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-PlayCapitalism 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.