Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[philosophyguy]

+Buy is usually the most difficult of the basic bonuses for a player to use. Get a +Buy too early and you waste the ability when you need expensive cards (there's a reason why Woodcutter is not a strong opener). Well, Traders solves that problem. Buy a Copper, then turn that gained card into a Silver. Or buy a Curse, if you're trying to run out an extra pile. All of a sudden, extra buys are free Silvers!

[guided]

Trader and +Buy is something several people have brought up, but I just don't see it. You have to buy a $4 card that you keep in your hand (instead of playing it, or playing some other card you could have bought instead like Silver) so that you can convert idle +Buys (which you're accumulating for some reason?) into Silvers that go into your discard pile. I am... let's just say not super impressed by this possibility. It's about as exciting to me as the idea of buying Workshop so you can use it to gain Silvers.

Woodcutter is not a strong opener.

Never say never! Woodcutter/Potion is often a strong opening on Alchemist boards. (Ok, Ok, I'm mostly playing Devil's advocate here.)

[Fangz]

Well, the main reason woodcutter is weak is that it's a terminal. Re: using +buy to fuel trader, I can't say it's worth it. Consider that a hand with trader in it is going to be able to gain silver easily anyway by trashing estates etc, so acquiring +buy for the off chance you have it collide with a trader (and hoping you have something useful in the remaining 3 cards), isn't a very effective strategy.

Furthermore, buying curses and swapping for silvers *does not* deplete the curse pile. You gain silver instead of the curse. You don't gain the curse, trash it, and get a silver instead.

[jonts26]

Or buy a Curse, if you're trying to run out an extra pile.

Using traders ability does not trash the would have gained card. It stays right in the supply. So no, you can't empty a pile (except the silver pile, of course).

[WanderingWinder]

Man, I still think that Traders will be good with +buys, but mostly for +buys you'd have anyway (goons, wharf, market, what have you) and while I think it's actually fairly decent with woodcutter, they're both so weak to start with that if this is the strongest play on the board... it's one of the weakest boards I've ever seen. Single smithy should clock it I think.
I also wouldn't call this a combo by any stretch, just some cards that have a little synergy.

[philosophyguy]

I was thinking for cards like Workers Village or Market, since those +Buys tend to be wasted relatively frequently. Goons (and Wharf, to a lesser extent) are not great candidates for Trading because they tend to be found in engine decks where having Silvers might dilute your deck too far. But, if it's not going to be a Goons meta-turn fest, then the extra Silver could easily come in handy.

Thanks for reminding me that the Trader doesn't trash the would-have-gained card…I take back the claim about buying out Curses to end the game.

Question: can you buy a Border Village, use a Trader to keep from depleting that pile, but still gain a card costing less than BV?

[Epoch]

Man, I still think that Traders will be good with +buys, but mostly for +buys you'd have anyway (goons, wharf, market, what have you) and while I think it's actually fairly decent with woodcutter, they're both so weak to start with that if this is the strongest play on the board... it's one of the weakest boards I've ever seen. Single smithy should clock it I think.
I also wouldn't call this a combo by any stretch, just some cards that have a little synergy.

Yeah, and the thing with "using Traders on +buys" is that the scenarios in which you'll get the most mileage out of it, you probably don't want a ton of Silvers anyhow.  Like, a Village/Wharf engine, or a Worker's Village/Smithy engine are both going to get you a nice combination of "Trader is likely to be in your hand at buy time," and "have a plethora of extra buys at buy time," but...  do you want another 5 Silvers in those decks?  It seems like the amount that you weaken your engine isn't worth the buying power.

[Epoch]

Question: can you buy a Border Village, use a Trader to keep from depleting that pile, but still gain a card costing less than BV?

No.  You only trigger the BV's "on gain" ability if you actually gain the BV.  If you gain a Silver "instead" of the BV, then you don't trigger BV's "on gain" ability because... you didn't gain a BV.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Question: can you buy a Border Village, use a Trader to keep from depleting that pile, but still gain a card costing less than BV?

I don't think so. Trader's reaction occurs when you "would" gain a card, and makes it so that instead of gaining that card you gain a silver. Anything that would have happened when you actually gained that card should not occur, since you never actually gain it.

[cayvie]

Haven't seen it come up yet, but Trader seems like a good way to get Grand Markets

edit-and then, the +buy from Grand Markets could work with Trader like in the OP.

[rrenaud]

Has anyone simulated a Trader + (Wharf or Council Room) big money style deck?  The idea is to use the extra buys from the wharf or CR to soak up silvers, and then just try to fairly consistently hit $8 on 7 or 8 card draws (stuffed with silvers).  I thought the combo would work very well, but I played it once, and it was only decent.  (my turn 12 trading province for 8 silvers was dumb, but you have to try that crap sometimes ).

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111016-194600-e3ba5805.html

[Mean Mr Mustard]

I don't think this is a theme that I would plan a deck around, more like something to consider when it comes up naturally.

[cherdano]

I think the real +buy-combo in Hinterlands is +buy + Highways.

[Jimmmmm]

I think the real +buy-combo in Hinterlands is +buy + Highways.

Yeah. I think when you combine Highways with +Buys, you're going to get fairly big turns more often than with Bridge, but you might not see the ultra-mega turns Bridge can give you.

[biopower]

Yeah. I think when you combine Highways with +Buys, you're going to get fairly big turns more often than with Bridge, but you might not see the ultra-mega turns Bridge can give you.

It hurts Highways to not be able to have its price-reduction effect be KC'd/TR'd, but being nonterminal does help it a lot. Of course, if you can get a draw engine going with KCs and be able to play multiple Highways with +Buy to spare, the result will probably be the same.

[rrenaud]

I've pulled off a mega turn in a market/highway/steward/peddler game.   I think it was a 13th turn 48 points.  Works a bit different than the bridge mega combo, it didn't need massive draw, just non-terminal +card, +action, with at least some source of +buy and some multi card trashing.

[guided]

I had the awesomest plan involving Highway and Throne Room, it was going to rule so hard, and then my megaturn came and I was going to buy all the Provinces... only to finally notice Highway's price reduction isn't Thronable

(Though to be fair I still won the game a couple turns later. But it was much closer than I thought it would be!)

[WanderingWinder]

I love Highway and gainers. Highway+Ironworks is pretty darn strong.

[AJD]

I love Highway and gainers. Highway+Ironworks is pretty darn strong.

Had a pretty intense Highway/Nomad Camp game last night, and it wasn't till endgame and too late to do anything about it that my opponent and I both noticed Talisman was on the board and what the implications of that were.