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JThorne

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Matching up cards
« on: October 07, 2016, 01:39:37 pm »
+3

I was responding to a "neat and useful" message when I realized that there might be a hole in the wiki.

It occurred to me that a great deal of the time, certain cards/combos rely on getting two or more specific cards to match up in the same hand (or at least during the same action chain.) It also occurred to me that there are a number of ways to get that to happen, but that they should be enumerated.

So, first of all, is there a generally accepted term for this phenomenon? I know that cards in the same hand are often referred to as "colliding" but more often than not that's use to indicate a negative connotation, such as colliding terminals (crash!) Should we be using the same term for getting cards to meet up that want to meet up?

The list of cards that want/need intentional collision is pretty long. Some of them are absolutely required (Treasure Map), some are strongly implied (Urchin/Urchin) and some are simply beneficial (Market Square/self-trasher.)

In any case, here's the list of ways to collide (match?) (meet?) cards that I can think of, loosely categorized:

1. Draw your whole deck

Kind of a no-brainer. If you can draw everything, all your cards meet. Included for completeness.

2. Trash everything else

See item 1. If your deck is very small, everything meets, so this is basically an extension of 1. Again, included for completeness.

3. Sifters

Cards like Warehouse and Inn and Forum may decrease handsize or keep it the same, but they give you an opportunity to match up cards much quicker than waiting for shuffle luck to do it for you, and can be faster than trashing down in the absence of multi-trashers. If this were a wiki article, I'd refer to the sifter page.

4. Diggers

The wiki does have a digging page. Some diggers like Hunting Party/Sage/Golem can help action combos meet up, though I'm not certain it's faster than just buying more copies of the pieces you want to match.

5. Waiters(?)

This is a group of actions/events that's almost guaranteed to produce a match because they set aside a card for the next hand in one way or another, continuing to set them aside until the two or more cards that want to be together are together.

This category includes Save, Haven, Courtyard, Archive, and arguably even taking advantage of topdeck attacks like Ghost Ship or Haunted Woods. You could possibly include Prince in this overall category, since it ensures that the Princed action meets up with its mate in a future hand.

Perhaps this concept deserves its own article on the wiki? It's one of those things I suspect people look for when evaluating a kingdom: If certain cards rely on synergy to be good, are there enablers in the kingdom that allow the match to happen quicker than it would by chance/draw/trashing?

I notice that the wiki has pages for "trasher" and "sifter" and "terminal draw" and "digger"(digging) but no article on this category of card that sets cards aside so that they can meet up with their combo pieces, unless I'm missing it.

Comments? Any mechanisms for matching up cards that I neglected? Any cards that could be listed explicitly in a wiki article for this purpose?
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GendoIkari

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #1 on: October 07, 2016, 02:51:54 pm »
0

Rearrangers, as a similar but different category from sifters. Cards like Scout, Patrol, and Cartographer (which is also a sifter) allow you to move the cards you want to the top of your deck, so that your next cantrip will draw it.

Stash probably gets special mention, as its ability it specifically allows it to get matched up with itself.

Scheme is a waiter probably. Same with Scavenger and Harbinger.
« Last Edit: October 07, 2016, 02:54:06 pm by GendoIkari »
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Dingan

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #2 on: October 07, 2016, 05:23:33 pm »
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Any "place a card on top of your deck" cards would be waiters, especially cards that gain the card to be placed, like Artificer, Graverobber, Develop.  Also Gear is a waiter.  Also I like the term "waiter".  Also I agree you or someone should make an article about this.  This already almost feels like an article.

Kind of a combination of 1 & 2, but having 5 cards or less in your entire deck + discard pile is a way to collide (match?) (meet?) cards.  Probably doesn't justify it's own category, but having a deck of Treasure Map - Treasure Map - Chapel is kind of cool.

Inheriting something when you know you have some Estates left in your deck.  "I will have an Estate and a Province in my next hand.. oh I'll Inherit a Tournament!"

Band of Misfits sort of deserves its own section.  "I have an Estate.. oh I'll play BoM as Baron!"

Anything that mentions the word "sift" should also mention Embassy, IMO.

It's edge-casey, but is the order in which you put cards back into the Black Market deck a form of 'matching up cards'?  Like does that ever play into strategy?  Probably not I guess.

While Possessing someone, you can do the opposite of 'matching up cards' to make their next (unpossessed) turn bad.

EDIT: Native Village

EDIT2: Sometimes you 'match up cards' but they're not even in your hand.  Like if you want to hit that Nobles with your Ironmonger -- put the Nobles there with a rearranger (as GendoIkari calls them).  Or put a Nobles and a Great Hall on top of your opponent's deck with Oracle, because you're going to play Tribute.  Or what if say if I want a Platinum, and I put my opponent's Platinum on top of their deck to hit with my Jester -- is this Jester-Platinum interaction considered 'matching up cards'?

EDIT3: Adventurer, Library, Farming Village, or really any card that cares about card types or something could be considered Diggers.
« Last Edit: October 07, 2016, 05:52:01 pm by Dingan »
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Chris is me

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #3 on: October 08, 2016, 12:50:28 am »
0

Can we please think of a better word than "waiter", because wow that is a terrible word with a non intuitive meaning. "Passer", maybe? I dunno, something other than "waiter". It's like seriously nails on a chalkboard bad in a way I can't put into words but am certain of.
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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #4 on: October 08, 2016, 02:00:02 am »
0

Can we please think of a better word than "waiter", because wow that is a terrible word with a non intuitive meaning. "Passer", maybe? I dunno, something other than "waiter". It's like seriously nails on a chalkboard bad in a way I can't put into words but am certain of.

Topdecker.

Or Reverse Cycler. I like Reverse Cycler.
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trivialknot

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #5 on: October 08, 2016, 03:06:40 am »
+2

You're missing the most obvious way to match up cards, which is to have a lot of copies of the cards.
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Doom_Shark

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #6 on: October 08, 2016, 09:59:36 am »
+1

Can we please think of a better word than "waiter", because wow that is a terrible word with a non intuitive meaning. "Passer", maybe? I dunno, something other than "waiter". It's like seriously nails on a chalkboard bad in a way I can't put into words but am certain of.

Topdecker.

Or Reverse Cycler. I like Reverse Cycler.

I think maybe Delay cards or Delayers, keeping the original intended meaning but makimg it sound less like Joe over at that fancy restaurant.
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Hockey Mask

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #7 on: October 08, 2016, 11:51:31 am »
+1

Waiter couldn't be more clear.
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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #8 on: October 10, 2016, 05:58:23 pm »
+3

Saver is clearer than waiter.
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madeofghosts

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #9 on: October 12, 2016, 06:27:23 am »
+1

How about Server. You know, because it "serves" the card next turn.

Or maybe Bartender.
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allanfieldhouse

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #10 on: October 12, 2016, 10:58:49 am »
+2

Saver is clearer than waiter.

Especially with the existence of an event called "Save" that helps to match up specific cards by saving them for later.
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Witherweaver

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #11 on: October 12, 2016, 11:42:39 am »
0

Clearly it should be 'capacitor'.
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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #12 on: October 12, 2016, 12:21:38 pm »
+1

How about Server. You know, because it "serves" the card next turn.

Or maybe Bartender.

Server should probably be a split pile with Client.

DG

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #13 on: October 12, 2016, 04:38:28 pm »
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Deck tracking and card play are an important part of pairing up cards. If you know the contents of the draw deck you can make an informed decision to put your treasure map on top of your deck when you have your royal seal in play. You can decide not to play drawing cards if they will make the next turn worse. You can use cards like wishing well, lookout, and apothecary to test the top of the deck or set up a pairing for next turn by stripping out bad cards.
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Doom_Shark

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #14 on: October 12, 2016, 05:04:21 pm »
+1

You can use cards like wishing well, lookout, and apothecary to test the top of the deck or set up a pairing for next turn by stripping out bad cards.

Patrol (and scout) falls in this vein as well. (If someone starts to refer to these as "strippers," I will personally hunt them down)
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AdrianHealey

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #15 on: October 12, 2016, 05:08:24 pm »
0

Cartographer also seems like a good strippzr card.

Bring it Liam Neeson.
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Chris is me

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #16 on: October 12, 2016, 06:25:22 pm »
0

I just consider those an extension of deck inspection cards, really. It just has you draw the junk instead of discarding it sometimes.
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JThorne

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #17 on: October 15, 2016, 11:05:45 am »
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I definitely like "Savers," and I think there are enough of them to warrant an article. We even have a new one in Secret Passage.

I just thought of another saving mechanism: Draw almost all of your deck, then use a sifter to discard a card or cards you want to save, then intentionally draw just enough cards to trigger a reshuffle of a 6-card discard pile, then stop drawing. (There's a small chance of accidentally drawing a card you wanted to save for the next hand, of course, if you can't trigger the reshuffle with an inspection) This might be handy if an engine needs a little help kicking off next turn.

This is an application for saving that doesn't fit with the "matching up cards" article, however, because if you have this much control over your deck, you're already matching everything up.

Another general application for matching up cards: Getting trashers to line up with junk. I know the optimal way to use a trasher is to trash down, then build up, precisely because when you start out, it's all trash. And I still berate IRL players who use that Steward for cards or coin the first time they play it (ARGH!) But some trashers (particularly $5s) sometimes need some help matching up with junk.
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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #18 on: October 15, 2016, 02:20:25 pm »
+1

Can we please think of a better word than "waiter", because wow that is a terrible word with a non intuitive meaning. "Passer", maybe? I dunno, something other than "waiter". It's like seriously nails on a chalkboard bad in a way I can't put into words but am certain of.
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JThorne

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #19 on: October 22, 2016, 10:32:42 am »
+1

I found an article on the wiki that addresses a couple of these issues loosely:

http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Luck-based

particularly in the "line-'em-up" section, but I still think a couple of separate articles might be worth posting:

A "savers" article enumerating all of the savers specifically:

Virtually all "topdeckers"  http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Top_decker
Save
Gear
Archive
Haven
Native Village

I can only come up with five additional cards, so the question becomes, does that deserve a separate article, or an addendum to the top-decker article, since setting aside a card for the next turn (or some future turn in the case of Native Village and Archive) is very similar to top-decking?


A "matching up" article enumerating all of the ways to match up cards. The "line-'em-up" section of the "luck-based" article is a little too specific.

Gain large numbers
Draw deck (draw/trashing/both)
Savers (see article)
Sifters (see article)
Gain-to-hand or upgrade-to-hand such as Transmogrify (list?)
certain Reserves (CotR/Ratcatcher/Duplicate/Transmogrify/Royal Carriage/Teacher) benefit from waiting around until the right card is in your hand.
Diggers (see article)
Chameleons (Band of Misfits/Overlord/Inheritance with good timing)
Deck-inspectors + Actions that interact with the top of the deck vs. the hand
Deck-tracking with a limited number of cards left

The reason I think an article like this is important is because it adds to the planning process. Knowing that you can or can't intentionally match up synergistic cards can help you plan how early to buy them, or if you want them at all. A lot of players recognize synergies and buy cards that go together, but completely fail to account for how they're actually going to use them and then curse their luck when they don't just match up magically.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2016, 10:35:32 am by JThorne »
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JThorne

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #20 on: October 22, 2016, 11:21:19 am »
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Hmm. It just occurred to me...

This is the YMYOSL article.

It's hardly surprising that I don't feel qualified to write it. I'm not a top player, merely an avid student of the game. But the upshot is that the phrase "You Make Your Own Shuffle Luck" is a Dominion meme, and yet most of the time, it appears in forums when losing players complain about their shuffle luck. Experts exclaim YMYOSL!, drop the mic and walk away.

In a way, what this article seeks to do is broadly enumerate all of the ways in which you do, in fact, make your own shuffle luck. The wiki doesn't have such an article. Shouldn't it?

I thought of a couple more:

Don't Dilute -- synergistic cards are going to match up a lot less often if you buy a bunch of other stuff. Silver Dilution is definitely a thing among weaker players who buy Silver on a dud $3 hand rather than nothing.

Avoid blind terminal draw -- if the synergy is really important, don't play a terminal draw without knowing what you're drawing; try to estimate the risk of drawing actions or synergistic cards that will then miss the rest of this shuffle. Goes nicely with deck tracking.

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schadd

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #21 on: October 22, 2016, 01:26:46 pm »
+1

Quote from: 'luck-based' wiki page
Rebuild - the least luck-involved [...] card
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Chris is me

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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #22 on: October 22, 2016, 02:04:26 pm »
+1

Quote from: 'luck-based' wiki page
Rebuild - the least luck-involved [...] card

this might actually be the worst sentence on the entire wiki
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Re: Matching up cards
« Reply #23 on: October 22, 2016, 07:06:13 pm »
0

If you go for Rebuild and your opponent doesn't, you're pretty sure to win on a lot of boards. No luck involved at all.
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