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[Stealth Tomato]

But I think if you pay $5 for doctor in the first turn, you may not have $2 next turn.

If you pay $5 for Doctor on T1, you are guaranteed at least $2 or Doctor next turn, and usually more than that. The only way you get just $2 is if all three Estates are on the bottom (so Doctor trashes Copper-Copper, and you draw the Estates).

This could potentially be a really nice counter to top-of-the-deck attacks. Sea Hag is substantially less brutal since you can trash that Curse. Rabble risks becoming helpful to your opponent because it nicely puts those Estates on the top of the deck where the Doctor can find them.

Not only this but (at the risk of stating the obvious) you don't even need to own a Doctor yet, or have it in hand, to do these things. Much stronger than Lookout this way.

The significant downside vs. Lookout is that it's terminal. Terminal Lookout would be a never-buy. Obviously this doesn't apply to the on-buy, but it is important for playing the card.

[cactus]

Weird art on this card.

I presume that is half of the patient's face we can see near the bottom left of the picture.... then moving up the left hand side of the image we see something that looks vaguely like a limp left hand lying on a dark green sheet.... then we see.... what? A knee sticking up under the sheet...? Yes it is a knee, let's just stick with that shall we...?

.... and the doctor is saying, "I'll just grind up a few more of these little blue pills for you"....

[philosophyguy]

Fair enough, but it's also much, much worse than Spice Merchant for trashing Copper.

Something something Warehouse's existence means Cellar is bad.

Doctor really does occupy a different niche than Spice Merchant. Spice Merchant is money trashing, like Moneylender. Doctor is (on play) weak trashing and (on buy) mediocre early game trashing and/or top-deck manipulation. Doctor has a couple of advantages over Spice Merchant: trashing anything, trashing multiple cards, cycling, and being able to get the effect in the shuffle that you buy the Doctor. Oh yeah, and Doctor only costs $3 if you just want the on play effect.

[A Drowned Kernel]

Weird art on this card.

I presume that is half of the patient's face we can see near the bottom left of the picture.... then moving up the left hand side of the image we see something that looks vaguely like a limp left hand lying on a dark green sheet.... then we see.... what? A knee sticking up under the sheet...? Yes it is a knee, let's just stick with that shall we...?

.... and the doctor is saying, "I'll just grind up a few more of these little blue pills for you"....

To me it looks like he's decided to whip out one of his pokemon.

[Beyond Awesome]

This is one of those cards that if you are good at tracking your deck will be brutal. The on-buy effect is where the real power is. But, as a terminal trasher, it's okay but nothing spectacular, but the on-buy ability makes up for that. Imagine those engine games where you have $20 floating around but some junk that makes you unable to play your entire deck. Blam! This card can take care of that for you.

[A Drowned Kernel]

I wonder if it's ever worth it to buy this with $4 on turn 1. You trash the top estate or copper, yay, but you trigger a reshuffle without your $3 buy. But the doctor speeds up reshuffles in the early game any way so maybe that's not such a big deal?

[SirPeebles]

I'm interested in the timing, given the "when you buy this" wording.  I can see that you need to overpay all at once, but it seems that overpaying is triggered by buying, so can you resolve other "when buy" effects first?  For instance, if I have Haggler in play, may I gain a cheaper card before choosing how much to overpay?  Potentially, I will choose to gain a Squire off Haggler, trash it to Watchtower for a Knight, and then I would make my decision regarding overpayment based on whether I want to buy the next Knight.  Alternatively, I would trash Squire into Cultist into drawing 3 cards, and make my overpayment decision based on which cards were drawn.

Good question. I just asked it over at BGG.

He replied:

Overpay is a when-buy trigger; the current player decides how to order multiple such triggers, and so can put either Haggler or the overpay first.

However, Doctor costs $3, regardless of how much you overpay; if you pay $10 for Doctor with Haggler in play, Haggler will gain you a card costing less than $3.

And just noticed that you asked the follow up I had in mind.  By the way, it can matter with current cards as in my obscure example involving Doctor, Haggler, Watchtower, Squire, and Knights/Cultist.

[Geronimoo]

Simulator results (it's kind of slow here at work):

Stupid Doctor beats Lookout 54-41 on a $4/$3 opening. (Stupid because he will not do any deck tracking) Lookout BM isn't a viable deck of course, but it should give you an idea of the power level. If there's interest I might implement Smart Doctor

[werothegreat]

Weird art on this card.

I presume that is half of the patient's face we can see near the bottom left of the picture.... then moving up the left hand side of the image we see something that looks vaguely like a limp left hand lying on a dark green sheet.... then we see.... what? A knee sticking up under the sheet...? Yes it is a knee, let's just stick with that shall we...?

.... and the doctor is saying, "I'll just grind up a few more of these little blue pills for you"....

My first thought was a woman in labor.

[SirPeebles]

Overpaying is part of the resolution of the overpay ability, so you don't do it until it's time to resolve it. You put Haggler and Doctor's overpay in some order; when it's time to resolve the overpay, you choose how much to overpay, then start flipping over cards.

[DStu]

Stupid Doctor beats Lookout 54-41 on a $4/$3 opening. (Stupid because he will not do any deck tracking) Lookout BM isn't a viable deck of course, but it should give you an idea of the power level. If there's interest I might implement Smart Doctor

This is still somewhat skewed for the Stupid Doctor because Lookouts +1Action does not have any effect.

[LastFootnote]

Simulator results (it's kind of slow here at work):

Stupid Doctor beats Lookout 54-41 on a $4/$3 opening. (Stupid because he will not do any deck tracking) Lookout BM isn't a viable deck of course, but it should give you an idea of the power level. If there's interest I might implement Smart Doctor

What decisions does stupid doctor make concerning overpaying and card naming?

[Witherweaver]

I feel like now Leo can do some nice Rube Goldbergs involving topdecking with Watchtower and trashing with Doctor.  (And then Cillian Murphy can chime in.)

Notably, this is an interesting Swindler target because the on-buy effect is the big benefit, and it's a terminal action.  You could spam your opponents with Doctors, then he'd have to start Doctoring the Doctors away.

[SCSN]

Looks like a decent card for a 6/2 open.

[jomini]

If you pay $5 for Doctor on T1, you are guaranteed at least $2 or Doctor next turn, and usually more than that. The only way you get just $2 is if all three Estates are on the bottom (so Doctor trashes Copper-Copper, and you draw the Estates).

I think this is incorrect. Imagine you pay 5 for Doctor and trash two coppers. You discard your hand, draw 2 estates, and shuffle. You have 6 cards to shuffle into a new draw deck, but only 5 are coppers. This can result in you drawing EEEDocC. At this point you are pretty much screwed, if you trash 3 coppers, you need to buy one to buy silver, but even then you are trying to hit 3 coppers out of a 7 card deck in a 5 card hand. This isn't as bad as Mint/Copper openings (as you can trash Estates), but it is pretty bad. Thankfully, this will be exceedingly rare.

I can foresee some fun shenanigans with T3 - T5 Doctor overbuys. For instance say I get to Salvage a Peddler on T5, that can get me 11 coin pretty easy so Doc gets to kill upwards of 8 cards. You pretty much go instantly to an ultra-lean Peddler  deck and you can ditch the Doc for Salvage. Likewise, I haven't gamed it, but I think with shuffle luck Doc/Bish might be near Chap/Bish in setup speed for a Golden Deck. I do wonder how easily you can set up the "trash everything you don't want" mechanic for a quick engine setup. E.g. something like Tr/Death cart can just blow away your deck and as long as you have an action silver, you can build out quick from there.

[popsofctown]

Coin tokens and overpay seems like more of a nombo than a combo to me.  Both give you a way of solving the 7$ hand problem, but you can't use both of them to fix a 7$ hand at the same time.
Am I missing something here?

[WheresMyElephant]

Weird thought, what about a Mandarin/Doctor opening? It mitigates Mandarin's speed problems (though not as compared to other Doctor openings), it mitigates the economic costs of Doctor's early Copper trashing, and if necessary you can combo the topdecking ability with Doctor trashing. Getting rid of the Copper is also great for later use of the Mandarin on-buy ability, though that's probably a separate question.

Coin tokens and overpay seems like more of a nombo than a combo to me.  Both give you a way of solving the 7$ hand problem, but you can't use both of them to fix a 7$ hand at the same time.
Am I missing something here?

I generally agree. I think the thing you could theoretically be missing is the ability to hoard Coin tokens and buy a $15 Doctor, but I'm not so sure if that's worth doing.

[LastFootnote]

Coin tokens and overpay seems like more of a nombo than a combo to me.  Both give you a way of solving the 7$ hand problem, but you can't use both of them to fix a 7$ hand at the same time.
Am I missing something here?

I'm guessing the overpay abilities will be useful enough that you'll often be willing to spend some coin tokens to pump them up.

[eHalcyon]

I think people are underestimating the on-play effect.  IMO, Lookout is nice mostly because it trashes cards not in hand.  You can play Lookout to trash and still have $3 or $4 to buy a Silver or something else.  Sometimes the +action on Lookout is helpful, but early game you have few actions anyway.  Hermit is decent trashing again because it can trash cards not in hand, but its drawback is that it can't touch treasure cards.

Doctor is clearly an early game trasher.  And yes, people are pointing out that it doesn't help your current turn, but they are omitting that it also does not kill the current turn either.  When I play Chapel or even Steward to trash, I'm probably not buying anything afterwards.  But I can probably play Doctor and still buy something.

Doctor should also be a faster trasher than Steward and, I think, Lookout.  With minimal deck tracking (especially early game, when there's not that much to track yet) you should be able to get rid of Coppers and Estates pretty quickly, even without overpaying.  So the trashing should be close to on-par with Steward while also providing early game cycling.

After the deck is trimmed, it does not have the same utility as Steward but it is still better than Lookout.  You can still hunt for stray Coppers, Estates, Curses and (less ably) Ruins without worry of having to trash good cards.  As a small bonus, it is self deck-inspection, which can be nice for Mystic or Wishing Well (though you'd need a village first).

[Witherweaver]

Weird thought, what about a Mandarin/Doctor opening? It mitigates Mandarin's speed problems (though not as compared to other Doctor openings), it mitigates the economic costs of Doctor's early Copper trashing, and if necessary you can combo the topdecking ability with Doctor trashing. Getting rid of the Copper is also great for later use of the Mandarin on-buy ability, though that's probably a separate question.

I guess if you buy Mandarin first (say you drew 5 copper), you topdeck 5 copper and draw them next turn, buy a Doctor for 3+3, trashing 3 of the remaining 2 copper and 3 estates, and you're still left with 6 copper and 1 estate or 5 copper and 2 estates.  If you buy doctor first, then you could at most trash 3 cards (with a 5 copper + coin token opening), and if you're lucky they're all estates.  Then you can buy a Mandarin second turn if you don't draw the doctor.  But then you wouldn't draw the doctor again, because the next turn you'd draw 5 copper.  I guess you'd move on with a buy and play the doctor next turn hoping to kill 3 copper.

I'm not sure it works as an opening.  Though playing a Mandarin (and a copper) to buy a doctor does let you trash the card you put back, that seems kind of slow, and you're really just replacing the card on your deck with a doctor in the discard pile.

Maybe I'm thinking of it incorrectly.

Edit: Fixed count.

[Stealth Tomato]

Crossposting from another forum. There's a truly absurd scenario that will occur once per 120 player-games with Doctor available, assuming the player buys it.

With Doctor available, you will get this setup in 1/40 games:
0: draw CCCCC
1: Buy Doctor, trash 2 Estate.

Now, if you're lucky, it continues as follows (1/3 of the time)
1: ... draw CCE[shuffle]CD
2: Play Doctor, name Copper, trash 3 Copper, buy Silver

Deck after turn 2: Doctor, Estate, 4xCopper, Silver ($6 in 7 cards with additional trashing potential). On turn 3, you will almost certainly get either a $5 buy or trash an Estate or 1-2 Copper. Possibly both. That's obscene.

[eHalcyon]

Crossposting from another forum. There's a truly absurd scenario that will occur once per 120 player-games with Doctor available, assuming the player buys it.

With Doctor available, you will get this setup in 1/40 games:
0: draw CCCCC
1: Buy Doctor, trash 2 Estate.

Now, if you're lucky, it continues as follows (1/3 of the time)
1: ... draw CCE[shuffle]CD
2: Play Doctor, name Copper, trash 3 Copper, buy Silver

Deck after turn 2: Doctor, Estate, 4xCopper, Silver ($6 in 7 cards with additional trashing potential). On turn 3, you will almost certainly get either a $5 buy or trash an Estate or 1-2 Copper. Possibly both. That's obscene.

Throw in a coin token on t1 so that you can trash all 3 Estates before your first reshuffle.

[Robz888]

And now for today's installment of But How Does This Combo With Scout?

Unfortunately, Scout does not combo with Doctor. Sorry, friends. This is deeply surprising and unfortunate, breaking a streak of combos that began with Cultist, Sage, and Feodum in the original Dark Ages previews and continued up until yesterday with Baker. But unlike Ruined Market, or Pillage, or Squire, Doctor just doesn't combo with Scout. Why?

Scout is too strong. Sorry.

When you play Scout, you draw all your Estates into your hand, so you can't trash them with Doctor! Scout is just too good at sifting and drawing for you to worry too much about trashing.

Doctor has to give you some reward for overpaying for it, to entice you to buy it. Ha, that's truly hilarious! With Scout, you commonly overpay for it by $6 or $7 money just to make sure you win the Scout split. No extra benefit necessary.

So instead of suggesting a Doctor/Scout combo, let me just take this opportunity to tell you all about a different combo, Scout/Scout. Which is now a possible opening thanks to Baker! Imagine that, on whatever percentage of boards that Baker and Scout are both present, the game is over on Turn 2.

[Stealth Tomato]

Crossposting from another forum. There's a truly absurd scenario that will occur once per 120 player-games with Doctor available, assuming the player buys it.

With Doctor available, you will get this setup in 1/40 games:
0: draw CCCCC
1: Buy Doctor, trash 2 Estate.

Now, if you're lucky, it continues as follows (1/3 of the time)
1: ... draw CCE[shuffle]CD
2: Play Doctor, name Copper, trash 3 Copper, buy Silver

Deck after turn 2: Doctor, Estate, 4xCopper, Silver ($6 in 7 cards with additional trashing potential). On turn 3, you will almost certainly get either a $5 buy or trash an Estate or 1-2 Copper. Possibly both. That's obscene.

Throw in a coin token on t1 so that you can trash all 3 Estates before your first reshuffle.

That brings the odds down even further (to 1/200 rather than 1/120). But let's take it a step further and play with Shelters...

I denote coin tokens by $

0: draw CCCCC
1: spend $, buy Doctor, trash Hovel Necropolis Overgrown Estate, draw Copper; draw C[shuffle]CCCD
2: play Doctor, name Copper, trash 3xCopper, buy Silver [or $4]; draw [shuffle]SCCCD

After two turns, your deck is six cards: 4 Copper, Doctor, and Silver.

Of note, this works just as well without Shelters, but Shelters move the odds from 1/200 to 1/180.

[Stealth Tomato]

And now for today's installment of But How Does This Combo With Scout?

Unfortunately, Scout does not combo with Doctor. Sorry, friends. This is deeply surprising and unfortunate, breaking a streak of combos that began with Cultist, Sage, and Feodum in the original Dark Ages previews and continued up until yesterday with Baker. But unlike Ruined Market, or Pillage, or Squire, Doctor just doesn't combo with Scout. Why?

Scout is too strong. Sorry.

When you play Scout, you draw all your Estates into your hand, so you can't trash them with Doctor! Scout is just too good at sifting and drawing for you to worry too much about trashing.

Doctor has to give you some reward for overpaying for it, to entice you to buy it. Ha, that's truly hilarious! With Scout, you commonly overpay for it by $6 or $7 money just to make sure you win the Scout split. No extra benefit necessary.

So instead of suggesting a Doctor/Scout combo, let me just take this opportunity to tell you all about a different combo, Scout/Scout. Which is now a possible opening thanks to Baker! Imagine that, on whatever percentage of boards that Baker and Scout are both present, the game is over on Turn 2.

I disagree. Scout removes the Estates from the top of your deck, allowing Doctor to trash Copper, which in turn increases the density of Estates for Scout to pick up! The two feed into each other perfectly.