Dominion Strategy Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Pages: [1]

Author Topic: empries: ritual  (Read 2964 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

schadd

  • Jester
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 892
  • Shuffle iT Username: schadd
  • Respect: +1266
    • View Profile
empries: ritual
« on: August 03, 2016, 09:06:04 pm »
0


"you get a curse afterwards, but, as we've learned from centuries of ghost stories, it's that curses are fine as long as they make you successful"


  a pretty important drawback of many bishopy strategies is that they often want to have some big junko card to trash, often gold, and you have to draw them together, which is hard because you have to both have the gold and play the thing that gains it. ritual, uh, alleviates that, kinda? you don't have to draw them specifically but you do get that curse sitting around. that being said, if you don't feel like comparing it to anything, ritual seems pretty good. 1 for 1 money to vp is good, except ritual shifts that down 1 unit and 4 to the right. and also you have to have that extra card that you maybe don't get to use but if it's a victory card or something then who cares. if there is some painless way to trash curses then one could also make the comparison to island—ritual a province, pay an action later to trash the curse and now you have a province out of your deck and 2 extra vp. neat.


-is there an element of ritual that makes it defy comparison to other cards? hopefully yes, free me from this demon of western culture
-what's the deal with this ritual being green? i thought all of the ramping green had were tied to creatures or maybe the weird lands
-how much does ritual's goodness hinge on being able to trash the curse
Logged
I thought you thought it was a slip because I said 'Jake's partners' instead of 'Roadrunner7671.'

tailred

  • Golem
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 195
  • Shuffle iT Username: ceviri
  • Respect: +368
    • View Profile
Re: empries: ritual
« Reply #1 on: August 04, 2016, 05:38:45 am »
+4

The first game I played with this event, it was a trolly sloggy cursey 4p game involving swamp hags. I intended to build some golden deckish thing using some alternate means of gaining provinces to bypass the 7+ curses on-buy, but by the time I had it set up I realized that this needed curses to function, and almost all of the pile was out. The deck functioned for all of 1 turn.

As with a lot of other Empires cards, reading comprehension is key.
Logged

Chris is me

  • Margrave
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2745
  • Shuffle iT Username: Chris is me
  • What do you want me to say?
  • Respect: +3457
    • View Profile
Re: empries: ritual
« Reply #2 on: August 04, 2016, 07:44:20 am »
0

An annoying facet of this card is that Curse attack games make up a portion of the games you would want to use this in, and you really can't there.

I suspect this is a card that's going to take awhile to really figure out how to play with properly. It's potentially a very good way to score points, but building a deck around it requires some pretty specific circumstances, so a lot of the time it's just going to be a Bishop Event you buy instead of a Duchy at the end of an otherwise normal game.

If you trash a good, useful card to this, it's basically VP that gives you a junk card while also removing a good card, so it's kind of sort of like 2 junk cards? But I mean if it was Gold you were trashing or something you didn't really need / didn't draw for you then it's not much of a change.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2016, 07:45:28 am by Chris is me »
Logged
Twitch channel: http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

bug me on discord

pm me if you wanna do stuff for the blog

they/them

trivialknot

  • Jester
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 757
  • Respect: +1171
    • View Profile
Re: empries: ritual
« Reply #3 on: August 04, 2016, 11:39:55 am »
0

I have not played a game with Ritual and decent trashing yet.

Without curse trashing, Ritual seems difficult to justify.  Trashing a Duchy or Province is 1 VP, and if you wouldn't buy a Great Hall you wouldn't buy Ritual.  With other cards, Ritual suffers from the same problem as Farmland--you're not just paying the price-tag, you're also paying the opportunity cost of not playing that expensive card.  Trashing a gold is like $7 for 5 VP.  Trashing one of those 5-cost actions is often ~$6 for 4 VP.  You might buy Ritual to prolong the game, but basic green seems better.
Logged

ced

  • Salvager
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 64
  • Respect: +99
    • View Profile
Re: empries: ritual
« Reply #4 on: August 04, 2016, 12:45:55 pm »
0

Possibly the most forgettable Empires event? I forgot this was a card until you posted it.

Seems best with any way of easily gaining expensive cards. Peddler is something you could buy a ton of, then it's worth the full 8 if you don't play an action. Explorer and Market Square can give you a steady stream of golds to trash, but this will slowly drown you in curses. Altar seems like the best combo - trash a curse, gain a 5, draw the 5, then trash it for 5VP+curse. You need 2 Villages, Altar, $4 to make the golden deck.

Beyond that, I think you might buy it in the lategame if you're behind and the Provinces are low. If you hit $7, perhaps Ritualing a Gold is better than buying a Duchy? That's one situation.
Logged

drsteelhammer

  • Torturer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1527
  • Shuffle iT Username: drsteelhammer
  • Respect: +1470
    • View Profile
Re: empries: ritual
« Reply #5 on: August 04, 2016, 01:44:34 pm »
0

I used it once on the big castles that I basically stole (had no other castles). That felt pretty good.
Logged
Join the Dominion League!

There is no bad shuffle that can not be surmounted by scorn.

faust

  • Cartographer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3377
  • Shuffle iT Username: faust
  • Respect: +5142
    • View Profile
Re: empries: ritual
« Reply #6 on: August 04, 2016, 04:40:35 pm »
+3

There's a trap in trying to make Peddler/Ritual work.
Logged
You say the ocean's rising, like I give a shit
You say the whole world's ending, honey it already did

jomini

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1060
  • Respect: +766
    • View Profile
Re: empries: ritual
« Reply #7 on: August 07, 2016, 07:17:44 pm »
+6

I think the best way to think about Ritual without trashing is basically as a second duchy pile. For $8 over two turns & buys, you net 3VP for one dead card. Compared to provinces, that is woefully inefficient and is not that great ... except that you should often find yourself in situations where you do not care about the coin efficiency of the other piles because they are close to empty anyways. Build the Rabble engine, then slowly churn out 5 VP/turn for 8-10 turns. Or go for Fteller/Legion payload combo on an engine and again slog out a bunch of VP. We routinely will accept all manner of spare VP as methods for engines to be more viable (e.g. weak Gardens, Silk Roads, Fairgrounds, and no discarding Tunnels), this is just a low end version of that for any card you like to trash.

Now Ritual shines when you can cheaply gain high value cards to trash. An action, a draw, a buy and $4 is actually not that bad for good VP.:
Mint can nab you up 8 VP per turn with a Ritual. That is exceedingly good for building up points without ending the game on a colony board.

A holy host of things (like Bag O Gold, Explorer, Charm, Duplicate, Windfall, Tmap, Page, Hoard, Tunnel, Msquare, Ssayer, and Governor) can all gain at least Gold; some are not even terminal.

Peasant can situationally provide you with "free" high value cards to trash and there are a lot of methods to get cheap actions - Ferry, Peddler, Quarry, Charm, University, Pilgramage, Advance, and Prssn

Even Transmute can be part of an efficient build to pile the curses with Rituals for a lot of VP.

Sure X/(4+X) is not going to be as efficient as the stock green (it ties or loses to every VP pile on raw cash efficiency) ... but it does work if any of the cards in the kingdom can give you value more efficiently than raw cash (most Ritual boards will have at least one of these).

Beyond that let us not forget that Ritual does a few other things for us - it is one of the few ways to trash out unwanted trashing. Possession & Forge? Ritual away the Forge. Have an extra estate in Rebuild mirror? Ritual it away to stop mucking up the Rebuilds. Forced trashing with Golem, Tr, or Herald? Ritual is good for what ails you.

Likewise, if you need to score points on Mission turns? Ritual is there, particularly if you have efficient gains. Need to trash out Gold, Silver, or singletons for Bandit Forts & Wolf dens? Ritual.


I have not played it yet, but I think there may be a nice combo with just Msquare. Buy some Silver & Msquares to start. Trash an estate (no net VP change), gain a gold or two, trash a Gold, gain 5Vp & gain more gold. Rats likewise seem to be nice - one initial $4 & one initial card can let you cycle Rats -> Ritual (trash Rats) -> Rats(trash curse) -> Ritual for $4 each. $4 for 4 VP, non-terminal is better by far than Dlands.

Ritual, like a lot of Empires, rewards you really highly for tactical play - use it sparingly when opportunity arises rather than building a deck on it and for boards that muck around with cost efficiency. Certainly it will not be worth building a strategy around, but you should routinely expect the odd busted hand to become a Ritual when it aligns with a defunct card (e.g. $4 & Moneylender near game end).
Logged
Pages: [1]
 

Page created in 0.045 seconds with 21 queries.