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Author Topic: Renaissance First Impnressions  (Read 6250 times)

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Dingan

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Renaissance First Impnressions
« on: December 01, 2018, 02:50:55 am »
+4

I'm still trying to figure out Cathedral.


Recruiter seems VERY strong. It's basically the inverse of a Witch.

Boarder Guard seems very weak and confusing.

Inventor seems much weaker than Bridge.

Patron seems very weak.

I like playing Actions during Buy phase.

Projects seem strong in general -- most projects make a deck strictly better than a deck without said Project.
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Simon Jester

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #1 on: December 01, 2018, 05:23:19 am »
0

I'm still trying to figure out Cathedral.


Recruiter seems VERY strong. It's basically the inverse of a Witch.

Boarder Guard seems very weak and confusing.

Inventor seems much weaker than Bridge.

Patron seems very weak.

I like playing Actions during Buy phase.

Projects seem strong in general -- most projects make a deck strictly better than a deck without said Project.

Border Guard is an excellent sifter, especially with Lantern activated. It's not a powerhouse, but 2's shouldn't be. I like it.

Quite the contrary! They can't be used in exactly the same way, but Inventor helps you out much more often than Bridge when you can't go for the megaturn in my experience. I found Inventor to be much more flexible and is probably my choice for most powerful 4, saved for Sauna.

Patron is ok. It's nice to load up on them on a boad when revealing happens pretty often and get the bonus regulary. Maybe that is more fun that good, though. Don't know yet.

Projects are sweet. In fact I want to get my impressions on them real quick. They are definitely the most interesting thing in Renaissance. 

----

Some radom impressions:

Cathedral: Best trasher thing ever, less pressure and more fun than Donate. With discarding attacks you will have a hard time though.

City Gate: Neat and very useful as soon as you need to connect something or wants to know what is top of your deck, otherwise a bit lackluster and skippable me thinks.

Pageant: Sweet bonus. Feels kinda like a Borrow without a downside, so cheap that it is almost always right to buy it.

Sewers: Makes every weak trasher splendid. Sad, like Tomb, when there is no trashing at all though.   

Star Chart: Ugh. I always make the wrong choice, when I put villages on top my draws are nowhere to be seen and when I gamble and put the payload on top of course no villages joins, and I rather get screwed by RNG than my own judgement. Not a favourite even though I see that it's strong naturally.

Exploration: Niche, but therefor fun. Can absolutely give an edge in a slog or at the end of the game where you dud pretty often.

Fair: Vanilla and good. Seldom game changing, seldom regrettable.

Silos: Don't like it. Don't like it at all. Either it's early in the game and the coppers you discard just become green cards or it's late in the game and you hardly use it much. Not denying it can be good, but not too fun for me.

Sinister Plot: Amazing. I love saving for megaturns even tough it might not be the best choice all the time. Still always fun to use and the decisions to do is exciting.

Academy: Much worse than it's sibling Guild Hall. Can be neat but I skip it often without getting too burned.

Capitalism: The times it's game breaking is not very often at all. Fun, but surprisingly mediocre on full random.

Fleet: Yet to see a game where this would mattered. Strange and a little disappointing.

Guildhall: Power house. Changes board completely. Like to use it.

Piazza: Nice way to achieve a splitter but like Herald it can be a luck-trap from time to time. Slightly annoying.

Road Network: Cool thing, but hard to evaluate since you don't diectly see the effect your opponents get and your own don't feel too great. Decent I guess.

Barracks: Vanilla and as good as you might expect. Not too exciting though.

Crop Rotation: Surprisingly good for it's price, but not too fun.

Innovation: Fantastic. My favourite trick is buying Swamp Hag every turn *evil grin*

Canal: Eh. It feels like it is a power house, but I have lost with it in ways that shouldn't be possible. The opportunity cost matters significantly, I think.

Citadel: Yeah. Good. I don't know. Think I have seen it a bit too little to really judge it yet.     
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #2 on: December 01, 2018, 10:10:17 am »
0

In most games I've played, I didn't get Cathedral because in seemed like a bad idea. I might be underrating it though. To me it seems like it's only worth it if there's no other trashing or if there's junking.

Capitalism is kind of niche.

City Gate is less useful than it seems, at least to me. You'll be drawing both cards anyway, so often not much impact is made.

Experiment is pretty good.

Innovation has some neat tricks, but sometimes it's useless.

I've never gotten Improve because of how weak it seems. It seems like a less interesting and harder-to-use Procession.

Mountain Village has not impressed me. A lot of the time your discard is empty, other times it forces you to pick up junk you just discarded.

I can't figure out how take full advantage of Priest. Most of the time you'll run out of junk too fast to do anything cool with it. Then I had a game where I ignored the Curser and tried to make a Priest strategy out of the Curses. It didn't work.

Scepter is super duper weak. Capitalism, Innovation and Scepter all have the same problem: Most Action cards are cards you don't want to play during your Buy phase.

Seer is pretty great most of the time.

Sewers is wonderful. The worst trasher immediately becomes good.

Silos is great; it's some of the best early-game cycling you could ask for.

Sinister Plot is also great.

Villain is pretty bad, but I think we all knew that already.
« Last Edit: December 01, 2018, 10:40:14 am by Commodore Chuckles »
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trivialknot

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #3 on: December 01, 2018, 11:38:13 am »
0

Villagers are great for gain & play megaturns.  In one game, I used villagers to pile Sculptors (with cost reduction).  In another game, where Lackeys was the only source of draw and actions, I managed to get two triple province turns with Inventor.  Villagers are my favorite mechanic in the set.

My partner complains that there seem to be a lot of broken combos in the set.  Some combos are fun (e.g. Scepter+draw-to-X), but others are just too obvious.  Capitalism is the best example of this.  Sometimes it doesn't matter, but sometimes you just pile those terminal payoff cards, and that's your deck.  I think Patron is the second-worst offender, with cards like Menagerie or Hunting Party.  There are other little things, like the several Guildhall combos, or when one person gets a lucky early Citadel.

Surprisingly, Recruiter and Hideout are not among the broken cards.  Cantrip trashers are very powerful, but what are you going to do, build your deck out of Recruiters?

I think the biggest "duds" of the set were Fleet and Acting Troupe.  Fleet is interesting in concept, but not that impactful.  Acting Troupe, maybe it's okay, but there are often better sources of actions.  Villain is alright, people are underrating it.
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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #4 on: December 01, 2018, 01:02:50 pm »
0

In most games I've played, I didn't get Cathedral because in seemed like a bad idea. I might be underrating it though. To me it seems like it's only worth it if there's no other trashing or if there's junking.

Cathedral is an amazing idea unless there's a handsize attack. As has been previously concluded, the worst case scenario going into the second reshuffle with Cathedral is better than the best case scenario with Chapel.
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Simon Jester

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #5 on: December 01, 2018, 03:14:41 pm »
+1


Scepter is super duper weak. Capitalism, Innovation and Scepter all have the same problem: Most Action cards are cards you don't want to play during your Buy phase.

Uhm, say what now? It may be situational, but that is not to say that is weak since it can't miss and instead becomes a silver, there's plenty of actions that might not be superduper to play in the buy phase but still gives you something which makes it neat. Might be awkward for 5, but I like to pick at least one up and can't remember regretting it. 
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William Howard Taft

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #6 on: December 02, 2018, 05:48:54 pm »
+1

Scepter is super duper weak. Capitalism, Innovation and Scepter all have the same problem: Most Action cards are cards you don't want to play during your Buy phase.

I initially thought the same thing but I've played some games where it really shines. It's good for junkers and stuff like Courtier or Pawn that gives you options where choosing +Action feels like a waste.
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ThetaSigma12

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #7 on: December 02, 2018, 10:18:47 pm »
+1

The Unabashedly Good:

Recruiter is super strong. Its favourite target is the early Estates, which is what you'd want to be trashing anyways. It's a trashing Lost City! And its a Masq with Copper after that, and then it's a powerful village with decent targets (Silver, old engine pieces, unnecessary recruiters).

Innovation has so many good combos (Workshop variants come to mind), and if you can figure out how to make it work then it can really jumpstart an engine.

Seer needs a particular type of deck, but it's usually a Lab, often a Double Lab, and at certain stages a Triple Lab. There are so many fun ways to make it work.

Inventor, oh man, such a megaturn card. It feels very similar to Bridge but unlike Bridge, it's much better at picking up multiple early engine / components. You can explode an engine out of the ground and then gain half or more of the Provinces. See very few games where you'd want to skip this one, it being at least a workshop with a pseudo +.

Cathedral is a super strong trasher. It gets worse in really long games, but guess what, trashing makes games go faster. Usually, it's a good opener, but perhaps you want to wait for a few turns.

Sinister Plot is also something you need to get early. Even if you activate it every other turn, then it's still for a Caravan that gets played every turn. Caravan is good, but this is more flexible, so it turns out this is pretty great. See very few reasons why you'd want to skip.

Other mentions: Star Chart, Priest, Treasurer, Cargo Ship, Sewers.
 
The Awkwardly Bad:

Lackeys feels like a trap a lot of the time. Overall it's a good card, don't get me wrong, but I think it will be really overgained.

Silos felt really good originally, but with any Copper trashing, it becomes a hefty investment. The early cycling can be superb with, say, travellers.

Barracks could have gotten away at , Academy often feels like a better bet on a solid board.

Villain, it's bad, what more. +2 Coffers and a mediocre attack can be worth throwing in some decks, but hey, usually the attack does next to nothing and you have better routes for economy.

Road Network is good in multi-player I presume, but again has steep competition. Late game it can get you some draw, but against typical Province/Duchy rushes I'm guessing it will get you about 5 cards total. The best case scenario is early/frequent greening such as a Castles, Silk Road, or Nobles opponent.

Exploration can be worth it, spamabble events can activate it, but honestly, it's not worth it.

Improve has been hailed as the "strongest card in Renaissance" by some people, but I'm not buying it. So far I've used it as a silver that upgrades itself into an important , but outside of classic enablers (Fortress, King's Court), it feels very mediocre.

Other Mentions: Ducat, City Gate.

The Tricky-To-Play

Capitalism is super funky. It's either broken or not, and I think the most important part of this one will be being able to get a good read on the power level on a given board then the overall power level.

Sceptre is a Throne Room/Silver, so I think it's pretty good. But know what actions to use it on and how to use them needs some finesse. It's not all that hard, Junkers, Economy, Trashers, and Sifters all make automatically good targets. The main advantage over Throne Room is more flexibility and no drawing dead, but it doesn't do anything until the Buy phase.

Scholar, if I had to guess, will be really good. But just as with all Draw-to-X activating could be hard. The sheer cycling is insane though!

Fleet could be a delayed Duchy usually, but hey, maybe it could be more. Just like Capitalism, the read on the combos with the board will be more important than general statements.

Other Mentions: Flag Bearer, Spices, Border Guard.
« Last Edit: December 03, 2018, 08:50:27 am by ThetaSigma12 »
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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #8 on: December 03, 2018, 01:18:33 am »
+2

The Tricky-To-Play

Other Mentions: Spices

Spices is unabashedly good.

ehunt is underselling how good Spices is for money decks.  Wandering Winder pointed out how strong monolithic Spices + money is on Discord; it's about as strong as Gear + money.  The idea is to buy Spices to stockpile a bunch of Coffers to smooth out Province buys.

Strategy
Open with whatever makes it most likely to hit $5 on turn 3.
Buy Spices with your first $5+ hand.
Before turn 7, buy Spices on all $3+ hands.
Turn 7+, buy Province or Spices.  Buy Province on all $7+ hands, probably.  Buy Spices on most $4-5 hands.  On $6 hands (and sometimes others), use your judgement based on your Coffers reserve and how close the game is to ending.
Perhaps this could be refined with some simulation.

Benchmarks
4 Provinces: 11-13 turns
6 Provinces: 14-16 turns
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ipofanes

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #9 on: December 03, 2018, 07:31:54 am »
0

I do think that Fleet can be good in engines which tend to end on 3-pile. Opponent must use her extra $5 to end the game on 3 piles and to gain a VP edge large enough not to be nullified by Fleet.
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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #10 on: December 03, 2018, 07:44:20 am »
+1

Sculptor, if I had to guess, will be really good. But just as with all Draw-to-X activating could be hard. The sheer cycling is insane though!

<quote author=clippy>Did you mean Scholar?</quote>
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ipofanes

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #11 on: December 03, 2018, 07:47:59 am »
+1

I can't figure out how take full advantage of Priest. Most of the time you'll run out of junk too fast to do anything cool with it. Then I had a game where I ignored the Curser and tried to make a Priest strategy out of the Curses. It didn't work.

As has been pointed out repeatedly, trashing in the Buy phase works well wih Priest. I had a cool game with Sauna trashing where I skipped a Sauna for a Priest quite early. It paid back when it came to affording Avannot.
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William Howard Taft

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #12 on: December 03, 2018, 04:01:24 pm »
0

I do think that Fleet can be good in engines which tend to end on 3-pile. Opponent must use her extra $5 to end the game on 3 piles and to gain a VP edge large enough not to be nullified by Fleet.

It’s also great for Mission, Swamp Hag, and situations where you can’t/don’t want to buy cards. Or if you’re just about to start greening but don’t want a Duchy mucking up your engine on the next shuffle.

With Devil’s Workshop you can buy the extra turn and still get a free Gold, but buying any project is good with Devil’s Workshop.
« Last Edit: December 03, 2018, 04:03:32 pm by William Howard Taft »
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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #13 on: December 08, 2018, 12:33:20 am »
+4

I'm still trying to figure out Cathedral.

Patron seems very weak.

I think Patron is stronger than it seems on first glance.

It's a good opening card, because it acts as a disappearing silver which gives good early game economy. But, there's more than that, because there's a high chances you will draw patron a couple of times in the early game with no other action cards. Opening patron nets you 2 or 3 villagers on average (in my play) that you can redeem at crucial points in the future.

Obviously, the card shines when you have a way to trigger its reveal effect. In particular, Patron + Sage is extremely strong, because it basically acts as an early-game Gold by turn 3 or 4 which ALSO gives a villager!

That lets you hit the coveted 5 and 6 in the early game, and then use the villagers you have been stacking to play those high value terminals before having a fully built engine.
« Last Edit: December 08, 2018, 12:34:59 am by roflmao »
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ackmondual

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #14 on: December 13, 2018, 11:08:22 pm »
0

Old Witch is nice.  An extra card draw, but play it too much, but the more you play it the more it helps your opponents (like Mountebank!)


Spice is nice!
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Awaclus

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #15 on: December 14, 2018, 07:07:08 am »
0

it helps your opponents (like Mountebank!)

I don't think Mountebank helps your opponent no matter how many times you play it.
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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #16 on: December 14, 2018, 06:23:46 pm »
+1

it helps your opponents (like Mountebank!)

I don't think Mountebank helps your opponent no matter how many times you play it.

And Old Witch doesn't help your opponents either. It just takes away its own bad effect after a while (sometimes). It's more accurate to say that both attacks become less effective the more you play them.
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Awaclus

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #17 on: December 14, 2018, 06:38:43 pm »
+1

And Old Witch doesn't help your opponents either. It just takes away its own bad effect after a while (sometimes). It's more accurate to say that both attacks become less effective the more you play them.

It does help your opponent if Curses are gone and they have a Curse in hand.
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #18 on: December 14, 2018, 11:22:18 pm »
0

And Old Witch doesn't help your opponents either. It just takes away its own bad effect after a while (sometimes). It's more accurate to say that both attacks become less effective the more you play them.

It does help your opponent if Curses are gone and they have a Curse in hand.

Yes, the Curse you gave them earlier. So overall not helpful, unless they got the Curse from something else I guess.
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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #19 on: December 15, 2018, 12:31:53 pm »
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And Old Witch doesn't help your opponents either. It just takes away its own bad effect after a while (sometimes). It's more accurate to say that both attacks become less effective the more you play them.

It does help your opponent if Curses are gone and they have a Curse in hand.

Yes, the Curse you gave them earlier. So overall not helpful, unless they got the Curse from something else I guess.

A third player.
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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #20 on: December 15, 2018, 12:59:55 pm »
+1

And Old Witch doesn't help your opponents either. It just takes away its own bad effect after a while (sometimes). It's more accurate to say that both attacks become less effective the more you play them.

It does help your opponent if Curses are gone and they have a Curse in hand.

Yes, the Curse you gave them earlier. So overall not helpful, unless they got the Curse from something else I guess.

A third player.

Not if Awaclus is playing.
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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #21 on: December 15, 2018, 01:22:08 pm »
+2

And Old Witch doesn't help your opponents either. It just takes away its own bad effect after a while (sometimes). It's more accurate to say that both attacks become less effective the more you play them.

It does help your opponent if Curses are gone and they have a Curse in hand.

Yes, the Curse you gave them earlier. So overall not helpful, unless they got the Curse from something else I guess.

But every single instance of playing Old Witch after a certain point in the game helps them or does nothing, which means you should stop playing it unless the +3 cards is worth it. This is not true of Mountebank, which will continue to hurt the opponent or do nothing.
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crj

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #22 on: December 15, 2018, 03:06:50 pm »
0

Mountebank might help your opponent, if they have some reason (most obviously draw-to-N) why they'd be glad to discard a Curse from hand.
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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #23 on: December 17, 2018, 12:01:38 am »
+2

Mountebank might help your opponent, if they have some reason (most obviously draw-to-N) why they'd be glad to discard a Curse from hand.

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Re: Renaissance First Impnressions
« Reply #24 on: December 17, 2018, 09:53:35 am »
+6

I have been quite impnressed with Renaissance overall.
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