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[O]

Disclaimer: I am not an authoritative expert on shanty town, but I haven't really seen someone who is. Constructive criticism is welcome and encouraged.



Shanty Town is the oft-maligned cousin of Village. At 3$, it shares a price point with the vanilla Village, which alone tells us something. It is not a village+ (like Worker's Village, Mining Village, Walled Village and Mining Village at 4$) or a Village- (Native Village at 2$). It is a card that plays entirely different from the plain old Village, and shares only the characteristic of giving two actions.

A good way to think of Shanty Town in many (but not all) games is as a restricted lab.



When is Shanty Town a good buy?

Shanty Town does not have a single thematic board type that makes it powerful. Rather, a piecemeal combination of a bunch of different cases make it a card that I would argue is more often a good buy than a vanilla village

1) Terminal-Less decks

In games where there are no terminal actions worth getting (notable cards to cause this are Familiar, Caravan and Tournament) early on, Shanty Town functions identically to a laboratory if you buy one, and each additional one functions as a slightly riskier lab (as your two shanty towns can combine). A lab for 3$ is nothing to scoff at, and while shanty-town is not deck making in these games it provides a significant boost.

Keep in mind that you can often still keep 1-2 terminals in your deck if your deck is large enough, the collision chance is small enough that buying Shanty Town will still benefit you.


2) Draw to X Engines

The draw to X engines that Shanty Town works best with are Watchtower, Library and Minion (which functions as a draw to X). It's an iffy prospect with Jack of All Trades that I would not recommend.

Shanty Town is superior to the vanilla village in Draw-To-X engines, though it is still inferior to Fishing Village (what isn't?). This is because there are three possibilities with shanty town in a draw-to-x-engine:

A) It is drawn with with a Draw-To-X-enabler card (Library, Watchtower, Minion)
B) It is drawn with no other terminal
C) It is drawn with another terminal that is not draw-to-x

Possibility A is a relatively likely option, and in this case, Shanty Town is nearly identical to a vanilla village. (Its ever so slightly worse with Watchtower and basically equivalent with Library and Minion, due to library's filtering and minions discard mechanic)
Possibility B is the second most likely option, and in this case Shanty Town is +2Cards +2Actions, far superior to village.
Possibility C is relatively unlikely in most draw-to-x decks, and is either significantly worse (no need for +actions, terminal not draw) or slightly worse (need for +actions or terminal draw card).

Conclusion: While Shanty Town is not amazingly better than village in draw-to-x, it is enough of an improvement to merit significant consideration in these decks.


3) As a counter to attacks

Shanty Town is much more likely to activate fully when you are playing it against attacks, primarily discard attacks. Shanty Town reacts slightly different against different ones, however.

Militia Shanty Town is only so-so against Militia. Often you would rather keep another terminal (say... a militia   ) as opposed to trying to recover your deck with Shanty Town.
Ghost Ship Shanty Town is an excellent counter to Ghost Ship. This is because instead of discarding your terminal actions, you can topdeck them and then draw them with your activated shanty town. This actually is almost a complete counter to ghost ship in many cases, because if they hadn't play ghost ship your Shanty Town would not have activated (both situations leave you with 4 cards and 2 actions).
Margrave Shanty Town is nice with margrave because not only does it provide a bit of a counter, it also facilitates the terminal draw aspect of margrave if you have it in your own deck.
Followers If your opponent has followers, then it is a tournament game. In which case you probably wanted a shanty town anyways to go with your tournaments.
Torturer Shanty Town does not really counter torturer very well because you're unlikely to have actions outside of +actions and torturer itself. However, since torturers are on the board you probably want a good amount of Shanty Towns anyways...
Goons See Torturer, really.

4) In games flush with actions
Fishing Village is your biggest culprit here, though certainly it's not the only case. If you have enough +Actions available to you on a given turn, you can simply play your terminals before your shanty town and then use your shanty town as a lab. In practice it plays similar to case 1, terminal-less decks, just with less of a guarantee.

5) When you need the +Actions regardless.
OK, so shanty town is worse than village in cases. Suck it up, sometimes you will still desperately need +actions in your engine. This tends to be true in torturer games, megaturn games involving terminal draw, and many others. Even when it's worse than a normal village, it's still a village variant and sometimes that's what you need. A good litmus test in these cases is that if Shanty Town has no support, if you would buy native villages for your engine, you probably should still buy Shanty Town.

6) With Massive, bloated decks
If you have 15 coppers and 5 curses in your deck, Shanty Town is far more likely to give you +2 cards. 'nough said.




When is Shanty-Town a bad buy?

1) With medium to heavy trashing! Trashing your starting coppers/estates makes it much more likely to collide and not activate. In these cases you need to evaluate if there's better alternatives and only get shanty town if you desperately need the +actions.
2) Most Terminal Draw goes pretty terribly with Shanty Town, especially envoy, embassy, smithy, and council room. Attacks are less bad because you more frequently want to build an engine around them, and because shanty town counters some of them. Vault is meh-probably take silver instead, but it makes little difference either way.
3) Big Money games involving a few terminal actions, draw or not (Jack of All Trades, Merchant Ship, Masquerade, etc.)


In conclusion: Shanty town is situational, and only sometimes can really be viewed as a village, and should not be maligned as a worse alternative to village.

Works with:
Draw to X, especially minion.
Torturer
Ghost Ship
Caravan, Tournament, Familiar, Other cantrips and nonterminals.
Bloated games caused by cursers
Fishing Village (though they conflict at 3$ and FV is usually better)
Powerful Engines

Doesn't Work With:
BM-X, where X is terminal
Games with moderate to heavy trashing that aren't powerful engines needing +action

[blueblimp]

Great article. I like the emphasis on viewing Shanty Town as a sometimes-Lab and supplement to Draw-to-X instead of as a bad Village. It's not a great card, but it's better than it's usually given credit for. I think the tricky thing about the card is that they can't be blindly massed. Even if you want some, you often want just a few and not the whole pile.

[HiveMindEmulator]

The other thing (the main thing, actually) that I like Shanty Town for is its ability to work along with another type of village to facilitate a draw engine with limited trashing. The idea is that you generally want to try to use it as a level 2 City, but when push comes to shove, it's at the very least its a card draw short of being a village. The fact that it can draw when you have only villages in hand and that it can function as both +cards and +actions when drawn alone really helps to smooth out engines.

[ednever]

Great article O.

Two comments:

1- why doesn't it work with Jack? I'm not great with either card (though councilroom disagrees with me on Jack), but I would think it would work. Draw without Jack to speed through your deck. Draw with Jack and no harm done. You'll have enough silvers with Jack that the silver opportunity cost is less relevant? But I'm likely missing something. In any case, assuming it doesn't work you should explain why.

2- Goons. It's a defense against the goons discard. And of its the only source of +actions, it's worth it for that opportunity to double goons... G+g+st = 6vp tokens if you are ok buying a couple of copper

Ed

[WanderingWinder]

1- why doesn't it work with Jack? I'm not great with either card (though councilroom disagrees with me on Jack), but I would think it would work. Draw without Jack to speed through your deck. Draw with Jack and no harm done. You'll have enough silvers with Jack that the silver opportunity cost is less relevant? But I'm likely missing something. In any case, assuming it doesn't work you should explain why.

Basically, what benefit do you get out of it? If you play shanty town and then a jack, it's done nothing for you (unless you have another action to play after, which is really rare in straight jack decks). Of course, you can play ST with no jack in hand to draw two cards, which is nice, but if you do end up drawing jack with that, the effect is mitigated, since you don't draw as much with jack itself. On the other side, you have the opportunity cost of a silver, which is actually more important, it seems. Possibly in decks with other actions, it can be a benefit, but usually there you'd prefer a different village.

[cherdano]

Any card that lets you reorganize your hand/top of the deck can give a boost to shanty town. I am thinking of haven, courtyard in the presence of other villages (play a village+courtyard, draw shantytown - hide your terminal on the deck!), cartographer/scout/apothecary/navigator (have a shanty town in hand? put a non-action card at the top of the deck before playing your cantrip - etc.).

Your point 4) is particularly strong with any disappearing village (FV, Festival, native village), as they are giving you other benefits instead of potentially drawing another terminal into your deck that will collide with your shantytown.

It can also work well in engines with discard-for-benefit cards (Inn, Hamlet, Secret chamber to a lesser extent). You discard all but one of your shantytowns, play your shantytown and other engine draw, and you can still use the discarded shantytowns later.

Overall, though, the cases where you should get more than one or two shantytowns are fairly rare.

[O]

2- Goons. It's a defense against the goons discard. And of its the only source of +actions, it's worth it for that opportunity to double goons... G+g+st = 6vp tokens if you are ok buying a couple of copper

Not sure how I forgot goons among the discard attacks.  Thanks for catching that.

The other thing (the main thing, actually) that I like Shanty Town for is its ability to work along with another type of village to facilitate a draw engine with limited trashing. The idea is that you generally want to try to use it as a level 2 City, but when push comes to shove, it's at the very least its a card draw short of being a village. The fact that it can draw when you have only villages in hand and that it can function as both +cards and +actions when drawn alone really helps to smooth out engines.

Great point, but you need some support to gain enough of ST/Other village for it to be competitive, unless that village is fishing village. Usually some sort of gainer will suffice, or even remake + vanilla village.

Any card that lets you reorganize your hand/top of the deck can give a boost to shanty town. I am thinking of haven, courtyard in the presence of other villages (play a village+courtyard, draw shantytown - hide your terminal on the deck!), cartographer/scout/apothecary/navigator (have a shanty town in hand? put a non-action card at the top of the deck before playing your cantrip - etc.).

Your point 4) is particularly strong with any disappearing village (FV, Festival, native village), as they are giving you other benefits instead of potentially drawing another terminal into your deck that will collide with your shantytown.

It can also work well in engines with discard-for-benefit cards (Inn, Hamlet, Secret chamber to a lesser extent). You discard all but one of your shantytowns, play your shantytown and other engine draw, and you can still use the discarded shantytowns later.

Overall, though, the cases where you should get more than one or two shantytowns are fairly rare.

Haven boosts ST a bit but there is some opportunity cost to hiding away other actions, and havening away an action now makes ST less valuable for the next turn.

Courtyard is great support on some boards but in BM my guess it that it's usually better to buy another courtyard, and with engine games you require a low-action-density engine for Courtyard to be effective (otherwise you're stuck with 3+ actions or something.

[jonts26]

So I've seen the shanty town in disappearing village/draw to X argument before, but I'm pretty sure it's still slightly worse than vanilla village in those engines. First, you want a good action density to pull this off, so it's unlikely shanty town every triggers for +2 cards. Or at least it will well below half the time. But the real reason is that, well yeah you draw an extra card with watchtower/library but ... you would have just drawn that card with vanilla village. The reason fishing village works so well in these engines (beside the next turn effect) is that even as it reduces your handsize it gives some other benefit, +1 coin.

And with a draw to x engine, you probably want other terminals in there, which means sometimes that not drawing from shanty town vs vanilla village is going to cost you, much more often than you'll get the +2 cards to help.

[WanderingWinder]

So I've seen the shanty town in disappearing village/draw to X argument before, but I'm pretty sure it's still slightly worse than vanilla village in those engines. First, you want a good action density to pull this off, so it's unlikely shanty town every triggers for +2 cards. Or at least it will well below half the time. But the real reason is that, well yeah you draw an extra card with watchtower/library but ... you would have just drawn that card with vanilla village. The reason fishing village works so well in these engines (beside the next turn effect) is that even as it reduces your handsize it gives some other benefit, +1 coin.

And with a draw to x engine, you probably want other terminals in there, which means sometimes that not drawing from shanty town vs vanilla village is going to cost you, much more often than you'll get the +2 cards to help.

I feel like O breaks it down really well in the article. The question is whether what he calls case B or case C happens more often, and how much of a benefit/hindrance the advantages of one vs the other are in those situations. It really depends on the particular engine and board in question, though honestly, it's not a big point - you'd need to have the choice between the two WITH all the other stuff we're talking about AND nothing that's stronger.

[O]

What I find harder to analyse is the effect of Library's filtering on shanty town.... mainly because I might have played with both cards in like 4 games or so, and it's highly dependent on what other actions are in your deck. My guess is that Library's filtering tilts it a bit more towards Shanty Town (as I hinted at in the article), as you can set aside ST after the draw-to-x if you know/highly suspect they will be drawn inactive/useless.

[jonts26]

I think Library's extra filtering will be extremely minor. Basically you need the top card of your deck to be an action that you don't want to draw. The point of a draw to x engine is to cycle through your deck to play your other actions.

Also I think both the odds of B and the benefit of B is greatly overstated. With an action heavy deck you are unlikely to trigger shanty town very much. But even if you do, it may very well be moot. For the same reasons stated in A, the extra card from shanty towns draw is only relevant if you dont play a watchtower/library etc. Cause that extra card draw would have been drawn anyway. The only exception is if the extra card draw draws the engine card you need, but now we need about 4 different things to be true simultaneously so the odds of this ever being a benefit are super small.

Not to say shanty doesn't work in these kinds of engines. I still think it works ALMOST as well as vanilla village, but it's still one of the worst villages you can use for this type of engine, if only slightly. And it's certainly more realistic to use in a draw to x engine than a more traditional engine.

[O]

I think Library's extra filtering will be extremely minor. Basically you need the top card of your deck to be an action that you don't want to draw. The point of a draw to x engine is to cycle through your deck to play your other actions.

I was more thinking you could sift out the Shanty Towns if you already had your action, or whatever.

[jonts26]

I think Library's extra filtering will be extremely minor. Basically you need the top card of your deck to be an action that you don't want to draw. The point of a draw to x engine is to cycle through your deck to play your other actions.

I was more thinking you could sift out the Shanty Towns if you already had your action, or whatever.

You mean like skip over them when you play Library? Why can't you do that with vanilla village?

[O]

I think Library's extra filtering will be extremely minor. Basically you need the top card of your deck to be an action that you don't want to draw. The point of a draw to x engine is to cycle through your deck to play your other actions.

I was more thinking you could sift out the Shanty Towns if you already had your action, or whatever.

You mean like skip over them when you play Library? Why can't you do that with vanilla village?

You can; you have no reason to with vanilla village and eliminates the downside of drawing dead Shanty Towns.

[chwhite]

Very nice.  Way back when, I ranked the Villages and put Shanty Town last, and I don't think I'd do that again.  I think it is still the single worst village for a standard Village/+X Cards engine (Torturer/Shanty Town is basically the worst way to chain Torturers... well actually Nobles is worse, or Throne Rooming Pearl Divers, but you get the idea)... but it's arguably a better card than Village overall because of its utility as a pseudo-Lab in terminal-light decks.  Splashing a Shanty Town or two in a BM deck, or a cantrip engine, or as a Militia defense, is much more productive than using it primarily for the +Actions.  If you're buying this card right, the second Action is going to usually be superfluous.

I don't really think it's any better than plain Village for "draw to X" cards, because generally if you're building that sort of engine you a) want enough draw density that case B is rare, and b) you often do want other terminals too; cycling through to your linchpins is a prime reason to go engine in the first place.  And the $2 Villages are better for that purpose as well.  But it is comparatively better in a "draw to X" engine than in a "draw X" engine, because case A (the most common one) mitigates Shanty Town's downside.  Hmm, I guess this is just what jonts26 said above.

[jomini]

A couple of points:
1. In case 6, what's the point? In a bloated deck full of coppers & curses your odds of beating a silver are virtually nil (e.g. in the specific case you mention of 15 coppers & 5 curses, you will get identical benefit from a silver 3/4 times and a superior benefit from silver in the other 1/4). If you aren't going to play an action after playing the shanty, then you just paid 1 coin extra for a moat that doesn't block attacks. With cantrips, I can see shanty = inferior lab (lvl 2 city) working, you need to draw the cantrips live to get benefit. In a bloated deck, I draw two cards ... and end my turn. I mean the kingdom would have to be almost completely worthless to make me take shanty over a silver if I'm not pairing it with actions most of the time. You need to have treasure better than a copper on average and action density low enough to hit most shanties into +2 cards to make them beat silver.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Torturer/Shanty Town is basically the worst way to chain Torturers...

With no trashing, I think Shanty Town might be the best Village for Torturers, because it has the easiest time finding a Torturer. In fact, if you take the Torturer/Village bot in Geronimoo's sim, and replace Village with Shanty Town, it does significantly better. And of course it does better still if you go 2 Shanty Towns into Villages (This was my point earlier about mixing it with other Villages to smooth things out).
Obviously, you can't completely trust these results, since the simulator defends Torturer horribly, but logically it at least makes sense, I think...

[DStu]

Torturer/Shanty Town is basically the worst way to chain Torturers...

With no trashing, I think Shanty Town might be the best Village for Torturers, because it has the easiest time finding a Torturer.

*cough* *cough* Fishing Village *cough*

[HiveMindEmulator]

Torturer/Shanty Town is basically the worst way to chain Torturers...

With no trashing, I think Shanty Town might be the best Village for Torturers, because it has the easiest time finding a Torturer.

*cough* *cough* Fishing Village *cough*

Ok so Fishing is like the best Village at anything. But the point is that Shanty is good for this situation. If both are around, you probably want both anyway.

[qmech]

You can; you have no reason to with vanilla village and eliminates the downside of drawing dead Shanty Towns.

I wasn't going to engage in pedantry here, but it turns out I'm capable of surprising myself: Village/Village/Village/Village/Village/Village/Village/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/KC/KC/Bridge/Bridge/Bridge.

EDIT: I knew there was a reason I started with 7 Villages in here.

[HiveMindEmulator]

You can; you have no reason to with vanilla village and eliminates the downside of drawing dead Shanty Towns.

I wasn't going to engage in pedantry here, but it turns out I'm capable of surprising myself: Village/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/KC/KC/Bridge/Bridge/Bridge.

The example may be extreme, but the point is correct. If you're willing to pass on a Shanty Town, you should be willing to pass on a Village. When you don't need the actions, the extra information of what cards are to follow is useful.

[O]

You can; you have no reason to with vanilla village and eliminates the downside of drawing dead Shanty Towns.

I wasn't going to engage in pedantry here, but it turns out I'm capable of surprising myself: Village/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/Transmute/KC/KC/Bridge/Bridge/Bridge.

The example may be extreme, but the point is correct. If you're willing to pass on a Shanty Town, you should be willing to pass on a Village. When you don't
need the actions, the extra information of what cards are to follow is useful.

Actually, it can still be worth it be because even if there is a chance that you'll draw x2 terminals or whatever, the opportunity cost for keeping shanty town is very high, especially compared to the opportunity cost for village.

Your case really seems like an edge case in comparison.

[chwhite]

Torturer/Shanty Town is basically the worst way to chain Torturers...

With no trashing, I think Shanty Town might be the best Village for Torturers, because it has the easiest time finding a Torturer. In fact, if you take the Torturer/Village bot in Geronimoo's sim, and replace Village with Shanty Town, it does significantly better. And of course it does better still if you go 2 Shanty Towns into Villages (This was my point earlier about mixing it with other Villages to smooth things out).
Obviously, you can't completely trust these results, since the simulator defends Torturer horribly, but logically it at least makes sense, I think...

Absolutely untrue, I'm 110% confident that Village >  Shanty Town for the purposes of Torturer (and, almost certainly for most other "Draw X" cards as well).  This is clearly a case where we're up against the limits of the simulator and are not going to get great results from it.  Let's look at this from a few different angles:

If you're building a *Village/Torturer engine, what are the various ways you can start a hand?

* You just have Torturer, no Villages: it doesn't matter either way.
* You just have Villages, no Torturer: if you only have one Village, this is the single case where Shanty Town is better than Village, because you draw two cards rather than one.  If you have two Shanty Towns, that's equivalent to two Villages (and in Torturer/Village, such an outcome is not exactly rare).  If you have three Villages, then you get more +Card from the vanilla Villages than the Shanty Town.  But even if you have that one ST hand, the extra card has to actually be a Torturer (and it's pretty slim odds) to make a huge difference.
* You have Villages AND Torturer!  Yay!  This is what you want to happen, because it maximizes your chances of getting that all-important double-Torturer hit.  And in this case, Village is clearly superior to Shanty Town, because it draws you an extra card.  Now, maybe you might want to have Shanty Town in hand to defend against opponents' Torturers and draw an extra card... but you are not going to discard your own Torturers to activate your Shanty Towns, because the chance of hitting Torturer in just the two cards you draw from ST (and drawing Torturers from ST is really the only case where ST has an appreciable advantage over Torturer here) is a really, really slim chance.

Another data point in disfavor of Shanty Town/Torturer: the CR card winningness stats.

http://councilroom.com/supply_win?&targets=torturer&interaction=true&nested=false&unconditional=true

You will note that ALL of the best cards for Torturer are Villages.  Every single one.  This passes the smell test, does it not?  City over Fishing Village is a little surprising (though can easily be explained by the fact that Torturer/Village often leads to the Curse pile running out, ergo Level 2 Cities are easy to achieve), but other than that it's not so surprising.  The top 12 cards for Torturer, and 15 of the top 16, give +Actions or are King's Court.  In fact, basically all the Villages are in this rank... EXCEPT for Shanty Town (edit: and University).  Mind you Shanty Town is still in the top 20, if it's the only way to chain Torturers it's probably still worth it.  But it's pretty clearly worse than all the other alternatives.  And if you realize that whenever you're chaining Torturers with ST you're NOT getting the +2 Cards, you're merely getting +2 Actions for $3 (a real raw deal), then it makes complete logical sense that Shanty Town would be the worst Village for Torturer.

Now what is possibly true is that if your opponent is going for Torturer and you're NOT going for Torturer but have some different plan that you think can handle the torture, than Shanty Town is a particularly good Village to have.  Because it'll be easier to activate and you are not so dependent on chaining terminals.  But I don't think that's what you were going for.

[WanderingWinder]

Torturer/Shanty Town is basically the worst way to chain Torturers...

With no trashing, I think Shanty Town might be the best Village for Torturers, because it has the easiest time finding a Torturer. In fact, if you take the Torturer/Village bot in Geronimoo's sim, and replace Village with Shanty Town, it does significantly better. And of course it does better still if you go 2 Shanty Towns into Villages (This was my point earlier about mixing it with other Villages to smooth things out).
Obviously, you can't completely trust these results, since the simulator defends Torturer horribly, but logically it at least makes sense, I think...

Absolutely untrue, I'm 110% confident that Village >  Shanty Town for the purposes of Torturer (and, almost certainly for most other "Draw X" cards as well).  This is clearly a case where we're up against the limits of the simulator and are not going to get great results from it.  Let's look at this from a few different angles:

If you're building a *Village/Torturer engine, what are the various ways you can start a hand?

* You just have Torturer, no Villages: it doesn't matter either way.
* You just have Villages, no Torturer: if you only have one Village, this is the single case where Shanty Town is better than Village, because you draw two cards rather than one.  If you have two Shanty Towns, that's equivalent to two Villages (and in Torturer/Village, such an outcome is not exactly rare).  If you have three Villages, then you get more +Card from the vanilla Villages than the Shanty Town.  But even if you have that one ST hand, the extra card has to actually be a Torturer (and it's pretty slim odds) to make a huge difference.
* You have Villages AND Torturer!  Yay!  This is what you want to happen, because it maximizes your chances of getting that all-important double-Torturer hit.  And in this case, Village is clearly superior to Shanty Town, because it draws you an extra card.  Now, maybe you might want to have Shanty Town in hand to defend against opponents' Torturers and draw an extra card... but you are not going to discard your own Torturers to activate your Shanty Towns, because the chance of hitting Torturer in just the two cards you draw from ST (and drawing Torturers from ST is really the only case where ST has an appreciable advantage over Torturer here) is a really, really slim chance.

Another data point in disfavor of Shanty Town/Torturer: the CR card winningness stats.

http://councilroom.com/supply_win?&targets=torturer&interaction=true&nested=false&unconditional=true

You will note that ALL of the best cards for Torturer are Villages.  Every single one.  This passes the smell test, does it not?  City over Fishing Village is a little surprising (though can easily be explained by the fact that Torturer/Village often leads to the Curse pile running out, ergo Level 2 Cities are easy to achieve), but other than that it's not so surprising.  The top 12 cards for Torturer, and 15 of the top 16, give +Actions or are King's Court.  In fact, basically all the Villages are in this rank... EXCEPT for Shanty Town.  Mind you Shanty Town is still in the top 20, if it's the only way to chain Torturers it's probably still worth it.  But it's pretty clearly worse than all the other alternatives.  And if you realize that whenever you're chaining Torturers with ST you're NOT getting the +2 Cards, you're merely getting +2 Actions for $3 (a real raw deal), then it makes complete logical sense that Shanty Town would be the worst Village for Torturer.

Now what is possibly true is that if your opponent is going for Torturer and you're NOT going for Torturer but have some different plan that you think can handle the torture, than Shanty Town is a particularly good Village to have.  Because it'll be easier to activate and you are not so dependent on chaining terminals.  But I don't think that's what you were going for.

I think the real way to test this, or anything like this, is to have some test games. The CR winningness stats sort of pass the smell test, but there is this idea amongst strong players that ST sucks with torturer, which means fewer of them play it, which makes those stats look worse. It's a bias in the data. Does that mean the data here is wrong? I dunno...

[chwhite]

I'd definitely be up for some test games.  Probably not today, though, I'm pretty busy.