I play primarily IRL. So since I have my cards sleeved, I was able to make up temporary copies of the new Dark Ages cards that were previewed by Donald X last week. We have only played 2-player games with these cards between my wife and me. We tend to play the same kingdom more than once to try different tactics or let the loser try to make up for previous mistakes or bad shuffles. Here are some things that we noticed about each of the cards:
Poor House – It is a lot of fun to finally have a card that costs 1. It certainly adds a whole new wrinkle to the game when trashing. It is also good when you have 7 and two buys. You can get that Gold and a Poor House together. Though PH obviously doesn’t like you to have a lot of treasure in your hand, it really isn’t that bad if the treasure is Gold. 2 Golds and a PH gives you a Province. Of course, you need to get rid of the Coppers to really make it good, and it works well with Actions that give you money, but we didn’t really have much in the way of actions that give you money in the games we played.
Hermit – We both love this card. The trashing that it lets you do in the discard works great for getting rid of those pesky Rats you pick up every time you play a Rats. It was also good for picking up extra Poor Houses, Squires, Silvers or Sages, which helped lead to almost every game ending with 3 piles, especially any where we used Colonies. And turning this into a Madman is totally worth it. You just grab a new Hermit with the Workshop effect and then trash him into a Madman.
Madman – As has been mentioned in the previews thread on this card, it is really crazy when you can play of couple of these in one turn. One game I was able to buy 3 Provinces in one turn with 2 Madmen and the extra buys from a Squire.
Rats – It works quite well for getting Coppers out of your deck, but they really will eat up your deck if you don’t have something else to trash them out. My wife had one time where she had to reveal a hand of all Rats. (Not a pretty picture.) As I mentioned above, Hermits is a good Raticide because it gets rid of it before you have to shuffle another one into your deck.
Squire – Since we didn’t have any villages in our setup, we used this primarily for the 2 Actions. It works great with a drawer like Cultist or any other good drawers. I also used the option of the 2 Buys quite a few times when I had multiple Squires show up. And the Silver choice was great early game or if Feodum was in the kingdom. I had a 5/2 a few times, and so I got a Cultist and Squire; then next turn with the Squire I got a Silver.
Feodum – I like this card, though it really is going to need silver-givers to shine. We played one kingdom with Jack, but it really didn’t give enough silvers quick enough to make it worth a lot. We also played a kingdom with Trader as one of the cards. This gets really crazy with Trader. One game I got my Feodums to be worth 7 each. I loved Tradering Cultists after the Ruins were gone since I got 3 cards for trashing the Cultist and 5 silvers from the Trader.
Cultist – I’ve already mentioned this card a few times above. It can be really devastating in giving out the Ruins because of the multiple play affect that you get when you can play more than one Cultist in a turn. And it doesn’t cost extra actions to play the extra Cultists! After I pummeled my wife with Ruins the first game using the multiple Cultists, she quickly learned to buy plenty of this card and turn the tables. (For Ruins I made cards that were +1 Action, +1 Card, and +1 Coin to go with the Ruined Market that Donald had revealed.) And once the Ruins are gone, being able to string them together still makes a great drawing engine, or they can be trashed for extra cards, which I did many times. Now that we know the other 2 Looter cards, I would say at this point that I think this one will be my favorite of the three.
Sage – This is a nice card for sifting through your Coppers and Estates to get to your early Silvers, Golds, Hermits, and Cultists. I never bought or gained more than two of them in any game. They definitely start to lose their effectiveness late when they find Provinces or Duchies instead of Golds, but overall a nice 3.
Graverobber – I have to admit that we probably underutilized this card in our games. With the kingdoms we had, the only real cards of value that you wanted to get out of the trash were Pillages or possibly a Cultist. With other kingdoms, there are going to be some nicer cards in the trash to dig for. And it did work nice with Cultist late to trash the Cultist from your hand, gain a Province, then get 3 cards from the Cultist. Overall, I think this is going to a great card once I get a better feel for it.
Pillage/Spoils – The attack on Pillage can be quite annoying when you lose the great action card you had or when you lose the money needed for a Gold or Province. However, since it only happens once per card gained, it isn’t a big problem. Getting the 2 spoils early in the game can be a real boost to get you good 5’s or Golds, especially if you have a source of +buy with them. My wife won one game by resurrecting more than one Pillage from the trash with Graverobber since you get to put the resurrected card on top of your deck and thus be able to get to your Spoils the next shuffle rather than 2 shuffles later.
Shelters – Nothing overly exciting to say about them, though I do like them better than Estates. I especially like Necropolis for allowing you to open with two good terminals with less worry about collisions between them.
I am sure that there are many other things that could be said about these cards, but these are just some things we noted as we tried them out. I look forward to adding other Dark Ages cards with them when I get my copy of DA. I am sure that we will discover many more interactions and benefits.
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Topic: Thoughts from playing with the earlier previewed cards (Read 1537 times)