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[ddubois]

I always avoid going with the former because I live in fear of my turn 4 play/purchase missing the reshuffle, (i.e., play warehouse turn 3, hag is in bottom 4).  I'm a negative thinker.  I do see the advantage later for having Warehouse because there will be so many bad cards to pitch once everyone is slogging; you'll tend to have a full compliment of cards that produce less than $1 to pitch.  But first turn Warehouse, I dunno.  I'm dubious, but I admit I could be wrong.

Other people go for it, because they are hoping to live the dream, i.e. turn 3 warehouse into hag, with all of their turn 4 cards, perhaps with a curse included, missing the re-shuffle.  They are optimists.

Which of us is right?

Does it depend on how important having some economy is?  The particular board for the game I just played had a number of other cantrips besides warehouse that would similarly be good for cycling around to hag quickly, e.g. Haven, Caravan, Stables.  (I ended up getting lucky and hitting $4, $5, and $2 my next three turns, and winning both the Curse and Caravan splits.  The rest of the board was mostly inconsequential: Fortune Teller, Haggler, Tactician; or plain terrible: Fool's Gold, Treasure Map.)

Does it depends on whether you are going first or second?  In other words, if you are second, it behooves you to try to ride the high-variance pony?

[ftl]

I would expect that on average, Warehouse/Hag would distribute more curses, just because you're cycling through cards faster. Regardless of whether it makes that first hag miss the shuffle or not.

[DG]

Simulator suggest warehouse before silver, even with better cards than stables at cost 5. Fool's gold with sea hags is good btw.

[WanderingWinder]

Simulator suggest warehouse before silver, even with better cards than stables at cost 5. Fool's gold with sea hags is good btw.

Scripts, please?

Edit: I am also coming up with the same thing, which jives with my intuition that you want a warehouse (but only 1 for the time being, and perhaps for the whole game), but it's really not so simple to just say 'simulator says X', because there's dozens of different levers to pull in different combinations. The fool's gold thing, I am less sure; it's generally good for money strategies, but that ought to be mitigated by the slog, and with a three pile ending, I am not sure. Certainly it ought to be good with warehouse involved too though.

[werothegreat]

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume Sage would be better than Warehouse.

[michaeljb]

Depends on the kingdom!

But I would imagine that generally Warehouse is the right choice. Also I agree with wero about Sage. Disclaimer: still don't have much dark ages experience.

[Beyond Awesome]

I am not sure about Sage because when you start adding Silver, you will often hit those. But, if the Sage on average sifts through more than 3 cards at a time, then I guess it most likely is a better option over Warehouse.

[qmech]

I always avoid going with the former because I live in fear of my turn 4 play/purchase missing the reshuffle, (i.e., play warehouse turn 3, hag is in bottom 4).

I used to have similar concerns, and found this a useful observation: absent any other drawing/discarding effects, if you draw Warehouse Turn 4 then, on Turn 4, you have 13 cards total, of which 8 are drawn into your hand and 5 end the turn sitting in your deck. So your next reshuffle is only going to be one turn long anyway.  There's also a speed-up if you hit the Warehouse Turn 3, if a little less dramatic.

[WanderingWinder]

I am not sure about Sage because when you start adding Silver, you will often hit those. But, if the Sage on average sifts through more than 3 cards at a time, then I guess it most likely is a better option over Warehouse.

I had a similar thought with sage - early on, it is more efficient at getting you to your sea hag, and playing it, which is good. But after the curses are gone or almost gone, then it makes you HIT your sea hag more often too, and can't replace estates and curses in your hand with better cards. Well, sage is probably better early, but is it by enough to compensate for how much worse it is later? I would guess yes, slightly, but I'm not sure. And you generally don't want a second one very soon, because you need those silvers....

[RisingJaguar]

I think on the flip side, hitting $5 with opening silver/sea hag on T3/T4 feels luckier than hitting warehouse T3 (and also finding the sea hag to hit).  I'm just saying that both sides has its luck dragons. 

My intuition says 2 warehouses before going into silvers, but I do tend to focus on curse splits more. 

[WanderingWinder]

I think on the flip side, hitting $5 with opening silver/sea hag on T3/T4 feels luckier than hitting warehouse T3 (and also finding the sea hag to hit).  I'm just saying that both sides has its luck dragons. 

My intuition says 2 warehouses before going into silvers, but I do tend to focus on curse splits more. 

Some of it is definitely going to depend on what else is on the board (is hitting 5 important? 4? Are there other good terminals at certain points? Non-terminals? Peddler? etc. etc.). I think in the broadest case you want only one, though maybe 2 can work as well - but if two warehouses, probably only one hag?

[RisingJaguar]

I think on the flip side, hitting $5 with opening silver/sea hag on T3/T4 feels luckier than hitting warehouse T3 (and also finding the sea hag to hit).  I'm just saying that both sides has its luck dragons. 

My intuition says 2 warehouses before going into silvers, but I do tend to focus on curse splits more. 

Some of it is definitely going to depend on what else is on the board (is hitting 5 important? 4? Are there other good terminals at certain points? Non-terminals? Peddler? etc. etc.). I think in the broadest case you want only one, though maybe 2 can work as well - but if two warehouses, probably only one hag?

Of course all of the kingdom should be considered as well.   My (First) comment was more to explain that I don't think warehouse provides a huge amount of variance compared to sea hag/silver.  ddubois poses the question if the variance provided by warehouse outweighs the consistency of silver.  I just wanted to provide a counter example (although I could be wrong on the overall that warehouse doesn't provide any more variance). 

[ddubois]

Fool's gold with sea hags is good btw.

Good?  You mean good at losing curse splits, surely.

[WanderingWinder]

Fool's gold with sea hags is good btw.

Good?  You mean good at losing curse splits, surely.

I don't see how FG makes you lose a split worse than silver....

[Titandrake]

Fool's gold with sea hags is good btw.

Good?  You mean good at losing curse splits, surely.

I don't see how FG makes you lose a split worse than silver....

Hag/FG opening would get $4 turns 3/4 less often than a Hag/Silver opening, so you might miss an early second Sea Hag. I'm more surprised that Fool's Gold is worth it at all. Uncontested, I think Fool's Gold > Silver in all BM strategies. Did the simulations account for partial contesting?

[jonts26]

Fool's gold with sea hags is good btw.

Good?  You mean good at losing curse splits, surely.

I don't see how FG makes you lose a split worse than silver....

Hag/FG opening would get $4 turns 3/4 less often than a Hag/Silver opening, so you might miss an early second Sea Hag. I'm more surprised that Fool's Gold is worth it at all. Uncontested, I think Fool's Gold > Silver in all BM strategies. Did the simulations account for partial contesting?

You don't always want a second hag first of all. And secondly, hag slogs often give you hands where you only have $2 to spend. In those cases you're taking the FG and it's better for you if you already have some in your deck. So FG>silver.


Oh, and the other issue is, maybe only 5 FG's in a junked deck isn't very good. So if you split them, it's not great. But if the other option is letting the other guy get 10... then you have to contest them.

[GwinnR]

Councilroom also says, that Warehouse/Sea Hag (5th place as Sea-Hag-opening) is better than Silver/Sea Hag (10th place)

[timchen]

I used to think about a similar problem: do you open Witch/copper just to avoid your turn 4 witch misses reshuffle? But this is not the case. Basically the chance for the bad cards to miss the reshuffle is higher than your good cards in all these cases. So in average the concern should only be in the long run which card do you want more. So in the current Sea Hag problem I'll say definitely warehouse.

[clb]

Assuming Sage were on this board, you could, with good shuffle luck, play your Hag every turn until the curses were out, which would make for an excellent curse split. You could pick up the FG on off turns and be well positioned to grab Duchies or Provinces on your way to the 3-pile.
Assuming back shuffle luck with Sage, I still think it would put you at least 2 curses ahead so long as you were willing to forego the build-p of buying silvers (or have something like FG you are happy to pick up).