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[yudantaiteki]

I was discussing with someone the other day how newer players (I did this too) mostly look at Curse as -1 VP and overlook the negative effect it has with clogging your deck.

This made me wonder -- let's say that the -1 VP was removed from Curse so that its only effect was to clog your deck.  How overpriced are the curse-giving cards now?  Would you buy a Witch at $4?  Would Sea Hag be $3?

(I suppose this may have more than theoretical relevance depending on what the Dark Ages cards turn out to be...)

[Captain_Frisk]

I would still buy every curser @ its current price and be happy with it.

[Morgrim7]

That would be strange though, how about IGG or Embargo?

[Tables]

I think most cursers would maintain their current price, but would drop from being some of the strongest cards at each cost to being... well above average at each cost. The IGG rush might become a lot weaker... if you let your opponent rush unopposed, you'd be 10 VPs up, which is probably enough to win the game (could you take >=5 Duchies while they buy IGGs? I'd say probably... so they better have a supporting plan).

[DG]

One difficulty with 0 VP curses is that they allow opponents to rush for quick vp, emptying two other piles.

[RisingJaguar]

Well Seahag would need an overhaul altogether.  You aren't placing a card on top anymore.  Mountebank would actually still be among the top as you can't block it no more. 

Another thing to consider would be if there is a limit on how many 'curses'/-1VP could be handed out.  I think this would make it uber demoralizing when KC gets involved if unlimited. 

[WanderingWinder]

Well Seahag would need an overhaul altogether.  You aren't placing a card on top anymore.  Mountebank would actually still be among the top as you can't block it no more. 

Another thing to consider would be if there is a limit on how many 'curses'/-1VP could be handed out.  I think this would make it uber demoralizing when KC gets involved if unlimited. 

I think you're misunderstanding the proposal... it's not that they get replaced by -1 VP chips, but rather by what Donald had as 'Confusion' cards - exactly like curses, except worth 0 VP instead of -1.

[Fabian]

If curses were worth 0VP instead of -1VP, not a whole lot would change.

[RisingJaguar]

Well Seahag would need an overhaul altogether.  You aren't placing a card on top anymore.  Mountebank would actually still be among the top as you can't block it no more. 

Another thing to consider would be if there is a limit on how many 'curses'/-1VP could be handed out.  I think this would make it uber demoralizing when KC gets involved if unlimited. 

I think you're misunderstanding the proposal... it's not that they get replaced by -1 VP chips, but rather by what Donald had as 'Confusion' cards - exactly like curses, except worth 0 VP instead of -1.

Oops! I read the title and assumed that's how we would value the -1VP aspect. 

Then yeah the clogging is the worst part of the attack, similar to ambassador.  I wouldn't expect too much difference in strength. 

[blueblimp]

Via a quick hack of Geronimoo's simulator:

With -1 VP curses, the default Witch bot beats the default Wharf bot around 74/24. With 0 VP curses, instead it's around 46/48.

[Jfrisch]

compare monument in strength to duchess. Or compare followers to militia (about half the difference is the value of 1vp) 1 vp is a quite significant difference. Great hall also offers a relatively pure example.
Though the main bite of cursing, especially in the early game, cursing gains quite a lot of power from the -1vp. A 7/3 split in cursers, requires 4 extra vp to overcome. That's more than a duchy and thus has the power to decide quite a few endgame situations. Late game curses, in particular, continue to have bite by reducing your score. Otherwise they would be relatively ignorable. Witch/mountebank are powerful enough (in that a terminal draw/terminal silver isn't particularly actively bad for your deck) that they would continue to be very good cards. I'm less convinced that hag/IGG/YW/familiar would be worthwhile (in decreasing order). I agree though, that I can't imagine any card being sufficiently weakened to warrant a price change. It's just important to remember that 1vp is, in fact, highly non-negligible, especially in bulk. (monument is much, much, stronger than duchess)

[popsofctown]

I would still buy every curser @ its current price and be happy with it.

Almost true for me

[rinkworks]

compare monument in strength to duchess. Or compare followers to militia (about half the difference is the value of 1vp) 1 vp is a quite significant difference. Great hall also offers a relatively pure example.
Though the main bite of cursing, especially in the early game, cursing gains quite a lot of power from the -1vp. A 7/3 split in cursers, requires 4 extra vp to overcome. That's more than a duchy and thus has the power to decide quite a few endgame situations. Late game curses, in particular, continue to have bite by reducing your score. Otherwise they would be relatively ignorable. Witch/mountebank are powerful enough (in that a terminal draw/terminal silver isn't particularly actively bad for your deck) that they would continue to be very good cards. I'm less convinced that hag/IGG/YW/familiar would be worthwhile (in decreasing order). I agree though, that I can't imagine any card being sufficiently weakened to warrant a price change. It's just important to remember that 1vp is, in fact, highly non-negligible, especially in bulk. (monument is much, much, stronger than duchess)

This is a really well-thought-out counterargument.

Without actually contradicting any of your points, though, I think it's worth pointing out that curses can be trashed (in many boards, at least) by their victims, while a VP gain from Monument is permanent and irreversible.  Similarly, you don't usually trash, or have to  trash, Great Halls, so those are usually permanent VP gains to your deck, whereas a Curse is only a guaranteed permanent VP swing in the absence of trashers.

At least equally important is the fact that Monument can rack up a whole lot more VPs than cursers usually can.  A 7-3 curse split is a 4 VP difference, but on a board where you'd consider Monument at all, you'll very often (true, not always) do better than just 4 VP. 

[Captain_Frisk]

I would still buy every curser @ its current price and be happy with it.

Almost true for me

Yeah, this is slight hyperbole.... I would probably only buy IGG 80% of the time instead of 100%.

[Fabian]

I assumed no one took the Monument vs Duchess argument seriously, but since someone did:

The difference between one VP chip and zero VP chips is not at all comparable to the difference between a -1VP Curse and a 0VP Curse in the context of actual games. The reason Monument crushes Duchess/non-Monument BM type stuff/Silver/etc is because it creates a tie-breaker which is very tough to recover from outside the contexts of engines/+buys/non-BMesque decks. The reason curse givers win games is because they clog your deck, and in those games, the difference between a tie-breaker and no tie-breaker doesn't matter nearly as much; the curse giver is winning close to every time anyway.

Certainly, plenty of situations come up where someone has lost the curse war 7-3 but has compensated by building an otherwise stronger deck, and the end result is roughly comparable decks but the cursed player needing more than a Duchy's worth of extra VP to recover. I'm not saying the value of a Curse never matters, but I definitely stand by "not a whole lot would change", overall. The curse givers are still strong enough to pursue on most boards.

[WanderingWinder]

compare monument in strength to duchess. Or compare followers to militia (about half the difference is the value of 1vp) 1 vp is a quite significant difference. Great hall also offers a relatively pure example.
Though the main bite of cursing, especially in the early game, cursing gains quite a lot of power from the -1vp. A 7/3 split in cursers, requires 4 extra vp to overcome. That's more than a duchy and thus has the power to decide quite a few endgame situations. Late game curses, in particular, continue to have bite by reducing your score. Otherwise they would be relatively ignorable. Witch/mountebank are powerful enough (in that a terminal draw/terminal silver isn't particularly actively bad for your deck) that they would continue to be very good cards. I'm less convinced that hag/IGG/YW/familiar would be worthwhile (in decreasing order). I agree though, that I can't imagine any card being sufficiently weakened to warrant a price change. It's just important to remember that 1vp is, in fact, highly non-negligible, especially in bulk. (monument is much, much, stronger than duchess)

Indeed.
I think that confusion-givers are still going to have significant impact on the game, but they would be much more skippable than curse-givers are. Not only am I buried under right now when trying to build a super-engine to overcome the curses, but I also have to come up with 10 VP more. So if I totally ignore the confusion-givers... you really have to invest more into them to get more stuck in my deck, and that's really not worth it probably, given that those late confusions are not going to hurt much at all.
But maybe we'll find out, with the advent of ruins.

[WanderingWinder]

I assumed no one took the Monument vs Duchess argument seriously, but since someone did:

The difference between one VP chip and zero VP chips is not at all comparable to the difference between a -1VP Curse and a 0VP Curse in the context of actual games. The reason Monument crushes Duchess/non-Monument BM type stuff/Silver/etc is because it creates a tie-breaker which is very tough to recover from outside the contexts of engines/+buys/non-BMesque decks. The reason curse givers win games is because they clog your deck, and in those games, the difference between a tie-breaker and no tie-breaker doesn't matter nearly as much; the curse giver is winning close to every time anyway.

Certainly, plenty of situations come up where someone has lost the curse war 7-3 but has compensated by building an otherwise stronger deck, and the end result is roughly comparable decks but the cursed player needing more than a Duchy's worth of extra VP to recover. I'm not saying the value of a Curse never matters, but I definitely stand by "not a whole lot would change", overall. The curse givers are still strong enough to pursue on most boards.

True true true. A more apt comparison would probably be to a hypothetical monument that gave you a chip on-gain rather than every time you play it. Which would not nearly be so strong a card. However, I still think several of the cure givers are going to be quite a lot weaker. Sea hag, familiar, young witch, and IGG are all going to be much much closer to average cards. Witch and mountebank will still be quite strong, because their ancillary effects aren't so bad anyway. There's a reason they're so absolutely dominating.




Seriously, think about if these cards gave estates - they'd be a lot worse, of course. But not totally worthless, and in fact still pretty good for a good part of the game. Confusions are about halfway in between. And you have a big benefit that you're not actually helping them in the late endgame.

[Fabian]

Confusions are something in the new set, or what? I don't have an opinion on that, I'm just talking about the curse givers which exist and what happens if curses are worth 0.

Sea Hag (close to) average if curses are worth 0? I really really don't think so. How many more non-Sea Hag decks are beating a Sea Hag deck with curses being 0? I gotta think that number doesn't change very much.

[WanderingWinder]

Confusions are something in the new set, or what? I don't have an opinion on that, I'm just talking about the curse givers which exist and what happens if curses are worth 0.

Confusions were a card that was in the game before it was published - basically exactly what we're talking about here: 0 VP cards that do nothing; you'd get them as penalties. Donald took them out because the design space was too close to curses. Don't you read the secret histories?

Sea Hag (close to) average if curses are worth 0? I really really don't think so. How many more non-Sea Hag decks are beating a Sea Hag deck with curses being 0? I gotta think that number doesn't change very much.

Mmm, might be an above-average card, but it's a LOT worse. I think it does change a lot. I'd expect Monument should beat it, for one. I'd say militia's probably better too. Keep in mind that Sea Hag is a 0 VP junk card for you, so until you play it twice, you're actually clogged up more than them. And early clog is more important than late clog. Yeah, I'm sticking with this one.

[Jfrisch]

I don't think it's really disputable that early on curses gain most of there bite from the fact that they clog your deck. If I had the ability to buy a 4 cost witch which shot out estates, I would still go for it. And, in fact, cursers are generally overpowered enough that they would still be worth going for. But, unlike confusions, curses still retain quite a lot of bite late game. With 1 more reshuffle left, a confusion is annoying, but frankly not that bad. A curse, is still pretty awful. The vp loss makes cursers worth going for significantly longer than they would otherwise. I will often buy a familiar/witch/mountebank for a chance at a single curse in a manner I don't think I would do with confusions. So, yes, while early game I'd be perfectly happy passing out estates my happiness/willingness to do so in the late game or even just the late mid game is much, much less than with curse.

[Axxle]

Confusions are something in the new set, or what? I don't have an opinion on that, I'm just talking about the curse givers which exist and what happens if curses are worth 0.

Confusions were a card that was in the game before it was published - basically exactly what we're talking about here: 0 VP cards that do nothing; you'd get them as penalties. Donald took them out because the design space was too close to curses. Don't you read the secret histories?

The highlight for me was that the Confusion card just showed a hypnotic spiral pattern with no text, and when a new player was like, ‘I don’t get it, what does this do,’ I’d hold up the card and rotate it so that the spiral did that optical illusion thing. Ah, memories.”

I like how the Confusion cards were confusing to new players.

[NinjaBus]

It would mean that a 6-4 curse split would be far less killer in a 2p game. You'd probably want to avoid buying a 2nd curse card just for the sake of winning that war. As it is now, it hurts your opponent and forces them to buy more green cards than you, which is the real game ender.

[Lekkit]

A hand with one confusion is like being hit by a Cutpurse or a Minion. A hand with two is like being hit by a Militia. Add your own green cards to this and you have a lot of handsize attacks from just a few confusions. I'd still buy the confusers almost every game.

[heron]

Two confusion is actually worse than militia; you don't get to choose what to discard.
Also, it's a tad more similar to ghost ship, I suppose.

[Lekkit]

What I meant was that you are playing with fewer cards. Play a Smity and draw two confusions pretty much equals to playing a card that's just +1 card.