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Author Topic: Combo: Seer/Vassal  (Read 3139 times)

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wittyhowlard

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Combo: Seer/Vassal
« on: February 24, 2019, 11:04:27 pm »
+3

Seer is hardly seen as a power 5-cost card. Compare Seer with Lab which is at the same price point. Lab is guaranteed to draw two cards, while Seer draws at least one, but can draw up to four. The caveat is of course, that three of the four cards must each cost between 2-4. So you’re not going to get four power-5 cards (or golds for that matter).

To make it worse, the 2-4 cost landscape is pretty… spotty. You have some gems like Ironmongers but also real duds like Chancellor (unless you’re running Chancellor/Stash). So just like almost any other card in Dominion, Seer’s use is Kingdom specific, and sometimes it feels like it’s only use is to pick up silvers. Luckily, one specific power card that matches with Seer is Vassal, especially in an action-heavy deck.

These two cards are almost made for one another. Use Seer to vacuum up Vassal, and rearrange the rest, putting the 5-cost actions at the top of the deck. Then play Vassal, and voila, you get to play that powerful action plus get an extra 2 coins to boot. Without Seer, Vassal would be flying in blind and likely a terminal action, and without Vassal, Seer wouldn’t generate much money by itself (although it can suck up silvers as mentioned before).

Of course, you need a bit of trashing before using this combo, or else your Seer will just be rearranging coppers. And cursers/looters aren’t ideal for this strategy – your Seers will also be stuck sorting curses or ruins and your Vassals will also be weakened significantly.

Seer-Herald and Seer-Mystic both also combo, but are slightly less effective than Seer-Vassal because of different reasons. Seer-Herald doesn’t provide the extra coin, and Seer’s scrying is pretty shallow; because Herald draws a card first before revealing for the action, that might be beyond Seer’s three-card scry already. On the other hand, Herald does guarantee that extra action already unlike Vassal. Seer-Mystic is an even better combo than Vassal, but then you must collect two 5-cost cards to use the combo, so this probably won’t be used until the later in the game.

Synergies:
-   Power 5-cost (or higher) cards, especially cantrips like Hunting Party, Grand Market, or Highway
-   Copper trashing
-   Thin-deck engines that need some virtual +coin

Antisynergies:
-   Cursers or Looters
-   Lack of trashing

Thanks for reading my first combo post y'all! Any feedback is either content or writing style is greatly appreciated.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2019, 11:05:28 pm by wittyhowlard »
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Chris is me

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Re: Combo: Seer/Vassal
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2019, 11:59:13 pm »
+5

You lost me at "Seer is hardly seen as a power 5 cost card".
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Seprix

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Re: Combo: Seer/Vassal
« Reply #2 on: February 25, 2019, 08:03:07 am »
+5

Seer is like a top 30 card in Dominion, and maybe top 20 depending on who you ask. Chancellor is a dead card now, nobody plays with it online because it got replaced. There are tons of fantastic $2s to $4s out there, which is part of the reason why Seer is so amazing. Erm, the combo with Vassal is pretty obvious, I don't know that it needs five paragraphs to point out. An article on Vassal would do better, which mentions deck inspection, which hey, Seer does. This article reminds me of the old article days, and I imagine that is what inspired this writing. We've all sort of branched out to the particular since then, other than outstanding combos that aren't obvious like Mandarin/Capital.

All that being said, the writing is nice, there's nothing wrong with that at all, and I look forward to your future writing.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2019, 08:05:38 am by Seprix »
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apostolosoruler

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Re: Combo: Seer/Vassal
« Reply #3 on: February 25, 2019, 12:02:59 pm »
0

Being a vassal fan, since the first time I saw vassal-sentry, I enjoy seeing these synergies. Seer is a great card and i think vassal is kinda underappreciated, so glad to see a nice 2card combo analysed.
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segura

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Re: Combo: Seer/Vassal
« Reply #4 on: February 25, 2019, 02:56:11 pm »
0

Synergies:
-   Power 5-cost (or higher) cards, especially cantrips like Hunting Party, Grand Market, or Highway
-   Copper trashing
-   Thin-deck engines that need some virtual +coin

Antisynergies:
-   Cursers or Looters
-   Lack of trashing
This is all true for Vassal alone and has nothing to do with Seer. Seer doesn't want those $5s (neither does Vassal by the way, all Vassal wants is a high fraction of Action cards in your deck), it prefers Ironmongers or Market Squares or Smithies to generate all the stuff that your engine needs yet Vassal doesn't do, i.e. Actions (also help to make Vassal dud less often which can happen even with Seer as support), draw power and Buys.
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Combo: Seer/Vassal
« Reply #5 on: February 25, 2019, 08:02:39 pm »
+2

As others have pointed out, Seer is just really good in general. Here's just one example of why drawing a bunch of cheap cards is really good: Most engines need villages, and what do you know, it turns out most villages are between $2 and $4.

Also, I think Wandering Minstrel is a card better described as "made for" Vassal. Wandering Minstrel gives spare actions, which is something Vassal desperately needs in case it duds. It also removes junk from the top of your deck, which Seer doesn't do. The most fundamental reason, though, is that Vassal actually wants you to leave Action cards on your deck, not draw them.
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wittyhowlard

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Re: Combo: Seer/Vassal
« Reply #6 on: March 01, 2019, 08:04:29 pm »
+3

Thanks for all of the feedback! Looks like I've truly underappreciated Seer and will be using that a bit more often in games. And yep, there are actually a bunch of cards that pair up better (i.e. Vassal-Wandering Minstrel as pointed out above).

In terms of card article topics, it looks like the discussion has branched out from combos/counters to different aspects of Dominion card play. I guess this makes sense given all the new expansions; any pair of cards showing up together are much rarer than they would be before. I will be focusing on profiling single cards or a particular mechanic in my future articles.

Appreciate all of your reads and suggestions!
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