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[Mean Mr Mustard]

I have done a 360 on Trader.  Thought it was strong first, than I didn't, and now I kinda think it is again.  I mean, just the act of converting an Estate into two Silvers before the second shuffle by itself is pretty effing strong.

[Fangz]

You've turned that estate into 2 silvers - and a trader. In short, all you've done is obtained a second silver buy, and that turn where you drew a trader instead of just a silver to do that was probably ruined in the process.

[Kuildeous]

I have done a 360 on Trader.  Thought it was strong first, than I didn't, and now I kinda think it is again.  I mean, just the act of converting an Estate into two Silvers before the second shuffle by itself is pretty effing strong.

I'm just grateful to see a proper use of "do a 360."

[Octo]

You've turned that estate into 2 silvers - and a trader. In short, all you've done is obtained a second silver buy, and that turn where you drew a trader instead of just a silver to do that was probably ruined in the process.

That's not all though, you've also got rid of two estates in the process, which is pretty significant in my opinion.

[Epoch]

You've turned that estate into 2 silvers - and a trader. In short, all you've done is obtained a second silver buy, and that turn where you drew a trader instead of just a silver to do that was probably ruined in the process.

That's not all though, you've also got rid of two estates in the process, which is pretty significant in my opinion.

One Estate.

Your deck sans Trader Buy: 7 Copper, 3 Estates, whatever else you bought.
Your deck with Trader and one use on an Estate: 7 Copper, 2 Estates, 1 Trader, 2 Silvers, whatever else you bought.

His point is that you still have 3 cards with no buying power (2 Estates, 1 Trader).  You have 2 Silvers, but if you'd bought a Silver instead of the Trader, you'd have 1 Silver.  And on the turn that you exploded the Estate, you had an effectively 3 card hand at best (since you had two cards -- Trader and Estate) with no buying power.

Or, here, look at it this way.  Compare a pure Big Money strategy to BM + 1 Trader.

Opening buys: Silver/Silver vs. Silver Trader.

Okay, after the first reshuffle, BM has 7xC,2xS,3xE while Trader has 7xC,1xS,3xE,1xT.  We agree, I hope, that on the first reshuffle, the BM has a strictly superior deck in terms of buying power?  One of its hands will be worth $2 more than the equivalent Trader hand.

Assume that the Trader deck successfully explodes an Estate after the first reshuffle.  Now, what did it buy that turn?  Its remaining three cards could have been worth anywhere from $1 (C,E,E) to $4 (C,C,S).  So it buys either a Silver ($3 or $4) or nothing ($1 or $2).

We assume that the two decks had identical shuffle-luck.  So on that same hand, the BM deck had $3->$6 in money.  It is guaranteed a Silver, and may have a Gold.

Let's assume that both decks buy a Silver with their "other" hand before the second reshuffle.

So after the second reshuffle, if both decks bought a Silver on the "Trader" hand (which is the best result for the Trader deck), then the BM deck has 7xC,4xS,3xE, while the Trader deck has 7xC,5xS,2xE,1xT.  In which case it has the same number of no-buying-power cards, but one more Silver than the BMU deck.  It is slightly superior.

However, that's the best case for the Trader deck.  It's possible that this is the matchup:

BM: 7xC,3xS,1xG,3xE
Trader: 7xC,5xS,2xE,1xT

In which case the BM deck is probably better.

And it's possible that this is the matchup:

BM:  7xC,4xS,3xE
Trader: 7xC,4xS,2xE,1xT

In which case the decks (through the next reshuffle) are exactly the same (same Treasures, both have 3 cards with no buying power).

And it is ALSO possible that you drew the Trader with 4xC, meaning you still have 3 Estates.

And in the next shuffle, it is quite possible, and indeed getting fairly likely, that the Trader won't hit your second Estate.

Long story short: there are a lot of failure modes for Trader, and the success mode is pretty mild.  It might beat straight Big Money, but Single Trader is not one of the better -- or even one of the kind of okay -- single-card Big Money decks.  Single Thief beats Big Money too, but we don't think Thief is a good card.

[Octo]

Ah yeah, it's only one Estate that's been got rid of, my mistake.

Thanks for the analysis by the way. Dominion is a very interesting game and I find there's many surprising strategic discoveries upon really close analysis or from putting them through a simulator that force me to re-asses my approach. This was again one of those times.

[LastFootnote]

I suppose the moral of the story is that Trader is usually a poor buy unless you're planning on making use of its reaction ability. However, I'd say that's true of Reaction cards in general, perhaps even all cards. If you're paying full price for a card, but only using part of its utility, you're probably better off buying something else.

[Epoch]

I suppose the moral of the story is that Trader is usually a poor buy unless you're planning on making use of its reaction ability. However, I'd say that's true of Reaction cards in general, perhaps even all cards. If you're paying full price for a card, but only using part of its utility, you're probably better off buying something else.

The two cases where Trader seems to be good are, yes:

1.  Your opponent is Cursing you or otherwise adding chaff to your deck.

Trader is so, so much stronger than Moat in response to Cursing attacks.  Your opponent does NOT want to be actually helping you with his attacks.

2.  You're buying some kind of limited use $4+ card, or playing games with prices.

Where it makes sense to explode valuable-ish cards early and often.  Maybe the canonical example is something guided mentioned (and this combines with #1), where he and his opponent IGG-rushed and he bought Traders: buy IGG, curse your opponent.  Your opponent curses you, they've given you Silver.  Then explode your IGG into 5 Silvers.  Game over.

Other scenarios might be: you've got Horde up and running, and are buying chaff VP cards in order to get Gold.  Maybe some kind of Peddler shenanigans?  But I'm a little dubious.  Trader/Border Village/Duchy rush?  Trader should be very good at getting you to $6, so you could buy BV/Duchy, explode the BV and your deck shouldn't appreciably slow.  Haven't tried it.  Kind of interesting, though it lacks a third pile ending.  Maybe Talisman?

[ChaosRed]

Does Trader make a case for itself with a Gardens deck? Seems like it would.

[chwhite]

I suppose the moral of the story is that Trader is usually a poor buy unless you're planning on making use of its reaction ability. However, I'd say that's true of Reaction cards in general, perhaps even all cards. If you're paying full price for a card, but only using part of its utility, you're probably better off buying something else.

The two cases where Trader seems to be good are, yes:

1.  Your opponent is Cursing you or otherwise adding chaff to your deck.

Trader is so, so much stronger than Moat in response to Cursing attacks.  Your opponent does NOT want to be actually helping you with his attacks.

2.  You're buying some kind of limited use $4+ card, or playing games with prices.

Where it makes sense to explode valuable-ish cards early and often.  Maybe the canonical example is something guided mentioned (and this combines with #1), where he and his opponent IGG-rushed and he bought Traders: buy IGG, curse your opponent.  Your opponent curses you, they've given you Silver.  Then explode your IGG into 5 Silvers.  Game over.

Other scenarios might be: you've got Horde up and running, and are buying chaff VP cards in order to get Gold.  Maybe some kind of Peddler shenanigans?  But I'm a little dubious.  Trader/Border Village/Duchy rush?  Trader should be very good at getting you to $6, so you could buy BV/Duchy, explode the BV and your deck shouldn't appreciably slow.  Haven't tried it.  Kind of interesting, though it lacks a third pile ending.  Maybe Talisman?

#3: Stables.  Turning Estates into 2 Silvers (or possibly even turning one Silver into three), even one at a time and if the Reaction effect doesn't matter, is *fantastic* in a Stables deck.  A deck full of Stables and Silver doesn't even need Gold to hit $8 consistently.

[Epoch]

Does Trader make a case for itself with a Gardens deck? Seems like it would.

We discussed it way back when it was previewed.  As I recall, my experimentation at the time indicated "slower to get to 4 or 8 Gardens than Workshop is, but much more robust deck in the late game, leading to things like Duchy buys."

I suspect it loses to straight up Workshop/Gardens (or Ironworks), but beats a Province strategy when Traders/Gardens is on the board.  But it's not terribly well explored at this point, and you play it differently than the existing Gardens scripts.  It has considerably more trouble ending the game very quickly with three piles, since unlike Workshop/Ironworks/Woodcutter, it doesn't help you rush down the Estates pile.  But you can actually have a deck that buys Duchies and Provinces even if you've gobbled up all 8 Gardens.

Give it a try solo on Isotropic: it's a lot more fun to play, with many more decision points, than the trad Gardens rushes.

[Epoch]

Some very minimal testing suggests to me that Cache/Trader is pretty okay.  Not great, but solid for Province play.

Basic concept:  buy a couple of Traders with early $4 buys.  Play Big Money otherwise.  Use Traders on Estates.

If you have a $5-$7 hand that also includes a Trader, buy a Cache.  Use the Trader on the two Coppers -- so you get, essentially a Gold and two Silvers.  This is Pretty Good.

I was getting 4 Provinces on turn 13 ish.  Nobody's idea of the Fastest Deck Ever, but there are plenty of boards where 4 Provinces on turn 13 ish is the winning deck.

[fellowmartian]

I've won a few games recently by opening with Trader, and flooding my deck with Silver. Obviously this doesn't work in Colony games, but if you trader a couple of reasonable cards you have a lot of silver very quickly. The best was IGG, but I've won with two traders as well, a couple of times trashing one with the other after awhile. You can also trash Silvers for three more if the $ left in your hand afterwards makes sense. The amount of Silver this seems to leave me with often means I can start buying Duchies early and still grab some Provinces (4 Silvers + x = Prov), and I've won this way despite losing the Provs split 3/5. If I start to seize up, I can sacrifice a good card to Trader just before the reshuffle so that next time through I have a bunch more Silvers.

I'm not a big one for going deep into the maths -- I tend to prefer to play by feel -- but this kind of gameplan has worked for me a number of times in practice.

[guided]

I've won a few games recently by opening with Trader, and flooding my deck with Silver.

Ditto. I've found this to be a reasonably strong baseline strategy. In the most boring version (where I don't really have anything else going on) I'll try to keep about 3 Traders in my deck most of the game, being totally happy to trash Trader with Trader if they collide. You can actually start buying Estates a little early too.

[AJD]

Well, Prosperity has a lot of extra Buys available, but Highway really hurts cards like Bishop and Forge.

Bishop certainly, but it doesn't quite hurt Forge as much if you play sufficiently many Highways that there are good cards at $0, as then you can forge coppers into much better cards.

I had an interesting Highway/Forge game today:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/21/game-20111221-185323-e9ffe9b5.html

A couple of times the Highways did hurt my Forging: ordinarily if you Forge away three Estates, or a Duchess and a Moneylender, you want a Gold in exchange, and because of all my Highways I was only able to get Silvers for them. But that didn't hurt me too much, since I was mainly just using the Forge as a Chapel-with-a-bonus; assembling a deck consisting mostly of cantrips (namely, Highways) let me use the Forge to trash whatever cards were getting in the way of my engine. Eventually I got my deck down to six Highways, the Forge, and two Platinums; and from there on every turn I was able to buy a Colony, while Forging Colonies into each other to run down the pile and end the game before my deck got too clogged.

This deck probably would have worked just as well, or slightly better, with Treasuries or Peddlers instead of Highways; I would have been able to get Gold instead of Silver for my $6 Forge trashing, but on the other hand using Highways might have given me a little more flexibility.

[Eevee]

Going back to read this thread was an enjoyable experience. 

[Qvist]

Going back to read this thread was an enjoyable experience. 

I have done that in the last couple of months twice. Yes, that was very interesting.

Ill-Gotten Gains: I don't like it. It's the only curse-giver in the set and only a one shot. And $5 is definitely overpriced. So you need trash-for-benefit cards and then you have a feast-like card with a one-shot cursing attack. Or you buy a new one for every trashed one.

Jack of all Trades: A little bit too complicated for my taste. It combines Bureacrat, Spy, drawing and trashing. I think one buy at the start is good, but I don't think it's a very good card.

Oasis: I don't get it yet. It's an expensive copper. It only removes a little bit of drawing luck. But I think for $3 I would rather buy a silver. Or can anybody tell me in which cases you would buy this?