Dominion Strategy Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Pages: 1 2 [3]  All

Author Topic: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things  (Read 26662 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Dulkal

  • Ambassador
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 33
  • Respect: +11
    • View Profile
Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things
« Reply #50 on: October 08, 2012, 04:57:07 am »
0

Rats + Junk Dealer is decent, even if probably rarely the best strategy on the board.

I'm still not sure how big the benefit actually is. Playing a rats, then junkdealing has the net result of -3 cards, +3 cards, trash one card. That seems to be about the same net result as one junk dealer (-1 card, +1 card, trash one card).

There is a marginal benefit to ratting estates/shelters for no significant card loss, to replace them with a card that gives +1 card when trashed later in the game (-2 cards, +1 card now; -1 card, +2 cards, trash one card later). I am unsure if this marginal benefit is ever going to beat silver. My guess would be that opening silver instead, to improve the odds of getting the junk dealer on the second shuffle, gives better results overall.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2012, 04:59:19 am by Dulkal »
Logged

brokoli

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1119
  • Respect: +786
    • View Profile
Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things
« Reply #51 on: October 08, 2012, 06:08:46 am »
0

Rats is a very fast trasher, much faster than Junk Dealer. If you simply take one, you don't lose so much time.
The idea is simply to trash the coppers and estates ASAP and then trash the rats before they destroy your deck.
Logged

Dulkal

  • Ambassador
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 33
  • Respect: +11
    • View Profile
Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things
« Reply #52 on: October 08, 2012, 09:18:39 am »
0

Rats is a very fast trasher, much faster than Junk Dealer. If you simply take one, you don't lose so much time.
The idea is simply to trash the coppers and estates ASAP and then trash the rats before they destroy your deck.

How is rats a fast trasher? The number of cards in your deck after playing rats is exactly the same as the number of cards in your deck before.

Barring special circumstances (Watchtower, empty Rats pile, etc.), Rats does not act as a trasher at all.
Logged

Captain_Frisk

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1257
  • Respect: +1263
    • View Profile
Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things
« Reply #53 on: October 08, 2012, 09:20:33 am »
0

Rats is a very fast trasher, much faster than Junk Dealer. If you simply take one, you don't lose so much time.
The idea is simply to trash the coppers and estates ASAP and then trash the rats before they destroy your deck.

How is rats a fast trasher? The number of cards in your deck after playing rats is exactly the same as the number of cards in your deck before.

Barring special circumstances (Watchtower, empty Rats pile, etc.), Rats does not act as a trasher at all.

Rats don't take up space because of the +1 card / action, and their trashing ability compounds.  (On your 3rd shuffle, you could be trashing up to 4 cards)

1 + 2 + 4 = 7 > 6 which is what you could trash if you used steward to full trash every time.
Logged
I support funsockets.... taking as much time as they need to get it right.

Dulkal

  • Ambassador
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 33
  • Respect: +11
    • View Profile
Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things
« Reply #54 on: October 08, 2012, 11:02:51 am »
0

Rats don't take up space because of the +1 card / action, and their trashing ability compounds.  (On your 3rd shuffle, you could be trashing up to 4 cards)

1 + 2 + 4 = 7 > 6 which is what you could trash if you used steward to full trash every time.

But you want to stop trashing, so they take up space once you are done doing that. On your third shuffle, you COULD be trashing up to 4 cards, but would you ever want to? By the third shuffle, most of your Rats will be just as dead as the cards they trashed.

Technically, Rats is a cantrip and a trasher. In reality, the forced trash and the requirement to re-trash means that your deck isn't thinned. See my calculations above: The total number of cards played or lost from hand by using junk dealer via rats is exactly equal to the amount drawn plus one, just as it is with junk dealer. The number of junk dealer plays required to reach the desired deck state (which I assume does not include rats) is also unaltered by going via Rats.

Rats probably provides some very minor deck-cycling, but that benefit is unlikely to get you to your target faster than Silver->Junk Dealer.

So I stand by my point: Rats should not be treated as a 'fast trasher'. The main benefit of rats, (sans TFB, benefits-when-trashed cards or cards that benefit from the action type), is that it allows you to exchange dead card draws now for live card draws later. Whether that small benefit is worth the cost and the risk of drawing dead rats is an open question, but the benefit is pretty small either way.
Logged

Sigismundo

  • Pearl Diver
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 11
  • Respect: +6
    • View Profile
Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things
« Reply #55 on: October 09, 2012, 11:49:51 am »
+2

I played a pretty fun rats board last night with my Wife.

Herbalist,Some 3 I can't remember,Marauder,Rats,Feast,Upgrade,Council Room, Embassy, Hunting Grounds, Kings Court.

I tend to avoid BM while my wife goes for it.  She opened Marauder/Silver and I went Rats/Marauder.  Then I started getting upgrades as I could with my spoils and silvers on 4 or <.  It was nice to have a 4>5>6>7 path for upgrade, but I didn't end up getting a Hunting grounds I don't think but would like to retry it with them vs some golds. My wife got at least 2 provinces before my deck was formed well.  Then I started KC'ing upgrades to trash rats.  I ended up having a strong turn where I trashed 4 rats for Duchy's and got 1 province from a KC upgrade and then bought the Penultimate province in the buy phase.  My deck was like 9 upgrades, 1 marauder, 4 KC's, 2 Council Rooms, 3 golds, lots o Rats.  Trashing rats to upgrades gave lots of card draw to get a slew of them quickly.

Rats helped get rid of the Ruins easily since the deck was pretty tight. It is a bit harder to tell how well it really worked since I don't know how many turns this game went due to playing IRL, but my wife's BM game seemed pretty normal.  She passed on one early province cause she hit 11 on like turn 6 and got gold/silver instead before she started buying provinces.
Logged

AJD

  • Cartographer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3292
  • Shuffle iT Username: AJD
  • Respect: +4434
    • View Profile
Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things
« Reply #56 on: October 09, 2012, 01:17:42 pm »
+2

She opened Marauder/Silver and I went Rats/Marauder.

...Aren't Rats and Marauder both $4 cards?
Logged

Sigismundo

  • Pearl Diver
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 11
  • Respect: +6
    • View Profile
Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things
« Reply #57 on: October 09, 2012, 04:44:17 pm »
0

Ah yup.  I went rats/silver and picked up a marauder 2nd time through.
Logged

brokoli

  • Saboteur
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1119
  • Respect: +786
    • View Profile
Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things
« Reply #58 on: October 09, 2012, 05:13:49 pm »
+1

Sigismundo, Welcome to the forum !  :D
Logged

BubbleBoy

  • Navigator
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 75
  • Did you say Black Market?!
  • Respect: +18
    • View Profile
Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things
« Reply #59 on: October 09, 2012, 06:34:24 pm »
+1

And the first reply to his first post is a correction. Welcome to the forum!
Logged
...Or, I guess you could just buy a Province.

redwings1340

  • Pawn
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4
  • Respect: +11
    • View Profile
Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things
« Reply #60 on: October 28, 2012, 09:39:05 pm »
0

I've played a few games with it, and I've found that rats is an amazing situational card. What it does is replaces all of your 0 cost cards with 4 cost cards, allowing trash for benefit cards to work at amazing speeds. I've used it really well with the remodel and the apprentice, and I imagine it would work really well with the remake, the upgrade, or the salvager, or any card that can take advantage of the fact that a rats costs 4. It's even better because you only need to buy 1 rats to get the advantage of it the entire game. If those cards aren't in the set though, yeah, rats is probably pretty useless and a waste of time to get.
Logged

Cuzz

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 623
  • Shuffle iT Username: Cuzz
  • Respect: +1018
    • View Profile
Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things
« Reply #61 on: October 28, 2012, 10:43:14 pm »
0

Played a really fun game recently with scrying pool, rats, and vineyard. An armory at the beginning helped me pick up a few key components quickly, and market square gave extra buys and a few gold. Bought no treasure all game and ended up with 8 vineyards for 9 vp each.
Logged
Pages: 1 2 [3]  All
 

Page created in 0.052 seconds with 21 queries.