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[werothegreat]

Your money or your life!

-Is this any better than Thief?
-Would you get this purely for the Gold gain?
-Is the Attack portion even any good?
-How does it compare to Noble Brigand and Pirate Ship?

[schadd]

-it is much better than thief in my experience
-i've been thinking lately that the action card that says "gain a gold" would be pretty balanced at $3. the thing about bandit is that if you would consider getting it for the gold gain, then your opponent probably would as well, thus making the stealing thing more powerful.
-yes, because bandit is on the board (as previously discussed)
-it is better than brigand and different than pirate ship (but better)

[Chris is me]

$5 for gain a Gold on play is useful on a decent number of boards. Obviously money boards, but also TFB boards, Storyteller engines, and the like. All kinds of uses for free Gold!

The attack is almost secondary to that, but it's nice that Bandit's presence makes the attack more likely to hit in the first place.

[Limetime]

This is a pretty decent bm enabler. Depending if there is trashing this can act like soothsayer in a engine.

[4est]

I feel the main reason the treasure-trashing attacks (Thief, Pirate Ship, Noble Brigand) have tended to be a bit on the weaker side is because usually the strongest counter to these attacks is to just not play Big Money.  All three of these do little damage to engines (and in the case of Thief and Pirate Ship, actually help the engine builder by trashing their Coppers), so if an engine is available, the correct move is often to skip the treasure-trasher and go for the engine.  Pirate Ship is slightly different in that it can still be useful in generating coin for the attacker in the late game, but against action-heavy, treasure-light (or treasure-less) engines, Noble Brigand and Thief can actually be useless to the attacker since they will rarely, if ever, gain treasures in the mid and late game. 

Bandit on the other hand is very different from these other three in that the "counter" of going engine doesn't hurt the attacker as badly since it always gains them Golds, regardless of what cards are revealed in the attack.  Whereas the strength of other three is largely dependent upon your opponent's strategy (e.g. strong against Big Money, very weak against engines), Bandit doesn't need to flip treasures in order to "work"; instead, the gold gaining becomes the primary function of the card and the treasure trashing becomes an added bonus when it hits.  With this in mind, I think Bandit-BM will definitely be vastly stronger than Thief-BM, Pirate Ship-BM, or Noble Brigand-BM against engine-players, but it's hard to say by how much. 

I'll add that I do really like that Bandit is also its own counter, much more directly and elegantly than the other three treasure-trashing attacks.

[faust]

The problem with Bandit is that it doesn't really shine in the scenarios where Thief was good. Thief is best if you play lots of them and wreck you opponent's deck, but Bandit will always self-junk, so it will be hard to keep on playing multiples. It also cannot steal any key kingdom treasures.

It seems okay on weak BM boards, the same way Soothsayer is okay. But Soothsayer's attack is much better than this usually.

[werothegreat]

In the couple times I've played with Bandit, I've gotten one, and my opponent hasn't, so it's just a Gold gainer for me.

[trivialknot]

I never got to play one of those degenerate 4P Thief games, because I imagine it only ever happens when multiple people are playing poorly.  But now I've seen a couple 4P Bandit games!  To be honest, I'm not sure what the correct strategy is here.  I suppose you just want to play as many Bandits as possible?

[jomini]

Gold gaining is always something to consider if you have any type of scaling TfB; this is particularly nice payload for an engine as you can get something province equivalent (e.g. Smason it into two $5s) with just 3 cards of draw and 2 actions - one card more than using Phouse as payload in a treasureless engine deck. Yeah it hurts the current turn to spend a card an action, but if nothing else Bandit is extremely good to quickly ramp up your deck after your engine starts hitting.  Having a card that is close to being +$6 can get up into Plat territory.

As an attack, the big advantage is that Bandit can be brutal against alternate treasures without removing coppers. Adding it to a Pool engine (insanely good with TfB or other draw) can be extremely good if you can poach the other guy's pot. It also is one of the few cards in the game that can go after Platinum which means that a lot of slingshot tactics (like Tac -> Plat -> Mint or Tr/Dcart) become much more risky. While this is true with Pship, this leaves the coppers, but also the swing is much more dramatic (I gain $5 of buying power in my deck instead of $1) and I can keep kicking you down (until my deck chokes on treasures) without sacrificing that gain. Unlike Nbrig, you cannot do anything against a treasureless deck, but if a board allows for a no treasure run it is pretty rare that it cannot purchase enough live draw to utilize the gold.

More than anything, the possibility of going Bandit can change strategy ranking. It is quite easy to have setups where engine > engine + Bandit > BMX > engine. This means that you need to do more than just read the board, but make a very difficult call on some boards as to what lines your opponent needs to cross before Bandit is a good buy. I suspect that this will be one of those cards that is often ignored or bought early by high skill players in a manner which is highly counterintuitive to players who do not yet have a feel for cases of deterrence and prediction.

[tailred]

Adding it to a Pool engine (insanely good with TfB or other draw) can be extremely good if you can poach the other guy's pot. It also is one of the few cards in the game that can go after Platinum which means that a lot of slingshot tactics (like Tac -> Plat -> Mint or Tr/Dcart) become much more risky. While this is true with Pship, this leaves the coppers, but also the swing is much more dramatic (I gain $5 of buying power in my deck instead of $1) and I can keep kicking you down (until my deck chokes on treasures) without sacrificing that gain.

Keep in mind that you don't actually steal the plat, just trash it.

[Seprix]

Why does the Bandit do her life of crime? For the good old American life: For the money, for the glory, and for the fun... mostly for the money.

[pacovf]

The art is good, but it's no thief.

[trivialknot]

Why does the Bandit do her life of crime? For the good old American life: For the money, for the glory, and for the fun... mostly for the money.

The Bandit doesn't steal for money.  She just steals for the heck of it, and dumps the loot in the river.  The gold she makes from her day job.