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[Mean Mr Mustard]

One of the strengths of Upgrade is the cycling ability that comes with it being a self replacing non-terminal.  In my mind, the cost difference between Upgrade and Remake is justified by the ability to play them without slowing down your deck progression, since Upgrade replaces itself and gives an extra action.  Remake is a powerful trasher, but sometimes buying and using it can potentially fatally slow down the tempo of deck progression: a turn buying or using Remake will often yield no other benefit.

Upgrade rarely is an outright bad buy in the first four rounds, as there are not too many Kingdoms that will be hurt by the easy trashing of Coppers or Estates.  Chapel or Apothecary scenarios might not benefit from Upgrade and on scary BMU boards Upgrade may be a deadly distraction, but on the whole it is a very strong card, especially if the Kingdom has $3 non-terminals.  Think Menagerie, although even Wishing Wells and Villages can be great targets for Upgraded Estates.

It is certainly possible to go to far and buy too many Upgrades.  There are times, however, when it makes sense to buy multiple copies going even into the mid-game.  Remember, extra Upgrades can be easily converted into Gold in turn 7-10 to make a strong push into the VP buying stage of the game.  This is board dependent.  In non-treasure setups it can be a very strong play to buy multiple Upgrades in order to quickly cycle and kill the starting cards.  Multiple Upgrades can also help against Cursing attacks, if you can stay on top of it and not let your opponent get too far ahead.

In <a href=http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/09/game-20110909-043915-71a66b40.html>this game</a>, the winning difference is the early inclusion of multiple Upgrades.  I was able to quickly trash the starting cards, gain multiple Peddlers and Upgrade those Peddlers into Platinum for an easy win against a very good player.

In <a href=http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110528-120142-1060940b.html>this game</a>, I used Upgrade to accelerate Alchemist and used Expand to turn the Upgrades into Provinces for a faster close against Saboteur attacks.

In <a href=http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110725-022058-752cf29a.html>this game</a>, I was able to build a deck made up entirely of non-terminals and Goons, three-pile ending in a win in 15 turns with no VP buys.

In <a href=http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110628-163405-9b8610ef.html>this game</a>, I way over-gained Upgrades and got spanked by an opponent who never bothered trashing his starting hand, and instead used his Coppers in conjunction with Laboratories and Banks to thoroughly whip me.

[kn1tt3r]

Upgrade is also great with Grand Markets. Getting rid of Copper plus upgrading Upgrades to GMs is just good.

[Superdad]

I actually have a severe disdain for upgrade, probably to a fault. You say that upgrade does not affect your hand much, but it actually does - you play with a 4-card hand everytime you upgrade. What do you get for that? Increase the value of the upgraded card by 1. So you minion-attack yourself for such a tiny benefit. How many times do you need to reshuffle/use that upgraded (+1) card to offset the fact that you played with a 4-card hand? That entirely depends on what you are upgrading to. Now consider the fact that you may upgrade that card again the next time you draw it. And the next time. 8 turns later, you are severely behind because you've played half the game with 4 card hands, and all you've accomplished is you've turned an estate into a gold over 4 consecutive upgrades, and you haven't even used the upgraded cards yet in the whole upgrading process. Also consider the opportunity cost of purchasing the upgrade itself.

I see upgrade as a niche card to facilitate access to kingdom-defining cards, most notably (for sure) is grand market. That being said, 99 times out of 100 I'd rather remake in my hand, simply for the fact that I can trash two coppers and thin faster. Upgrade is too slow for what it tries to do, even though the cantrip nature tries to pull the wool over your eyes, trying to sell you on efficiency.

I am in no way a fan of upgrade whatsoever. I find it a card that in the vast majority of cases is nothing but a distraction.

[Fangz]

Upgrade has a great combo with University. You deal with your buying power problem by being able to acquire massive numbers of upgrades very quickly, with the upgrades helping you both thin and cycle your deck.

Here's a game where this worked quick well.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110907-103310-0192d2a1.html

I actually have a severe disdain for upgrade, probably to a fault. You say that upgrade does not affect your hand much, but it actually does - you play with a 4-card hand everytime you upgrade. What do you get for that? Increase the value of the upgraded card by 1. So you minion-attack yourself for such a tiny benefit. How many turns with the upgraded (+1) card does it take to offset the fact that you played witha  4-card hand? That entirely depends on what you are upgrading to.

I've said this again and again, but the trash power of upgrade or masquerade is nothing like the discard of minion, or sea hags. In the case of upgrade, yes, you play with a 4 card hard, but the lost card is *one that you choose*. Whereas with minion or sea hags, it's one chosen at random. This is an enormous difference. In general, losing one card you choose out of a hand does barely any damage at all - how often do you draw perfect hands where every card is important? Far more often you draw an estate, or a curse, or an useless terminal, or an extraneous copper. Meanwhile, losing one card at random is often greatly damaging.

Increasing the value of a card by 1 is far from a tiny benefit. Turning an estate into a silver means that at some point in the future, you will have a hand with 2 more $ of buying power than otherwise, an effect almost equivalent to buying a merchant ship! (And indeed, frequently superior!) I agree that remake is generally better - especially because you can get it earlier, but usually you don't get the choice. Remake also loses its lustre in the late game, because it's very rare to find yourself with 2 useless cards in hand, and your turn is usually used up by playing remake because there's not much you can do with 2 cards and no actions.

EDIT:
Successively upgrading the same card over and over again is a very silly thing to do. The point of upgrade, remake, expand and so on is to turn junk cards into useful stuff.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

The strength of Upgrade usually isn't the +$1 card you gain, it is the Copper or Estate you will never see again.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

all you've accomplished is you've turned an estate into a gold over 4 consecutive upgrades

This is not the correct way to use this card.

[ackack]

This game is one of the more fun Upgrade ones I can remember, and I think my victory in it is mostly attributable to having that extra Upgrade. With this sort of big engine deck, Upgrade can be used to grab emergency cards that you want to play this turn - turn 12, for example, I use it to acquire 2 essential Markets that I hadn't had time for and play them that turn. While you can do that with any trash for benefit, turn 13 shows another useful side of them. When the deck is fully drawn, KC'ed Upgrade trashes 3 cards and puts 2 of the fruits of that Upgrading immediately in your hand, along with some bonus actions.

[AJD]

It's worth noting that Upgrade becomes way more valuable in endgame in games with $7 kingdom cards.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

It's worth noting that Upgrade becomes way more valuable in endgame in games with $7 kingdom cards.

Yes, and it is also useful to quickly turn $4 cards into Duchies in the end game to amass quick points in lieu of a buy or the extra spending power.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

I'd like to expand a bit on the notion that $3 cantrips can really help speed along a deck with Upgrade.

I feel like it is usually a good idea to get rid of Estates first, because they are completely useless and the Silver adds much needed buying power, but the trashing of copper thins the deck and allows more frequent use of the better cards.  The presence of $3 cantrips is really the best of both worlds, because they do not effectively take up space in the deck and make it possible, after trashing the estates, to quickly gain Gold (or whatever strong cards are being purchased).  The Upgrading player may then attack his Coppers with abandon, cycling along the way, and really ramp up a deck very quickly.

<a href=http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110908-192240-c4399026.html>Here is an example of this</a>

[WanderingWinder]

Upgrade is a decent card, but a bit slow without some kind of support, i.e. it's not terribly great support for big money. Where it really shines is in decks with a lot of cantrips and/or games with cursing attacks (or ambassador). Comparisons come in the form of remake, and, more importantly IMO, apprentice.

[DG]

Here is another example of what I'd call a classic upgrade game. http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110306-150442-d717e9c4.html. All the cards used are from the intrigue set too.

- enlarged hand size for better choice of upgrades
- fast deck cycling with few terminal cards to clog the deck
- simple action sequence (no terminals, extra actions, thrones)
- useful trashing of estates to a good 3 cost card
- deck improves significantly as copper is trashed (upgrade is a slow copper trasher so it needs to be good for the deck)
- remove excess upgrades to gold before they interfere with province buying
- option to convert 4 cost cards to duchies (not used in this game)

[snappy]

reminds me of a game i played recently ... http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110904-190817-d0582e30.html ... remake was too slow and clashed with ambassador, but upgrade probably would have been great.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I actually have a severe disdain for upgrade, probably to a fault. You say that upgrade does not affect your hand much, but it actually does - you play with a 4-card hand everytime you upgrade. What do you get for that? Increase the value of the upgraded card by 1. So you minion-attack yourself for such a tiny benefit. How many times do you need to reshuffle/use that upgraded (+1) card to offset the fact that you played with a 4-card hand? That entirely depends on what you are upgrading to. Now consider the fact that you may upgrade that card again the next time you draw it. And the next time. 8 turns later, you are severely behind because you've played half the game with 4 card hands, and all you've accomplished is you've turned an estate into a gold over 4 consecutive upgrades, and you haven't even used the upgraded cards yet in the whole upgrading process. Also consider the opportunity cost of purchasing the upgrade itself.

This was my initial impression of upgrade, but as Mean Mr Mustard points out, upgrading good cards into better cards is the wrong way to use upgrade. (The same holds true for remodel.) You should rarely be upgrading $3->$4 or $4->$5. The main thing upgrade gives is non-terminal trashing, which is really good. You get to consistently trash coppers and estates without using a terminal action, while only decreasing your hand-size to 4 (instead of down to 2 or 3 like other trashers), and while getting bonus free $3 cards when you trash estates is definitely worth spending an early $5 on in a lot of cases. It's definitely a bit slow since it's only 1 card at a time, so you have to get it early and can't do it in really fast games, but with an early upgrade, the benefits add up pretty quickly.

If you look at councilroom.com's win rate vs turn graph (http://councilroom.com/win_weighted_accum_turn.html?cards=Cost%3D%3D5) for $5 cards, you'll see upgrade at turn 1-2 is inferior to only witch, mountebank, and trading post, and at turn 3-4 is inferior to only witch, mountebank, and hunting party. Obviously this doesn't tell the whole story and doesn't apply to every game, but it does say something about how strong early upgrade can be.

[play2draw]

Another note, already briefly mentioned, is that it's nigh impossible to end up in a situation where you have too many Upgrades. If you draw a hand of all Upgrades, you Upgrade two of those Upgrades into Golds, Goons, Nobles, or even Grand Markets! And you still end up with a 3 card hand you can do stuff with. Upgrade is probably the *safest* trashing card in the game, with usefulness retained from beginning to end, and is an immensely beneficial card to help build your engine with (especially with a kingdom good, spammable $3 and $4 cards on the board).

[DG]

Another note, already briefly mentioned, is that it's nigh impossible to end up in a situation where you have too many Upgrades. If you draw a hand of all Upgrades, you Upgrade two of those Upgrades into Golds, Goons, Nobles, or even Grand Markets!

It is very possible to buy too many upgrades. Sometimes you can't get them out of your deck in time to buy provinces. Hands such as {upgrade, gold, gold, province, province} are not helpful. There are also sometimes much more complicated situations where you can clean up your deck too quickly, trash upgrades for gold too early, only find that your deck is bogged down by gold and no longer has any fluidity in the endgame. I'm guessing many people won't believe that last one is possible until they do it to themselves.

[Markov Chain]

Another particularly good use of Upgrade is against Curse.  Normally, the benefit from Remodeling or Expanding a card is much greater than the benefit from Upgrading, because of the larger gain; you can Expand an Estate to a Lab, Remodel it to a Caravan, or Upgrade it to a Silver.  But an Upgrade trashes a Curse completely, which is usually just about as good as Expanding it to a Silver.  (The same applies to Copper, but if you Upgrade a Copper, you lose $1 to spend this turn

In particular, if you are Tortured with an Upgrade in hand, you can take the Curse knowing it will go away and you will have an extra card to play with.

[greatexpectations]

- upgrade peddlers into platinum
- upgrade a chapel/remake to a useful endgame card after heavier early trashing
- estates into great halls
- duchy/duke (http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110720-185005-eaf7bedd.html) and *theoretically* silver-> gardens
- not only grand markets but cities too
- perfect counter to sea hag
- upgrade/ambassador and upgrade/warehouse are nice uses too