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[WanderingWinder]

Slight nitpick on the Governor write-up. Silver isn't bad for your deck in colony games. It's ONLY if you want an action chain that you might not want silver. You will never ever get to a point in a BM game where silver is a bad card for your deck (with the cards out now), though obviously at some points other cards are better. There are lots of people who don't get this. I hear all the time 'well, silver can be bad for you'... no, it can't. It really, really can't. I mean, yes, hypothetically if you have a zillion silvers, you get stuck on $10 all the time. And then you can 'only' buy a province every turn. But really, you're never getting anywhere near that much silver. And you only need a few golds or platina peppered in and that high silver density is great. Not to mention that province every turn isn't too bad for BM, even in a colony game.
Of course, engines are a different story, and you're quite right to point that out. Furthermore, in the case of governor itself, you sorta are working on a single-card money engine kinda thing. So... yeah.
Other than that, only some language issues (your phrasings imply things that I don't think you want to), but nothing big.
Oh, and cards misranked, but hey, that's not your fault. And that'll be the next post.

[WanderingWinder]

Too low: Embassy, Governor, Tactician, IGG, Witch, and a bunch of lower cards (Merchant ship, Haggler, less so Jester, possibly Bazaar and venture)
Too high: Mountebank (OK, by one spot), Apprentice, Minion (by a few spots only), Lab, Vault

Torturer is really hard to measure. It's not that good without a village or if there's another curser, or one of a number of counters. But absent that, and with a village, it's so monstrously dominant.
So the big thing is the #1 vs #2 thing. Witch is just much better than mountebank. Almost (almost) every situation you'd like a mountebank, you'd prefer a witch. There are a few cases where you really need virtual money, and maybe a couple where the coppers kill. But that's pretty rare. And otherwise, witch is just a lot better than mountebank. Okay, like maybe 20% better. But clearly better.
Um, vault strikes me as a pretty big overrate. Only really good in BM or a few choice situations (w/tactician, scrying pool), and for BM, most every other terminal card draw that costs at least $3 is better.... Actually, they're better for engines too. So vault strikes me as a pretty big overrate here.

I have to admit I'm pretty sure I underrated governor when I ranked it. It's really quite a strong card, not always dominant, not without it's flaws, but quite good. Better than Lab.

[chwhite]

Okay, so nothing here was more than three spots from my list, and only one card was even that far off.  That card is Wharf, which I had all the way down at #6, below Torturer/Minion/Hunting Party.  Torturer is debatable, I think with hindsight I'd have put Wharf above it since boards where you can skip Torturer are so much more frequent.  I guess Minion is sort of the same issue, in that unfavorable boards also occur with Minion, but it's far less commonly a bad buy than Torturer (even when the classic Minion engine isn't a possibility, it can still cycle and attack with aplomb).  And if there's support, Minion works just fine in Colony games.  Hunting Party I am quite confident is better than Wharf, however.

I mostly don't agree with WW on which cards are too low or too high, but he's totally right about Lab.  I had it just above Stables, because it's useful in a wider variety (read: Treasure-light) of decks, but really the two are almost identical in power.  Conversely, I had Stables a couple spots higher, and Margrave is another one I had a bit higher as well; it's equally powerful in both BM-X and in engines, where it supplies three count 'em three crucial functions: attack, Buy, and Card.  Granted, if you stack a bunch of Margraves then the attack becomes pretty lame, but it's a great kicker if there's other +Card as well.

Guess I'll also defend Mountebank as #1 over Witch, where I went along with the crowd.  For me, the most important factor is that you can ignore Witch far more often, like over twice as often, than you can ignore Mountebank.  Of course, the situations where you can ignore either are pretty uncommon.  But if you have a board with strong trashing and strong engine possibilities, it may be better to just build your economy and drawing fast, since you'll be able to Remake or Chapel those Curses as they come in.  However, since Mountebank gives two cards instead of one, it's nearly twice as hard to outrace him: those Coppers do often make a huge difference.  A lesser point is that I much prefer +$2 to +2 Cards here; if you have other actions in your deck that's less a chance they collide, if your deck is clogged with Curse and Copper (like Mountebank gives you!) then your expected value is higher with the cash now.  And, not that they're always reliable, but Councilroom stats prefer the Mountebank, it has a marginally higher Win Rate, lower Win Rate Without, and is bought just a bit more often.  Yes, a second Mountebank is much weaker than a second Witch, that's true; in a match which is really just "give out all the Curses ASAP, buy money and Duchies" then maybe Witch is better on the head-to-head.  But on balance Mountebank is simply more disruptive, so it gets my vote.

[chwhite]

Now, for the real drama.  Are we going to see a unanimous #1 vote, or perhaps a unanimous #14 vote, on the $6-plus list?  It strikes me as a real possibility, given how obvious (I think) the best and worst cards are, but even Chapel didn't earn that honor, so who knows!

[WanderingWinder]

Now, for the real drama.  Are we going to see a unanimous #1 vote, or perhaps a unanimous #14 vote, on the $6-plus list?  It strikes me as a real possibility, given how obvious (I think) the best and worst cards are, but even Chapel didn't earn that honor, so who knows!

#1 I seriously doubt. People will vote for GM. People will vote Goons. Last place... maybe. It's SO clear. But somehow I doubt it.

[Fabian]

Yeah if Chapel doesn't win out on $2 compared to whatever card was placed higher, there's no way Goons beats GM on every list.

[WanderingWinder]

Yeah if Chapel doesn't win out on $2 compared to whatever card was placed higher, there's no way Goons beats GM on every list.

Well, it's $6+ iirc, so it should be KC pretty easily....

[Fabian]

Oh it was? Can't remember anything obviously

Anyway, uhm.. isn't Goons better than KC? Like, by a huge margin?

[DStu]

[Vault...] and for BM, most every other terminal card draw that costs at least $3 is better.... Actually, they're better for engines too. So vault strikes me as a pretty big overrate here.

So just asking the simulator (don't know how optimized these bots are), but:
Vault vs:
Envoy: 48-45
Smithy: 50-43.5
Embassy: 48-45
Rabble: 51-43
Counil Room: 53-40

Masquerade: 48-48

Torturer: 45-48  (but probably not played optimal from the Vault)
Courtyard: 37-55
Wharf 37-55
Margrave 43-55
Witch 23-74
Ghost Ship

seems pretty tied for me...

[chwhite]

Oh it was? Can't remember anything obviously

Anyway, uhm.. isn't Goons better than KC? Like, by a huge margin?

Well that answers that.

And, um, let's put it this way.  I am absolutely in love with Goons.  I buy it more often than any other $6-plus card, and it's my best win rate given available (actually second-best, but that's only because I'm better at knowing Smugglers is a bad card than most folks).  I build Goons engines all the time, and when I can't build Goons engines I make damn sure it's my terminal anyway.  It is, to my mind, the third-best card in all of Dominion.  (Obviously Ambassador is #1.)

And yet I still rank it below King's Court.

...I guess Goons over KC is actually reasonable.  Grand Market over KC is crazytalk, though.

[Fabian]

My mind is blown. KC over Goons? Is this after you account for it being more expensive, too? It's ignorable so often compared to Goons, I don't understand Looking at councilroom data, I see people buy it 84% of the time, which is why more than I do (68%), and seems way way high to me.

[jotheonah]

KC's only really ignorable if all the other actions suck. i.e. on big money boards.  Otherwise, if you skip KC and your opponent buy it they can do whatever you're doing three times as much.

I know you could say the same thing about Possession, but the opportunity cost of picking up a $7 or two is not nearly as high as a $6P, which really makes all the difference.

Qvist, I'm curious - what's the lowest card on the master list that got #1 on anyone's list?

[greatexpectations]

KC's only really ignorable if all the other actions suck. i.e. on big money boards.  Otherwise, if you skip KC and your opponent buy it they can do whatever you're doing three times as much.

that first part is just not true.  it is ignorable quite often, as the opportunity cost is too high.

and then if you do buy it, you need to mitigate the risk of dead-drawing it or drawing it with just a village or something.

[WanderingWinder]

KC's only really ignorable if all the other actions suck. i.e. on big money boards.

This is in fact not true. And much as I dislike and misuse KC and LOVE goons... I can't see goons being better than KC on average. Specific boards, yes.

[chwhite]

Qvist, I'm curious - what's the lowest card on the master list that got #1 on anyone's list?

Conspirator was #17th on the $4s and got a #1 rank, that seems to be the likely winner.

My mind is blown. KC over Goons? Is this after you account for it being more expensive, too? It's ignorable so often compared to Goons, I don't understand Looking at councilroom data, I see people buy it 84% of the time, which is why more than I do (68%), and seems way way high to me.

It is ignorable more often than Goons, true, but 68 percent strikes me as incredibly low for a card that is so flexible and powerful.  (I buy it 85 percent of the time.)  It is just such a boon to Action-heavy strategies of each and every stripe that it takes a pretty extraordinarily bad slate of Actions to justify skipping it.  The gap between $6 and $7 is an issue, sure, and it's the main reason I buy Goons more often, but I actually think that in practice the difference between $6 and $7 is a lot less than between $4 and $5, or even $5 and $6.

[O]

Now, for the real drama.  Are we going to see a unanimous #1 vote, or perhaps a unanimous #14 vote, on the $6-plus list?  It strikes me as a real possibility, given how obvious (I think) the best and worst cards are, but even Chapel didn't earn that honor, so who knows!

#1 I seriously doubt. People will vote for GM. People will vote Goons. Last place... maybe. It's SO clear. But somehow I doubt it.

Am I missing something? I would rank Farmland as the worst 6$ card (though I didn't rank), but I know there's a ton of adventurer-hate on this forum (I would still rank it second worse even though I think it's underrated; it's frequently ignored when it's a better buy over gold).

[Fabian]

Well chwhite, if winrates are any indication, my win without KC is 1.66 (with=0.61) and yours is -0.17 (with =-0.22). You win a full 6.5% more games with Goons on the table than KC, over a significant sample size, that's an enormous difference.

[Fabian]

Now I want to see the $6+ list! This $5 list has been discussed to death and been dragged out way too long as it is, anyway, and I'm curious how Goons is doing. I usually don't disagree very strongly with the best players on here, but I really feel this is just wrong. Some more councilroom data:

(All players)
Goons gained 87.4%, KC gained 84.1% (too much!)
Goons winrate with 1.04, winrate without 0.77 (!) KC winrate with 1.02, winrate without 0.92

[chwhite]

Now, for the real drama.  Are we going to see a unanimous #1 vote, or perhaps a unanimous #14 vote, on the $6-plus list?  It strikes me as a real possibility, given how obvious (I think) the best and worst cards are, but even Chapel didn't earn that honor, so who knows!

#1 I seriously doubt. People will vote for GM. People will vote Goons. Last place... maybe. It's SO clear. But somehow I doubt it.

Am I missing something? I would rank Farmland as the worst 6$ card (though I didn't rank), but I know there's a ton of adventurer-hate on this forum (I would still rank it second worse even though I think it's underrated; it's frequently ignored when it's a better buy over gold).

Adventurer could be underrated and it'd still be the worst 6-plus by a huge, gaping margin.  Not only does this forum dislike Adventurer, isotropic at large hates it too, buying it less often than every card save Chancellor, Counting House, Navigator, Stash, and Harvest.  And its win stats really aren't any better than those cards either.  Okay, sometimes it's a better buy than Gold: those "sometimes" are like ten percent of the time.  Farmland is no great shakes either, but at least it's always something you need to watch to for in the endgame; well over four-fifths of the time Adventurer is just a dead card.

http://councilroom.com/win_rate_diff_accum.html?cards=Cost%3D%3D6 is a pretty stark depiction of what I'm talking about.  By and large, Adventurer just doesn't belong in this cost tier.

[Fabian]

For all WW's support of KC, looking at his stats is even more telling than mine:

Gain KC 54.6% (!), winrate with is 1.10, winrate without is 1.34 (!) Sample size 551 games.

[O]

Now, for the real drama.  Are we going to see a unanimous #1 vote, or perhaps a unanimous #14 vote, on the $6-plus list?  It strikes me as a real possibility, given how obvious (I think) the best and worst cards are, but even Chapel didn't earn that honor, so who knows!

#1 I seriously doubt. People will vote for GM. People will vote Goons. Last place... maybe. It's SO clear. But somehow I doubt it.

Am I missing something? I would rank Farmland as the worst 6$ card (though I didn't rank), but I know there's a ton of adventurer-hate on this forum (I would still rank it second worse even though I think it's underrated; it's frequently ignored when it's a better buy over gold).

Adventurer could be underrated and it'd still be the worst 6-plus by a huge, gaping margin.  Not only does this forum dislike Adventurer, isotropic at large hates it too, buying it less often than every card save Chancellor, Counting House, Navigator, Stash, and Harvest.  And its win stats really aren't any better than those cards either.  Okay, sometimes it's a better buy than Gold: those "sometimes" are like ten percent of the time.  Farmland is no great shakes either, but at least it's always something you need to watch ot for in the endgame.

http://councilroom.com/win_rate_diff_accum.html?cards=Cost%3D%3D6 is a pretty stark depiction of what I'm talking about.  By and large, Adventurer just doesn't belong in this cost tier.

When do you really need to watch out for it in the endgame? Most of the time: buy a farmland to trash for a province, and hey, you could have bought that Province anyways. a 9$ hand in late, late endgame with gold gives you +2VP over a province.. which is rarely significant. Farmland chains are really, really bad the vast majority of the time. So really the best use of Farmland is when you have a border village setup.

Adventurer works with: Moneylender/Spice Merchant with sufficient +actions, Fools Gold, Bank, to a lesser extent HOP, really any form of decent copper trashing. It is a soft counter top junking decks and allows you to green earlier. It Colony games, like most other money-centric cards, it becomes far better.

That being said, I probably buy farmland more frequently than adventurer, however infrequently I buy either. But in Farmland games I buy it mostly to be in correct form, it almost never decides a game. Adventurer, while certainly almost never dominant, can actually occasionally be the difference between a loss and a win. 

[chwhite]

Well chwhite, if winrates are any indication, my win without KC is 1.66 (with=0.61) and yours is -0.17 (with =-0.22). You win a full 6.5% more games with Goons on the table than KC, over a significant sample size, that's an enormous difference.

Now I want to see the $6+ list! This $5 list has been discussed to death and been dragged out way too long as it is, anyway, and I'm curious how Goons is doing. I usually don't disagree very strongly with the best players on here, but I really feel this is just wrong. Some more councilroom data:

(All players)
Goons gained 87.4%, KC gained 84.1% (too much!)
Goons winrate with 1.04, winrate without 0.77 (!) KC winrate with 1.02, winrate without 0.92

The numbers are eye-popping, true.  I think (at least vis-a-vis my winrate) they're slightly misleading, in that Goons is actually an incredibly high-skill card where King's Court is much swingier: getting to $7 fast, or King's Courting the first power card (especially if that card is a King's Court), will very often decide the game.  I mean, I buy Menagerie more often than Mountebank, win with it in my deck more often, and win with it out more often.  That doesn't mean Menagerie is necessarily a better card than Mountebank.

I'm quite certain KC will end up as #1 when the votes are in- there's something about King's Courting a King's Court that sticks in people's minds... and wins games.  But Goons is really incredibly strong too, you make a good case for it deserving the #1 spot, and I'd be very disappointed if it wasn't at least #2.  They're both certainly miles better than Grand Market.

[Fabian]

+2VP in the endgame is "rarely significant"? Yikes man.

Farmland chains are indeed generally terrible, and certainly not how Farmland should generally be played. Overall, Farmland is a fine if slightly undewhelming card you often buy once or twice (in the right situations, hopefully). Adventurer, you pretty much never buy.

[Fabian]

chwhite, if I were slightly meaner, I would say that the skill with King's Court is knowing when to ignore it (which is often (relatively speaking)), but I'm a very nice person so I won't

[theorel]

http://councilroom.com/win_rate_diff_accum.html?cards=Cost%3D%3D6 is a pretty stark depiction of what I'm talking about.  By and large, Adventurer just doesn't belong in this cost tier.

that graph is a little unfair to Adventurer.  He's not alone in the negative slope of cards costing 6+:
http://councilroom.com/win_rate_diff_accum.html?cards=Cost%3E%3D6%20%26%26%20Action