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Author Topic: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger  (Read 10775 times)

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werothegreat

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Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« on: March 13, 2016, 11:32:10 am »
+2


Only you can prevent forest fires.

-How does this compare to Smithy?
-How does this interact with other Journey token things?
-How important is the +Buy?
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Jack Rudd

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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #1 on: March 13, 2016, 11:35:03 am »
+1

Playing the weak half of Ranger every turn to play the strong half of Pilgrimage every turn looks as if it could be powerful.
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transportowiec96

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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #2 on: March 13, 2016, 04:11:22 pm »
0

Smithy gives you +3/6 cards.
Ranger gives you +0/5 cards, but gives you 1/2 buys.
Two buys trade for one card.
I'd rather have smithy in early game than this.

This just can be used as token flipper for other cards.

The +buy really helps you if you draw a lot of money cards.
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DG

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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #3 on: March 13, 2016, 04:21:30 pm »
+1

-How does this compare to Smithy?
-How does this interact with other Journey token things?
-How important is the +Buy?

Better when played well, worse when played badly.
Not often enough to be interesting.
Very.
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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2016, 04:25:32 pm »
+1

As I said in some other thread about a completely different card, the worth of Ranger is more than the sum of its parts. It's simply much easier to fire off your engine when your first draw is a ludicrous 5 cards, even if you burn an Action to reverse the token later. The +2 Buys you get with your two plays is also really nice since you often would spend terminal space on +Buy cards if you had to. So despite it drawing on average 2.5 cards per play, I think it is a very powerful draw card in certain circumstances - basically whenever you want to draw a lot of cards at once to make sure you play your engine components in the right order or get to them in time.
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Mavy2k

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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #5 on: March 13, 2016, 06:05:47 pm »
+3

There is a good interaction with pilgrimage, if they should show up in the same kingdom. Ranger helps you get to more expensive cards and youŽll be very happy, when you can clone Kings Court and Platinum. The only other journey token card is Giant and I donŽt see a worthwile interaction with that card.

The +buy on the card is very useful, since you will end up with quite a bit of coins on the turn that you drew 5 cards.

Smithy is better for a reliable engine, which draws the whole deck every turn.
I like ranger more on boards with expensive cards like Platinum and Kings Court. Those extra 5 cards help a lot to reach that threshold.

The card is a little bit like Tactician. You have one turn that is worse to get an amazing second turn.

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Beyond Awesome

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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #6 on: March 13, 2016, 07:35:58 pm »
+1

There is a good interaction with pilgrimage, if they should show up in the same kingdom. Ranger helps you get to more expensive cards and youŽll be very happy, when you can clone Kings Court and Platinum. The only other journey token card is Giant and I donŽt see a worthwile interaction with that card.

The +buy on the card is very useful, since you will end up with quite a bit of coins on the turn that you drew 5 cards.

Smithy is better for a reliable engine, which draws the whole deck every turn.
I like ranger more on boards with expensive cards like Platinum and Kings Court. Those extra 5 cards help a lot to reach that threshold.

The card is a little bit like Tactician. You have one turn that is worse to get an amazing second turn.

Even if you gain 3 $5 cost cards in a turn, that is well worth the two-turn $8 investment.
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Mavy2k

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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #7 on: March 13, 2016, 07:53:11 pm »
0


Even if you gain 3 $5 cost cards in a turn, that is well worth the two-turn $8 investment.

I totally agree. I wanted to hightlight that you can gain quality cards with pilgrimage. My poor terminology clearly failed to do that.
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SirMartin

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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #8 on: March 13, 2016, 07:59:16 pm »
0

I've played with Ranger exactly once. In that game, Port was also available. I dinked around with Swamp Hag and Guide and all the fancy new action card that I had never played with before. My opponent did something similar, but I did it better as I came in second.

But my third opponent utilized Port. Since he could get villages so easily, he managed to kick off quite often (he had a few Guides) draw his deck, then play one more Ranger to flip his Journey Token face down.

I have concluded (and I may be incorrect) that Ranger is better than Smithy if you have more village support. 
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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #9 on: March 13, 2016, 08:35:32 pm »
0

I've played with Ranger exactly once. In that game, Port was also available. I dinked around with Swamp Hag and Guide and all the fancy new action card that I had never played with before. My opponent did something similar, but I did it better as I came in second.

But my third opponent utilized Port. Since he could get villages so easily, he managed to kick off quite often (he had a few Guides) draw his deck, then play one more Ranger to flip his Journey Token face down.

I have concluded (and I may be incorrect) that Ranger is better than Smithy if you have more village support.

Guide helps make sure you have Ranger in hand. I feel Smithy is more reliable, but if you can set up an engine where you almost always kick off with Ranger, then Ranger will be superior to Smithy.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #10 on: March 13, 2016, 09:36:52 pm »
0

As I said in some other thread about a completely different card, the worth of Ranger is more than the sum of its parts. It's simply much easier to fire off your engine when your first draw is a ludicrous 5 cards, even if you burn an Action to reverse the token later. The +2 Buys you get with your two plays is also really nice since you often would spend terminal space on +Buy cards if you had to. So despite it drawing on average 2.5 cards per play, I think it is a very powerful draw card in certain circumstances - basically whenever you want to draw a lot of cards at once to make sure you play your engine components in the right order or get to them in time.

It should be added that it's also riskier than Smithy, in that if your engine ever whiffs, it can be a lot harder to get back on track.  Ranger is more reliable than Smithy if you can play it for +5 cards to start, letting you draw the rest of your deck to do awesome stuff and flipping your Journey token again to set up for the next turn.  But if you ever fail to follow through and flip that token, it'll be a disaster.
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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #11 on: March 14, 2016, 04:49:28 am »
0

It should be added that it's also riskier than Smithy, in that if your engine ever whiffs, it can be a lot harder to get back on track.  Ranger is more reliable than Smithy if you can play it for +5 cards to start, letting you draw the rest of your deck to do awesome stuff and flipping your Journey token again to set up for the next turn.  But if you ever fail to follow through and flip that token, it'll be a disaster.

I remember a 3p game with both Ranger and Giant where my Giant-heavy opponent trashed one of my Rangers after they were gone, leaving me with an odd number of Rangers in my deck. I was worried that this would completely kill my engine, but since it only made a difference the turn after next I was able to win without there being a problem. But that is a consideration for Ranger, that if somehow you end up with an odd number it can be a problem.

schadd

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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #12 on: March 14, 2016, 02:05:04 pm »
0

smithy is a good card. it's kinda hard to beat smithy and not be superweird
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GendoIkari

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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #13 on: March 14, 2016, 02:17:53 pm »
0

To repeat what I said in a different discussion... if you can consistently play 2 of these (or an even number of them) per turn, I think that net +3 cards, +2 buys is usually better than net +4 cards.
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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #14 on: March 14, 2016, 03:16:16 pm »
0

The extra reliability from Ranger is really cool in engines. The +buy makes this even better for engines because it may serve terminal space that otherwise would have to be used buy it.

Like other terminal draw, it is obviously really great with the +action token/Champion.

The most important thing is to be disciplined, though. If you have a semi-dud turn and don't find all your villages, prioritize playing another Ranger of fancy payload cards! Otherwise more than one of you will be messed up!

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jomini

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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #15 on: March 15, 2016, 12:20:52 pm »
0

As I said in some other thread about a completely different card, the worth of Ranger is more than the sum of its parts. It's simply much easier to fire off your engine when your first draw is a ludicrous 5 cards, even if you burn an Action to reverse the token later. The +2 Buys you get with your two plays is also really nice since you often would spend terminal space on +Buy cards if you had to. So despite it drawing on average 2.5 cards per play, I think it is a very powerful draw card in certain circumstances - basically whenever you want to draw a lot of cards at once to make sure you play your engine components in the right order or get to them in time.


Yeah, but it is even harder if that first draw is 0 cards. And kicking off the second round of an engine is not much easier if you are looking at 9 cards vs 7.

The big thing is that your first hand is a whiff. This means that Ranger will likely cost you a big turn/buy that Smithy would hit. That leads to compound losses.

Say I want to build a Bazaar/draw engine. With Smithy, virtually all my early game Smithy hands buy Bazaars. With Ranger, the first one is a curse hand - highly unlikely to hit $5 and better than even odds of failing to hit $4. The second one might make up for it ... but for the fact that an extra two cards where one is likely copper are unlikely to get me an offsetting gain.

Ranger is good for the +buy. Draw & +buy are two big engine enablers, getting both on one card makes it far more likely that engine is viable (and Ranger is vastly better than Woodcutters or other terminal +buys).

Ranger is also good for when you really need one big hand to set off a megaturn (e.g. a Madman/Csmith megaturn).  Or where you need high variance to spike points (e.g. colony money boards). But I highly doubt that your average Smithy engine will ever fall behind your average Ranger engine, particularly if the +buy is not an issue (e.g. it is on the village or the payload as well).
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Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Ranger
« Reply #16 on: March 16, 2016, 02:23:34 pm »
0

Ranger is going to be awesome if you can play two a turn, to consistently kick off +5 cards. It also always gives the +buy. However, I haven't played with this card. But seriously, +5 cards is more than Hunting Grounds, WITH a +buy? That's scary good. A fantastic engine card I would think.
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