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JThorne

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Surplus
« on: March 09, 2018, 12:05:38 pm »
+6

I feel like there's an article here, but every time I think about posting some kind of authoritative article, what I mostly want to do is get insight from the community on an issue (such as with my "payload first" post) so once again, I'm posting it as an open-ended subject.

Surplus

Cards in Dominion are costed according to their function. What if you buy a card and are not using some key part of its function? Surplus anything left at the end of a turn could indicate that you're overinvesting. Sometimes that's acceptable, but sometimes the surplus can be used as a guideline to identify bad play or bad buying decisions. So, at the end of a turn, what do you have left over?

Extra actions -- Don't overinvest in cards that generate +actions you don't need. You could be a Village Idiot.
Extra coin -- Don't overinvest in coin-generating you can't spend if there's no +buy.
Extra buys -- Don't overinvest in buys that you don't have the coin for.
Extra action cards -- Don't overinvest in terminals you can't play.
Extra value -- "Gain a card costing up to X" is a fuzzy category...it's frequently worth it to gain a card costing less than the maximum, but there could be some lost efficiency here.
Extra cards you couldn't draw -- All the cards left in your deck were an investment that didn't pay off this turn. If you can only draw half your deck, you've paid for cards that you can only use every other turn, making them fundamentally half as valuable.
Extra cards you could draw -- Overdrawing is a thing you want to do, but even then, it's possible to overdo it. If your deck is in hand and you can still draw more cards than you could possibly want for the whole rest of the game, you may be overinvested in draw (I hesitate to even suggest this, but I've done it.)
Underbuying -- Some cards are just terrible without the overpay. You generally don't pay $3 or $4 for a Masterpiece, or $2 for a Stonemason; doing so would be failing to use a key feature of the card. (Herald gets a pass. Buy all the $4 Heralds you want.)

Dominion is about efficiency, and if one player wastes resources and the other doesn't, the more efficient player is more likely to win.

So here's the question: What common overinvesting do you see when playing? Which ones would you consider mistakes, and when is it just a side-effect of wanting a unique function of a card that just happens to be giving you something else you don't need?

Here are some examples I see with particular cards:

Festival -- if you're not using the actions and/or +buy, you're paying $5 for Silver.
Minion for $2 -- I've seen players literally never get a new hand in a whole game. Facepalm.
Witch for draw -- if the curses are already gone, that's a $5 Moat. (Torturer, fine, I'll pay $5 for a Smithy.)
Wine Merchant -- if you never buy multiples, and you always leave $2 to get him back, that's a $5 Woodcutter.
Bank -- if ever a card needed +buy...
Highway -- is there +buy or gainers? If not, it's a bad Treasury, worth $4 according to conventional wisdom.
Cursed Village -- Used with terminal draw, it's a $2 Necropolis that hexes you. This is essentially another category: Any time you have a draw-to-X in hand and your hand is already >=X you've overinvested.
Scheme always topdecking itself -- Why did you buy it?
Ghost with deck in hand -- Oops. Exorcise something into an Imp right now or be sad.
Settlers with no Copper. Bustling Village with no Settlers. Either one with no discard pile or sifters -- You have paid for functionality you're not using. Maybe it's worth it, maybe it's not, but it's worth pondering if your plan could have been better.

Notice that I'm not listing bad cards here. I'm listing good cards misused by not taking advantage (or not being able to take advantage) of their natural synergy with other card categories.

Sometimes the overinvesting is subtle. I got into a long argument about Highway + University not being a synergy, and it hinges on this very issue: If you're not gaining $6/$7/$8 actions, University is overinvesting in surplus gain value. If you're not using the +2 actions, you're overinvesting in surplus actions. Highway (even without +buy) gains more Highways faster than University because of the addition of two stop cards (University/Potion) to the deck. With +buy it's not even close. And without +buy, Highway might not even be good. (But since many +buy cards are terminal, you might need that University after all!)

There are also plenty of examples where surplus just happens, such as City chains, Champion, King's Court -- lots of explosive engines accidentally generate gobs of +Actions that you don't need once they go off. KC often accidentally generates a bunch of +buys and other things you don't need, as well. But even then, the surplus could be a good indication of what to buy for next turn (if there is one!) Also, you sometimes generate surplus because you're battling to win the split on a key card, which will result in some inefficient turns after the pile empties but before you've bought the other pieces. But battling too hard over a split can also lead to suboptimal play, and a large surplus of anything helps expose this.

Thoughts?


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weesh

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #1 on: March 09, 2018, 12:26:27 pm »
+4

Ghost with deck in hand -- Oops. Exorcise something into an Imp right now or be sad.

night comes after buy, so simply buying a card is sufficient to not waste your ghost....said the guy that trashed his ghost before he realized this.

in my playgroup, the biggest example of surplus is FLUFF.
if you draw your deck, but don't have payload, you are just creating fluff.  I see people that keep buying more villages and smithies because they neglected economy, and have trouble buying the cards they want.
« Last Edit: March 09, 2018, 12:30:48 pm by weesh »
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crj

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #2 on: March 09, 2018, 01:08:08 pm »
+5

A big reason for surplus that you don't mention is to mitigate a lack of consistency. It might well be worth risking a surplus to avoid the risk of a deficit.
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JThorne

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #3 on: March 09, 2018, 01:39:22 pm »
+2

Quote
night comes after buy, so simply buying a card is sufficient to not waste your ghost

True. I've had "dead Ghost" syndrome when I was greening, though, which tends to go hand-in-hand with drawing deck. I do like the Silver Gainer/Exorcist-Imp/Ghost reliability bump for greening.

Quote
in my playgroup, the biggest example of surplus is FLUFF.

I love it! Fluff! That kind of dovetails nicely with my "payload first" thread.

The biggest problem in my playgroup is the opposite: "I'm going to by another Horse Traders because I keep not drawing my Horse Traders when I need it." What? No! You should buy more draw and draw your ONE Horse Traders every turn! (Asterisk: Sometimes rushes are a thing, but they're not good at seeing those, either.)

The saddest symptom of fluff is the disheartening need to buy more Silver. Bleah. Then again, it's kind of amazing that the game is so well balanced that treasure alone isn't good payload, meaning that sometimes people build fluffy decks when they should really just go money. The delicate balance between when money is good and when engines are good is a real triumph of game design.

Quote
A big reason for surplus that you don't mention is to mitigate a lack of consistency.

True. Sometimes I'll open double-Silver because there's a key $5 that I absolutely must have in the second shuffle and no better way to ensure it, and then end up paying $6 or even $7 for it. The Surplus is still bad, it's just unlucky.

overpaying $1 or $2 for the right card is fine. Buying Gold just because you hit $6 is often worse than buying a power $5. But if you're routinely overpaying, some sort of decision tweaking might be in order. Opening double-Silver is often wrong if there's a better way to ensure $5 that also makes your deck better. Overdrawing falls into much the same category.
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crj

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #4 on: March 09, 2018, 01:43:45 pm »
0

Another example of surplus to ensure consistency is having enough non-terminal draw in your engine that you're unlikely to get a hand that stalls.

Spending 1 turn buying the Laboratory that will prevent you stalling an expected 1.2 times is good play, even if it causes overdraw.
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Jack Rudd

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #5 on: March 09, 2018, 01:47:25 pm »
0

Sometimes surplus is an unavoidable consequence of the kingdom. If I'm running a Worker's Village - fuelled engine, I expect to get ridiculous quantities of buys I can't use.
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #6 on: March 09, 2018, 03:17:44 pm »
+1

+Buy is the weirdest of the vanilla bonuses in that its very nature often leads to Surplus.

Sometimes you get Wine Merchant just because it's the only card with +Buy and end up using it as a $5 Woodcutter. There are also some really terrible cards (most infamously Herbalist and Ruined Market) that you spend precious resources to get because of the +Buy.

On the other end of the scale, Grand Market would be a fantastic card even without the +Buy, so you always get a ton of them and usually end up with a lot of superfluous Buys.

Regular Market can sort of swing both ways. It's expensive for what it does, but you usually need it if it's the only +Buy. On the other hand, sometimes it can make decent payload (like if you're getting it for free with Artisan), in which case it's the numerous +Buys that become superfluous.

And, of course, if there's no +Buy at all but the board can still generate large amounts of $ then you end up with a lot of $ you don't use.
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JThorne

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #7 on: March 09, 2018, 03:56:46 pm »
+2

Quote
Grand Market would be a fantastic card even without the +Buy, so you always get a ton of them and usually end up with a lot of superfluous Buys.

True, but the Surplus can still be illuminating. If it appears in a kingdom with Conspirators (drool) then it would probably be more efficient to stagger them so you're not spending for buys you're not using. With $8 and two buys, two Conspirators is going to be better than GM/nothing, then either two GMs or three Conspirators the turn afterward, depending on the split.

Quote
Regular Market can sort of swing both ways. It's expensive for what it does, but you usually need it if it's the only +Buy. On the other hand, sometimes it can make decent payload (like if you're getting it for free with Artisan), in which case it's the numerous +Buys that become superfluous.

But again, just gaining lots of Markets isn't usually a core strategy. What you're describing is a situation where it's just something to gain with Artisan after you've emptied all of the better $5s and isn't going to hurt your deck. Maybe you end up with surplus buys, but buying lots of markets is a sort of strategy that I've seen beginners use without realizing they're overpaying for resources they're not using. It would be better to fill out the deck with something else that's actually being used.

Quote
And, of course, if there's no +Buy at all but the board can still generate large amounts of $ then you end up with a lot of $ you don't use.

I would consider that one of the most common mistakes of all. If the board has no +buy, you need to get to a reliable $8 per turn as quickly as possible and no more. $10-20 with one buy is almost always an error. If there are gainers or Alt+VP, they need to be leveraged, but making lots more money than you need is genuinely bad.
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #8 on: March 09, 2018, 05:45:07 pm »
0

Quote
Regular Market can sort of swing both ways. It's expensive for what it does, but you usually need it if it's the only +Buy. On the other hand, sometimes it can make decent payload (like if you're getting it for free with Artisan), in which case it's the numerous +Buys that become superfluous.

But again, just gaining lots of Markets isn't usually a core strategy. What you're describing is a situation where it's just something to gain with Artisan after you've emptied all of the better $5s and isn't going to hurt your deck. Maybe you end up with surplus buys, but buying lots of markets is a sort of strategy that I've seen beginners use without realizing they're overpaying for resources they're not using. It would be better to fill out the deck with something else that's actually being used.

Well, that was kind of my point. Market is weak for its price, so you're usually overusing your resources if you're getting a ton of them. If you're buying one just for the +Buy, then you're overusing your resources a little, but in that case you have no choice.

Quote
And, of course, if there's no +Buy at all but the board can still generate large amounts of $ then you end up with a lot of $ you don't use.

I would consider that one of the most common mistakes of all. If the board has no +buy, you need to get to a reliable $8 per turn as quickly as possible and no more. $10-20 with one buy is almost always an error. If there are gainers or Alt+VP, they need to be leveraged, but making lots more money than you need is genuinely bad.

I think maybe I was mostly thinking of some Bank games where I got way more money than I was expecting. So I guess my mistake was underestimating Bank's explosive nature more than anything else.
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DG

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #9 on: March 10, 2018, 03:24:53 pm »
0

Control & resilience vs surplus.
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Chase Adolphson

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #10 on: March 16, 2018, 05:44:14 pm »
0

Sauna/avanto is one that everybody skips a key factor of. They have an avanto but no sauna and then they can't play any more actions.
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Jack Rudd

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #11 on: March 17, 2018, 01:37:28 pm »
0

Sauna/avanto is one that everybody skips a key factor of. They have an avanto but no sauna and then they can't play any more actions.
Really? My experience of online games with this pile is that they tend to end up in mirror matches where both players get at least two copies of each.
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Cuzz

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #12 on: March 17, 2018, 02:14:44 pm »
0

Sauna/avanto is one that everybody skips a key factor of. They have an avanto but no sauna and then they can't play any more actions.
Really? My experience of online games with this pile is that they tend to end up in mirror matches where both players get at least two copies of each.

I mean...it's pretty clear this dude is trolling at this point, right?
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trivialknot

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #13 on: March 17, 2018, 03:49:27 pm »
+7

Sauna/avanto is one that everybody skips a key factor of. They have an avanto but no sauna and then they can't play any more actions.
Really? My experience of online games with this pile is that they tend to end up in mirror matches where both players get at least two copies of each.

I mean...it's pretty clear this dude is trolling at this point, right?
Chase Adolphson is just very young.  Be nice, etc. etc.
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Marcory

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #14 on: March 17, 2018, 03:56:57 pm »
+3

Sauna/avanto is one that everybody skips a key factor of. They have an avanto but no sauna and then they can't play any more actions.
Really? My experience of online games with this pile is that they tend to end up in mirror matches where both players get at least two copies of each.

I mean...it's pretty clear this dude is trolling at this point, right?
Chase Adolphson is just very young.  Be nice, etc. etc.

And his experience playing is in friendly games with his family, not with online cuthroats like us.
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Cuzz

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #15 on: March 17, 2018, 04:02:03 pm »
+1

Sauna/avanto is one that everybody skips a key factor of. They have an avanto but no sauna and then they can't play any more actions.
Really? My experience of online games with this pile is that they tend to end up in mirror matches where both players get at least two copies of each.

I mean...it's pretty clear this dude is trolling at this point, right?
Chase Adolphson is just very young.  Be nice, etc. etc.

arite, arite, sorry. thought maybe it was a Ken M type of situation
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crj

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #16 on: March 17, 2018, 04:17:49 pm »
0

Chase Adolphson is just very young.
Allegedly. /-8

I don't know. It may just be bad luck, but a lot of what they say seems to be finely calculated to be wrong in ways that cause slight outrage and a smidgen of controversy without being as blatant as "Chapel is a bad card". Meanwhile, those wrong things aren't interspersed with correct things to the degree I'd have expected. I mean, it's pretty easy for even an inexperienced player to say correct things about Dominion once in a while, right?

Also, their remarks seem fairly widely distributed across the forums, cropping up unexpectedly in the middle of some fairly advanced threads such as this one. Call me Mr Suspicious, but it's almost as though it was a sock puppet for an avid forum user.

Having said which, I've not been sure enough to be the one who calls them out.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #17 on: March 17, 2018, 04:42:07 pm »
+1

Chase Adolphson is just very young.
Allegedly. /-8

I don't know. It may just be bad luck, but a lot of what they say seems to be finely calculated to be wrong in ways that cause slight outrage and a smidgen of controversy without being as blatant as "Chapel is a bad card". Meanwhile, those wrong things aren't interspersed with correct things to the degree I'd have expected. I mean, it's pretty easy for even an inexperienced player to say correct things about Dominion once in a while, right?

Also, their remarks seem fairly widely distributed across the forums, cropping up unexpectedly in the middle of some fairly advanced threads such as this one. Call me Mr Suspicious, but it's almost as though it was a sock puppet for an avid forum user.

Having said which, I've not been sure enough to be the one who calls them out.

Writing up that fan card thread would have been very time consuming; even if there were things such as formatting that would have taken even more time. If that was just a troll; it was an extremely dedicated one.

Also, we know he's young, it's right below his username: 'Young Witch".
« Last Edit: March 17, 2018, 04:44:40 pm by GendoIkari »
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Re: Surplus
« Reply #18 on: March 17, 2018, 05:39:29 pm »
+3

If that was just a troll; it was an extremely dedicated one.

It must be Dan!
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crj

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #19 on: March 17, 2018, 05:44:25 pm »
0

Writing up that fan card thread would have been very time consuming
Ah. I don't routinely read the fan card threads. [looks] I do see what you mean; that smells a lot less like a troll.
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Chase Adolphson

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #20 on: March 18, 2018, 07:34:38 am »
+1

Sauna/avanto is one that everybody skips a key factor of. They have an avanto but no sauna and then they can't play any more actions.
Really? My experience of online games with this pile is that they tend to end up in mirror matches where both players get at least two copies of each.


What I meant was no sauna in their hand not their whole deck.
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ipofanes

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #21 on: March 19, 2018, 08:32:02 am »
0

The main surplus of Sauna/Avanto which I see is the trashing at the end of the game. At least there's no Temple/Mercenary-type compulsory trashing, but normally the need for trashing is satisfied after the second Sauna/Avanto chain.
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weesh

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #22 on: March 19, 2018, 09:23:20 am »
+2

Recently, I've been seeing surplus trashing.
That is, people continuing to trash coppers when they are already overdrawing their deck, and thus reducing their economy...
Or finally trashing an estate that never lined up...on one of the last turns for the game.
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ipofanes

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #23 on: March 19, 2018, 09:53:15 am »
0

I don't think this is the definition of surplus. Surplus is the resource you don't use. What you describe is the excess use of a resource, like buying coppers with your extra buys.

Of course two wrongs can make a right, for instance if you buy extra coppers to keep your Mercenary busy, thus excessively using surpli in the hope they will cancel out.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #24 on: March 19, 2018, 04:19:00 pm »
0

I don't think this is the definition of surplus. Surplus is the resource you don't use. What you describe is the excess use of a resource, like buying coppers with your extra buys.

Of course two wrongs can make a right, for instance if you buy extra coppers to keep your Mercenary busy, thus excessively using surpli in the hope they will cancel out.

I dunno, trashing 1 card is the equivalent of adding 1 lab into your deck. So if buying too many labs leads to surplus drawing, then trashing too many cards is a different way of arriving at that surplus drawing. So it's still the drawing that is surplus; not the trashing. But in that case, the way to resolve the issue would be to trash less.
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jonaskoelker

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #25 on: March 19, 2018, 06:52:08 pm »
0

Sometimes surplus is an unavoidable consequence of the kingdom.

The consequence of this, which you almost explicated, is that having a surplus of some resource is not a proof that you misbuilt your deck—merely a suggestion. Your Worker's Village example is a great one. Reliably drawing a big deck with City Quarter might take enough CQs that you often overdraw.

Werewolf has the advantage that you can add one or two more than you need for drawing and get both the increased reliability and also an attack out of those you didn't need for draw. So that's a kind of not-actually-surplus that looks like a little like a surplus—or is it actually a surplus, just not a wasteful one? I was never good with definitions. ;)

To have enough Bustling Villages to kick off your turn, you might need so many that you end up with spare actions at the end, which is why Port is often preferable.

I think the generalized lesson might be: sometimes adding a card to your deck gives you multiple benefits. If you have a surplus of one (or more) of them, you should ask yourself whether the non-surplus—actualized—benefits are worth the (opportunity) cost.
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jomini

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #26 on: March 19, 2018, 09:40:16 pm »
0

Sometimes a surplus is merely a "threat in being". Take the simplest case - I have 10 buys. You no longer can leave me up by 11 points and having two empty piles. Being able to quickly threaten three pile drastically changes the game at high levels of play even if you never use them. I routinely will pick up subpar +buys over a marginally "better" bonus (like say Farming village) so I can expand the number of ways I can control the end game. This gets really crazy quickly with some cards I may otherwise leave dead (e.g. Stonemason can spawn two more Smasons who can then nab 4 cards and a single Smason can then then pick off 3 more for a total of 9 cards just for keeping one "dead" card in the deck). I may never use it, but one dead card can force my opponent to green sooner and that can give me an advantage.

Another case is anticipation. Overdraw is hugely worth it. Yes you want to time things nicely, but if may way to secure overdraw early so I do not get locked out. Or I may know that something clutch will be opened shortly (e.g. Split piles, Castles, Knights, Bm). Bm is absolutely huge on this, you often want to grab cards that you cannot use now anticipating that you can build back to them later (e.g. buy Mountebank as your third terminal in a short deck, you can buy village next turn).

Another option is stockpiling for boards where you expect to irretrievably lose cards (e.g. Swindler); if there is a clutch card I may well nab a second opportunistically so my deck is not crippled should I lose it (e.g. a "useless" silver when I am using Merchants). In some rare cases it is a nice deterrence strategy (e.g. burning off the Peddlers/more rarely lone $5s so the opponent cannot risk a Swindler play).

Finally, the fluff you add has direct impacts on end game state. Taking an extra Smithy? Well if it drops the game ending card count to 4 - which you can manage while your opponent can only hit three ... welcome back to threat in being.

It is enough to keep or gain a card if you have a plan where "using" it might win you the game.
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ipofanes

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #27 on: March 20, 2018, 04:00:39 am »
+1

Werewolf has the advantage that you can add one or two more than you need for drawing and get both the increased reliability and also an attack out of those you didn't need for draw. So that's a kind of not-actually-surplus that looks like a little like a surplus—or is it actually a surplus, just not a wasteful one? I was never good with definitions. ;)


Playing Werewolf as a Skulk is not more than a consolation prize.
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crj

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #28 on: March 20, 2018, 02:28:01 pm »
0

Agreed. If just that part was made into a separate Night-Attack card, there's no way you'd pay $5 for it. Maybe $2?

Smithy is $4 and Werewolf is $5; Throne Room is $4 and Crown is $5. In both cases, a popular base card has been buffed with an alternative way to play it, but it seems that alternative is rather weaker in Werewolf's case?
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Re: Surplus
« Reply #29 on: March 20, 2018, 02:38:01 pm »
0

Agreed. If just that part was made into a separate Night-Attack card, there's no way you'd pay $5 for it. Maybe $2?

Smithy is $4 and Werewolf is $5; Throne Room is $4 and Crown is $5. In both cases, a popular base card has been buffed with an alternative way to play it, but it seems that alternative is rather weaker in Werewolf's case?

Playing multiple Hexes a turn on your opponent seems pretty good and Werewolf seems like the easiest way to do that.
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crj

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #30 on: March 20, 2018, 02:52:23 pm »
0

That's why I suggested it might be OK to charge as much as $2. (-8

An "each other player receives the next Hex" Action would struggle to sell at $0. After all, Skulk comes quite close to being "+1 Buy. Each other player receives the next Hex. // When you gain this, +1 Buy" priced at -2$
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Chase Adolphson

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #31 on: March 20, 2018, 07:52:33 pm »
0

Agreed. If just that part was made into a separate Night-Attack card, there's no way you'd pay $5 for it. Maybe $2?

Smithy is $4 and Werewolf is $5; Throne Room is $4 and Crown is $5. In both cases, a popular base card has been buffed with an alternative way to play it, but it seems that alternative is rather weaker in Werewolf's case?

Playing multiple Hexes a turn on your opponent seems pretty good and Werewolf seems like the easiest way to do that.


But greed can actually help people in games with coppersmith.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #32 on: March 21, 2018, 09:15:39 am »
+2

Agreed. If just that part was made into a separate Night-Attack card, there's no way you'd pay $5 for it. Maybe $2?

Smithy is $4 and Werewolf is $5; Throne Room is $4 and Crown is $5. In both cases, a popular base card has been buffed with an alternative way to play it, but it seems that alternative is rather weaker in Werewolf's case?

Playing multiple Hexes a turn on your opponent seems pretty good and Werewolf seems like the easiest way to do that.


But greed can actually help people in games with coppersmith.

It can also help your opponent if they have 39 cards in their deck, a bunch of Gardens, they're down by 1 point, and there's 2 piles gone, with 1 Copper left in the Copper pile.

But edge cases such as these are completely irrelevant to the discussion.
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jomini

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #33 on: March 21, 2018, 10:27:50 am »
0

Agreed. If just that part was made into a separate Night-Attack card, there's no way you'd pay $5 for it. Maybe $2?

Smithy is $4 and Werewolf is $5; Throne Room is $4 and Crown is $5. In both cases, a popular base card has been buffed with an alternative way to play it, but it seems that alternative is rather weaker in Werewolf's case?

Hex locking is simply brutal, much stronger than a couple of extra coins at best. Unlike with standard attacks, Hexes combine a lot of different effects so it is far harder to counter. For instance, Lib engines actively like discard attacks as they can toss green and draw more, so sure Poverty and Haunting are still countered, but everything else still hurts. Plague and Greed both are very harsh on Lib decks and War and Locusts can burn all your village support. You can of course shrug off hexes with Gaurdian, Lighthouse, and Moat, but in general repeated hexes will diminish turns a way few late game attacks can manage against an engine.

Even when all the counter actions are there (e.g. Steward, Lib, Iw), it still is vastly harder to reliably shake off multiple different attack effects each turn. Lining up draw, trashing, and gaining is hard even if all of them are non-terminal; if you also need village support you can still fall behind. Single hexes are weak because you have good odds of not doing much and even when they hit, your opponent may have a counter ready. Multiple Hexes give you good odds of just destroying turns and mass Hexes will bury the opponent rapidly if they cannot clear the wreckage soon.

Werewolf is great in part because you do not so rapidly fall out of curse block - every 3 stop cards or so reduces the Hex count by 1. That makes for a very long end game and a LOT more time to recoup a point deficit compared to Smithy. Adding Skulks requires adding in another +action, even the most cost effective options make this more expensive than Werewolf and that ignores the issue with reliably drawing your Skulks; the gold does make Skulk viable, but it also means you are more restricted with need for additional draw. Werewolf is just begging for you get a pack and got to town.
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Holunder9

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #34 on: March 21, 2018, 04:08:40 pm »
0

Yeah, I also don't get the hate on Werefolf.
Terminal draw that non-terminally attacks when it is drawn dead can easily compete with terminal draw with a modest attack on top of it, i.e. stuff like Rabble. And it is not like you are normally unwilling to pay 5 for a Smithy with a little extra anyway just like you are normally not unwilling to pay 4 for Mining Village.
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jonaskoelker

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #35 on: March 21, 2018, 04:10:36 pm »
+2

While we're on the (off-?)topic of Werewolf and mass hexing, it occurs to me that if your early-game focus is trashing, getting at least 5xWerewolf and enough villages to draw your deck with Werewolf, you can effectively add attacks to your deck later by buying e.g. Patrol Smithy.

That is, if you have a multi-modal card with modes A and B that you have been using primarily for mode A, if you add another card which just does mode A (or a sufficiently equivalent substitute for it), you have effectively added a mode-B card to your deck.

Or rather, you have effectively added a multi-modal card which you can use for whichever mode you like. The interesting bit is not that you can get more A by adding A, but that you can get more B by adding A.

Adding Mill to a well-greened Minion stack seems like an example of this as well. Adding Remodel to a Governor stack seems similar.
« Last Edit: March 29, 2018, 07:57:55 am by jonaskoelker »
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crj

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #36 on: March 21, 2018, 06:32:37 pm »
0

While we're on the (off-?)topic of Werewolf and mass hexing, it occurs to me that if your early-game focus is trashing, getting at least 5xWerewolf and enough villages to draw your deck with Werewolf, you can effectively add attacks to your deck later by buying e.g. Patrol.
If your early-game focus is trashing, why buy Werewolf when you can have Patrol?
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Holunder9

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #37 on: March 21, 2018, 07:34:18 pm »
0

While we're on the (off-?)topic of Werewolf and mass hexing, it occurs to me that if your early-game focus is trashing, getting at least 5xWerewolf and enough villages to draw your deck with Werewolf, you can effectively add attacks to your deck later by buying e.g. Patrol.
If your early-game focus is trashing, why buy Werewolf when you can have Patrol?
It is hard to argue that there is better terminal draw than Patrol but I don't think that the critics of Werewolf realize how often a basic engine does not work as intended; you start your hand with 2 Smithy variants but no village or you play 3 villages without drawing into your Smithy variant.
Werewolf hedges against that risk and allows you to build a draw engine with less villages due to the secondary option. This is a big thing. About the secondary option, it might feels lackluster as it doesn't do anything for you and as you are sad about not being able to have played that Smithy but that's all just psychology: in the end it is still a nonterminal attack.

+1 Action ; Hex everybody (and Werewolf is stronger than that) would not be much weaker than +2 Coins ; Hex everybody aka Tormentor and yet people still buy Tormentor without necessarily getting that many Imps with it.
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Chase Adolphson

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #38 on: March 21, 2018, 11:05:22 pm »
+1

Agreed. If just that part was made into a separate Night-Attack card, there's no way you'd pay $5 for it. Maybe $2?

Smithy is $4 and Werewolf is $5; Throne Room is $4 and Crown is $5. In both cases, a popular base card has been buffed with an alternative way to play it, but it seems that alternative is rather weaker in Werewolf's case?

Playing multiple Hexes a turn on your opponent seems pretty good and Werewolf seems like the easiest way to do that.


But greed can actually help people in games with coppersmith.

It can also help your opponent if they have 39 cards in their deck, a bunch of Gardens, they're down by 1 point, and there's 2 piles gone, with 1 Copper left in the Copper pile.

But edge cases such as these are completely irrelevant to the discussion.


Have you seen dear my opponent I am sorry? It is way off topic. It's talking about grammar.
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Donald X.

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #39 on: March 22, 2018, 01:53:04 am »
+3

Have you seen dear my opponent I am sorry? It is way off topic. It's talking about grammar.
Thanks, I'm on it.
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cascadestyler

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #40 on: March 22, 2018, 04:20:49 am »
+1

Agreed. If just that part was made into a separate Night-Attack card, there's no way you'd pay $5 for it. Maybe $2?

Smithy is $4 and Werewolf is $5; Throne Room is $4 and Crown is $5. In both cases, a popular base card has been buffed with an alternative way to play it, but it seems that alternative is rather weaker in Werewolf's case?

Playing multiple Hexes a turn on your opponent seems pretty good and Werewolf seems like the easiest way to do that.


But greed can actually help people in games with coppersmith.

It can also help your opponent if they have 39 cards in their deck, a bunch of Gardens, they're down by 1 point, and there's 2 piles gone, with 1 Copper left in the Copper pile.

But edge cases such as these are completely irrelevant to the discussion.


Have you seen dear my opponent I am sorry? It is way off topic. It's talking about grammar.

Off-topic is not the same as edge-casing.
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ipofanes

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #41 on: March 22, 2018, 07:53:51 am »
+2

Off-topic is not the same as edge-casing.

Indeed, edge-casing is shunned in this forum.
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crj

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #42 on: March 22, 2018, 01:36:07 pm »
+2

Except when...

Um.

I'll note that an intentional digression is not the same thing as a comment which is less applicable than the author expects.
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jonaskoelker

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #43 on: March 23, 2018, 02:41:29 pm »
0

If your early-game focus is trashing, why buy Werewolf when you can have Patrol?

(a) to not lose the Werewolf split; and (b) Patrol was the first not-too-disruptive $5 Smithy I thought of. Strategically it probably isn't the best example, but I think it illustrates the generic point about substitution and modality just fine.
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crj

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #44 on: March 24, 2018, 12:35:03 am »
0

But... if there's a better way to draw than Werewolf, you don't care if you lose the Werewolf split.

More generally: if Werewolf is the best draw on the board, you probably want to be buying Werewolf and also probably want to be making sure you can play those Werewolves for draw. If Werewolf isn't the best draw on the board, buy the thing that's better instead.
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jonaskoelker

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #45 on: March 24, 2018, 05:52:25 am »
+3

But... if there's a better way to draw than Werewolf, you don't care if you lose the Werewolf split.

More generally: if Werewolf is the best draw on the board, you probably want to be buying Werewolf and also probably want to be making sure you can play those Werewolves for draw. If Werewolf isn't the best draw on the board, buy the thing that's better instead.

What you're saying is unrelated to the point I was trying to make. You do understand this, right?

I'm happy to discuss the things you're saying. Let me first generalize them, probably too much:

Quote
If there's a better way than card X to do Y, you don't care if you lose the X split.

More generally: if card X is the best way to do Y on the board, you probably want to be buying X and also probably want to be making sure you can play those Xs for Y. If X isn't the best Y on the board, buy the thing that's better instead.

If Minion isn't the best virtual money, you don't care if you lose the Minion split. If Bridge isn't the best source of +buy, you don't care if you lose the Bridge split. If Mint isn't the best treasure gainer, buy Bandit instead. If Count is the best virtual money, you want to be buying Count and playing it for money. If Minion isn't the best virtual money, buy Mandarin instead. If there's a better way to gain Estates than Wild Hunt, you don't care if you lose the Wild Hunt split.

If Jack of all Trades is neither the best topdeck inspection, the best Silver gainer, the best draw nor the best non-treasure trasher, you should buy what's better at each of those things. So on a 5-card board with Moat, Hermit, Cartographer, Explorer and Jack, I shouldn't buy Jack, I should buy the other cards instead.

If you're evaluating a multi-faceted card in terms of only one of its facets, you're very likely to be evaluating less accurately than if you consider all its facets. In particular, there's value to the modality of modal cards, even if they're not best at any one thing they do.

For example, on a board with Village, Smithy, Bazaar, Patrol, Woodcutter, Festival, Band of Misfits and Donate, the BoM is not best at anything it can do, but it's not obvious that it's always optimal to get zero BoMs. In fact, I would be surprised if it was.

Maybe my examples are bad because Y=draw is special. If so, why—why is your mode of analysis appropriate when comparing cards that draw but not other cards? And if draw is special, I should definitely buy Moat over—or at least in addition to—Jack, and play it for draw, because it's better at drawing, right? Or are there other specific characteristics of Werewolf that are relevant to your general point?

The way I read your comment, and maybe I misread it, is that Werewolf should only be evaluated in terms of its ability to draw cards. I think that's a bad approach, as I have just argued.

I have observed that there's disagreement about the strength of hexing your opponent. If you belong to the camp that says "hexes are so ultra-weak that you can ignore them", an analysis of Werewolf that's limited to its ability to draw cards is fine. But that's because you evaluated the other facet of the card!
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Gazbag

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #46 on: March 24, 2018, 12:00:44 pm »
+1

If you're using a mix of Werewolf and e.g. Patrol for draw and are planning on using some Werewolves for attacks each turn then you run the risk of drawing all of your Werewolves early in the turn and being forced to use them for +card and then draw a bunch of Patrols that don't do much. If you had all Werewolves it doesn't matter what order you draw them in, that's the value of modal cards. So if you're planning on using the Werewolf attack and some kind of terminal draw card for draw you should probably use Werewolf for that draw.
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crj

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #47 on: March 24, 2018, 01:05:32 pm »
0

For example, on a board with Village, Smithy, Bazaar, Patrol, Woodcutter, Festival, Band of Misfits and Donate, the BoM is not best at anything it can do, but it's not obvious that it's always optimal to get zero BoMs. In fact, I would be surprised if it was.
The really awesome use of BoM is as a card that can "pivot" if you need one thing early and something completely different later on. Beyond that, it's a handy thing to have in moderation, especially if you suddenly find yourself with $5 to spend when you wanted a $4-coster (that you're sure won't pile out!).

But, you were talking about winning the Werewolf split. Does anybody ever try to win the BoM split? And if, in the example kingdom you provide, if you realise your deck is short of draw, why spend $5 on a BoM instead of a Patrol? If your deck is short on consistency, perhaps.

I don't think Werewolf comes off well in the comparison with BoM because hexing opponents is only ever a consolation prize. It's never that one specific thing you need in order to get your engine going this turn; it can't improve your deck's consistency.
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crj

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #48 on: March 24, 2018, 01:11:21 pm »
0

If you're using a mix of Werewolf and e.g. Patrol for draw and are planning on using some Werewolves for attacks each turn then you run the risk of drawing all of your Werewolves early in the turn and being forced to use them for +card and then draw a bunch of Patrols that don't do much. If you had all Werewolves it doesn't matter what order you draw them in, that's the value of modal cards. So if you're planning on using the Werewolf attack and some kind of terminal draw card for draw you should probably use Werewolf for that draw.
Conversely, most of the time you need fewer Patrols than Werewolves to draw your deck, and they do so more reliably.

If your deck has no green or purple, and you're intending to megaturn rather than green gradually, OK, maybe invest in Werewolves, though if everyone else thinks the same way your deck might not be free of purple for long!
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Holunder9

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Re: Surplus
« Reply #49 on: March 25, 2018, 03:01:12 am »
+4

I don't think Werewolf comes off well in the comparison with BoM because hexing opponents is only ever a consolation prize. It's never that one specific thing you need in order to get your engine going this turn; it can't improve your deck's consistency.
If you think that hexing is so weak that one can ignore it you will of course consider Werewolf to be the weakest existing Smithy+. But IMO that evaluation is more than mildly off.

I don't think that you should try to build a deck in which you use Werewolf mainly as an attack. But the huge advantage of Werewolf over other Smithy variants is the need for fewer villages in your deck as Werewolf does something decent (Hexing is weaker than most other attacks in the game but contrary to your claim it is not trivial or superweak) no matter what.
So while it doesn't increase the consistency of your draw engine (how could it) it does increase the overall consistency of your deck as it is a card which, unlike a Smithy that can be drawn dead, always does something useful.

I agree that it is still miles weaker than Patrol though but this has more to do with the strength of Patrol than the weakness of Werewolf.
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Re: Surplus
« Reply #50 on: March 29, 2018, 08:06:53 am »
0

Quote
[If you draw with Werewolf] you can effectively add attacks to your deck later by buying e.g. Patrol Smithy.

[... I]f you add another card which just does mode A [...], you have effectively added a mode-B card to your deck.
[your generalized point is not the most strategically important thing in one of the particular examples you used to illustrate your general point]
*facepalm tableflip*

Have I expressed my dissatisfaction with the way the conversation is going in a sufficiently passive-aggressive fashion? ;D
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