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AdamH

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Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« on: October 04, 2012, 10:15:49 am »
+2

The latest perceived weakness in my game is perhaps an over-valuing of trashing. This comes from a few games I lost, and also this WW video:



I'll do my best to (briefly) outline my view of trashing, and I'm hoping the community will pick it apart and tell me everything I'm doing wrong, so that I become a better player (and maybe help out other people reading this thread).

First, some definitions.

"Strong Trashing" - Any card that has the ability to reduce the number of bad cards in your deck by two or more. Examples: Steward, Remake, Forge, Trading Post, Count (probably others from DA that I'm forgetting). Chapel of course fits here, but I almost think of Chapel as being its own type of "Super-Strong Trashing". For you smart-allics out there, Masquerade is not included here, even though it's possible for it to work like this.

"Weak Trashing" (Also called "Light Trashing") - Any card that has the ability to reduce the number of bad cards in your deck by one. This is stuff like Masquerade, Moneylender, Loan, Spice Merchant, Trade Route, Upgrade, Transmute, and the list goes on and on... NOT in this category are Farmland and Feast, and if I played more with DA, I'm sure I'd mention that Rats doesn't fit here either. I'd like to include pseudo-trashing in here as well, such as Island and NV+Top-deck-control. Usually these cards provide some kind of benefit, and a lot of the time they only work on specific types of cards (most notably, copper and non-copper).

If you think about classifying trashers in a different way, I'd certainly like to hear about it.

When to use Strong Trashers:

I feel like I actually have a decent grasp on this. Chapel+BM isn't so hot; and having nothing but good cards in your deck can make you much more vulnerable to many types of attacks. This is most likely the way to go when there is an engine to build, and the payoff is enough to overcome a deficit against a BM+X player -- it almost always requires +Buy and is helped a lot by Alt VP.

Engines built using Strong Trashers usually have the goal of eliminating all ten starting cards from the deck as quickly as possible. Options for engines like this are increased because delicate engines with no +draw, or megaturn engines become viable when the deck is so trimmed. Think Festival+Library or KC+Bridge. The drawback is that they choke on green really hard, really fast, so there needs to be a plan in place to mitigate this, especially if the engine isn't fast enough to play the get-a-lead-and-keep-it strategy.

I believe that in most cases, strong trashing is for engines only. Sure, you can buy a Remake just to turn your Estates into Silvers, and maybe that's faster than BM+Scout, but then it's not being used as Strong Trashing. If there are other uses for Strong Trashing, please suggest them.

When to use Weak Trashers:

Much more situational, and I'm much worse at it. I'll start with what I think I know well...

Estate-trashing in BM games: Most of the strongest BM-enablers are what they are because they trash estates. Masquerade and Jack come to mind and there are many others. Be careful of cards like Trade Route, though, that are probably out-classed by Silver in the early game.

Copper-trashing in BM games: I'm not aware that this is particularly strong. You may get to three provinces faster but I think I heard somewhere that BM+Moneylender isn't that much better than just BM. Perhaps this is different in Colony games?

Village+Smithy-style engines: Does light trashing really help here? Not drawing your coppers helps you draw your deck faster, but it also hurts your economy once you do. Let me guess -- the answer is "It depends on the kingdom"?

Slower Engines: I'm thinking here of those kinds of engines that don't really start to fire until turn 9-12 or so; you're more gradually buying engine components and trashing down your starting cards until your deck reaches that critical point of action density and you really start to move. I'm thinking of stuff like Highway+Market -- the addition of Spice Merchant here is super-strong because not only does it provide an early source of +Buy for the occasional extra Highway buy, but later in the game, it's trashed down all your coppers enough to get you that 4-Province+3-Duchy megaturn. The best part is that you can still pick up decent green cards in a deck like this after your megaturn if you needed to beat your opponent to it, or you can just go for one megaturn if your engine components are more contested. Even combos like NV+Bridge use this same concept (or at least they feel the same) but in a different way.

But what if you had Trade Route or Salvager or Loan instead of Spice Merchant? Is it still worth it? Evaluating the hit you take to your early economy and engine-building pace versus the payoff you gain by having a smaller deck can mean a one or two-turn advantage in the endgame, which often is the deciding factor. I used to think I had a good feel for this, but I think what it really was was to always choose the trashing and it ended up well for me a lot just because I was playing against weaker opponents. In the Highway+Market scenario, I think it was still worth it, but answering that question in general is probably close to the heart of this post.

I watched that WW video and I thought he was crazy for skipping Loan in a City+Goons game -- usually the objective is to just play as many Goons as possible and I thought trashing helped with that, and the extra draw from Cities didn't really compensate too much for that either since he was already in full-green mode by the time they got to Level 2 anyways, but WW handily won this game and he knew he would because he skipped Loan and his opponent didn't.
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ednever

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #1 on: October 04, 2012, 10:42:27 am »
0

Just a quick thought for now:
Trashing in general slows you down at the start, accelerates you in the middle, them flows you down again at the end (when the coppers become helpful again)

This means there are interesting interactions with trashing and vp cards.

Trashing tends to be a lot better in colony games.  (loan is usually a good buy in a colony gsme)
Trashing tends to be worse in some alt vp games (gardens, silk road), but better in others ( fairgrounds, vineyards)

Ed
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PSGarak

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #2 on: October 04, 2012, 11:29:00 am »
+2

I've mention this elsewhere before, but since you asked, I'll say it again.

I classify trashers by "high-impact" or "low-impact," based on how much it reduces the purchasing power of your current turn. Chapel, for example, is the highest-impact of all: you basically give up an entire turn when you play it, forsaking an opportunity to buy a card that could make your deck more powerful. Spice Merchant, on the other hand, is extremely low-impact, because it perfectly replaces the actions and cards it took to draw it. Masquerade and Trading Post are actually positive-impact, making your hand better than it was before you trashed.

As a rule of thumb, high-impact trashers are strong trashing and low-impact trashers are weak trashing, but not always.

Your outline above is trying to judge trashers entirely in terms of benefit. But trashing also has an opportunity cost, and in order to best understand trashing you need to think about it in terms of cost-benefit ratio.
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jomini

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2012, 12:30:20 pm »
+2

There are several things I weight when evaluating a trasher:
1. What can it trash? Cards that can only trash certain types of cards just don't play like general trashers or even all that much like each other (graver robber vs steward vs moneylender vs Jack - none of them play alike).
2. How quickly can it trash what I need it to trash? Take moneylender vs loan. Loan will clear out the last few coppers faster than moneylender and can be coupled with terminals for extremely fast trashing (e.g. embassy/loan burns through coppers) Something like embassy/venture/loan is going to setup a lot quicker than embassy/money lender. This is part of why masq is fast enough to play like a two card trasher - you just see it more often thanks to the faster cycling. Likewise, non-terminal trashing like upgrade, apprentice, or spice merchant can sometimes play faster than 2 card trashing.
3. What can I get during the trashing turns? Useful 2 coin cards make steward much more powerful; upgrade gets a huge boost because you have 3 silvers in waiting to have and you can still play a +2 coin terminal to make it easy to hit 3 or 4. Of course Masq's ability to play 5 treasures, have small odds of gaining a copper for an estate, and the optional ability to trash a card mean that you opt for an early forge (expand, etc.) while improving your deck.
4. What good is the card once I've trashed down my deck? Something like moneylender becomes worthless and detrimental, steward has potential to sub in for deck acceleration or payload as need, and altar can cannibalize an engine for extra duchies.

In any event a few more times for trashing:
1. Curse givers mean you generally should go strong trashing. First it means that you can get rid of your curses faster making them do less harm to your deck. Second it means you get to play your own curse givers more often. Yeah both you and the opponent may go strong trashing and ignore the curse giving card, but if you don't, getting buried in a flood of curses will doom you. Additionally, be careful about light vs strong trashing something like salvager vs remake isn't obvious; the former can get you curse givers sooner - and make your opponent spend more time thinning down his deck while the latter can deal more effectively with curses once they come in.
2. Powerful cards can be worth trashing to play every turn. The king of this is possession. Trashing your deck to nothing but green, possession and maybe a sifter like cellar or warehouse is an example of how one card can carry your deck. Other powerful cards include Kc, Expand, Grave robber, Horn of Plenty, Platinum, and Governor all make it extremely worthwhile to trash hard.
3. Light trashing is very useful for village/smithy type engines. Look over theory's article about the opening set engine. Remodel trashes out estates & lets you sub in more engine components. Because component density is so important to village/smithy type engines it helps a lot to get rid of the starting estates and maybe even some coppers. On the other hand, every turn you spend trashing heavily tends to be a turn you don't buy a component. There are obvious exceptions (e.g. using courtyard as your "smithy" let's you trash more aggressively), but the opportunity cost often favors some trashing; particularly if it is some sort of TfB that lets you get multiple components per turn.
4. Trashing is generally not so great when there are expensive game defining cards out there, but not ones where only one or two copies can carry you. Goons is the perfect example. Loan reduces a hand by one coin and may skip your 4 coin buy. This isn't that bad if there are many useful things you want in the 3-4 coin range. If you are gunning for 6 or 7, then it becomes big. Goons is particularly harsh because once you start playing it, the opponent loses a lot of his strong hands and can't buy it himself in many matches. Obviously, some trashers work better than others here - steward into goons is a lot stronger than loan into goons as the steward can take +2 coin with an early 6 coin hand to get the coins, loan can't. This gets much worse when there opportunity cost is not just 1 coin in difference between a loan and a silver, but something bigger like 4 coins between lookout and baron.
5. Trashing tends to be better in attack games. There are exceptions (like some swindler setups, discard/masq setups, etc.), but attacks make the game last longer and often reward you for having good odds of drawing your deck. The downside is that trashing can be harder in attack games as the trashing process itself is slower. You may build up more slowly in the presence of attacks (e.g. militia or oracle), but engines and even just tight decks can benefit a lot for attacks slowing down the other guy.
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AdamH

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #4 on: October 04, 2012, 12:51:32 pm »
+1

This discussion of "High-impact" or "Low-impact" trashers seems to be appropriate for the weak trashers. I'm wondering how to merge your classification and mine -- it seems like a good way to flesh out what I alluded to in the "Slower Engines" section.

I posit that there is a line we can draw, though, between strong/weak trashing and the discussion of impact. Sure, there are awesome hands like Remake+SCEE where the only cost to that turn is the fact that you could have bought a silver instead of a remake, or the same idea with Steward+SCEE; but I would argue that before the game starts, if you decide you're going to open with a strong trasher, you're probably willing to give up your trashing turns to not buy anything anyways.

The exceptions are Trading Post, with which you are less likely to want to build a strong engine so maybe you're less likely to have bought an engine component as opposed to a Gold... hmm, maybe TP belongs in the weak trashers? The other one might be Forge, but again that's sort of an edge case and you're usually not playing it until your 3rd or 4th reshuffle.

It seems like impact is a great thing to classify the weak trashers by, then. So what kind of impact does a weak trasher have on your current turn? I think there are three big categories: +Cards, +$, and gaining.

+Cards would be Apprentice, most notably, but can also be Spice Merchant. I can't think of any trasher that gives +Cards for trashing that is terminal (Jack and Masquerade don't count here since you get the cards before you trash and the trashing is optional. Is that wrong?)

+$ would be tons of stuff: Moneylender, Salvager, SM again, Trade Route, Loan, and the list goes on and on... It seems that these are different flavors of opportunity cost vs. just buying a silver, along with how useful the trashing is.

gaining: Remodel/Expand, Trader, even Jack and Forge, etc. They don't directly impact your buying power, but this still seems relevant, since these cards give you more options -- you can feed better cards into them to get a bigger benefit.

I see lots of different flavors of benefit here, and at first glance I would prefer +$ in the early game, gaining in the middle-to-late-game, and +cards in very few cases, most of them being edge cases.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #5 on: October 04, 2012, 05:39:29 pm »
+3

For you smart-allics out there, Masquerade is not included here, even though it's possible for it to work like this.

It's spelled 'smart aleck'.  ;)
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AdamH

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2012, 06:06:10 pm »
+2

For you smart-allics out there, Masquerade is not included here, even though it's possible for it to work like this.

It's spelled 'smart aleck'.  ;)

...and already this post has more respect than the thoughtful dominion-related discussion I spent a decent amount of time putting together. Thanks, trolls.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #7 on: October 04, 2012, 06:18:50 pm »
+2

For you smart-allics out there, Masquerade is not included here, even though it's possible for it to work like this.

It's spelled 'smart aleck'.  ;)

...and already this post has more respect than the thoughtful dominion-related discussion I spent a decent amount of time putting together. Thanks, trolls.

That post no longer has respect.  Did you just chastise someone into un-respecting?
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AdamH

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #8 on: October 04, 2012, 06:22:51 pm »
+1

For you smart-allics out there, Masquerade is not included here, even though it's possible for it to work like this.

It's spelled 'smart aleck'.  ;)

...and already this post has more respect than the thoughtful dominion-related discussion I spent a decent amount of time putting together. Thanks, trolls.

That post no longer has respect.  Did you just chastise someone into un-respecting?

I might have. MISSION SUCCESS!
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Schneau

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #9 on: October 04, 2012, 06:24:12 pm »
0

For you smart-allics out there, Masquerade is not included here, even though it's possible for it to work like this.

It's spelled 'smart aleck'.  ;)

...and already this post has more respect than the thoughtful dominion-related discussion I spent a decent amount of time putting together. Thanks, trolls.

He was demonstrating correct smart aleck technique.
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dondon151

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #10 on: October 04, 2012, 09:25:55 pm »
+1

My observations on trashing:

In the presence of engine plus strong trashers, attacks that give out Curses can be ignored.
In the presence of engine plus light trashers, picking up a light trasher that can get rid of Curses is generally a good move.
Copper trashing is weak. If one is using something like Spice Merchant or Loan to trash Coppers, he can expect to have difficulty hitting $5 consistently in the second reshuffle, whereas trashing an Estate (and possibly gaining a $ producing card) will typically result in higher quality future shuffles.

Obviously, none of these apply uniformly to all games.

One mistake that I see players make is committing to strong trashing on a board where light trashing will be better (assuming both are available), or overtrashing with a strong trasher. Having a super-tight deck feels pretty awesome, but with strong enough engine components (or pieces to gain the engine components), one doesn't need to trash every last Copper in order to consistently draw his deck; furthermore, one he can draw his deck, he can also match up the trasher to the cards that he wanted to trash anyway.
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AdamH

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #11 on: October 05, 2012, 08:13:44 am »
0

In any event a few more times for trashing:
1. Curse givers mean you generally should go strong trashing. First it means that you can get rid of your curses faster making them do less harm to your deck. Second it means you get to play your own curse givers more often. Yeah both you and the opponent may go strong trashing and ignore the curse giving card, but if you don't, getting buried in a flood of curses will doom you. Additionally, be careful about light vs strong trashing something like salvager vs remake isn't obvious; the former can get you curse givers sooner - and make your opponent spend more time thinning down his deck while the latter can deal more effectively with curses once they come in.

I hadn't even thought of curse-trashing as a part of this discussion, but it feels so good when my opponent buys a couple of Familiars and I'm able to keep up defensively, even with just weak trashing available; I'm able to improve my deck while my opponent spends most of his resources attacking me. I recall a Familiar game with only Lookout and Watchtower for defense, but I was easily able to keep up with the curses because I was able to get my watchtowers in hand more often from lookout-trashing.

2. Powerful cards can be worth trashing to play every turn. The king of this is possession. Trashing your deck to nothing but green, possession and maybe a sifter like cellar or warehouse is an example of how one card can carry your deck. Other powerful cards include Kc, Expand, Grave robber, Horn of Plenty, Platinum, and Governor all make it extremely worthwhile to trash hard.

I'm all about this, but the thing I thought of before I got to your list were attack cards, mainly Ghost Ship. I've made some awesome comebacks with a CR-draw engine after six provinces were gone by playing a ghost ship every turn. I've also been on the receiving end of an engine with a single University that picks up Labs, then Militia-Masquerade as the kicker. I needed just one more Province to ice the game, but I was never going to buy a Province again after getting hit with that every turn. You addressed attacks separately, so I guess you mean something different by this that I must be missing...

3. Light trashing is very useful for village/smithy type engines. Look over theory's article about the opening set engine. Remodel trashes out estates & lets you sub in more engine components. Because component density is so important to village/smithy type engines it helps a lot to get rid of the starting estates and maybe even some coppers. On the other hand, every turn you spend trashing heavily tends to be a turn you don't buy a component. There are obvious exceptions (e.g. using courtyard as your "smithy" let's you trash more aggressively), but the opportunity cost often favors some trashing; particularly if it is some sort of TfB that lets you get multiple components per turn.

Strong Trashing vs. Weak Trashing... I'll admit I've never thought to take the weak option over the strong option before because it would actually be better, but then again, I'm not a level-40 player, and that seems like a level-40 concept...

This is silly, but the way I think about this is a graph (I'm a math guy). The X-axis is turns, and the Y-axis has a few things super-imposed on it. First is number of bad cards left in my deck (I think of this as "deck potency" or "deck awesomeness"). Second is total buying power of my deck (Have to make sure this doesn't go below $3, and if it hits exactly $3, your deck better not be Mint-CCEEE-(Pawn/Copper/Herbalist), because good luck drawing all three of your dollars in a given turn -- I learned that one the hard way). Third is the number of good cards in your deck. The danger here is to let your deck potency get too high too quick (what dondon was talking about). But if you don't see your Chapel until turn 5, you don't want to let your deck potency get too low too quick either, or else you won't see your trasher often enough and you won't be able to line it up with the cards you want to trash as easily. Balancing these curves on the graph is super-tricky, and how you do it depends heavily on shuffle luck. The strategy for Ambassador has been talked about a lot, but other strong trashers haven't been given the same treatment. Is there any kingdom-invariant advice that anybody can provide here?

4. Trashing is generally not so great when there are expensive game defining cards out there, but not ones where only one or two copies can carry you. Goons is the perfect example. Loan reduces a hand by one coin and may skip your 4 coin buy. This isn't that bad if there are many useful things you want in the 3-4 coin range. If you are gunning for 6 or 7, then it becomes big. Goons is particularly harsh because once you start playing it, the opponent loses a lot of his strong hands and can't buy it himself in many matches. Obviously, some trashers work better than others here - steward into goons is a lot stronger than loan into goons as the steward can take +2 coin with an early 6 coin hand to get the coins, loan can't. This gets much worse when there opportunity cost is not just 1 coin in difference between a loan and a silver, but something bigger like 4 coins between lookout and baron.

OK this lines up with some stuff I'm seeing, but I remember a thread from a long time ago:

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1859.msg33057

My take-away from that was that the objective was to play the Goons card as many times as possible. Anything that helped play more Goons was helpful, which included trashing. Maybe I just mis-interpreted this? Perhaps it's better to almost play a BM-variant where your goal is $6 instead of $8, and only add trashing if there is little-to-no opportunity cost associated with it?

5. Trashing tends to be better in attack games. There are exceptions (like some swindler setups, discard/masq setups, etc.), but attacks make the game last longer and often reward you for having good odds of drawing your deck. The downside is that trashing can be harder in attack games as the trashing process itself is slower. You may build up more slowly in the presence of attacks (e.g. militia or oracle), but engines and even just tight decks can benefit a lot for attacks slowing down the other guy.

OK I know I mentioned this above, but I guess I have one thing to add related to cursing attacks. Sometimes I'll see an engine board with a curser on it and strong trashing. Both me and my opponent ignore the curser at the start and build our engines. But once or twice I've pulled this move: at the point where I can draw my whole deck (or at least most of it), I'll use my buys to pick up one or two copies of the curser, and on the very next turn, before my opponent can really react, I will pump a ton of Curses into their deck super-quickly (KC helps a lot here). Getting the initiative on this is like pouring a bucket of water on their nice engine, and the 1-turn tempo loss I get from this is totally worth the 4 or 5 turns my opponent loses by having to clean up the mess I made in their deck. This seems powerful if you can do it quickly enough that your opponent doesn't have time to react, and they can't clean it up all that fast. Is there a good counter for this, other than getting to it first?
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DsnowMan

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #12 on: October 05, 2012, 11:17:42 am »
0

The problem with starting out with Loan in a Goons game is that it may take you a long time to get the 1st Goons. If your opponent gets Goons first, even longer.

I think you could buy a couple Goons, then with a spare 3, buy a loan. Depends on engine potential and how far into the game we have to go.
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dondon151

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #13 on: October 05, 2012, 12:52:50 pm »
+2

Strong Trashing vs. Weak Trashing... I'll admit I've never thought to take the weak option over the strong option before because it would actually be better, but then again, I'm not a level-40 player, and that seems like a level-40 concept...

This is silly, but the way I think about this is a graph (I'm a math guy). The X-axis is turns, and the Y-axis has a few things super-imposed on it. First is number of bad cards left in my deck (I think of this as "deck potency" or "deck awesomeness"). Second is total buying power of my deck (Have to make sure this doesn't go below $3, and if it hits exactly $3, your deck better not be Mint-CCEEE-(Pawn/Copper/Herbalist), because good luck drawing all three of your dollars in a given turn -- I learned that one the hard way). Third is the number of good cards in your deck. The danger here is to let your deck potency get too high too quick (what dondon was talking about).

Well, not exactly. I'm sure you're aware that there are two ways to increase the quality of your deck: by increasing the quantity of "good" cards, or decreasing the quantity of "bad" cards. In every case there is an optimal way to increase the quality of your deck through a combination of those two. You just need to keep in mind what your target goal is.

At a point where you can draw your entire deck, or draw good enough hands to matter, then you don't get very much value out of decreasing the quantity of "bad" cards. I'd argue that once you've reached that point, traditionally "bad" cards (i.e., Copper) become good because now they produce $ at very little opportunity cost. This is the reason why very strong cycling (e.g., Village + Wharf, First Game engine, etc.) needs little to no trashing in order to work. This is compounded by the fact that these 2 engines in particular are very adept at gaining components quickly, something that a trimmed down deck with only 3 Coppers generally cannot do.

The strategy for Ambassador has been talked about a lot, but other strong trashers haven't been given the same treatment. Is there any kingdom-invariant advice that anybody can provide here?

That's because Ambassador is simultaneously an attack and a pseudotrasher. There are the rare occasions when one can rebuild a deck via Ambassador after accelerating, but you need some very strong helpers to do that.

Kingdom-invariant advice is too general to be incredibly useful. Typically, you just need to figure out what you're going to do with your deck after trashing; if you don't have a good answer, then you don't need to trash as aggressively, or you don't need to trash at all.
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jomini

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #14 on: October 05, 2012, 02:03:37 pm »
+1

Quote
I hadn't even thought of curse-trashing as a part of this discussion, but it feels so good when my opponent buys a couple of Familiars and I'm able to keep up defensively, even with just weak trashing available; I'm able to improve my deck while my opponent spends most of his resources attacking me. I recall a Familiar game with only Lookout and Watchtower for defense, but I was easily able to keep up with the curses because I was able to get my watchtowers in hand more often from lookout-trashing.

Curse trashing is a pretty big reason to go into trashing. Now I won't take transmute (no other potion card) just to deal with the curses, but going something like trade route, salvager, or some other generally weak trashing can be worth it on some curse boards.  If my opponent goes strong trashing, on some boards that is enough to shift my strategy away from cursing and towards another (like engine building). Familiar is one of the strongest examples of a curse giver that can be deterred by strong trashing - you rarely want familiar against a chapel deck.

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I'm all about this, but the thing I thought of before I got to your list were attack cards, mainly Ghost Ship. I've made some awesome comebacks with a CR-draw engine after six provinces were gone by playing a ghost ship every turn. I've also been on the receiving end of an engine with a single University that picks up Labs, then Militia-Masquerade as the kicker. I needed just one more Province to ice the game, but I was never going to buy a Province again after getting hit with that every turn. You addressed attacks separately, so I guess you mean something different by this that I must be missing...

Sure, let's say your opponent goes for Nv/Bridge. You go for possession. Your goal is to be able to play possession every turn. Trashing down to a small hand, buying silver-silver-gold-pot-possession means that you can steal the megaturn whenever is most advantageous. Your deck revolves around playing one card; play it and you win. Likewise, let's say you have Plat/adventurer (a weak combo, but hey), you have one card (adventurer) that you want to see over and over again. Trashing hard to get down to where you will see that card most every hand works well.

Or let's take a HoP deck. When building a strong HoP deck, you want trash out duplicate cards, load up on cheap-no terminals and maybe have one each non-HoP treasure. When your HoP gets up to 5 coin, you cascade HoPs (HoPs gain other HoPs) and then you have your one megaturn when the HoPs get worth 8 and cash out. For this type of deck, the key is to play HoP over and over again. Sure you might be using it to gain crap like pawn, pearl diver, village, and walled village ... but the key is one card does it all for you - HoP gains you your enablers (cheap non-terminals), HoP gains you your payload (more HoPs), and HoP gains you your payout (provinces). Heavy trashing is extremely useful when rather than buying more economy (e.g. plats), you can just use the ones you have more often.



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Strong Trashing vs. Weak Trashing... I'll admit I've never thought to take the weak option over the strong option before because it would actually be better, but then again, I'm not a level-40 player, and that seems like a level-40 concept...

This is silly, but the way I think about this is a graph (I'm a math guy). The X-axis is turns, and the Y-axis has a few things super-imposed on it. First is number of bad cards left in my deck (I think of this as "deck potency" or "deck awesomeness"). Second is total buying power of my deck (Have to make sure this doesn't go below $3, and if it hits exactly $3, your deck better not be Mint-CCEEE-(Pawn/Copper/Herbalist), because good luck drawing all three of your dollars in a given turn -- I learned that one the hard way). Third is the number of good cards in your deck. The danger here is to let your deck potency get too high too quick (what dondon was talking about). But if you don't see your Chapel until turn 5, you don't want to let your deck potency get too low too quick either, or else you won't see your trasher often enough and you won't be able to line it up with the cards you want to trash as easily. Balancing these curves on the graph is super-tricky, and how you do it depends heavily on shuffle luck. The strategy for Ambassador has been talked about a lot, but other strong trashers haven't been given the same treatment. Is there any kingdom-invariant advice that anybody can provide here?

In a word, No.

Sometimes chapel will be amazing. Chapel/squire/goons/village is a gimme chapel/squire opening almost. Other times, like Fg/Chap, the trashing hurts you too much early to be worth it. As Dondon notes, at some point trashing coppers is counterproductive, but that varies heavily by deck type. It doesn't take much for something like Border Village/Margrave to want keep some coppers around (this combo is strong enough that I might even just forgo chapel) and prefer TfBs like remake or remodel to chapel. On the other hand some combos, like pin decks, discard/masq, or Kc/Mountebank are so strong that you want to get rid of your coppers the moment you no longer need them to buy your components.

I mean some things just get really crazy here. Smugglers means that you can ignore your economy and just mooch off the other guy ... unless he goes for Kc engine and stops buying non-Kc components before you get setup as well.   


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My take-away from that was that the objective was to play the Goons card as many times as possible. Anything that helped play more Goons was helpful, which included trashing. Maybe I just mis-interpreted this? Perhaps it's better to almost play a BM-variant where your goal is $6 instead of $8, and only add trashing if there is little-to-no opportunity cost associated with it?

It depends. Like I noted steward is great for goons games - you can either trash crud out of a hand that won't buy a goons or you can buy the goons. Likewise, cards like squire, smugglers, remodel, etc. can all let you bootstrap into goons for a decent tradeoff; however you do have to be aware - Goons is harsh because:
1. It interferes heavily with trashing - often forcing you to choose between trashing two cards or buying a silver.
2. The only way to buy a goons after you've been hit with one is to have 3 silvers (or equivalent) in hand. This makes goons a race card. Winning the race results in decent odds of a compounding advantage - by the time they can buy their first goons, you have bought 3 and they can never play as many goons.
3. Playing sooner gives them more VP chips. Yeah it isn't a lot, but any lead in a goons game can be strong - either to give you a chance to go green and end the game before they can cash out for mega chips or force them closer to 3 piles if they build their own engine.



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OK I know I mentioned this above, but I guess I have one thing to add related to cursing attacks. Sometimes I'll see an engine board with a curser on it and strong trashing. Both me and my opponent ignore the curser at the start and build our engines. But once or twice I've pulled this move: at the point where I can draw my whole deck (or at least most of it), I'll use my buys to pick up one or two copies of the curser, and on the very next turn, before my opponent can really react, I will pump a ton of Curses into their deck super-quickly (KC helps a lot here). Getting the initiative on this is like pouring a bucket of water on their nice engine, and the 1-turn tempo loss I get from this is totally worth the 4 or 5 turns my opponent loses by having to clean up the mess I made in their deck. This seems powerful if you can do it quickly enough that your opponent doesn't have time to react, and they can't clean it up all that fast. Is there a good counter for this, other than getting to it first?
Sure - the turn after you buy the curse givers I buy some TfB's and additional draw. You give me say 4 curses, I play my engine and then trash all 4 curses. Chapel in a strong engine deck (one that draw the whole deck) laughs this stuff off easily, forge is also great at counter this. I can also play around with reactions (trader, moat, watchtower) - particularly if I have any top deck control, reflections (ambassador or masq), and racing - if we've depleted two piles building our engines you may have just dumped half the curses on me ... but they go into my discard so I might be able to buy two provinces and the rest of the curses for a 2 point win (or a colony, an estate, and the rest of the curses; or if I have a strong reaction like Wt or trader somewhere in my deck).

At the end of it, you normally give up at LEAST a province for this. Take the Kc case if there are ANY +2 actions you could get instead of the curse givers, you'd have made 12 coin instead the next turn and netted 6 VP (the same differential you got from cursing me). If my engine is strong enough to deal with the curses, then I just Kc my trashing and deal with them.

Your strat works really well against trashing that can only hit coppers and against trashing that is gone from the deck (island on the chapel, Procession or Grave robber being used on the trashing card, etc.). It works less well when the opponent doesn't have & can't buy the draw to deal with six curses. It works better when you can hit closer to a shuffle - but strong Kc engines rarely leave more than 5 cards in the draw deck. It works extremely well if the other guy has not built a very robust engine or no engine at all.
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AdamH

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #15 on: October 08, 2012, 07:47:39 am »
0

I can feel my brain growing as I read your posts. It feels good, and you know what I always say: "If it feels good, do it."

Anyways, both of you had quoted this part of my other post:

This is silly, but the way I think about this is a graph (I'm a math guy). The X-axis is turns, and the Y-axis has a few things super-imposed on it. First is number of bad cards left in my deck (I think of this as "deck potency" or "deck awesomeness"). Second is total buying power of my deck (Have to make sure this doesn't go below $3, and if it hits exactly $3, your deck better not be Mint-CCEEE-(Pawn/Copper/Herbalist), because good luck drawing all three of your dollars in a given turn -- I learned that one the hard way). Third is the number of good cards in your deck. The danger here is to let your deck potency get too high too quick (what dondon was talking about). But if you don't see your Chapel until turn 5, you don't want to let your deck potency get too low too quick either, or else you won't see your trasher often enough and you won't be able to line it up with the cards you want to trash as easily. Balancing these curves on the graph is super-tricky, and how you do it depends heavily on shuffle luck. The strategy for Ambassador has been talked about a lot, but other strong trashers haven't been given the same treatment. Is there any kingdom-invariant advice that anybody can provide here?

...and said that it wasn't quite right. Is there something not-right with this other than the idea that "copper-trashing is not always a good thing"? I know I don't have the specifics of it all worked out, but if this is the wrong way to go about thinking of things then I suppose I should probably stop.

One other thing, I played an IRL game this weekend where I got completely owned because I went for trashing, and it wasn't mentioned here: Bishop. I'm trying to remember the relevant cards: City, Monument, Bishop, Menagerie, I think Grand Market? Plat/Colony. The only hand size increasing cards were Menage, the only village was City, and Level-2 Cities and the only trashing on the board was Bishop. I thought that I couldn't get Menage to work without some trashing (which I still think is correct) and I didn't want to wait on Cities. My opponent had his $4 opening turn first and bought Monument, and like an idiot I opened Bishop. What I didn't realize was that my opponent was getting way more than I was out of my Bishop, and it was a card in MY deck! He bought some early Menageries, and he told me that three times he had a hand where my Bishop enabled his Menagerie to trigger by trashing a Copper. He was getting more money from his Monument, and he was even getting more VP tokens because he was playing Monument more often. I think I learned that Bishop as a trasher is much better after your opponent has committed to another strategy that doesn't benefit as much from the free trashing.
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ednever

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #16 on: October 08, 2012, 11:01:49 am »
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Bishop isn't really a trasher in early game. As stated above it helps your opponent as much as you (more since it doesn't require an action)

In later game it works a lot better since your opponent doesn't often have a card in hand that they want to trash.

Ed
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ehunt

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #17 on: October 10, 2012, 12:12:42 pm »
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Bishop isn't really a trasher in early game. As stated above it helps your opponent as much as you (more since it doesn't require an action)

In later game it works a lot better since your opponent doesn't often have a card in hand that they want to trash.

Ed

Definitely agree. Best rule of thumb when deciding whether you want to open Bishop: do you plan to win the game because you have more VP chips than your opponent? If not, don't open bishop.

(I screwed this up just the other day - "I'll just open bishop, get rid of my coppers, and buy lots of ventures." My opponent got to buy more ventures than me cause he didn't have a 4 dollar terminal copper in his deck, and, what do you know, those 5 or 6  abstract goonie points didn't add up to the two-province deficit.)
« Last Edit: October 10, 2012, 12:14:00 pm by ehunt »
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LastFootnote

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #18 on: October 10, 2012, 05:02:02 pm »
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Menagerie seems like a pretty awesome counter to Bishop. Similarly, I once played a game where my opponent went Bishop and I bought Libraries to counter. I think I bought all 8 Provinces/Colonies that game (can't remember which).
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #19 on: October 11, 2012, 12:22:44 pm »
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I'm a big fan of the delayed Bishop. If there is something that can help build up the deck more early game, start with that. You'll still get equal trashing to your opponent if he opens Bishop, but get at the key expensive cards more easily. Then when you add in your Bishop(s), you're down a little in points, but up in deck quality, and often this deck quality lead is enough to even catch up in VP tokens after a bit. It's the same reasoning that it's better to open with Silver than Tunnel in Vault/Tunnel games.
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jomini

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #20 on: October 11, 2012, 04:12:44 pm »
+1

Bishop is a bad opener only in that the opportunity cost bites you. If I don't need anything more than 4 coin (e.g. bishop/fortress, no +buy; bishop/village/poor house), then I will open bishop/silver unless there is a strong reason for something else. Yeah I get +1 coin +VP compared to my opponent's +1 action, but that is  not a bad trade if there isn't something better than on the table.

Likewise, if my opponent is going for a copper strategy (like coppersmith, apothecary or counting house), then I may open bishop as well.

It isn't that bishop helps your opponent more, generally, it is that you have to delay purchasing important cards (like gold) AND you don't get the massive bonus of a tighter deck than your opponent.
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Drab Emordnilap

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #21 on: October 11, 2012, 05:17:50 pm »
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Yeah I get +1 coin +VP compared to my opponent's +1 action, but that is  not a bad trade if there isn't something better than on the table.
They get an action and a card, though, not just an action (up on you when you play Bishop). They play a level 2 City when you get your $1 and VP chips.
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jomini

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #22 on: October 11, 2012, 07:18:46 pm »
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Yeah I get +1 coin +VP compared to my opponent's +1 action, but that is  not a bad trade if there isn't something better than on the table.
They get an action and a card, though, not just an action (up on you when you play Bishop). They play a level 2 City when you get your $1 and VP chips.

You are over-counting the effects. They end up with a 4 card hand (barring stuff like Oge) and one action to my 3 card hand +1 coin. Differential is +1 card, +1 action, -1 coin, -VP chips. Them playing a lvl2 city would be a 6 card hand with 2 actions, or a differential of +1 card, +2 actions.

This is frankly, irrelevant to the point though - if I don't have something to buy at at the 5-7 coin range, Bishop has a low opportunity cost. The biggest cost of the bishop isn't giving your opponent the free trash, it is giving your opponent the ability to spend 4 coin on something else (e.g. silver). If I don't need the buying power of silver, or the effect of some other kingdom card, then bishop is not a bad opener.
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DG

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #23 on: October 11, 2012, 08:03:49 pm »
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Card gaining is the most common reason to trash heavily in a treasure based game. A classic example would be a hoard. The hoard will gain the gold needed to sustain a deck as it buys victory cards, even starting from a very small deck.
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Drab Emordnilap

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #24 on: October 12, 2012, 03:30:47 pm »
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Yeah I get +1 coin +VP compared to my opponent's +1 action, but that is  not a bad trade if there isn't something better than on the table.
They get an action and a card, though, not just an action (up on you when you play Bishop). They play a level 2 City when you get your $1 and VP chips.
You are over-counting the effects. They end up with a 4 card hand (barring stuff like Oge) and one action to my 3 card hand +1 coin. Differential is +1 card, +1 action, -1 coin, -VP chips. Them playing a lvl2 city would be a 6 card hand with 2 actions, or a differential of +1 card, +2 actions.

If you play a Bishop (and I trash a card), then I, on my next turn, have one more card and one more action than you did after playing your Bishop. (4 cards and one action vs. 3 cards and no actions)

If I play a level 2 City, and you don't, then I have one more card and one more action that you did on your last turn. (6 cards and 2 actions vs. 5 cards and one action)


Thus, the opportunity cost for buying and playing a Bishop, assuming your opponent has something useful to trash, is like trading a 'level 2 city' for the $1 and VP chips. I'm just trying to say, you should either be getting a good number of VP chips, or trashing against an opponent who doesn't have useful cards to trash.


EDIT: Just for clarity, I'm not saying that when you play Bishop, the opponent gets a level 2 city on top of that. I'm comparing playing Bishop (only) to the opponent playing Level 2 City (only).
« Last Edit: October 12, 2012, 03:32:38 pm by Drab Emordnilap »
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jomini

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Re: Request: The Value of (Not) Trashing
« Reply #25 on: October 13, 2012, 04:53:59 pm »
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There is only so far you can go with those sorts of comparisons. For instance, a lvl 2 city played early on gives you a 6 card hand which is good odds (with a silver opening) to hit the magical 6 coin break point. A 4 card hand will have a strong shot at 5 coin, but if the 5's are weak, worthless, or simply not there then the differential is MUCH smaller than an early lab. Likewise, being able to play two terminals (due to synergy) than not being able to play one. For instance a free lvl 2 city makes all sorts of things like militia -> young witch or IW (gain a tunnel) -> young witch possible.

Pretty much early on, the hand size differentials are more favorable for the bishop than the "free lab". Later, the odds of them having a desired card to trash are lower while the odds that they could use synergistic actions are much higher.

Really, early bishop is all about the opportunity cost. What could you buy instead of bishop, how much will that help you compared to bishoping sooner? There are some niche situations where your bishop is heavily countered (opponent having strong counters like menage, market square, feodum, etc.) or where the opponent gets a lot less from trashing (e.g. opening baron, coppersmith, apothecary, etc.), but most of the time the other guy doesn't get enough benefit to make up for the chips so really are just down buying something else (which is a VERY non-trivial penalty).

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