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[yudantaiteki]

I'm still basically a Dominion beginner, and I'm having a hard time understanding the concept of a card "missing the reshuffle" -- I feel like I only sort of half-understand what this means, and I'm also not sure how the concept applies when you're actually playing (i.e. how to recognize it or avoid it)

[DStu]

"Missing the reshuffle" describes the following effect:

When you reshuffle your draw deck, there are usually cards in hand or in play.  Most easily that happens when you just redraw 5 cards for your next turn, and there are less than 5 cards in your drawpile.  Say you have a 12 card deck like it usually happens after the first two turns, without any cards that draw cards.  Say you just bought Silver/Silver on turn 1 and 2.  Now you draw two "usual" hands. In turn 5, you will draw the 2 remaining cards.  These cards "miss the shuffle", as they, in contrast to the other 10 cards of the deck, will not be in the draw pile for the next shuffle.  So they can only played once in two shuffles, while the other card will be played twice.  If these are important cards, this of course sucks.

When this happens between turns, there is not much that can be done about it, but during your turn, you should be careful if you want to trigger a reshuffle by playing say a Smithy or not.  You might give up the opportunity to buy some better card, but by triggering the reshuffle, the Smithy, all the cards in your hand and play and the newbought card might not get seen for a long time, so maybe it's better to just settle for the Gold instead of hoping for the Province.  Maybe it's not...

This effect can get really strong if you have discard-for-benefit cards like Cellar.  If you have say an engine playing Villages and Smithies to draw many cards, and inbetween discard Coppers and Estates with Cellars, all your good cards are in your hand and in play (the Villages, Smithies, Cellars, good Treasures, whatever), while your bad cards (Copper, Victory cards) are in your discard.  In this situation it can be really dangerous to trigger a reshuffle if you can't guarantee to draw the whole remaining deck this turn, because if you do, after this turn you have a draw deck with 10 (or more) bad cards which will take some turns to get trough, while all the cards that you rely on are in your discard.

[Qvist]

Let's assume you open Witch/Hamlet.
Then you draw both on turn 4. You have 2 cards left in your draw pile. You could now play Hamlet and then the Witch. This would cause a reshuffle.
As both opening cards are in play they would get discarded at the end of your turn and you wouldn't see them until the next reshufflle at around turn 7. They missed the reshuffle. The same would happen if those two cards are the bottom 2 cards which you will draw in turn 5. Then they will miss the reshuffle too.
So, it's better to not play the Hamlet and play the Witch directly so that you will reshuffle at the end of your turn where you may draw the Witch immediately again or at least in around turn 6.

Edit: ninja'd

[PSGarak]

You can only play a card once per time you shuffle your deck, is what it comes down to. If you play a card, you don't get another opportunity to play it until after you've played all of the other cards in your draw pile, and re-shuffle your deck. Then, your draw pile contains all of your cards, and you get to play each of those cards once more, and you shuffle your deck again and repeat.

Unless some cards weren't in your deck when you reshuffled, because they were in your hand or in play. Those cards "miss the re-shuffle" and don't get shuffled in to your draw pile. Which means that those cards, you don't get an opportunity to play, until the next time you shuffle your deck. Basically it means you missed an opportunity to play one of your cards. You only get to play each card once every few turns (depending on deck size and draw rate), and if you miss one of those chances it can be a big deal. Getting to play a power-card only three times in a game instead of four can have a noticeable impact on win chances.

[carstimon]

It's been pointed out that a similar thing happens in real life, when doing laundry.  Suppose you only wear clothes for one day, and then you have to clean them before wearing them again.  Say you also do laundry every Sunday.  Most clothes you can wear once a week, but the clothes you wear on Sunday can only get worn once in the two week period before and after that Sunday.

[Kuildeous]

I always like illustrations. I'm not always good at them, but I can try.

I liked Qvist's example of opening with a Witch and Hamlet, so we'll go with that.

Let's say your first four hands are:
Hand 1: CCEEE (buy Hamlet)
Hand 2: CCCCC (buy Witch)
<shuffle>
Hand 3: EEECC (you could buy Hamlet here, but let's assume no buys)
Hand 4: CCCWH (decision time)
Hand 5ish: CC + <shuffle>

Let's say you want to buy a second Witch with this setup.

Scenario 1: Play Witch but not Hamlet
Hand 1: CCEEE (buy Hamlet)
Hand 2: CCCCC (buy Witch)
<shuffle>
Hand 3: EEECC (you could buy Hamlet here, but let's assume no buys)
Hand 4: CCCWH (play Witch only) CC (buy Witch)
<shuffle>
Your next hand could have that Witch you just bought. In fact, you could possibly draw:
Hand 5: CCWWH

Scenario 2: Play Hamlet and then Witch
Hand 1: CCEEE (buy Hamlet)
Hand 2: CCCCC (buy Witch)
<shuffle>
Hand 3: EEECC (you could buy Hamlet here, but let's assume no buys)
Hand 4: CCCWH (play Hamlet) C (play Witch) C + <shuffle>  + C (buy Witch)
Since you shuffled before you were done with your hand, your Witch is now in your discard pile. But now you have your entire deck to go through before you can shuffle that Witch back in. In this scenario, you will never get a sweet deal like CCWWH in turn 5 or even turn 6.


Then this can be expanded into larger decks. If you have two cards left in your deck, then playing Smithy means that whatever you buy this round won't be available for the next hand (or six). That's bad if you are buying a Platinum, but it's good if you are buying a Province. You don't really want a Province in your next shuffle anyway unless you're really banking on an Explorer/Tournament strategy or something else weird.

[SirPeebles]

Missing the reshuffle can be good as well.  If you have a lot of junk in hand/play, then triggering a reshuffle means you'll have a few hands free of this clutter.

Shuffle timing is also useful to keep in mind when gaining.  It can be really nice to get a Curse into your opponent's deck just before a reshuffle (as opposed to just after) since it means that he'll draw that dead card one additional time.

Similarly, paying attention to your shuffle can inform you as to when to transition to victory cards.  If you draw $6 and have a reshuffle coming up, then maybe grab just one last Gold before hitting the Duchies.  On the other hand, if you just reshuffled and the game is likely to end before your next reshuffle, well then you'd be better off buying a Duchy over Gold -- even buying an Estate over Gold if the Duchies are out.

[michaeljb]

This would be a good topic for a page on the wiki.

[ConMan]

The cards most at risk of missing the reshuffle are Duration cards, particularly those that draw (like Wharf), because they can miss the reshuffle not only when you draw your deck during the turn you play them, but if you reshuffle in the Clean-up phase. To demonstrate that, consider the case if you open Wharf/nothing on 5/2. Then there are three scenarios:

1: You play Wharf turn 3. You've drawn 7 of the 11 cards in your deck this turn, so in Clean-up you draw the remaining 4, reshuffle, and draw 1, with the Wharf still out. Then in turn 4 you draw 2 more cards, leaving 4 cards in your deck if you bought something turn 3 and only now does Wharf get cleaned up and reshuffled into the deck, giving it a 1 in (size of your deck minus 4) chance of being in your Turn 5 hand.

2: You play Wharf turn 4. This causes you to draw the last 2 cards in your deck, so you will definitely shuffle in Clean-up, and so your Wharf has missed that reshuffle and unless you have good draw will not be in your hand for at least another couple of turns.

3: You play Wharf turn 5. In this case, Wharf already missed the reshuffle, and in other respects this behaves like the first scenario.

[Robz888]

This is already kind of covered, but it bears repeating: If you're good cards miss the reshuffle, it's really, really bad. Some of this can't be avoided, but before you auto-play a card that is going to trigger a reshuffle, think things through. Do you really need to play this card? Are you okay with not seeing the cards in your hand again for like forever?

Remember: You usually try to avoid doing laundry while you're wearing your favorite shirt!

[Avalanchian]

It can be really nice to get a Curse into your opponent's deck just before a reshuffle (as opposed to just after) since it means that he'll draw that dead card one additional time.

This is why Sea Hag and IGG are such nasty cursers. They can get a Curse into your hand on turn 3/4 which obviously clogs up your hand, slows deck cycling and means it causes mayhem earlier than most other cursers that need to wait until turn 5 at the earliest before their damage is done. Those early hands are so crucial to getting an advantage that they can all but decide a game right from the start (think of discarding your Hag to your opponent's Hag on turn three - not fun).