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Author Topic: Fix the worst cards  (Read 48063 times)

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Holunder9

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #100 on: June 12, 2018, 03:54:52 pm »
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The real problem for Mute on these boards is the same as always - opportunity cost.
I'd say that the real problem of Transmute is that it converts but doesn't thin. It wouldn't be bought that more often if it costed $0.

Nonsense. The effect of replacing an estate with a Gold is massive going from a raw $.7/card to a $1 per card.
You are aware that you cannot gain Transmute in the opening, right? That Gold arrives in your hand after you have shuffled thrice (even in my hypothetical scenario in which you could open with Transmute the Gold would only arrive after you have shuffled twice, i.e. in a situation in which the average Coin yield certainly isn't 0.7 anymore). I'd rather buy Skulk, at least it does something useful when you play it and jumpstarts your economy kind of when you need it, like immediately.

You spend two Buys for a card that transforms a maximum of 3 Estates into 3 Golds and doesn't get rid of your Coppers, something that Dismantle can do. Dismantle can also do something useful for an engine, namely gain a $5 if you are willing to forsake 3 Coins on a turn.

Quote
Mute would be a perfectly fine (though not top tier) game accelerator with end game potential if it were not for the horrid opportunity cost of gaining it.
No idea about what fan card you are talking. But the offical card Transmute is nearly always worse than the weakeast trashers in the game. Give me Sacrifice, give me Moneylender, give me Dismantle. Even Mine. They all help you to get rid of these cards called Coppers.
Perhaps Transmute is OK in some funky Duke games with some other Alchemy cards around, who knows. Even Copper can be a good card in Garden games. But then again Copper is nearly always better than Transmute anyway as it does at least a little bit of something constructive and above all it doesn't reproduce like crazy.
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DeepCyan

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #101 on: June 12, 2018, 04:52:57 pm »
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As long as we're on the subject of Transmute, a change that might be fun would be to let the card trash other Transmutes for a strong benefit - maybe a card of any type costing up to $6? Maybe even $7? As it currently stands, turning Coppers into Transmutes hurts more than it helps, and this would at least let you do something with the card once you've turned your Estates into Golds. Besides, by the time you're trashing a Transmute with another Transmute, you're probably on your 4th or 5th shuffle anyway, so giving it a massive payload doesn't seem particularly broken.
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jomini

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #102 on: June 12, 2018, 06:54:15 pm »
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Quote
You are aware that you cannot gain Transmute in the opening, right? That Gold arrives in your hand after you have shuffled thrice (even in my hypothetical scenario in which you could open with Transmute the Gold would only arrive after you have shuffled twice, i.e. in a situation in which the average Coin yield certainly isn't 0.7 anymore). I'd rather buy Skulk, at least it does something useful when you play it and jumpstarts your economy kind of when you need it, like immediately.

Yes, I posted quite a bit about how the opportunity cost of Transmute - 3 full buys and shuffle before you see the gold - is what kills it. This is why it is not actively bad to pick up often on busted pot hands for things like Familiar, University, Alchemist, etc. Mute is much better (still weak) when your potion is already a sunk cost. It sucks precisely because on T3/4 Dismantle is getting a gold when you are buying the Mute. On T5-7 it finally gets a gold, by which time Dismantle has been played twice and is better on space efficiency.

Quote
No idea about what fan card you are talking. But the offical card Transmute is nearly always worse than the weakeast trashers in the game. Give me Sacrifice, give me Moneylender, give me Dismantle. Even Mine. They all help you to get rid of these cards called Coppers.
Perhaps Transmute is OK in some funky Duke games with some other Alchemy cards around, who knows. Even Copper can be a good card in Garden games. But then again Copper is nearly always better than Transmute anyway as it does at least a little bit of something constructive and above all it doesn't reproduce like crazy.

You discussed "if it costed [sic] $0". A $0 Mute would be bought on T1, played on T3, and would be better for your deck on T5-T6. T6-T7 it would fall around equal to Dismantle for bootstrapping at that point. Late game which one is better will depend on how flexible the board is and how easy/important Duchies are to get.

Not killing coppers directly is pretty irrelevant, being able to convert estates into Golds is extremely powerful; so much so that you will gladly grab a copper for the privilege. What is relevant is that the gold so ungodly slow that just about anything else is faster.

Which again is why you can win the odd game with Mute in a Potion friendly deck. $2P hand in an Alchemist match - Mute vs nothing can be Mute. Mute vs other weak $2s like Moat, Duchess, Embargo can even still be Mute sometimes. If there is no other way to get more than 6 VP turn ... yeah I will gamble on cannibalizing out a duchy late game if my deck can support the draw and take maybe a gold for my troubles. If it is Familiar and no other trashing? One trash offsets Mutes space-price, and I do not need too much luck to get enough VP from killing curses or Duchies from Familiars to make that work. And after all if I am hitting $2P I likely will hit the estate/curse next shuffle or am losing the curse split regardless - may as well go high variance.

The number one problem with Mute is that it is bootstrapping card which is unbearably slow. Just buying silvers is better than Mute for cash density with the stock card (at T5 XCCCE, Mute gives you $12/13, silvers give you $13/13 - this is the BEST possible case for Mute with otherwise equivalent shuffles). Making Mute faster would make it much better.

This is why I suggest on-buy play. You get a cash benefit better than Skulk one turn later, you actually beat silvers for cash density, and most importantly you can buy it late game or with spare buys to spike Duchies. Not a rock star card, not even something to build a deck around. Definitely something that would get bought a lot more than the bog standard Mute.
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Holunder9

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #103 on: June 12, 2018, 07:27:01 pm »
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Not killing coppers directly is pretty irrelevant, being able to convert estates into Golds is extremely powerful; so much so that you will gladly grab a copper for the privilege. What is relevant is that the gold so ungodly slow that just about anything else is faster.
Aha, so Gold is extremly powerful yet also ungodly slow. Bit too schizophrenic for my taste.
Let's say it like this: Copper trashing is never irrelevant. If you cannot get rid of the Estates you still buy that Moneylender or that Baron and ignore Transmute. If you buy Potion for the sake of something else you still don't buy Transmute when you dud unless there is no trasher/sifter around and you really need a Curse trasher. Familiar games, there we have a niche for Transmute. Except for such rare circumstances it is simple bad, even if you could have it for free.

I mean, what more can you say. It is obvious that you somehow for some strange reasons love the card but objectively it is among the worst of the game. You can see that by the very simple fact that transmuting Coppers into Transmute is often bad which implies that the card is worse than Copper (or to be more precise, the net benefit of every Transmute beyond the first one is usually negative).
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #104 on: June 12, 2018, 08:04:34 pm »
+3

jomini vs tristan is like my dream f.ds thread.
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phonological loop

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #105 on: June 12, 2018, 08:10:22 pm »
+11

Is it really that hard to type "Transmute" instead of omitting the first 5 letters? It's not even a good abbreviation; it's an entirely different word.
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Kirian

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #106 on: June 12, 2018, 08:15:49 pm »
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B) Would bump it out of the bottom 10%

But then we would have a different bottom 10%. Wouldn't we have to fix that next?

I feel like there's a bacon analogy here somewhere.
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Awaclus

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #107 on: June 12, 2018, 09:04:55 pm »
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B) Would bump it out of the bottom 10%

But then we would have a different bottom 10%. Wouldn't we have to fix that next?

I feel like there's a bacon analogy here somewhere.

I had ten strips of bacon yesterday...
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Kirian

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #108 on: June 13, 2018, 12:19:55 am »
0

B) Would bump it out of the bottom 10%

But then we would have a different bottom 10%. Wouldn't we have to fix that next?

I feel like there's a bacon analogy here somewhere.

I had ten strips of bacon yesterday...

Would you say that one of them was the worst of the ten?  And was it still tasty?
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LibraryAdventurer

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #109 on: June 13, 2018, 12:33:30 am »
+1

Quote
Badly Cooked Bacon
$4 - Action
Reveal your hand. Trash the weakest card and strongest card from your hand. Gain two silvers to your hand.

Kirian

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #110 on: June 13, 2018, 01:04:27 am »
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And so that newer people who are scratching their heads about the bacon thing don't think we're all just crazy:

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11886.msg427883#msg427883
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jomini

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #111 on: June 13, 2018, 09:00:18 am »
+1

Not killing coppers directly is pretty irrelevant, being able to convert estates into Golds is extremely powerful; so much so that you will gladly grab a copper for the privilege. What is relevant is that the gold so ungodly slow that just about anything else is faster.
Aha, so Gold is extremly powerful yet also ungodly slow. Bit too schizophrenic for my taste.
Let's say it like this: Copper trashing is never irrelevant. If you cannot get rid of the Estates you still buy that Moneylender or that Baron and ignore Transmute. If you buy Potion for the sake of something else you still don't buy Transmute when you dud unless there is no trasher/sifter around and you really need a Curse trasher. Familiar games, there we have a niche for Transmute. Except for such rare circumstances it is simple bad, even if you could have it for free.

I mean, what more can you say. It is obvious that you somehow for some strange reasons love the card but objectively it is among the worst of the game. You can see that by the very simple fact that transmuting Coppers into Transmute is often bad which implies that the card is worse than Copper (or to be more precise, the net benefit of every Transmute beyond the first one is usually negative).

Mute is objectively the worst card in the game. It is too slow for what it does.

An inability to trash copper is not sufficient to doom a card. Rebuild does quite nicely without it. Jack does quite well without it. As long as estate trashing is coupled to something powerful enough, it is worthwhile as a to get that card.

Mute does not suddenly become good on boards with easy copper trashing. Say you open Counterfeit. All your coppers are trashable, when do you buy Mute? My answer is typically never. Spice merchant likewise has never tempted me to go Mute.

Heck, how often do you buy Mute with Donate? Copper trashing is trivial on Donate boards, but I have never seen an opponent go for Mute after they have a copper less deck.

Ultimately the real reason we know that copper trashing for something like Dismantle or Dev is less important than gaining off the estates is that you will virtually never trash a copper over bootstrapping your estates into better cards. It is far more effective on a hand of DCCCE to gain something even if you plan on buying a nice $2 (e.g. Squire). Nobody says, well I am trying to build a lean deck here so I will trash a copper rather than flip an estate to a gold and gain a copper. Killing coppers with Dev or Dismantle is a consolation prize when you cannot get the real value out of the card. After all, everyone buys these two on Donate boards unless there is something much more powerful around.

I mean seriously, suppose we "fixed" Mute by letting it flat trash a copper. Would you buy it then? You still gain Golds from green and duchies from actions, coppers just function like curses and go straight into the trash. All you have to do is burn your opening $4 on a pot, a first shuffle buy on a Mute and then you have a terminal trasher which gains gold and kills copper. And then once you play it, twice, on coppers - you are break even on card count. The third time you play it, on an estate, you then are starting to make headway with a deck better on cash density than you started with.

Even being able to trash copper would not fix Mute. It is so ungodly slow that you can just buy village/draw and come out ahead. Unless I am forgetting one obscure one, I would buy every single other trasher before I would buy a Mute that trashes coppers - it is that slow.

Sure trashing coppers would make Mute suck less, but that would not change how often people bought it. Game is over on most boards before a copper-trashing-Mute beats Trade route.

And this is what I like about Mute. It is a good object lesson for the price of SPEED.

Mute is slow, it sucks.

When Mute is faster, you can actually do something with it. Very few things give you duchy efficiency VP for a single terminal trash. I have won at least a half dozen games by snagging Mute when it doesn't suck because the stars align and I can get it for low opportunity cost.

Alchemist stack with a +buy? No buying power loss the turn I grab it. Every-other-turn after that I manage copper -> Duchy. That beats most non-attack terminal silvers.
Pool? Any $1P will be a Mute. Increased action density. Fodder for late game duchies. Golds instead of estates. This is all good unless I have some truly stiff competition for terminal actions.
Possession? Yes please, let me trash out all the treasures so you cannot buy provinces.
Vineyards? Spare +buy for an action worth 8/3 or even 4/3 VP after the Vineyards are piled? Yes. And trashing a copper becomes a no-brainer.
Lurker? Burn my Lurkers for late game duchies? Absolutely. I have won by Lurking a Mute on the final turn to take a 3 VP lead at least twice.
Forge? Forge EE -> Pot, buy Mute, Forge Pot -> Mill, Mute Mill -> Gold/Duchy; next turn Forge for Colony.

When Mute has actually worked (i.e. <2% of Mute games) it has not been when I could couple it with a copper only trasher but when I could get it without having to burn two full buys. It amazes me that highly ranked players won't Lurk for Mute when it is literally the only way to score more than 6 VP per turn on the board. This tells me that people don't understand why Mute sucks, just that it does.

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GendoIkari

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #112 on: June 13, 2018, 09:44:37 am »
+4

This post makes me want to update my extension to automatically replace "Mute" with "Transmute".
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LastFootnote

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #113 on: June 13, 2018, 09:46:31 am »
+4

This post makes me want to update my extension to automatically replace "Mute" with "Transmute".

Seriously. And c’mon, “pot”? “Potion” is six measly letters.
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AJD

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #114 on: June 13, 2018, 10:32:38 am »
0

This post makes me want to update my extension to automatically replace "Mute" with "Transmute".

Seriously. And c’mon, “pot”? “Potion” is six measly letters.

And it comes in a bottle.
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crj

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #115 on: June 13, 2018, 11:28:52 am »
0

As long as we're on the subject of Transmute, a change that might be fun would be to let the card trash other Transmutes for a strong benefit
If - if - the card was fixed enough in other respects for something like that to be worthwhile, I feel it would be more interesting to make it a benefit for trashing any potion-cost card.
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faust

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #116 on: June 13, 2018, 12:28:01 pm »
+2

This post makes me want to update my extension to automatically replace "Mute" with "Transmute".

Seriously. And c’mon, “pot”? “Potion” is six measly letters.
Kind of ironic coming from someone who writes "c'mon" instead of come on.

Maybe that was intended. In whcih case, good for me to have explained the joke!
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allanfieldhouse

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #117 on: June 13, 2018, 12:30:22 pm »
+1

Seriously. Mute is not an acceptable abbreviation for the word Transmute.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #118 on: June 13, 2018, 12:53:21 pm »
0

This post makes me want to update my extension to automatically replace "Mute" with "Transmute".

Seriously. And c’mon, “pot”? “Potion” is six measly letters.
Kind of ironic coming from someone who writes "c'mon" instead of come on.

Maybe that was intended. In whcih case, good for me to have explained the joke!

“C’mon” has entered the English lexicon. “Pot” is MMO chat-speak.
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SuperHans

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #119 on: June 13, 2018, 02:37:06 pm »
0

Seriously. Mute is not an acceptable abbreviation for the word Transmute.
Trans is acceptable though.
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jomini

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #120 on: June 13, 2018, 07:37:55 pm »
+2

My wife and I played Dominion over Gchat when Dominion first came out and I was overseas; I will always think of these cards as we talk about them the fact that this is our private shorthand should not be that topic derailing. I type this up between doing other things so it is not like I am going to bother proof-reading a simple post that much nor try to be sure that things which are clear in context meat some arbitrary definition of reasonable abbreviations. Sorry, but f.DS is not that important to my life.

And yes Potions are Pots, just like how Settlers of Cataan somehow developed Sheep over Wool or how Puerto Rico magically had Chuts and 3Sug.

It is frankly sad how pretty much every thread on this board eventually has people come in who would rather mock than engage. Likewise how deviation from the groupthink is discouraged. Perhaps the boards would rather posters just stayed mute.
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Kirian

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #121 on: June 13, 2018, 07:53:42 pm »
0

how Puerto Rico magically had Chuts and 3Sug.

What are those?  I've never seen those in relation to Puerto Rico.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #122 on: June 13, 2018, 08:29:28 pm »
+1

My wife and I played Dominion over Gchat when Dominion first came out and I was overseas; I will always think of these cards as we talk about them the fact that this is our private shorthand should not be that topic derailing. I type this up between doing other things so it is not like I am going to bother proof-reading a simple post that much nor try to be sure that things which are clear in context meat some arbitrary definition of reasonable abbreviations. Sorry, but f.DS is not that important to my life.

And yes Potions are Pots, just like how Settlers of Cataan somehow developed Sheep over Wool or how Puerto Rico magically had Chuts and 3Sug.

It is frankly sad how pretty much every thread on this board eventually has people come in who would rather mock than engage. Likewise how deviation from the groupthink is discouraged.

Since I’m the one who first mentioned it, I should let you know that I didn’t mean for my response to be mocking. It was meant as a light jest. Sorry if it came off rude.

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Perhaps the boards would rather posters just stayed mute.

I can’t tell if this was on purpose or not.
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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #123 on: June 14, 2018, 03:33:30 am »
+9

so it is not like I am going to bother proof-reading a simple post that much

Why should any second person bother to read it, if you don't care to read it a second time?
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Re: Fix the worst cards
« Reply #124 on: June 14, 2018, 08:42:02 am »
0

so it is not like I am going to bother proof-reading a simple post that much

Why should any second person bother to read it, if you don't care to read it a second time?

A little louder for the people in the back, please!
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