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Author Topic: Surplus  (Read 9101 times)

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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 »
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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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Cave-o-sapien

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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 »
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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 »
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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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