If you're looking at a board where you would open double Steward for the purpose of thinning quickly, then yeah you should probably open double Amulet. Maybe you want a third Amulet if you feel like your draws are not letting you thin as much as you'd like (you would have this problem with Steward <3 #stewardisthebest <3) but all I needed to know to get me on the right track is comparing it to Steward.
Well the pace of your trashing is less important to you. I'd get one Amulet here, maybe a second Amulet on the second shuffle if you want a little more pace, but I dunno I'm just sort of guessing what would be close to what Steward does.
Bolded the part that I feel like the comparison lets people down. We've established that Steward trashes faster, and then becomes useful as coins/cards later in the game. What the comparison does is tell me that when I would have wanted 2 Stewards, I want at least 2 Amulets. Understanding if I possibly want a 3rd or a 4th or whatever has to be balanced against the usefulness of the card after the trash mode, at which point Amulet doesn't really compare that cleanly to Steward. Also in the 1 Steward case, do I need a second to get the job done?
Well yeah they're different after the fact -- I can't think of many engines that will prefer more Amulets once they have thinned because $1 and gaining a Silver aren't as useful as drawing cards. I'm sure if you ever have that situation you'll know, though (like you're overdrawing your deck). The pieces you're missing here, though, are really hard to talk about at all. Like, if I'm going to come up with a situation where I want that third Amulet in an engine, I feel like I'm coming with a pretty convoluted scenario, which isn't very useful to talk about. You need more context, like you said.
I don't think it's the comparison to Steward's fault that it's hard to talk about this, though. I feel like the comparison to Steward got us this close and this is probably as close as we can get without talking about specific games and specific draws. If anyone has a better idea I'm open to it but I've got nothing.
Pretty much the same argument can be made for your other question by the same reasoning.
This one I feel is even less clear with the comparison. If I wanted 1 Steward to tide me over until I can get Junk Dealer or Count or Forge or whatever, is just 1 Amulet going to do enough in the same time-frame to justify buying it? The fact that Amulet trashes more slowly than Steward might cross the threshold towards not buying it at all.
In the case of Steward, if you're opening with it to thin even in the presence of these $5 trashers, I think you're going to be pretty thin and you won't get that much value out of your more expensive trasher. I suppose that's not going to be true as much with Amulet since it's slower at trashing (though some people would disagree with my correct
assessment of this), plus Amulet won't draw you cards later on, so I suppose the comparison does kind of break here now that I know more specifically what you're talking about.
Unfortunately, without more context it's tough to give better insight than "sometimes you won't even open Amulet in favor of using the $5 trasher as your main source of thinning because Amulet's other abilities aren't helpful." Hmh. I do see your dilemma here, but again it's hard to talk about.
So I hope you see my point that these guidelines are most easily explained by comparing the card to Steward. Steward has been around for like 8 years so that feels like a pretty valid reference point as long as you point out the differences (draw vs. gain a silver, missing shuffles, flexibility blah blah blah).
There is certainly value in the comparison; perhaps I should have been more clear and stated "doesn't help me nearly enough" or "this comparison loses enough of its value to warrant further consideration".
I guess the main point is about crossing thresholds; if I know that I'd want 1 Steward to trash on my way to (wwlog) Junk Dealer, and I also know that I wouldn't buy a Trade Route in the same situation (this ordering of Trade Route/Amulet/Steward seems clear to me; could be wrong but its just for example purposes anyway), then I don't know where the threshold is of "worth-it-ness" and on which side of it Amulet falls. I hope I'm making sense here.
Yes, you are making perfect sense (to me at least). And I also think you're putting the right amount of stock in your comparisons to other cards here. This is actually some really smart stuff you have here and I feel like someone who doesn't understand it would benefit a lot from understanding it. I want to make an alt account and +1 your post again, but unfortunately I don't have the password to the LeagueKingdoms account anymore so that's tough to do
So how do you improve this understanding? Unfortunately, the only way I know of that really works is to play lots of games with Amulet in them, which is hard to do right now. Unfortunately, I can't even promise you that there will be any Amulet boards in my tournament on the 30th (I haven't made the kingdoms for that yet)
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Topic: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Amulet (Read 23855 times)