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[Seprix]

Something I've been thinking about...which individual card is the most powerful?  To be clear, I'm not trying to infringe on Qvist's outstanding effort to rank.  I'm talking any card in the game.  Off the top of my head, here are the candidates:

Champion
Dominate
Donate
Followers
Fortune
King's Court
Madman
Prince
Princess
Teacher

Am I missing anything else?  Anything that has no business on the list above?  (I'm looking at you, Princess.)

If there is interest in this topic, maybe we'll do a nomination round, vote for the top 8 or 16, then do a little head-to-head playoff.

Um...

Prince and Followers I can already tell you are not the strongest. You're forgetting Goons, Mountebank, and Cultist.

Oh, and because I'm a son of a bitch and I love to rub into people's faces that I'm on the 2017 testing list, City Quarter also deserves to be on this list.

[A Ladder]

Oh man! I was just thinking about this yesterday. Orange, we should be besties.

Anywho, to go off of what Seprix has said: Prince can be beaten by ignoring it, and not just in gimmicky Edge Case scenarios. I've never seen Followers lose, but that's b/c I play IRL and crush everyone I know when Tournament is on the board. But I could see it losing to someone that intentionally ignores it.

I'd love to see City Quarter used in a real engine. But every time I saw it come up in our full random games (twice) it was one of three or two other actions and those were not super. So it really hasn't been played all that much in my circles.

[Seprix]

If we're going to talk about strongest card to have T1 just right off the bat, it's Champion. Hands down. No debate required.

[Accatitippi]

If we're going to talk about strongest card to have T1 just right off the bat, it's Champion. Hands down. No debate required.

Yeah, but I don't think that's what we are discussing. Anyway, I'd get a Saboteur for a 25% chance of hilariously trashing the Champion before they can play it.

[AdrianHealey]

Followers is weak because there is only one. If there were multiple, buyable like other cards; that's gonna hurt.

[Kirian]

I think it really depends on how you view greatness.

"Some are born great; some achieve greatness; and some have greatness thrust upon them!"

[faust]

Without that said, I feel very confident saying Donate is the strongest Dominion card in the game.

I'm very confident that this is not the case.

I think it really depends on how you view greatness.

The thing with Donate is it is almost exclusively used a single time in a game, so it doesn't have as much of an apparent effect as KC, Goons, Cultist, etc.

But in terms of how much the game changes with its presence, how much it reduces luck and leads to the higher skilled better playing player winning the game, it's hard to beat.

I think it depends on how I view "card" much more than on how I view greatness.

[A Ladder]

If we're going to talk about strongest card to have T1 just right off the bat, it's Champion. Hands down. No debate required.

Well yeah. It's stupid/broken good.

Before Champion was conceived I would have said Goons.

[JThorne]

I sounds to me like what's being asked here is not what "the greatest card" is but what "the most powerful effect or combination of effects" is that is printed on a single card-shaped object.

The list obviously ignores cost. If we are taking coin/debt/opportunity cost into account, then the greatest card in Dominion is Chapel, debate over.

When listing Champion, Teacher and Prince, my assumption is that the card is already in play (aside or tavern mat) ready to do its thing. When listing Donate, my assumption is that you are imagining a scenario in which you could just Donate whenever you wanted without regard to cost, because cost is not being taken into account in this rating.

So, starting with those assumptions, I have two comments.

First, I want to give at least some props to Teacher. Champion's immunity to attacks probably puts it over the top, but my thought is that often, you only need to +action a single key terminal action card in order to make an engine hum, not ALL of the terminals. The ability to also add +card and +coin is extremely powerful. There are very likely many kingdoms where free Teacher would beat free Champion. But attack immunity is a deal-breaker. Advantage Champion. That said, I'm not sure the top effect(s) is one of those two guys(gals) anyway.

Including Dominate raises an interesting issue: VP effects are extraordinarily hard to rank outside of their opportunity cost. If Province cost $2 it would be far more powerful than Dominate, because the pile would empty long before anyone could Dominate. If Dominate was free...let's see...the most powerful card in the game would be, what, Squire? Ranking effects ignoring cost is starting to seem silly.

And including VP effects raises the same sort of issue as ranking Chess pieces: Is the the Queen or King "greater?" The Queen is a more powerful attacking piece, but the King is the actual victory condition. If the direct victory condition can be included in the ranking, the King is infinitely more important. Therefore, Dominate, if included, is the single most powerful card-shaped object in the game, because who ever has the most of them wins, period, regardless of everything else. For that reason I would suggest omitting anything VP-related from consideration (and if that's not a slippery slope...)

Secondly, I want to give extra props to DX for outstanding overall game design. Look at what just happened. In a discussion about the most powerful effects in the game, the majority of the cards don't actually do anything! They're all cards that make other cards better directly (Champion/Teacher/Prince/King's Court/Fortune) or get rid of junk so that other cards have more of a chance to shine (Chapel/Donate.) It says a lot about good game design when synergy is this fundamental and no single card wins games all by itself (even Goons!)

[Beyond Awesome]

When listing Champion, Teacher and Prince, my assumption is that the card is already in play (aside or tavern mat) ready to do its thing. When listing Donate, my assumption is that you are imagining a scenario in which you could just Donate whenever you wanted without regard to cost, because cost is not being taken into account in this rating.

That 8 debt is a lot cheaper than you realize. Also, Donate is much more reliable than Chapel.

[JThorne]

That 8 debt is a lot cheaper than you realize. Also, Donate is much more reliable than Chapel.

Oh, believe me, I'm totally on board with debt. I play IRL and I make sure to always put debt cards lowest in the cost arrangement on the table since they require no coin to buy. And after a Donate, paying off the debt should be virtually automatic unless you've done something terribly wrong.

If taking cost into account, would you say that Donate is overall better than Chapel? In most kingdoms, if both were available, would you build up and donate, or Chapel and trash down/build up? I don't think I've played a kingdom with both yet.

Side note: I recently played an IRL game where Donate was ignorable, but only by accident. A bunch of (other) players opened Bishop, and by the time that I even thought about playing Donate, I had no junk left at all! Bishop with 4P+ is really dangerous.

[Seprix]

Donate is much better than Chapel. You *might* pick up a Chapel if there are junking attacks flying around afterwards and you have an otherwise great engine.

[Beyond Awesome]

That 8 debt is a lot cheaper than you realize. Also, Donate is much more reliable than Chapel.

Oh, believe me, I'm totally on board with debt. I play IRL and I make sure to always put debt cards lowest in the cost arrangement on the table since they require no coin to buy. And after a Donate, paying off the debt should be virtually automatic unless you've done something terribly wrong.

If taking cost into account, would you say that Donate is overall better than Chapel? In most kingdoms, if both were available, would you build up and donate, or Chapel and trash down/build up? I don't think I've played a kingdom with both yet.

Side note: I recently played an IRL game where Donate was ignorable, but only by accident. A bunch of (other) players opened Bishop, and by the time that I even thought about playing Donate, I had no junk left at all! Bishop with 4P+ is really dangerous.

Donate over Chapel every time.

[Chris is me]

That 8 debt is a lot cheaper than you realize. Also, Donate is much more reliable than Chapel.

Oh, believe me, I'm totally on board with debt. I play IRL and I make sure to always put debt cards lowest in the cost arrangement on the table since they require no coin to buy. And after a Donate, paying off the debt should be virtually automatic unless you've done something terribly wrong.

If taking cost into account, would you say that Donate is overall better than Chapel? In most kingdoms, if both were available, would you build up and donate, or Chapel and trash down/build up? I don't think I've played a kingdom with both yet.

Side note: I recently played an IRL game where Donate was ignorable, but only by accident. A bunch of (other) players opened Bishop, and by the time that I even thought about playing Donate, I had no junk left at all! Bishop with 4P+ is really dangerous.

This isn't even close. Donate every single time. Even if you have to buy it twice, which you really shouldn't in most cases, Donate is dramatically faster and better.

[ThetaSigma12]

Oh man! I was just thinking about this yesterday. Orange, we should be besties.

Anywho, to go off of what Seprix has said: Prince can be beaten by ignoring it, and not just in gimmicky Edge Case scenarios. I've never seen Followers lose, but that's b/c I play IRL and crush everyone I know when Tournament is on the board. But I could see it losing to someone that intentionally ignores it.

I'd love to see City Quarter used in a real engine. But every time I saw it come up in our full random games (twice) it was one of three or two other actions and those were not super. So it really hasn't been played all that much in my circles.

I already think you are the same peron because you have the same avatar.

[gloures]

Disconsidering Donate, IŽd try to make a case for Madman as the strongest printed effect for single use.

[luser]

Turn 1 champion vs t1 teacher isn't clear. I would probably pick teacher over champion on more boards than other way round. Almost always unless there is cursing and no strong trashing.
For reliability one needs only +action on drawer and teacher also allows +card on cantrip.
Versus teacher-enabled engine attacks tend to be weaker than normal. One could easily deal with junk if he has engine where chapel could trash four extra cards each turn and with teacher its easy to get into stage where you could trash all junk each turn.
Likewise discard attacks hurt lot less with nonterminal draw, you just discard all nondrawing cards and draw your deck anyway unless your starting hand contained four drawers where attack may made difference.

[AdrianHealey]

Turn 1 champion vs t1 teacher isn't clear. I would probably pick teacher over champion on more boards than other way round. Almost always unless there is cursing and no strong trashing.
For reliability one needs only +action on drawer and teacher also allows +card on cantrip.
Versus teacher-enabled engine attacks tend to be weaker than normal. One could easily deal with junk if he has engine where chapel could trash four extra cards each turn and with teacher its easy to get into stage where you could trash all junk each turn.
Likewise discard attacks hurt lot less with nonterminal draw, you just discard all nondrawing cards and draw your deck anyway unless your starting hand contained four drawers where attack may made difference.

Champion is just insanely fast.

[Accatitippi]

Turn 1 champion vs t1 teacher isn't clear. I would probably pick teacher over champion on more boards than other way round. Almost always unless there is cursing and no strong trashing.
For reliability one needs only +action on drawer and teacher also allows +card on cantrip.
Versus teacher-enabled engine attacks tend to be weaker than normal. One could easily deal with junk if he has engine where chapel could trash four extra cards each turn and with teacher its easy to get into stage where you could trash all junk each turn.
Likewise discard attacks hurt lot less with nonterminal draw, you just discard all nondrawing cards and draw your deck anyway unless your starting hand contained four drawers where attack may made difference.

Champion is just insanely fast.

I really think that it depends on the board (duh). Teacher can conjure +buy and +cards on a board lacking either or both. That can win you a game right there.
And if the board is more Champion-friendly, it can put its +Action token (or whatever) on the draw card by turn 3, and while clearly worse than champ that' not catastrophic either.

[Orange]

Bracket first round voting:

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=16424.0

[Watno]

The greatest card is obviously Great Hall.