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[Toskk]

During some recent solitaire games, this situation came up twice, and each time I wasn't really happy with it.. so, any advice? Here's the scenario:

Turn 6 draw - Salvager, 3x Copper, Silver

No Gold has been purchased so far. One each of Labs and Caravans have already been purchased.

Purchase options: Laboratory, Caravan, Gold

At this point in the game, is it best to not play Salvager and grab another Laboratory, play Salvager to trash a copper and grab another Caravan, or play Salvager and trash the Silver to grab the first Gold?

[Fangz]

Are these really the only options? Well, I'd grab gold.

[ackack]

Lab seems best to me here. Especially since you're shredding Estates, drawing an extra card is almost certainly going to be a bigger boost to your buying power than the delayed-Mine effect of Salvaging Silver for Gold.

[Toskk]

Yeah, from my memory of the set, those were the only real options. As I recall, it also included Fairgrounds, Outpost, Coppersmith, Warehouse, Village, Fool's Gold, and Haven. As an aside, I did try a heavy-Fool's Gold deck, and got crushed something like 24 to 33.

[Fangz]

Lab seems best to me here. Especially since you're shredding Estates, drawing an extra card is almost certainly going to be a bigger boost to your buying power than the delayed-Mine effect of Salvaging Silver for Gold.

Estates are going to be gone quickly. First gold is important.

Toskk:
Lemme amend my suggestion then. Pick up outpost. The extra buy helps, outpost with caravan and laboratories is basically an extra turn. If you have nothing to do with your outpost turn, you can pick up havens/warehouses/silvers (depending on preference), which will be surprisingly helpful later on, and just by playing it, it accelerates your deck cycling. Since you have no terminals, there's no reason not to.

[ackack]

Estates are going to be gone quickly. First gold is important.

The point is not that Lab draws Salvager and Estate into hand, although it does help with that too. The point is that without Estates in the deck, the extra card that Lab pulls is going to be a bigger average contribution to your buying power than $1, which is what you get when that Silver is a Gold instead. Even if you've whiffed on Estates Lab will be barely worse, and over the course of the game the difference will become substantial. (As an aside, this isn't an argument that one should always buy Lab over Gold. It is an argument that you gain more by inserting a Lab into your deck vs. replacing a Silver with Gold.)

[Toskk]

Toskk:
Lemme amend my suggestion then. Pick up outpost. The extra buy helps, outpost with caravan and laboratories is basically an extra turn. If you have nothing to do with your outpost turn, you can pick up havens/warehouses/silvers (depending on preference), which will be surprisingly helpful later on, and just by playing it, it accelerates your deck cycling. Since you have no terminals, there's no reason not to.

I did debate the Outpost.. and I can certainly admit that my typical poor performance with Outpost was one of the reasons I shied away from it. I do have another terminal, though.. the Salvager, and I wasn't really sure what to do in the case of a future Salvager + Outpost collision. This set produced some very fast games (typically over in 15-16 turns, with as many as 6 Provinces purchased by a single deck in that time), so I really wasn't sure how much time I had to pick up the reasonable cost-3 options.. plus opting out of a Salvager trash when I was only going to get at most 5 uses out of it seemed painful.

[Fangz]

Ackack: Ah okay you are probably right.

Toskk: Well, haven resolves that problem.

[ehunt]

Interesting - I think I'd "cutpurse myself" (stealing this language from the salvager article from the main blog) and take the caravan in this situation. It's just that caravan is pretty good, and trashing copper is pretty good, and those two pretty goods add up to better than a lab, at least early. Simulation data?

edit: I definitely prefer lab + hang on to a silver to gold here; I think the debate is between lab and trash copper + caravan.

[Anon79]

Toskk:
Lemme amend my suggestion then. Pick up outpost. The extra buy helps, outpost with caravan and laboratories is basically an extra turn. If you have nothing to do with your outpost turn, you can pick up havens/warehouses/silvers (depending on preference), which will be surprisingly helpful later on, and just by playing it, it accelerates your deck cycling. Since you have no terminals, there's no reason not to.

I did debate the Outpost.. and I can certainly admit that my typical poor performance with Outpost was one of the reasons I shied away from it. I do have another terminal, though.. the Salvager, and I wasn't really sure what to do in the case of a future Salvager + Outpost collision. This set produced some very fast games (typically over in 15-16 turns, with as many as 6 Provinces purchased by a single deck in that time), so I really wasn't sure how much time I had to pick up the reasonable cost-3 options.. plus opting out of a Salvager trash when I was only going to get at most 5 uses out of it seemed painful.

Easy, Salvage your Outpost.

[timchen]

My intuition is that a lab is better. It is quite possible that you are going to go for a deck drawer; in this case a caravan is precisely half a lab, delayed. Also early on one extra copper is not necessarily that bad.

[danshep]

CARAVAN? You peoples is crazy.

If this was turn 3, and you opened Silver/salvager your deck is:

CCCCC CCEEE Ss - original avg hand value = 5 * 9/12 = 3.75

trash an estate for a lab, then the chance of having the lab in hand is 5/12. avg treasure value of other cards is 9/11.

avg hand value (estate->lab) = 5/12 * ( 6 * 9 / 11) + (7/12) * ( 5 * 9 / 11 ) = 4.432

trash a silver, gain a gold, instead you've now got an average value of 10/12:

avg hand value (silver->gold) = 5 * 10 / 12 = 4.167

trash a copper, gain a caravan. Odds of a 6 card hand is the same as with lab, but delayed, so it's crappier. But so is your money density, making this the worst option:

avg hand value (copper->van) = 5/12 * ( 6 * 8 / 11) + (7/12) * (5 * 8 / 11) = 3.940

Lab looks like a much better buy, gold passable, caravan silly.

Since this is turn 6, I'll assume instead you've just been pumping silver into your deck, so your starting deck is:

CCCCC CCEEE SSSSs - avg hand value = 5 * 15/15 = 5

avg hand value (estate->lab) = 5/15 * ( 6 * 15/14) + (10/15) * ( 5 * 15/14) = 5.7142
avg hand value (silver->gold) = 5 * 16/15 = 5.3333
avg hand value (copper->van) = 5/15 * ( 6 * 14/14) + (10/15) * ( 5 * 14/14) = 5.3333

or maybe, you've trashed an estate, but still only got silver:

CCCCC CCEE SSSSs - avg hand value = 5 * 15/14 = 5.357

avg hand value (estate->lab) = 5/14 * ( 6 * 15/13) + (10/14) * ( 5 * 15/13) = 6.593
avg hand value (silver->gold) = 5 * 16/14 = 5.714
avg hand value (copper->van) = 5/14 * ( 6 * 14/13) + (10/14) * ( 5 * 14/13) = 6.153


This all assumes for simplicity that salvager doesn't help your hand value. That's not true, so the figures won't be exact. But doing the math of estate collisions is too much for right now, and each of the salvager turns involves the same cascading math problem, but salvager's value is going to be increased by having a wider variety (bigger hand) of things to trash.

In short: trash estate, get a lab. There's corner cases, but you won't go wrong with lab.

[dondon151]

The topic states that the player draws a Salvager with no Estates in hand, only 3 Coppers and a Silver. In that case, trashing nothing and buying the Lab will yield an average hand value of 4.038 using your formula. Objectively, that means that trashing Silver and getting a Gold is the best move, but that's not considering the benefit of faster deck cycling with Lab or Caravan.

[guided]

My instinct in this situation is to (a) cry and hope my opponent isn't very good since this is a disaster, (b) trash Silver to buy Gold. I have an intense distaste for trashing Copper on Salvager unless I've already gotten rid of all my other trash and I'm playing some enormously big-hand engine that can afford to spend an action for -$1 +1 Buy.

[danshep]

Silly me - that's what I get for waiting a day before replying - I completely forget what I'd read.

Now that I've re-read the question, the answer is "it depends on what else is in your deck". If you've already trashed an estate and the rest of your purchases have been silvers, you will be better trashing the copper for a caravan (as the caravan will probably draw a silver+copper, or maybe silver+silver). If you haven't trashed any estates yet, then the gold will increase your deck value more. If the rest of the purchases have been caravans, I'd guess gold is the answer then too.

[DG]

I think it depends to some degree upon the kingdom.  I'm guessing that the mid-game target is a deck that can be fully drawn each turn with a lot of treasure value, using the salvager as sole terminal action. Build up towards double province turns by trashing out estates and copper to get gold and labs. In this sort of situation, having a mix of caravans and labs sounds good. The labs get played every turn but the caravans assure a decent starting draw.

I'm guessing that I'd salvage the copper for the caravan. The copper is already an obstacle to the progress of the deck. Caravans fit into the final deck plan.

[Toskk]

Wow.. lots of different suggestions. Yeah, I was pretty sad to get this particular hand.. but in ~10 solitaire decks it came up at least twice. For those asking about what the deck was at that point, typically it played out as follows:

T3 - Salvager an Estate -> $5 - Buy a Laboratory
T4 - $4 - Buy a Caravan
T5 - $3 - Buy a Silver

So the typical deck at the T6 - Salvager + CCCS decision point is:

Copper x7
Silver x2
Estate x2
Salvager
Laboratory
Caravan

For reference, the solitaire games were all up against either BMU or BMU and BM + Salvager. None of them lasted more than 16 turns, and even BM + Salvager never had the opportunity to purchase two Provinces.. the games were just over too quick for any of the decks to build up enough treasure for a double Province turn. The top score for any of the decks was 37 points (6 Provinces, 1 Estate) after 15 turns.

[guided]

FWIW, Salvager is quite low on my list of opening buys. If you draw it with no Estates at turn 3/4, you're pretty much toast against a good player on most boards. It can be the best of a bunch of mediocre options, but it's rarely (if ever) an elite opening.

[greatexpectations]

not to entirely hijack the discussion, but this is related to something else i wanted to post about.  that being how to play remake/steward and establishing trashing priority.  of course it will vary some depending on the 4/5 cards available and overall strategy, but some guidelines might be useful for those who can crunch the numbers and run a sim or two.

im thinking especially of:
steward, 4 copper - gold or trash two copper
remake, 2 copper, 2 estates - you are likely not buying anything this turn, so do you trash two copper and thin the deck so you can cycle the remake a little quicker, or boost your buying power by getting two silver?  or one of each?

i guess you can throw upgrade into the discussion as well.

[Toskk]

FWIW, Salvager is quite low on my list of opening buys. If you draw it with no Estates at turn 3/4, you're pretty much toast against a good player on most boards. It can be the best of a bunch of mediocre options, but it's rarely (if ever) an elite opening.

Yeah, I certainly don't look at a single-trash terminal as a really elite opening.. but in this case the alternative (Caravan) wasn't phenomenal either. Councilroom.com, for example, rates the two as:

Salvager / Silver: 2.119 ± 0.911
Caravan / Silver: 1.246 ± 0.907

I didn't look at the values before playing, but interestingly the best-rated 4/3 opening on the board was Caravan / Warehouse:

Caravan / Warehouse: 2.332 ± 1.017

Here was the particular board for the games:

Cost 6 - Fairgrounds
Cost 5 - Laboratory, Outpost
Cost 4 - Salvager, Caravan, Coppersmith
Cost 3 - Warehouse, Village
Cost 2 - Fool's Gold, Haven

[popsofctown]

If there's no other trashing methods, ditching copper seems best in the long term.

[guided]

Trimming your deck is not so essential that you can afford to spend time using terminal actions to trash single cards as part of your plan, at least on a Province board.

The winner is not whoever has the tightest deck; it's whoever has the most victory points.

[Elyv]

not to entirely hijack the discussion, but this is related to something else i wanted to post about.  that being how to play remake/steward and establishing trashing priority.  of course it will vary some depending on the 4/5 cards available and overall strategy, but some guidelines might be useful for those who can crunch the numbers and run a sim or two.

im thinking especially of:
steward, 4 copper - gold or trash two copper
remake, 2 copper, 2 estates - you are likely not buying anything this turn, so do you trash two copper and thin the deck so you can cycle the remake a little quicker, or boost your buying power by getting two silver?  or one of each?

i guess you can throw upgrade into the discussion as well.

You generally want to trash the estates to boost your buying power, but in rare circumstances, trashing the coppers first is defensible.

About steward, it depends on what your midgame plan is and whether there are good 2s.

[mith]

My answer to this situation tends to be "Trash a Copper, buy another Salvager". I know I've trashed Silver for Gold before, though. Either way, when I'm opening Salvager I'm usually not looking for drawing power...

(Sample game, which coincidentally had Caravan and Lab available... though I did already have a Gold before this hand came up. I'm pretty sure this is the fastest game I've ever played, barring resignations/disconnects.)

[Kirian]

Trash a copper, buy two Fool's Golds?