when we talk about deck thinning, what we really mean is getting a high density of cards we want to be playing relative to cards we don't: action density for engines, high-treasure density for big money, etc.
Hmm, that's not what I'm talking about when I talk about thinning. When I talk about thinning, I'm just talking about removing bad cards from my deck -- you could say "trashing bad cards" and it would mean the exact same thing -- and I use those other terms, action density and money density, to talk about those particular things. Thinning certainly helps with those.
- Do you ever refer to decks without trashing as "thin" if they have a really good density of cards to be played, or do you just use that word for trashing?
- Are there any kinds of engines that can consistently do well without good action density?
The reason being thin is good is precisely because of consistency. Yeah, your engine can work and kick off if you have enough good cards that can draw it, but if the operative word is consistency (which it usually is/should be) then removing stop cards is the most important thing. Sifting helps, having lots of components helps, top-decking with Courtyard or Scheme or Gear or Haven helps, having Wharves or Haunted Woods out helps, but nothing is as good at achieving consistency as thinning.
"Consistently do well"? Well of course you can do well enough consistently enough even without thinning and in the presence of junking attacks. More on that later.
But of course, on boards without trashing (or even some boards with it), we go about getting that density in other ways, like trying to mass-buy desirable cards or avoid being on the wrong side of a junking battle.
I wanted to generate some discussion about card-type density, but I don't really know where to start, so here are some possible questions you guys can answer:
[...]
- What kinds of boards make you confident enough that you could get an action-dense enough engine without trashing?
"confident enough", well if all of the components are there then I weigh the quality of the trashing and the quality of draw vs. the strategies that don't involve me drawing a bunch of cards. This is extremely abstract and the question "what kinds of boards" that you want answered is extremely difficult to answer. If you want the fish, sorry, you can't have mine
but I will teach you how I go fishing. You're a musician, yeah? Sightreading is a very valuable skill more than practicing the same song over and over again.
"Quality of the trashing" is just how many stop cards can I get out of my deck and how quickly I can do it. Trade Route is bad. Hermit still leaves seven stop cards in my deck. Remodel is no bueno against Cursing attacks. Is the trashing non-terminal? That makes it much better because I can load up on trashers and not worry about collision.
"Quality of draw" is what does it take to increase my handsize? If the only village is Fishing Village and the only draw is Witch or Ghost Ship, I'm going to have a really really tough time getting a lot of cards in my hand. Talk through what your awesome turns look like, and if it sounds really laborious to get there and to play, then it probably is.
You also have to take your payload into account, but that's not what you asked, you asked about thinning. I'm also talking about draw because you can't really talk about one of those without talking about the other.
What are you comparing it to? Many times the landscape of the game is that it's hard to really do anything, which makes Big money really bad, so an engine is still best, but if there's a slog option or something that doesn't care about being full of junk or drawing cards, well then the engine becomes much less attractive.
So what do you take away from this? How do you know when it's good enough to play? Well I can't directly transfer that knowledge to you, and even if I could I wouldn't do it. I would tell you to go out there and learn it yourself. The next time you think it's close, play the engine. If the engine never gets there, you just learned something very valuable (don't be afraid of losing a pro game! I know this is something you don't like to do, but I promise you what you learn from that will pay dividends on your pro rating in a couple of months). If the engine is close, then don't say it was too weak, just look for ways to improve it and just tell yourself ymyosl. You'd be surprised how infrequently these things happen, though.
- When would you use trashing to get better high-treasure density in a big money game?
1. A Colony game
2. Estate-trashing is always good for Big Money
3. The presence of attacks (having a thin deck allows you to play your attacks more often and in some cases will allow you to make a deck that is more resiliant to attacks -- discard attacks in particular).
There are lots of decks where money is the focus where you want to do this, but you aren't playing Big Money at that point, so I'll assume that isn't what you're asking. This post is already long enough so I won't go answering questions you didn't ask.