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[Young Nick]

It's pretty simple, I would love to learn about how to use this card properly. In my mind, it is almost always not going to be effective enough to justify purchasing more than one (the only way it is truly effective). Having said that, it sucks to be consistently drawing 2 or so Victory cards.

I just question that it's that good of a card, especially when comparing against Margrave, Torturer, or Ghost Ship.

[-Stef-]

Depends on the kingdom 

No, seriously, it does. In general, rabble is worse than the three cards you mention. But rabble is more about the +3 cards than about the attack, and +3 cards can be pretty good. Don't play pure rabble though. Rabble is great for drawing your deck *and than do something impressive*. Due to the attack side of rabble, you'll have more time to make it all work. Stalling your opponent in some way is very often key in building a successful engine, and rabble helps both in building and in stalling.

Occasionally rabble can really punish people for greening too early / too heavily. Plans that would otherwise be great (silk road, dukes) can become unplayable because of rabble. But even here, rabble needs more help then just a village.

(This is the obligatory paragraph with stuff you already know)
Rabble's attack can backfire against a single native village or a lookout (with curses), and the attack is countered by farming village, golem, venture & friends. In smithy/BM mirror matches, rabble seriously outclasses smithy, but that's why it costs 1 more. $5 is an ugly price for engines, because there's usually a lot of competition.

In one sentence: Rabble will never become a lock, but occasionally can do miracles as a stall while drawing your deck.

[jomini]

Rabble has some fairly simple setups and a few niche tricks. The basic approach is to treat it as a smithy or torturer and try to chain it. This is pretty weak before the opponent greens up or is cursed, but it becomes an absolutely vicious engine late game. For instance, playing 3 rabble nets you 9 cards and very strong odds of leaving 2-3 VP/curses top decked. Once this happens it is extremely difficult to make progress; odds of hitting village + draw are just abysmal. On the flip side, as already mentioned, a good number of cards will just flip right past all those vp/curses.

A number of cards also allow for some fun tricks with rabble. First among these is rabble -> sab. Odds of hitting provinces this way increase dramatically, all those silvers that sab chokes on are discarded and your opponent gets to lose 3 VP pretty quickly. Another very nasty & strong attack is rabble -> minion (cards) when you have only 1 or 2 cards, you can rarely do more than purchase something in 2-5 coin range or play your own minion. You can also get strong results from rabble (this turn) and masq (next turn); you can give a lean opponent (thanks to his own masq trashing) the option of passing you something strong (like a gold or another 5) or passing VPs directly. Rabble -> Jester is good for allowing you to load the opponent up on curses when you otherwise would have low odds. B-crat -> rabble sounds good (in theory you can pin the opponent more easily this way), but it is such a slow pin and you absolutely have to have something to do with the silver flood (or a watchtower).

[dan11295]

Important to note that if you can trash your estates early and there are no cursers, Rabble isn't going to hurt you much at all until you start to green. Had an in-person 3-player Remake, Rabble, Grand Market game w/Colonies where both my opponents went for Rabble, I bought one initially for the drawing but remade it into a GM fairly early. (one opponent also went Bishop as opposed to Remake, for some unknown reason but thats another discussion). Also the only +action here was Hamlet, not the greatest for Rabble chaining in a game without a lot of junk in your hand.

As said before its best in a game with cursing or where non-drawing VP cards are in play. Island might be an exception. Since you may have just pared up his Island with his province instead.   

[verikt]

Buying one or two scouts and secret chambers can make a rabble chain an advantage instead of a liability. Got a bad hand? Draw the next two cards with secret chamber, put your crap back on deck to be discarded and draw the green with scout.

[Jfrisch]

very important, rabble chains kills opponents dead once they've started greening. Especially if they didn't get a chance to kill there estates early. A rabble chain can very, very, very, effectively slow down your opponent late game.

[J.Co.]

In some ways, it's higher variance, but I think the simple fact that you quite often skip three of your opponents' best treasures/actions can hurt, and if you're lucky (again, high variance), you could even trigger an unwanted shuffle. Sometimes you help their cycling, of course, but it can be worth it.

[HiveMindEmulator]

In some ways, it's higher variance, but I think the simple fact that you quite often skip three of your opponents' best treasures/actions can hurt, and if you're lucky (again, high variance), you could even trigger an unwanted shuffle. Sometimes you help their cycling, of course, but it can be worth it.

At the very least, on average you are doing something good. You skip up to 3 cards, and they can't be victory cards. So you're effectively making the victory card density in their deck worse.

[AdamH]

Kind of an old topic, yes, but I played an IRL game where Rabble was a key card and it brings up an important question.

I don't remember much about the kingdom, but it was a 2-player game, and let's say the only kingdom cards available were University and Rabble. There may have been other things, but whatever.

What happened is I played BM + Rabble (I bought 2 Rabbles by a certain point) and my opponent went Universities to gain Rabbles, eventually chaining Rabbles and drawing a good chunk of his deck. I got off to a very quick 4-0 province lead, and I had 2 or 3 golds in my deck, when his engine started playing multiple (like 5 or so) Rabbles every turn. Naturally, I was unable to buy anything but estates the rest of the game, and he had all the time in the world to buy duchies and the rest of the provinces and I got slaughtered.

I had thought that Uni->Rabble would be too slow and my lead would carry me through (obviously I was wrong) but looking back, I'm wondering what is the appropriate thing to do in a kingdom like this, where there is the potential to get pinned down like this after you start greening, and no "real" counters.

Is it possible to win with a strong BM-variant? Maybe I should have bought 6 or 7 golds, 3 Rabbles, and fattened up my deck quite a bit before greening, given that I'd have the extra time my opponent gives me by building a draw engine? Perhaps this fatter deck would allow me to buy 3-4 provinces quickly before I start having to play two-card hands? (Maybe not, since his Rabbles will be cycling my deck like crazy at that point?) But at that point, with so many golds in my deck, I could possibly buy some duchies with just two real cards?

Or is the only correct thing to do here to just mirror my opponent?

How does the presence of +Buy affect this discussion? What about the presence of soft counters like Scout or Secret Chamber (or maybe Warehouse/Cellar)? If a soft counter were present, would the best strategy be to go with a BM+Rabble deck with 3 or so Scouts?

I'd really like to say that I have some ideas, but I continue to get completely wrecked in rabble games from the late-game "pin"...

[DStu]

Just Uni+Rabble might be not strong enough, don't know.  But it certainly does not need much help.

I think your mistake as I read it was especially buying Estates. So say there are no +buys in the kingdom, and no strong gainers like HoP, so that you really can only buy one Victory card per turn. If you get 5 Provinces in this sitation, you are in a pretty good shape, because picking up Duchies without +buy takes a lot time for the engine.

You now say you have 3-4 Provinces before the engine started running.  Against a Rabble-engine, it get's difficult at this point obviously, but you will not win this over the Estates.  The Estates will lose you the game. "All" you need is one more Province and maybe some Duchies, but for the Province you need a good hand. Buying Estates will just block your deck again, against the Rabblechain they will fastly be on top of your deck.  So I think in this situation you must fully focus on the important cards, and this is the Province, and, especially under this attack, the Estates only poison your deck and give the engine all the time of the world it needs to win on the remaining Provinces and a few Duchies.
If you get the Province, it needs 4 more Duchies, and the chances are high the engine will break before they are bought.

[AdamH]

I understand what you're saying about buying estates, and that provinces are the most important card, but I feel like after I had 7 green cards in my deck, once that engine kicked in, I was playing two-card hands the rest of the game, which all but eliminate the possibility of ever buying a province for the rest of the game (only possible way I can think of is to draw 3 greens and a rabble, play rabble, draw three more greens, pass, then draw enough treasure to buy a province next turn).

...and it doesn't seem to matter if his engine starts breaking from too much green, I still feel like once we've gotten to that point, he has as many turns as he needs to catch up, +Buy or not. I felt like if I didn't have 44 points by the time I was pinned, that I had lost.

...are you saying that if I buy silvers after I've been pinned, that one day I'll eventually be able to province again?

I could be wrong on this, but that's how it felt... admittedly, Rabble tends to throw off my reads, so...

[dondon151]

I do not like to green early against the possibility of a Rabble engine. If you have 6 or more Victory cards in your deck, an engine that consistently plays 4+ Rabbles every turn will pin you down.

[Lekkit]

I loooove Rabble Engines. I do think Rabble is one of the most underrated cards in my regular play group. When Rabble is on the board, I can usually manage to win with it.

[brokoli]

I really like rabble, because it's not a strong as other $5 attacks, it opens many engine possibilities and unlike torturer, even with a village rabble doesn't always dominate the board.

[AdamH]

I have definitely felt the power of the rabble engine myself, most of the time being on the wrong end of it. So when it's there, is there any way to prevent being pinned down by it other than going for the rabble engine myself?

[DStu]

I have definitely felt the power of the rabble engine myself, most of the time being on the wrong end of it. So when it's there, is there any way to prevent being pinned down by it other than going for the rabble engine myself?

Farming Village, Venture, Adventurer, Island, Native Village, don't buy Victory cards (e.g. Goons).

If there is another engine, that also might be viable, because two engines played against each other often end on pile-ending, so you could probably win without buying (many) Victory cards before the last turn. Especially if there are dual-type Victories around.

But if all that is not the case, and there is an engine on the board, and there is Rabble, and you want to play BigMoney against it, you better have luck.

[Davio]

Sometimes you can easily get over the hill (43 points in a regular Province game without Cursing or other VP cards/tokens) before the Rabble engine is in full throttle.

I use this strategy often when my opponent is trying to get all Cities by buying one per turn.

I mean, 1 Rabble will rarely hurt more than a single Fortune Teller and those cards have the added effect that they're cycling you. So if it's a game where your opponent can't really get more than one card per turn, you'll have a decent chance with a money-esque type of game.

[Asklepios]

I have definitely felt the power of the rabble engine myself, most of the time being on the wrong end of it. So when it's there, is there any way to prevent being pinned down by it other than going for the rabble engine myself?

Farming Village, Venture, Adventurer, Island, Native Village, don't buy Victory cards (e.g. Goons).

And Golem, and to a lesser degree, Counting House.

Also, victory cards that do something useful are nice to have.

But on a more general basis increasing your draw and decreasing the %green in the deck will help.

Crossroads seems an excellent specific counter, and can be bought pretty cheaply too.

I understand what you're saying about buying estates, and that provinces are the most important card, but I feel like after I had 7 green cards in my deck, once that engine kicked in, I was playing two-card hands the rest of the game, which all but eliminate the possibility of ever buying a province for the rest of the game (only possible way I can think of is to draw 3 greens and a rabble, play rabble, draw three more greens, pass, then draw enough treasure to buy a province next turn).

...and it doesn't seem to matter if his engine starts breaking from too much green, I still feel like once we've gotten to that point, he has as many turns as he needs to catch up, +Buy or not. I felt like if I didn't have 44 points by the time I was pinned, that I had lost.

...are you saying that if I buy silvers after I've been pinned, that one day I'll eventually be able to province again?

I could be wrong on this, but that's how it felt... admittedly, Rabble tends to throw off my reads, so...

Re: this, I'd also agree that Estates were a mistake in your situation. Even copper would have been better.

Maybe the problem came a little earlier though - when you were 3-0 provinces up, and you saw your opponent acquiring lots of Rabbles, it might have been worth spending some of those $6 on gold rather than provinces, purely to avoid the later lock. Maybe, maybe not. Not sure.

[DG]

One of the more interesting aspects of the rabble is their interaction with other attacks. Rabble and ghost ship can result in all sorts of guessing games with your opponent. Rabble, council room, then rabble might not please your opponent either. In two player games you can try to control what you're doing to your opponent's deck but with more players you've got to think through the posibilties. There might be something unique in the kingdom.

I have definitely felt the power of the rabble engine myself, most of the time being on the wrong end of it. So when it's there, is there any way to prevent being pinned down by it other than going for the rabble engine myself?

Trash out your initial estates, even if you need a trade route to do it. Buy duchies later. Get lots of gold. Don't rely on cards like markets that will only give one coin and draw a green card. Use rabbles yourself.

[Davio]

@Asklepios, dual-types get discarded too, because they are often either Action-VP or Treasure-VP.

It's not like Fortune Teller which leaves a VP or Curse on top.

[Powerman]

I have definitely felt the power of the rabble engine myself, most of the time being on the wrong end of it. So when it's there, is there any way to prevent being pinned down by it other than going for the rabble engine myself?

Farming Village, Venture, Adventurer, Island, Native Village, don't buy Victory cards (e.g. Goons).

And Golem, and to a lesser degree, Counting House.

And Scout.  Scout is easily the best and hardest counter to Rabble.

[AdamH]

All right, I think I'm getting the answer I'm looking for: in the absence of some type of counter to Rabble's attack, there is no BM-centric way to secure a win when your opponent is going for an engine the plays several Rabbles each turn. In this case, the correct move is to go for the same engine yourself.

The exception would be when there is no way to gain more than one card per turn, then BM+Rabble would outrace a Rabble engine, likely by getting half the available points before the pin sets in.

In the presence of any counter, such as the many listed here, the pin doesn't have the same You-Will-Never-Buy-A-Province-Again effect, and then the question becomes "is BM+enabler+Rabble-Counter faster than Rabble Engine?"

I might argue that once you've got enough green in your deck to be pinned down by an opponent who's playing several Rabbles each turn, that the game is already lost and it's not possible to recover from this situation, whether or not you buy estates, coppers, silvers, whatever; of course this is in the absence of any of the counters discussed. (Yeah, Scout is actually really good here, would this be the first situation we've found where Scout doesn't actively hurt your deck?)

I suppose buying silvers could be effective *in theory* if you have a Rabble or two in your deck, but that does require being lucky enough to draw your Rabble in one of your two-card hands (which is NOT guaranteed to happen eventually; I think the probability is similar to if you shuffled all your cards minus three greens every turn and drew two and expected one to be a Rabble). At that point you're likely to have a decent hand next turn. If this is accurate, then it seems buying silvers is the "best" thing to do; but if you ask me, the REAL winning move is to resign.

This makes me wonder if sufficient draw could even be a counter to this pin...

[jomini]

I have definitely felt the power of the rabble engine myself, most of the time being on the wrong end of it. So when it's there, is there any way to prevent being pinned down by it other than going for the rabble engine myself?

Farming Village, Venture, Adventurer, Island, Native Village, don't buy Victory cards (e.g. Goons).

And Golem, and to a lesser degree, Counting House.

And Scout.  Scout is easily the best and hardest counter to Rabble.

Nah scout is easily worse than farming village in pretty much all cases except when you have an active use for your green cards (e.g. scout/xroads beats farming village/xroads; likewise scout/vault is better than farming village vault). Either golem or farming village are far harder counters to rabble.

Sufficient draw is easily a counter to a rabble hold (I reserve pins for those setup where you literally have no cards to play), the big thing is having a high enough concentration of draw to break out. For instance, menage isn't too bad if you have a good variety of VP card types. You play menage and then have 4 card hand. Likewise warehouse, cellar, and several other sifters can make good use the green cards to get draw. Things like lab and activated cities can also push you over the top. A laughably easy counter is Xrds. He loads you up with green, you draw with the xrds and can then play further draw.

Even if you are just playing Smithy/BM Eventually you will have a smithy hand which means you end up with 4 cards; yeah you need to have an average treasure density of 2,but three of your 0 coin cards are already locked down and hitting two golds will often push you to province. Council room or hunting party gets you into reasonable range for colonies.

It isn't that you will never be able to hit a province, it just is going to take a LONG time until you get lucky enough to have big draw coupled with either villages (for an engine) or enough cash (for BM) to hit the last province or two. Once you lock down half the VP, rabble can't stop you from eventually winning if there is draw.

[AdamH]

Sufficient draw is easily a counter to a rabble hold (I reserve pins for those setup where you literally have no cards to play), the big thing is having a high enough concentration of draw to break out. For instance, menage isn't too bad if you have a good variety of VP card types. You play menage and then have 4 card hand. Likewise warehouse, cellar, and several other sifters can make good use the green cards to get draw. Things like lab and activated cities can also push you over the top. A laughably easy counter is Xrds. He loads you up with green, you draw with the xrds and can then play further draw.

Even if you are just playing Smithy/BM Eventually you will have a smithy hand which means you end up with 4 cards; yeah you need to have an average treasure density of 2,but three of your 0 coin cards are already locked down and hitting two golds will often push you to province. Council room or hunting party gets you into reasonable range for colonies.

It isn't that you will never be able to hit a province, it just is going to take a LONG time until you get lucky enough to have big draw coupled with either villages (for an engine) or enough cash (for BM) to hit the last province or two. Once you lock down half the VP, rabble can't stop you from eventually winning if there is draw.

I mentioned this before, but if you have a smithy in your deck, it is not guaranteed that you will eventually draw it in your two-card hand. It could continue to be skipped by your opponent's rabbles. If I was playing a BM-based deck, I could expect to have two of these in a deck of 25 or so cards. This makes my odds less than 20% of hitting one smithy in each hand.

The other nasty thing is that on top of the fact that three of the cards in your current hand are green, the three cards on top of your deck are also green. I think that makes the prospects of your current turn pretty bleak; I'm pretty sure that the best we can hope for (out of all things that have at least a 1% chance of happening) given this circumstance is to make your next hand viable.

That seems pretty promising, though. As long as you don't trigger a reshuffle drawing your next hand, and as long as you weren't foolishly buying estates (I guess if you were just buying silvers) you've got a decent shot at a province next hand; since that deck, minus the green cards you bought that got you into this mess, was able to buy at least three provinces, right?

Unfortunately, we don't get any control over our reshuffles; it's all up to the rabbles. Unless you had a council room or something that can draw 4 cards (not including 2-card combos, though KC+crossroads would be nice), you aren't going to make all that green miss the reshuffle -- not like it would matter, since it would all end up on top of your deck on your opponent's next turn anyways.

I guess sufficient draw is almost as good of a counter as any of this other stuff, though. Crossroads, Farming Village, Golem, and Adventurer will give you two or three live cards to play with this turn, as well as setting up your next turn, while Scout or dead draw will only give you one live card for this turn (so Scout is really only as good as Rabble here, without requiring another kingdom card -- ah, Scout, I thought we had a chance here, but alas...). Estate-trashing, Native Village, Island, Goons, etc. all seem more like preventative measures that are far more effective, NV could even be considered an actual hard counter to Rabble attacks, to the point where the Rabble actually help your deck!

So I wonder how effective this stuff is -- whether or not it's actually worth going for this stuff (particularly using Rabble to get out of it) versus various types of engines, or whether you should just go for the engine yourself. Maybe I'll be able to use the simulator for this, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it... I'll give it a shot.

[jomini]

Exactly how many VP cards do you expect to have and how many rabbles do you expect them to play? Half the VP is 5 provinces, 3 duchies, 4 estates (including starting estates). Once you hit that, you can only lose if you went first AND can't buy an estate before the end of the game. So yes, you can just buy silver/gold until you break the lock down. If you get pinned back after hitting 5 provinces, you can normally just win half the VP. Getting locked with only 8 VP cards is a bit hard - 3 of them are inside your hand gumming it up and it takes a very large number of rabble plays to find 3 of the other 5 VP cards in something typical (like say 30 cards). We to hit one VP card in the first two rabbles. After that rabble's search space is cut by a third and we expect to hit a second VP card after the next three (5 total rabble plays). Getting a consistent lock of 3 VP dead in hand and 3 VP dead on top CANNOT be done with Tr/Kc/Prssn or some other source of VP/curse cards (e.g. swindler, witch, masquerade, etc.).

In any event, if you play long enough, you will eventually hit the smithy - it may require 9 or 10 shuffles but that is a statistical lock eventually. Remember with rabble you shuffle a lot and 3 green normally do miss each shuffle. Odds are no worse for your smithy being a live card in hand than anything else (coppers, golds, or other VP).

I think you are also underestimating the effect of counters. Take farming village. This turn, sure you draw two live cards with two actions (more than enough in a strong engine to kick it off), however, you have cleared the blockage off the top of your deck and NEXT turn you will have a non-VP rich hand of 5 cards (one of which will likely be a Fv). Say 1/5 of your deck is Fv, once you break the rabble, you will be free of it every turn after that. Same with golem or scout, sure this turn is still crap; but next turn is good and that turn can also prevent your third turn from going bad (assuming you have enough counters in the deck). Even with smithy, playing it once gives you a normal hand next turn.