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Draw-to-X engines

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Titandrake:
I started this a while ago, then ran out of steam when I realized it was a lot harder to write than expected. This draft is very rough but I'm putting it up now just to be done with it.

Draw-to-X engines are a special subcategory of engine, formed by two pieces.


* An action that says "Draw until you have X cards in hand".
* Disappearing money - a way to get money during your Action phase that decrases your hand size. This doesn't have to be fancy, a terminal Silver will do.
When they work, draw-to-X engines are one of my favorite engines to play. The core idea with these decks is that the fewer cards you have in hand, the more cards the draw-to-X action gives you, so if you can consistently turn cards-in-hand into money, you get to draw a lot more cards than you normally would. For $5, the going rate is +3 Cards and a bonus, with +4 Cards costing $6. Meanwhile, Library can draw up to 7 cards if the conditions line up.

The big question is whether the conditions line up. Draw-to-X engines differ quite a bit from more traditional Village-Smithy engines.

1. Treasures and Victories Super Super Suck For You

A Village-Smithy engine can get away with only using Gold for payload. This does not fly for draw-to-X engines. Like, it completely fails.

Let's suppose you play a Library and draw a Gold. If you don't have a way to get the Gold out of your hand, it effectively says "every future Library you play this turn draws 1 less card". This is really, really bad! It adds up to 3-4 missed card draws, depending on how many Libraries you have. (Cards like Scholar don't have this problem, since they discard your entire hand.) This has greening consequence as well. Eventually, you need points. Each Province hurts your deck a lot more than it would hurt a normal engine.

It's really hard to start a draw-to-X engine if there isn't trashing, just because of how many stop cards you start with. Trashing on its own is sometimes but not always enough for the draw-to-X engine. Eventually, you need to pick up points, usually through Provinces. You can't trash Provinces without losing the VP...

This leads to the other important piece: a discarder, like Warehouse, Artificer, or Storeroom, that lets you get unwanted Treasures and Victory cards out of your hand. That way you can dig for Actions instead. An effect like Villa or Black Market (to play Treasures midturn) can also play the role of a card discarder.

If either trashing or card discarding were missing, I would need an exceptional circumstance to consider the draw-to-X engine. The classic Base set combo is Festival/Library, but in my experience with Base-only games, the combo is really more like Festival/Library with Cellar and some kind of trasher.

2. +Buy is Great

Engines like +Buy since it lets them buy lots of engine pieces in one turn, then green later. The "green later" part is what makes them extra nice for draw-to-X engines. In draw-to-X games it's usually correct to build longer, then end the game fast, since your engine isn't designed to handle greening over several turns.

3. Your Deck Can Be Less Consistent

Often, Draw-to-X engines use a disappearing village to get +Actions, because it turns the drawback (not getting to draw a card) into a benefit (will draw the card for free off the draw-to-X card anyway). Buying Fishing Village instead of Village gives you an extra +$1 over the next 2 turns while not hurting your draw - it improves your payload.

Except, it kind of does. If you're playing a Village-Smithy engine and your starting hand is

4 Villages, 1 Copper

you're a little unhappy, but not that unhappy. You get 4 chances to draw into the Smithy.

By contrast, in a Festival-Library deck, if your starting hand is

4 Festival, 1 Copper

you're *really* upset. You're unable to "go-off" with a Library this turn, and your later Libraries are all likely to be dead because your Festivals collided. I've had this happen a few time and it sucks every time.

Because of this, it helps to have reliability increasing effects, like Scheme, Travelling Fair, Tracker, or Overlord. If a disappearing village and regular village are in the Kingdom, I personally like buying 1-2 copies of the regular village when my draw-to-X deck starts working, since I value the reliability more than the payload.

4. Hand Size Tactics are Sweet

The point of draw-to-X engines is to play lots of disappearing money, but there are other ways to get value while decreasing hand size. Trashers are one of them.

Consider this turn.

* Play Festival, Festival, Library.
* The Library draws a Steward and a Library.
* Steward, trashing 2 cards.
* Play LibraryBy trashing with Steward before playing the draw-to-X card, you get to draw 2 extra cards, which is a pretty great deal. You can't really plan for this, but it's an important tactical play. Ambassador 2 Coppers (handsize -3), then play Library. Remodel Silver into Festival (handsize -2), then play Library.

From a strategy perspective, plays like this don't tend to change what you buy - odds are you're buying trashing anyways. They're just important parts of optimizing draw-to-X builds.

5. Key Draw-to-X cards

An incomplete list of cards that are especially nice in draw-to-X games: Villa, Count, Storeroom, Steward, Inn, Warehouse, Cellar, Fishing Village, Squire, Junk Dealer. As an exercise it might be worth thinking through why some of these cards are so nice.

crj:
Just to check my understanding, when your heading says "Your Deck Can Be Less Consistent", you mean "there is a risk your deck will be less consistent", not "it's OK if your deck is less consistent", yes?

That could probably be worded more clearly. (-8

faust:
Using Fishing Village as an example in part 3 is misleading. I mean the great thing about Fishing Village is the consistency it provides. If you're going to talk about how draw-to-X reduces consistency, this is quite a bad example to use.

I think discard-for-benefit could use a mention. Artificer makes a short appearance in the article, but only as an example for sifting (which it is really not). Other great cards are Mill, Storeroom, Horse Traders.

And one thing that isn't clearly mentioned is that you want more +actions in draw-to-X than you would "need" by terminal count, as you need to be able to play your terminals as soon as possible.

J Reggie:
I think it would be worth it to include a list of draw-to-x cards, since really only 4 cards say "draw until you have x cards in your hand" (and Jack isn't that great of an engine card). I mean, at this point we all probably know, but for newer players it's good to mention that Minion, Menagerie, and Scholar are lumped in with the other cards.

greybirdofprey:

--- Quote from: J Reggie on October 10, 2018, 09:34:35 am ---I think it would be worth it to include a list of draw-to-x cards, since really only 4 cards say "draw until you have x cards in your hand" (and Jack isn't that great of an engine card). I mean, at this point we all probably know, but for newer players it's good to mention that Minion, Menagerie, and Scholar are lumped in with the other cards.

--- End quote ---

Menagerie, Minion, Tactician, Library, Watchtower, Jack of all Trades, Guide, Cursed Village, Scholar. Did I miss any?

Tactician doesn't work more than once each turn and double Tactician is its own strategy altogether.
Jack of all Trades is hard to make work because it only gives you five cards and it gives you a Silver on each play.
Guide doesn't work, as you can only play it at the start of your turn, before any actions. Although it synergizes well with start-of-turn trashers (but how many of those are there? Amulet... Ratcatcher... Transmogrify not so much... Prince...)

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