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[Watno]

Twitch Highlight of live reveal
YouTube Video of live reveal



Farmers' Market: $3 Action-Gathering
+1 Buy
If there are 4 VP or more on the Farmers' Market Supply pile, take them and trash this. Otherwise, add 1 VP to the pile and then +$1 per 1 VP on the pile.

You may or may not already know this from other previews, so let's talk about the Gathering type. Some cards can put VP tokens on their supply piles, and then somehow you get those tokens. That's what Gathering cards do. Also, the wording about "4 VP or more": as of right now I don't know of a way to get more than 4 VP on the pile, but who knows, maybe it could come up in the future...

Let's do the "easy" comparison first: you play Farmers' Market five times, you get a total of $10, 5 buys, and 4 VP tokens. This comes out to an average of a card that looks like this:

Average Farmers' Market: $3 Action
+1 Buy
+$2
+0.8 VP tokens

Once you play this five times, trash it.

This looks like a pretty favorable comparison to Monument until you get to that last part, especially considering this guy only costs $3. Still, seems like a pretty solid card without even considering that it becomes very important when it's the only +Buy on the board -- it's like a Woodcutter/Monument mix, priced pretty competitively, but you have to re-buy it if you play it too much. I don't think the spiky distribution of money counts against it all that much. Let's put this in perspective, though, comparing favorably to Woodcutter and Monument is something many Dominion cards do quite easily, so that doesn't mean FM is a top-tier card in terms of power level (it isn't) -- the fact that it's pretty slow is something important to keep in mind.

And I should say that almost all of the time, you're going to want those points, getting the points is way, way better than getting money and the exceptions to this are rare.

Strategy:

Any time a card provides another way to score points, you have to figure out how many points you can score using that card, and how much time/work it will take to score those points (oh man you've already seen quite a lot of that in the previews and it's one of my favorite things about this set). We know that you can get up to 40 VP tokens with Farmers' Market, which is enough to offset a 6-2 Province deficit. That's a lot of points, and even better, they're VP tokens which are way better than green cards. The potential of this card is huge. It even becomes infinite with Rogue or Graverobber on the board.

But you're not guaranteed to get all of those points: any of your opponents could hit the VP jackpot after you've put all that hard work into getting those tokens on the pile. There's a dance to be danced to make sure you're getting more VP tokens than your opponent. Let's say that together you run the pile and get all 40 VP available, if you get 6 of those jackpots, that's an 8VP swing you have, it's more than a Province, that's a big deal. If you don't run the pile you can look at it like every time you manufacture a way to get those VP for yourself, you got 4VP on your opponent, and every time you snipe one from your opponent, it's an 8 VP swing. Of course this is the most optimistic way to look at it in terms of points, but considering the potential of the card when uncontested or contested poorly is very important.

So what is this dance and how do you do it? Let's talk about the one-card kingdom of Farmers' Market: Certainly you get them, and it's just like any other non-drawing terminal, you want to play it a lot of turns but not have them collide. There's not much you can do here other than just get more of them to try playing FM more than your opponent, but there's a lot of luck involved here.

What about the case where there are no villages and you can somewhat reliably play Farmers' Market once per turn? The hilarious thing is that the right thing to do is to have the card in your deck, but don't play it if you think your opponent can get the VP on the following turn. So you can end up with this card in your deck that you have just for the threat of playing it. Good times, huh? In any case, it's certainly an opportunity to outwit your opponent. I should also say that in games with more than 2 players, something similar to this strategy ends up being good a lot of the time, where you don't play your Farmers' Markets unless you can get the VP that turn and/or it's far enough away that your control becomes too little to matter.

In some cases the buy is just more important than all of this hullabaloo, so you play it anyways, but I'd say this happens more in the late game and I wouldn't make a habit out of doing this.

Then there are the games when you can play multiple Farmers' Markets in a turn. You've got this terminal payload card that adds a new phase to the game where you're building up longer than normal because you get these VP tokens in the process. The trick to dancing here is all about pile control, but this time you're controlling the number of VP tokens on the pile and not necessarily the number of cards in the pile. You'll have to keep track of how many FMs your opponent can play on a turn and try to build your deck so you can play more than them -- doing this gives you the trick of leaving the VP on the pile at juuuust the right amount where your opponent can't collect VP on their turn, but they also can't stop you from collecting on your next turn. Shutting them out like this is a big deal.

In this case, when you're looking for the best synergies, you find cards that work well with all kinds of terminal payload cards, so King's Court, Royal Carriage, and Throne Room are the stars of the show, though they don't actually increase the total number of VP you can get from Farmers' Markets in one game, sadly.

The neat thing, though, is that it actually plays nice with other terminal payload cards, since the Farmers' Markets will eventually go away and in the process they give you money and buys, which can be used to buy the terminal payload cards you can replace them with. For this reason, it is often good to get Farmers' Markets in the early-to-mid game as you're still building your deck, before going on to whatever other payload there is. Maybe you just want to replace it with terminal draw because you're greening. Maybe the other terminal payload is so strong that the points from FM are just too slow to compete so you skip it. Or maybe the other terminal payload helps you build up faster early and can win you the village split (being faster than a Woodcutter isn't terribly difficult to do).

So that's Farmers' Market. It gives you VP and it gives you a buy, which make it very important on a lot of boards, despite its slower tempo.[/q]

[Seprix]

Seems average, reminds me of Fool's Gold. Uncontested 4VP, can be strong in the long run for engines. Contested, the 4VP instantly loses all meaning unless you can play 4 a turn or unless you think you can get the 3rd and 4th play in before your opponent, and even that dance won't last long because the card will trash itself eventually. The 4 VP is more of a bonus, the real excitement of this card is going to be the +buy.

[LaLight]

dunno what to say about the card, but art slightly reminds me of HoMM 2, human castle =)

[clb]

Collecting the VP is paramount, but your competitor(s) might get the points - seems like a delicate dance.

[crj]

Seems average, reminds me of Fool's Gold.

Er... Fool's Gold isn't average!

[scott_pilgrim]

I love the art!  Also, there are too many people now with Procession avatars...

[Awaclus]

Seems average, reminds me of Fool's Gold.

Er... Fool's Gold isn't average!

That article is 4 years old. Fool's Gold is pretty average.

[eHalcyon]

Possible plays of this card:

+$1, +1 Buy (terrible)
+$2, +1 Buy (woodcutter)
+$3, +1 Buy (terminal gold)
+$4, +1 Buy (awesome money)
+4VP, +1 Buy, trash this (super efficient VP purchase)

With timing being so crucial, I expect this to play well with Transmogrify and Summon.  It also works well with King's Court, which takes you through 3 steps on its own.  Adam mentions it as a card that "work(s) well with all kinds of terminal payload cards", but I think covering many steps is the crucial bit since it makes it that much easier for you to score the VP. 

It's going to feel so swingy with 3+ players.

Edit: removing accidental strikethrough from writing [s]...

[Orange]

"or more"?

[LastFootnote]

"or more"?

Never can be too careful.

[faust]

I thought this card would be:

+1 action
+1$
+1 buy
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal an Action or Treasure. Put it into your hand and discard the rest.

[Voltaire]

"or more"?

Also, the wording about "4 VP or more": as of right now I don't know of a way to get more than 4 VP on the pile, but who knows, maybe it could come up in the future...

[Orange]

Best of the bonus previews.  Appreciate the analysis.

[Seprix]

"or more"?

You can presumably add more VP tokens onto cards with Landmarks or Events not shown yet.

[A Drowned Kernel]

The art for this features a disappointing lack of waxed mustaches and NPR totebags.

[faust]

Gotta say I dislike putting long strategy articles into previews. Leave that stuff for us to figure out in our own time, man. (Yeah, yeah, Adam won't read this, but I'm too lazy to make a reddit account just to tell him.)

[Chris is me]

Gotta say I dislike putting long strategy articles into previews. Leave that stuff for us to figure out in our own time, man. (Yeah, yeah, Adam won't read this, but I'm too lazy to make a reddit account just to tell him.)

He'll still read this, he just won't post here out of protest / a weird sense of pride about the whole drama explosion. In this case, with it being an official preview or whatever, it's more annoying than anything else.

Hey, if I'm wrong, he'll never read this comment, right?

[2.71828.....]

I just don't read long walls of text. I need more pictures

[eHalcyon]

Gotta say I dislike putting long strategy articles into previews. Leave that stuff for us to figure out in our own time, man. (Yeah, yeah, Adam won't read this, but I'm too lazy to make a reddit account just to tell him.)

Well, you can just not read the commentary if you don't want to. 



I'm pretty curious about the testing for this card.  You crack the VP on the fifth play of the card.  Was it tested with 4 plays?  6 plays?

[Watno]

Luckily, there's a picture at the top. I didn't read the text, I just copied it.

[Max]

The art on this card is my favourite so far of the set.

[navical]

Gotta say I dislike putting long strategy articles into previews. Leave that stuff for us to figure out in our own time, man. (Yeah, yeah, Adam won't read this, but I'm too lazy to make a reddit account just to tell him.)

Well, you can just not read the commentary if you don't want to. 



I'm pretty curious about the testing for this card.  You crack the VP on the fifth play of the card.  Was it tested with 4 plays?  6 plays?

5 makes it a terminal Silver on average which is pretty standard and also makes it easier to compare to other cards.

[Donald X.]

I'm pretty curious about the testing for this card.  You crack the VP on the fifth play of the card.  Was it tested with 4 plays?  6 plays?

I didn't try it every which way, but this wasn't the only version.

[DG]

Gotta say I dislike putting long strategy articles into previews. Leave that stuff for us to figure out in our own time, man. (Yeah, yeah, Adam won't read this, but I'm too lazy to make a reddit account just to tell him.)

I think something to get the reader thinking about possibilities is a good thing. It is a teaser after all. It also doesn't really matter what Adam says about when not to play the farmer's market. I'm guessing that particular discussion will keep running as long people play Dominion.

[eHalcyon]

5 makes it a terminal Silver on average which is pretty standard and also makes it easier to compare to other cards.

Sure, but I think the cycle is more important than the average case and makes it really hard to compare to other cards, even with a cycle of 5.

I didn't try it every which way, but this wasn't the only version.

I hope the secret histories will go into those other versions, and why you settled on 5!

[amoffett11]

I was going to chime in on the format of this teaser also, but I guess that's been done.  I also prefer the strategy to come out of the discussion, and not this large infodump.  Maybe a hint or two here or there, but not quite this.  Let people have a chance to play with the cards before telling them how to play them.  And ya, you can just not read it, but I guess you don't know to not read it until you've read it, and you can't read what's not written (and in this case I think it's a bit much). 

[Nflickner]

I was going to chime in on the format of this teaser also, but I guess that's been done.  I also prefer the strategy to come out of the discussion, and not this large infodump.  Maybe a hint or two here or there, but not quite this.  Let people have a chance to play with the cards before telling them how to play them.  And ya, you can just not read it, but I guess you don't know to not read it until you've read it, and you can't read what's not written (and in this case I think it's a bit much).

I disagree--I like the poster having a long monologue about what he thinks of the card. 

[pacovf]

Gotta say I dislike putting long strategy articles into previews. Leave that stuff for us to figure out in our own time, man. (Yeah, yeah, Adam won't read this, but I'm too lazy to make a reddit account just to tell him.)

He'll still read this, he just won't post here out of protest / a weird sense of pride about the whole drama explosion. In this case, with it being an official preview or whatever, it's more annoying than anything else.

Hey, if I'm wrong, he'll never read this comment, right?

But if you are right you are basically trolling him, and that's not very nice.

I hope the secret histories will go into those other versions, and why you settled on 5!

Now you are just teasing Awaclus.

[eHalcyon]

I hope the secret histories will go into those other versions, and why you settled on 5!

Now you are just teasing Awaclus.

Can you explain this joke?  I'm seriously blanking right now...

[pacovf]

...120 plays was rejected quickly after everybody started calling Farmer's Market "the snitch".

[drsteelhammer]

I also like the more in-depth strategic advice by the previewer. It's refreshing to see actual interesting strategy advice since we usually just talk about weird edge cases that only Stef has to worry about while implementing and otherwise never matters.

[Titandrake]

I also like the more in-depth strategic advice by the previewer. It's refreshing to see actual interesting strategy advice since we usually just talk about weird edge cases that only Stef has to worry about while implementing and otherwise never matters.

Let me briefly explain why I don't.

Cards can only be new once. Part of the fun with Preview threads is that we have no clue how good or bad the revealed cards are. Go back to the Cornucopia previews from the main blog, it's really funny to read people's first reactions. It doesn't matter how good you are, it's very hard to hit the power level correctly until you play with it for real.

Except, by "we" I mean the people who haven't gotten to playtest Empires. When a playtester is giving strategy advice on a card, they're probably saying something correct because they got to play with the cards already. That ruins the fun. There's no surprise. I thought one of the revealed cards was going to be pretty good, then I read a Reddit comment from a playtester that said "no this card is pretty bad", and now I'm sad because I didn't get to discover that for myself.

If you want accurate strategic advice, it's best to wait until the set gets released. Preview threads are for wild speculation, rules questions, etc.

(If you're going to say I don't have to read it, I actually didn't read it, but now I'm have to avoid the top half of the first page because it's an information hazard.)

[Beyond Awesome]

Even if a play tester believes a card is weak that doesn't always make them right. There are many cases where cards are later on discovered to be stronger than believed at first. I'm finding the more I play with Adventures, the harder it really is to gauge the true power level of the card until you've played with it A LOT.

But, anyway, I do see your point. It's nice to work things out on your own. But, even reading this site and reading play testers comments has not taken away my enjoyment from Adventures. I am still very much buying the cards and making "bad decisions" just to find out if it really is a "bad decisions" and if the card really does work the way I think it works. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised and learn something new about the card, and other times my rating tanks because I'm doing silly things.

So, even reading play tester comments, I know for a fact that I will explore Empires cards on my own and try to work them out for myself. I will though keep in mind what other people say, but their beliefs will not be what ultimately formulates my opinion about said cards.

[xyz123]

The thing that sticks out to me is that it says 4 or more VP on the Farmer's Market pile, yet the card itself does not provide a way of having more than 4 VP on it. Does this mean there is a card or event that allows you to put tokens on other cards, or is it just Donald future-proofing the card and not closing off this design space for future expansions?

[eHalcyon]

...120 plays was rejected quickly after everybody started calling Farmer's Market "the snitch".

Well I get this one, but I still don't see how it was teasing Awaclus... 

(Edit: Wait, I got it.  That gets me every time.)

The thing that sticks out to me is that it says 4 or more VP on the Farmer's Market pile, yet the card itself does not provide a way of having more than 4 VP on it. Does this mean there is a card or event that allows you to put tokens on other cards, or is it just Donald future-proofing the card and not closing off this design space for future expansions?

Future-proofing, or maybe it's something else in Empires.  Adam actually mentions it in his write-up, saying that for now he doesn't know of a way to do it, but maybe he's not counting anything that hasn't been revealed.  It was also answered twice on page 1 of this thread.

[Aleimon Thimble]

I agree with Beyond Awesome, this strategy advice is beyond awesome.

It was from Adam, right? Man, I miss that guy.

[Joseph2302]

I agree with Beyond Awesome, this strategy advice is beyond awesome.

It was from Adam, right? Man, I miss that guy.

Really good advice about it- I think it's interesting, and not necessarily spoiler-y, since lots of people would make the connection to e.g. Monument pretty quickly.

[Davio]

Just KC Farmer's Market and then call 2 Royal Carriages on it.
Which gives you $10 + 4VP + 5 Buys

Doing the same with Monument gives you $10 + 5 VP + 0 Buys


So you get 1 less VP and a lot of Buys with so many plays overall.
The good thing is that you can get away with just playing it once or twice for bigger bonuses if you time it right.

[pst]

Does this mean there is a card or event that allows you to put tokens on other cards, or is it just Donald future-proofing the card and not closing off this design space for future expansions?

Not necessarily, but there should be some reason there is a card type Gathering. That could be a card putting VP tokens on or taking VP tokens from any such card.

[Awaclus]

I doubt there will be a card that interacts with Gatherings unless that card somehow makes sure that there is a Gathering available in the game. There are so many cards in the game at this point, it wouldn't really be very useful to have cards explicitly interact with a card type that's introduced now and isn't probably even that common in Empires. My guess is that a card specifically avoids interacting with Gatherings instead.

[jsh357]

I'm not judging types of previews one way or another, but I went with a Donald x style preview because the audience for these also includes casual players who don't care about strategy that much, and as titan implied, the community will figure the cards out anyway. The response here indicates that readers are divided on this, so clearly there is room for both types of preview.

[markusin]

The best compromise would be for the previewer to put their detailed thoughts on the strategic considerations of a new card in spoiler blocks. Using the actual spoiler tags would be overkill and inelegant in my opinion, but a simple warning should suffice.

In my mind, Adam is likely just scratching the surface with these thoughts. I didn't find his thoughts be too long. Even if it was his intention to be thorough, the perspective of one person can only understand so much. If he really did cover almost everything, then there just wasn't much to talk about in the first place with the card and the massive depth of exploration space on this card was illusory.

[Watno]

I doubt there will be a card that interacts with Gatherings unless that card somehow makes sure that there is a Gathering available in the game. There are so many cards in the game at this point, it wouldn't really be very useful to have cards explicitly interact with a card type that's introduced now and isn't probably even that common in Empires. My guess is that a card specifically avoids interacting with Gatherings instead.

I guess it might put VP tokens on non-gatehring piles somehow.

[crj]

My main objection to this preview is that it's, well... not as entertaining or interesting as the others.

Whether that's through the inclusion of reams of dry (and, at first glance, meandering rather than incisive) strategy analysis, or some other reason... dunno.

[wachsmuth]

My main objection to this preview is that it's, well... not as entertaining or interesting as the others.

Whether that's through the inclusion of reams of dry (and, at first glance, meandering rather than incisive) strategy analysis, or some other reason... dunno.

I think one factor is that the card just isn't that exciting. It is pretty unique, but even in the uniqueness, it's *just* a Woodcutter/Monument mashup with some weird player interaction. I am personally far more excited by getting to play with Enchantress, Catapult and Chariot Race, and well, honestly all the other previewed cards than this one.

[crj]

I think one factor is that the card just isn't that exciting.

At first glance, I'd tend to agree. I'll have to try it, but right now I'm not "getting" the Gathering mechanic.

But at least one playtester must have had some enthusiasm for this card or it wouldn't have made the set, let alone the previews. If that's not Adam Horton, couldn't we have had a preview by them instead?

[Elestan]

I'll have to try it, but right now I'm not "getting" the Gathering mechanic.

Temple has this weird word "Gathering" on the bottom, I should say something there. Well uh. It groups together a few cards that put VP on their piles, and lets another card refer to them (in a "let's not mess this up" way).

It's probably safe to infer from this that the purpose of "Gathering" is probably not going to be evident until we see the "another card" DXV refers to.

[werothegreat]

The best thing about this card is that it continues the trend of Ryan Laukat illustrating something from every single Dominion product.

[Witherweaver]

I just don't read long walls of text. I need more pictures

All strategy articles shall henceforth be written through memes.

[Witherweaver]

The art for this features a disappointing lack of waxed mustaches and NPR totebags.

Also, what's in the foreground?  Is that white thing cauliflower?

[werothegreat]

The art for this features a disappointing lack of waxed mustaches and NPR totebags.

Also, what's in the foreground?  Is that white thing cauliflower?

It's clearly a monstrous, mutated slime mold hell-bent on consuming the young lady in the mid-ground.

[Accatitippi]

The art for this features a disappointing lack of waxed mustaches and NPR totebags.

Also, what's in the foreground?  Is that white thing cauliflower?

It's clearly a monstrous, mutated slime mold hell-bent on consuming the young lady in the mid-ground.

Or, you know, sheep.

[werothegreat]

The art for this features a disappointing lack of waxed mustaches and NPR totebags.

Also, what's in the foreground?  Is that white thing cauliflower?

It's clearly a monstrous, mutated slime mold hell-bent on consuming the young lady in the mid-ground.

Or, you know, sheep.

Isn't that what I said?

[LastFootnote]

But at least one playtester must have had some enthusiasm for this card or it wouldn't have made the set, let alone the previews.

I like Farmers' Market a lot! My group buys it all the time.

I haven't played many 2-player games with it at all, and maybe the "dance" Adam describes is more of a thing there. With more players it's like, you get what you get. And usually you're not so unhappy with +$3, +$4, or the VP. From a strict cost/payout perspective, the +$4 is the real jackpot, although as the game nears its conclusion, the +VP is more and more valuable.

[2.71828.....]

I just don't read long walls of text. I need more pictures

All strategy articles shall henceforth be written through memes.

Thanks. Maybe I will finally get good at dominion now!