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[philosophyguy]

I just finished a game on isotropic with the following cards:

Goons
Ghost Ship
Contraband
Bridge
Sea Hag
Militia
Fishing Village
Hamlet
Crossroads
Cellar

When analyzing this board, I immediately see that 1) the decks are likely to be filled with lots of bad cards (Sea Hag, no trashing) and 2) there is almost no drawing power (only Ghost Ship gives net cards). Based on that, I guessed that the game was going to end on piles.

For me, the interesting strategic choice was whether to go for Goons or Ghost Ship early (we both opened Sea Hag/FV). Goons has the huge advantage of VP chips, but the discard attack is likely to be mild because the decks are so filled with junk. Ghost Ship is not likely to draw into great cards, but it also forces the opponent to see bad cards twice. I made the decision to use early buys for Ghost Ships and then bought Goons later, when my buying power increased. It worked out in this game, but I don't think it was the optimal strategy, and I'd be curious about other opinions.

[ackack]

With the presence of useful 2s for this situation - Hamlet, Cellar - Goons is quite important here and should probably be the focus. Since the game should end pretty quickly, I think getting Goons as fast as possible is the priority even though the attack isn't as good as sometimes. Use the extra buys from the Hamlets to pick up a few extra Goons points.

[jonts26]

With a junky deck, Ghost Ship will be absolutely devastating. The only concern here is that it might help your opponent line up a double goons turn, which may be enough to win this game. Still an early Ghost ship will keep them from getting two goons in the first place. I'd look to add some Goons and village/hamlets buying a bunch of coppers for the points then getting as many duchies as possible for points. Though this is one of those games that may require you to react a bit more to what your opponent is doing.

[popsofctown]

Ghost ship is less powerful in junky games and more powerful in slimdeck games.

Ghost ship might be good here but not because of junk.

[Robz888]

For me, the interesting strategic choice was whether to go for Goons or Ghost Ship early (we both opened Sea Hag/FV). Goons has the huge advantage of VP chips, but the discard attack is likely to be mild because the decks are so filled with junk. Ghost Ship is not likely to draw into great cards, but it also forces the opponent to see bad cards twice. I made the decision to use early buys for Ghost Ships and then bought Goons later, when my buying power increased. It worked out in this game, but I don't think it was the optimal strategy, and I'd be curious about other opinions.

Did the game end on piles? I would expect Curses, Fishing Villages, and Hamlets to run out pretty quickly. Goons might have been more important that Ghost Ship, purely for earning a few more VP chips before the game ends.

A Bridge or two or three could have really helped your Goons here, because you'd have the +Actions to the play Bridges, thanks to all the Hamlets and Fishing Villages.

[dondon151]

Ghost ship is less powerful in junky games and more powerful in slimdeck games.

Ghost ship might be good here but not because of junk.

How do you figure this?

[DG]

There are quite a lot of small interactions here that might be someone's undoing. The dynamics of the fishing villages and hamlets change when you're playing with 3 card hands. These sorts of games often swing more heavily than you'd expect because a losing player can't buy high and ends up filling the deck with low cost clutter, clutter that might eventually be useful but doesn't help you buy the good stuff.

[popsofctown]

Ghost ship is less powerful in junky games and more powerful in slimdeck games.

Ghost ship might be good here but not because of junk.

How do you figure this?

If you get hit by ghost ship and have a hand of consistent quality, you don't have any choices.  For instance, if you have 5 coppers, you're going to topdeck 3 and that's that.

If you have two golds and three curses, or three golds and two curses, Ghost Ship presents a choice.  You can screw up your next hand with curses, or enhance it with golds.  In the first case you might bounce a gold or two to hit province, in the second the choice is unambiguous.

Basically, inconsistent deck quality amps up the deck manipulation component your opponent gets off Ghost Ship, but the overall effect is the same, every couple times through their deck they will have a hand size of 3. 

Militia is dramatically worse when there is trash, and when you switch to Ghost Ships it makes it seems like Ghost Ship is thriving on it.  And being forced to choose between -2$ this turn or next turn seems like a horrible choice you didn't have to make when you were playing a slimdeck game, but that's because it was -2$ no matter what, which is actually a more damaging effect.

[jonts26]

I'm not sure I follow your examples here. Neither one is an example of a slim deck game for starters. Having a hand full of copper or having several curses mixed in with your golds are both pretty junky hands. And the examples provided don't even illustrate much. I could make up an example like say I have a nice sleek deck and I draw 5 Golds. Well then please, please Ghost Ship me.

Second, I think you're overstating the benefit of deck manipulation. There are of course instances where it's helpful (Baron, Tournament, etc), and maybe it's true to a lesser extent in Big Money, but you're missing the real power of the ship there. In topdecking instead of discarding, Ghost Ship slows down your reshuffle considerably. Less reshuffling means fewer plays of your big cards, even if you do have the ability to line them up once in a while. It's really as simple as that.

[WanderingWinder]

Militia's attack is much much weaker when you've got a deck with high standard deviation in its card values, i.e. you have some really strong power and really bad junk, so discarding two isn't so bad, 'cause you can ditch the junk without much pain.
Ghost ship is a bit more complicated, but depending on how junked up your deck is, it's also weaker in junky decks. That's because haven/courtyard kind of effects matter much more (positively) for those decks. Here's what I mean: think of a deck with 2 golds, 4 silver, 7 copper, and X worthless cards - curses, estates, duchies, whatever. Now, if this deck gets ghost shipped, it's going to be really hard to get those 2 golds together with a silver to get to 8; if X were small, then the deck would be in great position to be grabbing a lot of green pretty quick, and the ghost ship is therefore a significant impediment. If X is large, you've got to do quite a bit more build-up anyway, and you really need golds. So if I have silver silver copper estate curse, I have two pretty good options: put both silvers back in an effort to get up to gold next turn, or put silver and a junk card back, grab silver and hopefully something good. And chances are, I'm not getting ghost shipped every turn, because you have a bunch of junk too. If I have a lot more curses than you, I'm probably lost anyway.
Actually, the other thing is that you can circumvent the long build-up fairly often anyway, and aim for duchies and a three-pile. Which gives even more options.
In general, more options is better, so more variety when getting shipped is better for you. The reason that's not true with your hand of five golds is that what you actually need is only one good option - you're more likely to have that with more options, but it's not JUST options that give you a good option. But also, if you have 5 golds in your hand reliably, either you're playing treasure map (in which case, I shouldn't have gone ghost ship!), or you're playing very poorly.

[jonts26]

Well the 5 gold example was meant to be a contrived thing for sake of arguing against the proof by example fallacy. I understand what you're saying about the lining up of money cards to score a province or even a duchy but I just don't buy it as all that significant. If X is large, the odds of having both gold and a silver in the space of a hand and a half is also going to be small. Sure there is the chance that it happens, but the slowing down of the deck is just so much more powerful.

[WanderingWinder]

Well the 5 gold example was meant to be a contrived thing for sake of arguing against the proof by example fallacy. I understand what you're saying about the lining up of money cards to score a province or even a duchy but I just don't buy it as all that significant. If X is large, the odds of having both gold and a silver in the space of a hand and a half is also going to be small. Sure there is the chance that it happens, but the slowing down of the deck is just so much more powerful.

No, but you're missing my point then. If I have a gold and a silver and crap, then sure, I can either take it now or later and I have great choices. But I'm talking more silvers and coppers - weaker hand than that. Splitting them up doesn't do much damage. Or like, copper copper curse curse estate. just put the coppers back, and it's actually a help. Silver copper copper estate curse. I mean, in heavy cursing games, these are the hands you really get. And they ARE slowed down. I'm not trying to say that ghost ship's attack doesn't hurt junk decks. It absolutely does. What I'm saying is that it doesn't hurt relatively as much as it does with faster decks.
Gonna use some extreme examples here to make my point. Remake+money deck, let's say it takes 15 turns to hit 4 provinces? Ghost ship's gonna slow it down like 6 turns. If instead, you throw cursers into the mix on both sides, let's say your game is taking 25 turns. Now it might take 33 or something, but while that's more of a slow-down overall, it's less of a percentage slow-down.
Okay, the cursing numbers I made up off the top of my head - check me on those. The others I have a pretty good feel for.

[jonts26]

Well, I'm not feeling up to simulating it but there is a difference in your two examples. In the first, you want to get a ghost ship pretty quickly. In the second you want to get a curser or two first and then get a ghost ship later on and you'll be able to play it less due to your own larger deck so the single card sees comparatively less play in the junky deck.

Honestly though, I'm not even sure what were arguing anymore. We both agree that Ghost Ship is typically a powerful attack regardless of the junk level of your deck and is often a good buy. I might reconsider my position that it's more powerful in a fat deck than a slim deck, but I'll have to think about and maybe play some sample games or do some simulations.

[WanderingWinder]

Honestly though, I'm not even sure what were arguing anymore. We both agree that Ghost Ship is typically a powerful attack regardless of the junk level of your deck and is often a good buy. I might reconsider my position that it's more powerful in a fat deck than a slim deck, but I'll have to think about and maybe play some sample games or do some simulations.

Well, sorta. I actually think it's a pretty crummy buy when you've got cursers on board, unless there some way to clear all those curses out really quickly. Like, I'd definitely prefer monument, probably even cutpurse in a lot of cases.

[jonts26]

Ok after giving it some though I'll concede this one to you. I'm still not so sure that it's the fact that the attack itself is any weaker overall, but its just so comparatively weaker to the curses/ambassador whatever it is that junked up the deck in the first place that by the time you'd want to even consider ghost ship, helping your own deck might take precedence.

I do think though that the deck manipulation aspect is more likely to help you with a slimmer deck in more cases. Baron/Tournament/Treasure Map etc all want thin decks to be really viable anyway (well baron to a lesser extent perhaps). Also in a think deck its usually a quick race for provinces and the ghost ship can help you avoid a bad situation maybe turning duchy/duchy into province/estate or something. In a junked up deck you might be able to buy duchy/copper instead of estate/estate or something like that. This might happen more frequently but the overall impact is much less.

[popsofctown]

Using five Golds doesn't invalidate my example in anyway that I can see.  Actually, it's a valid example as well.  If I have five golds in hand, I have 15$ in hand.  When you ghost ship me, I have no choice but to drop to 9$ and draw the guaranteed 6$ next turn.

What if instead I had 2 Plats, a Gold, a Silver, and a curse?  Well now in the deck with inconsistent card quality, I have choices about how much money to use this turn and how much to save for later.  I'm going to put 7$ on my deck, the plat and the silver, so I buy the same province and have more money next turn.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I think any simulations with Ghost Ship are not going to be too illustrative (at least in Geronimoo's simulator). This is my understanding of Ghost Ship: a single Ghost Ship attack does a couple of things. First, it slows cycling by 2 cards. Second it turns 2 "average" 5-card turns into a bad 3-card turn and a good 5-card turn. (Geronimoo's play rules screw this up, playing a "good" 3-card turn and a "bad" 5-card turn, which is much worse.) In a lot of cases, this good 5-card turn is a big deal, and does a reasonable amount to weaken the attack to the point where I feel that while it's still a good attack, it's not great. However, it becomes really strong when you are able to play Ghost Ship on multiple consecutive turns, because instead of one improved turn per Ghost Ship play, they only get one per string of Ghost Ship plays, giving you a much greater ratio of upside to downside in the attack.

Now, in the context of a "junky" deck, I think Ghost Ship struggles a bit, mostly because your own deck is "junky" as well. This allows less consecutive Ghost Ship plays, weakening the attack. Plus, it makes the +2 Cards you get for yourself, less useful.

[popsofctown]

Losing consecutive plays isn't too big a deal.

+cards does indeed mean less, but that just means you buy it later than usual. 

[WanderingWinder]

Losing consecutive plays isn't too big a deal.

It really, really is.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Losing consecutive plays isn't too big a deal.

I don't think I could disagree more. A single Ghost Ship is simply a "good" attack. It's the consecutive plays that make it a power card (much the same way as chaining makes torturer a power card).