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Author Topic: Transmute  (Read 16852 times)

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ackack

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Re: Transmute
« Reply #25 on: July 07, 2011, 05:39:19 pm »
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Contraband and Transmute?  I don't even see them... it is like playing with nine kingdom cards.

Transmute I can see, but you're missing out on Contraband. There are certainly tons of times where it's useless, but a Gold with +buy is occasionally fantastic. In fact, according to Council Room it's my highest Win With and Effect With card!
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Amaranth

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Re: Transmute
« Reply #26 on: July 07, 2011, 07:52:46 pm »
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I cannot see this card doing anything worthwhile in a Scrying Pool deck.  First off, I would be buying Pools with every Potion buy, and besides, what benefit is it to fill your deck with terminals (as replacement for coppers) when they are basically useless en masse?  Yes, obviously it is important to clear out the starting cards to make a Pool deck work, but I would require a better trasher to begin with before I went this route.
Only Chapel, sometimes Remake (where there's a 3 cost action), and sometimes Remodel (when there's a 2 cost action) move you to a 100% action deck more quickly than Transmute does. For the purpose of a Scrying Pool deck, it's a faster trasher than Steward, Lookout, Loan, Bishop, Salvager or Moneylender. And really, if it helps you draw your entire deck, it doesn't matter that it's terminal. I've had ~10 terminal actions in a Scrying Pool deck, and I didn't care, because I drew my entire deck every turn regardless. Plus, it doesn't destroy your economy, because it turns your Estates into Golds. If you have 3 Scrying Pools and 3 Gold, and the rest of your deck is actions, then you draw them every turn (almost) guaranteed.

Oh, and if you have the actions it can net you 12 or so VP in your last turn, which is not nothing, even in a Colony game. In a Vineyard game, the value of changing your 7 starting copper into actions, thus making all your Vineyards +2 VP speaks for itself.
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Mean Mr Mustard

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Re: Transmute
« Reply #27 on: July 08, 2011, 07:33:46 am »
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How are you quickly trashing all your coppers and buying both Pools and Transmutes?  And why is it good to draw a whole deck worth of useless crap?

Actually, never mind.  if you guys love contrabands and transmutes and pearl divers so much, more power to you.
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Mean Mr Mustard

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Re: Transmute
« Reply #28 on: July 08, 2011, 07:42:56 am »
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Just to add one more thing:  Amaranth, your win rate without Transmute is significantly higher than when you buy one.

As for you Ackack, it seems you are very good at playing with contraband.
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skrotkanon

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Re: Transmute
« Reply #29 on: July 08, 2011, 07:45:14 am »
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I have to agree with mr Mustards list of crappy cards, Pearl Diver and Contraband are almost
running gags at our "offline"-games and Transmute just seems so sexy but I guess it's just as
bland as I thought it was. The one card I am still struggling to actually make use of is Ironworks.
It seems bad, it is bad and yet I buy it whenever I believe I can make use of it. And always lose.
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Elyv

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Re: Transmute
« Reply #30 on: July 08, 2011, 12:08:52 pm »
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Contraband can be fine as long as actions are at a premium and/or there are no other good 5s and you get stuck with 5. I try to avoid buying it anyway, but somehow I have a good winrate with it.

I think Transmute is terrible, and I ignore it.
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Amaranth

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Re: Transmute
« Reply #31 on: July 08, 2011, 02:17:00 pm »
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Just to add one more thing:  Amaranth, your win rate without Transmute is significantly higher than when you buy one.
There's something dodgy about those stats, in that I have a positive Effect With for Transmute and a negative Effect Without. As for your point about "worthless crap", it's not clogging up my deck if it doesn't prevent me from drawing my other cards.
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ShuffleNCut

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Re: Transmute
« Reply #32 on: July 08, 2011, 02:42:01 pm »
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I buy Transmute only when it happens to be on a board with another Potion card I'm going for, like Familiar, and I end up with a CCPEE/CPEEE hand on turn 3/4.  I'll buy the Transmute expecting to make golds out of my estates and maybe trash a curse or two in the mid game or gain a Dutchy or two in the late late game.  Even then it's marginal at best.

That's about it.  Any time I see Transmute as the only Potion card I pretty much see two blank spaces in the Kingdom cards and move on.

I can understand trying to use it as the only trasher in a Scrying Pool deck however if better; trashing is not available then Scrying Pool is probably not a very good strategy in the first place.

As far as Contraband, I'm OK with it on a board with Remake/Upgrade where it can get me some early engine cards and later in the game become the Gold it so longs to be.

The biggest point I see against both of these cards is that I have to define a very specific set of circumstances for the card to become OK.  If you don't want to regularly buy a card of it's own merit that's probably a sign that it's pretty bad.  I've never had to convince myself to shoehorn Mountebank into my strategy in any given game...
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Transmute
« Reply #33 on: July 08, 2011, 03:05:03 pm »
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Just to add one more thing:  Amaranth, your win rate without Transmute is significantly higher than when you buy one.
There's something dodgy about those stats, in that I have a positive Effect With for Transmute and a negative Effect Without. As for your point about "worthless crap", it's not clogging up my deck if it doesn't prevent me from drawing my other cards.
Effect with takes your win rate with and subtracts your overall win rate, then compares that with the average person's win rate with and subtracts their overall win rate (which is obviously 1). It's in terms of standard deviations. Effect without is the same except for win rate without.
So that just means you use it better than the average person, and you deal with not having it worse than the average person

Zaphod

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Re: Transmute
« Reply #34 on: July 08, 2011, 07:19:06 pm »
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I was going to create a thread about Transmute until I saw this.  It's a tricky card, at least.

I think it would be more useful combined with a major draw engine, or with some means of producing extra cards (+ buy cards, or something in the Ironworks family).  But I've never been able to get it to work, so my opinion doesn't mean much.
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Mean Mr Mustard

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Re: Transmute
« Reply #35 on: July 08, 2011, 09:32:33 pm »
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I was going to create a thread about Transmute until I saw this.  It's a tricky card, at least.

I think it would be more useful combined with a major draw engine, or with some means of producing extra cards (+ buy cards, or something in the Ironworks family).  But I've never been able to get it to work, so my opinion doesn't mean much.

Your opinion is valid.  You haven't been able to get it to work because it is an unusually bad card.
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Amaranth

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Re: Transmute
« Reply #36 on: July 09, 2011, 04:53:50 am »
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Effect with takes your win rate with and subtracts your overall win rate, then compares that with the average person's win rate with and subtracts their overall win rate (which is obviously 1). It's in terms of standard deviations. Effect without is the same except for win rate without.
So that just means you use it better than the average person, and you deal with not having it worse than the average person
Ah, I thought it was measuring against my own average performance, not the average performance of other players. Anyway, I see that I win more when I buy Transmute than when I buy Caravan, and win more when I don't buy Caravan than when I don't buy Transmute. I don't think most people would regard this as an argument that Caravan is a weak card.
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dan11295

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Re: Transmute
« Reply #37 on: July 09, 2011, 06:33:30 am »
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I agree it has limited usefullness. I could see using it in a situation I am being given estates, via Masquerade or Ambassador. But it is extremely situational. Once the Estates are gone from your deck, the cards is dead wait until near then end where it may get you a Duchy. Even there there are likely other cards you could have bought instead of the Potion and then the Transmute to acheive that same end.
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Mean Mr Mustard

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ShuffleNCut

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Re: Transmute
« Reply #39 on: July 09, 2011, 09:18:09 am »
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I agree it has limited usefullness. I could see using it in a situation I am being given estates, via Masquerade or Ambassador. But it is extremely situational. Once the Estates are gone from your deck, the cards is dead wait until near then end where it may get you a Duchy. Even there there are likely other cards you could have bought instead of the Potion and then the Transmute to acheive that same end.

Yeah, you're far far better off buying Ambassadors and Masquerades yourself instead of spending two shuffles and two buys to get Potion+Transmute yourself.
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