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[gman314]

I looked at the wiki and saw that Caravan didn't have an article so now it does. Feedback wanted!

   Caravan is a good card. It’s consistently in the top ten $4s on Qvist’s ranking, and if you look at the stats on Councilroom, you can see that most players have noticed it: it has been gained by 89.4 % of all decks which could have gained it. It also leads to quick games. Its average game length of 19.20 turns comes in behind only Governor and Wharf. So, what makes it so good, so fast and intuitive? And if it’s so good, what’s going on in the remaining 10.6 % of decks?

What’s going on with this card?

   On your current turn, Caravan does nothing. It just replaces itself with a new card, leaving you with a 5-card hand and 1 action. Now, if you make the mistake I’ve made several times in RL games and accidentally clean it up immediately after the turn in which you play it, it’s just a stupid and pointless card. But of course, the awesomeness happens at the start of next turn, when you draw a card, getting you a 6-card hand with 1 action, as if you had already played a Lab! Since Lab is a good card, this helps explain what makes Caravan good; it’s like a Lab but costs $4! So, you can always open with it and it’s much more accessible, explaining the slightly faster games than Lab’s 19.56 turns.

   But Caravan isn’t strictly better than Lab because of the fact that it’s a duration. Since it stays out, it effectively takes two turns to play Caravan as a Lab. And it misses reshuffles more often because that’s just what durations do. So, in a deck-drawing engine, you play Caravan half as often as Lab, and without deck-drawing you play it just slightly less often do to skipped reshuffles. So, Caravan’s main advantage over Lab is the fact that it costs $4 rather than $5 which is a pretty significant advantage in accessibility. This comes because not only is $4 significantly easier to hit than $5, but also because cards which gain up to $4 are more common than those which gain $5+ cards. For instance, Caravan is a great target for Talisman. This accessibility increase makes it easier to add extra Caravans to your deck when you're in the greening phase and maintain reliability. That being said, Caravan becomes a little less useful in the late-game as making next turn big becomes less important when you may not even have a next turn. Also, an important point about Caravan management is to figure out how many you actually want at the start of a given turn and not autoplay all of them. If a you can reliably draw your deck with a 7 card hand, but not with 6, and you have 4 Caravans in your deck, you should try to play 2 each turn, and not split them 3-1.

        However, if your deck is built around fishing for a specific megaturn combo like King's Court/Bridge, or a Horn of Plenty deck, you might find yourself wanting one super turn over reliability. This is where clumping your Caravans for a single turn can actually be useful.

What about the 10.6 %?

   Now, this is the point where with something like Explorer I’d spend a long time telling you about the few cases where you actually want it. But people seem to understand when they want Caravan so instead I’ll tell you that the 10.6 % of players may have had a good reason to skip it. Caravan is worth picking up in all the cases where you want Labs; that is anytime you want non-terminal drawing in your deck. In an engine deck there are two main cases where you don’t want non-terminal draw; Menagerie and cards which draw up to a fixed handsize. Drawing extra cards will make Menagerie less likely to activate, and will make cards like Library and Watchtower draw fewer cards.

   In non-engine decks, there are two more cases where you probably don’t want Caravan. In terminal-draw BM, any cantrip will likely just get in the way of your terminal draw card. And in slogs, you probably have a low action density, so while Caravans still help cycle your deck, there are likely more appealing actions to purchase, knowing that you have a lower risk of terminal collisions.

        Also of note with Caravan is that while it's often good, it's not usually great, making opportunity cost a big part of deciding to get it. There are many Villages and decent terminals at $4 that you might rather want - especially if you have a card like Caravan letting you draw your deck every turn.

Works with
Cards that like big handsizes (eg.Baron, Trashers, particularly Trash for Benefit.)
A few key terminals that you want to play as many times as possible (eg. Monument)
Gainers (eg. Workshop, Talisman, Ironworks)
Decks which need a bit of extra reliability

Doesn’t work with
Menagerie
“Draw up to” cards (eg. Library, Watchtower)
Terminal-draw BM
Slogs (if there’s a better card at $4 or less to buy)

[ftl]

So, you play Caravan  a little less than half the number of times you play a Lab.

This really depends on the deck, but it's not less than half no matter how you slice it, I think.

If you have an engine that draws your whole deck, every caravan will be played half as often as a lab would be.

On the other extreme, if you have a large deck, and draw caravan early in the shuffle so that it doesn't miss the reshuffle, you can play your caravan exactly as often as you would have played a lab!

[soulnet]

There is one thing in which Caravan is better than Lab: Adding reliability. Good engines can often stall way beore the end. This usually happens for just one turn in which you happen to draw no Village or you don't hit your key drawing cards, or something like that. If you throw in some Caravans to those engines, you can effectively start each turn with 6/7/8 cards and draw your deck yet again, playing the other 2 or 3 Caravans to improve the odds of doing it again next turn. The fact that Workshop-style gainers can get Caravan is great to this effect, because if you are drawing your deck you have actions surplus anyway, and getting a Workshop or Ironworks is much easier than getting $4 and a Buy. This is especially true in Scrying Pool decks, which btw, also love ANY cantrip, and Caravan is possibly the best kind of cantrip for SP, that can get unreliable if there is no virtual money and you need to draw your Treasures for that.

[matste]

There is one thing in which Caravan is better than Lab: Adding reliability.

It is probably only true if you try to draw all your deck each turn. I run a little simulation of BM+multiple X. Starting with a given deck of cards it executes 10 turns always playing all Caravans/Labs and always buying one victory card. The charts show how often you end up with hands of given size. I don't count the first turn where hand size for Caravan is always 5.
The results show that caravan doesn't add reliability in this case and the risk of hitting a "dead" 5 card hand is slightly larger.

[Davio]

Another thing might be that Caravan becomes less good in the end game just because the "next" turn becomes less important. There may not even be a next turn.

If you hit 2 Golds + Caravan (drawing a Province) late, you would have wished it was a Silver.

[Lekkit]

While I agree to the first part, I'm really getting tired of the "If you draw $6+ 'the card in question', you'd want that to be a Silver instead."...

[SCSN]

While I agree to the first part, I'm really getting tired of the "If you draw $6+ 'the card in question', you'd want that to be a Silver instead."...

Yeah. If I need the last Province for the win and my hand is Province, Baron, Gold, Silver, Silver, I'd so wish that that Gold was an Estate! Obviously, that doesn't mean that I should have been spending my $6 buys on Estates

I think the article is a decent start, though. It could also mention something about spreading Caravans between turns, so that you start all your turns with, say, 8 Cards rather than some with 6 and others with 10. This is very important in cases where you can expect to draw your whole deck with most 8-card starting hands, but not with much less (and starting with more just leads to overdrawing).

Caravan also works really well with Double-Tactician decks that tend to break down during the greening phase. With Caravan support you can maintain them a little longer, which can make a huge difference in the endgame.

I disagree with Caravan working well with Vault, which is mostly a terminal-draw BM card. When playing Vault-BM you really want to get a Silver for $4, as connecting two Silvers with Vault is enough for a Province, whereas drawing a dead Caravan only gives you $1. Vault-BM doesn't care about big handsizes either, as anything over $8 is just wasted.

[Davio]

While I agree to the first part, I'm really getting tired of the "If you draw $6+ 'the card in question', you'd want that to be a Silver instead."...

Well, it was a slight tongue-in-cheek comment. You can't really compare a Caravan to a Silver.
But I do find Caravans to have a tendency to be mostly mid-game cards, also because extra cards in hand are more important at that point.

During the mid-game with an engine your deck is mostly rid of bad cards, so if we assume every single card offers ~$2 worth of value, an extra card may be huge if you can go from "one good engine piece + one crappy" to "two good engine pieces". So if Caravan allows you to go from $9 to $10 (providing $1 of value) that's pretty good, allowing you to get 2 $5's.

If you're greening and all you care about are Provinces and Duchies, going from $8 to $9 with a gazillion buys doesn't do a lot for you as you'll only get 1 Province anyway.

[gman314]

So, you play Caravan  a little less than half the number of times you play a Lab.

This really depends on the deck, but it's not less than half no matter how you slice it, I think.

If you have an engine that draws your whole deck, every caravan will be played half as often as a lab would be.

On the other extreme, if you have a large deck, and draw caravan early in the shuffle so that it doesn't miss the reshuffle, you can play your caravan exactly as often as you would have played a lab!

You're right. I don't know what I was thinking.

There is one thing in which Caravan is better than Lab: Adding reliability. Good engines can often stall way beore the end. This usually happens for just one turn in which you happen to draw no Village or you don't hit your key drawing cards, or something like that. If you throw in some Caravans to those engines, you can effectively start each turn with 6/7/8 cards and draw your deck yet again, playing the other 2 or 3 Caravans to improve the odds of doing it again next turn. The fact that Workshop-style gainers can get Caravan is great to this effect, because if you are drawing your deck you have actions surplus anyway, and getting a Workshop or Ironworks is much easier than getting $4 and a Buy. This is especially true in Scrying Pool decks, which btw, also love ANY cantrip, and Caravan is possibly the best kind of cantrip for SP, that can get unreliable if there is no virtual money and you need to draw your Treasures for that.

I disagree that Caravan is totally better than Lab for adding reliability, but I think you do have a point that Caravan + Workshop/Ironworks is good for reliability. I think that if I had a Highway added to that engine, I would totally prefer to Workshop a Lab over a Caravan. This is an edge case, but it shows that Lab would really be just as good.

Another thing might be that Caravan becomes less good in the end game just because the "next" turn becomes less important. There may not even be a next turn.

Totally true.

While I agree to the first part, I'm really getting tired of the "If you draw $6+ 'the card in question', you'd want that to be a Silver instead."...

I think the article is a decent start, though. It could also mention something about spreading Caravans between turns, so that you start all your turns with, say, 8 Cards rather than some with 6 and others with 10. This is very important in cases where you can expect to draw your whole deck with most 8-card starting hands, but not with much less (and starting with more just leads to overdrawing).

Caravan also works really well with Double-Tactician decks that tend to break down during the greening phase. With Caravan support you can maintain them a little longer, which can make a huge difference in the endgame.

I disagree with Caravan working well with Vault, which is mostly a terminal-draw BM card. When playing Vault-BM you really want to get a Silver for $4, as connecting two Silvers with Vault is enough for a Province, whereas drawing a dead Caravan only gives you $1. Vault-BM doesn't care about big handsizes either, as anything over $8 is just wasted.

Yeah, spreading between turns is a good point.

Caravan + Double-Tac I agree with, but I think that again a Lab would be at least as good.

I find it interesting that you commented on Caravan + Double-Tac as good, but don't find Caravan to synergize with one of the best Double-Tac enablers. And while Vault-BM doesn't like Caravan or big handsizes, Vault in any sort of engine does.

[soulnet]

I disagree that Caravan is totally better than Lab for adding reliability, but I think you do have a point that Caravan + Workshop/Ironworks is good for reliability. I think that if I had a Highway added to that engine, I would totally prefer to Workshop a Lab over a Caravan. This is an edge case, but it shows that Lab would really be just as good.

Lab is better than Caravan, no argument there.

My point was: If have good deck control, Caravan will add even more control (similar to Double Tac, which is only great because of its reliability). Lab is better overall, but the worse case may be worse, i.e., Lab improves your expected performance more than Caravan, but Caravan can easily improve your "worst of 90% of the cases" performance, which is good to control the end-game decay of your engine, especially when there is no +Buy or there is not that much cash, and overperforming gives too little of a bonus. Lab usually overperforms, for instance, in good SP decks, and a cantrip that improves the odds of having your SPs in hand next turn may be better. Next turn is sometimes bad because the game can end, but its sometimes better when Duchy dancing or wanting to prevent the opponent taking the risk of breaking PPR succesfully.

[SCSN]

I find it interesting that you commented on Caravan + Double-Tac as good, but don't find Caravan to synergize with one of the best Double-Tac enablers.

Vault is a terrible Double-Tac enabler because 1) you need heavy trashing for a reliable Double-Tac engine, in which case you hopefully end up with cards that do more for you than functioning as a virtual Copper, and 2) Vault-BM simply outraces it. For a Double-Tac engine to be better than Vault-BM, it eventually needs to get a double-Province turn or two. Vault won't get you there.

And while Vault-BM doesn't like Caravan or big handsizes, Vault in any sort of engine does.

There are very few engines in which Vault is a good card. The only one I can really think of is a completely trimmed Scrying Pool engine, where it's worse than Secret Chamber (because Vault also helps your opponent) and much worse than Store Room (because in addition it also lacks the +buy).

[WanderingWinder]

The biggest problem with caravan is the same as the biggest problem with Lab: opportunity cost. Sure, it's almost always good, but not too often is it great, and there is just other stuff you want to do.

[dondon151]

Vault can also work in a draw to X engine.

[soulnet]

Vault can also work in a draw to X engine.

Does that work? Draw-to-X cards are terminal and so is Vault, so you would need a LOT of villages to make it reliable enough, and it does seem like it would take a long time to get it running. Maybe with Hamlet it would work, because you can get lots of them really quick, and they already combo pretty well with draw-to-X.

[WanderingWinder]

Vault can also work in a draw to X engine.

Does that work?

Sure. It just rarely works well.

Caravan/Vault is actually I think fairly well known as a nombo. Adding caravan to Vault/BM makes a pretty imperceptible difference.

[dondon151]

Of course it works. You just need a lot of villages.

[soulnet]

Of course it works. You just need a lot of villages.

This sounds to me like those fancy engines I keep trying and can never make them work. Of course, it can be the case that I fail at building and/or executing those engines.

[WanderingWinder]

Of course it works. You just need a lot of villages.

This sounds to me like those fancy engines I keep trying and can never make them work. Of course, it can be the case that I fail at building and/or executing those engines.

Usually, you won't have enough villages OR you'll have something better to do. But of course, usually isn't always, and it's part of what makes the game very tricky.

[Davio]

The biggest problem with caravan is the same as the biggest problem with Lab: opportunity cost. Sure, it's almost always good, but not too often is it great, and there is just other stuff you want to do.

This is an interesting point and worth quoting. I think it greatly depends on your deck size and how easy you can draw everything. If you can draw your deck without Caravans, you can probably get other components which are worth more to you (say...Conspirator). If your deck is pretty big with lots of junk, your average card value isn't that high so Caravan doesn't really add that much.

[jomini]

A few thing:
1. In decks that draw a big percent of their cards each turn, there are two ways to play Caravans - either clump them so you get big (perhaps deck drawing) hand some of the time or space them to get consistently large starting hands. Say you have six Caravans in a reasonably reliable Bazaar/Rabble deck, you often want to play 3 a turn so you start with 8 cards, draw deck, and then play 3 next turn. Playing 6 on one turn results in overdrawing and the next turn you have worse odds of lining up Bazaar/Rabble - 8/8 is much more reliable than 11/5. Particularly, if you already have drawn your deck you may want to only play enough Caravans to have balance. Say I have a single Caravan in play (from last turn) and get lucky drawing Bazaar x2/Rabble x3; Playing Bazaar -> Rabble twice will net me 8 cards and my other Rabble will net me 11. I may well draw my entire deck without touching my 5 other Caravans. In that case, I like have a reasonably reliable draw mechanism and it is better to just play 3 Caravans (leaving to 2 to play next turn) so I can consistently fish for Bazaar/Rabble in a 8 card starting hand. This is particularly common if you gain lots of Caravans because they are close to free (e.g. Haggler, but also Ironworks after you have enough villages).

In contrast, say you have a HoP deck, normally you will always play your Caravans, but you might intentionally send them back a turn (e.g. you play Mandarin) to try to set up a deck drawing hand the turn after next. Clumping is really good if you are fishing for megaturns with cards that enable clumping (e.g. Haven).

2. Before your big turn, the Caravan is not in hand (it is waiting in play for you), in contrast with Lab where before your big turn Labs are in hand. This is normally not a big deal, but a couple of things can make this a big deal. First are the obvious Masq pins, Caravan can leave you some chance to counter a pin after you've been hit, Lab cannot. More commonly, but less powerfully, before your big turn you are more likely to have reaction cards in hand. These can help prevent attack cards from ruining the big hand. E.g. you are going for a Madman megaturn while your opponent is running Council Room/Ghost ship. Caravan gives you better odds of having Moat in hand with the Caravans in play.

3.  Caravan works well with TfB cards. Cheap live draw is good for pairing up TfB with the cards it needs to hit. Caravan is cheap so you may well grab a few if you don't need more silver, which is more common with trashing in play. Mid-late game caravan makes for excellent TfB fodder. For instance say you are playing Salvager. Silvers don't provide a particularly good return on a Salvager play (just +1 coin relative to not using it), so a deck centered on playing Salvager often (say Hoard/Salvager) pretty quickly loses interest in Silvers  and loves better odds of pairing Salvager/Gold/Hoard (a province and replacement gold). Late game you can start burning Caravans for a bonus Duchy (assuming you have a copper lying around).

4.  Caravan is among the best activating cards in the game. It is cheap. It increases the odds of drawing the stuff you want to activate (e.g. Conspirator, HoP, Peddler) or other activating cards. Pretty much whenever you care about the number or uniquely named cards already in play, you want at least one Caravan in deck.

[lespeutere]

Of course it works. You just need a lot of villages.

And "a lot" doesn't mean 10ish but more like 5ish, which is totally reasonable. Of course you'd like to have some trashing but you'd like to have this for most engines, right? To state the fairly obvious, menagerie is also very well suited besides the typical "draw to X".

Edit: or you don't have trashing but still manage to make it work with 7 villages: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120313-073949-03028ae7.html (I didn't play well, I believe, it's a long time ago, I was somewhere in the 30s, maybe).

[gman314]

Some long overdue edits added.