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Author Topic: Hermit/Madman  (Read 5965 times)

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werothegreat

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Hermit/Madman
« on: January 09, 2013, 09:39:56 am »
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(in progress)


Hermit is one of the self-upgrading cards in Dark Ages, upgrading into a Madman on turns when you decide not to buy anything.  The two cards have little in common with one another - the former is a poor man's Altar, and the latter is a one-shot Tactician thing.  However, the cards do work well with each other.

What do they do?

Hermit is one of the few cards that allows you to poke through your discard pile, allowing you to trash a card from there or from your hand.  I had actually been expecting a card like this since playing Ascension, which had discard-trashers from the beginning.  Whenever I think about this aspect of Hermit, I always get an image of some grungy old man poking through my trash with a stick.  After you've chosen a card to trash (or elected not to), Hermit then requires you gain a card costing up to $3.  Barring cheap cards you want en masse, such as Fool's Gold or Squire, this will typically be a Silver.  Already a pattern emerges - Hermit feels very similar to Jack of all Trades.  It loses the Spying and the draw, but its gain and trash are more flexible.  Playing DoubleHermit and gaining only Silver plays very similarly to DoubleJack, but it's not as fast and not nearly as resistant to Attacks, given the lack of draw, though it does do quite well against Looters and Cursers (better than Jack, even, since it can trash from the discard).  This is where Madman enters the picture. 

On turns where your coin fielding is not up to par, gain a Hermit with your Hermit, and let him sail off to the trash pile.  There may even be turns where you have a substantial amount of coin fielded, but if your opponent hasn't started greening, and/or you've played several Hermits this turn, and/or you're nearing a reshuffle, go ahead and skip the buy.  Don't think of these turns as "wasting your buy" - you're essentially just buying the Madman, with whatever you happen to have in your hand.  So instead of forfeiting the turn before you play it, like Tactician, you're forfeiting the turn you gain it.  One play of Madman is certainly very nice, but the card really shines when you're able to play more than one, bringing you up to 14 cards in hand, normally.  Now, I've been comparing Hermit to Jack, but using Madman as draw after a discard Attack would not be a very good use of Madman - this card is at its best with larger hand sizes.  Playing a Madman after a Militia would be like playing a level 2 City, which is nice, but given that you only get to use that Madman once, you should probably save him for a better turn.  Hermit/Madman really showcase what I've found is the unspoken theme of Dark Ages - cards you don't play without thinking.  You can't just run on autopilot in Dark Ages games, playing Villages and Smithies and buying a Province - you have to consider what order you want to play cards in, and even whether or not you want to play a card this turn.

Given the ephemeral nature of Madman, typically if you're going for a Madman strategy you want to make it fast, so you can win before you run out of Hermits to trash.  Luckily enough, Madman is just the card for the job.  If you've been tending your deck correctly, one or two plays of Madman should field you enough to pick up a Province.

So the Hermit/Madman pair gives you everything - Actions, draw, (limited) trashing, and virtual +Buy.  But virtual +Buy is definitely not as good as real +Buy, so a couple Markets or somesuch would be good to add to the mix.  And limited trashing can always use more help, so a card like Spice Merchant to eat up your Coppers would also be good to pick up.  And when you're out of Treasures you want to trash, just feed it to the Hermit.

So when should I buy Hermit? 

Earlier is better - you'll typically want to open with Hermit; either double up, or pair it with a Treasure trasher like Moneylender.  Outside of Cursing/Looting games, Hermit essentially only gets three uses out of its trashing, so feel free to send them off to be mad after your Estates are gone.  In Shelters games, you typically want to hang onto your Necropolis (barring better Villages in the kingdom), so you'll really only get two trashing uses there.  One card that gives a much longer life to that trashing is Rats.  Since it turns every card into an Action, you can use Rats to eat your Coppers, then Hermit to trash the Rats, giving you a nice little +1 Card bonus, and gaining Silvers to ensure you don't go broke.  The great thing about this is that Hermit can trash the Rats you just gained from your previous Rats play, since it's just sitting in the discard pile.

How can I add to a Hermit/Madman strategy?

Anything that draws cards!  Laboratory, Smithy, Hunting Grounds, Menagerie, anything that increases your handsize.  If they're $3 or less, you can even pick them up with your Hermits.  Madman wants to be played with the largest handsize possible, so even Tactician, which you might think would be overkill, can combo with Madman.  Engines with good draw ensure you find your Madmen more often, and ensure that you get more out of them.

Hermit specifically also likes cards that do something when trashed.  Trash a Fortress from the discard, and it goes into your hand.  Trash a Squire (preferably freshly gained from another Hermit), and gain the best Attack on the board.  Et cetera.

Now I'm sure there are some of you out there who, like me, have always disliked the idea of having to trash away a card after one use of it and have it be gone forever.  Well, thanks to Rogue and Graverobber, they're not gone forever!  Donald X may have done everything he possibly could to make sure you can't Graverob a Madman, but that doesn't stop you from Graverobbing the Hermits!  Trash-gainers allow you to no longer worry about running out of Madmen - there is now an infinite supply.

An odd quirk of rules allows another instance to provide an infinite supply of Madmen.  If you Scheme a Hermit on a turn where you don't buy anything, it is saved from being trashed, but you still get a Madman.  Scheme effectively turns Hermit into a Madman-gaining machine.  Similarly, if you Possess an opponent with Hermits, you can get free Madmen that way, as well.

My opponent has lots of Madmen!  What do I do?

Go back in time and get your own Madmen.  Failing that, there's a couple things you can do.  Discard Attacks will handicap Madman quite nicely, as previously described.  The best cards for this are Ghost Ship (the card I hate most in this world), which will keep your opponent from cycling, and Pillage, which will handily knock that Madman out of your opponent's hand.  And if Graverobber or Rogue are being used to get back Hermits, you can also get back your Pillages to keep the onslaught going.  And while Cursing will easily be remedied by their Hermits, Swindler can be evil against Madman, turning him into a Curse or Copper, and turning the Hermits into (comparatively) useless Silvers.

Good with:
+Buy
Treasure trashers
Engines
"When you trash this" cards
Trash gainers
Scheme

Counter with:
Swindler
Discard Attacks
« Last Edit: January 14, 2013, 10:30:46 am by werothegreat »
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GendoIkari

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Re: Hermit/Madman
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2013, 09:54:09 am »
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Just a couple thoughts...

I like to gain Hermit with Hermit even if I'm not evolving the hermit that turn. Sure you won't do that as often as gaining Silver, but you generally want multiple Hermits anyway.

It's also worth noting that because it's a one-shot, Madman is a Curse until you're ready to use it... if you draw it in a hand where you don't think it will help, you don't want to play it.

"If you've been tending your deck correctly, one or two plays of Madman should field you enough to pick up a Province." 2 plays of Madman to pick up just 1 Province sounds terrible. If you're playing 2 Madmen in a turn, I would hope that you have a good engine with +buy where you will get much more from it.

Now, playing just 1 Madman for 1 Province can be fine... recently played a 3 player game with the recommended Dark Ages + Base Kingdom IRL... it includes Witch and Hermit and no +buy. With all the Curses flying around, Hermit was great for trashing the Curses, but also playing a Madman was often necessary to hit $8. But even so, I think Madman is going to be more often worth going for when there is a good engine potential on the board. A good 3-Madman turn should be able to get you several Provinces and Duchies, with support of course.
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SirPeebles

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Re: Hermit/Madman
« Reply #2 on: January 09, 2013, 09:54:55 am »
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I would mention that Hermit/Madman is good for setting up megaturns.  Governor, Horn of Plenty, KC/Bridge.  All of these can make good use of a few Madmen for the massive cumulative draw.  Governor and Horn of Plenty even give you ways to continue gaining parts while eschewing buys for Madmen.
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werothegreat

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Re: Hermit/Madman
« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2013, 10:03:14 am »
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"If you've been tending your deck correctly, one or two plays of Madman should field you enough to pick up a Province." 2 plays of Madman to pick up just 1 Province sounds terrible. If you're playing 2 Madmen in a turn, I would hope that you have a good engine with +buy where you will get much more from it.

In the video listed, there was no +Buy, and I often needed two Madmen to draw enough for a Province.  I'll admit I wasn't exactly playing optimally there - that was the first time I was really getting down and dirty with Madman.

I would mention that Hermit/Madman is good for setting up megaturns.  Governor, Horn of Plenty, KC/Bridge.  All of these can make good use of a few Madmen for the massive cumulative draw.  Governor and Horn of Plenty even give you ways to continue gaining parts while eschewing buys for Madmen.

I will definitely do that.

Somewhat a propos - has anyone tried Rats/Jack yet?
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Re: Hermit/Madman
« Reply #4 on: January 09, 2013, 10:30:28 am »
+1

I wonder if hermit is one of the few cards that you could productively add to native village/bridge?
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DrFlux

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Re: Hermit/Madman
« Reply #5 on: January 09, 2013, 10:35:13 am »
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I think an important point to add to the article is that Hermit combos VERY well with other draw. So if you play two labs, all the sudden hermit is drawing you 6 cards. If you have any other draw at this point, you will probably draw your whole deck.
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WheresMyElephant

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Re: Hermit/Madman
« Reply #6 on: January 09, 2013, 12:10:42 pm »
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I would mention that Hermit/Madman is good for setting up megaturns.  Governor, Horn of Plenty, KC/Bridge.  All of these can make good use of a few Madmen for the massive cumulative draw.  Governor and Horn of Plenty even give you ways to continue gaining parts while eschewing buys for Madmen.

What would it take to do something like NV/Bridge using Madmen instead of NV?  It's problematic because your Hermits and Bridges collide, but on the other hand there is major synergy between Hermit gain and Bridge cost reduction. This would let you build faster, and in the end you could keep some Madmen around to gain free Provinces on your megaturn (which might let you get away with just 5 Bridges).

I have to imagine it's viable on some boards, even if not many. Seems like at minimum you need another source of +Action, preferably one gainable by Hermit such as Village or Hamlet (or even NV itself for a sort of hybrid strategy). Or FV, obviously. I can see how the need to pick up Villages might use up all the time you gained with your Hermit gain, but then again it might not, especially in FV's case. Then you might need Copper trashing or something on top of that.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2013, 12:16:24 pm by WheresMyElephant »
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jomini

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Re: Hermit/Madman
« Reply #7 on: January 09, 2013, 12:31:38 pm »
+1

Hermit, via Madman also combos very well with high treasure count strategies. The obvious candidates are Bank and Coppersmith. With Madman draw, you can pretty easily pack out 10+ treasures and have the actions needed to play multiple terminal +buys or Coppersmiths. Other things, like Hop, Forge/Mint (single shot all-copper killing), big Trader (e.g. Using trader on peddlers to mass silver for a quick splurge), and pile driving alt-VP (e.g. mass buying Feoda) all are viable even with high treasure counts (assuming you have the needed +buy) thanks to the draw potential of Madman.



I'd say the biggest counter to Hermit/Madman decks would be discard attacks with perhaps Ghost Ship being the top one. Discard doesn't help Hermit (it can already trash from hand) and playing a two card hand will rarely do better than gain 2 silver; not really that harsh actually. However if there are 5 coin or higher cards you want to mass, discard can make it hard to mass them (2 silvers + Hermit not making 5). Discard is just brutal on Madmen, you require not only an additional play of Madman to hit your target card amount, but you also now have to worry a lot more about Madman density as it is a lot harder to ensure that you can go up the chain (2 - 4 - 6 - 10, etc.) if you want a megaturn.

Hermit actively counters/mitigates curse givers and Madman's draw can still enable megaturns with junked decks. Deck inspection can be okay at delaying megaturns if you discard Madmen, but Hermits just aren't that strong on their own and the other guy can mass them without too much worry; loading up on silver means he doesn't have the sort of distribution where flipping key cards can really hurt. Now deck inspection with Swindler out, that can be huge, Swindling a Hermit to a silver is normally a good idea - the opponent will be able to do that next turn AND gain Madman, however swindling madmen is really nasty - enjoy your new curse/copper/ruin. Swindler alone might be able to muck up the opponent's strategy, but I wouldn't count on it.

Another thing to mention with Hermit/Madman is that you need to consider the impact of playing Kc/Tr/Prssn on the Madman. Gaining +actions at the price of one draw card is an interesting trade off, with these guys out, you normally aren't short on actions (also since Madman is a village you have a pretty decent action surplus in most cases) and often would prefer to have the extra card & saving your multiple play cards for your target actions (e.g. Coppersmith, Herbalist). Likewise, chaining Tr or Kc's can greatly decrease Madman draw. A few cases, like Diadem, may actually make it better to play the Kc on the Madman; you may wish to use a Black Market bought Tr on a Madman if you have a lot of different terminals you want to play; or you may wish to keep your actions intact and not need the draw when playing around with Prssn. Madman is one of the few cards that can get actively better if you don't throne it and that is worth reminding people.

A few combos maybe worth mentioning:
1. Feoda. Let's see trade estates for silver or just pinata a Feodum for a quick silver rush, it can also be useful later to pinata a foedum late game to increase your total VP count.
2. Menage. Yeah you need a village, but being able to clear out duplicate cards by trashing & gaining a menage is really good.
3. Squire. Yeah you kinda mentioned it, but Squire/Hermit is the best shot for using Squire's on-trash options to jump to the big attack. Hermit has the biggest search space in the opening (either colliding Squire/Hermit on T3, hitting just Squire on T3 & trashing it on T4, or buying a Squire on T3 to trash with Hermit on T4) for trashing the squire.
4. Courtyard/Haven/etc. : as has been noted a Madman is a curse until you want to play him, being able to bounce him back to the next turn, where you might have better odds of drawing 2 or more Madman in the opening hand is quite helpful.
5. Bridge. Already mentioned a bit, but with Madman powered megaturn you can pretty easily get 5 coin cost reduction, 6 buys and snap up 4 provinces and two duchies for just 12 coin, of which 8 needs to be on something other than the Bridges; adding more +buy can just get you more free duchies. You can decisively megaturn off just Madman/Bridge/Village, no Kc required (though I grant the Kc option may well be quicker). As an added bonus if you play Bridge -> Hermit you can gain more Bridges which may let you win the Bridge split against other Bridge strategies (e.g. Nv/Bridge, though I'm not sure if that was just luck on my part or not)
6. Tac. You'd think this would be overkill, but you'd be wrong. Tac is great with Hermit as you can both trash cards, play a second Tac, and gain Madmen if you buy nothing. Once you have a 10 card hand, it takes one or two Madmen to draw your entire deck - which can now megaturn with minimal/no thinning. Even crazy stuff, like bulking up on coppers off spare +buys can work when your first Madman draws 9 cards.
« Last Edit: January 10, 2013, 11:14:49 am by jomini »
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Hermit/Madman
« Reply #8 on: January 09, 2013, 01:51:14 pm »
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Disclaimer: I have played VERY few games with the card.

That being said, I think I would arrange the comparison to Jack a bit differently. Hermit is actually much BETTER against cursers/looters/ambassador-giving-you-not-treasure. But it never draws, which is actually straight off decently significant in the money matchup, but absolutely a huge deal against HANDSIZE attacks. Deck-disruption jack deals with slightly better, but this is generally fairly insignificant.

It's probably at its best, though, if you have lots of engine components to gain with it - there it gives you estate trashing and builds your engine. Let's look at villages: there's fishing and vanilla, hamlet crossroads and native. As far as draw cards, the big one is oracle, but there's also menagerie, as well as moat, courtyard, and steward that often work in a pinch. Wishing well possibly. I imagine it's really good in swindler games - it can gain you more swindlers et al, and most important it cleans up.

It can also grab estates to break ties, in a pinch.

I would like  more on when to trade in for a madman - low buying power is sort of obvious, but what about in the engine case - when should I trade my hermit in to forego a round of buys?

SirPeebles

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Re: Hermit/Madman
« Reply #9 on: January 09, 2013, 02:01:43 pm »
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Disclaimer: I have played VERY few games with the card.
I would like  more on when to trade in for a madman - low buying power is sort of obvious, but what about in the engine case - when should I trade my hermit in to forego a round of buys?

I want to second this.  I imagine that there are some games where you really want to keep Hermit all the way through.  There are other games when you'll just want to amass Madmen, trashing your Hermits immediately.
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werothegreat

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Re: Hermit/Madman
« Reply #10 on: January 10, 2013, 12:01:47 am »
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Disclaimer: I have played VERY few games with the card.
I would like  more on when to trade in for a madman - low buying power is sort of obvious, but what about in the engine case - when should I trade my hermit in to forego a round of buys?

I want to second this.  I imagine that there are some games where you really want to keep Hermit all the way through.  There are other games when you'll just want to amass Madmen, trashing your Hermits immediately.

I put in a sentence detailing that.
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