148. Workshop
It works in rushes. It works moreso in gaining cheap engine components. But it has a big drawback in being terminal. Still, it's often solid enough, and sometimes a big game-changer.
147. Urchin (Mercenary)
This card can be a game-changer, too, but... well, it takes a while to get these to connect with something, unless you already have strong trashing, in which case mercenary is way less than stellar. Actually, some combination of other trashing and other discard attacks just obsoletes this in general, especially since you are just going to run out of fuel. It hurts a lot that you have to trash before discarding. Urchin itself isn't the worst, though, and would make a reasonable 2-cost, I think.
146. Trader
As a trasher, it's really the very worst. As a silver-flooder, it's okay, but not the best thing ever, and silver-flooders aren't usually the greatest. Its best use by far is as a defense against junkers, but even here, you have to connect it to their attack, and after a while, your deck gets bigger, and this is harder to do...
145. Lookout
This card gives decent trashing, and it's non-terminal no less, but there are a few significant drawbacks. You can't hit stuff in hand, which is bad for maintaining a thin deck which is, say, getting hit by cursers after you have an engine up. It's slow to get off the ground, providing no economy. And it's really risky to play later on, as you might hit something you want; this last bit, combined with it's one-card-at-a-time-ness, make it hard to quickly and effectively get as thin as you'd really like. Oftentimes, you could just build the engine better by grabbing components from the get-go. Okay, still non-terminal trashing isn't bad.
144. Merchant Guild
Another new card I'm quite possibly way off on. But this does seem to really compare to Bridge. And while, okay, coin tokens are pretty good, the drawbacks aren't totally insignificant either - most notably, it needs to go over a few turns. True enough, being able to play a few of these consistently just seals a game, but especially at $5, this takes a while. I have a feeling this card specializes in setting up not a single mega-turn, but more a 2-4 turn spurt.
143. Beggar
This card is excellent in slogs, t also works really well with counting house and has a couple other nice synergies. Otherwise... well, terminal gold for 2 would be pretty good, but even just so not the greatest thing ever (you can see I'm not super high on +coins as a benefit...), and having to gain coppers is (barring slogs) just a big drawback. Has some use in BM, but very limited. Okay, then there's the reaction. I don't really get it, thematically or mechanically. And power-wise... well, it doesn't seem consistent enough to get beggars just for it, and in a situation where you want it anyway, do you really want to forego playing it this turn? I guess sometimes yes.
142. Walled Village
A Village! You know, this is pretty tough. Would village for $4 be that bad? I don't think it really would, right? Well, it's worse than this, obviously. And probably a while back, this would have been a top-half card. But as a number of other villages have come out, this gets slotted worse and worse, by a little bit, as there are just other villages that I will usually prefer, and this just gets knocked down. Okay, this is still the only village reasonably often, and that means it's not terrible, and there are even many situations now where I would prefer it to other villages... but still a small minority.
141. Scavenger
People compare this to Chancellor, but I don't think that's really the main thrust of the card. Sure, it can be chancellor-with-a-plus. But the plus is big! You get to set up your next turn with the best card in your deck (or sometimes even this turn!) And it can be a lot better than chancellor toward the middle of your shuffle, where not using the discard ability can be very powerful, either to just get lots of extra plays on a key card, or because you have pretty good ideas as to what's being set up.
140. Golem
Essentially +2 cards +2 actions where the cards are guaranteed to be actions. For sure that is a powerful effect. The problem is definitely that 1) you don't know what you'll hit; 2)doesn't work well when already drawing deck; 3) most important, it costs quite a lot. 4p is too expensive to count on getting in the first shuffle, and getting the potion later can be awkward. Well, it's still a great card to have, but once again (similar to alchemist in a way) you can often skip it.
139. Procession
Throne with a twist... I like it less than throne. Maybe this is wrong and biased of me (I don't like getting rid of my *good* cards, I gained those on purpose man), but I think it is a little worse. Obviously has good uses if there's a great chain of actions up the food chain, and it can get rid of say ruins, but it's not something you want to be using on payloads very often, and that's often what I like my TR to be able to do, particularly since TR is not the best village for setting drawing up (you need to TR TR or have another village, else you run out of actions)
138. Smugglers
This gets the nod over workshop for me, just because you can gain 5s and 6s. Okay, there is the drawback that their cards need to be useful for you, but... either they are playing a markedly worse strategy, in which case you're fine anyway, or you are reasonably close to a mirror. Okay, this can also do nothing (they buy something too expensive), but this mostly happens against big money, where this is indeed terrible. But BM isn't so common anymore. For sure this has spots where it's nothing, but it's often pretty darn good.
