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[-Stef-]

The kingdom:

$5: Tribute, Festival, Explorer
$4: Bridge, Herald, Horse Traders, Navigator, Remodel
$3: Village, Oasis

I just have to try out every new Guilds card I see, so I played the Herald stack vs Navigator-BM with late Explorer match here.
Strategic question to answer before you look at the log: does the engine overcome the lack of draw and end with a megaturn or will BM just have a good laugh at the Village Idiot?

log

[Davio]

Without looking: Remodel is your enemy and you're friend here.

A solid BM with Remodels to speed the game up will be hard to catch, but not impossible of course. A regular BM-ish game as you explained will luckily be quite slow and I think with a couple of cheap components like the regular Village and Oasis and of course Bridge it's quite doable to get a pretty large action density pretty fast. So I don't think Herald is going to be a Village Idiot here. I don't even think you need (that many) Navigators to make it work. You just have to watch for piles, but luckily the engine player is much more in control of them than the BM player.

After looking: I don't understand why the BM player didn't get any Remodels or even more terminals. A BM deck can support a bit more than just 1 Navigator and 1 Explorer. So you didn't face a very well executed BM deck. Still I think even a more streamlined BM deck will have a hard time coping with your quickly cascading Herald deck.

[qmech]

We had a bit of a chat at the start of this game about whether Herald is enough draw to run an engine.  I decided to go BM partly to put that to the test.  I made two miscalculations: first I miss that Bridge allows Remodel to turn Copper into Villages directly, when I'd imagined the Coppers slowing everything down.  Second, I'd been thinking about a situation where the Herald's were contested: letting Stef get 10 activated cities is a very bad idea!

Davio, what do you think the best BM is here?  What am I going to do with a Remodel?

[WanderingWinder]

Well, the board actually looks quite weak to me. The best BM is either Bridge or explorer, eventually going for remodels, I think, but this is pretty terrible. Of course it can pick up festivals on $5 and should.
I am not so sure about hanging on a mega-turn engine here, and I doubt your ever getting to the point you are drawing your deck like a traditional engine. There is no draw, apart from the weird pseudo-draw of herald - not even a moat, which would clearly say engine to me, as most everything else is there on a board with no good BM. However, I would probably try something with remodel into several bridges, probably a couple of early oases, hit festival a few times on $5, and eventually head for heralds. I don't really know whether this would work, but I guess something along these lines is best. I don't know about navigator - it potentially lines up heralds, though, so it might be nice. How good is that? Not sure. I would go for something engine-ish, anyway.

Okay, now to read the log. Okay, wow, it worked better than I expected. A LOT better. More heralds faster than I expected, but I guess this isn't so surprising. And of course, Stef pilots it pretty expertly on his first time with the card - color me unsurprised.

[Schneau]

I'm a little surprised to not see a Navigator or 2 thrown in to line up the Heralds. But, I do like to see the mega turn set up by a big Herald overpay.

[eHalcyon]

The nesting is so confusing without indentation. Probably even worse irl.

That is an impressive log!

[Davio]

We had a bit of a chat at the start of this game about whether Herald is enough draw to run an engine.  I decided to go BM partly to put that to the test.  I made two miscalculations: first I miss that Bridge allows Remodel to turn Copper into Villages directly, when I'd imagined the Coppers slowing everything down.  Second, I'd been thinking about a situation where the Herald's were contested: letting Stef get 10 activated cities is a very bad idea!

Davio, what do you think the best BM is here?  What am I going to do with a Remodel?

I doubt there's even a good BM here, since you're basically only playing with (terminal) Silvers.
BM+Navigator is hardly better, if that even, than BM+Chancellor. You can add Festivals all you want, but they're just Silvers as well and so is a single Bridge. Now if you start combining Festivals and Bridges to make use of the cost reduction with some buys and use some of those buys to buy more little action cards, it's no longer BM, but it's already turning into an engine.

So what I'm basically saying is that BM+Whatever on this board is hardly better than straight BM. You could try BM+Explorer, but well, that's just a bit sad.

What you're going to do with Remodel is to turn Golds into Provinces or Provinces into Provinces. There's no chance for you to overcome an engine that has been kicked into gear, so the only option for a BM strategy is ending the game before the engine has come together. Remodel helps with that.

You ended the game with 5 Golds if I'm not mistaken. It would have been great if some of those Golds got turned into Provinces. Another cute trick with Remodel is that you get a faux +Buy. A hand of Gold-Silver-Silver-Copper-Remodel can use Remodel to turn the Gold into a Province and buy a Duchy with the rest of the money.

[-Stef-]

We had a bit of a chat at the start of this game about whether Herald is enough draw to run an engine.  I decided to go BM partly to put that to the test.  I made two miscalculations: first I miss that Bridge allows Remodel to turn Copper into Villages directly, when I'd imagined the Coppers slowing everything down.  Second, I'd been thinking about a situation where the Herald's were contested: letting Stef get 10 activated cities is a very bad idea!

Davio, what do you think the best BM is here?  What am I going to do with a Remodel?

I doubt there's even a good BM here, since you're basically only playing with (terminal) Silvers.
BM+Navigator is hardly better, if that even, than BM+Chancellor. You can add Festivals all you want, but they're just Silvers as well and so is a single Bridge. Now if you start combining Festivals and Bridges to make use of the cost reduction with some buys and use some of those buys to buy more little action cards, it's no longer BM, but it's already turning into an engine.

So what I'm basically saying is that BM+Whatever on this board is hardly better than straight BM. You could try BM+Explorer, but well, that's just a bit sad.

What you're going to do with Remodel is to turn Golds into Provinces or Provinces into Provinces. There's no chance for you to overcome an engine that has been kicked into gear, so the only option for a BM strategy is ending the game before the engine has come together. Remodel helps with that.

You ended the game with 5 Golds if I'm not mistaken. It would have been great if some of those Golds got turned into Provinces. Another cute trick with Remodel is that you get a faux +Buy. A hand of Gold-Silver-Silver-Copper-Remodel can use Remodel to turn the Gold into a Province and buy a Duchy with the rest of the money.

this is... simply not true.
Remodel isn't a good card in BM at all.
You end up wishing it was a silver way too many times.
Maybe, just maybe, if you're approaching your last reshuffle and want to green badly but end up with $4... maybe then you pick up a remodel.

Also, Navigator is actually not that horrible in BM. I think qmech played a pretty decent BM deck, about as good as the kingdom allows for. And I'm pretty sure his version is stronger then what you're suggesting now.

[WanderingWinder]

Well... remodel is terrible in BM until it stalls out hard, in which case you usually don't have time to get it, but if you somehow get the 'wrong' chance, you can sneak it in to end the game faster - more or less what you are saying here, Stef.

But Navigator *is* pretty bad in BM. It's not that it's nothing, but if that's the best you can have going, well, it does not bode well for you at all.

[Davio]

Well... remodel is terrible in BM until it stalls out hard, in which case you usually don't have time to get it, but if you somehow get the 'wrong' chance, you can sneak it in to end the game faster - more or less what you are saying here, Stef.

But Navigator *is* pretty bad in BM. It's not that it's nothing, but if that's the best you can have going, well, it does not bode well for you at all.

Well, this was pretty much my point, just worded differently.

I didn't mean: Play BM+Remodel, open with Remodel and get even more Remodels.
More like: Try to get at least one when you're stalling.

And Stef saying "Navigator isn't that horrible in BM", well what's that saying actually? Where does Navigator end up in the great BM+X rankings? I'm guessing not that high. BM+Navigator is about even money with BM+Chancellor, I simmed it to make sure. And BM+Chancellor isn't regarded as a very competitive BM variant last I've heard. Heck, BM+Navigator only has 5 percentage points over regular BM.

So I basically disagree on all points with you Stef, well, I half disagree on the first one (Remodel in BM). I fully disagree on the second (Navigator not that horrible in BM) and the third (Qmech played a pretty decent BM).

[WanderingWinder]

Well, you don't want the remodel until late in BM, I think we all more or less agree there. But I think the point Stef and I would make is that the opportunity to get it doesn't even come up in every game (not most games even), and that even when it does, it usually doesn't make a big impact. So it can help, but not much. Sorta like how I would describe Navigator's impact on BM.

[Davio]

That I agree on. Given the type of deck BM is up against I wonder if it would be opportune to take a Remodel over a Duchy with a 3-1 Province lead or something like that.

And how about some BM+Bridge variant? How does that fare?

[WanderingWinder]

That I agree on. Given the type of deck BM is up against I wonder if it would be opportune to take a Remodel over a Duchy with a 3-1 Province lead or something like that.

And how about some BM+Bridge variant? How does that fare?

It's not too hot - I mean, Bridge is not better than terminal silver unless you are buying more than one thing a turn, which is something BM just doesn't do all that much. Maybe because there are festivals, you can up your bridge count a bit but... I dunno, doesn't seem all that hot. The main thing that bridge BM gets you over like woodcutter is that $3+bridge is 2 silvers rather than one. In a BM mirror, Tribute is probably best, but against the engine, it helps BM not so much. It's just a really weak board for BM.

[Davio]

BM+Bridge wins roughly 57 to 43 against BM+Navigator it seems. Sure, doubling up on Silvers is nice, but also a late Province+Estate or Duchy+Estate are helpful.

Obviously BM+whatever isn't so hot here, but Navigator just isn't the best choice if you do happen to go for BM. Like you said, you can carelessly throw in Festivals with no risk (other than facilitating 3-pile endings).

[WanderingWinder]

BM+Bridge wins roughly 57 to 43 against BM+Navigator it seems. Sure, doubling up on Silvers is nice, but also a late Province+Estate or Duchy+Estate are helpful.

Obviously BM+whatever isn't so hot here, but Navigator just isn't the best choice if you do happen to go for BM. Like you said, you can carelessly throw in Festivals with no risk (other than facilitating 3-pile endings).

While I do think that bridge is going to be navigator for BM virtually regardless of the situation (tunnel being the only exception I can come up with off the top of my head), the extra estate power is... well, it probably helps break a decent number of ties in BM vs BM, but it's not going to matter much at all in a matchup against an engine. Not none of course, but very little.

[Blueswan]

This is a massive eye-opener. Thank you Stef!

I really really need to start improving my engine building skills.

[kn1tt3r]

BM+Bridge wins roughly 57 to 43 against BM+Navigator it seems. Sure, doubling up on Silvers is nice, but also a late Province+Estate or Duchy+Estate are helpful.

I'm not convinced. I mean, if you buy 1 card (which you usually du), Bridge is a Woodcutter. I guess the simulator just doesn't play Navigator very well, since there are several tricky tactical issues like whether to trigger a reshuffle, whether to ditch a $5 for the sake of cycling (especially if you don't need $5) etc.

[brokoli]

Just played a game with Herald, Armory and Conspirator.
This is a very good 3 card combo...
... but definitely NOT against Rebuild and Marauder 

[ftl]

Herald is reasonable against Marauder, but not against Rebuild, not at all...

[Geronimoo]

Here's some results from simulation.

The Herald/Bridge engine is very very strong! It will win 95% of games vs Navigator BM.

The buy rules:

Open Remodel/Village (yes Village! is better than Oasis or Silver)
Buy Bridge if you have 3 more Heralds in your deck
Buy Herald
Buy Village
Buy Provinces if you have 6 or more Bridges in play.

[Blueswan]

Here's some results from simulation.

The Herald/Bridge engine is very very strong! It will win 95% of games vs Navigator BM.

The buy rules:

Open Remodel/Village (yes Village! is better than Oasis or Silver)
Buy Bridge if you have 3 more Heralds in your deck
Buy Herald
Buy Village
Buy Provinces if you have 6 or more Bridges in play.

How many variations have you done? Intuitively, I would think that you'd want a Bridge fairly early since it gives you an extra buy to pick up cheap engine pieces and it enables remodeling coppers into villages. Having said that I'm not a strong engine player so I'm probably wrong. 

[SirPeebles]

Here's some results from simulation.

The Herald/Bridge engine is very very strong! It will win 95% of games vs Navigator BM.

The buy rules:

Open Remodel/Village (yes Village! is better than Oasis or Silver)
Buy Bridge if you have 3 more Heralds in your deck
Buy Herald
Buy Village
Buy Provinces if you have 6 or more Bridges in play.

How many variations have you done? Intuitively, I would think that you'd want a Bridge fairly early since it gives you an extra buy to pick up cheap engine pieces and it enables remodeling coppers into villages. Having said that I'm not a strong engine player so I'm probably wrong. 

Yeah.  You must at least buy one Bridge early, no?  Are you really suggesting to acquire Remodel, Village, and three Heralds before the first Bridge?

[-Stef-]

Here's some results from simulation.

The Herald/Bridge engine is very very strong! It will win 95% of games vs Navigator BM.

The buy rules:

Open Remodel/Village (yes Village! is better than Oasis or Silver)
Buy Bridge if you have 3 more Heralds in your deck
Buy Herald
Buy Village
Buy Provinces if you have 6 or more Bridges in play.

I gave it some thought and I just can't believe this. Opening village over oasis?
That only makes sense if you don't know how to discard (like discard an estate even if you have / are likely to get the remodel)
And why wouldn't I start with 1 bridge before going for heralds? I really need that copper->village thing. And the buys.
The last rule seems primitive but probably adequate on most games.

[DG]

My intitial thought was that you'd open village/remodel but after seeing the actual game I certainly won't disagree with oasis. There might be some simulator card play issues where it is better without a decision on discarding cards.

If anyone is going to do the Goko adventures they should look out for the remodel/village openings in the base set adventures. With the small differences between similar kingdoms they are actually quite good training in engine building.

[Davio]

I think it might be a simulator problem.

Gero, if it has a hand of Remodel-Oasis-Estate-Copper-Copper, would it play Oasis, drawing a Copper and discarding an Estate and Remodel a Copper (or nothing)?

Maybe this is better suited for Dominiate where you can override some of the play rules.