Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Beyond Awesome]

At least Chapel is number 1, as it should be.

[Dingan]

At least Chapel is number 1, as it should be.

Does anybody NOT think Chapel is #1?

[aku_chi]

At least Chapel is number 1, as it should be.

I think Ambassador deserves the top spot.  Ambassador is so rarely ignorable and it has a such a major impact on the game.  Okay, the same can be said for Chapel.  But I think there are more boards where it is only slightly disadvantageous to ignore Chapel.  On most boards, if you ignore Ambassador, you get wrecked.  I wonder, are there statistics for how often 5/2 openings lose on an Ambassador board?

[Roadrunner7671]

At least Chapel is number 1, as it should be.

Does anybody NOT think Chapel is #1?

Me! Pick me!

[Aleimon Thimble]

At least Chapel is number 1, as it should be.

Does anybody NOT think Chapel is #1?

I had Chapel around #10 or so. It's incredibly strong, but there are several cards that are even more game-breaking, including Page, Ambassador, Cultist, Goons, King's Court and Scrying Pool.

[Awaclus]

At least Chapel is number 1, as it should be.

Does anybody NOT think Chapel is #1?

I don't think it's #1. It's worse than Ambassador for sure. Comparisons between Chapel and cards like King's Court are a lot more difficult because they have very little in common, but I'd still say KC is stronger than Chapel too.

[AdamH]

Rebuild and Cultist should certainly be higher than Chapel. Masquerade, Urchin, and Ambassador should probably be higher than Chapel. Lost Arts for sure, Goons for sure.

There are arguments to be made for even more cards -- so it's pretty clear-cut for me that Chapel isn't the strongest card in Dominion. Sometimes getting rid of your cards as quickly as possible isn't the best thing ever, but the games where those other cards don't fit into the best strategy possible AND change the landscape of the game because of their presence are very rare.

[markusin]

At least Chapel is number 1, as it should be.

Does anybody NOT think Chapel is #1?

I had Chapel around #10 or so. It's incredibly strong, but there are several cards that are even more game-breaking, including Page, Ambassador, Cultist, Goons, King's Court and Scrying Pool.

I also had Chapel around #10, but I can't deny that it's low cost contributes makes it hard to compare to other elite cards. I had Ambassador, Masquerade, and Rebuild in my top 3.

[ehunt]

Part of it depends on how seriously you take price into account: Chapel is clearly the best deal in Dominion, and Adventurer the worst. This in turn makes Chapel a really good card, and Adventurer a really bad card, but to me it's not quite enough to make them the best/worst cards.

What price do you have to put on Chapel for it to become a bad card? It's a fine 5 but not overpowered; probably worse than Count but not definitely so. At 6 it's too expensive and undoubtedly one of the worst, but still not a total dud.

[Awaclus]

Part of it depends on how seriously you take price into account: Chapel is clearly the best deal in Dominion, and Adventurer the worst. This in turn makes Chapel a really good card, and Adventurer a really bad card, but to me it's not quite enough to make them the best/worst cards.

What price do you have to put on Chapel for it to become a bad card? It's a fine 5 but not overpowered; probably worse than Count but not definitely so. At 6 it's too expensive and undoubtedly one of the worst, but still not a total dud.

Forge costs $7, it's only slightly better than Chapel, and it's a decently powerful card.

[ehunt]

Forge costs $7, it's only slightly better than Chapel, and it's a decently powerful card.

I don't agree that it's only slightly better than a Chapel (that is to say, a hypothetical Chapel that's costed at 7). The "trash only 4" restriction would hurt a lot on the types of boards where you want a Forge, and the gaining from Forge (and in particular the endgame tempo control) is very important. But I do agree with the larger point which is Chapel at 7 would certainly not be awful.

[Awaclus]

Forge costs $7, it's only slightly better than Chapel, and it's a decently powerful card.

I don't agree that it's only slightly better than a Chapel (that is to say, a hypothetical Chapel that's costed at 7). The "trash only 4" restriction would hurt a lot on the types of boards where you want a Forge, and the gaining from Forge (and in particular the endgame tempo control) is very important. But I do agree with the larger point which is Chapel at 7 would certainly not be awful.

Well, at least you get to actually trash 4 with Chapel. With Forge, you essentially only trash 3 cards because you also have to gain one, and you don't always get to gain a good card.

[Limetime]

Sometimes you can ignore rebuild which is pretty sad for a card this high in the ranks. It is harder but is still possible to ignore cultist and mountebank. Chapel, king's court, urchin, masquerade, liopoil, hermit help you ignore these. Lost arts is sometimes better than page. I put Chapel at #2 and hold by that decision. The thing about ambassador is it is way slow compared to chapel limited to 2 trashes per play you will not be able to trash estates for awhile unless if you forgo trashing two coppers. The reason I put KC above chapel is there are so many trashers these days but there is still nothing quite like KC(Except disciple). Peasant is really good becuz of disciple.

[wachsmuth]

Ambassador is clearly worse than every other top tier trasher with Shelters, which is also a knock against it.

[teamrocketgrunt]

so it's pretty clear-cut for me that Chapel isn't the strongest card in Dominion.

I don't think it is, either. I have very little experience and I hope, I understood the ranking method concerning all cards correctly, but as of now - with only a handful of people having submitted a ranked list of all the cards - all this ranking says is: "Chapel is the best card in Dominion, if a card's absolute value was only determined by how it compares to all cards costing the same." But - and I say this not, because I think I know what I'm talking about Dominion-wise, but because it seems logical - that can't be the case, since that would split up the effect of a card and its cost in a way that cannot portray the actual strength of a card accurately.

I'm not sure how you would have to go about this (in fact, all my ideas here might be older than the sun and have been put forth before, I just didn't know about the rankings then, or Dominion, for that matter), but you could either try an intuitive approach (just what the above mentioned handful have been doing presumably) to rank all cards or you could try one that tries to separate effect and cost carefully before combining them again.

First, rankings of all the cards, based solely on the value of the card effect without considering cost, would have to be submitted (super difficult and also highly intuitive). Second, you would have to determine how well you expect a card costing "X" to perform compared to a card costing "Y". If you take $2 cards as a baseline, you probably wouldn't just assume $3 cards to be "1.5 times (3/2) better" on a regular basis, nor would you even automatically assume that a $5 cost card is 2.5 times (5/2) better than an average $2 cost card. I have to admit, I'm at a loss determining how well cards are supposed to perform compared to their cost, though. Plus, you cannot just multiply effect rating by cost factor to determine a card's true value. You would also need to take into account that card effect and cost might have to be weighted differently in different "cost categories". $ 5 cards are often crucial. Their effects are so good on an absolute basis that this justifies having a lower card effect to cost ratio.

The more I write about it, the more I think I'm starting to ramble, though. Anyways I'd be curious to see everyone ranking all cards and compare the results with the list that Qvist offered. I'd contribute myself and I'd try to help out Scout. Poor guy.

[AdamH]

Ambassador is clearly worse than every other top tier trasher with Shelters, which is also a knock against it.

Ambassador is worse at getting the number of cards in your deck as low as possible as quickly as possible, yes. There's no denying that Chapel is the best card for doing that and it always will be*.

But it's so rare that this is what you want, yeah it's close a lot of the time but mansies, it's a pretty severe oversimplification that you just want to trash your ten starting cards as quickly as possible 100% of the time in order to maximize your win rate.

Not to mention the attack part of Ambassador is devastating. With Shelters and no other support whatsoever, I can build a deck that gives you two junks per turn, which can be difficult to deal with sustainably, even with Chapel.


I think it's tough to say precisely what these rankings measure, mostly because the only criteria we were given are "vote for the best card" without any context. Granted, I think that's appropriate, but when you read these rankings you have to keep in mind that lots of people voted with lots of different criteria in mind. What this means (IMHO) is that differences between cards that are close to each other can't really be taken with very high importance. I put Cultist on top of the $5 list but that doesn't mean I will be getting Cultist in every game I play and it doesn't mean it will always be the first fiver I buy -- it just means that it's a good card and you should give it more weight when assessing a kingdom.

These cards lists are super-great, but you're only going to get maximum value out of them if you know exactly what kind of data to get out of them and don't draw false conclusions from them.

[Deadlock39]

But it's so rare that this is what you want, yeah it's close a lot of the time but mansies, it's a pretty severe oversimplification that you just want to trash your ten starting cards as quickly as possible 100% of the time in order to maximize your win rate.

Adam's point here is highlighted well by this classic Dominion video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weO-3cWqV0A&t=348

[Limetime]

Ambassador can be countered by Moat and liopoil and hermit and spice merchant/moneylender and ratcatcher and raze and chapel and junk dealer and count and counterfeit . Maybe I am biased because I hate junkers.

[AdamH]

It's not countered by any of those things -- those things can provide defense that is mostly inconsequential unless you're going to have some way to guarantee they're in every single hand you draw, since the attack of Ambassador makes it less and less likely that you'll be able to defend effectively.

Trashing often fits into your strategy when you're going for Ambassador, but if you aren't junking your opponent with Ambassador along with that other stuff, you're going to lose over 99% of the time to the guy who does.

Yes, I said over 99% of the time and I'm not exaggerating. Ambassador's attack is really that powerful.

[GendoIkari]

It's not countered by any of those things -- those things can provide defense that is mostly inconsequential unless you're going to have some way to guarantee they're in every single hand you draw, since the attack of Ambassador makes it less and less likely that you'll be able to defend effectively.

Trashing often fits into your strategy when you're going for Ambassador, but if you aren't junking your opponent with Ambassador along with that other stuff, you're going to lose over 99% of the time to the guy who does.

Yes, I said over 99% of the time and I'm not exaggerating. Ambassador's attack is really that powerful.

I don't see how. Ambassador's attack is worse than Witch's or any other Cursor's... unless you're including the fact that curses run out. So any board where Chapel would win out against Witch should be a board where Chapel would win out against Ambassador also...

[Awaclus]

I don't see how. Ambassador's attack is worse than Witch's or any other Cursor's... unless you're including the fact that curses run out. So any board where Chapel would win out against Witch should be a board where Chapel would win out against Ambassador also...

Witch doesn't thin your own deck and you can't open with two of them (edge cases aside).

[markusin]

It's not countered by any of those things -- those things can provide defense that is mostly inconsequential unless you're going to have some way to guarantee they're in every single hand you draw, since the attack of Ambassador makes it less and less likely that you'll be able to defend effectively.

Trashing often fits into your strategy when you're going for Ambassador, but if you aren't junking your opponent with Ambassador along with that other stuff, you're going to lose over 99% of the time to the guy who does.

Yes, I said over 99% of the time and I'm not exaggerating. Ambassador's attack is really that powerful.

It's sort of like Ambassador is negating the benefit you would get from those trashers, except the Ambassador is thinning it's owner deck while yours isn't getting thinned as quickly. That is unless.you buy more trashers to compensate, but those are buys (and possibly actions) not going towards your payload cards. And the Ambassador player will just start junking faster and faster due to having a smaller deck if you don't retaliate.

I'd say you can still get away with ignoring Ambassador if you have good trashers while you don't want a particularly small deck, say because there's no real engine on the board that benefits from a small deck. The Ambassador player wastes a terminal slot and will have fewer cards helpful in other ways while you have a nice balance of treasures and actions and are just better equipped to resist the greening phase.

If you're looking for a thin deck against Ambassador, you won't get it easily without getting Chapel or Ambassador yourself.

[AdamH]

It's not countered by any of those things -- those things can provide defense that is mostly inconsequential unless you're going to have some way to guarantee they're in every single hand you draw, since the attack of Ambassador makes it less and less likely that you'll be able to defend effectively.

Trashing often fits into your strategy when you're going for Ambassador, but if you aren't junking your opponent with Ambassador along with that other stuff, you're going to lose over 99% of the time to the guy who does.

Yes, I said over 99% of the time and I'm not exaggerating. Ambassador's attack is really that powerful.

I don't see how. Ambassador's attack is worse than Witch's or any other Cursor's... unless you're including the fact that curses run out. So any board where Chapel would win out against Witch should be a board where Chapel would win out against Ambassador also...

Awaclus already mentioned cost, which is a huge deal. I think Amb is the only card that costs less than 4 that can hand out Curses, right? Even junks of any kind. Well there's Swindler, ehh, probably not a valid comparison. Costing $3 is a big deal.

This is actually a really big deal, that the piles of junk don't run out (60 Coppers is basically infinite in a 2P game). When the purples are gone you can just go ahead and build whatever deck you were going to build without worrying a constant influx of junk. Man, just try building an engine with Treasure Trove as the payload, you'll quickly see what I mean. This means that building a deck that can dish out two, three, or let's-not-even-get-into-the-obscene-numbers-when-King's-Court-gets-involved junks per turn can actually have the junking effect magnified where when you're just dealing with Purples there's an end to the misery.

If I play you on 55 boards where we force both Ambassador and Chapel into the kingdom, I'm not allowed to buy Chapel and you're not allowed to buy Ambassador, I'm willing to be money that I will win at least 35 of those games convincingly, and the rest of them I'll probably win like 50%? Maybe more? Maybe this doesn't mean anything, I haven't really thought it through (just because one card is better to get than another card when both are on the board doesn't mean it's a better card in general -- I'm thinking of Counting House and Mountebank here).

I know that in all of the games of Dominion I've played (that weren't specifically designed kingdoms), I'm pretty sure more than 100 have been with Ambassador and I only know of one of them where Ambassador didn't seem like part of the best strategy at the end of it all (neither I nor my opponent bought Ambassador that game). There's another one where I thought it might have been close but I don't remember it very well. OTOH, I've lost count of the number of games where I ignore Chapel because I want to go with other options for trashing that are better for my building. This goes back to the idea that purging all starting cards as quickly as possible is not always best.

[JW]

Here is some useful data compiled by TheExpressicist from about a year ago on gain rates of cards based on the top 20 players on Iso (as of one snapshot). https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13mQ1humtQbPLY9nbKscR65dV7hbGPdI3AQkNjMHZpeM/pubhtml?gid=495443102&single=true

A related thread is here. Of note to the present discussion, Chapel is gained in 88% of games, and Ambassador is gained in 85% of games.

[Marcory]

Just to be pedantic, Adam, Masquerade, Swindler, and Embargo can also curse opponents and cost less than $4, but, of course, they can seldom do so as effectively as Ambassador.