Hi, it's me again. So this list is small enough it's hard to find a cutoff that works well, so I just selected the ones that are very different, plus a couple of others that I wanted to talk about. Here we go...
I ranked Nobles 19th, here it's 12th.
Well weren't we generous to Nobles? This has been talked about quite a bit so count me in for thinking we overrated this one quite a bit. Nobles is really overcosted for what it does: for $6 you expect to get 4 VP, 4 cards, or +2 Cards/+2 Actions, but you don't get any of those things. Sure, you get some flexibility but really you're wanting exactly one of those things in most decks, and you're almost always very sad if you have to take Actions with one of your Nobles. If Nobles cost $5 I would probably put it in the bottom 50% of $5 cards, so the fact that it's around 50% here seems very wrong.
I ranked Border Village 14th, here it's 5th.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. 5th? Wow. I'm trying to see the rationale behind putting Border Village so high and I'm just not getting there. Yeah Border Village is pretty good but wow, this is just way too high and I really don't understand how people can put it above a lot of these other cards. Cards that cost $6 and up can usually break the game and BV just doesn't do that...
I ranked Forge 11th, here it's 16th.
A minor difference, but big enough that it needs to be talked about. Trashing your cards is really good, did you know that? Forge is really good at that and it gives you huge endgame flexibility -- I wonder if people are underestimating Forge because the endgame flexibility is rarely used to its full potential, kind of like Develop, Procession, and Inn on the other costs. I think I like that theory; Forge is super-great.
I ranked Fairgrounds 8th, here it's 13th.
Hey it's green and I've ranked it higher than the community! Big shocker there, though a lot of other people have chimed in agreeing with this particular read. A second stack of Provinces has a huge impact on the game if there's any sort of engine viable.
I ranked King's Court 4th, here it's 1st.
I thought very hard about every single card I put above King's Court (and I stand behind each one of them); so even though this is only three ranks of difference I feel like this is probably worth talking about because it shows some other cards we're underestimating (particularly Adventures cards). The cards I put above King's Court are the following:
Goons. Yeah, Goons is a big deal on every single board you see it on. I believe only Cultist and Rebuild can make Goons ignorable, otherwise the best strategy always revolves around playing Goons as often as possible. Sure, there's an argument to be made that KC should still be ranked higher, and there's something to that. It kind of depends on what criteria you're using to rank cards on this list. At the end of the day I had it 2nd and so did the community so it's tough to complain about.
I ranked Lost Arts 1st, here it's 4th.
During playtesting, we quickly found that Lost Arts was very, very, super-ultra extremely broken. Lost Arts makes it extremely easy to just draw your deck, and drawing your deck is really good. The first comparison made was to King's Court, which justified not nerfing the card (but in fact buffing it by making it an event, decreasing the opportunity cost by a whole bunch). The impact Lost Arts has on a game is huge and the cost is so small -- with King's Court you have to pick up several of them to start the craziness but here it's just $6 and a buy and now you draw your deck every turn. Nothing can come close, IMO.
I ranked Inheritance 3rd, here it's 9th.
This is the big one: the one that I expect to change drastically the next time the cards lists come out. The community has this one way off and I feel like it's because we're genuinely underestimating the impact this card has on the game.
I think in general we're still assuming that each card in the game has the opportunity cost of money and a buy to get it into your deck, and then a card an action to draw and play it. This means we underestimate Events and overestimate the Journey Token stuff. Inheritance probably suffers from this: you only need to hit $7 once and boom, everything changes.
The first thing is that you've not only "thinned" three Estates from your deck (this effect is ENORMOUS and I feel like that's a valuable little nugget of insight that isn't realized enough) but you've gained three really good cards and not lost those points. This effect is amazing. Like, it's way better than King's Court. I remember the first time this happened to me: I had inherited Oracles and I draw a hand of Throne Room, Throne Room, Estate, Estate, Copper and I think to myself "aww man, I dudded. This sucks." Then I realized "no, you idiot, this hand is AMAZING! Remember you've been buying Estates on $5 the past few turns?"
The second thing is that now you have this stack of cards that is really, really, overpowered. These four-costs now cost only $2 and are even worth points. This is like Ferry, which we all recognize is completely ridiculous, only even better.
Each of these aspects is probably being underestimated, which probably explains why Inheritance is put so low. Inheritance is bonkers (and really fun, too. Like, it's easily my favorite "card" in Adventures and is competing with the likes of Steward and Jack for the top spot in my heart), you guys should play with it more, it's super-great. <3
And here is my full ranking for reference.
1.) Lost Arts [X]
2.) Goons [X]
3.) Inheritance [X]
4.) King's Court [X]
5.) Grand Market [X]
6.) Hunting Grounds [X]
7.) Pathfinding [X]
8.) Fairgrounds [X]
9.) Hireling [X]
10.) Peddler [X]
11.) Forge [X]
12.) Altar [X]
13.) Prince [X]
14.) Border Village [X]
15.) Expand [X]
16.) Bank [X]
17.) Hoard [X]
18.) Training [X]
19.) Nobles [X]
20.) Farmland [X]
21.) Harem [X]
22.) Adventurer [X]
Author
Topic: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition: $6+ cards (Read 38823 times)