Remodel is one of the more interesting cards in the base set. It’s one of only 2 cards (Chapel) capable of trashing Estates! It also shows up in the
first game set so it’s one of the first cards you see, and man does it seem cool. You quickly get the idea that you can remodel Estate=>Remodel=>Gold=>Province! But then you eventually you realize that turns out to actually be pretty slow. So pure Remodel isn’t a good strategy, but surely there’ some use for the card, but what is it?
To figure that out, we need to first identify what’s good and bad about the card:
Good:
1. Can trash Estates
2. Allows you to gain multiple cards in the same turn
3. Adds $2 of value to your deck every time you play it
Bad:
1. Uses a terminal action
2. Uses up 2 cards from your hand (leaving you with only 3 if you didn't draw any)
3. You may not have a suitable card to remodel in hand
4. Silver is cheaper and is a
treasure that adds $2 of value to your deck every time you play it!
Considering the bad points, good point 3 doesn’t look so hot, so we need to focus on 1 and 2. Point 2 is the biggest one, because you can’t always pair your Remodel with an Estate. Sure the first one is easy, and you get it 80% of the time, but then once you’ve trashed one and added a few more cards to your deck, getting the two to collide is no longer automatic.
So the key situations we’re looking for are those where you want to be getting multiple cards rather than just buying one more expensive card (adding the $2 value to your buy as you would with Silver). There are 2 types of situations where this occurs:
1. Late game when you want to get multiple victory cards. For example, if you have $8 including a Gold, instead of buying a Province, you can remodel the Gold into a Province and buy a Duchy, or a whole host of similar things, including Remodeling your action cards into Duchies or even Copper into Estate if you have $1 to spare. There are also applications where you can get a Province you wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford, if you have a $6+ card and nothing else good to go with it, particularly something like a Peddler or Border Village. You can even remodel a Province into a Province or Duchy into Duchy to drain the pile and potentially screw up parity so you can win a split 4/3. On many occasions, it’s worth sneaking in a late Remodel with a spare small purchase so on the last time or two through your deck, you can play these little tricks. Of course, it works better if you’re drawing up to large hands, because then you can be reasonably be sure to actually pull it off. The presence of Remodel may also lead you to want to green slightly earlier than usual in anticipation of these Remodel shenanigans.
2. When you’re building an engine that needs a lot a cheap (sub-$5) cards. One of the biggest drawbacks of Remodel is that it uses up 2 cards from your hand, leaving you with very little purchasing power. A typical early Remodel hand lets you trash an Estate, gain a $4 card, and buy a $3 card. If you had Silver instead, you’d just keep the Estate and buy a $5 card. So when early $5 cards are critical, you don’t want to open Remodel. But if you’re building an engine that masses cards costing $2-4, and doesn’t really need $5 cards, then you’re in business. Remodel ends up working like a Workshop that also trashes Estates! Remodel openings tend to be best for things like Caravan chains, Menagerie engines, Fishing Village/Watchtower, Warehouse/Conspirator, or Village/Smithy. Notice that all of these engines not only consist primarily of cheap cards, but they also provide enough drawing/cycling to allow your Remodel to keep finding something good to hit. It’s also pretty important to have something worth getting at $2, like Cellar/Pawn/Hamlet/Haven or even Pearl Diver in case you find yourself with nothing to remodel but Coppers.
While Remodel openings are best for when you primarily want cheap cards, it can also work in situations where you still want key $5 cards along with a lot of cheap support cards (typically villages). With Remodel openings, you can still hit $5 on your non-Remodel hands, you just run the risk hitting $5 less often early on. If you can afford to take that risk in order to be able to trash your Estates and get a bunch of cheap support cards, go for it! The fact that it offers light trashing in addition to the card gaining, allows you to get a good enough village density to make a draw engine viable even in the absence of heavy trashers. It can also work nicely in conjunction with other single-card trashers, particularly Loan and Lookout, since they cost $3 and can be opened along with Remodel, when you need a little more trashing than Remodel alone can provide.
Examples:
DG pulls of a nice Coppersmith/Caravan engine with a Remodel opening in
his article on game planning.
The first game set famously supports a nice Village/Smithy engine enabled by a Remodel opening that can consistently allow you to draw your whole deck by around turn 8, and with a little luck get
8 Provinces in 15 turns! Geronimoo also wrote a
simulator article about it.
And a bunch of less well-analyzed ones that I just dug up from my games over the past 3 months:
Opening Remodel/Loan to build a
Menagerie engine vs a Mountebank opening.
Using it as
better trashing than Jack in a Festival/Wharf/Highway engine.
Enabling a
Wharf engine vs Wharf BM.
In a
Margrave/Nobles/Walled Village engine for
Fabian's Game Analysis Series, Game #1Works with:
- Cheap Labs: Caravan, Menagerie, Wishing Well(?)
- Engines powered by cheap terminal draw: Watchtower, Smithy, Envoy
- All types of villages
- Other (semi-)massable cheap non-terminals: Conspirator, Tournament, Scheme, Warehouse, Fool's Gold
- Expensive cards you get for cheap: Peddler, Border Village
- Colony (and longer games in general)
- Other light trashers: Loan, Lookout
Doesn’t work with:
- Strong trashers (which you should usually open instead of Remodel): Chapel, Ambassador, Remake, Steward
- Power 5s you need to hit early
- Big Money
- Lack of $2 cards
