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[painted_cow]

Well, I got 20 cards above 85%, wont give numbers for all :-)

Chapel 97 %
Ambassador 92 %
Fishing Village 89 % -1.41 Effect with!
Mountebank 86 %   -1.51 Effect with! How I hate this card.
KC 86 %

[DStu]

I wasn't surprised that Market and Caravan is on the list, but that the EffectWith was so positive. With cards that you pick up because they don't hurt, you would somehow expect to have an effect +-0.

[guided]

But I think, say, Fishing Village is a legit must-buy by the standards of this thread. It fuels other nastier cards so effectively that it itself becomes rather nasty.

I can't really disagree with this. All on its own it's not a must-buy, but boards where it's highly useful are the rule rather than the exception. When I say it suits my playstyle, well, my effect with is 1.26

[LetsGame]

I looked back quickly through my games to find an interesting alternative strategy to goons. I've no idea when I played it and I know nothing about my opponent but it's a fun one anyway. http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110201-165128-9ac294f7.html.

This is a nice engine DG. It bought all 8 provinces and was immune to Goons attacks.

[NinjaBus]

Still a risky strategy, if your opponent didn't copper themselves to oblivion 1 powerhouse goons/tactician turn could've earned more points than all of the green cards in the game combined.

[minced]

I'm surprised your opponent didn't use chapel to clear out some of that copper - 16 coppers?! wow.

[WanderingWinder]

Still a risky strategy, if your opponent didn't copper themselves to oblivion 1 powerhouse goons/tactician turn could've earned more points than all of the green cards in the game combined.

You'd basically need to be able to organize playing like 5 goons in a single hand... quite unlikely.

[NinjaBus]

Still a risky strategy, if your opponent didn't copper themselves to oblivion 1 powerhouse goons/tactician turn could've earned more points than all of the green cards in the game combined.

You'd basically need to be able to organize playing like 5 goons in a single hand... quite unlikely.

It's set specific, but for that set it had worker village, lab, tactician and chapel trashing. It'd be easy.

[WanderingWinder]

Not fast enough. You need: 5 goons, 1 tactician, a chapel, 3 WVs, and enough time to set all that up by turn 18. Could you do it? Maybe. Not easily. Would you win with this strategy? Yeah, I think you would, 'cause you could start grabbing VP chips well before your one turn.

[guided]

Single-Tac is fast enough: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201107/21/game-20110721-122814-6db4a6a1.html

and so is double-Tac (which is how I would have approached it myself): http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201107/21/game-20110721-124050-47b61c12.html

Either deck could easily eclipse 50 points by turn 18 if the game was in danger of ending.

[chwhite]

Warning: looooooooooooooong post ahead.

There are 18 cards I buy over 85 percent of the time, twelve of which are over 90.  That's a lot of cards, which indicates that perhaps I am more predictable than I ought to be. While there are no cards which are true "must-buys", a couple come close- and no I don't think Chapel comes closest.

#1 is Fishing Village, which I buy 96.9 percent of the time.  Considering it's the #1 bought card on Isotropic overall, that's not actually surprising.  By itself, it's not a must-buy, but there are vanishingly few situations where it isn't strictly better than Silver (since it gives that much money anyway in addition to the extra actions).  It's pretty close to being a must-buy. 

#2 through #5 are all Cornucopia cards!  Hunting Party at 95.5, Menagerie at 95, Tournament at 94.3, and Remake at 93.8.  There is definitely an "ooh shiny! I want the new cards!" effect going on, but it's actually a really small effect.  HP is so much better than Lab it's not funny- a stack of Hunting Parties doesn't just get you a huge hand each turn, it is especially good at enabling tricky combos or working with untrimmed decks.  There was a game a couple days ago where I skipped HP because I had a double-Tactician setup with trashing and didn't need any other card draw, but HP is just so good in such a wide range of situations.  I might even rank it above Minion, Torturer, and GS in a combined Top $5 Cards list.  Menagerie does no harm even in decks it's ill-suited for, and does so much good in favorable situations.  I probably overbuy it a little, but not much.  Prizes are powerful enough that I'd only consider skipping Tournament in games which are obviously suited to Goons or Gardens, and Remake is another card I probably overbuy but it's a good enough trasher that I'm willing to take it instead of Chapel half of the time.

#6 is Ambassador at 93.6 and honestly I'm not sure why it's that low.  If you're not going Gardens, or it's a Possession game with other strong trashing options, you need to go Ambassador and win that war, otherwise you're likely screwed.  I consider Ambassador to be the closest thing Dominion has to a true must-buy, and would absolutely rank it above Chapel as "best card in the game".  BTW I utterly hate Ambassador games.

#7 is Festival at 92.3, which seems way too high until you realize it's way too high for Isotropic at large, too- not surprising considering it's really just an overpriced Fishing Village with +Buy.  (Given how good FV is, this makes it not actually overpriced.)  I have a huge soft spot for Festival and do very, very well with it around, but wouldn't call it a must-buy.

Five other cards break the 90% barrier for me: Goons and Hamlet at 91.5, Nobles at 91.3, Chapel at 90.8 and Mountebank at 90.6.  Here we're finally getting to the sorts of cards which most people would call "must-buy".  Goons is pretty close- even if you can't build a Goons engine it's probably a good idea to make it your terminal; Mountebank is the baddest attack out there; Chapel is Chapel.  Hamlet is an ubercheap "do-no-harm" cantrip with surprisingly strong powers to enable chaining, and Nobles is a card I definitely overbuy but still think is important to grab your share of in most games.

The rest of the over-85 crowd include King's Court at 88.8, Apprentice at 87.3, Mining Village at 86.8, Minion  and Upgrade at 85.5, and Caravan at 85.4.  Of these cards, King's Court is the closest to a must-buy- unless you're playing a super-Cursy or Gardens game where nobody ever reaches $7, you're going to need some of these.  It's the most powerful card in the game, and its ability is arguably "unsafe at any price".  There was a period of time where I overbought Minion, but it's usually a must-buy except in certain well-defined circumstances.  Apprentice is rocket fuel for your deck, it's almost always worth buying.  Mining Village and Caravan do no harm and usually do a lot of good, and Upgrade is a card I massively overvalued for awhile.  Well, actually I'm not sure Caravan does a lot of good: I do horribly when I buy Caravan and it has by far my worst "Effect With" at -3.47.

…

There are some surprising omissions!  No Familiar, no Witch, no Province.  To be fair, Familiar and Province are right behind.  Familiar is kinda like Chapel: if it's out you need to get a card that does what it does, but you don't necessarily need that card itself.  If the other Potion pickings are slim, I'll pick a different curse-giver.  Witch I should buy more, but again it's not my favorite curse-giver: I'll grab a Mountebank first almost every time.  Given my play-style, I kinda expected Tactician and Peddler to be higher as well.  If you just looked at the past couple months Masquerade would also be up there, but I ignored it way too often when I was starting out here, so it has a hill to climb.  Not sure why Grand Market is so low either.

…

Alternatively, instead of looking at our Buy%, why don't we look at our "Win Rate Without" and pick the cards with the worst rate- the cards that, if we don't buy, we lose.   On this list, my champion is the humble Hamlet, which if I skip it leaves me with a terribad 0.71 Win Rate.  Hamlet!  Whoda thunk!  Second is Fishing Village at 0.78, which lends credence to the idea that these cheap cards aren't just "do-no-harm", that you in fact can't afford to ignore them and still win.  Third, at 0.89, is Trusty Steed, but prizes don't really count here.  Next is the Best Attack, Mountebank, at 0.92.  Fifth is Lighthouse at 0.95.  Yeah, Lighthouse.  Which is surprising until you realize it's a Silver's worth of buying power for $2, and has the strongest Reaction effect in the game.  Perhaps it is really a must-buy when attacks are around, as opposed to Moat and Secret Chamber which are terrible cards that should usually be avoided even when attacks are around. 

There are three other cards where I only break even when I skip them.  Two of them, Chapel and Ambassador, should be no surprise.  The third is Woodcutter.  Why I do so poorly when I skip Woodcutter is an utter mystery, probably even more so than why I suck at Caravans.

All in all, the top 10 cards I consider closest to being must-buys, in rough order:
Ambassador
King's Court
Mountebank
Fishing Village
Goons
Familiar
Hunting Party
Tournament
Chapel- yes, all the way down here at number 9.
Hamlet

The next cards looking in would be Witch, Masquerade, and, I dunno, Grand Market?

[Axe Knight]

Another thing to keep in mind is that what makes a card a "must-buy" is relative to the other cards in the kingdom.  The reason I always go for the +2 Cards +1 Action cards is mostly due to the fact that they work well in any kingdom.  But there are some cards people consider "must-buys" that are only such when the kingdom supports it.  This is the same criticism I have of the list of "best" cards or the list of Best Openings on councilroom.  Helpful overall, but you have to consider the entire situation. 

[painted_cow]

Alternatively, instead of looking at our Buy%, why don't we look at our "Win Rate Without" and pick the cards with the worst rate- the cards that, if we don't buy, we lose.   On this list, my champion is the humble Hamlet, which if I skip it leaves me with a terribad 0.71 Win Rate.  Hamlet!  Whoda thunk!  Second is Fishing Village at 0.78, which lends credence to the idea that these cheap cards aren't just "do-no-harm", that you in fact can't afford to ignore them and still win.  Third, at 0.89, is Trusty Steed, but prizes don't really count here.  Next is the Best Attack, Mountebank, at 0.92.  Fifth is Lighthouse at 0.95.  Yeah, Lighthouse.  Which is surprising until you realize it's a Silver's worth of buying power for $2, and has the strongest Reaction effect in the game.  Perhaps it is really a must-buy when attacks are around, as opposed to Moat and Secret Chamber which are terrible cards that should usually be avoided even when attacks are around. 

Imo these numbers dont say much. At least on my lists these cards with "bad win rates without" have a really low number of occassions. the relative numbers with +- are high. Therefor I would not give them much credit.

But your conclusive list seems good to me, at least cards, not excact placement (which does not matter anyway).

[WanderingWinder]

chwhite, nice post, but I have one big issue to take. KC is nowhere near a must buy.

[krawhitham]

I'm a little late to the party to suggest this but...

The question probably needs dividing into:

1) Cards that I must buy 1 (or a small number) of
2) Cards that I must buy lots of

So I would put Caravan into the 'buying lots of' catagory.

[Thisisnotasmile]

I'm a little late to the party to suggest this but...

The question probably needs dividing into:

1) Cards that I must buy 1 (or a small number) of
2) Cards that I must buy lots of

So I would put Caravan into the 'buying lots of' catagory.

Caravan is not a must buy. Caravan is a "I have $4 and nothing better to buy" buy. Go into any random Caravan game and play with a strategy of rushing as many Caravans as possible before doing anything else. You will lose.

[Davio]

Disclaimer: I am only Level 28 at Isotropic, so obviously past the beginner stage, but not yet up there with the great ones, so take this for what it's worth.

My Top 10:

1. Tournament - 95,6%
Who doesn't like an early Peddler? It's sad to see that most setups with Tournament are generally races for Trusty Steed and the others. It loses some value in Colony, but I've seen many a game skip Colonies and go for Provinces instead, just because of Tournament.

2. Laboratory - 95,2%
What can I say? It's a well known gem. It helps almost every deck.

3. Mountebank - 94,3%
My view on Curses: I'd rather give them than get them. Mountebank stays useful when Curses are gone, dealing Coppers.

4. Chapel - 93,9%
The best $2 in the game, if it would have cost $3, it might even have been the best $3.

5. Mining Village - 93,7%
A personal favorite, I see it as an early attempt at using a Gold (trashing it and drawing a Copper with it). I trash this quite aggressively as is advised.

6 Menagerie - 91,8%
I'm surprised that this percentage is so high, but then again I'm not. I generally buy this if I strike out with just $3 and I feel I have enough Silvers already. It also effectively counters some attacks like Ghost Ship and Militia (Goons).

7. Fishing Village - 90,0%
I wonder if I maybe like this card too much, but as with all duration cards, the fact that it isn't in your hand the second time helps a lot.

8. Caravan - 88,6%
Right up there with Laboratory.

9. Farming Village - 87,2%
Hey, another Village, what do you know!

10. Silver - 86,4%
Okay, this one doesn't really count.

Honorable mention: King's Court - 84,4%
Obviously only as good as the other actions


Of these 10, I think only Tournament, Mountebank, Laboratory and Chapel are must buys for me. The other cards are more like, "Okay, I have $X and I want a card that doesn't hurt my deck."

I have Ambassador at only 76,1%, I wonder why it's so low. Maybe I have disregarded this too much in the earlier levels, this has become a must buy now though; being on the wrong end of the seesaw is no fun.


Worst 5:

5. Library - 5,3%
I probably undervalue this too much.

4. Adventurer - 5,1%
I'd buy it more if it cost $5 or $4, maybe.. with $6 I generally rather buy a Gold.

3. Cutpurse - 4,1%
What? I actually bought this?

2. Explorer - 3,8%
When you have enough Provinces to show, it's likely time to buy Duchies instead of Explorers.

1. Bureaucrat - 3,2%
Must have come up in the phase when I wanted to try every card.

[Thisisnotasmile]

I'm surprised Cutpurse is in your 5 least bought cards! Brilliant early-game terminal silver and also combos well with Mountebank (They're gonna have a lot of Coppers, play Cutpurses and they can't even spend them). Also, Bureaucrat is criminally underrated. My bottom 5:

Fortune Teller - 11.4% - Obviously a bad card. Good in some situations though.
Contraband - 10.3% - I'd much rather have a Gold.
Explorer - 9.6% - By the time you want it, it's too late to buy it.
Stash - 9.3% - Seriously, I hate this card. It's minimally better than Silver. Sometimes I spend a $5 buy on Silver when Stash is available just so I don't have to mess about reordering every time I shuffle. I need a very good reason to buy Stash.
Counting House - 4.3% - Situational. It's good when the right situations present themselves, they just don't present themselves very much at all.

[guided]

Caravan is not a must buy. Caravan is a "I have $4 and nothing better to buy" buy. Go into any random Caravan game and play with a strategy of rushing as many Caravans as possible before doing anything else. You will lose.

I'm mostly in agreement with you--Caravan is a "might as well buy" rather than a "must buy"--but let me do say that a pure Caravan rush can work. The dream board is probably something like Caravan/Ironworks/Worker's Village/Workshop/Bank, opening IW/Workshop and focusing 100% on getting Caravans until the pile is empty.

I've definitely a couple of times laughed off Caravan and let somebody get 8 or 9 of them quickly and then gotten crushed by superior hand-size. This certainly doesn't apply to every Caravan board, but it can happen from time to time.


edit: Just read Davio's post. If you think Library and Cutpurse are among the worst cards in the game... can you and I play a whole bunch of games with those cards please? You've underrated Bureaucrat as well, but while it's a good card on a lot of boards it's rarely a great card. I don't buy it enough, myself.

[rattenversammlung]

While I appreciate what Cutpurse can do in a game with no way to remove the copper, and especially in games where there is no good 5$ card or 4$ card where cutpurse can steal 2$ worth of an opponent's hand as early as turn 3, I have yet to find use for Bureaucrat outside a gardens game (where both parts are valuable) or as mediocre hate against Nobles, Islands and Barons (which can also backfire as well if you think about it)

by the way: (effect_w minus effect_wo)(wRate_w minus wRate_ wo)
Chapel 100% (-0.34)(+0.23)
Fishy 95.3% (+2.13)(+0.40)
Tourney 94.0% (-1.21)(+0.04)
Remake 92.6% (-0.04)(-0.22!)
Caravan 92.4% (-1.08)(-0.10!)
So except for Fishy I overbuy all of these
for reference: wRate copper available: 1.27

Thief 2.4% ()(-0.61)
Adventurer 3.0% ()(-0.49)
Navigator 3.5% ()(-0.39)
Counting House 4.3% ()(-0.50)
Bureaucrat 4.7% ()(-0.82)

[AJD]

I've sometimes found Bureaucrat to work well as the $4 in a chapel opening, but sometimes not.... On the one hand, there's the risk of clashing terminals, but on the other hand you can trash all your copper without having to worry about where your silver is going to be coming from.

[chwhite]

My least-bought cards:

#1- Thief at 4.3%.  This is shocking.  Not that Thief is at number 1, but that it ended up in my deck this often!  I mean, seriously, Thief is a horrible card that is basically never good in any situation, and I knew that even when I started playing Isotropic!  Digging deeper, it seems I gained it as often as I bought it, so perhaps it's twice as high as it would be without opponents' Swindling.  And maybe I used it to push my Fairgrounds to 6 or something.  But I had to have legitimately bought it a couple times, and I really have no idea why.

#2 is Explorer at 6.2%.  I hate this card.  It gives you combo-killing Silver (gag me) and unlike Bureaucrat you can't usually open with it.  It's probably a little better than I give it credit for, and I should try it in a Duke strategy someday, but really it just sucks.

#3, speak of the devil, is Bureaucrat at 8.7%.  I buy it with Gardens and Dukes, and leave it otherwise.

#4 is Saboteur at 8.9%.  It has its niches (add Minion and KC and it's suddenly killer) but usually I'd rather let it sit there.  Not as bad as Explorer.

#5 is Treasure Map at 10.1%, which if anything I underbuy.  I tend to avoid it even with enablers, and that's cost me a few games.  What can I say, I prefer to get my coin from Actions, and TM is too high-variance for my taste.

Other cards I buy less than 15 percent of the time: Adventurer at 10.5; it's the one legitimately bad 6+ and it's probably the reason I had such a hard time grasping Venture.  Has a niche in Chapel-Big Money and that's mostly it.  Outpost at 11.7%- random 3-card hands usually don't work!  Fun with Minion or Tactician though.  Counting House at 11.9%; Coppersmith at 13.4%.  Counting House is kinda like the Spy in Stratego, in that it is a devastatingly effective counter to the two worst attacks in the game (Mountebank and Ambassador), but mostly useless everywhere else.  I do a very good job of winning on the rare occasions I buy it.  Coppersmith is a much different beast, again it's mostly useless but has a niche with Apothecary or some mega-turn combos.  Rounding out the hall of shame is the eminently forgettable Stash at 13.8%.

This list does not entirely square with my conception of what cards are the "worst", in particular Moat and Secret Chamber are worse than most of the cards here, but they're cheap enough that I get them more than the $5s on this list.  Transmute and Smugglers are also kinda horrible but it took me awhile to figure that out.

[guided]

While I appreciate what Cutpurse can do in a game with no way to remove the copper, and especially in games where there is no good 5$ card or 4$ card where cutpurse can steal 2$ worth of an opponent's hand as early as turn 3, I have yet to find use for Bureaucrat outside a gardens game (where both parts are valuable) or as mediocre hate against Nobles, Islands and Barons (which can also backfire as well if you think about it)

Bureaucrat is quite strong in Big Money-ish decks in general. Top-decking a Silver is good in the final stretch when every Duchy counts, and dumping Estates back on an opponent's deck in the early going is a significant effect. When you call dumping a card back onto the deck "minor hate" you reveal that you underestimate just how bad it is to lose one card out of your 5-card hand! Ditto when you poo-poo the early-game effects of Cutpurse. Losing $1 out of two hands early in the game (even if that's all Cutpurse's attack ever accomplished) is a big deal.

Neither of these are elite cards, but to call them bad cards belies significant gaps in strategic understanding.

[chwhite]

While I appreciate what Cutpurse can do in a game with no way to remove the copper, and especially in games where there is no good 5$ card or 4$ card where cutpurse can steal 2$ worth of an opponent's hand as early as turn 3, I have yet to find use for Bureaucrat outside a gardens game (where both parts are valuable) or as mediocre hate against Nobles, Islands and Barons (which can also backfire as well if you think about it)

Bureaucrat is quite strong in Big Money-ish decks in general. Top-decking a Silver is good in the final stretch when every Duchy counts, and dumping Estates back on an opponent's deck in the early going is a significant effect. When you call dumping a card back onto the deck "minor hate" you reveal that you underestimate just how bad it is to lose one card out of your 5-card hand! Ditto when you poo-poo the early-game effects of Cutpurse. Losing $1 out of two hands early in the game (even if that's all Cutpurse's attack ever accomplished) is a big deal.

Neither of these are elite cards, but to call them bad cards belies significant gaps in strategic understanding.

I tend to avoid Bureaucrat because I dislike strategies that rely on lots of Silver- I recognize that it can be better than most people think it is, but it doesn't fit my usual play style.

100 percent agreement on Cutpurse, though.  It's a solid opener that can do almost as much damage as Militia, and I don't get why people dislike it so much.

[guided]

Yeah, high-Silver strategies aren't really my style either. I'll venture to force an action-chain strategy out of just about any board with non-terminals, even when it's probably not the right move.