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[Earl]

The Best Cards

For a long time, the only Dominion that I had in my life was the 1E Big Box, so potion cards are near and dear to my heart. Let’s talk about them!

This list has lots of disagreement. Except for the obvious two bottom cards, every card got voted #1 by at least one person.

	#10 =0 Transmute (Alchemy) Weighted Average: 6.07%▲2.27pp / Unweighted Average: 6.86% / Median: 0% =0pp / Standard Deviation: 9.9% Transmute is the bottom of this list. Cue the gasps of surprise. This card has been judged the worst potion card every year since the Qvist list was started. Actually, though, it’s climbed about 3pp in the last couple of years and the gap between this and PhilStone has narrowed to about half a pp: it was 12.7 in 2013. Maybe one day enough of us will feel the sweet tang of gaining a Gold off of an Estate trash and Transmute will have its day in the sun. Or at least, the relative sun of not being dead last.
	#9 =0 Philosopher's Stone (Alchemy) Weighted Average: 6.53% ▼3.07pp / Unweighted Average: 10.52% / Median: 11.1% =0pp / Standard Deviation: 11.11% This has fallen 6pp in the last two years alone. We’ve always known this card is bad, but we’re starting to think that even the slight credit we gave it back in the day was undeserved (cf. the f.ds article about how PhilStone/Herbalist is a “powerful combo.”) I mean, I guess I’ll gain it off a Hero play on a Keep board, and in a real sloggy, bloaty deck, it can start to earn some intimidating amounts of money when you finally draw around to it, but most of the time this card is just bad. 3P is a steep cost, and it slaps you in the face for having a thin, drawable deck, which is the most fun thing in Dominion. Plus, if you’ve ever played with this card IRL and sat there while your opponent counts their deck time and time again, well it makes Dominion less of a game and more of a Taoist exercise in patience.
	#8 =0 Golem (Alchemy) Weighted Average: 31.97% ▲3.07pp / Unweighted Average: 38.85% / Median: 33.33% ▲11.11pp/ Standard Deviation: 21.65% Speaking of cards which are annoying to resolve IRL . . . it’s Golem! Although this is #8 on the list, we’re in another tier of potion cards altogether, with this landing 25pp higher than the bottom two in the weighted scores. Golem crashed down quite a lot last year, but now it’s stabilized. Even gained a couple of pp. IRL deck flipping notwithstanding, this is a fun card. Diving for actions and playing them is so much of what makes us love Dominion. I mean, watch your shuffles, but sailing past all that junk to a couple of good cards feels amazing. At least in part, this probably accounts for why the unweighted average is so much higher than the weighted average. Careful, folks; it can be a trap!  Speaking of traps, who can resist that sweet, sweet dream of playing a Tactician and then continuing your turn with a Lab or – dare we hope – a Library. Your opponent’s going to win while you set that all up, but you’ll have had more fun, and that makes you the real winner. Thanks, Golem.
	#7 =0 Apothecary (Alchemy) Weighted Average: 43.83% ▼5.07pp / Unweighted Average: 42.21% / Median: 37.5% ▼6.94pp / Standard Deviation: 21.69% Someone voted this card last, which makes me want to sit them down and interview them about their experiences with Transmute and PhilStone. Apothecary used to sit a lot higher on the list before tumbling down three ranks last year to #7 and staying there this year. Still, it’s a pretty brilliant card when you can’t trash your coppers. Even when you’re mostly rid of your copper, the deep deck-inspection and rearranging can set up some nice combos. You have to be careful of shuffles, and all the usual opportunity-cost potion considerations apply, but it’s definitely never a card that you’re sad to have. I’d say that its relatively low spot on the list has more to do with the strength of what’s to come.

	#6 ▼2 Alchemist (Alchemy) Weighted Average: 56.9% ▼4.6pp / Unweighted Average: 60.31% / Median: 55.56% ▼11.14pp / Standard Deviation: 17.25% Non-terminal draw is really good. Topdeckable non-terminal draw is even better. It’s that damn opportunity cost again. There are so many decisions here. Do you buy the potion? When? How much do you cry when it misses the shuffle and you draw it with two coppers and two estates? Over the years, this card has occupied every spot from #3 to #7 on this ten-card list, and it moves a spot or two almost every year. He’s a tough guy to pin down, the Alchemist.
	#5 ▲1University (Alchemy) Weighted Average: 57.05% ▲3.05pp / Unweighted Average: 55.05% / Median: 55.6% =0pp / Standard Deviation: 18.65% This is the highest ranking of all time for University. Congratulations! Turns out that $5 actions are great to gain. Plus, this gives you +2 Actions to help play all that stuff you’ve gained. You definitely need to think before going for Unis. Are they going to be an expensive Necropolis? Are they going to take too long to set up? Are you going to have trouble drawing through these stop cards? Often enough, you answer yes to these questions and skip the Uni. But when the answer is no, you can have a real powerhouse here.
	#4 ▼1 Vineyard (Alchemy) Weighted Average: 63.8% ▲0.98pp / Unweighted Average: 62.75% / Median: 66.67% ▼11.07pp / Standard Deviation: 27.84% This fell a rank despite its weighted average going up 1pp. If I knew more about math, I’d probably try to explain this to you. I do know enough math to note that this has the highest standard deviation of any card on the list. Alt-VP is hard to rank, and Vineyard is no exception. This had one last place vote and five first place votes, and it occupied just about every space in between on at least one person’s list. Under the right circumstances, though, this is some of the best Alt-VP in the game. We’ve all had games where Vineyards are easily more valuable than Provinces, maybe even Colonies, and they reward you for having a deck full of actions. Who doesn’t love a deck full of actions?
	#3 ▼1Familiar (Alchemy) Weighted Average: 70.01% ▼3.99pp / Unweighted Average: 70.12% / Median: 77.78% =0pp / Standard Deviation: 17.08% Let me tell you a story. About a year ago, I was having a busy week. A friend knew when I had a free hour, and he decided to set up Dominion for me as a “stress reliever.” Well didn’t the sadistic bastard include Familiar! And like a maniac he opens Potion/Trade Route. Of course he hits 3P on turn 3, trashes an Estate and buys a silver on turn 4 and proceeds to happily drown me in curses. I open a nice, sensible silver/potion and am immediately rewarded by drawing 2P on TURN 5. Needless to say, I lost badly. My friend’s advice: “You should have gotten an early Trade Route like me. Trashing is important in Dominion.” Stress not relieved. I think this anecdote sums up most of what there is to say about Familiar. Cantrip cursing is nasty and can turn into an avalanche of purple. Playing the odds of hitting 3P and losing is as frustrating as anything in Dominion. Sure there’s luck everywhere in the game, but it’s just so much more apparent and stinging when your potion misses its first shuffle, or you draw it with only two copper, or – God forbid – both things happen at once.
	#2 ▲3 Possession (Alchemy) Weighted Average: 72.28% ▲12.58pp / Unweighted Average: 65.48% / Median: 66.67% ▲11.01pp / Standard Deviation: 26.95% You’ve probably noticed that the several of the middle cards on this list fell a rank or two, and now we come to the reason why. Last year this rose three spots from #8 to #5. Incredibly, it has repeated the feat again this year. From essentially the worst potion-cost card other than the complete duds to the second-best in two years: this has got to be one of the biggest changes in thinking we’ve seen about any card. Full credit to Gazbag who, in last year’s write-up, correctly predicted that this card would continue to rise. Rise it did, and that in spite of the 2E version restoring the minor VP-chip nerf. About 1/6 of voters didn't even rank this card. It doesn’t exist anymore for a lot of online-only folks. And it’s the same for a lot of IRL folks who want to maintain their friendships. Taking an extra turn without any sort of handsize or buy-option limitations is scary-strong. But then again, the card is scary-expensive to make up for that. What really makes this card feel bad is the fact that your opponent gets to use your deck that you’ve worked so hard building. Combine this with all kinds of pseudo-attack effects, like calling your opponent's reserve cards, or Borrowing, or triggering terrible shuffles, or the mostly-fantasy “return two Colonies with Ambassador” kind of play, and you have a card that really makes us want to cry. Plus, the potential for an “enjoy possessing THIS shitty deck” stalemates is gross. Buy hey, every once in a while your opponent cycles a dud hand for you, and that’s nice.
	#1 =0 Scrying Pool (Alchemy) Weighted Average: 95.79% ▼2.11pp / Unweighted Average: 90.19% / Median: 100% ▲11.1pp / Standard Deviation: 17.89% The obvious king of this list, Scrying Pool has been in the top spot since 2014 and has never been lower than second place. Almost two-thirds of voters put this on top, although someone ranked it second from bottom. I’m starting to think that there may be a troll among us. Or someone who submitted their order backwards. It’s just a monster card. The potential for drawing huge numbers of actions plus a sort-of-tacked-on-but-non-trivial topdeck attack makes this ferocious. Still, though, it’s not an autobuy. The potion cost means that you don’t always want it if gains are very limited. The action-only draw means that it won’t be amazing on a board without trashing. It’ll be worse if there’s also junking. So even though it’s a great card, you still think before you buy.

[Awaclus]

I agree with this order.

[DDL]

I've never used Possession but I've read enough about how it turns every game into an unplayable degenerate nightmare and it made sense to rank it #1. I mean, we rank Mountebank and Cultist high for the same reason and they are not that centralizing.

[Commodore Chuckles]

PStone likely keeps falling due to the increasing prevalence of engines. It's not hard to see the day where it's last place. Also, it's way more expensive than Transmute. And Transmute is much more fun to play when it's actually good, for what that's worth.

Props to Earl for the very amusing write-up.

[Chris is me]

Possession votes must be people going "it must be banned because it's too good". It's not.

[jsh357]

Possession votes must be people going "it must be banned because it's too good". It's not.

Disagree. I legitimately think it's the second best Potion card. Broken combos aside, it's a multiple turn enabler that you can stack. That is a power card regardless of cost.

[aku_chi]

Shouldn't Alchemist and University be swapped?  Alchemist has the higher weighted average.

[Awaclus]

Shouldn't Alchemist and University be swapped?  Alchemist has the higher weighted average.

I no longer agree with this order.

I've never used Possession but I've read enough about how it turns every game into an unplayable degenerate nightmare and it made sense to rank it #1. I mean, we rank Mountebank and Cultist high for the same reason and they are not that centralizing.

The reason why we rank Mountebank and Cultist high is that they are extremely strong cards that you have to buy almost every time, not because they turn games into "unplayable degenerate nightmares".

[Earl]

Shouldn't Alchemist and University be swapped?  Alchemist has the higher weighted average.

Fixed. I stole an old post for HTML help. I adjusted the +/- stuff first, and then I forgot to change that number. Thanks for spotting that, Aku Chi.

[sudgy]

How would Familiar change if it was three debt and a potion?  It would make it less swingy, but you still have to wait until at least the second shuffle to get it.

[hvb]

Very nice writing style and on point examples and comments, Earl. You made it a pleasure to read the list