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[Schneau]

The list so far is pretty close to my rankings, besides Wishing Well being much lower than I have it and Black Market being higher. I think Black Market is a lot closer to Woodcutter than people realize, being a card that allows you an extra buy that you might not even want.

I agree Black Market is usually not great, but when it's good it's amazing. Pulling an Early Mountebank or King's Court out can be devastating.

The list so far is pretty close to my rankings, besides Wishing Well being much lower than I have it and Black Market being higher. I think Black Market is a lot closer to Woodcutter than people realize, being a card that allows you an extra buy that you might not even want.

I agree Black Market is usually not great, but when it's good it's amazing. Pulling an Early Mountebank or King's Court out can be devastating.

Yeah. The luck factor is high, but if you're on the lucky side, Black Market is big. If you haven't watched my latest Tournament match, go and watch it. BM won me one game there. I never had a luckier BM before AFAIR.

I think both of your reactions are a result of confirmation bias, where you're noticing the few, low-probability occasions when Black Market has high utility, and not taking into account enough all of the higher-probability, low-utility occasions. Sure, Black Market might win you a game every once in a while, but it's also quite possible that on average, playing Black Market on that board is worse than not playing it.

[ipofanes]

The next time they get to put in a vote, they choose almost the same cards at the same positions.
But this is inherent to voting for lists with previous results. In Holland we have an annual top 2000 best songs of all time list and every year the same song is at #1 (Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody).

Ah, among elderly music lovers in the German South West it ranks second.

[Qvist]

This makes me think that this ranking is more likely to be a joke or an attention-seeking ploy.  I hope I'm wrong.

I'm not sure what comment you were refering to, but you're wrong. The lists are weighted because a new player or one who "only plays for fun in his family" obviously judges cards differently than the #1 from the leaderboard. But as I comment on every card what would change if it would be unweighted you see it wouldn't change that much because we got so much submissions so that a #1 Great Hall hasn't a weight just because of the number of submissions alone. It's the wisdom of the masses.

The problem with the consensus is that it keeps reasserting itself.

I agree, sort of. But the last list already showed that especially the Hinterlands cards, like Oracle for example, significantly changed after the first list. So, this shows that the representation of the change in opinion on specific cards is very good. I think also that the next list will have more significant changes because we will see how Dark Ages changes the strength of each individual card not only of the general "landscape". I mean Ambassador is worse now with Shelters. Personally I'm not able to say how much this affects the general strength of Ambassador. That's why I ranked it similar to last year. But I think in half a year that will change. And I think we will also see that in the rankings.

Also, several high level players, I like to especially mention Rabid here, had submitted lists which are significantly different from the general opinion. This shows to me also that players put real effort in their lists and not only repeating the last year's lists. And basically all players did that. That's why the deviation is around 15-20% on the cards which is pretty high I think. If you compare this to the deviations of Chapel or Chancellor, you see the difference.

[Qvist]

The list so far is pretty close to my rankings, besides Wishing Well being much lower than I have it and Black Market being higher. I think Black Market is a lot closer to Woodcutter than people realize, being a card that allows you an extra buy that you might not even want.

I agree Black Market is usually not great, but when it's good it's amazing. Pulling an Early Mountebank or King's Court out can be devastating.

The list so far is pretty close to my rankings, besides Wishing Well being much lower than I have it and Black Market being higher. I think Black Market is a lot closer to Woodcutter than people realize, being a card that allows you an extra buy that you might not even want.

I agree Black Market is usually not great, but when it's good it's amazing. Pulling an Early Mountebank or King's Court out can be devastating.

Yeah. The luck factor is high, but if you're on the lucky side, Black Market is big. If you haven't watched my latest Tournament match, go and watch it. BM won me one game there. I never had a luckier BM before AFAIR.

I think both of your reactions are a result of confirmation bias, where you're noticing the few, low-probability occasions when Black Market has high utility, and not taking into account enough all of the higher-probability, low-utility occasions. Sure, Black Market might win you a game every once in a while, but it's also quite possible that on average, playing Black Market on that board is worse than not playing it.

I don't like Black Market because of the luck involved. But, if the board is weak, BM is strong. If the board is strong, BM is weak. How much percentage of the boards are weak in your opinion? The percentage of this answer should somehow represent the percentage/rank of Black Market in this list.

[kn1tt3r]

*lol* @ ranking Great Hall at #1

Must have only played an Ironworks/Scout kind of board.

"Even Greater Hall"
+1 Card
+1 Action
1 VP
You may gain a Scout and put it on your deck.

[Piemaster]

This makes me think that this ranking is more likely to be a joke or an attention-seeking ploy.  I hope I'm wrong.

I'm not sure what comment you were refering to, but you're wrong. The lists are weighted because a new player or one who "only plays for fun in his family" obviously judges cards differently than the #1 from the leaderboard. But as I comment on every card what would change if it would be unweighted you see it wouldn't change that much because we got so much submissions so that a #1 Great Hall hasn't a weight just because of the number of submissions alone. It's the wisdom of the masses.

He was responding to my comment where I questioned if the #1 ranking of Great Hall was a genuine vote from an inexperienced player, or a 'joke' vote from a better player.  All the weighting in the world doesn't help if someone with a reasonably high ranking starts playing silly buggers with their list.  I guess part of my confusion came from the fact that Great Hall is just not a very interesting card.  If a card is generally considered weak or average, but does something complicated or difficult to evaluate, like Black Market, Urchin or Tunnel, I could understand a newbie putting it out there at #1, but Great Hall is just such a bland card.  What would make someone look at it and say "Woah, p0wer!" and rank it #1?

Having thought about it some more though, and read other people's comments, I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume that someone out there just really likes Great Hall.

[Qvist]

Of couse I cannot say if the vote was trolling or not, but it wasn't from a high level player.

[RobBennett]

Great Hall is just such a bland card.  What would make someone look at it and say "Woah, p0wer!" and rank it #1?

I agree with this comment.

Just as an intellectual challenge, though, I can try to explain the selection.

Great Hall is a cantrip and therefore cannot hurt you in any serious way. And it gives a Victory point. I have played many games that were decided by only one or two Victory points. So an argument can be made that picking up a Great Hall is a costless way of significantly increasing your chances of a win. There are few other cards that let you gain Victory points without hurting your hand (Harem is one that comes to mind). And it might be said that the best $3 card need not be a power card on the thinking that the true power cards are the $5 cards.

I am not personally persuaded of this argument. But I don't see it as being entirely crazy.

Rob

[Qvist]

I just looked through the list of this player who ranked it first and I'm pretty sure that this was a serious vote.
He's just a newer player, but that's fine. He'll probably learns a lot of the results of this list.

[Piemaster]

I just looked through the list of this player who ranked it first and I'm pretty sure that this was a serious vote.
He's just a newer player, but that's fine. He'll probably learns a lot of the results of this list.

That's okay then.  Absolutely no problem with new players votes being used in the rankings.  After all, these lists are supposed to be a consensus of players' opinions, not some kind edict from on high determined by a small group of elite players in an ivory tower.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Other than Chancellor at the bottom, this list bears at best a passing resemblance to mine, but ranking the worst cards is always tough. The sample size of games where they dominate is often small enough that you can't really get a good comparative opinion. A lot of it comes down to playstyle.

I personally have all the gainers (Workshop, Smugglers, Develop) 5-6 spots higher than they show up here, but that's probably because I tend to really enjoy low-trashing engines predicated on gaining a bunch of key cards to achieve the needed good card density. Shanty Town I like for similar reasons. If you trash heavily, it's worse than a regular Village, but if you don't have much trashing, then the +2 cards comes into play more and really helps you in the build-up phase.

Fortune Teller I have much higher, but it's hard to rate since it doesn't actually end up getting purchased that often. It's more of a card good for engines battling money decks. If you play with people who tend to play the same style as you, you may never buy it.

Loan tends to always be underrated, and I'm not sure why. It's trashing that doesn't cost an action...

And since I have all these cards rated much higher, something has to fall, so in my list, Wishing Well is bottom 5. It has its applications, like when you know what's on top of your deck, a lot of times it's unreliable at best. You need to have a bunch of the same card in your deck (like your starting Coppers, or a bunch of Wishing Wells) to even get a 30-40% conversion rate on the wish. This just doesn't seem like a great thing to build a strategy around to me. I'd rather take the gainers.

Black Market is also getting a lot of discussion for not having shown up yet, and I think it's a very interesting card in terms of how people feel about it. It depends heavily on the cycling power of your deck, since you have to play it a lot to find the good cards, then cycle around to play those cards enough to matter. So if you're going to play a game where you shuffle 4-5 times, it's terrible. But if you shuffle a lot, you can't really ignore it, since then you're just asking for your opponent to get ALL the good cards. Things that depend on number of shuffles have an interesting dynamic of who likes them. Beginning players don't know how to end the game fast enough, so they always shuffle a lot, and strong engine-builders can make a fast cycling deck on practically any board. Players with less engine-building experience, and players who focus on money-heavy rush styles tend to think it's terrible.

[CopperrCopper]

I really like chancellor in Minion games. 

[Robz888]

This list is okay. Intuitively, I feel like Wishing Well and Shanty Town should be better rankled, but for that to be so, what cards would be worse? Probably Lookout, which mistakenly didn't appear yet, for one thing. I would move Trade Route to a worse rank by a spot or two. Fortune Teller and Smugglers feel like they should be ahead of Loan... Loan is a last resort trasher. Other than those things, I guess I concur with this list.

[chwhite]

Smugglers continues to be drastically overrated.  Had I submitted a list, it would have been dead last for me yet again.  I feel like Black Market belongs in this tier, too, but I am no longer so confident of that- it has atrocious win rates on Council Room, but it can be so crucial in engine games.

Most of the other cards here feel like they should be higher... but what would take their place?  However, there are two cards I feel confident don't belong here.  I'd like to defend Loan, which is very strong whenever there are Colonies or a good source of non-Treasure income.  Even light trashing can be crucial, and light trashing that doesn't cost an action for only $3 deserves better than this.  Shanty Town is also a lot better: the pseudo-Lab ability is a lot more commonly useful, especially as a Turn 1/2 buy, than many people realize, and it works in both BM-esque and engine games.  (My opinion of its utility has certainly skyrocketed over time.)  It's probably still a slot or two below Village because there is the danger of anti-synergy... but only a slot or two.  It deserves the next tier up.

Chancellor, of course, also remains underrated, but not by enough to really matter.

[chwhite]

Loan/Transmute is an actual thing in Colony games, by the way.  I've pulled it off multiple times.

[jonts26]

Ranking the $3's I found hard because there aren't actually that many bad $3 cards. Other than the very best, most of them are the type of card which is going to be pretty useful sometimes, and not useful at all other times, but nothing (other than maybe chancellor?) in the counting house, sab extreme that you tend to see at the $5 level.

I think I have a general agreement with the order given here. My biggest miss is probably fortune teller, which is criminally underrated still for reasons I don't understand. The attack hurts when played consistently. A lot. Now because it's terminal and doesn't offer +card (like rabble) it needs a good bit of support to play consistently, which is why it's probably sitting around the middle of the pack for me, but it's not bottom third.

Oh also to all the people saying shanty town should be higher. No. It's super terrible. As a village it's probably the worst one there is. Worse than native. You can sometimes make use of the +2 cards as an opener or a counter to something like ghost ship, but in general, it kills engines that any other village would enable.

[chwhite]

Ranking the $3's I found hard because there aren't actually that many bad $3 cards. Other than the very best, most of them are the type of card which is going to be pretty useful sometimes, and not useful at all other times, but nothing (other than maybe chancellor?) in the counting house, sab extreme that you tend to see at the $5 level.

I think I have a general agreement with the order given here. My biggest miss is probably fortune teller, which is criminally underrated still for reasons I don't understand. The attack hurts when played consistently. A lot. Now because it's terminal and doesn't offer +card (like rabble) it needs a good bit of support to play consistently, which is why it's probably sitting around the middle of the pack for me, but it's not bottom third.

Oh also to all the people saying shanty town should be higher. No. It's super terrible. As a village it's probably the worst one there is. Worse than native. You can sometimes make use of the +2 cards as an opener or a counter to something like ghost ship, but in general, it kills engines that any other village would enable.

I definitely agree that there aren't many bad $3s- even the worst $3s can be quite useful.

Can't agree on Shanty Town though: I used to think it was super terrible, but then there was that experiment where I went Village/Torturer and HME went Shanty Town/Torturer... and guess what, Shanty Town/Torturer consistently crushed the vanilla Village approach.  And you'd think Torturer would be a worst-case scenario for the Shanties, since terminal draw engines are most likely to leave you stuck with just the +2 Actions.  But, no, the early pseudo-Lab is that useful. My perspective was changed rather drastically after that experiment.

[Robz888]

Ranking the $3's I found hard because there aren't actually that many bad $3 cards. Other than the very best, most of them are the type of card which is going to be pretty useful sometimes, and not useful at all other times, but nothing (other than maybe chancellor?) in the counting house, sab extreme that you tend to see at the $5 level.

Yeah, the $3s actually have probably the fewest duds of any price level, sort of by far.

[jonts26]

Ranking the $3's I found hard because there aren't actually that many bad $3 cards. Other than the very best, most of them are the type of card which is going to be pretty useful sometimes, and not useful at all other times, but nothing (other than maybe chancellor?) in the counting house, sab extreme that you tend to see at the $5 level.

I think I have a general agreement with the order given here. My biggest miss is probably fortune teller, which is criminally underrated still for reasons I don't understand. The attack hurts when played consistently. A lot. Now because it's terminal and doesn't offer +card (like rabble) it needs a good bit of support to play consistently, which is why it's probably sitting around the middle of the pack for me, but it's not bottom third.

Oh also to all the people saying shanty town should be higher. No. It's super terrible. As a village it's probably the worst one there is. Worse than native. You can sometimes make use of the +2 cards as an opener or a counter to something like ghost ship, but in general, it kills engines that any other village would enable.

I definitely agree that there aren't many bad $3s- even the worst $3s can be quite useful.

Can't agree on Shanty Town though: I used to think it was super terrible, but then there was that experiment where I went Village/Torturer and HME went Shanty Town/Torturer... and guess what, Shanty Town/Torturer consistently crushed the vanilla Village approach.  And you'd think Torturer would be a worst-case scenario for the Shanties, since terminal draw engines are most likely to leave you stuck with just the +2 Actions.  But, no, the early pseudo-Lab is that useful. My perspective was changed rather drastically after that experiment.

I think I remember that discussion. Wasn't the conclusion that the best option was to open shanty for the lab, and then get regular villages after that?

OK, I'm exaggerating how bad shanty is, I think it's appropriately placed at 35% here, and you might argue me up a spot or two, but not more than that. It's still worse than vanilla village by a decent bit. 

[chwhite]

I think I remember that discussion. Wasn't the conclusion that the best option was to open shanty for the lab, and then get regular villages after that?

OK, I'm exaggerating how bad shanty is, I think it's appropriately placed at 35% here, and you might argue me up a spot or two, but not more than that. It's still worse than vanilla village by a decent bit. 

Yeah, Shanty first then regular Villages would be best, but that experiment also proved, I think, that ST doesn't actually "kill engines" as much as one would expect.  You can use it by its lonesome if you have to the majority of the time. 

But, sure, it does work better in conjunction with other Villages, where you can get it first for the Lab effect and then mix other things in.

[dondon151]

Loan has got to be, like, my least favorite card. If it skips over your good cards or repeatedly hits the only Silver or Potion in your deck, then you're boned. Bonus points if it does both. And Copper trashing is so much weaker than Estate trashing.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I think I remember that discussion. Wasn't the conclusion that the best option was to open shanty for the lab, and then get regular villages after that?

OK, I'm exaggerating how bad shanty is, I think it's appropriately placed at 35% here, and you might argue me up a spot or two, but not more than that. It's still worse than vanilla village by a decent bit. 

Yeah, Shanty first then regular Villages would be best, but that experiment also proved, I think, that ST doesn't actually "kill engines" as much as one would expect.  You can use it by its lonesome if you have to the majority of the time. 

But, sure, it does work better in conjunction with other Villages, where you can get it first for the Lab effect and then mix other things in.

Doesn't almost everything work better when there are villages around? The thing that's good about Shanty Town is that in kingdoms with little or no trashing, it helps you get your engine going sooner, which a lot of times (i.e. in engines with key attacks, like Torturer) is a huge deal. It does this by letting you draw cards at the time of the game where you need it the most. And when combined with other villages, it can continue to draw cards even once the engine is rolling.

[Tables]

I'm disappointed to see Develop rise a ranking again. It really, really deserves that dead last spot. It has so, so much potential to be a power card, on the right board, but that 'right board' is so elusive. 80% of the time it's on the board, it's a terrible buy, pretty close to being useless. Even in that remaining 20%, it's bad most of that time. For it to work well you need a good $4 and a good $5, both ones you're happy to have lots of, a way to collide your Develop into those cards and, even then, you still get something that's only good, not great. You really need to add extra buys, extra actions and extra draw (or good sifting) for it to be really worthwhile, and for it to actually shine, you generally need a $7. It can be really amazing in those circumstances, but it's just so ridiculously rare. I think I've had one case where after examining the board, I've decided Develop would be really good, and I still barely won.

I think somewhat it might come down to people ignoring the frequency and seeing it's sheer power on those crazy-rare boards, but honestly, I really don't think it's significant enough to matter. I mean Chancellor/Stash is a power combo, comes up a lot more than Develop on a friendly board, but it's rated last.

[dondon151]

Develop's primary use is not in its ability to pull off cute combos; it's to trash Estates into better things.

[Tables]

First time I've ever heard anyone say that.