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Brando Commando

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Farmland (draft)
« on: October 11, 2012, 11:10:06 pm »
+6

Since Farmland does something on-buy, there are really two big questions for it, and you probably want to have a good answer to both before buying it.

Question 1: What are you going to trash by buying Farmland?

More to the point, why do you want to buy this lame green card instead of Gold or some other snazzy $6 card?
If you can gain a Gold by buying the Farmland and trashing something from your hand, either through Hoard or Market Square, then this is pretty great. But let's assume you're doing it for the on-trash ability itself:

a) You're trashing nothing.

Surely you can do better than this with your $6.

b) You’re remodeling a Gold into a Province.

You have, egad, too many Golds and aren’t going to have +buys to convert them into anything else later. Really, most times, if you’re able to get 3 Silvers and 1 Gold in hand to get both a Farmland and Province on a single turn, you’re probably ready to do just that.

c) You’re remodeling a Farmland into a Province.

This will net you 4 VP for $6 while inching you closer to the end game. This is an easy choice over the Duchy if you have the $6 or $7 to buy it (barring considerations that make the Duchy better, a Duke-Duchy strategy being the most obvious).

But you might also ask yourself, if pushing toward the endgame and/or possibly break the PPR is to your advantage. It's a tough question with its own complications, but we won’t get into them now. It’s enough to note that the situation is essentially like buying a Fairgrounds (pumped up to 4 VP, of course) that also happens to reduce the Province pile by 1.

The other reason to do this, of course, is if you’re not planning to buy any more Provinces and just plan to remodel the rest of your deck into whatever you can get it to -- that is, you’ve given up on improving economy and are, most likely, in the home stretch trying to get as many points as possible.

Here’s how ecq put it: “Buying a Farmland and trashing a Farmland for a Province only nets 6 VP.  Any time you do that, you could have just bought a Province if you had any other source of $2 instead of a Farmland.  Further, other sources of $2 aren't nearly as bad to have in your hand as Farmland when you only have $5.”

d) You're remodeling Silver for a Duchy.

Using Farmland to remodel Silver into a Duchy is unlikely to be a good play unless you’re really hitting the wall and trying to squeeze out every last possible point before the end of the game.

e) You're remodeling a <$5 card into something better.

If Farmland is in the kingdom, decide early if you’re going to make use of it later, because a bunch of $5 cards in your deck are not going to be very useful with it.

Trashing Coppers, Estates, and Shelters into $2, $3, and $4 cards:

Stop. Do not pass Go. Do not collect a $2 card. A general rule of thumb is that remodeling or expanding Coppers, Estates, and Shelters into cards to improve your economy is too slow in most kingdoms -- the differential between a Copper and Silver is just too little to justify the economy and time that goes into swapping the Copper for a Silver. So you especially won’t want to buy a Farmland for $6 just to remodel these little guys, unless you really love the idea of having that Farmland available later to turn into a Province. And for the record, you should not love that thought enough to blow $6 on an early Farmland.

“Trashing a Curse into a $2 card, especially a late-game Estate.”

…as ecq put it. “Buying a Duchy gives you 3VP, +1 dead card.  Trashing a Curse to, say, a Lighthouse is 3VP, +0 dead cards.  Trashing a Curse to an Estate is 4VP, +1 dead card.”

Trashing $3 or $4 cards into better $5 or $6 cards.

What Farmland can be good for in the midgame is to be useful when you hit that $6 or $7 one time too many. Notice a theme here? It’s a way to set yourself up for the endgame when you aren’t yet hitting $8 but have already developed infrastructure/economy and want to start cashing in.

There are any number of cards that work well in the early game but not so well later; these are your ripest targets for trashing.


  • $4 cards that want Coppers or Estates in your hand/deck:
Baron, Moneylender, Remake, Spice Merchant, Rats. (This might include more Dark Ages cards when we figure out which ones are weakest  in late game.)
  • $3 cards that want Coppers or Estates in your hand/deck:
Masquerade, Lookout, Loan.
  • Attacks that are less relevant mid to late game:
Sea Hag. Young Witch. Cutpurse. Ambassador.
  • Low-grade gainers (better for building mid-game economy than buying Provinces):
Trader, Jack of All Trades. Bureaucrat. Ironworks. Workshop. Talisman.
  • Miscellaneous cards that are better in early or mid-game:
Smugglers. Potion. Quarry. Tunnel.
  • Cards you shouldn’t have bought in the first place:
Sometimes you have a dud card in your deck that’s not synergizing the way you thought it would, or maybe it’s just not doing much in this hand: dead Throne Room, dead Conspirator, dead Nobles.


Question 2: What are you going to do with that Farmland now that you’ve trashed something with it?

Here’s the rub: Now you’ve got this lame green card that isn’t going to do much and is only worth 2 VP. If it’s not interesting to you now that you’ve gotten the trashing benefit out of it…then you probably shouldn’t have bought it. Like Border Village, you probably shouldn’t buy Farmland just because it gives you a fun on-buy effect. It really ought to be doing something for you coming and going, unless, of course, you’re at the very end of the game.

a) Use the Farmland for its greenness.

An unlikely case. You might be using some combination of Crossroads and Scout, which sounds pretty bad to begin with, but Farmland would slow your deck down a little less this way. More plausibly, you’re doing silk road, in which case it really comes down to the math.

b) Just use it for the 2 VP.

Weak. If this is what you plan to do with the Farmland, it better be last ditch.

c) Trash it for benefit.

One of its best uses. Asklepios puts it this way: “When a card has some of its benefit on buy/gain (or just on buy in Farmland's case), then once it’s in your deck it’s less valuable to you than a card of its price ought to be. This makes it a good target for trash-for-benefit like Apprentice or Bishop.” Or Salvager, for that matter.

d) Remodel the Farmland itself into a Province

Of course, Farmland synergizes with itself to a limited degree by being a perfect target for future Farmlands to trash when you buy them. But this only gets better when you have actions that can do that for you without you wasting $6, like Remodel, Expand, Governor, or Rebuild. Otherwise, only if you’re desperate and squeezing the last few points out.

e) Remodel/expand it into a nice fat $7 or Platinum

Look for this combo mid-game, especially with a Remake, Upgrade, or Develop. First, use the Farmland for one of the reasons described in Part I above to trash something janky, then turn this over into a good $7.
Sounds great, right? But you need to be able to draw that Farmland and your trasher together…so a thinned deck of 15 with some cantrips is a better bet than a thicker BM or engine deck.

Notes:

Thanks to ecq and Askpelios, but also to everybody who participated in these threads on Farmland, which I've taken a lot of these ideas from:
 
HYPERLINK "http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=2503.0" http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=2503.0

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1228.0
« Last Edit: October 11, 2012, 11:18:23 pm by Brando Commando »
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Brando Commando

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #1 on: October 11, 2012, 11:14:18 pm »
0

So I'm not particularly high level -- 27, give or take -- but I figured it couldn't hurt to put an article together, especially if people want to weigh in.

Back up your claims if you can, I'd particularly like to see evidence (I know, I know, it's hard with CouncilRoom down) or tight reasoning. Especially evidence, however.

Thanks for reading. I hope this is helpful...

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jotheonah

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #2 on: October 11, 2012, 11:27:15 pm »
0

This is nice work! It's good to see more article drafts going up, and Farmland has always been a bit inscrutable to me.
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jotheonah

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #3 on: October 11, 2012, 11:27:56 pm »
0

Actually, I never know quite what to do with any of the $6 victory cards, except maybe Nobles.
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gman314

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #4 on: October 11, 2012, 11:29:28 pm »
0

Actually, I never know quite what to do with any of the $6 victory cards, except maybe Nobles.

Yeah, they're an interesting bunch. General premise: If you want points, it's worse than Duchy but in other circumstances it could be better.
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ftl

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #5 on: October 11, 2012, 11:31:11 pm »
0

d) You're remodeling Silver for a Duchy.

Using Farmland to remodel Silver into a Duchy is unlikely to be a good play unless you’re really hitting the wall and trying to squeeze out every last possible point before the end of the game.

I'm not sure this is such a bad play. The farmland and the duchy together are 5VP - a province is 6vp. It's one dead card more and one vp less, but it seems like a pretty solid PPR play.

Especially if the $3 card you're trashing isn't a silver but something that wouldn't have given you the +$2 that would have let you buy a province.
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gman314

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #6 on: October 11, 2012, 11:37:42 pm »
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Especially if the $3 card you're trashing isn't a silver but something that wouldn't have given you the +$2 that would have let you buy a province.

Like that Ambassador who has nothing left to give, or that Lookout who's just a liability, or in some cases a Swindler who could now discard a Province for the opponent.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #7 on: October 12, 2012, 02:45:39 am »
+1

This is a nice list, but the problem is that it's all about tactics, and not at all about strategy. You're answering the questions: "I have $6, should I buy Farmland?", and "I have Farmland, what should I do with it?". But there is another big question to address: "How does the presence of Farmland factor in to my overall strategy?"

To answer this, we have to ask, "What does Farmland bring to the table?"
1. More VPs. With Farmland, you need more than 44 VPs to clinch a win. So it may make BM rushes less effective.
2. It's possible to add $8 of "coin value" to your deck with only $6. So it may make trash-for-benefit-based strategies more appealing.
3. It can trash Estates (or things that give something good when trashed). If it's the only method to trash these cards, it may be worth going for it.
4. It thrives when draw with other particular cards: i.e. the TfB card or money totalling $6. So it's good in decks where you can get a decent amount of card-drawing.
5. It enables a lot of end game tactics where you can do stuff like getting 5VP without draining a Province, or get 8VP with one buy, etc...

The general feeling I get out of this is that (given other decent cards to support such a strategy) I'm more likely to go for an engine, particularly one with some sifting and TfB.

I think the most common use I've actually had for Farmland is endgame tactics, but there have definitely been games where I've used it to build an engine. In an engine where you draw a good portion of your deck consistently, a Farmland is just as good as a Harem, and Harem+$4 engine component (typically village) > Gold+Estate, which makes buying Farmland with $6+Estate a pretty good buy.
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Robz888

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #8 on: October 12, 2012, 02:55:25 am »
0

I gave you a +1, thanks for this. Farmland is tricky customer. Probably one of the more difficult cards to use well.
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Robz888

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #9 on: October 12, 2012, 02:56:23 am »
+4

Of course, you missed the top reason to buy it: Mistakenly thinking it's Fairgrounds.
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DG

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #10 on: October 12, 2012, 07:42:01 am »
0

How can you change your play for a farmland kingdom? You can buy cards knowing that might have options to trash them later with farmland. A moneylender is prime example since when you buy a farmland to trash the moneylender you can gain a gold if you want. You can sometimes ignore weak attacks such as swindler knowing that you can use farmland to remove exchanged cards. A fool's gold kingdom might be an example for that. You might also specifically purchase cards at 2 cost less than victory cards, just to give yourself the farmlands option.

In the endgame you need to be aware of the extra points available on a farmlands turn. The PPR can't be applied so easily. Farmland is a vp card and you need a big focus on victory points and scoring.

One crucial point for farmland is that you can't buy another farmland to trash it for a province once the pile is empty. This changes the value of the last farmlands in the pile.
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brokoli

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #11 on: October 12, 2012, 07:48:48 am »
0

And of course, the tricks with on-buy and on-trash cards. Buy farmland, trash rats, gain border village + IGG ...
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WheresMyElephant

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #12 on: October 12, 2012, 12:34:37 pm »
0

Quote
c) You’re remodeling a Farmland into a Province.

This will net you 4 VP for $6 while inching you closer to the end game. This is an easy choice over the Duchy if you have the $6 or $7 to buy it (barring considerations that make the Duchy better, a Duke-Duchy strategy being the most obvious).

But you might also ask yourself, if pushing toward the endgame and/or possibly break the PPR is to your advantage. It's a tough question with its own complications, but we won’t get into them now. It’s enough to note that the situation is essentially like buying a Fairgrounds (pumped up to 4 VP, of course) that also happens to reduce the Province pile by 1.

The other reason to do this, of course, is if you’re not planning to buy any more Provinces and just plan to remodel the rest of your deck into whatever you can get it to -- that is, you’ve given up on improving economy and are, most likely, in the home stretch trying to get as many points as possible.

Here’s how ecq put it: “Buying a Farmland and trashing a Farmland for a Province only nets 6 VP.  Any time you do that, you could have just bought a Province if you had any other source of $2 instead of a Farmland.  Further, other sources of $2 aren't nearly as bad to have in your hand as Farmland when you only have $5.”

You have a big typo here at the beginning: 4VP should be 6VP.

Apropos of ecq's quote, this is my own weird perspective and probably doesn't belong in the article, but I like to think of Farmland as a Harem variant. Once in your deck it's basically a Harem with the caveat that it's $2 may only be spent on Province. If you buy Harem over Gold you're sacrificing some buying power for VP. If you buy Farmland over Harem (supposing both are available) you're sacrificing almost all the remaining buying power for the Remodel effect. So it certainly seems like you had better be getting value out of this Remodel.



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jotheonah

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #13 on: October 12, 2012, 01:13:32 pm »
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No, 4 VP is correct. You lose 2 VP and gain 6, for a net gain of 4 VP.
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AJD

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #14 on: October 12, 2012, 01:16:43 pm »
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No, 4 VP is correct. You lose 2 VP and gain 6, for a net gain of 4 VP.

No, 6 VP is correct. You lose 2 (trash Farmland from hand), gain 6 (Province), and gain 2 (the Farmland you actually bought).
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jotheonah

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #15 on: October 12, 2012, 01:20:25 pm »
0

Oh, right. Good point.
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Brando Commando

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #16 on: October 12, 2012, 01:58:30 pm »
0

You have a big typo here at the beginning: 4VP should be 6VP.

Ouch. Good catch.

Thanks for the feedback, everybody -- I've already seen several things I definitely need to change and clarify. I'm planning on updating sometime next week, so keep the comments coming if you have anything to say.
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popsofctown

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #17 on: October 12, 2012, 02:02:58 pm »
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Thinking Farmlands with Farmlands in hand is a halfpowered fairgrounds is such a HUGE misconception, and stops you from coming to the realization that Farmland is a Harem variant.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #18 on: October 12, 2012, 02:25:18 pm »
+1

Of course, you missed the top reason to buy it: Mistakenly thinking it's Fairgrounds.

Man I had a game last month where I bought a few Farmlands for the on-trash part of it... while also working to add more variety to my deck to make those Farmlands worth more points! So I wasn't confusing Farmland for Fairgrounds, I was confusing Farmland for some overpowered non-existent Farmland + Fairgrounds combo card! :-[
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Captain_Frisk

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #19 on: October 12, 2012, 02:35:55 pm »
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Bishop + Silver + Gold + Farmland + Province is also a stranger version of a golden deck if you somehow lost the extra silver.
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dondon151

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #20 on: October 12, 2012, 03:11:46 pm »
0

This is a nice list, but the problem is that it's all about tactics, and not at all about strategy. You're answering the questions: "I have $6, should I buy Farmland?", and "I have Farmland, what should I do with it?". But there is another big question to address: "How does the presence of Farmland factor in to my overall strategy?"

I don't agree that this is a big question with a card like Farmland. Strategies that use Farmland, at least in my opinion, are just spinning their wheels - if you play $6, buy Farmland, trash Farmland -> Province, then you could have just bought a Province if that Farmland were a Silver instead (and Silver is way cheaper!). If you buy Farmland with $6 and trash Estate -> $4, that's just like paying $2 extra to add 1 VP onto a $4 card.

So, it's really more of a situational thing. You're not going to think, "oh man, Farmland, better rethink my overall strategy;" rather, you're going to think, "oh, there's Farmland, now I know what to do after I open with Smugglers or Lookout or Potion and it becomes a useless card in the endgame: Farmland it to a Duchy, Gold, or Farmland." But the OP already covered that.
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jomini

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #21 on: October 13, 2012, 05:14:00 pm »
+1

This is a nice list, but the problem is that it's all about tactics, and not at all about strategy. You're answering the questions: "I have $6, should I buy Farmland?", and "I have Farmland, what should I do with it?". But there is another big question to address: "How does the presence of Farmland factor in to my overall strategy?"

I don't agree that this is a big question with a card like Farmland. Strategies that use Farmland, at least in my opinion, are just spinning their wheels - if you play $6, buy Farmland, trash Farmland -> Province, then you could have just bought a Province if that Farmland were a Silver instead (and Silver is way cheaper!). If you buy Farmland with $6 and trash Estate -> $4, that's just like paying $2 extra to add 1 VP onto a $4 card.

So, it's really more of a situational thing. You're not going to think, "oh man, Farmland, better rethink my overall strategy;" rather, you're going to think, "oh, there's Farmland, now I know what to do after I open with Smugglers or Lookout or Potion and it becomes a useless card in the endgame: Farmland it to a Duchy, Gold, or Farmland." But the OP already covered that.

Buy Farmland (Farmland -> Province) is quite a good move in engines. First if you are going for multiple provinces it is 2 coin per transition. So say I buy two farmlands and swap two estates to engine components. Now my magic price point isn't 16 coin, it is 12. That means that instead of spending 14 coin on components & payload, I spend 12 coin on farmland and for my trouble I'm two cards tighter (no silvers or whatever to make up the 4 coin to get to 16; meaning I skip buying a smithy/village set a good fraction of the time) and I have 2 VP more. If I'm drawing everything, or close thereto, getting farmlands lined up is not all that hard. All told that is often the difference between firing off the engine this turn or next turn.

In any event, farmland does have some major strategic implications. The biggest being that it increases the total potential VP out there AND the amount you can acquire per turn. Farmland makes it a lot easier to lose the province split 4:3 or to be down on duchies. Farmland also means that you can pull some nice 5 VP buys late game with 3 -> duchy. Both of these tilt the balance more towards engines and away from Big Money with nothing else out there. Throw in things like a remodel, easy gold gaining, and simply being up 2 additional points and farmland has a decent strategy space.
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popsofctown

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #22 on: October 13, 2012, 05:40:13 pm »
0

This is a nice list, but the problem is that it's all about tactics, and not at all about strategy. You're answering the questions: "I have $6, should I buy Farmland?", and "I have Farmland, what should I do with it?". But there is another big question to address: "How does the presence of Farmland factor in to my overall strategy?"

I don't agree that this is a big question with a card like Farmland. Strategies that use Farmland, at least in my opinion, are just spinning their wheels - if you play $6, buy Farmland, trash Farmland -> Province, then you could have just bought a Province if that Farmland were a Silver instead (and Silver is way cheaper!). If you buy Farmland with $6 and trash Estate -> $4, that's just like paying $2 extra to add 1 VP onto a $4 card.
This is so very wrong.  Farmland trashing an Estate gaining a 4$ is a very powerful play.  Instead of buying a Gold, you've trashed an Estate, gained a 4, and gained a conditional Harem (it doesn't actually do anything if the rest of your hand doesn't hit 6$ or have TFB).  Such a card is worth about ~4$, two 4's and losing an Estate can be worth a Gold, depending on the board.  If you have Haven or Tactician or Courtyard, or just know that your deck is running very strong by now, Farmland becomes less of a conditional Harem and more of a straight Harem, so the Remodel perk it offered becomes very appealing.

I played a tournament game with Farmlands, Wharf, and Farming Village as the only 4$.  I opened Silver Silver and still didn't hit 5$ until turn 5.  I won because once I was confident my BM Wharf was rolling consistently to hit 8's consistently, I bought Farmlands over Golds to convert my Estates to Farming Villages.  Because Wharf BM has a phase of the game where it hits 8 consistently and the primary question is how much other VP you will buy the same turn, the Farmlands played just like Harem +'s.
« Last Edit: October 13, 2012, 05:44:06 pm by popsofctown »
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Asklepios

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Re: Farmland (draft)
« Reply #23 on: October 15, 2012, 01:54:23 pm »
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Lovely to be quoted, as if I have any sort of game wisdom! My rank seems to be plummeting recently, so I'd take anything I say with a dose of scepticism.

b) Just use it for the 2 VP.

Weak. If this is what you plan to do with the Farmland, it better be last ditch.

I'd actually say that this "weak" reason is my number one reason for acquiring Farmlands.

That is, in games where 2VP makes a difference, I'll acquire it.

For example, if the (2 player) game is 3 provinces apiece and moving towards a 4/4 Province split, and I have Silver/Silver/Silver/Copper, I could either buy the Duchy, or buy the Farmlands and make a Duchy.The latter would be my preferred option, as now my opponent needs a Duchy and 2 extra VP from somewhere to get the 4/4 split back to a draw. Sure, if he manages to get the Provinces to 5/3, then I've wasted my time, but generally losing that silver doesn't slow me down enough for him to get both provinces, and generally that extra 2VP is enough of a pain to force him to start observing PPR, even after he's bought a Duchy in reply.

Or, more classically, if I have three golds and naught else, then a Farmlands plus trashing to Province might be better than a straight Province if I'm not expecting to see a reshuffle, or if I#m expecting my opponent to buy the last province before I can.

For me, the 2 VP is the entire point of the card. Farmlands is a card that worsens my deck, but increases my score. In that way, its pretty similar in play principles to a late game Duchy, the only difference being it costs a dollar more, scores a point less, and if I'm lucky, offsets its deck-weakening a little with its on-buy effect.

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