The point is, when people say chancellor is weak, they mean that when they look at a board, it takes like 1 second to be decide that chancellor is completely ignorable because there is some other terminal they want more, so chancellor is worse than silver. 

The same goes with scout.  Ok, so you can come up with some contrived situations where you are not SUPER unhappy to have scout in your deck.  But it's very rare that there wasn't another card that you could have bought instead of scout that you want in your deck more.  Hope this helps.
Yes, you are mostly correct here. However, on problem 2, your Mountebank and Chancellor would not have even had the chance to collide if you would not have used Chancellor's ability. Thus, Chancellor let you play your Mountebank.
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Seprix

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #320 on: August 03, 2015, 10:23:32 pm »
0

Scout. The only truly bad card in the game. Others may be subpar, but at least they don't require a ton of support just to be mediocre.
Pearl Diver and Duchess, maybe Secret Chamber

Duchess is fine if you have next to no Terminals. It's essentially a Silver that you *might* draw dead. There are times you want this card.

Pearl Diver is great in games with Vineyards and Scrying Pool for example. They're awesome to gain in engines with +buy, they never hurt ever.

Secret Chamber is amazing in decks with Double Tactician/Village. It's essentially a Vault that doesn't draw you anything, so if you have the draw, Secret Chamber can be nice, especially if you can simply draw all those juicy action cards you discarded with a single scrying pool. Huge payload if you can make it work.

There is no good strategy with Scout. Using Scout to draw up Great Halls is awful, and using it to draw up Nobles is okay at best. You'd have to go so out of your way to make Scout draw great.
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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #321 on: August 04, 2015, 01:27:38 am »
0

Scout. The only truly bad card in the game. Others may be subpar, but at least they don't require a ton of support just to be mediocre.
Pearl Diver and Duchess, maybe Secret Chamber

Duchess is fine if you have next to no Terminals. It's essentially a Silver that you *might* draw dead. There are times you want this card.

Pearl Diver is great in games with Vineyards and Scrying Pool for example. They're awesome to gain in engines with +buy, they never hurt ever.

Secret Chamber is amazing in decks with Double Tactician/Village. It's essentially a Vault that doesn't draw you anything, so if you have the draw, Secret Chamber can be nice, especially if you can simply draw all those juicy action cards you discarded with a single scrying pool. Huge payload if you can make it work.

There is no good strategy with Scout. Using Scout to draw up Great Halls is awful, and using it to draw up Nobles is okay at best. You'd have to go so out of your way to make Scout draw great.
Scout is good as well in Scrying Pool and Vineyard decks. With Scrying Pool, you can even rearrange the cards to draw more. Pearl Diver is bad if and when you draw it dead. Duchess helps your opponent, how often would you really rather have it over a Silver. Once every 400 games? And Secret Chamber and Tactican are rarely going to be on the same board, and with heavy trashing, Secret Chamber is so much worse.
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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #322 on: August 04, 2015, 02:23:05 am »
+1

Scout. The only truly bad card in the game. Others may be subpar, but at least they don't require a ton of support just to be mediocre.
Pearl Diver and Duchess, maybe Secret Chamber

Duchess is fine if you have next to no Terminals. It's essentially a Silver that you *might* draw dead. There are times you want this card.

Pearl Diver is great in games with Vineyards and Scrying Pool for example. They're awesome to gain in engines with +buy, they never hurt ever.

Secret Chamber is amazing in decks with Double Tactician/Village. It's essentially a Vault that doesn't draw you anything, so if you have the draw, Secret Chamber can be nice, especially if you can simply draw all those juicy action cards you discarded with a single scrying pool. Huge payload if you can make it work.

There is no good strategy with Scout. Using Scout to draw up Great Halls is awful, and using it to draw up Nobles is okay at best. You'd have to go so out of your way to make Scout draw great.
Scout is good as well in Scrying Pool and Vineyard decks. With Scrying Pool, you can even rearrange the cards to draw more. Pearl Diver is bad if and when you draw it dead. Duchess helps your opponent, how often would you really rather have it over a Silver. Once every 400 games? And Secret Chamber and Tactican are rarely going to be on the same board, and with heavy trashing, Secret Chamber is so much worse.
I don't think people would ever get Duchess over a Silver.  It cost 2 (or 0 most of the time).
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Asper

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #323 on: August 04, 2015, 08:54:22 am »
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Scout. The only truly bad card in the game. Others may be subpar, but at least they don't require a ton of support just to be mediocre.
Pearl Diver and Duchess, maybe Secret Chamber

All of those cost $2. Very often there's no better card at that price point in a kingdom, so the decision is usually whether to get them or nothing. Pearl Diver rarely hurts, even though there are situations where a cantrip is something you have to think twice about. Secret Chamber is okay to reach $4 consistently on a board without discard attacks, making it viable for a few alt-VP cards. Also, i feel the relative amount of attacks it helps against has increased a little with the last few expansions, especially Dark Ages. It's still very bad usually, but again, it just has to be better than nothing, and there are boards where it (barely) manages to do this. The same goes for Duchess, which puts this to it's ultimate conclusion by coming for free entirely (sometimes).

For Scout, there's always at least Silver, and that alone is most of the time the better alternative. If Silver isn't something you want, chances are there will be at least one other kingdom card you'll prefer at $4, $3 or $2. And if even that is not the case, it's still not trivial to decide Scout is better than nothing. Often it isn't. The $2s you listed have the same problem, but it's their only problem.
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Marcory

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Re: Cards you hate!
« Reply #324 on: August 04, 2015, 12:26:11 pm »
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Like all $2 cards (barring maybe Chapel), Duchess can be important in some kingdoms and completely ignorable in others. For example, Lighthouse is a very powerful $2 card, but is often skippable in Kingdoms without attacks.

Lots of engines prefer coins from cards (even Terminal Silver) over Treasures. Scrying Pool, Double Tactician, Herald, Wandering Minstrel, and Minion are the most obvious of these, but there are many others (such as Village+Draw to X). Most of the time, Duchess's coins will outweigh the help it give your opponents, especially if it's the only source of non-Treasure coin available.  Duchess is also useful in Duke games, where free Duchesses can help you win the Duke/Duchy race, and in slogs, where even getting $3 can be a challenge. Free Duchesses can be helpful when you're greening, as well.

Duchess is not a world-beater, and you'll almost never buy Duchess over, say, Militia or Steward, but it fills a useful niche at $2 and is sometimes handy for free.
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