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Author Topic: WW's Power Rankings  (Read 234638 times)

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Robz888

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #200 on: July 06, 2013, 12:39:53 pm »
0

Intuitively, shouldn't most of the $4 villages be grouped up close together?  They're all pretty close in power, I think.  I mean, they all have their individual uses, but on many boards, Fortress, Walled Village and Worker's Village are all fairly interchangeable.

Oh. How can you think this, Mr. Expert Card Designer? I say it's Walled Village, more-than-slight jump Mining Village, more-than-slight jump Fortress, substantial jump Farming Village, huge jump Worker's Village, huge jump Plaza, slight jump Wandering Minstrel.

What do you mean by "jump"? If a slight jump is ~5 cards, your $4 villages are going to be spread over like 50+ cards. It seems like it would be difficult to find that many cards to squeeze between them in value.

Additionally, I don't agree with your ordering of them. Farming ~= Walled, and Worker's is the best. Seems like you're over-valuing what they do with VP cards or curses in your deck (where Farming and Wandering are stronger).

Workers is good, but it's absolutely not the best. Plaza and Wandering are stronger. Wandering, because it makes engine assembly so easy, even in a bloated deck, and Plaza, because earning coins as you build your draw engine is really good. And Farming is obviously better than Walled. In an engine they are virtually the same, except Farming skips your green and Walled puts itself back on you deck if you didn't fire your engine that turn. Maybe it's close, but I do actually think the Farming thing is better there. And then Farming has some use in slogs, and Walled, well, I just don't think it has that much going for it.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #201 on: July 06, 2013, 12:51:48 pm »
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Sure Farming is slightly better than Walled, but you have 2 "more-than-slight" jumps and a "substantial" jump between them. Being able to skip VP cards isn't worth that much. Wandering Minstrel and Plaza are both good as well, but again, they are at least close to Worker's. You have then at least a "huge" jump ahead, which can't be right.
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Robz888

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #202 on: July 06, 2013, 01:09:54 pm »
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Sure Farming is slightly better than Walled, but you have 2 "more-than-slight" jumps and a "substantial" jump between them. Being able to skip VP cards isn't worth that much. Wandering Minstrel and Plaza are both good as well, but again, they are at least close to Worker's. You have then at least a "huge" jump ahead, which can't be right.

Wandering and Plaza are a lot better than Workers. I would stand by that. Maybe I exaggerated the difference between Farming and Walled.
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #203 on: July 06, 2013, 01:34:48 pm »
+2

There's just no way Plaza is a lot better than Worker's Village. I can see Wandering Minstrel, but +buy is one of the pillars of a strong engine (and you won't find too many sources of +buy that are more useful then Worker's for an engine). I think the newness of coin tokens is making people overestimate their strength (although tokens are strong). In any case, all three are very good villages.
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SCSN

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #204 on: July 06, 2013, 01:42:33 pm »
+4

Worker's is clearly best. In an engine you often buy a Herbalist/Woodcutter/Nomad Camp only for the +buy if there's no better option, with Worker's you can just completely skip those cards. Would you ever be willing to buy a terminal that solely performs the added bonus of any of those other villages? Like, a terminal "Super Scout" that discards your treasures and victories and lets you rearrange your upcoming actions (for fairness sake, let's also give it +$2 to make it the equivalent of woodcutter)?
« Last Edit: July 06, 2013, 01:43:34 pm by SheCantSayNo »
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #205 on: July 06, 2013, 02:02:04 pm »
0

Worker's is clearly best. In an engine you often buy a Herbalist/Woodcutter/Nomad Camp only for the +buy if there's no better option, with Worker's you can just completely skip those cards. Would you ever be willing to buy a terminal that solely performs the added bonus of any of those other villages? Like, a terminal "Super Scout" that discards your treasures and victories and lets you rearrange your upcoming actions (for fairness sake, let's also give it +$2 to make it the equivalent of woodcutter)?

I upvoted this, but it's not a fair comparison because the Wandering Minstrel effect is obviously way better on a non-terminal. Whereas +buy doesn't really matter if it's on a terminal or not. It still highlights the importance of +buy though.
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Robz888

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #206 on: July 06, 2013, 02:11:10 pm »
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Workers is not the only source of +buy in the game! It's certainly a very good one, but a lot of other worthwhile engine components have +buy attached. I say Wandering Minstrel's filtering gets your engine up much, much faster (and can even create an engine in a low trashing or even slog environment). Which easily gives it the nod, I say.
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jonts26

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #207 on: July 06, 2013, 02:20:03 pm »
+2

Workers is not the only source of +buy in the game! It's certainly a very good one, but a lot of other worthwhile engine components have +buy attached. I say Wandering Minstrel's filtering gets your engine up much, much faster (and can even create an engine in a low trashing or even slog environment). Which easily gives it the nod, I say.

There are also times when WM isn't a great village though. If you aren't drawing your deck, and you don't have good source of non treasure coin, then you're just going to be discarding a lot of useful treasures.

As far as the other cards have +buy argument, well, that isnt always true. WV is sometimes the only +buy. However, even if there is other +buy, WV still offers a 'free' + buy. It doesnt take a card slot, or an action, or even another buy to get the card in your deck. It's really good. Not saying WM isn't also really good. The filtering is often quite strong.

In engines with another source of +buy that you'd be getting anyway (goons or something), then WM is a lot better than WV. But I find WV to be more often the stronger card. It's close, but I'd give the nod to WV.
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Beyond Awesome

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #208 on: July 06, 2013, 02:32:47 pm »
+2

As far as $4 villages goes, WM is the best. Now, on some boards, WV might be better, but WM's cycling is so powerful and often I don't mind skipping my treasures. The point is to get to your engine components faster or to get to a certain action faster. Heck, it even works in non-engine decks for getting to your cursers faster and gives +Actions so you can play two cursers in the same turn. There have actually been many games where I bought WM just for that reason, and it games without trashing WM makes it possible to create a reliable engine.
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Fabian

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #209 on: July 06, 2013, 02:35:28 pm »
+5

WM seems sweet for sure, but WV is very very good. That's about the most useful analysis avaliable.
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Witherweaver

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #210 on: July 06, 2013, 02:45:39 pm »
+1

Aren't they designed for different types of engines?  Wandering Minstrel works with virtual coin better than treasure, and Worker's Village seems like it's designed to solve the problem of smithy/village/coin where you don't have extra buys (or have to get a card that you otherwise don't want for them).
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LastFootnote

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #211 on: July 06, 2013, 02:51:38 pm »
+1

Would you ever be willing to buy a terminal that solely performs the added bonus of any of those other villages? Like, a terminal "Super Scout" that discards your treasures and victories and lets you rearrange your upcoming actions (for fairness sake, let's also give it +$2 to make it the equivalent of woodcutter)?

You mean like a terminal Cartographer that gave +$2? Yes, I would absolutely buy such a card. It would be way, way better than Navigator. Like, you have no idea until you've played with it. Try it out.
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dondon151

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #212 on: July 06, 2013, 07:35:29 pm »
+2

WM seems sweet for sure, but WV is very very good. That's about the most useful analysis avaliable.

Urgh, too many villages with "W."
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JacquesTheBard

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #213 on: July 06, 2013, 08:40:09 pm »
0

I have to wonder about the position of Shanty Town. It seems like many people on this site regard Shanty Town as roughly equal to or even slightly superior to vanilla village. I'm certainly less skilled than they, but I can't help but question this decision nonetheless. Shanty Town is an expensive necropolis unless it draws, but how often does it draw? Only if it is either the only action in hand or the last action in hand that you play. However, this brings up two thorny issues. First, if you have such a low action density that Shanty Town can normally be drawn without any actions, the likelihood of getting an action in the two cards you draw ought to be quite low, making the +2 actions a waste. And if you have terminal actions in your main hand, playing a +actions source followed by shanty town requires a pretty specific set-up. Shanty town, terminal, shanty town... and the end result is inferior to Village.

I wonder if people who like shanty town regard it as a lab variant instead of a village. It seems like that's the better way to regard it. In terms of engine enabling, typically the main purpose of a village, shanty town leaves much to be desired.

In my own ranking, I'm not sure I'd put it above Adventurer. Does anyone here understand it better?
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dondon151

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #214 on: July 06, 2013, 08:46:16 pm »
+8

I'm pretty sure that most people agree Village > ST in general.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #215 on: July 06, 2013, 08:53:30 pm »
+3

137.   Harem
Actually, I'm pretty sure this is overrated (it's going to be moving on the next iteration). It's definitely a nicer card in general than Farmland, but not terribly much so. The problem is, you often want this over gold in big money, and you play a longer midgame, but the BM mirrors aren't so common, and it isn't *that* much better than gold. And lots of times you just want gold anyway. Well, it's a stack of 2VP cards which usually don't hurt your deck quality, at least by much, so there's some purpose, but aside from the odd crossroads or vagrants thing, it's basically never great, just an occasional modest boon.

136.   Forager
I feel like this card is significantly better than Lookout, as it generally gives a little more money, hits your hand (okay, this mostly makes up for the money) which gives it a bigger range, lets you avoid unwanted trashing, and this makes it work a lot better once your engine is in place whilst also generally not being worse at setting it up. On the other hand, I don't really see lots more cards it can more in front of, so I guess there's just a relatively big drop-off somewhere a little before here?

135.   Mining Village
I'm not really sure that this is better than walled village, even. I don't find myself wanting to trash it very often, as I almost always buy it as a village and not as a one-shot thrust to something big (this *tends* not to be worth it). When I do crack it, it's most often for an end of game point surge, but as you have to play villages first amongst components, it's a little hard to know when to do this. Okay, a village with some kind of plus, anyway.

134.   Count
A reasonable card in slogs, where gaining copper isn't bad, setting cards back can often be good, 3 coins is nothing to sneeze at, and gaining duchies is generally excellent. The trashing option deserves some attention, but on the other hand, it doesn't trash *that* well, as you have to do some negative and it can sometimes be awkward to be able to protect the stuff you want to. Okay, can be strictly-better-once-you-have-it Mandarin, too, so really the versatility is what gets this card here and not lower.

133.   Armory
The topdecking makes this worse than workshop for rushes, but better in almost all other scenarios. Okay, it costs a little more, but because you get the card so fast, you don't really fall behind with this card near as much as you do with workshop. If you track your deck well, you can also use the knowledge of what's coming up to get slight boons and set up draws. Okay, it could also hurt you if you are getting too many terminals, but if you're only getting terminals, you probably didn't want this card to start with...

132.   Pawn
None of the options is really worth 2 all that much, but the versatility makes the card at least decent And it can always be a cantrip. Probably it's most important uses are as virtual coin (for KC, draw-to-X), cheap (and possibly non-terminal) source of buy, and for card and coin where you have tracked your deck well. It's also pretty good for engines, where if you get it too early, you can just cycle it, and after you've drawn your deck, it's... copper or herbalist. Okay, not the greatest thing ever, but copper-that-can-cycle really isn't so bad.

131.   Sage
This is one I still don't really understand, I guess. If you are building an engine, you often just prefer components. This skips over copper and estate, true, but I guess it's mostly useful in something like a mountebank game - not really big money (where silver is generally preferred), but sort of big-money-ish dry games where you mostly need to play those one or two key cards really often. I dunno, not spectacular but has at least little uses often enough.

130.   Shanty Town
This can be necropolis, but with a drawing terminal, that's usually not the worst thing ever. And it can be better-than-lab. Okay, the big drawback is that it's really not the best village as the main village for an engine, though it *can* do that for certain engines. Really nice in decks where you just don't have terminals you want to play, but lots of reasonable non-terminals. And good as a support piece for engines - as one of your opening buys particularly, it doesn't have some of the drawbacks of silver later, but it still enhances your economy (and cycling) early.

129.   Tunnel
Potentially a big trap - people dream about gaining lots of gold off of this, but it's a bit tricky to line it up with the thing to discard it. Okay, sometimes can be great, but you do have to watch out - you have a junk card along with that gold. Obviously best when there is sifting - lets you get your golds more and discard your unwanted green - which gets you more gold. So it's pretty high-skill. Of course, still has 2 VP for 3, and this isn't negligible either.

128.   Bishop
I think this is the biggest trap card in the game. You just don't often want to be the first buy to buy bishop. Or more specifically, it's generally a very very bad early game card. It just trashes for your opponent so much better than it does you, and you are wasting time on it. Okay, there's the golden deck, but there's very often something to beat it (any non-deck attack does it, and there's some ways to outrace it). But anyway, that shows the point - it's much more of a late game card. At this point, the trashing doesn't help your opponents much - they often won't even take it, because it will hurt them right now (which is more relevant than the long-term prospects by now), or they want to hold on to their points. And man, you can really hammer home some massive points, say, setting up an engine which gains and then trashes 2-3 gold every turn (or trashes then buys; it all works), all the while not helping your opponent end the game much at all. Setting this up is reasonably rare, though, and sometimes the engine is good anyway.

127.   Farming Village
Filtering past green cards and curses is something which is usually useful, but it's rarely REALLY useful, at least in games where you want villages. Okay, though, there's a few combos and counters it sets up, and mostly it's a village with small-but-tangible plus.

126.   Noble Brigand
This card can really be bananas. If Big Money were viable more often, this card would be way higher on the list. Thing is, this destroys most big money strategies. We can say that it's one of the best BM cards, but really it's that it's one fo the best cards *against* BM. To the point where silvers are just really risky propositions, and there are only a few BM strategies that can outrun it (and even they, generally, should mix with it overall). Obviously stymied by alternate treasure and not really a player against a lot of engines, though even in engines it can have *some* usefulness if there still needs to be silver and gold as a reasonably high component of the economic backbone of the deck.

liopoil

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #216 on: July 06, 2013, 08:56:34 pm »
0

woah, I think forager is way better than that...
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #217 on: July 06, 2013, 09:00:25 pm »
+4

I have to wonder about the position of Shanty Town. It seems like many people on this site regard Shanty Town as roughly equal to or even slightly superior to vanilla village. I'm certainly less skilled than they, but I can't help but question this decision nonetheless. Shanty Town is an expensive necropolis unless it draws, but how often does it draw? Only if it is either the only action in hand or the last action in hand that you play. However, this brings up two thorny issues. First, if you have such a low action density that Shanty Town can normally be drawn without any actions, the likelihood of getting an action in the two cards you draw ought to be quite low, making the +2 actions a waste. And if you have terminal actions in your main hand, playing a +actions source followed by shanty town requires a pretty specific set-up. Shanty town, terminal, shanty town... and the end result is inferior to Village.

I wonder if people who like shanty town regard it as a lab variant instead of a village. It seems like that's the better way to regard it. In terms of engine enabling, typically the main purpose of a village, shanty town leaves much to be desired.

In my own ranking, I'm not sure I'd put it above Adventurer. Does anyone here understand it better?

It's not just about how often it draws, but when it draws. Early in the game, when +cards is more useful than +actions, it gives you +cards. It makes those turns where you just draw it + starting cards not be complete duds like they would be if that card were Village. Later on, when you've built your engine, the +cards isn't as important, because you presumably have other sources of +cards, it's just +2 actions, with +2 cards when you have an excess of actions. This makes it much better than vanilla village for engines with a slower build-up. Village is better when you have something like Chapel which can get you straight into the engine, since it performs more consistently when your engine is already up and running.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #218 on: July 06, 2013, 09:09:05 pm »
+1

128.   Bishop
I think this is the biggest trap card in the game. You just don't often want to be the first buy to buy bishop. Or more specifically, it's generally a very very bad early game card. It just trashes for your opponent so much better than it does you, and you are wasting time on it. Okay, there's the golden deck, but there's very often something to beat it (any non-deck attack does it, and there's some ways to outrace it). But anyway, that shows the point - it's much more of a late game card. At this point, the trashing doesn't help your opponents much - they often won't even take it, because it will hurt them right now (which is more relevant than the long-term prospects by now), or they want to hold on to their points. And man, you can really hammer home some massive points, say, setting up an engine which gains and then trashes 2-3 gold every turn (or trashes then buys; it all works), all the while not helping your opponent end the game much at all. Setting this up is reasonably rare, though, and sometimes the engine is good anyway.
I think you're really underrating this. Yes it's a bad opening, but it's greatness later in the game gives is enough value that it should at least be up with Silk Road, for instance, which is also bad early but can be worth a lot of points.
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scott_pilgrim

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #219 on: July 06, 2013, 10:13:02 pm »
0

I'm surprised Forager is this low.  I think of it as a top 5 (maybe 6 or 7) $3 card.  But then I have no idea why it feels so good.  It really doesn't sound that good on paper.  But I feel like every time I don't get two or three of them I end up falling way behind.  It's not quite as good on play as Upgrade/Junk Dealer, but it's so much cheaper.  Early on you can grab several of them quickly because they're cheap, and you trash your starting cards pretty fast while still making decent money, and you don't have to worry about collision.  All that, and you get extra buys if you need them.  Later on, you can use them to trash each other and get +buy, or you can trash a Silver to power them up if your opponent has trashed theirs.

Shanty Town seems higher than I would expect as well.  (And yeah, I think the general consensus is that Village is better than Shanty Town.)  I feel like I've seen a decent number of boards on which, a weak engine would have been viable with Village in the kingdom, but with Shanty Town instead, big money was faster.  Sure, if the engine is good enough, you'll just be glad to have the +actions, but a lot of times it's just not worth it.  Thinking of it as a lab variant rather than a village variant is interesting, but that just makes it seem even more disappointing.  Labs are usually good when you can chain them.  With Shanty Town, you need a low action density to trigger them, but then you can't really chain them because you don't have enough of them.  It can also be used in a big money deck, where it's a drawer that is guaranteed not to collide with your terminal.  But even then it's pretty weak; +2 cards isn't usually worth it for $3.
« Last Edit: July 06, 2013, 10:15:06 pm by scott_pilgrim »
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Eevee

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #220 on: July 06, 2013, 10:18:57 pm »
0

Forager has some strong combos, for example potion cards and counterfeit. I feel this might be bit of a playstyle thing - I feel WW values weak early game trashing less than other top players.
« Last Edit: July 06, 2013, 11:05:57 pm by Eevee »
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Titandrake

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #221 on: July 06, 2013, 11:02:30 pm »
+3

Forager has some strong combos, for example potion cards and counterfeit. I feel this might be bit of a play style thing - I feel WW values weak early game trashing less than other top players.

Off-topic: I think it's still really amazing that there can be such a thing as "different playstyle" in Dominion.

I think Forager makes engines possible where they wouldn't otherwise be. The same could be said of all the other 1-card trashers, I suppose, but Forager seems especially good at making this work. That one extra +$1 after a Copper is in the trash just helps so much to make it work. Same reason that the Bishop opening isn't awful, the extra +$1 makes it work. I'm coming around to opening Bishop being bad, but the VP tokens feel too strong for it to be around here.
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markusin

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #222 on: July 07, 2013, 01:18:05 pm »
+3

I have to wonder about the position of Shanty Town. It seems like many people on this site regard Shanty Town as roughly equal to or even slightly superior to vanilla village. I'm certainly less skilled than they, but I can't help but question this decision nonetheless. Shanty Town is an expensive necropolis unless it draws, but how often does it draw? Only if it is either the only action in hand or the last action in hand that you play. However, this brings up two thorny issues. First, if you have such a low action density that Shanty Town can normally be drawn without any actions, the likelihood of getting an action in the two cards you draw ought to be quite low, making the +2 actions a waste. And if you have terminal actions in your main hand, playing a +actions source followed by shanty town requires a pretty specific set-up. Shanty town, terminal, shanty town... and the end result is inferior to Village.

I wonder if people who like shanty town regard it as a lab variant instead of a village. It seems like that's the better way to regard it. In terms of engine enabling, typically the main purpose of a village, shanty town leaves much to be desired.

In my own ranking, I'm not sure I'd put it above Adventurer. Does anyone here understand it better?

Shanty Town is one of the weirder cards. You can be sure that every vanilla Village you gain adds reliability to your engine. Each Shanty Town also adds some reliability to your engine in the sense that you can play more terminal actions, but at the cost of potentially less card draw.

The way I see it, there are two types of collision with Shanty Town: collision with itself and collision with terminals. The collision with itself will definitely reduce the card draw, but you can play an extra terminal for every extra Shanty Town in hand without affecting the final handsize you'd have if there were only Shanty Towns in hand. Collision with other terminals also turns Shanty Town into a necropolis. You reduce Shanty Town collision by either buying less of them or by having a larger deck (often, the larger deck is thrust upon you by a junker). You reduce the terminal collision problem by having some other source of +actions (possibly making Shanty Town the best second village to have in the kingdom).

A Shanty Town that does end up drawing is pretty neat though. Even if the extra actions are wasted, you still get the $5 lab effect on a $3 cost, and you can always open with a $3. Shanty Town is at its best when it draws a terminal draw card with its +2 cards, since the terminal draw card won't draw anything dead. Then you can make use of the full +2 cards +2 actions. In general, Shanty Town is an okay village in draw decks, especially in ones that tend to overdraw

Though I like Shanty Town more than the vanilla Village, I think I'd still rank it a bit lower than Village (and I imagine many other players do too). The village works well in the *classic* engine that have heavily trimmed decks. Shanty Town is a card that gets better when your deck is not at the position you'd normally want it to be, which is what makes the card so intriguing.
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scott_pilgrim

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #223 on: July 07, 2013, 04:25:48 pm »
+2

Even if the extra actions are wasted, you still get the $5 lab effect on a $3 cost
If the extra actions are wasted, you get the $2 moat effect on a $3 cost.

But the actions aren't necessarily wasted, which is what makes Shanty Town viable (I agree with the rest of your post).
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eHalcyon

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Re: WW's Power Rankings
« Reply #224 on: July 07, 2013, 09:03:42 pm »
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My favourite thing for Shanty Town is tossing one or two into a deck full of non-terminals and maybe one or two terminals.  They become $3 Labs most of the time, occasionally regular Villages when the STs collide, and Necropolis if one collides with a terminal.
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