Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[HiveMindEmulator]

Not a whole lot to complain about with the top 10. My list is probably worse than this one, since I probably underrated Governor a lot.

Witch vs Mountebank I could go either way on, but I still think Witch should be #1. While it's not as good as Mountebank at eliminating the possibility of an engine, it's still good enough most of the time, so there's not a huge difference there. And in terms of giving Curses, it's clearly better since, well, it actually always gives Curses. I'm more likely to skip Mountebank (at least in favor of other cursers), and almost never want to buy a second one.

And Hunting Party I put below all the attacks right below it (which I order, incidentally, in the exact opposite order they appear on this list). All 4 of these cards are pretty close, I guess, but I just tend to favor attacks. Hunting Party just doesn't really blow me away. Hunting Party decks are simple, so they seem stronger at first, but they're not resilient to attacks, and they don't play nice with a lot of support cards, so mass HP ends up not being that great a lot of the time. Now you still might want to add them into your engine, but then it's in much more of a supporting role and might as well just be any other Lab.

[chwhite]

They are the two most powerful cards in the game

Goons, Ambassador (2p), King's Court, and Chapel say hi.

I'd call Mountebank #5 and Witch #6.

Sure, Mountebank shuts down engines harder, but Witch actually makes your hands have less money on average (because Mountebank's Copper counterbalances the Curse in terms of raw $$).

If the average value of the cards in your deck is $1 or higher, this is not necessarily true.  In Witch games you usually can get to the point where Copper is below average, though admittedly the Curses will be mostly gone by then.

Hunting Party decks are simple, so they seem stronger at first, but they're not resilient to attacks, and they don't play nice with a lot of support cards, so mass HP ends up not being that great a lot of the time.

Depends on the attack- Hunting Party is badly hurt by hand reduction, but it can shrug off curses pretty well.  And I of course disagree that it doesn't "play nice with support cards"- the stack is not the only way to play, Hunting Party can often be an important part of more complex engines.

I definitely skip Witch way more often than Mountebank.  Part of this is an artifact from an earlier time when I was underrating Witch, but even now I think Witch is definitely ignorable a higher percentage of the time.

[Robz888]

They are the two most powerful cards in the game

I meant at their price point! I'm not that stupid 

Where's a board where you would skip Witch but not Mountebank? I can't think of one. Maybe you can give an example. It seems to me the obvious counters counter them both pretty evenly--Lighthouse, Moat, Watchtower. Then you have Masquerade and Ambassador, which does counter Witch harder, but still counters Mountebank adequately. And then Trader counters Mountebank harder than Witch. And of course Counting House counters Mountebank sort of, and doesn't counter Witch at all.

[chwhite]

Also, because I've done it for all the other cost levels.  I'm pretty sure that my $5 list is probably the one with the most mistakes, or at least it has the most egregious mistake (Treasury).

1. Mountebank
2. Witch
3. Hunting Party
4. Wharf
5. Ill-Gotten Gains
6. Minion
7. Tactician
8. Governor
9. Torturer
10. Ghost Ship
11. Apprentice
12. Margrave
13. Stables
14. Embassy
15. Laboratory
16. Vault
17. Bazaar
18. Festival
19. Upgrade
20. Haggler
21. City
22. Treasury
23. Jester
24. Venture
25. Rabble
26. Inn
27. Trading Post
28. Cartographer
29. Council Room
30. Market
31. Horn of Plenty
32. Library
33. Duke
34. Highway
35. Merchant Ship
36. Mint
37. Outpost
38. Harvest
39. Mine
40. Royal Seal
41. Tribute
42. Contraband
43. Mandarin
44. Stash
45. Cache
46. Saboteur
47. Explorer
48. Counting House

Biggest problem here is Treasury, which I inexplicably ranked at least six or seven spots too high.  Conversely, Highway is too low for sure, since I was overreacting to its general over-ratedness.  Both of them should be around #30, with Market.

A lot of the other cards could easily go up or down a couple slots, with so many cards it's hard to get things exactly right.  In particular, I'd probably bump Saboteur and Horn of Plenty up a little, and Venture/Upgrade/Harvest down a little.  Eh, maybe someday I'll admit Wharf is better than Hunting Party, I still think it's not so clear-cut.

I will defend my placement of Bazaar and Merchant Ship against all comers.  I'll admit I'm irrationally biased against Duke, but even keeping that in mind I'm not willing to move it up much more.

[blueblimp]

...compare 10 Ventures + 5 Copper against 15 Golds....

Okay. This is the last thing I'm going to say about Venture on this thread. I promise.

Maybe I'm being unclear in what I'm saying. But this is the last shot. I don't want to compare a deck with Ventures to a deck without and say which one is better. It's either too hard or not meaningful. What I've been saying is this:

Compare a Venture deck with no green cards to one with a lot of green cards. There is a small difference.

Compare another deck with no green cards to one with a lot of green cards. There is usually a big difference.

Hence, Venture decks are more resilient to greening than other decks.

(FWIW, I don't object to continuing discussing Venture. It's an interesting card.)

I think I understand what you're saying, which is: 10V and 10V40E decks have the same buying power most turns ($10), whereas 10G and 10G40E have drastically different buying power per turn ($15 for the former, an average of $3 for the latter). I agree. Then you're saying that it must be the green-resilience of Venture that is causing this effect. I disagree--I think the effect is not from green-resilience. Then you're saying that if it is the green-resilience causing this effect, then because there is a large effect here, then there should be a small (but non-zero) effect in normal cases. I would agree with that, if I thought it was the green-resilience causing the effect in the extreme case.

What I think is actually going on with 10V vs 10V40E is that Venture is whiffing when you play it. By "whiff", I mean the Venture chain from a single play terminates without finding a non-Venture treasure. Whiffing is bad: you miss out of the value of the final treasure you draw, plus you use up the Ventures in your deck, so that they don't contribute value to your next plays. I argue that the reason 10V40E is so good is that 10 Ventures in a deck should be $10 per play, but with a 10V deck only, you whiff too much, so you don't get the full value you would otherwise expect.

Whiffing doesn't happen in normal decks (unless you've drawn your whole deck, in which case Venture is bad). Even Venture-heavy decks are typically built to not whiff much, because whiffing is bad, unless you can get enough Ventures to buy a Province without other treasure. So, I don't think considering a whiff-every-time deck is helpful for understanding how Venture acts in a normal deck, where Venture never ever whiffs.

There IS an effect that might cause Venture to be green-resilient in normal decks, which is when you play Venture and it triggers a reshuffle, but doesn't whiff. I don't know much about this effect, but I believe it's very small in normal decks, and I'm not yet convinced that it's always a helpful effect.

[popsofctown]

I lean towards Mountebank.  The best way to deal with curses is trashing.  Mountebank punishes trashing with the defensive mechanic it has.  Most boards have trashing, more now with Dark Ages

Is Witch really better than Mountebank head to head?  I usually go Mountebank, I don't remember being taught a lesson for it yet.

[jonts26]

I lean towards Mountebank.  The best way to deal with curses is trashing.  Mountebank punishes trashing with the defensive mechanic it has.  Most boards have trashing, more now with Dark Ages

Is Witch really better than Mountebank head to head?  I usually go Mountebank, I don't remember being taught a lesson for it yet.

Generally, witch is better against money decks, MB is better against engines.

[Davio]

Witch is probably also better if you're going more money based yourself.

With a money based approach, you won't have as much terminal collision (or draw other dead action cards) and you can cycle a bit more often with Witch.

[Jfrisch]

@chwhite, how in the world do you justify Hunting-party over wharf? That one just confuses the heck out of me?

[HiveMindEmulator]

I lean towards Mountebank.  The best way to deal with curses is trashing.  Mountebank punishes trashing with the defensive mechanic it has.  Most boards have trashing, more now with Dark Ages

Is Witch really better than Mountebank head to head?  I usually go Mountebank, I don't remember being taught a lesson for it yet.

Generally, witch is better against money decks, MB is better against engines.

And since the presence of Mountebank is often enough to discourage going engine, Witch is usually better in the head-to-head.

[Tables]

Definitely surprised to see Mountebank over Witch, again. Last time I thought Mountebank>Witch, but I've played enough MB to see that it gets blocked surprisingly often, and Witch junks your opponent up pretty much at least 75% as fast. Doesn't sound like much, but Witch is dealing out nothing but curses, which are pure pain, while Mountebank gives 50% Coppers, which are not quite so terrible. So while Mountebank is definitely a bit better against big engines, both shut down Engines on at least 2/3rds of boards they're on (and that's only boards that would otherwise HAVE an engine, if there wasn't one, Witch was better in the first place as it's BM esque), and then Witch is the better card. And Witch of course wins the head to head, which is common enough to be a big point in it's favour (if Witch is on the board, there's about a 7% chance Mountebank is on the board IIRC and vice versa). I really don't see how Mountebank being better in those rare Engines-that-tolerate-mass-cursing can make up for the sheer frequency Witch is better, which is perhaps about 75% of the time.

[chwhite]

I think the "Witch is better than Mountebank in money games and head-to-head" sentiment, while possibly true in a vacuum (aka simulation), is definitely not true by very much and is being overstated pretty badly here.  Also, even in curse games you are often going to want to add other things to your deck even when you can't go full engine.  And the more things you add, the better Mountebank looks.

Where's a board where you would skip Witch but not Mountebank? I can't think of one. Maybe you can give an example.

There's a game I played not that long ago where IIRC I was able to chapel (or maybe remake or something?) into a pretty nice engine against my opponent's Witch, but it might not have worked against Mountebank.  Really, good trashing and engine potential is the thing you want to look for as an example more than the counters you listed, which I agree don't really favor Mountebank all that much.

CR appears to be down right now, I'll have some links for y'all when it's back up.

@chwhite, how in the world do you justify Hunting-party over wharf? That one just confuses the heck out of me?

The gist of it is that I've bought Hunting Party significantly more often (something like 95% rather than 80%), and while I definitely have underbought Wharf somewhat in the past (80% is much less than Wharf deserves), the games where my HP purchase was a mistake have been so, so rare that even with optimal play I'd have picked it up more often.

Also I do think the head-to-head is not a slam dunk for Wharf; there are definitely boards where the Hunting Party stack can beat a Wharf strategy, especially those with a powerful linchpin and no villages. 

But it's certainly possible I'm wrong on this one, I think it's pretty close to a coinflip and just mainly can't get behind this assumption that Wharf is definitely better, no explanation necessary, when my own experience doesn't necessarily bear that out.

[Kirian]

I have never heard the idiom "between the devil and the deep blue sea" before.  I was under the impression Anglophones were supposed to say "between a rock and a hard place."

I searched for an equivalent for that german proverb and found that. As nobody complained the last time, I leaved it in this time.

What's the equivalent German idiom?

[werothegreat]

If only the previews were being released to public iso - we might be able to fit Graverobber somewhere on here...

[Robz888]

I don't know, Chwhite, I really think Witch is better than Mountebank. I get that Mountebank hurts engines more, and there are cases where that matters... but the fact that Mountebank has a built-in way to block its Attack more than makes up for that, I think.

[shraeye]

What's the equivalent German idiom?

zwischen Hammer und Amboss="between hammer and anvil"

[werothegreat]

What's the equivalent German idiom?

zwischen Hammer und Amboss="between hammer and anvil"

That makes so much more sense than rock/hard place.

[carstimon]

Between witch and mountebank, I think they're generally incomparable but mountebank deserves the #1.

Witch and mountebank HAVE to be pretty incomparable.  They are the two $5 cursing attacks, and they're pretty similar.  It has to be an interesting decision whether to buy witch or mountebank when both are on the board.  So they're designed to make it an introducing decision.

Mountebank deserves #1 because it has more of an effect on the game.  Trashing a lot is no longer as viable (because of two bad cards per play) or useful (because you don't get to discard), and as a result slick engines are less possible.

[Qvist]

I have never heard the idiom "between the devil and the deep blue sea" before.  I was under the impression Anglophones were supposed to say "between a rock and a hard place."

I searched for an equivalent for that german proverb and found that. As nobody complained the last time, I leaved it in this time.

What's the equivalent German idiom?

What's the equivalent German idiom?

zwischen Hammer und Amboss="between hammer and anvil"

I don't know this idiom shraeye.    I was thinking of "the choice between pest and cholera".

[cayvie]

I have never heard the idiom "between the devil and the deep blue sea" before.  I was under the impression Anglophones were supposed to say "between a rock and a hard place."

I searched for an equivalent for that german proverb and found that. As nobody complained the last time, I leaved it in this time.

What's the equivalent German idiom?

What's the equivalent German idiom?

zwischen Hammer und Amboss="between hammer and anvil"

I don't know this idiom shraeye.    I was thinking of "the choice between pest and cholera".

is... is that a real idiom?

[Qvist]

I have never heard the idiom "between the devil and the deep blue sea" before.  I was under the impression Anglophones were supposed to say "between a rock and a hard place."

I searched for an equivalent for that german proverb and found that. As nobody complained the last time, I leaved it in this time.

What's the equivalent German idiom?

What's the equivalent German idiom?

zwischen Hammer und Amboss="between hammer and anvil"

I don't know this idiom shraeye.    I was thinking of "the choice between pest and cholera".

is... is that a real idiom?

Yes, it is. http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&lang=de&searchLoc=0&cmpType=relaxed&sectHdr=on&spellToler=&search=pest+cholera

[cayvie]

oh, "Pest" is "plague"

that makes sense

if still morbid

[werothegreat]

Here, let me try: "I'm stuck between vomit and diarrhea."

[shraeye]

Well that's a lot of idioms walking around trying to mean the same thing.

I don't know this idiom shraeye.    I was thinking of "the choice between pest and cholera".