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[Roadrunner7671]

Am I supposed to list all the other cards that can serve those functions as well?

Sure, if you want.

[enfynet]

Scout is a card with two prime purposes: it puts victory cards into your hand, and it reorders the top cards of your deck. It also has the added plus of being non-terminal.

Let's take a look at each point here...

So let's focus on the fact that it puts victory cards into your hand. This is obviously good in the end game where you don't want your next turn polluted by Duchies and Provinces, so you can draw 2-4 Victory cards and make it more likely that you can buy that last Province next turn.

How often is your deck polluted with Victory Cards to begin with? Right away you are limiting yourself to a money game without trashing.

However, Scout can also combo with a deck full of alt-VP. Is Nobles the only draw for your engine? Put them in hand with Scout! Island is the only trashing? Speed up that process with Scout! Buying a lot of Duchies to help your Dukes? Maybe you can hit $5 next turn if you play Scout and draw three Duchies. Have Great Halls because they are better than nothing on the board that you're playing? Draw them with Scout! Harems? Scout has a solution for that.

Chances are (quite good) that your Nobles, Island, Great Hall, and Harem would have been in your hand had you not purchased the Scout. There have been plenty of trials done to prove this. Also, buy Duchies before you buy Dukes - and only when you can support the extra green.

In a rush strategy, Scout usually isn't that good as it takes a valuable turn to pick one up. However, in a Gardens/Silk Road/Feodum slog, Scout can draw you a lot of cards and make your next turn that much better. Now, with all these victory cards in your hand, what can you do? If they are an Action-Victory hybrid, you can obviously play them. But what if they are a Silk Road or a Garden? You can play discard for benefit cards (Warehouse, Cellar, Inn, Horse Traders, Embassy, etc.) as there are tons of those. You can also use cards that like having victory cards in your hand, such as Madman, Crossroads, Baron, Tournament or Explorer. And Apothecary is often considered to be Scout's best combo, as Apothecary chokes on the green cards that Scout can pick up easily. Finally, Inheritance, an event, combos with Scout for obvious reasons.

You are relying on a lot of "what-if" scenarios. Sadly, most of those scenarios will have better alternatives. That is the argument. Scout isn't always completely useless, but is often less useful than other options on any given board.

Now let's focus on our second point: Scout reorders the top cards of your deck (assuming that you don't draw four Victory cards). When can reordering the top cards be a good idea? When you have a cantrip in your hand (anything that gives +1 card and +1 action) you can decide what card you want to draw. Already have $7? Put a Copper on top of your deck and save that Gold that you were going to draw with your Walled Village. With non-terminal weak draw, like Ruined Library, Moat, Mercanary and other cards that only give +1 card or +2 cards, you can put your treasure cards on top and save your action cards for next turn. Scout also helps cards that care about the top card of your deck, such as Mystic and Wishing Well. Scout can also combo with Spy particularly better than other cantrips, as you put the card that you want to draw with Spy on top of your deck, then you put a Curse/Copper/Ruin right under that card so that you can discard it with Spy. Doctor and Scout can be a combo, but not if you're hoping to trash Estates with Doctor! You can guarantee that Doctor will hit a few of your coppers, though. I will admit that the reordering part of Scout is not the strongest aspect of the card, but it is still something to look for.

I would argue that controlling your next draw is considerable stronger than putting dead cards in your hand. Even still, the percentage of time this is useful is minimal at best.

Finally, Scout is non-terminal. What does this mean? This means the addition of Scout to your deck is less likely to hurt than a terminal card that is considered 'weak.' It also means that in a pinch, you can Prince Scout if you are desperate for a village. You can also find it with Golem for a village (if you find another non terminal, which could be another Scout!). Scout can also lower the price of Peddler and activate Conspirator, but it's unlikely that you should buy Scout just for that purpose.

By the time you can afford Prince in a game without villages and only terminal-draw, it may not be your best option. The game is probably almost over. Golem is even harder to use with Scout, as you want it to find better Actions to play. This is really reaching here...

*Drops mic*

Let me get that for you...

[Roadrunner7671]

But you asked to name individual cards. Please do that!

[iguanaiguana]

So, in my opinion, this thread isn't about scout, it's about Roadrunner.

And I would say Roadrunner is hilarious, because everything he says is 99% serious, and 1% genius satire.

Anyone care to argue the point with me?

[Roadrunner7671]

So, in my opinion, this thread isn't about scout, it's about Roadrunner.

In my opinion, Roadrunner is hilarious, because everything he says is 99% serious, and 1% genius satire.

Anyone care to argue the point with me?

I do!

[iguanaiguana]

So, in my opinion, this thread isn't about scout, it's about Roadrunner.

In my opinion, Roadrunner is hilarious, because everything he says is 99% serious, and 1% genius satire.

Anyone care to argue the point with me?

I do!

Ah, but you are proving my point, not arguing it!

[enfynet]

Okay, lets start with Drawing Victory (or other) Cards: [2+ Card Draw or target Junk]

Moat, Smithy, Council Room, Laboratory, Library, Witch
Courtyard, Masquerade, Steward, [Scout], Minion, Torturer, Nobles
Warehouse, Navigator, Ghost Ship, Wharf
Apothecary, Alchemist
Watchtower, Rabble, Vault
Menagerie, Young Witch
Oracle, Spice Merchant, Embassy, Inn, Margrave
Vagrant, Cultist, Hunting Grounds
Advisor, Journeyman
Dungeon, Gear, Guide, Ranger, Haunted Woods, Lost City
Envoy, Governor

Reorder/Manipulate next Draw: [search "any order"]
[Scout], Navigator, Apothecary, Cartographer, Survivors, Wandering Minstrel, Doctor

Non-Terminal
[Too Many to count]

[Roadrunner7671]

But very, very few do both.

[enfynet]

And you don't need them to. They do the other things better.

Card Draw: Inconsistent, and only draws junk, save for very few dual-types.

Draw Manipulation: Apothecary, Cartographer, and Doctor are particularly good at this. And useful otherwise.

Non-terminal: You are likely to have ~3 non-terminal cards in any random game of Dominion. The only one less useful is probably Lookout when you have no junk left to trash.

[jamfamsam]

I would like Roadrunner to first defend the position that Scout passes the Silver test.

One interesting point: for being widely considered to be the worst card in the game (I don't think it's the worst but certainly in the bottom 3), Scout sure gets a lot of attention in the threads, satirical or not.

[Limetime]

We have talked enough about scout imo. Why don't we move on to something that will help our Dominion skills a little more?

[Roadrunner7671]

We have talked enough about scout imo. Why don't we move on to something that will help our Dominion skills a little more?

Start a thread! I support that!

[liopoil]

Roadrunner, what ranking would you honestly give Scout on Qvist's rankings of 4-costs? Personally I wouldn't put it last, but I can't see it in the top 55.

[Roadrunner7671]

Roadrunner, what ranking would you honestly give Scout on Qvist's rankings of 4-costs? Personally I wouldn't put it last, but I can't see it in the top 55.

I gave it 32, 31 or 30. I can't remember, but it was definitely one of those. I'm not yet sure whether Adventures made it better or worse.

[theright555J]

RR, I wonder if you have a tendency to try and green early in general.  That's certainly how I used to play, especially when it was just base only. Playing with stronger players and better engine boards has taught me otherwise. I remember back on BGG arguing that one should buy province turn 3 after a baron-silver opening just after Intrigue was released. The argument being something to the effect of "that's one less province for my opponent". Now of course that's silly barring edge cases involving Tournament.

Once your deck is full of green anyway, there does come a point where scout is quite useful, especially if it can be gained without a buy. Others have stated that the deck does have to be very heavily greened before the expected draw is greater than 1 card, which it has to be to be better than nothing.

The more interesting argument to me is whether there can be a point at which the higher levels of play could utilize scout to start greening 1-2 shuffles earlier and actually use that momentum to win at a higher rate than otherwise (i.e. Punish the opponent for overbuilding).  This would highly depend on the board and as a general rule the answer is very likely "no".

[Roadrunner7671]

I think I do green earlier, but I think that's because my opponents (my family) greens as soon as they hit $8. So, I think I have adapted my strategy around what they do, because I feel uncomfortable if my opponent has three Provinces and I'm still building.

That's my short answer.

[enfynet]

That would change the apparent value of Scout significantly, I think. Now you need to build a deck that has dead cards in the way, which is difficult.

[Awaclus]

Roadrunner, what ranking would you honestly give Scout on Qvist's rankings of 4-costs? Personally I wouldn't put it last, but I can't see it in the top 55.

What would you put last then?

[liopoil]

Treasure Map, Coppersmith, and even Taxman are all good candidates. Thief and Pirate Ship get a pass because I've actually experienced the moment where they are actually powerful. I've never actually gotten Coppersmith to work, Taxman is pretty awful, and Treasure Map just doesn't seem worth it all that often. Scout at least has the potential to be picked up on a spare gain (Ironworks that ran out of good targets) and be useful in engines that are sputtering because they greened too hard. Just being non-terminal goes a long way, because there are a lot of decks that just like having more actions (Herald, Scrying Pool, Vineyards,...)

[Roadrunner7671]

Treasure Map, Coppersmith, and even Taxman are all good candidates. Thief and Pirate Ship get a pass because I've actually experienced the moment where they are actually powerful. I've never actually gotten Coppersmith to work, Taxman is pretty awful, and Treasure Map just doesn't seem worth it all that often. Scout at least has the potential to be picked up on a spare gain (Ironworks that ran out of good targets) and be useful in engines that are sputtering because they greened too hard. Just being non-terminal goes a long way, because there are a lot of decks that just like having more actions (Herald, Scrying Pool, Vineyards,...)

It's a shame I can't hit the +1 button more than once. But I teared up a little while reading this.

[Awaclus]

Treasure Map, Coppersmith, and even Taxman are all good candidates. Thief and Pirate Ship get a pass because I've actually experienced the moment where they are actually powerful. I've never actually gotten Coppersmith to work, Taxman is pretty awful, and Treasure Map just doesn't seem worth it all that often. Scout at least has the potential to be picked up on a spare gain (Ironworks that ran out of good targets) and be useful in engines that are sputtering because they greened too hard. Just being non-terminal goes a long way, because there are a lot of decks that just like having more actions (Herald, Scrying Pool, Vineyards,...)

Treasure Map is a strong card, its only problem is that usually there's something even better you could be doing and then the Golds would just get in your way, or that you can't build a strong enough engine to actually utilize all of the Golds and they would just get in your way again. When you can build a strong engine with +buy (or possibly something like Remodel) but there's no other payload, Treasure Map is really good, and that's not an unreasonably unlikely scenario. Like, the scenario where ignoring Treasure Map just automatically loses you the game is more common than the scenario where adding a Scout to your deck doesn't make your deck worse than it was.

The scenario where Coppersmith is good might be roughly as common or somewhat less common than the scenario where Scout is better than nothing, but in that case, Coppersmith can be crazy good while Scout is just very slightly better than nothing. I think that means Coppersmith is the stronger card.

Taxman is a weak card, but at least it's usually better than nothing (if we look at the entire game rather than a single buying decision). That makes it worth getting whenever there's nothing better going on, and usually there is, but not always.

When you have an Ironworks that ran out of good targets and Scout is the only thing you could gain with it, most of the time you just simply don't play that Ironworks. No deck ever has greened so hard that Scout would have been better than nothing in it just because of that reason. Really, you need to be able to utilize the fact that it's a non-terminal Action card, the ability to remove green cards from the top of your deck and the ability to reorder your deck before you actually want to pick up a Scout on a spare gain, and then you still need that spare gain too. It can happen in Scrying Pool games for instance, but it's unusual even when both Scout and Scrying Pool are on the kingdom. The other way Scout can be better than nothing is that you desperately need any non-terminal Actions you can possibly get in your deck no matter what they do (I guess it can happen with Golem in extremely rare situations) or that you just want to increase your Vineyard/Gardens/Fairgrounds points and you don't care about junking your deck, but those situations are exactly as common as Ruined Village being better than nothing so that's not super amazing.

[drsteelhammer]

Pretty much agree with all of them. Coppersmith may be a contender for being at the bottom cause it's super rare that it is worth it, but Taxman and Treasure Maps atleast do something significant, altough they don't do it very often.

Scout is just underwhelming even in cases where it should theoretically shine.

@Roadrunnner: Can you give us the list with all the cards you had below Scout? That would be fun to see. (You can access it still if you remember your password)

[Roadrunner7671]

Pretty much agree with all of them. Coppersmith may be a contender for being at the bottom cause it's super rare that it is worth it, but Taxman and Treasure Maps atleast do something significant, altough they don't do it very often.

Scout is just underwhelming even in cases where it should theoretically shine.

@Roadrunnner: Can you give us the list with all the cards you had below Scout? That would be fun to see. (You can access it still if you remember your password)

If you give me the link, I will show you!

[Awaclus]

Pretty much agree with all of them. Coppersmith may be a contender for being at the bottom cause it's super rare that it is worth it, but Taxman and Treasure Maps atleast do something significant, altough they don't do it very often.

Scout is just underwhelming even in cases where it should theoretically shine.

@Roadrunnner: Can you give us the list with all the cards you had below Scout? That would be fun to see. (You can access it still if you remember your password)

If you give me the link, I will show you!

http://www.qvist.de/dommesh/

[Roadrunner7671]

NSFW
Here is a screenshot of everything Scout and below. My list (if made today) would be very, very different. Please no judging.