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Author Topic: The swingiest card ever  (Read 22179 times)

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Q

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #50 on: July 01, 2017, 02:51:28 pm »
0

Followers is best understood as a weaker version of buying the only Goons off the black market.  It has no buy and the net VP effect of curses can be trashed. Good players know how to not be slowed down too much by its Militia attack.
Followers is the only double attack in the game and thus the strongest attack card. Unless there are other Cursers in the Kingdom (Cursers are rarely weak; even in a Kingdom with Chapel you might go for that Witch) such that the Curse pile is (nearly) empty and there are decent ways to defend against handsize attacks which has probably less to do with player strength than with the particularities of the respective Kingdom.
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terminalCopper

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #51 on: July 01, 2017, 03:26:54 pm »
+1

Followers is the only double attack in the game and thus the strongest attack card.


There is also catapult. Furthermore, Sea Hags topdecking can be seen as an additional attack.
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O

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #52 on: July 01, 2017, 05:19:53 pm »
+1

Quote
Followers is best understood as a weaker version of buying the only Goons off the black market.

That's... the only Goons off the black market is an absurdly strong and swingy option. I don't see how this is making an argument that it's worse than any single attack that has 10 in the supply.

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JW

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #53 on: July 01, 2017, 06:11:13 pm »
+4

Followers is the only double attack in the game and thus the strongest attack card.


There is also catapult. Furthermore, Sea Hags topdecking can be seen as an additional attack.

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Gherald

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #54 on: July 01, 2017, 08:43:32 pm »
+1

The draw of Followers is more significant than any "double attack" aspect.

Goons has the same net effect on VP and deck junk, assuming the player buys an average of 2 cards per turn, and Goon's VP differential can't be trashed away.
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Q

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #55 on: July 02, 2017, 04:26:18 am »
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The draw of Followers is more significant than any "double attack" aspect.
Other way around. Without the double attack it would be something worse than Moat.
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Gherald

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #56 on: July 02, 2017, 05:57:45 am »
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In this comparison, +2 cards is better than +$2 for most boards.

Your concept of "double attack" is just a misunderstanding of what Followers does to VP and deck size, since it's self-junking. Followers' effect is in fact weaker than Goons because the curses can be trashed or blocked, and also the first few times it's played the player would prefer to not gain estates.
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Awaclus

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #57 on: July 02, 2017, 06:27:54 am »
0

The draw of Followers is more significant than any "double attack" aspect.
Other way around. Without the double attack it would be something worse than Moat.

That really depends on how you mentally parse the card. If you think of it as:

+2 cards
Gain an estate
Double attack (i.e. Militia and Witch attacks)

Then yeah, it's the "Double attack" part that makes it strong. But if you think of it as:

+2 cards
+2 VP (not entirely accurate, since you want to trash your +1 VP away and your opponent wants to trash his -1 VP too, so that'll probably happen if it's possible)
Militia attack
Both players gain a junk card

Then it's really very comparable to getting a single Goons, with the only upside being that it doubles as a super weak engine component, i.e. the +2 cards.
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Q

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #58 on: July 02, 2017, 08:29:51 am »
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Your concept of "double attack" is just a misunderstanding of what Followers does to VP and deck size, since it's self-junking. Followers' effect is in fact weaker than Goons because the curses can be trashed or blocked, and also the first few times it's played the player would prefer to not gain estates.
Sure, most of the times (i.e. unless it is late in the game when you'd actually want Estates) you'd prefer Followers to be a pure Curser. But it is still an attack and in Kingdoms without trashers the 2VP difference is permanent.
I'd agree though that most of the times (you don't always buy two cards with Goons in play and 2 Cards is a bit better than 2 Coins) Goons is slightly better than Followers.

Trusty Steed, being used most of the times as a Lost City, is also more or less a hypothetical 6/7 (of course you cannot really prize prices, that's just a rough benchmark).

Of course this is all just academic, the crucial element is that Goons is available to everybody while there is only one Followers and in some Kingdoms getting Followers can be the game deciding moment.
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Gherald

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #59 on: July 02, 2017, 09:56:15 am »
+1

I don't think anyone here needed to read your comment to have a similar understanding of all those things.

The less-understood point is that while a card like Followers can decide games, it's not as hard to counter as people think. Good play and reasonable luck can beat it often enough. Your play will improve if you understand and think of it as a somewhat weaker Goons rather than as being a curser attack.
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Q

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #60 on: July 03, 2017, 02:42:34 am »
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If there is nothing in the Kingdom that can counter the handsize (while a draw engine can of course deal with handsize attacks there are not that many explicit counters to them: only Guide, Diplomat, Menagerie and Shanty Town come to mind) and junking attack (no trasher or sifters and you are doomed if you cannot mirror a Curser) good play does not save you and luck does not matter above the degree that it matters for Dominion in general.

In a game without Landmarks or alt-VPs that difference of 2VPs per Followers play can be crucial to the score.
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Gherald

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #61 on: July 03, 2017, 04:30:47 am »
+1

You keeping assessing it as a doom-bringing junking attack instead of +2VP, so I guess we aren't making any progress on that front.

I already said it can decide games. Surely we all here know something of the ways in which it can decide games. But thanks for the update.
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luser

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #62 on: July 03, 2017, 05:57:48 am »
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I would say that swingiest card is cultist. Cultist bm is often dominant and given how fast it is one couldn't recover from losing ruin split 7-3 unless there is vineyard. Sea hag is swingier than swindler as it sea hags opponents sea hag. I would put ambassador on third place for unlucky 5/2 splits and that winner is decided by collision of double-ambassador or not lot of time.

Main problem with entropy measure is that it measures something completely different than swinginess, namely how much poor player misplay(especially openings). Amb has low rating there because noobs don't open double ambassador. bishop follows that as noobs open with it and get deserved loss most of time.
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Q

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #63 on: July 03, 2017, 08:37:58 am »
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You keeping assessing it as a doom-bringing junking attack instead of +2VP, so I guess we aren't making any progress on that front.

I already said it can decide games. Surely we all here know something of the ways in which it can decide games. But thanks for the update.
I don't think that your snarkiness is warranted.


I would say that swingiest card is cultist. Cultist bm is often dominant and given how fast it is one couldn't recover from losing ruin split 7-3 unless there is vineyard.
I don't disagree with that but I think that this is overdetermined by the fact that Cultist is overpowered.
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luser

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #64 on: July 03, 2017, 12:20:33 pm »
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I would say that swingiest card is cultist. Cultist bm is often dominant and given how fast it is one couldn't recover from losing ruin split 7-3 unless there is vineyard.
I don't disagree with that but I think that this is overdetermined by the fact that Cultist is overpowered.

That isn't surprising as card needs to be strong to affect outcome in significant manner. Otherwise I could say that scout was very swingy as you could remove three estates with it or none.
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Q

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #65 on: July 03, 2017, 01:17:47 pm »
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I would say that swingiest card is cultist. Cultist bm is often dominant and given how fast it is one couldn't recover from losing ruin split 7-3 unless there is vineyard.
I don't disagree with that but I think that this is overdetermined by the fact that Cultist is overpowered.

That isn't surprising as card needs to be strong to affect outcome in significant manner. Otherwise I could say that scout was very swingy as you could remove three estates with it or none.
I don't agree entirely. You are right that a weak and swingy card is not really relevant as its risk does not impact the game much. But I don't think that the opposite is true, i.e. that a swingy card has to be strong to  really impact the game. Swindler and Tournament are in my opinion medium power level cards and unlike Cultist not crazily overpowered and yet a single play of them can significantly change the game.
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Sharajat

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #66 on: July 05, 2017, 11:02:49 am »
+1

Really?  Because I'll offer an incredibly weak, incredibly swingy card: Saboteur.  Trashing provinces with sab while your opponent's sabs hit silver is the difference between winning and losing in the late game - if both players go Sab.  Chances are if one player goes Sab and one doesn't, the Sab player just loses anyway because god that card is bad. 

And despite being enormously swingy it's not even on this list. 
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LastFootnote

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #67 on: July 05, 2017, 11:33:41 am »
0

Really?  Because I'll offer an incredibly weak, incredibly swingy card: Saboteur.  Trashing provinces with sab while your opponent's sabs hit silver is the difference between winning and losing in the late game - if both players go Sab.  Chances are if one player goes Sab and one doesn't, the Sab player just loses anyway because god that card is bad. 

And despite being enormously swingy it's not even on this list.

Well, I mean, it is an outtake now.
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Jack Rudd

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #68 on: July 05, 2017, 12:34:30 pm »
+1

Really?  Because I'll offer an incredibly weak, incredibly swingy card: Saboteur.
Saboteur is not so much weak as it is terribroken; it flips from "so weak it should be ignored" to "so strong it dominates the board" very quickly depending on how often you can play it. (Once per turn is probably about the tipping point.)
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SettingFraming

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #69 on: July 06, 2017, 08:18:01 am »
+6

*cough Black Market *cough

Nope, Black market isn't swingy at all, but there are some people who like to blame their losses on this card.

I patently disagree with this. What and when you flip from the BM deck is incredibly important AND not in the player's control. Thus it's plenty swingy and I have won and lost plenty when the most important meter movers in the game were Black Market plays.

Page, though, receives my vote.
« Last Edit: July 06, 2017, 08:19:25 am by SettingFraming »
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Gherald

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #70 on: July 07, 2017, 01:55:56 pm »
+2

It depends on what one wants to talk about with "swingy" -- how you define the word?

If to you "swingy" means something that simply leads to unequal events you have no control over, which can be game-deciding, then yes Black Market is very swingy.

If to you "swingy" means something that often gives one player a strong early advantage that the other often has insufficient good chances of countering, Black Market is not swingy.

You can have unlucky outcomes with the Black Market that determine some games, we know this. But at the same time it also leads to many more important choices that are in the player's control, not fewer, and so is possibly the best card in all Dominion in terms of rewarding skilled play. That's why people like Stef appreciate it, and don't find the swingy label to be at all useful.
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Skumpy

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #71 on: July 07, 2017, 02:40:43 pm »
+1

If to you "swingy" means something that often gives one player a strong early advantage that the other often has insufficient good chances of countering, Black Market is not swingy.

As breppert says, the what and when is extremely important. Say there's weak/no trashing on the board. If you find a Chapel/Steward/Amulet/heck even Rats, on your very first Black Market play and I have to wait until my fifth BM play before stumbling on an Apprentice (which can absolutely happen), that's a huge early advantage that's basically impossible to overcome. Going the other direction, King's Court is a wonderful card to have around, but I don't want it to be in my first flip because I can't afford it yet.

You can have unlucky outcomes with the Black Market that determine some games, we know this.
= swing

But at the same time it also leads to many more important choices that are in the player's control, not fewer, and so is possibly the best card in all Dominion in terms of rewarding skilled play.

Fair enough, but this is only true when events like the one above don't happen first. There are plenty of games with no swing. Maybe the swindlers do equal damage to both players deck. Warriors almost never hit the other player's (or players'). If one player gets the first Big-3 Prize, the other player can often get one of the remaining 2. Players can have equal/close to equal luck with Sentry and Sauna. You get the idea. The point is, just because Black Market is a high-skill level card (certainly more than any of the options in the poll at any rate) doesn't mean there isn't also a huge luck factor involved that can early and quickly turn the tide.
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Gherald

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #72 on: July 07, 2017, 05:52:18 pm »
0

You're overstating things with "basically impossible to overcome". Although scenarios like that are not that common, they can be overcome.
Quote
= swing
On occasions, yes. Stef did oversimplify things by saying Black Market isn't swingy "at all", but he's right to consider it an uninteresting aspect of the card. It's not the most interesting thing about BM, and nor is it interesting to compare it to the top tier of cards which do tend to more deterministically swing games.
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Q

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #73 on: July 08, 2017, 06:47:41 am »
0

Black Market can be extremly swingy and game-deciding if you e.g. gain a junker or trasher while no junker or trasher is present in the Kingdom.
On the other hand this only happens sometimes and it is partially mitigated by a huger Black Market deck which makes it more likely that the seemingly unlucky player will later also find a card of a category that is not present in the Kingdom.
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Sharajat

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #74 on: July 09, 2017, 04:37:42 pm »
0


Mint can also be very swingy if one player gets a 5/2 start and there other cards that support a Mint opening.

But there are very few cards that do - basically only Fool's Gold and $2- cards that guarantee a $3-4 turn on the second shuffle, i.e. Poor House and Secret Chamber (RIP).
(Baker and Borrow don't count here because they remove the swinginess of the opening.)
I think Alms deserves special mention.

That being said I think Alms deserves special mention for basically making 5/2 hands insanely good always, but Mint>Alms (Salvager) just feels brutally unfair.
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