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[rrenaud]

I haven't done all that much testing on this, but I think it's better idea to use early Remakes to trash coppers rather than turn estates into 3 cost cards.  After your deck is small and mostly money-less, you can turn the estates into silvers and draw them quickly to bootstrap yourself out of the $3 to $4 average money phase quickly, almost chapel style.

I guess this shouldn't be surprising, it follows the conventional Dominion wisdom that you should trash aggressively early in the game.

[shark_bait]

If you're going to remake them into silvers anyway, why not just do it right away?  You get rid of "dead" cards earlier and replace them with cards of monetary value.  I think this would help get to the $5 or 6$ level faster than leaving green cards in your deck.  Then once they are remade, you can work on the coppers.

[Dave970]

Just depends on what's in your hand at the time, and what's on the board, really.  Assuming you buy a remake with a 4/3 start, say you draw Remake, Copper, Copper, Estate, Estate.  Are there any good $2 cards on the board?  If not, make your deck smaller, since you weren't going to buy anything, anyway.  But if there is a good $2 card, why not dump the Estates to Silvers (at least, or something else useful), and also buy the $2 card?  Also, if you do decide on the Estate -> Silver route, when it all comes back around in the next shuffle, you're likely to have money to get something useful (via the Silvers) while still dumping the Coppers you wanted to dump anyway.  I'm sure the mathematicians will have a fact-backed answer soon    My answer is that the best choice will be different in any different game and shuffle.

[HockeyHippo]

I agree, having a thinner deck will allow you to draw your remake faster, resulting in more trashing and a better overall deck.

[PetterTB]

Hey, I never thought of it that way before! I usually trash the estates as soon as I have the chance!

[guided]

I would prefer Remaking an Estate to trashing a Copper just about 100% of the time, I think. I don't think it's close, either. If you find careful study of game situations contradicts my instincts here I'd be very interested to hear about it.

[Superdad]

Funny this post appeared. I'm not remake's biggest fan, but a few days ago I ran into a game where remake was really good.

I played the game and remade my estates, but after the game I realized that I could have gone with a pretty aggressive bishop/silver/silver/gold/province deck had I instead remade the coppers first.

I actually think remake is a very strong card, particularly on a bishop board in a province game. All you really need to do is get up to a single gold in terms of buying power, and just keep trash trash trashing your deck down. When you get down far enough, you bishop the remake (and generally buy the gold this turn as well, ideally with a 5-card deck of bishop/silver/silver/silver/gold).

I find it pretty funny that this post popped up, I've been meaning to create it myself. I mean, steward is pretty solid at the start of a game.

[WanderingWinder]

The only reason (okay, you might actually want the estates, and if you've played a bridge or something and other very rare circumstances exist, but most of the time) you want to ditch the coppers first is because you will more often get the remake with bad cards early on. And I'm with guided, I doubt this is a good enough reason. Copper really isn't THAT bad.

[Superdad]

There are some decks where it's absolutely critical to reaching a thin deck fast. The bishop deck is a perfect example of this for two reasons. Firstly, it wants to hit a 5 card deck as soon as possible. Secondly, it doesn't need a whole lot of buying power. It really only needs to hit 3 silvers, 1 gold, 1 bishop, then it buys a province every turn.

Another example would be a Worker's Village/Peddler deck. It really only needs to hit $4, and it wants to be very lean. You would absolutely buy more peddlers faster if you trashed coppers before estates. I don't know if in this particular deck I would trash 4 coppers in a row, but I could see trashing the first two, then trashing two estates to silvers, then going back to coppers.

[rrenaud]

Awesome, I thought I was going to get a "yeah dude, trash the coppers", so at least someone will learn something from this .

Here is a game that motivated the remake coppers rather than estates first.  It was a Colony game, which probably helps the case for getting rid of coppers early, since there is a bigger cost for having coppers in the deck longer.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110712-211120-8205e975.html

I kind of wish I had a more advanced search, so I could query for games involving players >= level 30, where both open remake, and one trashes coppers early while the other remakes estates.

[guided]

I mean, you could just run a simulation of two single-Remake/Big Money bots, one that prefers to trash Copper and one that prefers to upgrade Estates. Not the end-all-be-all in settling the debate, but fairly instructive nonetheless.

[rrenaud]

Yeah, big money strategy simulations could offer some insight.  But simulations tend to vastly undervalue a trimmed deck (here, the small deck let's the upgrade/library combo work well together).  Chapel/big money barely beats big money in simulations, but anyone who is good at all loves chapel.

[WanderingWinder]

It's going to be situational. In colony games, you're more likely to want to trash the coppers, as you say.
Not sure how easy that's going to be to set up in the sims. Certainly we can't do it with what's publicly available to us. One of the coders of the sim could probably do it pretty easily. But we can always do it old-school; solitaire the thing.

Also, I think I'm 'good at all', but I don't love chapel. Just like I don't love ambassador (though ambassador is worse). Doesn't mean I don't think they're incredibly powerful.

[Elyv]

I feel like it depends on the board. If there are a lot of good actions/cursing attacks, I'd rather trash the copper so I can draw my mountebanks or whatever more frequently. If there aren't, I'd rather get silvers so I can get my golds faster.

[guided]

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110712-211120-8205e975.html

I've had difficulty reproducing anything like this result, either by prefering to trash copper or estates. I'm beginning to think it was mainly a matter of getting lucky at turns 4 and 5:

Code: [Select]

--- rrenaud's turn 4 ---
rrenaud plays a Silver and 3 Coppers.
rrenaud buys an Upgrade.
(rrenaud reshuffles.)
(rrenaud draws: 5 Coppers.)

--- rrenaud's turn 5 ---
rrenaud plays 5 Coppers.
rrenaud buys an Upgrade.
(rrenaud draws: a Remake, a Silver, an Upgrade, and 2 Estates.)

Trashing 2 Coppers at turn 3 and then getting Upgrades on the next 2 turns is very good and very unlikely.

[ARTjoMS]

I think that estates to silvers is clearly better, if you fail to do this your buying power will fall behind resulting in snowball effect.

I think that more interesting early copper/estate problem is when you draw ambassador, 3 coppers and an estate.

[rrenaud]

If you trash the coppers, your deck gets smaller so that you can further remake it quickly.  Once it gets very small, you can turn the estates into silvers that are drawn basically very turn and have a nice comeback.  You have a long "early game" in return for a short "mid game."

I think the mint like "don't trash coppers too early" heuristic is wrong, because you can move up the money ladder quickly after your deck is small without the need for coppers via the estate to silver remake.

But it's possible that I am just overgeneralizing from one game that went very smoothly.

[WanderingWinder]

As I've said, I think both are reasonable, and it largely depends on the board, but generally trashing the estates first is preferable.
But I also think opening mint/decent-money-producing-$2 is much much better than it gets credit for on these boards.

[painted_cow]

Well, I think this choice is not easy at all. When I go for a chainlike deck I would trash coppers first (really trashing instead of "just" upgrading your estates). So you will draw your engine, and with it the Remake more often.

While when you go for BigMoney type deck trashing Estates should be better, cause you get to 6 faster.

[WanderingWinder]

I also want to point out that it matters what you're remaking into. If you're lifting the estates into some kind of cantrip-plus, it's a no-brainer to go for the estates first. So actually there's either big money or combo decks without cantrip 3s that are going to benefit most from trashing the coppers first.

[ackack]

I think that estates to silvers is clearly better, if you fail to do this your buying power will fall behind resulting in snowball effect.

I think that more interesting early copper/estate problem is when you draw ambassador, 3 coppers and an estate.

Yep, I agree with both of these. The argument that occasionally there are spots where Remaking Coppers first is better I can see, but I think that's the exception and not the rule. I also think the "always return 2" heuristic with Ambassador is not obvious, and again depends on what else is going on.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I mean, you could just run a simulation of two single-Remake/Big Money bots, one that prefers to trash Copper and one that prefers to upgrade Estates. Not the end-all-be-all in settling the debate, but fairly instructive nonetheless.

I don't think this can really provide much insight. I suspect estate->silver is better is better in big money decks, what with big money decks relying heavily on silver and not caring much for deck-size reduction. But if you're transitioning into something that requires a lot of trashing, trashing the coppers first may be favorable.

[drg]

If there are really useful 2's, 3's and 4's you almost surely want to trash the estates so you get some of those useful cards and still have your turn's buy power.  Like.. hamlet, fishing village, smithy being around, or pawns and peddlers.

If just going for silvers, depends on the board. If trying to put together an action engine, probably best to trash the coppers. If the board is crap, it's a province game and just going for $$, get rid of the estates and get the silvers.

[philosophyguy]

One factor that needs to be emphasized is that the Remake strategy that trashes Copper cannot trash as fast as a Chapel strategy. While the Chapel player does need to buy a Silver at some point (hopefully he/she can afford it on a turn when the Chapel is not in hand), the Chapel can nuke twice as many cards as the Remake in one go. Remake does have an edge in that it can flip Estates to Silvers, so it can gain more buying power in one turn. But, I don't know if Remake can thin fast enough to make use of that advantage vs. a Chapel player who will get to cycle the deck quicker and hence move out of the early-game phase sooner.

Obviously this gets quite complicated when we start looking at what other cards are available in the $3-4 range. But, I would be interested in seeing a simulation of Chapel-BM vs. Remake-trash-copper-then Estate to Silver-BM. That comparison should at least give a sense of whether the ability of Remake to quickly create buying power outweighs the slower start vis-a-vis Chapel.

[philosophyguy]

Follow-up: I couldn't run a proper simulation, but I did try out a comparison of Chapel vs. Remake-trash-coppers with perfect shuffle luck. Best case scenario, the Remake strategy is in far better shape than I assumed against the Chapel strategy.

By the end of turn 6, Chapel had a deck of Chapel and 3 Silvers. By comparison, Remake had a deck of 3 Copper, 3 Estates, but 2 Silvers and a Gold. So, Remake has better buying power at the moment, and also can scale up faster because the Estates are still around to convert to Silver.

Play details, if anyone is curious:

Turn	Chapel	Remake
1	Buy Chapel	Buy Remake
2	Buy Silver	Buy Silver
3	Trash Estate x 3 & Copper x 1	Remake Copper x 2
4	Buy Silver	Buy Silver
5	Trash Copper x 4	Remake Copper x 2
6	Trash Copper x 2;	Buy Gold
	Buy Silver

Even if the Chapel player decides not to trash the Copper on turn 6 in order to buy a Gold, the Remake strategy can still scale up faster because the remaining Estates are Silvers-in-waiting for Remake.