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Author Topic: Getting use out of Chancellor  (Read 9427 times)

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Asklepios

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Getting use out of Chancellor
« on: January 25, 2012, 04:08:29 am »
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So dominionstrategy's accepted wisdom is that Chancellor is a bad card that you think might be a good card in disguise, but turns out to be just a bad card.

Lets talk about circumstances where it would be a good buy.

I recently played a game where I opened Chancellor/Potion, with Universities available. I was actually very happy with this.

The University came into play a turn earlier than it would have done because of the Chancellor reshuffle. There were no worthwhile terminal actions for Chancellor to clash with, and the University was generating Hunting Parties for the most part. So in that game, for the first time, I felt that Chancellor was the best $3 opening for me, though I only bought one.

So I'd say that Chancellor is worth considering if there's no other terminals to clash with it, and you would have bought silver if it wasn't there. Extreme case, but there it is.

Thoughts?
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Tahtweasel

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #1 on: January 25, 2012, 09:21:36 am »
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Short answer:

Yes, Chancellor/Potion with a powerful alchemy card is one of the absolute best uses of Chancellor.
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brokoli

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #2 on: January 25, 2012, 09:34:45 am »
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Interesting, I always thought chancellor would be quite good in a familiar race, but haven't tried yet...
And obviously the strong Chancellor + Inn...
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chwhite

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #3 on: January 25, 2012, 10:01:14 am »
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I gave an example of Chancellor being useful here: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=708.msg9831#msg9831

In general, Chancellor is best in setups that give out Curses (esp. Mountebank/Familiar/IGG since they don't have dead draw; possibly Hag as well but the downside of collision is much higher there, so probably not) but don't have any trashing: early on, it has a good chance of giving you the tempo boost necessary to play your curse-giver more, later on maybe you can flip your deck when you've already played its one Gold or something.  Obviously, Stash and Inn combo well with Chancellor.  (Theoretically Counting House could, but building an engine around those two terminals is just never worth it.)  And sometimes I'll pick up a couple of 'em if I'm swimming in +Actions and prefer my money to come from not-Treasure sources (Minion/Tac/Vineyard/Pool decks), but obviously that's a fairly marginal use and I'm not *excited* about Chancellor there like I am in Mountebank or Inn games.
« Last Edit: January 25, 2012, 10:04:22 am by chwhite »
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DG

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #4 on: January 25, 2012, 10:27:55 am »
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If you look far enough back through the BGG forums you'll find plenty of discussions about the chancellor. There was time when it was a mysterious card that seemed to offer so much, if only players could understand it! In actual fact it is much like the woodcutter. It's a reasonable card, not worse than silver unless you play it badly, generally not the strongest terminal in the kingdom. Many 3 cost terminals share that problem.

The chancellor can add more value multiplayer games when it is less vital to attack and more important to protect and advance your own deck. In two player games you would generally always choose a terminal attack card ahead of the chancellor.
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ehunt

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #5 on: January 25, 2012, 12:25:41 pm »
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chancellor allows you to mix hunting party with non terminal draws like caravan or schemes without risking a junk reshuffle, which is nice. But usually, there's a better terminal at the end of the hunting party chain.

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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #6 on: January 25, 2012, 02:29:12 pm »
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In general, Chancellor is best in setups that give out Curses (esp. Mountebank/Familiar/IGG since they don't have dead draw; possibly Hag as well but the downside of collision is much higher there, so probably not) but don't have any trashing: early on, it has a good chance of giving you the tempo boost necessary to play your curse-giver more, later on maybe you can flip your deck when you've already played its one Gold or something.
I'm not sure I agree. In order for Chancellor's ability to be good, you basically want your discard pile to be better than your draw deck. Most of the time, this is true, because you tend to be buying stuff better than what's already in your deck. But in curse games this is less so. You buy your curser early, and then get a bunch of curses dumped in your discard pile. As a result, there will be a fewer than average number of times you actually want to use the ability (basically any time you draw it before the curser), and you have less to gain, since the quality of your discard is not often that much better than the quality of your deck.
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jomini

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #7 on: January 27, 2012, 02:07:33 am »
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Chancellor has several very generic uses:
1. It is a deck accelerant. By getting your new cards back into hand ASAP, you can much more quickly build up to game winning buys. Because it is a terminal, this doesn't help out so much with most of the really strong cards - terminal attacks, terminal draw, etc. all conflict heavily with chancellor. In a BM deck, there is normally something out there that builds deck value faster than chancellor. It doesn't take that many trashes for something like steward, or moneylender to get faster than chancellor so as deck accelerants go, its pretty poor.

2. It is a dissappearing silver. For library, watchtower, menage, and the odd jack deck this can actually be pretty big. With chapel/TR/menage you can get a lot more out of TR/chancellor than TR/silver or TR/menage alone. The problem being here for spammable disappearing silver, duchess is better and that says a lot.

3. Reshuffle "management". A large number of decks have a tendancy to leave a bunch of dross near the end or force a reshuffle at a time when all your cards are in play. Playing a chancellor at the end of your turn can fix all of that. Common places for this to become a problem include: minion decks (we all hate knowing we are going to have 2 or 4 hands with no minions ... but if we minion for four and trigger it we might be able to nab a colony), apothecary decks, and golem decks. Likewise cards like spy and rabble are nicely circumvented by playing chancellor.

Still, most of the time smart play will either allow you to game reshuffles, or you will lack the option of playing the chancellor when you really need it (e.g. you don't have +actions and you need to play a poorly timed smithy to get those last two cards in your deck, odds of even a pair of chancellors being in your final minion hand are pretty low). There are also many better cards for getting rid of dross - warehouse, young witch, and cartographer come to mind.

So yeah on it's own it is good enough that I'll toss it in if I have no superior terminal or if acceleration is going to be huge. For instance if you know your odds of hitting 3P are crap for turn 4, then chancellor can save you in a familiar rush. Other than that, it is strictly a "use this only when nothing else is viable" for the basic stuff.

Useful synergies:
Counting house: ideally you chancellor everything and then CH for whatever you want. However this has the problems of requiring +actions, +buys (to stock up on copper, and still you have to hit a three card combo to make it work. Chancellor/CH/golems is much better (hit a golem, buy a colony, don't hit a golem -> buy a golem, copper, or VP).

Inn: properly executed chancellor/inn can give you pretty much an auto-hit on a massive engine every turn without trashing.

Treasure map: Chancellor increases your odds of hitting two maps quick a good bit more than many other deck accelerators. Unlike Steward or chapel, it doesn't have to struggle to hit 4 coin & buy a map on turns 3 & 4. Unlike watchtower top decking, you can still use the 3 coin card on turn 3 (rather than having to hit 4 coin & watchtower for good odds of hitting double map). This isn't a great strat, but it is better than straight map and its extremely high variance. Seeing a 5/2 break for the other guy  in a witch game can make this one of your better shots of winning.

Forge: Getting to 7 is huge if forge is dominant or even viable. While something like baron is superior, getting silver/chancellor gives you slight odds and more importantly can churn new coin to the top pretty easy. Unlike other high value cards (like KC, bank, goons, etc.) Forge will take a less useful terminal silver and say crunch it to a gold with a regular silver, the big problem - of chancellor being a dead card to often - goes poof in the nigh.

Stash: get 4 stashes, get lots of chancellors, give yourself a province every turn after you play a chancellor (one of the few strats that makes going heavy chancellor good). Still tends to be slow.

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chwhite

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #8 on: January 27, 2012, 03:34:49 am »
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2. It is a dissappearing silver. For library, watchtower, menage, and the odd jack deck this can actually be pretty big. With chapel/TR/menage you can get a lot more out of TR/chancellor than TR/silver or TR/menage alone. The problem being here for spammable disappearing silver, duchess is better and that says a lot.

I agree with most of what you've wrote here... but Duchess is certainly a worse a terminal silver than Chancellor: it can provoke unwanted shuffles, has generally less-powerful cycling, and the benefit to your opponent(s) is a major downside.
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Geronimoo

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #9 on: January 27, 2012, 05:46:57 am »
+2

Chancellor/Stash isn't slow. To me this is a true combo: two crappy cards combine into a monster.
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jomini

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #10 on: January 28, 2012, 12:57:58 pm »
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chwhite: I disagree with you on several points. First off the threat of mistimed reshuffles is exceedingly low with duchess. No matter how many you play, as long as you have a single card left on top of the deck you can't be forced into an early reshuffle. That is a rather rare corner case, most engines gain something from the sifting ability of being able to discard provinces in the late game if nothing else. In fact, I'd say the ability to discard is going to save far more shuffles as you can burn off green that you've been forced to deck with the discard ability.

Additionally, duchess costs 1 less, this doesn't sound like much, but for a lot of engines 7 coin means you can buy 5 coin engine card (like say a festival) and a 2 coin terminal. 8 coin with two buys is only going to be really helpful if you are playing for colonies. Likewise, hitting 10 coin with 2 buys allows you to add to the engine while getting to 11 doesn't do so much.

Lastly, there is the 5/2 split issue. Opening upgrade/duchess can be done if you are looking to upgrade into a watchtower/festival deck. So yes, as terminal silvers go, duchess fits better into disappearing cash/draw engines than a chancellor.

Geronimoo:
Really? BM/smithy is 14 turns to 4 provinces. With a 3/4 split that means that, at best it is only on turn 7 when you can get the stash/chancellor combo lined up (or do you only need to grab 3 stashes & hope to hit a chancellor for the last 2 coin, it has been a while for me since I played this). Assuming you hit it every other turn after that you are looking at turn 13 for province number 4 (theory's example game gets to province 4 on turn 14).  Now maybe I'm off here somewhere, but that is no longer as fast as it once was. Jack beats it, as can several different types of engines (e.g. monument/hunting party). While stash/chancellor is somewhat resitant to cursing attacks, it falls down hard against discard attacks and even is fairly vulnerable to deck inspectors (spy, rabble, etc.) and card trashers (swindler & sab) that can hunt for chancellors. I'm not saying it is bad, just that it has gotten relatively slower as new cards have come out.
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Fabian

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #11 on: January 28, 2012, 01:53:38 pm »
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chwhite is pretty clearly right on all his points, I'm not even sure what there is to disagree with except the conclusion. Chancellor can't provoke unwanted reshuffles while Duchess can, this is obviously not even a point of debate. Chancellor unquestionably has more powerful cycling power in general (though I will agree there are situations where playing ~6 Duchess is better than playing ~6 Chancellor, but good luck with that in a real life scenario). Chancellor doesn't help your opponent while Duchess does, though I realize as I'm writing this it's debateable if this is a "major" downside, I suppose (relatively speaking, it definitely is). Whether Duchess's one upside (it costing less) makes up for its downsides is debatable, I'm going to go with a very clear no, like chwhite.

I will concede that when I open 5/2 with Upgrade and Duchess and Festival and Watchtower and Chancellor on the board, I will prefer Duchess over Chancellor on turn 2, so there's that I guess. Of course, later in the game I might be using Chancellors anyway, as Estate (and Duchess!) can be Upgraded into Chancellors.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2012, 01:58:53 pm by Fabian »
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #12 on: January 28, 2012, 03:05:11 pm »
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Geronimoo:
Really? BM/smithy is 14 turns to 4 provinces. With a 3/4 split that means that, at best it is only on turn 7 when you can get the stash/chancellor combo lined up (or do you only need to grab 3 stashes & hope to hit a chancellor for the last 2 coin, it has been a while for me since I played this). Assuming you hit it every other turn after that you are looking at turn 13 for province number 4 (theory's example game gets to province 4 on turn 14).  Now maybe I'm off here somewhere, but that is no longer as fast as it once was. Jack beats it, as can several different types of engines (e.g. monument/hunting party). While stash/chancellor is somewhat resitant to cursing attacks, it falls down hard against discard attacks and even is fairly vulnerable to deck inspectors (spy, rabble, etc.) and card trashers (swindler & sab) that can hunt for chancellors. I'm not saying it is bad, just that it has gotten relatively slower as new cards have come out.
First, BM/Smithy is not always available. Second, Chancellor/Stash is much more resilient to all attacks except those consistent handsize-reducers. And its biggest upside is... you can start greening much sooner. You're getting your provinces from the stashes, so you're free to duchy a lot a lot sooner.
Chancellor/Stash crushes BM/Smithy in simulations. It beats Wharf. It even crushes Mountebank. It goes toe-to-toe with witch. It. Is. A beast.
Code: [Select]
<player name="Chancellor/StashWW"
 author="WanderingWinder"
 description="Two crappy cards make for a great combo. This is the optimized Chancellor/Stash combo (though hey, it might well be better optimized yet)">
 <type name="Combo"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
   <buy name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Stash"/>
         <operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Duchy"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Stash"/>
         <operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Stash"/>
   <buy name="Chancellor">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Chancellor"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Chancellor">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Chancellor"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="countAllCardsInDeck"/>
         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="13.0" />
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Stash"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
</player>

jomini

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #13 on: January 29, 2012, 08:30:08 am »
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Fabian:

The point is the criticisms being made are well out of proportion. The chances that you will lose an engine turn, you know the reason we care about reshuffles, to a duchess inspection is exceedingly low - the lowest of any card in the game that still can do it. It is only in an extreme edge case that it is even possible. Secondly the discard ability is more likely to save engine turns - where you play everything in the engine - thanks to the ability to clear junk off the top deck before you draw it. In a multiple watchtower/library engine, green/coin in hand gums up the engine like nothing else, being able to discard one or two of those per watchtower can make you engine run a lot hotter.

As far as helping your opponents, yes it does, but again this marginal. Duchess helps your opponents only up until it hits cards worth putting back. You, as an engine player, will at some point put good cards back and then draw them with the menage or whatever. After this you can keep sifting. Unless your opponent's deck has vastly more junk in it, duchess discards are always going to favor the player in the midst of drawing his deck.

Once you've gotten the engine built up, both of the "downsides" to duchess are upsides.  Both clearly help the engine player more than they hurt him. I grant that the remote chances of a forced reshuffle exists and that you will help your opponent, but not that this makes chancellor a better card for the specific case under discussion.

So what about chancellor? It is a deck accelerant, but the point of an engine deck is to draw & play large numbers of cards. This greatly diminishes the usefulness of chancellor as each turn you churn through a higher and higher percentage of your deck. With a peak efficiency engine you will draw everything and chancellor's discard ability will do nothing. Suppose you are setting up worker's village/menage/talisman with a chapel in a colony game; the only dissapearing silvers out are duchess and chancellor. Sure I might open chancellor/chapel (though talisman is huge hure), but once I'm thinned from 3 plays of chapel and have WV my priorities are going to be (in order): colonies, then have one of each treasure (maybe two plats), WV, menages, and throw the odd duchess to soak up surplus actions when I have 2 coin left on a spare buy.

Why doesn't chancellor work as well here? It competes with more important engine cards. I can on a 5 coin hand with two buys and a talisman I can get two chancellors or two duchesses and a menage. Likewise on a 6 coin hand with talisman I can get 4 chancellors (which will likely hose my action balance) or I can get 2 duchesses & 2 WV (keeping actions balanced). The point is when you are playing with multiple buys and want to build an engine, 2's can be bought in addition to rather than in competition with other engine cards.


I think you, like most good players, are categorically undervaluing the difference between a 2 and 3 coin card. The former is often an easy buy with spare change, the latter most often means buying that instead of something else good.

So yeah, buy the chancellor early, but spam the duchesses to fill out an engine (and remember we are only talking about a rare set of boards where dissapearing silver is dominant).


WW: First, my definition of "fast" is not the same thing as "strong". Yes I know stash/chancellor is strong, you can rack up large points without slowing the combo much. My point is, it can be slow. Most discards will slow it down. Early cursing (e.g. IGG) or cutpursing can make it very hard to hit 5 for the stashes. There are many other combos out there now that are are faster, even if they crap out quicker. If I can build a consistent draw deck with a discard attack (which have become easier to do) or if I can hit a megacombo before you can soak up enough VP, then I'm going win because while stash wins, it doesn't win FAST. If I can set something up before you get enough VP then stash goes down. Strong & fast are related, but stash/chancellor is one of the few combos where they have significant diverigence.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2012, 12:27:19 pm by jomini »
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Fabian

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #14 on: January 29, 2012, 09:35:11 am »
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I don't know what "out of proportion" means in this context, but you don't get to say "I disagree" when someone says one reason why Chancellor is stronger than Duchess is that Duchess can provoke unwanted reshuffles and pretend like that's going to fly. If you disagree with the conclusion that Chancellor is stronger than Duchess then that's fine, you've given your reasons and so have we. In the specific case you've been discussing for the last 2 posts (dedicated action decks with watchtower/library and +actions and +buy etc) I agree you'd buy more Duchess than Chancellor in general, since it doesn't compete with Menagerie or Fishing Village or Watchtower or what have you. In that sense, it's more useful to those decks (assuming they'd want a terminal Silver). That accounts for.. dunno, 2% of all decks? I hope you're not planning on writing this many paragraphs about the other 98% of decks, the forum might explode :) Either way, I would say that corner case isn't what chwhite was discussing, he was simply saying that Chancellor is a stronger terminal Silver than Duchess is in general.

And just to save us time, this "(and remember we are only talking about a rare set of boards where dissapearing silver is dominant)." is not true. You brought up the convoluted action chain decks after chwhite corrected a small exaggeration, nothing more.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2012, 09:37:18 am by Fabian »
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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #15 on: January 29, 2012, 11:23:11 am »
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Jomini your third start of a paragraph isn't even a complete sentence. You may want to look into that.  ;)
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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #16 on: January 29, 2012, 12:16:23 pm »
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I don't think Chancellor's problem is that it's a bad card, its problem is that there are often better ones in the kingdom.
Usually, you don't want more than a couple of terminals in your deck and is Chancellor so critical that it's going to be one of them?

If you can play it every single time it turns up for the $2 it provides and make the perfect decision to discard or not then it's strictly better than Silver of course. However, if you're only able to play it 60% of the time due to terminal collision, then it just provides $1.2 on average, not that much better than Copper.
Also, you can't always be sure when it turns up. If it's always in the last hand before the reshuffle, then it's just not better than Silver.

I can see its uses with Alchemy (Potion-costing) cards, because they take some time to buy and play. One full (usually the first) shuffle for the Potion, one full shuffle for buying the card (e.g. Familiar): Play it on your next shuffle. If you're lucky, you can buy and play a Familiar without Chancellor the earliest on turn 5 (barring other Hinterlandish interactions). With Chancellor, this can be on turn 4. This makes quite a difference if you're the second player because on normal turn 5's, the first player gets a Curse after a reshuffle and the second player gets a Curse before the reshuffle.

So that's is my analysis of Chancellor.

Sure, there are specific situations where it's a good card (Chancellor/Stash, Chancellor/Golem/Counting House), but those are rare.

I don't hate it and I will buy it when it's useful, but that's not very often.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #17 on: January 29, 2012, 12:29:06 pm »
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WW: First, my definition of "fast" is not the same thing as "strong". Yes I know stash/chancellor is strong, you can rack up large points without slowing the combo much. My point is, it can be slow. Most discards will slow it down. Early cursing (e.g. IGG) or cutpursing can make it very hard to hit 5 for the stashes. There are many other combos out there now that are are faster, even if they crap out quicker. If I can build a consistent draw deck with a discard attack (which have become easier to do) or if I can hit a megacombo before you can soak up enough VP, then I'm going win because while stash wins, it doesn't win FAST. If I can set something up before you get enough VP then stash goes down. Strong & fast are related, but stash/chancellor is one of the few combos where they have significant diverigence.
If you care about this distinction, then fast is irrelevant. Only strong matters. Curse-givers hurt, of course, but not actually near as much as they do other strategies. Handsize-reducers hurt, but they don't totally kill it. and there are only like, what, 4 or 5 of them? And if the mega-combo that is so fast is out there, that isn't the fault of chancellor/stash. I'm not saying it's the strongest deck ever, only that it's quite strong.
And actually, it's really really fast, too. Almost three turns faster than BM/Smithy.

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #18 on: January 29, 2012, 02:00:44 pm »
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To jomini:

Yes, Duchess is better than Chancellor in the specific case of a 5/2 opening split, where the $5 is a strong card that doesn't immediately boost your buying power, like a Lab or a Mint.  That's the one case where the cost difference is consistently important.  Or Hunting Party?  But... Hunting Party stacks are perhaps the case where Duchess is most likely to cause those unwanted reshuffles, enough such that you simply can't build the classic HP spam deck with Duchess.  (But you can with Chancellor, lackluster as it may be).  My point is that it may seem like the "unwanted reshuffle" problem is rare enough to discount, until you realize that the best-case deck for a $2 terminal silver is also the same exact deck that can't handle said unwanted reshuffles. 

I'd also say that it's a big mistake to discount the extent to which Duchess can help your opponent.  It may not seem like much, but trust me it can be- probably on the level of Vault, I'd say.

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Ferrouswheel

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #19 on: January 30, 2012, 12:11:42 am »
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Counting house: ideally you chancellor everything and then CH for whatever you want. However this has the problems of requiring +actions, +buys (to stock up on copper, and still you have to hit a three card combo to make it work. Chancellor/CH/golems is much better (hit a golem, buy a colony, don't hit a golem -> buy a golem, copper, or VP).

Golem / Counting House works just as well as if CH is the only non golem action then the whole deck ends in the discard anyways.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #20 on: January 30, 2012, 08:56:13 am »
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Counting house: ideally you chancellor everything and then CH for whatever you want. However this has the problems of requiring +actions, +buys (to stock up on copper, and still you have to hit a three card combo to make it work. Chancellor/CH/golems is much better (hit a golem, buy a colony, don't hit a golem -> buy a golem, copper, or VP).

Golem / Counting House works just as well as if CH is the only non golem action then the whole deck ends in the discard anyways.
But it's worse than BM.

jomini

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #21 on: January 30, 2012, 11:55:31 am »
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Fabian & CHW: I think you guys are misreading me. I'm not saying that chancellor is generally worse than duchess. I'm saying that in the specific context of needing a spammable dissappearing silver, chancellor tends to be worse than duchess. This is a VERY specific situation. Normally this requires a lot of trashing and normally either draws every card most hands or comes pretty close.

In this specific situation, where you are building a draw engine that can use spammable terminal silvers, and pretty much only in those situations my points stand: duchess is going to save far more engine turns than it will lose to bad shuffles, duchess costing 2 becomes a major selling point, and the ability to sift with duchess is much better for the current player. In this specific situation, my disagreements are being made.

Why do I talk about these types of decks heavily, because as per my original post, decks that need a spammable disappearing silver are one of the rare general cases where chancellor can be worth massing. Even in this rare case where chancellor does what you need, chancellor just isn't as strong as a lot of the competition cards - it gets smoked by monument, hosed by steward, and normally is weaker than swindler, duchess, or oracle.

Like I initially said, chancellor is a deck accelerant, but he's rarely the best one to get your deck running fastest - he just collides too much with other much stronger terminals. He's a cheap disappearing terminal silver, but here also he's pretty poor. Unlike most, he is a bit of both so he can be better in situations where both are required (e.g. forge hunting, alchemy setups, etc.) but he sucks if you only need one of his attributes.

WW: Fast & strong differ mainly in how secure they are against attacks & megacombos. A strong deck that can pound out early duchies can get heavily hosed by a reliable mass sab deck. It is also vulnerable to a masq pin where it can be trashed into oblivion. And yes it has gotten easier to hit reliable forced discards that can disrupt the combo: militia, minion, ghost ship, margave, torturer (or eat a lot of curses), goons, followers. 30% of the time (assuming play with all cards, no exclusions & ignoring stuff like BM and young witch) you will see a hard counter on the table (not that the other player can always use it, but if they can set up a fast deck with that counter, then stash/chancellor may well go down). Likewise, consistent possession can own it.

More often there will be stuff out that slows the whole game down and can make other options more viable - early cursers like sea hag and IGG can slow the acquisition of stashes, cutpurse is extremely effective at doing that as well, etc.
Stash has to hit 5 early to make progress (as opposed to say a remake deck) so if the early game is coin constrained it may not go off in time. Likewise, if it doesn't get enough VP before a hard counter comes out, like a draw deck with ghost ship, it can go down.

That is my warning - if there is something that sets up fast enough, like chapel/militia/engine; then the combo is weaker. If there is something slower to get running, like a Margrave engine you are in a lot less danger of losing.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #22 on: January 31, 2012, 04:00:33 pm »
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One of the great things about the Chancellor/Stash combo is that it's pretty impervious to cursers. Like... they hurt it, but except for Witch (depending on the bane, young witch too), they lose to it. Followers isn't going to be reliable enough, especially since tourney races are going to be something that's helpful to chancellor/stash, and which they can win pretty will. Moreover, you can't play it nearly as often as the others.
With torturer, you just eat the curses if it's a province hand, not otherwise. Really really not a problem
That leaves us with 5 cards that REALLY disrupt it. And it's a 2-card combo. Anyway, it (or some slight variant) is going to be dominant in maybe half the games it's in, which is pretty good for two cards which are normally 1 terrible 1 extremely mediocre.

jomini

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #23 on: February 01, 2012, 01:01:09 pm »
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WW: I don't disagree that stash & chancellor is a strong combo, but there are more than 5 counter cards. Possession can reliably counter it. If you can hit possession every turn, you can steal the stash hands and force the opponent to not hit the combo (lest you get another assured province next turn).

Likewise, a quick sab deck can crush it, because so many of your buys hide in the discard, a quick sab deck can kill all the chancellors and start hunting green.

Swindler is more difficult, but with enough swindler play (e.g. KC/Swindler) you can pretty quickly turn the chancellors into silvers and heavily disrupt the combo.

Like I've said this is a strong combo, but if you can set something up quick to counter it, it can lose.
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Fabian

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Re: Getting use out of Chancellor
« Reply #24 on: February 01, 2012, 01:08:07 pm »
+1

Something quick like the ol' Possession every turn decks, or KC/Swindler / KC/Sab decks? Got it.
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