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[ftl]

I think it's best used as a three-shot.

You have an overdrawn engine. You want to add spending power to it fast. One buy and $4 (or one play of a gainer) gets you $5 to spend on the next three turns (assuming you can draw the Death Cart with the ruins, which you should in an overdrawn engine), and honestly a lot of engines don't spend more than three turns greening.

I think that is the best use of death cart.

[WheresMyElephant]

So to sum up, the issue we're debating is whether Death Cart is viable as a long-term trash-for-benefit, or if it's best used as a one-shot.  Personally I lean toward the former, but everyone seems to be disagreeing with me.

Is this really the debate? That wasn't my impression, and it sounds like a silly debate to have. Obviously either approach can be good depending on your deck/the board, so both are worth discussing, though of course if one is somewhat more prevalent it's worth knowing.

Buying an endless stream of $2s for Death Cart isn't much of a strategy, seems to be the biggest thing people are saying. But the same would go for any other TfB, though for different reasons (i.e. most of their benefits are cost-dependent). It doesn't mean using Death Cart as a TfB isn't viable; it just means that neither Death Cart nor say Bishop is so broken that buying up all the Moats to trash becomes a winning strategy.

[jomini]

So to sum up, the issue we're debating is whether Death Cart is viable as a long-term trash-for-benefit, or if it's best used as a one-shot.  Personally I lean toward the former, but everyone seems to be disagreeing with me.

The bigger problem is that you aren't listening to nor talking about why people say it is a one-shot and why you think it should be good for long-term TfB.

Space efficiency, odds of pairing Dthcrt with its fodder, needing an action, tempo concerns, sustainability, etc. these are issues that you blithely ignore for reasons I don't understand. I've done a worked example showing exactly how one-shotting a dead Dthcrt & replacing it with gold/silver gives you 5 provinces for only one more card of draw.

You aren't doing a good job until you address these concerns legitimately. Maybe I'm wrong about Dthcrt becoming a weakish gimped gold when you can't feed it Ruins, fine, tell me why. Why do you think Dthcrt/Money is actually viable on a lot of boards? Why do think it is better than Dthcrt/Engine? Why don't you want to sift for Ruins?

[werothegreat]

So to sum up, the issue we're debating is whether Death Cart is viable as a long-term trash-for-benefit, or if it's best used as a one-shot.  Personally I lean toward the former, but everyone seems to be disagreeing with me.

The bigger problem is that you aren't listening to nor talking about why people say it is a one-shot and why you think it should be good for long-term TfB.

Space efficiency, odds of pairing Dthcrt with its fodder, needing an action, tempo concerns, sustainability, etc. these are issues that you blithely ignore for reasons I don't understand. I've done a worked example showing exactly how one-shotting a dead Dthcrt & replacing it with gold/silver gives you 5 provinces for only one more card of draw.

You aren't doing a good job until you address these concerns legitimately. Maybe I'm wrong about Dthcrt becoming a weakish gimped gold when you can't feed it Ruins, fine, tell me why. Why do you think Dthcrt/Money is actually viable on a lot of boards? Why do think it is better than Dthcrt/Engine? Why don't you want to sift for Ruins?

I could have sworn I at least started out saying that Death Cart doesn't do well as a Big Money thing.  I'm sorry for blithely ignoring.

Death Cart/Money - this is probably not a good strategy - a sustained Death Cart needs Actions, and with Big Money, you're not going to be colliding Death Cart with anything.  One-shotting the Death Cart can slingshot you to Golds or Platinums, but then you're left with Ruins in your deck.

Death Cart/Sifter - yes, you can use this to find your Ruins to trash, and then you can use Death Cart as just a three-shot (or four-shot with Shelters).  But if you have Death Cart, Warehouse and three Coppers, you may as well just eat the Warehouse and get a Province.

Death Cart/Engine - this is probably the best.  You're buying lots of Actions anyway, you usually have +Buy to make full use of the $5, and you're usually drawing your entire deck, so you don't have to worry about collision.

I guess I didn't articulate properly with the cheap Actions thing.  How about this: only do that if you have +Buy, or are in an engine.  What I'm trying to say is that you get the most out of Death Cart if you can keep it going.

Maybe I should compare this to Moneylender.  Moneylender is awesome - it gets rid of your Coppers, and it gives you coin.  When you're out of Coppers, Moneylender is now a Confusion in your deck.  Do you buy more Coppers to feed to Moneylender?  Most likely not, barring Goons or something like that.  Perhaps it is best to think of Death Cart as a Moneylender analogue - you use it to eat up those Ruins (and maybe your Necropolis), and as an added bonus, it takes itself out of your deck when you're done with it.

But the fact that it gives $5 should give you pause.  Moneylender has 7 targets, unless you're being Mountebanked.  Death Cart only starts off with 2.  So while you don't normally have to worry about Moneylender running out, you do with Death Cart, because it will usually run out of Ruins before the game ends.  So while you wouldn't normally spend a +Buy on Coppers (again, except maybe for Goons) to keep feeding the Moneylender, it might be worth your while to spend a +Buy on a $2 non-terminal.  You spent $4 on Death Cart in the first place to get $5 out of it - are you saying that you now won't spend another $2 to get another $5?  And again - this would be if you had +Buy, and typically in the context of an engine.

I seriously need to overhaul this article. 

Am I making sense?  Or am I still blithely ignoring something?

EDIT: I've also noticed that with Death Cart and Procession, you often find yourself blithely (heh) chewing up Actions you normally wouldn't, just because they happened to collide.  One game, I fed a Merchant Ship to a Death Cart to win.  One of my recorded games has me Processing anything and everything, even with no $6 Action on the board, and it was the most fun I've had with Dominion in a while.  It gives games a delightful sort of "ah, fuck it, let's do it" attitude.

[WanderingWinder]

So to sum up, the issue we're debating is whether Death Cart is viable as a long-term trash-for-benefit, or if it's best used as a one-shot.  Personally I lean toward the former, but everyone seems to be disagreeing with me.

The bigger problem is that you aren't listening to nor talking about why people say it is a one-shot and why you think it should be good for long-term TfB.

Space efficiency, odds of pairing Dthcrt with its fodder, needing an action, tempo concerns, sustainability, etc. these are issues that you blithely ignore for reasons I don't understand. I've done a worked example showing exactly how one-shotting a dead Dthcrt & replacing it with gold/silver gives you 5 provinces for only one more card of draw.

You aren't doing a good job until you address these concerns legitimately. Maybe I'm wrong about Dthcrt becoming a weakish gimped gold when you can't feed it Ruins, fine, tell me why. Why do you think Dthcrt/Money is actually viable on a lot of boards? Why do think it is better than Dthcrt/Engine? Why don't you want to sift for Ruins?

I could have sworn I at least started out saying that Death Cart doesn't do well as a Big Money thing.  I'm sorry for blithely ignoring.

Death Cart/Money - this is probably not a good strategy - a sustained Death Cart needs Actions, and with Big Money, you're not going to be colliding Death Cart with anything.  One-shotting the Death Cart can slingshot you to Golds or Platinums, but then you're left with Ruins in your deck.

Death Cart/Sifter - yes, you can use this to find your Ruins to trash, and then you can use Death Cart as just a three-shot (or four-shot with Shelters).  But if you have Death Cart, Warehouse and three Coppers, you may as well just eat the Warehouse and get a Province.

Death Cart/Engine - this is probably the best.  You're buying lots of Actions anyway, you usually have +Buy to make full use of the $5, and you're usually drawing your entire deck, so you don't have to worry about collision.

I guess I didn't articulate properly with the cheap Actions thing.  How about this: only do that if you have +Buy, or are in an engine.  What I'm trying to say is that you get the most out of Death Cart if you can keep it going.

Maybe I should compare this to Moneylender.  Moneylender is awesome - it gets rid of your Coppers, and it gives you coin.  When you're out of Coppers, Moneylender is now a Confusion in your deck.  Do you buy more Coppers to feed to Moneylender?  Most likely not, barring Goons or something like that.  Perhaps it is best to think of Death Cart as a Moneylender analogue - you use it to eat up those Ruins (and maybe your Necropolis), and as an added bonus, it takes itself out of your deck when you're done with it.

I think this is a great analogy, but...

But the fact that it gives $5 should give you pause.  Moneylender has 7 targets, unless you're being Mountebanked.  Death Cart only starts off with 2.  So while you don't normally have to worry about Moneylender running out, you do with Death Cart, because it will usually run out of Ruins before the game ends.  So while you wouldn't normally spend a +Buy on Coppers (again, except maybe for Goons) to keep feeding the Moneylender, it might be worth your while to spend a +Buy on a $2 non-terminal.  You spent $4 on Death Cart in the first place to get $5 out of it - are you saying that you now won't spend another $2 to get another $5?  And again - this would be if you had +Buy, and typically in the context of an engine.

But I think you get the wrong takeaway out of it. You buy moneylender (and not all that often anyway) primarily to trash copper, not for the economic benefit. Why? Because you want the copper out of your deck.
Death Cart does the same thing, except with junk actions like ruins. You also want them out of your deck, great. But buying cheap actions to feed to death cart is like buying coppers for the moneylender - you usually don't want to do it. And if the cheap actions are worse than copper, you want to do it even less. And since you are getting two in any case, this is like buying two coppers (or actually worse!) just to get a moneylender. Except, you don't already have 7 other targets like you do for moneylender.
Now, of course, there are SOME countervailing plusses on DC - it gives more cash, and it can get rid of itself. The second thing will, in the average deck, be a good thing! Now all these differences mean, at the end of the day, I think (and again I don't have oodles of experience here) is that it has far less general utility than moneylender, though in the case you really want it (similar to the case you'll be buying coppers for a moneylender, or if you're getting hit with ruins attacks anyway, or if the ruins are out), it has a far higher upside.

So it's a niche card.

[werothegreat]

A powerful niche card.  It could possibly be a trap card, but it just gives so much money at once that the trap isn't that hard to get out of.

But yes, I'm seeing the point.

[RD]

But I think you get the wrong takeaway out of it. You buy moneylender (and not all that often anyway) primarily to trash copper, not for the economic benefit. Why? Because you want the copper out of your deck.

I think this is kind of unfair to both cards. The copper-trashing is why you would buy Moneylender over Silver. The economic benefit is why you would buy Moneylender over, say, Spice Merchant. Now it so happens that Silver is in every game but Spice Merchant isn't, and that's why with Moneylender we usually wind up asking "What's that copper trashing worth to you?" rather than "What's a terminal Silver with a shelf life worth to you?"

But Death Cart isn't directly comparable to Silver; in fact it's not comparable to much, especially not at $4. Baron and Gold and Moneylender, but it's pretty far from any of those. Its economic benefit is genuinely impressive and is definitely a big part of why you're buying it over whatever other option you might have.

Here's an interesting thought experiment. After you play and trash your Death Cart, would you consider buying another one, along with two Ruins? I think this is often worthwhile, even though it undoes all the junk-Action trashing you've been doing. (In fact I think Death Cart can be a great use of a spare $4 buy late in the game; sort of like you might buy a Feast to turn into Duchy).

But  keeping the original Death Cart around and not gaining those Ruins sounds even better, especially if you're focused on getting rid of junk! Now suppose your deck control is such that you could have guaranteed this, by buying 2 $2 Actions somewhere along the line to keep the Death Cart alive (i.e. you're certain they would successfully collide). Why not do this? If you have the buys, it's not really any more expensive than buying a new Death Cart, and the Actions are probably better than Ruins.

[werothegreat]

But I think you get the wrong takeaway out of it. You buy moneylender (and not all that often anyway) primarily to trash copper, not for the economic benefit. Why? Because you want the copper out of your deck.

I think this is kind of unfair to both cards. The copper-trashing is why you would buy Moneylender over Silver. The economic benefit is why you would buy Moneylender over, say, Spice Merchant. Now it so happens that Silver is in every game but Spice Merchant isn't, and that's why with Moneylender we usually wind up asking "What's that copper trashing worth to you?" rather than "What's a terminal Silver with a shelf life worth to you?"

But Death Cart isn't directly comparable to Silver; in fact it's not comparable to much, especially not at $4. Baron and Gold and Moneylender, but it's pretty far from any of those. Its economic benefit is genuinely impressive and is definitely a big part of why you're buying it over whatever other option you might have.

Here's an interesting thought experiment. After you play and trash your Death Cart, would you consider buying another one, along with two Ruins? I think this is often worthwhile, even though it undoes all the junk-Action trashing you've been doing. (In fact I think Death Cart can be a great use of a spare $4 buy late in the game; sort of like you might buy a Feast to turn into Duchy).

But  keeping the original Death Cart around and not gaining those Ruins sounds even better, especially if you're focused on getting rid of junk! Now suppose your deck control is such that you could have guaranteed this, by buying 2 $2 Actions somewhere along the line to keep the Death Cart alive (i.e. you're certain they would successfully collide). Why not do this? If you have the buys, it's not really any more expensive than buying a new Death Cart, and the Actions are probably better than Ruins.

This is why Rats does well with Death Cart, because you only buy it once, and it turns everything into an Action.

[WanderingWinder]

But I think you get the wrong takeaway out of it. You buy moneylender (and not all that often anyway) primarily to trash copper, not for the economic benefit. Why? Because you want the copper out of your deck.

I think this is kind of unfair to both cards. The copper-trashing is why you would buy Moneylender over Silver. The economic benefit is why you would buy Moneylender over, say, Spice Merchant. Now it so happens that Silver is in every game but Spice Merchant isn't, and that's why with Moneylender we usually wind up asking "What's that copper trashing worth to you?" rather than "What's a terminal Silver with a shelf life worth to you?"

Certainly if you're buying it over spice merchant, you want some economy out of it. On the other hand, since silver is (virtually) ALWAYS available, you are (virtually) ALWAYS buying it for its copper trashing power. I think it's quite fair to say that. It may not be the only reason you're buying it, but it is A reason. And my broad, general point is that it's usually the primary reason.

But Death Cart isn't directly comparable to Silver; in fact it's not comparable to much, especially not at $4. Maybe Baron. Its economic benefit is genuinely impressive and is definitely a big part of why you're buying it.

Here's an interesting thought experiment. After you play your Death Cart as a one-shot, would you consider buying another one, along with two Ruins?

I don't understand - you're presuming that I have a death cart in the first place - my point is that you usually don't want to. But the actual confusing bit is, how is this different from just the decision to buy a death cart in the first place?

I think this is often worthwhile, even though it undoes all the junk-Action trashing you've been doing. (In fact I think Death Cart can be a great use of a spare $4 buy late in the game; sort of like you might buy a Feast to turn into Duchy).

I think that much like buying a feast to turn into duchy (actually much moreso), you almost never want to do this, unless you have a wonderful drawing at least most of your deck engine already. So no, this doesn't sound like a good deal to me in most cases - it sounds like a pretty bad deal, especially considering that I could have bought something else.

But  keeping the original Death Cart around and not gaining those Ruins sounds even better, especially if you're focused on getting rid of junk!

Yes, if I already have a death cart, I would generally like to keep it around, but only up to a point - I don't want to have to bend the rest of my deck around backwards for it.

Now suppose your deck control is such that you could have guaranteed this, by buying 2 $2 Actions somewhere along the line to keep the Death Cart alive (i.e. you're certain they would successfully collide).

Yeah, to be ensured of this, you need to have a strong engine going, and this is the case I said I thought it would be useful.

Why not do this?

Generally? Opportunity cost.

If you have the buys, it's not really any more expensive than buying a new Death Cart, and the Actions are probably better than Ruins.

Well, if I am doing it at once, the second death cart gives me two more actions to trash anyway, and more money/potential to trash them, and if I have the buys, I can get another ruin to go with them to boot. If I am doing it spread, then okay, yeah, sure, in this edge case (how do I have exactly 2 and a buy? Did I buy province and have 2 left? Am I sure I didn't want two $5 cards?), go for it. But in this case, I am probably buying that 2-cost anyway. Anyway, I probably don't want to buy a second death cart all that often anyway - it may be fine, but there's usually something better to do. I mean, yeah, the situation can come up for sure. I just don't think it's very common.

[RD]

Ah, evidently I'm not keeping the arguments straight too well; sorry for the confusion.

[werothegreat]

Alrighty, I'm going to rewrite the article.

Key points I'll include - please let me know if these actually make sense to anyone.

-Does not go well with Big Money - too hard to collide it with an Action, and if you one-shot it, you're left with practically useless Ruins

-Moderate with sifting - Warehouse/Cellar can help for the collision, or even just provide fodder BUT don't go out of your way to do this, because...

-Best with engines with +Buy - makes best use of the +$5, ensures you can always collide, and extra +Buy can pick up something to feed to it.

-Without the engine, you're wasting turns when you're buying fodder

-Good combos:
--Action gainers like University, Rats
--Market Square - provides fodder, +Buy, and a reward for trashing something

-Counter with Cursing or a faster strategy

[jomini]

I guess I didn't articulate properly with the cheap Actions thing.  How about this: only do that if you have +Buy, or are in an engine.  What I'm trying to say is that you get the most out of Death Cart if you can keep it going.

Maybe I should compare this to Moneylender.  Moneylender is awesome - it gets rid of your Coppers, and it gives you coin.  When you're out of Coppers, Moneylender is now a Confusion in your deck.  Do you buy more Coppers to feed to Moneylender?  Most likely not, barring Goons or something like that.  Perhaps it is best to think of Death Cart as a Moneylender analogue - you use it to eat up those Ruins (and maybe your Necropolis), and as an added bonus, it takes itself out of your deck when you're done with it.

But the fact that it gives $5 should give you pause.  Moneylender has 7 targets, unless you're being Mountebanked.  Death Cart only starts off with 2.  So while you don't normally have to worry about Moneylender running out, you do with Death Cart, because it will usually run out of Ruins before the game ends.  So while you wouldn't normally spend a +Buy on Coppers (again, except maybe for Goons) to keep feeding the Moneylender, it might be worth your while to spend a +Buy on a $2 non-terminal.  You spent $4 on Death Cart in the first place to get $5 out of it - are you saying that you now won't spend another $2 to get another $5?  And again - this would be if you had +Buy, and typically in the context of an engine.

I seriously need to overhaul this article. 

Am I making sense?  Or am I still blithely ignoring something?

Okay so for how to play Dthcrt, I'm okay with spending a spare 2 coin buy to help keep the Dthcrt alive, but will almost always be a card I'd buy without Dthcrt in my deck. At a tactical level, sure buying those $2 coin cards is good. At a strategic level, the decision of: should I buy the Dthcrt at all, that isn't changed much by the $2 coin cards being viable.

I like the Moneylender analogy, but let's look at that; its payout is identical to the hand you'd get with a simple silver. Moneylender works, 95+% of the time because it removes something you don't want in your deck. Unwanted actions are pretty rare in your deck, you may have one or rarely 2 leftover from the early game (Chapel being an obvious example), and there are edge cases like using Develop, being hit with Swindler, and receiving them from Masquerades ... but it is fairly rare to find your deck inundated with actions you don't want.

As to why not to buy actions to keep the Dthcrt alive - that would be the worked example I already put out - you know the step by step one where I showed how not feeding the Dthcrt lets you buy an extra province over 4 turns at the price of drawing one more card each turn. This is pretty common for Dthcrt; cashing it out for a gold loses some tempo, but it is much more reliable and more space efficient in the long haul. It is pretty rare that you can't do something else with your money/buys and often that something else is more space/cost/action efficient than just buying fodder.

As far as what to include, well my best uses of Dthcrt have been come from using it to get to some big card (e.g. Forge, Altar) early. I'd be tempted to make that the article focus, but at the very least you should have a decent bit emphasizing when it is worth it to add some junk to your deck just to get to something strong quickly.

Another niche use that I have gotten really good mileage out of is Band of misfits; Bom is great for where you can the odd hand that hits 9, 8, or whatever only if you kill a 2 coin action. It comes without Ruins, but often you will use Bom as something else and only need to start cannibalizing to pick up the last few provinces.

[werothegreat]

Band of Misfits is awesome on a Rats/Death Cart board.

[eHalcyon]

It might be good to mention that Death Cart is a good counter to other Looters.

[werothegreat]

I made some changes - thoughts?

[DG]

Did nobody mention death carts and vineyards? Even the Goko bots seem to know death cart + vineyards.

[dondon151]

Death Cart + Transmute!