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Author Topic: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?  (Read 5604 times)

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Polk5440

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Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« on: April 20, 2017, 10:50:42 am »
+1

I bought Windfall for the first time ever in a game yesterday and it got me thinking that there are some Events that I almost never use. Or want to use. Or really ever think is the best use of a buy. What is the worst Event? Maybe the winner of the poll should be declared The Event Most Likely To Replace Scout As The Butt of Every Joke Because It's Almost Completely Useless?

Here are my candidates:

Windfall -- Very rarely do I draw my deck, want Golds as a payload, and not have a better way of gaining them.

Tax -- Maybe I just don't get it, but it seems like it's only really worth buying when you are playing an engine against a big money-ish player. But how often does that happen anymore?

Raid -- I've bought this in maybe two games. And it just feels like I'm cursing myself.

I haven't played enough games to have a solid feel for Annex, Banquet, or Conquest, but they also strike me as potentially very situational, at best.

What do you think?
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #1 on: April 20, 2017, 11:13:34 am »
+1

Trade and Delve are strange picks for this list, considering you did not add all events.

I have used all Events in the list. Windfall is good for TfB, but it kinda sucks that you gain the Golds at the end of your turn, when you really want to be gaining mid-turn.

Conquest can be decent with other Silver-gainers. Double Jack should probably pick up Conquest over Gold on each Jack play. Big Money might pick this up over Gold anyway, but that depends. It's certainly better than Harem though.

Tax is a nice enough pick with a spare $2, better than Pearl Diver for sure. Not great, but you know, okay.

Annex is probably the Event I get the least. It feels like you can do tricks with it, but I never really did. It's worth picking up late game when you need the Duchy but miss $5, but that's about it, and even there it hurts.
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #2 on: April 20, 2017, 11:19:26 am »
+2

I don't think there's any event that's completely useless to the degree that Scout was, but I think Annex is the least useful. It basically just gives a free Duchy to whomever ends the game (if they have spare buys) and other than that, nobody ever buys it.

Windfall is okay, there are times when you do draw your deck and actually buy Golds for $6 each so it's better than that at least. It's also better than Treasure Map. It pretty much requires a strong engine with strong trashing and no other amazing payload, but in that scenario, it's a good event.

You can use Tax to do something somewhat useful if you have a weak turn, even in mirror games. If you can turn your useless $2 to 2 debt tokens for your opponent, that's a lot better than letting it go to waste, and it's much easier to do that than to hand out Curses with Embargo since the effect happens instantly.

Raid is ridiculously good with any Silver synergy card, especially if you also have draw.
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #3 on: April 20, 2017, 11:56:03 am »
+1

Annex is probably the Event I get the least. It feels like you can do tricks with it, but I never really did. It's worth picking up late game when you need the Duchy but miss $5, but that's about it, and even there it hurts.

Honestly I think it's better when you need the Duchy and have $7, or sometimes $6. You can have a good shot at making your next hand awesome, assuming you have another turn.

I voted Banquet. It's just almost always such an awful deal, I think.

Runner-up is Tax. I so rarely buy Tax. But I like how Tax changes the starting setup, so I like having it in the game even when I don't buy it.
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #4 on: April 20, 2017, 12:04:40 pm »
+1

Runner-up is Tax. I so rarely buy Tax. But I like how Tax changes the starting setup, so I like having it in the game even when I don't buy it.

Totally agree, to me Tax feels like what Embargo should've been all along.

I still haven't bought Ritual yet.  Anybody ever use that one to good effect?
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #5 on: April 20, 2017, 12:28:33 pm »
+4

I still haven't bought Ritual yet.  Anybody ever use that one to good effect?
Ritual seems terrible when you consider the costs for trashing common cards.  Trash Duchy or Province to get 1 VP for $4--worse than great hall.  Trash a gold to get 5 VP for $7--doesn't seem exciting.  However, there's often a way to trash the curse, and then you can think of it like Distant Lands, in that it only temporarily junks your deck.  Even if you can't trash curses, it is often useful to have a large source of VP that doesn't empty the province pile.
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Polk5440

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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #6 on: April 20, 2017, 12:31:30 pm »
0

Trade and Delve are strange picks for this list, considering you did not add all events.

I didn't want to type all the events out; ten seemed like a nice number, and I saw Trade low on Qvist's list of $5s and a lot of negative talk around Delve in some threads.

Edit: words.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2017, 12:35:00 pm by Polk5440 »
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #7 on: April 20, 2017, 01:23:05 pm »
+2

Tax is garbage.  It makes games start off garbage, and then it's a garbage thing to buy.  You're basically wasting now to make someone (hopefully else) waste later; and not even necessarily the turn they take the debt!
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #8 on: April 20, 2017, 02:01:46 pm »
+3

You're basically wasting now to make someone (hopefully else) waste later

That's not what's basically going on at all. You buy it when you have a useless extra $2 that you would have had to waste anyway, and then your opponent has to waste some important $2.
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #9 on: April 20, 2017, 02:48:44 pm »
+1

You're basically wasting now to make someone (hopefully else) waste later

That's not what's basically going on at all. You buy it when you have a useless extra $2 that you would have had to waste anyway, and then your opponent has to waste some important $2.

Unless you put it on a card that you want to buy sooner than your opponent wants to buy it.
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #10 on: April 20, 2017, 02:51:49 pm »
+1

You're basically wasting now to make someone (hopefully else) waste later

That's not what's basically going on at all. You buy it when you have a useless extra $2 that you would have had to waste anyway, and then your opponent has to waste some important $2.

Unless you put it on a card that you want to buy sooner than your opponent wants to buy it.

Why would you do that?
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #11 on: April 20, 2017, 04:23:05 pm »
+7

I thought Tax was really bad at first but it turns out to be middling to good if you know what you are doing with it. A lot of the time people would be better off just buying through Tax on good cards because they are good; avoidance works but is usually wrong - thinking of Tax debt more like the other debt cards might be good, although there is an opponent to consider.

Banquet is generally bad but in some cases is necessary (think like Forager as only +buy) and in others decent (like Counting House). Being too aggressive with it is bad of course and opening with it for a trasher is nearly always wrong, but like if the game is going to suck making it suck faster for your opponent is good. Curses are a lot worse than Copper.

Here is a game with both: 2895507
Not necessarily that enamored with my opponent's strategy but Tax was able to shut its potential down pretty hard. Also Banquet opening for Mountebank is worth it (simulators back this up).

I don't know why Annex exists other than to make endgames a little weirder.

jomini

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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #12 on: April 24, 2017, 10:53:52 am »
+1

Every event is very good with at least one card:

Windfall is very nice with highly aggressive trashing (e.g. Chapel) or easy big draw (e.g. Tac on a $5/2 split is extremely good)

Annex is extremely good with Rebuild (leave all the green out of the deck, gain the last duchy with $0 in hand) and also for light trashing megaturns (e.g. no draw/light draw, mass Btroll)

Delve - idiotically good counter to Swamp hag & Haunted Woods in the mid game. Massively good with Conquest to bulk out points if the other guy destroys his deck on provinces (e.g. Hop deck)

Banquet - basically any Alt-VP slog is great here.

Pilgramage - okay seriously? For $8 over two turns I can easily nab a Kc, a Bv (& $5), and a Gm for instance. It becomes exceedingly good with additional turns, particularly off a Mission turn.

Raid - totally worth it when setting up a vicious attack set. -1 card is almost as bad as a Minion attack. It is about as efficient as Masterpiece at increasing deck density and like Masterpiece it can rock Feodum and Tower.

Conquest - same VP as Harem, but gives you an extra card (better for cash density, worse for engine density). Like Harem, it is often skippable, but also like Harem it can buy a province or two of breathing room for a slow building engine. Unlike Harem at high $ levels it actually beats provinces for VP (at $24 and 4 buys, provinces give you 18 VP while Conquest gives you 20). In a competitive match, you should be looking at Conquest to either make up a province deficit or to manage end game VP dancing. Conquest, like many other sources of VP chips, becomes extremely versatile with Mission.

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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #13 on: April 24, 2017, 11:51:36 am »
+3

Pilgramage - okay seriously? For $8 over two turns I can easily nab a Kc, a Bv (& $5), and a Gm for instance. It becomes exceedingly good with additional turns, particularly off a Mission turn.
Pilgrimage's problem is that usually, when you gain cards over two turns, you can use the cards you bought in the first turn in the second turn. Pilgrimage delays that, so even if you get better value-for-money, you have fewer turns left to take advantage of that.
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Titandrake

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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #14 on: April 24, 2017, 12:17:58 pm »
+1

Can someone explain to me why Quest has so few votes? In my experience it's been a dead Event so many times.

Edit: to explain more, there are certainly times where Quest happens to give you a Gold now and then, but that's the problem - it caps out at giving you a Gold. In games where you draw 6+ cards, you have actions to buy or have already drawn $6. In games where you have an extra Attack to discard, you usually have actions to buy too. The 2 Curse case can be useful, but it just doesn't pop up that often. So overall, it's a Gold that just kind of shows up now and then.
« Last Edit: April 24, 2017, 10:16:10 pm by Titandrake »
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Awaclus

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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #15 on: April 25, 2017, 04:35:28 am »
+1

Can someone explain to me why Quest has so few votes? In my experience it's been a dead Event so many times.

Edit: to explain more, there are certainly times where Quest happens to give you a Gold now and then, but that's the problem - it caps out at giving you a Gold. In games where you draw 6+ cards, you have actions to buy or have already drawn $6. In games where you have an extra Attack to discard, you usually have actions to buy too. The 2 Curse case can be useful, but it just doesn't pop up that often. So overall, it's a Gold that just kind of shows up now and then.

Because you can just open Attack/Attack and that's a pretty good opening if Quest is on the board. For instance, if you have double Ambassador and they collide, that's actually fine because at least you get a Gold that turn. Same goes for double Catapult. If you have double Urchin and they don't collide, getting a Gold instead of a Silver is pretty good on the turn where you don't buy another Urchin. You might even want to open something like double Oracle just because Quest is on the board if it's a big money game.
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jomini

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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #16 on: April 25, 2017, 02:14:52 pm »
+1

Pilgramage - okay seriously? For $8 over two turns I can easily nab a Kc, a Bv (& $5), and a Gm for instance. It becomes exceedingly good with additional turns, particularly off a Mission turn.
Pilgrimage's problem is that usually, when you gain cards over two turns, you can use the cards you bought in the first turn in the second turn. Pilgrimage delays that, so even if you get better value-for-money, you have fewer turns left to take advantage of that.

Okay, so let's grant that you are sacrificing a $5 the first turn. How much can a $5 give you in a single turn (remembering also that this is your second or later copy of that $5)? Well a second Torturer is certainly clutch a turn earlier, maybe a second Mountebank, and of course the second Tac can really change the game. But ultimatley, precious few cards will give you more than $5 of effect on their second copy.

This really limits the times where waiting a turn is terribly harsh. Basically you either are right on a major hump (e.g. $2 away from 16, needing another source of +buy to threaten piling with Kc, needing a card to enable a compound attack like Militia/Masq), right near game end, or the piles you want to tap are down in number and easy to empty.

This is the same sort of calculus as playing AmbCCGE; you can wait a turn on the $5, but get more $5 effects once you have it or you can get it sooner, but have fewer $5 effects throughout the game. Yes, it comes a bit later in the game, but I suspect that often enough getting $5 bonus 3rd-best-card-in deck is worth it. Particularly if you have a healthy mix of card "types" in play (e.g. draw, village, payload).

All that being said, Ranger and even the odd Giant board can make it highly worthwhile to either overcome the turn delay, or use Pilgrimage to start your turn with the token down. And again, it is a beast with a Mission board.

Titandrake:
In a heavy cursing slog it is extremely powerful, something like Familiar makes it far too easy to line up curses for a free gold off a +buy. Getting to 6 cards is also very easy in a lot of slogs where gold is very nice - stuff like Haven, Save, Archives, and Caravan can turn hands of absolute trash into Golds. It also makes it much faster to build out an engine when an attack has become useless (e.g. Oracle when you both are deck drawing most every turn, Hag after the curses are gone, Swindler when you cannot risk burning provinces/they have a $4/7/pot/debt deck you cannot muck around with) use a +buy to get a gold to go with the new draw and never waste a turn on getting up your coin count.
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #17 on: April 25, 2017, 02:27:16 pm »
+5

Can someone explain to me why Quest has so few votes? In my experience it's been a dead Event so many times.

It's the power combo with Bureaucrat!

Opened Bureaucrat on a Quest board, discarded it three times to Quest for Golds, then passed it away to my opponent's Masquerade without ever having played it. Power card!
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #18 on: April 26, 2017, 02:59:29 am »
+5

This thread is  further prove of Betteridge's law of headlines ;)

I remember Dan Brooks saying that Events should be automatically ranked 10 spots higher than where you would put them [in the card rankings] just because they're events. And I'm pretty sure he's onto something there.

If you want to decide whether you want a card it's basically calculating whether its upside of playing/having the card  outweighs the opportunity cost of gaining the card aswell as, most importantly, the opportunity cost of having the card in your deck. Funnily, Scout is the best example of that. There is almost no downside to playing Scout, and sometimes you could have easily gained them. Why didn't we? Cause it took up space in our deck which wasn't worth the upside. If you were gifted a princed scout, you would be winning the vast majority of your games since all the downsides of scout would be gone.

Of course, this is also true for events. They have no similar opportunity cost, so we only have to measure the upside of buying that event. Additionally, you can decide how often you use it and be done with it. If you gain your Golds via cards, you stuck with a dead one if you don't want more Golds or go out of your way to get rid of the gainer.

It doesn't surprise me that the treasure gainers are still the worst events, since most others are just insanely good. Yes, in most games you don't want those, but they don't hurt when they're available (Scout makes 9 card kingdoms, Quest doesn't, aka opportunity cost of being in the kingdom). So Events are either strong or meaningless and never bad like Kingdom card are.


Quest is most likely the weakest one, the six card option is just so strange (it means you have draw in the kingdom and your average card is worse than copper), the others are still ok in sloggy games or as a cheap gold gainer for engines.

Banquet will be close but atleast it has some decent synergies.

edit: Annex is fine is thick decks, where does all the hate come from? Removing five cards produces a lot more money!

We still have plenty of useless cards to choose from if we need a new scout meme, just look at Harvest, Stash, Duchess, Cache etc, those have real negative impact.




« Last Edit: April 26, 2017, 03:26:02 am by drsteelhammer »
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Awaclus

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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #19 on: April 26, 2017, 05:33:57 am »
+2

edit: Annex is fine is thick decks, where does all the hate come from? Removing five cards produces a lot more money!

It's not enough that you have a thick deck. You need to have a thick deck and you need to have not drawn it last turn and you need to have not drawn it this turn and you need to have good cards in your discard pile that are so much better than the average card left in your deck that you're fine with having to pay a bunch of debt and you need to not have more than 5 cards that you don't want to shuffle in and you need to want to buy a Duchy. Basically you have to be playing some kind of big money with a lot of Curses/Ruins in your deck and you need to draw your cards in exactly the right order at exactly the right time and then it's a good event to buy.

That, or it needs to be your last turn and you need to have a spare buy.
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #20 on: April 26, 2017, 01:56:43 pm »
+1

We still have plenty of useless cards to choose from if we need a new scout meme, just look at Harvest, Stash, Duchess, Cache etc, those have real negative impact.

Hey, leave Cache out of this - it's narrow, not bad. :P
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #21 on: April 26, 2017, 02:51:38 pm »
+1

Windfall is pretty brilliant with heavy trashing when Gold are payloads, and I find myself evaluating it like that.  Like say you have Market, Wishing Well, Windfall and something like Remake or Steward.  I'll get a bunch of wells and markets and then plan on windfalling for golds at some point to get massive amounts of money.  Gold isn't a terrible payload.  My picks

Raid:  I think the ideal scenario for this is you have a Feodum deck and you play like 4/5 silvers and then gain 4/5 silvers and give out the -1 card token.  Which would be better than gaining a Province I guess?  Maybe if you have a Storyteller/Feodum deck you can leverage some sort of Storyteller megaturn to gain a bajillion Silvers?  Then you could combo it with Tower to gain a bajillion points?  Seems a bit magical christmasland, and you're deep in the woods of 3/4 card combos.

Annex: If a player would end the game in a tie, they may instead win.  Also something something something. 

Pilgrimage: If you can't find a less painful way to flip your journey token this is usually dead.  I've used it in engine decks with Ranger to rapidly gain extra engine components really quickly, but outside of that I find myself using it rarely.  At most I buy it on an awkward $4 turn then flip it for some cards later, but often it's just dead as a doornail.

NB: Quest is strong.  It turns attack or any draw into golds.  Even something stupid like Courtyard or Moat can get you a gold guaranteed on reshuffle, which often is worth it (aside: I think Moat is starting to get decent, since +2 cards isn't as bad as it used to be).  I think the "two curse" option throws people since it's so easy to see it as an anti-curse event and it's not good in that role.  If it were just "discard an attack or 6 cards" people would realize that those are the two interesting modes.
« Last Edit: April 26, 2017, 02:56:26 pm by Sharajat »
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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #22 on: April 27, 2017, 11:39:26 pm »
+1

edit: Annex is fine is thick decks, where does all the hate come from? Removing five cards produces a lot more money!

It's not enough that you have a thick deck. You need to have a thick deck and you need to have not drawn it last turn and you need to have not drawn it this turn and you need to have good cards in your discard pile that are so much better than the average card left in your deck that you're fine with having to pay a bunch of debt and you need to not have more than 5 cards that you don't want to shuffle in and you need to want to buy a Duchy. Basically you have to be playing some kind of big money with a lot of Curses/Ruins in your deck and you need to draw your cards in exactly the right order at exactly the right time and then it's a good event to buy.

That, or it needs to be your last turn and you need to have a spare buy.

Now, now it is nowhere near that bad. You can use it as a gimped Inn very easily - all the cards you gain after going into the buy phase will happily be in discard the moment you Annex. For instance, say I have an engine with Two Hagglers in play. I buy two provinces and gain something like Trx2/Bazaar/Ranger. I shuffle those up and now have open my turn with 7 cards, 4 actions and $2; at the end of the next turn I do have $8 less buying power, but I have 3 more VP to start with and that sort of deck control can easily be worth trading down a province to a duchy. Or I might gun a Hop deck and the turn before I cash out, I might want to shuffle all my newly gained draw and exclude my newly gained Hops.

Beyond that there are cards that work really nice with Annex:

Scav for instance lets you dump the deck and then shuffle up without 5 Greens.
Hwoods can be brutal, dumping 4 greens into the discard and leaving a few more already in the discard is a pretty decent counter.
Swamp hag/Embargo likewise can make Annexing stomp all over buying a single province.
Mission, so I have a full turn and can use any discarders to seed my discard deck with 5 good cards, gain 3 VP, likely pay off the entire 8 debt, and still get the VP late game on a completely busted Mission turn ... sign me up.


Possession - here let me shuffle up 5 green for you ... every turn ... for the rest of the game.

Duke - deck tracking tells me I have $4 this and $4 next hand, do I want the last Duchy? Really hard call. Honestly the point where you should Annex a duchy on $4 or less comes pretty quickly in Duke mirrors.

Glass cannon decks - go off a turn or too sooner knowing you can eke out a duchy every third turn or so.

Annex is not great, but it is far from poorly priced.
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Awaclus

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Re: Is There an Eventful New Scout in Our Midst?
« Reply #23 on: May 03, 2017, 10:14:23 am »
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Another thing that Tax is useful for is when you're ahead. If you're generally just making more money than your opponent, if both of you lose $2, that probably hurts your opponent more.
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Bomb, Cannon, and many of the Gunpowder cards can strongly effect gameplay, particularly in a destructive way

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