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Author Topic: The swingiest card ever  (Read 22180 times)

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Holger

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #75 on: July 10, 2017, 11:59:08 am »
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.

Indeed (but you already said so above). Advance (if there's a $2- Action available) and Delve also make for a good Mint opening. Still, it's only 5-6 "cards" out of ~400 total.
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luser

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #76 on: July 21, 2017, 05:21:12 pm »
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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.)

Also it isn't very swingy, in moneyish boards odds that it helps you are astronomical. You would rather buy duchy. Even if sab hits province that opponents changes into duchy its same vp swing as buying duchy.

In engines where you play multiple sabs skill is deciding factor. What really matters is to get engine operational fast and play more sabs than opponent buys. Before that one could relatively easily replace engine components. It doesn't matter much what those sabs hit as you need to reduce opponent deck until it collapses.
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Sharajat

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #77 on: July 24, 2017, 04:03:13 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.)

Also it isn't very swingy, in moneyish boards odds that it helps you are astronomical. You would rather buy duchy. Even if sab hits province that opponents changes into duchy its same vp swing as buying duchy.

In engines where you play multiple sabs skill is deciding factor. What really matters is to get engine operational fast and play more sabs than opponent buys. Before that one could relatively easily replace engine components. It doesn't matter much what those sabs hit as you need to reduce opponent deck until it collapses.

However in games where it's a bad buy because it can't be King's Courted (and lets face it that's 90% of the times it was a passable buy) and yet both players still buy it then the game would often come down to a straight coin flip. 

In short it's swingy AND awful, and we don't care it is swingy because it's awful.  Swingy strong cards (Familiar, Chapel) are the cards that draw our attention.  But the bad swingy card was still swingy (Tribute and Harvest are two more swingy cards that aren't great - Harvest in particular rises to only 'pretty good' if you're consistently high rolling)
« Last Edit: July 24, 2017, 04:04:30 pm by Sharajat »
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Asper

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #78 on: August 03, 2017, 12:20:51 pm »
+3

Page. Or Warrior, more specific. It's the only card where getting lucky once can decide the game. Worst of all, those game's aren't even fun. Black Market and Tournament might also be swingy, but they are still enjoyable. Just my personal opinion.
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Q

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #79 on: August 03, 2017, 12:50:39 pm »
+1

You can easily hedge yourself against the risk of getting a Warrior trashed by an opponent's Warrior via buying several Pages.
Warrior is a fairly harmless attack and in my experience less swingy or devastating than some Knight Kingdoms.
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Asper

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Re: The swingiest card ever
« Reply #80 on: August 03, 2017, 03:20:28 pm »
+1

You can easily hedge yourself against the risk of getting a Warrior trashed by an opponent's Warrior via buying several Pages.
Warrior is a fairly harmless attack and in my experience less swingy or devastating than some Knight Kingdoms.

I can just say that in my experience you don't always want to exchange your Warrior right away. Sometimes you want to quickly build a deck that can turn over as many cards as possible by getting just Pages and 1 Warrior. If you're lucky and hit your opponent's Warrior and can constantly trash more cards than they gain, you're never letting another Page past Treasure Hunter. You can still exchange the Warrior once all Treasure Hunters are in the trash. Having that Hero/Champion will give you the edge either way, while your opponent has to build from zero. Obviously this fails as soon as they get a 5$ that helps getting other 5$+ cards, like Hero.
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