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[Awaclus]

A Peddler draws a card and provides an Action which is why you can easily build decks with all kind of (double) Peddler variants as long as there is decent trashing.

Contrary to your belief not every Kingdom features villages and terminal draw.

A Peddler also takes up a card slot and an action, which is why the only way in which it improves your situation is by providing the coin, i.e. it doesn't help you build a deck-drawing engine at all. It is super rare for there to be a kingdom in which you can even build a deck with 4 or less stop cards in the first place, and it is even rarer to be able to build such a deck with any kind of sustainability during the greening phase.

I'm aware that there are some kingdoms in which you play big money, rush, slog or combo strategies, but I don't see how those kingdoms are relevant to this discussion.

If you have Lost Cities, either you should also be having terminal draw, or your payload should be terminal, both of which are a significant improvement over just having cantrip payload in a thin deck.

Virtually every Grand Market decks disagree with you.
There are ample of reasons why you want virtual coins in engines. Scrying Pool, Herald and all the Herald variants and so on.
Kinda funny that we come back to Herald with which this all started. With Heralds you definitely want Peddler variants in your deck and not Gold as payload.

None of this makes any sense.

1) So you would build a deck with Lost City for draw and Grand Market for payload? Why would you get all of those actions and then not play any terminal Actions?
2) I don't know why you're bringing up virtual coins.
3) The only one who ever brought up having Gold as payload for a Herald engine is you. You are fighting against your own strawman argument here.

[faust]

Scrying Pool, Herald and all the Herald variants and so on.

List of all Herald variants:
Herald

[werothegreat]

Scrying Pool, Herald and all the Herald variants and so on.

List of all Herald variants:
Herald

Technically, according to the cladistic schema I pulled out of my ass and smeared all over the wiki, Herald is a Golem variant.

[weety4]

Scrying Pool, Herald and all the Herald variants and so on.

List of all Herald variants:
Herald

Technically, according to the cladistic schema I pulled out of my ass and smeared all over the wiki, Herald is a Golem variant.

Vassal is also a Herald variant. All three cards have in common that they prefer action cards and thus automatically also action cards that provide payload (respectively in the case of Vassal, are in themselves an action card that provide payload and potentially can be non-terminal).

[allanfieldhouse]

I don't quite get all this arguing...

Vassal and Herald are two sides of the same coin. They're deck-autoplayers. Both are good in engines, but they each provide a different half of the equation (don't quote my math here -- my equation has more than two halves total). Herald provides the cards/actions half, while Vassal provides the payload/money half. If your board is weak in cards/actions, you'd much rather have Herald. If you have plenty of cards/actions, you'd rather have Vassal.

So yeah, Herald is a little better (because generally actions/cards is better), but they're similar in strength overall. Various factors like "may play", "riskiness of playing the action blind", "sifting", and "overpay" all make slight variations that don't really change the overall picture.

[trivialknot]

Vassal certainly conjures visions of a deck filled with Vassals, which plays itself.  However, I have yet to see this work.  In practice, it seems like more than a few Vassals is just bad.

For people who think Vassal is strong, is this based on actual games you played?  What does Vassal even look like at its best?  What kind of deck is it in?

[gloures]

I think pretty much the only similarity between herald and vassal is how with both you really want very high action density decks.  And while both are strong in the right conditions, Iīd say herald is a lot better card. Due to a few reasons

While +coins is important, itīs +cards and +actions, that actually allow us to do crazy stuff. A herald based deck can look at the 9(usually) other action cards in the kingdom and figure out whatīs the best payload. Vassal needs to look at the other 9 kingdom cards and figure out how to build an engine with them. (And thatīs a major point with vassal, itīs definetely an engine card, but it doesnīt actually help much in making the engine work)

Both herald decks and vassal decks will mostly need trashing, but the first will generally be looking for a +coins action card while the second needs village support, my point here is not that the former is more common than the latter (which I believe is true, but I really have no data to back this statement), but that in the later you actually need a village in hand before you can safely play the vassal, this means a vassal based deck is much more prone to duds than a herald based. This also leads to my last point

Vassal fits in a rather clunky space of Dominion cards that Iīll call maybe-terminals, itīs a card that when you play it you donīt know if itīs gonna be a terminal or not (If I recall  correctly the only other cards that are like this are Golem and Tribute, but I may be forgetting someone). That can lead to very diffcult decisions where you have a vassal and another terminal and donīt know which to play, itīs the weirdest thing in the card for me...



Well... That said, I donīt think Vassal is a weak card, itīs very interesting engine payload, you just shouldnīt expect there to be vassal decks in the same way that we see herald decks...

[flies]

Vassal is also a Herald variant. All three cards have in common that they prefer action cards and thus automatically also action cards that provide payload (respectively in the case of Vassal, are in themselves an action card that provide payload and potentially can be non-terminal).

If you had high action density, you wouldn't get much use out of the deep deck inspection that Golem offers, so I don't see that it "prefers actions" as vassal and herald do. 

[dedicateddan]

It's also not Farmland.

Of course not. Vassals work the Farmland.

[weety4]

Vassal certainly conjures visions of a deck filled with Vassals, which plays itself.  However, I have yet to see this work.  In practice, it seems like more than a few Vassals is just bad.

For people who think Vassal is strong, is this based on actual games you played?  What does Vassal even look like at its best?  What kind of deck is it in?

I once played a (base) game with around 8 or 9 Vassals, some other non-terminals and no village. It was obviously only possible due to strong trashing via Chapel (and because my opponent neglected Vassal) but I was kind of surprised that it worked without village support.
Normally a Vassal deck is far more risky and much harder to set up than a Conspirator deck which is why Vassal only costs 3$. But if a Vassal deck is feasible you can more or less go for it as early as Herald, i.e. immediately, whereas with Conspirator you gotta wait a bit.

One interesting and non-trivial feature of Vassal is the discarding of non-Actions. It is not as important and strong as e.g. in the case of Ironmonger but it definitely helps.

[Haddock]

From my limited experience so far, a "Vassal deck" is not a thing without pretty good support.

You can throw a few Vassals into an otherwise-good deck, but that's hardly a Vassal deck.  So far I've only built bona fide Vassal decks in the presence of good cantrip deck-inspectors, like Cartographer, Apothecary, etc.  Those were pretty damn strong.

[Qvist]

I once princed a Courtyard. Vassal was amazing there.

(Edit: Didn't want to post already.)

Vassal is not also similar to Herald, it's also comparable to Golem. Both auto-play action cards and you might get unlucky hitting terminal(s).
To me Vassal is a very strong card. It needs more support than Herald, usually by buying some cards that give +2 Actions, so that you can play Vassals without risk or some cards that order the top of your deck (or of course even both). But when Vassal is good, it might be even better than Herald because Herald alone just gives you the ability to do with your deck whatever you want, while Vassal adds payload to your engine without losing the strength of your engine (mainly the ability to draw your deck). Herald engines sometimes have the problem just spinning circles, playing a lot of action cards but doing nothing, the engine needs good payload to be worth it, but Vassal already offers the payload. It's for sure weaker than Herald without doubt, but it only costs $3 and be easily picked up in masses if you have the gains.

[Watno]

I once princed a Courtyard. Vassal was amazing there.

I think this is an important observation. There are a lot more ways to manipulate/know the top card of your deck than the card below that. This gives Vassal synergies that Herald doesn't have (similarly to Wishing Well vs Mystic)

[Psyduck]

Who said you couldn't have both Vassal AND Herald?

[trivialknot]

Vassal certainly conjures visions of a deck filled with Vassals, which plays itself.  However, I have yet to see this work.  In practice, it seems like more than a few Vassals is just bad.

For people who think Vassal is strong, is this based on actual games you played?  What does Vassal even look like at its best?  What kind of deck is it in?

I once played a (base) game with around 8 or 9 Vassals, some other non-terminals and no village. It was obviously only possible due to strong trashing via Chapel (and because my opponent neglected Vassal) but I was kind of surprised that it worked without village support.
Normally a Vassal deck is far more risky and much harder to set up than a Conspirator deck which is why Vassal only costs 3$. But if a Vassal deck is feasible you can more or less go for it as early as Herald, i.e. immediately, whereas with Conspirator you gotta wait a bit.

What were the other supporting cards?  Sentry, Poacher, Merchant, Cellar, Throne Room?  If the non-terminals are cantrips, it seems bad because you'd end up with a hand of 4 dead Vassals every turn.