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Bard is not weak

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Awaclus:
Here are the different effects you can get out of Bard:

1. +$2, you may discard a Treasure to gain a card costing up to $4.
You get to choose between an Ironworks-ish effect and a terminal Silver. That's super versatile and fairly strong.

2. +$3, +1 action
That's super good at hitting $5.

3. +$2, you may trash a card from your hand
That's Salvager. Salvager is a very powerful card.

4. +$3, +1 buy
That's strictly better than Horse Traders without the reaction part, which is already a decent card.

5. +$2, you may topdeck a card from your discard pile
That's strictly worse than Scavenger. Probably the worst Boon you can get, it sort of sucks if you get it without anything good in your discard pile, but even then it's no worse than having a Swindler hit an Estate or having a Militia hit two.

6. +$2, gain a Silver
That's Explorer. Considering that you only paid $4 for the card, that's very good tempo in the early game. You probably don't want it in the late game though.

7. +$2, +1 card at the end of your turn
That's great at hitting $5 and in general.

8. +$2, +1 card
That's a bit more awkward than the above, but still pretty good.

9. +$2, you may discard 3 cards to gain a Gold
If you actually want the Gold, that's super strong. If you don't, well, it's not.

10. +$2, Cartographer effect
That's a lot better than Navigator, which doesn't say much necessarily, but the difference is really big.

11. +$2, gain a Wisp
Gaining a Wisp in addition to the terminal Silver is pretty good for most decks.

12. +$2, Dungeon effect
Again, that's super good at hitting $5.


Half of these make it super likely that you hit $5 on turn 3 and/or turn 4, either allowing you to open Bard/Silver and have realistic hopes of hitting $5 twice, or Bard/trashing while still having a decent chance of hitting $5 at all. The other ones are still on-par with most other cards for hitting $5, and they give you stuff like trashing, free Wisps, and sometimes something of very low utility in addition. All in all, it doesn't do anything amazing, but it is more than sufficiently strong at what it does, which is early game economy.

faust:
Good points. That it's so good in the opening is probably the reason it doesn't cost $3.

JThorne:
Agreed.

Opening with some way to get $2 with a single card in order to hit $5 after the first shuffle is so critical most of the time that it's usually the right call to open Silver (even in a kingdom that absolutely hates treasure) if the only other option are actions that only generate $1. Much of the time I'll trash that Silver at my first opportunity; the rest of the time it sits there like an ugly yellow lump mocking my weakness.

If there are power-5s, there's probably a decent engine, and probably ample terminal space to afford Bard as a piece of the payload.

And on balance, there are far more effects in the game that somehow combine with actions compared with effects that combine with treasure. How many events, landmarks, gainers or simply other action cards are there that do something with an action card, but would look at a Silver and shrug?

So far, Nocturne cards are surprising me with their speed after playing a few games on-line. In turns, that is. The amount of time it takes to figure out what to do, on the other hand...

Jack Rudd:
I'm surprised your #2 didn't just read "that's a Gold".

markusin:

--- Quote from: Jack Rudd on November 17, 2017, 09:47:30 am ---I'm surprised your #2 didn't just read "that's a Gold".

--- End quote ---

He didn't say it wasn't. Also relevant, you might even hit $6 with that, especially if you also opened Silver with Bard. Nice to get an early Altar or Artisan.

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