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Author Topic: Delve: A Brief Overview  (Read 14709 times)

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Seprix

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Delve: A Brief Overview
« on: June 24, 2016, 04:13:46 pm »
+14

This article is a brief overview on Delve. It is meant to be a quick and friendly read for newer players, but more experienced players may also benefit from the contents.

Introduction

With the advent of Dominion: Empires, many are looking at the strength of Events such as Dominate, Salt The Earth, and of course the biggest contender for best Event in the game, Donate. However, I wish to focus today on Delve, an Event that has gotten less attention than it deserves.

So what does Delve do? Simply stated, Delve gains a Silver for $2 without costing a buy. This seemingly innocent ability is much stronger than it first lets on. In fact, I will make a bold prediction from my limited playing time with Empires and say that Delve may become as game-warping as Save is.

I can hear some objections already. “Isn’t Silver a bad card?” “Why would you ever want Silver in an engine?” Some of you may already know in general what I will write about, but my hope is that everyone learns something new about Delve, including myself. So let’s “Delve” into the world of Silver gaining, shall we?

The Opening

Delve is most likely to be bought right at the opening first two turns, whether the strategy is Big Money or Engine. The mechanics of Delve in the opening likely would create an article in itself! Thankfully, a lot of it is common sense. For example, a player can pick up a Hamlet and a Delve for Silver with $4 on Turn 1, followed by a $3 Steward on Turn 2. Or perhaps a Silver/Silver with $4 on Turn 1 followed by a $3 Oracle Turn 2. The presence of the extra Silver helps spike $5 more often. What may come as a surprise is this: It may be better to open triple Silver over a $4 and a Silver! On a board where hitting $5 is crucial, this is great to consider! In the case of opening with $5/$2 hands, Delve will likely be a must purchase. Mountebank and Silver on the opening buys? Yikes.

In the opening buys, it is important to weigh out the plan in your mind. Do you want three Silvers in your deck straight away? They provide more economy and building quicker, but they may clog up your deck later on.

Big Money

Next off is likely the first thing on your mind for Delve: Big Money. Delve is a powerful Event in Big Money Kingdoms, and I’m sure you didn’t need me to tell you this. A free Silver without losing a buy for $2 is very strong indeed. What may be a little less obvious is this: Avoid buying Gold completely. The pure density of three Silvers in your deck increases your average monetary deck value more than a single Gold.

Because of the nature of Delve, there are two more things to consider when playing a Province Big Money game. These things are easy to conclude but worth stating; both stem from the free +buy given with the purchase of Delve. Firstly, there is the ability to buy draw and payload at the same time. A hand of $6 becomes Silver and Smithy. A hand of $7 becomes Silver/Silver/Gear. Secondly, there is a potential fear of overbuying terminal draw. Delve also mitigates this through the sheer volume of Silver it can purchase in a given turn, allowing you to buy more draw if needed.

Before you get too comfortable, everything changes when you are presented with a Colony board. While some initial Silver flooding is fine, the ultimate goal will be to get Platinum. A hand of 5 Silvers will become more unlikely as the game progresses and you accumulate Victory cards. This effect is somewhat mitigated with stronger draw cards but still holds true.

Alright. Delve can be great in Big Money. But is Delve any good in an engine?

Engines

Delve may even be better for engines than Big Money. To approach this conclusion, Silver must not be thought of simply as a Treasure but as a payload. This section of the article will be more abstract; there are many kinds of engines out there in the world and Delve will have different uses depending on the board.

Firstly, as with Big Money, Delve encourages flexibility with purchasing power, decreasing the opportunity cost of time and coin. The power of building the engine and increasing payload simultaneously cannot be overstated! Secondly, Delve’s cheap cost encourages more aggressive trashing. Instead of worrying about trashing too many cards, the player can simply trash everything with Chapel and use a spare $2 for Delve. Thirdly, Delve provides instant quick payload. For example, Upgrade can get more fuel with more Silvers to enable more power $4 gains. This quick payload may not even be specifically for trash-for-benefit, but perhaps even just the simple spending power. Spending $4 for an extra $4 economy with no +buy sacrificed can be huge.

All of this considered, engines using Delve may very well be much quicker than engines without.

Miscellaneous

Delve absolutely loves Gardens and Feodum. Delve can mitigate certain junking attacks like Ruins and Curses, as well as trashing attacks like Swindler and Knights. Cultist adores Delve, as does Rebuild.

What about times Delve is not so great? There are plenty of cases where buying Delve is a bad idea. Engines that rely on VP chip payloads like Goons engines and Groundskeeper would do well to stay away from purchasing Delve. Engines that wish to be slim also despise Delve, whether it be because of King’s Court, fragility, lack of trashing, etc. Minion decks in general do not like a flood of Silver.

Conclusion

Delve will likely be purchased at least once in most Kingdoms it is in; it is a very formidable force that is best used as a compliment to a strategy. Will Delve be as game warping as Save? Only time will tell, but the future looks very bright for such a darkly colored Event.
« Last Edit: July 06, 2016, 04:36:59 pm by Seprix »
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Seprix

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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #1 on: June 25, 2016, 01:48:43 pm »
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No comments. Is it that bad?
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #2 on: June 25, 2016, 01:53:49 pm »
0

No comments. Is it that bad?

It's a bit early for a strategy discussion on Empires cards maybe.
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #3 on: June 25, 2016, 01:56:51 pm »
+3

No comments. Is it that bad?

I think it may be too early for Empires articles. In the article itself, you explicitly make a "bold prediction" based on limited playing time.   That's basis for discussion, not a full-fledged article. As it is, maybe the lack of comments is because people don't feel they're familiar enough to point at stuff to say that it's wrong or they agree, because they have yet to form an opinion.
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #4 on: June 25, 2016, 02:44:56 pm »
+1

No comments. Is it that bad?

Personally I didn't read it because it was too long.
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #5 on: June 25, 2016, 02:57:00 pm »
+5

I'd comment on it if you posted a picture or Delve so that I knew what it was :P
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #6 on: June 25, 2016, 02:58:39 pm »
+3

It's a "no news is good news" sort of thing for me. It's good, I learned stuff.
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #7 on: June 25, 2016, 06:13:08 pm »
+2

I haven't even played with Delve yet.
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #8 on: June 25, 2016, 06:18:48 pm »
+4

Is it like some Magic card?

Seprix

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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #9 on: June 25, 2016, 06:47:45 pm »
0

Is it like some Magic card?

Yes. It costs two manna and an eyeroll.

I haven't even played with Delve yet.

Then this article is for you!
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #10 on: June 29, 2016, 12:52:00 pm »
0

In on Delve but not Raid? Surely there are times where you've gotten to $5 and 1 buy with 2 Silvers and a Copper, where your Delve advice would suggest buying Delve twice. Surely you'd rather Raid? Sure, Delve both helps you get going and then keeps itself going, whereas Raid needs some help getting itself to the useful stage. But it can also get going pretty large and gives you an additional benefit.
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Seprix

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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #11 on: June 29, 2016, 01:27:48 pm »
0

In on Delve but not Raid? Surely there are times where you've gotten to $5 and 1 buy with 2 Silvers and a Copper, where your Delve advice would suggest buying Delve twice. Surely you'd rather Raid? Sure, Delve both helps you get going and then keeps itself going, whereas Raid needs some help getting itself to the useful stage. But it can also get going pretty large and gives you an additional benefit.

That's an edgecase. This singular example involves that:

1. This is a board with both Raid and Delve
2. This is a board where you would want to Silver flood

Because of this, it would be obvious in the first place to buy the thing that gives you more Silvers or more total benefit than Delve anyways. I cannot address every single little edgecase in an overview article.
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #12 on: June 29, 2016, 01:30:27 pm »
0

In on Delve but not Raid? Surely there are times where you've gotten to $5 and 1 buy with 2 Silvers and a Copper, where your Delve advice would suggest buying Delve twice. Surely you'd rather Raid? Sure, Delve both helps you get going and then keeps itself going, whereas Raid needs some help getting itself to the useful stage. But it can also get going pretty large and gives you an additional benefit.

That's an edgecase. This singular example involves that:

1. This is a board with both Raid and Delve
2. This is a board where you would want to Silver flood

Because of this, it would be obvious in the first place to buy the thing that gives you more Silvers or more total benefit than Delve anyways. I cannot address every single little edgecase in an overview article.

Right, that's just illustrating the more general case: in games where you would consider buying Delve, you would also consider buying Raid, for the reasons specified above. It really only applies when you want to flood, because its much harder to one-time buy Raid to build payload (because you have to have some first). The point is, there are cases that you mention in your article where replacing Delve with Raid would be fairly similar.
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #13 on: June 29, 2016, 01:31:28 pm »
+1

In on Delve but not Raid? Surely there are times where you've gotten to $5 and 1 buy with 2 Silvers and a Copper, where your Delve advice would suggest buying Delve twice. Surely you'd rather Raid? Sure, Delve both helps you get going and then keeps itself going, whereas Raid needs some help getting itself to the useful stage. But it can also get going pretty large and gives you an additional benefit.

That's an edgecase. This singular example involves that:

1. This is a board with both Raid and Delve
2. This is a board where you would want to Silver flood

Because of this, it would be obvious in the first place to buy the thing that gives you more Silvers or more total benefit than Delve anyways. I cannot address every single little edgecase in an overview article.

I think his point isn't a kingdom with both events, it's that Raid is often doing the same thing or a better thing than Delve would be doing. I think he's trying to understand why Delve seems so much better than Raid to you.
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Seprix

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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #14 on: June 29, 2016, 01:42:36 pm »
+2

In on Delve but not Raid? Surely there are times where you've gotten to $5 and 1 buy with 2 Silvers and a Copper, where your Delve advice would suggest buying Delve twice. Surely you'd rather Raid? Sure, Delve both helps you get going and then keeps itself going, whereas Raid needs some help getting itself to the useful stage. But it can also get going pretty large and gives you an additional benefit.

That's an edgecase. This singular example involves that:

1. This is a board with both Raid and Delve
2. This is a board where you would want to Silver flood

Because of this, it would be obvious in the first place to buy the thing that gives you more Silvers or more total benefit than Delve anyways. I cannot address every single little edgecase in an overview article.

I think his point isn't a kingdom with both events, it's that Raid is often doing the same thing or a better thing than Delve would be doing. I think he's trying to understand why Delve seems so much better than Raid to you.

Raid is terrible because it is only good when you want silver flooding and/or suddenly need the opponent to draw one less card so that he stalls in the end game. The opportunity cost of $5 is horrible.

Delve is much better, because it gives the +buy back and allows for other things to be purchased.

Raid takes forever to set up for practically the same effect, flexible Delve is instantly available if you need it.

Silver flooding is almost always a bad idea. The idea of a quick cheap Silver helps the Engine much more than Raid helps the engine.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2016, 01:43:38 pm by Seprix »
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Seprix

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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #15 on: June 29, 2016, 01:45:32 pm »
0

That being said, there may be a time where buying Raid in a simple Big Money game is the right call. I harp on how bad Raid is because it's funny to see the reactions from everyone whenever I say it. But I'm not talking about Raid. I'm talking about Delve.
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #16 on: June 29, 2016, 02:10:49 pm »
+2

That being said, there may be a time where buying Raid in a simple Big Money game is the right call. I harp on how bad Raid is because it's funny to see the reactions from everyone whenever I say it. But I'm not talking about Raid. I'm talking about Delve.
Raid is better than gold with two silvers in play the majority of the time in bm
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #17 on: June 29, 2016, 03:32:37 pm »
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I'd comment on it if you posted a picture or Delve so that I knew what it was :P

This.
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #18 on: June 29, 2016, 03:53:17 pm »
+2

I'd comment on it if you posted a picture or Delve so that I knew what it was :P

This.



Here you go Seprix.
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Seprix

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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #19 on: June 29, 2016, 04:05:33 pm »
0

That being said, there may be a time where buying Raid in a simple Big Money game is the right call. I harp on how bad Raid is because it's funny to see the reactions from everyone whenever I say it. But I'm not talking about Raid. I'm talking about Delve.
Raid is better than gold with two silvers in play the majority of the time in bm

Okay, I will catalogue that in my mind.
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #20 on: July 02, 2016, 05:12:47 pm »
+2

I suspect the most game warping thing about Delve will prove to be the opening. Opening Silver x3 gives you vastly better odds of hitting $5. A lot of $4 cards simply are not worth getting on a $5 dominant board. Particularly if you have a strong $3 (like Oracle, Swindler, etc.) a Silver x2 shot on the opener really makes it easier to leapfrog up to $5, $6, or $7. Likewise, a lot of the troublesome $3 trashers (Develop, Trade route, Lookout, etc.)

For instance in a top heavy board with Goons (e.g. Oracle, Goons, Bazaar, Hgrounds, Altar), I would very seriously need a reason not to open Silver/Silver/Oracle. An extra silver dramatically increases the odds of hitting $5 & 6.

On $7 boards, the Silver x2/terminal $3 opening will be even stronger for anything but Kc. Getting an early Forge or Expand is vastly easier with a bit more silver.

The opener is likewise changed heavily on a 5/2. There are the obvious things - like Mint or Catacombs/BM, but in general getting a $5/silver is a much quicker start for engines, particularly if the $5 is a trasher or a low economy attack (e.g. Gship). I suspect Delve will power up a lot of expensive engine openers.

Basically a standard Silver/Smithy opening makes the Smithy worth about $2.25 so your average Smithy hand is $5.25. Your average hand from a Silver x3 opening is $5 even. Pretty much any $4 weaker than Smithy (one of the stronger non-attack, non-trashing $4's) is likely not going to beat out a triple silver opening whenever $5s or higher are dominating the board.
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Seprix

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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #21 on: July 02, 2016, 07:20:45 pm »
0

I suspect the most game warping thing about Delve will prove to be the opening. Opening Silver x3 gives you vastly better odds of hitting $5. A lot of $4 cards simply are not worth getting on a $5 dominant board. Particularly if you have a strong $3 (like Oracle, Swindler, etc.) a Silver x2 shot on the opener really makes it easier to leapfrog up to $5, $6, or $7. Likewise, a lot of the troublesome $3 trashers (Develop, Trade route, Lookout, etc.)

For instance in a top heavy board with Goons (e.g. Oracle, Goons, Bazaar, Hgrounds, Altar), I would very seriously need a reason not to open Silver/Silver/Oracle. An extra silver dramatically increases the odds of hitting $5 & 6.

On $7 boards, the Silver x2/terminal $3 opening will be even stronger for anything but Kc. Getting an early Forge or Expand is vastly easier with a bit more silver.

The opener is likewise changed heavily on a 5/2. There are the obvious things - like Mint or Catacombs/BM, but in general getting a $5/silver is a much quicker start for engines, particularly if the $5 is a trasher or a low economy attack (e.g. Gship). I suspect Delve will power up a lot of expensive engine openers.

Basically a standard Silver/Smithy opening makes the Smithy worth about $2.25 so your average Smithy hand is $5.25. Your average hand from a Silver x3 opening is $5 even. Pretty much any $4 weaker than Smithy (one of the stronger non-attack, non-trashing $4's) is likely not going to beat out a triple silver opening whenever $5s or higher are dominating the board.

I could make a reference to this, but I am afraid it might be too much. It is just an overview article. There's probably a quick way to mention this though. I really think it's pretty important.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2016, 07:22:16 pm by Seprix »
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Seprix

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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #22 on: July 02, 2016, 07:39:49 pm »
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And I just separated out the Opening from the Engine and Big Money section. I will peer over the rest of the article and try and correct any mistakes from this major change in writing, but it should be about ready.
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #23 on: July 06, 2016, 03:05:21 pm »
0

I haven't had a chance to play with Delve yet, but even without enablers on the board, it already seems fairly strong on its own. To begin with Delve is strictly superior to Silver since:

1) Delve costs $1 less
2) Delve gives you back a buy

I definitely feel that Delve makes the biggest impact at the start of the game for the reasons given already; if there's a strong $5 or $3 card on the board, one can get 1 or 2 Silvers to go along with that card and not miss a beat.

I'm not sure how much I would prefer having the 3 Silvers over a Gold though. I get a stronger distribution, sure, but with a Gold I can get stronger spikes, and I also draw through my deck faster due to having fewer cards in the deck. In general, since the higher priced cards tend to give a better return for cost, I'd rather add 1 strong expensive card to my deck over 2 middle of the road cards (or outright start putting high cost points into my deck if I feel my deck can deal with the friction).

Past early game, if I hit $6 or $7 and think that I still need pieces in my engine to keep it smooth, being able to pick up a Silver on the side instead of letting $2 or $3 go to waste sounds pretty nice. My general habit in this case would be to just get a Gold and eat the $1 waste if I had $7, but I'd like to play with Delve before I say that my old habit is definitively the better choice.
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Re: Delve: A Brief Overview
« Reply #24 on: July 06, 2016, 03:43:04 pm »
+4

To begin with Delve is strictly superior to Silver since:

1) Delve costs $1 less
2) Delve gives you back a buy

False!  Cost reducers don't work on Events. :)
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