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[ednever]

I think the proper comparison is to Warehouse.

Warehouse is like Monument only it gives +1 action, lets you draw and discard 3 cards, but doesn't give you a VP or any $s. The only big difference is that it costs $1 less.

Ed

[Titandrake]

Nobody thinks that monument above seahag is... absurd?

I don't think it's absurd, but I do think it's wrong. Both are important cards because they can have a major effect on game pace. Sea Hag can do so by slowing down the game with junking, and Monument can extend it by offering an unlimited supply of points. The question is which of these effects is more valuable.

The problem with Sea Hag is that good trashing makes it pointless, since you give up a lot of tempo to get it by sacrificing a lot of early economy. The problem with Monument is that to actually get a lot of points out of it, you need a lot of spare terminal actions and a way of drawing all the villages and Monuments. Otherwise it's just a decently good terminal, giving you some score.

If you ignore Sea Hag without a good counter, you'll die, as your deck turns to junk. If you ignore Monument, you mgiht be okay a fair amount of the time, since if they can build something to reliably play Monuments, you can probably also build something to reliably buy Provinces.

I think overall Monument is useful less often, and less critical when it is useful, so all signs point to it being worse than Sea Hag overall. But I know WW absolutely loves Monument, so there's that... I guess when it's good, it's the centerpiece of your deck. Sea Hag is "just" an early-game thing (though I think early game is the most important part).

I thought the point of Monument is that on a lot of boards, you can build something that occasionally plays Monuments, and reliably buys Provinces, and that forces your opponent to either join in Monumenting or buy an extra Duchy, and because Monument is average money-wise you don't slow down too much, or at all, by picking up Monument, and certainly not enough to make getting an extra Duchy doable.

[() | (_) ^/]

...

But I am an awesome guy.

3/10
made me lol

[WanderingWinder]

Sea Hag: Usually a bit more powerful than Monument
Monument: Occasionally lots better than Sea Hag

[WanderingWinder]

36.   Ironmonger
A solid card all around - passing victory makes this better than lab, sometimes it's village, and peddler for 4 (which can skip coppers) is also very nice. It suffers from the unreliable problem and from the this-basically-never-wins-the-game-for-you-by-itself problem, but it's such good utility.

35.   Laboratory
A very nice card for lots of engines, never fails... well, it would be higher (because it's always good), but it rarely just wins for you.

34.   Soothsayer
A curse-giver which gains gold. This card gives great longevity, but... well, gaining gold is a 5ish value, giving a curse is a 4ish value, labbing opponent a 5 value to them... it's good, but mostly, when you look at specifics, this is a bit weak against many engines, as the extra card helps them go off, and with halfway reasonable trashing they can keep up.

33.   Wandering Minstrel
Arguably the best primary village for an engine - you just make sure you get your chain off with really high probability. Very nice.

32.   Remake
A pretty strong trasher, of course, but it costs 4, and the upgrade effect is not always the best, particularly because you MUST do it twice. Alright, still a great way to get going.

31.   Young Witch
If you have to play BM-X with nothing else, this is the best card which exists. This is of course an artifact of opponent not buying bane, which is a huge thing. But being able to force them to buy a bane isn't nothing, and there's just generally great utility.

30.   Hermit
The best junk-cleaner, a card which is really nice any time you want to get reasonably high amounts of cards 3 or less - including silver for BM - oh, and it can become madman.

29.   Tournament
A card which certainly would be lower if more players would be considered. But basically, it's a peddler for 4, and that's really good. You also have better chances of connecting with your own province than theirs in any kind of engine, and well, prizes can be good, too. I think they (prizes) are rather overrated, but I wouldn't say no to them.

28.   Fairgrounds
"A second stack of provinces"
Can be even more with a lot of DA stuff. Or just a solid 4 in a lot of cases, that's not nothing.

27.   Knights
So often, it just becomes a race as to who wins this split, as they chew through everything. Sort of need an engine, though, and there are some counters. And you have to watch out for 3 pile endings.

[markusin]

Of course the knights are killer when you get most of them in an engine. Against a player trying to rush for provinces, you can just trash all their good treasure and maybe any Duchies they have too. Then you can pick up the remaining victory cards pretty leisurely. The best defense (other than getting knights of your own or good reactions) seem to be decks that use a lot of 2$- and 7$+ cards.

The thing I find with Knights is, you want to be in a position where you can get lots of them, without actually getting them. Most of the time, I'd rather strengthen my deck than get Knights. Once my deck picks up, it's not that hard to get Knights of my own as a response to my opponent getting them. What follows is a knight war that usually still leaves me ahead when it's over.

I just find they are such a win-when-you-are-ahead kind of card. trying to get a bunch of them in the hopes of catching up doesn't seem to work out so well. So to me, they seem a bit overrated here.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Knights and Soothsayer are overrated here. Knights in particular. Its not uncommon for the top knight to be useless for a particular kingdom, and then the opportunity cost of not getting another $5 and potentially revealing a very useful Knight for your opponent makes the pile a bit of a trap. You need to be playing these consistently for the attack to really hurt your opponent. Sometimes very good, usually not terrible. But not #27 strong. Certainly weaker than any of the $4 junkers, as well as most of the other cards in this section.

If Soothsayer had been released in one of the earlier expansions it would have been a lot stronger than it is today, but now it's the weakest curser in the game. It's strong without trashing on the board, but with trashing and engine components, drawing your opponent a card is TERRIBLE, and gaining Golds isn't great. A bunch of Gold is not as useful as one might think it is. You need something to do with that all that Gold, so you want TfB or an engine that can draw a lot of your deck with buys. But playing a Soothsayer doesn't help your engine much, and helps your opponent's quite a lot. The benefit to your opponent is immediate, the harm to your opponent is delayed, and the benefit to you is delayed. It slows you down and speeds them up. I am repeating myself a lot. Probably the best use for Soothsayer is to first build your engine, then add Soothsayer to pump up your economy in the middle of the game, but I don't have a lot of experience using this kind of strategy.

[dondon151]

Sea Hag: Usually a bit more powerful than Monument

Quite the understatement.

[WanderingWinder]

In either case, you aren't going to use these as primary villages all that often.

This is almost certainly not true.

Sea Hag: Usually a bit more powerful than Monument

Quite the understatement.

No, you're wrong.

Gee, this is an effective way to argue.

Edit: To be fair, I'm basically as guilty of this. So I will try to give some reasonings here.
Primary village: You are just giving yourself straight up fewer cards. So it's like making a village-moat engine. This is certainly possible, of course, but it's got to have some strong support.

Sea Hag vs monument: it's the junk card which runs out vs the money and the points that don't. Okay, well, the clog over the course of a game is going to be worth enough to be worth it for... the first copy, and by a certain amount, BUT there's sort of an inflection point - very short term, Monument is better, because it gives you money, shortish to medium-term, sea hag is better, because that clog comes through; long term, the monument comes back, because the chips don't run out. Also, Hag is a junk card for itself. So, I mean, Sea Hag is clearly better than Monument for the first copy in the absence of trashing, but I don't think it's even completely crushingly-dominant here, and almost any trashing or engine helps bring this back toward monument. Also, 'a bit' is purposefully somewhat vague.

[Schneau]

It seems strange to me that Ironmonger is 60 places higher than Peddler. They both seem to fill the same roll -- utility card that is usually helpful but inconsistent (Ironmonger on play, Peddler in cost). Sure, Ironmonger can do nice things discarding Victories and Coppers, but Peddler can be easier to mass with an engine that has +Buy, and can do neat things with TFB. I don't know if you're overrating Ironmonger or underrating Peddler, but my guess is both.

[dondon151]

Edit: To be fair, I'm basically as guilty of this. So I will try to give some reasonings here.
Primary village: You are just giving yourself straight up fewer cards. So it's like making a village-moat engine. This is certainly possible, of course, but it's got to have some strong support.

A Hamlet - terminal +3 cards engine is not at all like a Village - Moat engine. You net the same number of cards, but the quality is different, and the engine is much less likely to fail because Hamlet - terminal +3 cards sees more cards than Village - Moat. It's not as good as Village - terminal +3 cards, but this is offset by the fact that Hamlet costs $1 to $2 fewer than the majority of villages.

Sea Hag vs monument: it's the junk card which runs out vs the money and the points that don't. Okay, well, the clog over the course of a game is going to be worth enough to be worth it for... the first copy, and by a certain amount, BUT there's sort of an inflection point - very short term, Monument is better, because it gives you money, shortish to medium-term, sea hag is better, because that clog comes through; long term, the monument comes back, because the chips don't run out. Also, Hag is a junk card for itself. So, I mean, Sea Hag is clearly better than Monument for the first copy in the absence of trashing, but I don't think it's even completely crushingly-dominant here, and almost any trashing or engine helps bring this back toward monument. Also, 'a bit' is purposefully somewhat vague.

Sea Hag is bad because it's not beneficial to get a second copy? I don't get it. Sea Hag warps the game. If there's no trashing, if you don't get a Sea Hag, you're basically giving up the game. If there is trashing, you still very often need a Sea Hag, because if your opponent goes Sea Hag + trashing and you go no Sea Hag + trashing, you're still going to lose the game (depending on the trasher).

Monument is hardly ignorable, but that's because its opportunity cost is so innocuous. It's a terminal $4, and a whole bunch of terminal $4s give +$2 as a vanilla bonus. It's not super spammable like Caravan or Ironmonger, but everyone picks it up because well why not. But Caravan and Ironmonger don't get brownie points for being spammable.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I think we don't really understand Soothsayer well yet. I think of it more as a Gold-gainer than a true Curser in the sense that if you don't really value gaining Gold (vs getting 5s), then it's not worth it. If $5 is the key price point, I'm okay taking a Curse and give you a Gold to get a 2 card advantage this turn, especially if you had to spend $5 last shuffle to just get that effect.

Soothsayer has the same problem as Sea Hag, but probably worse, since it's more expensive. It costs you a lot of tempo since it doesn't produce any money AND it gives your opponent a free card. Sure it's good if they can't get rid of the Curse, but with basically any trashing, the attack is a wash at best, so buying Soothsayer comes down to how much Gold-gaining is worth it compared to what the other 5s do. And often that's not that great.

I also think Lab and particularly Ironmonger are too high for their vanilla-ness. Ironmonger is particularly not high impact. And while Lab is usually good, it's not as important as quite a few of the cards below it. The same argument you make about Monument > Sea Hag can similarly be made about most of the next 10 below Lab > Lab.

[blueblimp]

I don't understand Ironmonger well yet. In an engine, it's pretty awful actually: because you're trashing your Estates (if possible) and loading up on actions, it becomes a $4 Village-that-is-sometimes-randomly-a-sifting-Peddler-instead, which makes it a poor choice for primary village. (Compare to Walled Village.) So while I wouldn't say no to having a bunch of them since it's a do-no-harm cantrip at worst, there will usually be something at <=$4 that I'd prefer.

Another way to look at it: if you have no green in deck, having X Ironmongers is pretty similar to having Y Villages and Z Peddlers, where Y+Z = X, except you can't control the balance of Y and Z. So in an engine kingdom with Village and Peddler available, it's hard to imagine when you would buy Ironmongers before those piles run out.

On the other hand, the hit-a-victory-card condition is obviously super good. So maybe Ironmonger is more of a nice bonus for BM than it is a mass-in-engine card.

[JacquesTheBard]

Personally, I'm surprised by the position of Hermit. Madman is one of the best megaturn-enablers in the game, comparable to King's Court. I also appreciate the way it counters junkers. However, the 3-cost flooding is questionable in engines. Silver works, of course, but engine pieces costing 3 or less are actually quite rare. Someone compared it to Jack once: trashing estates, silver flooding and draw makes a solid BM deck. The trouble with this is that taking your draw all at once with the madman leads to a very inconsistent deck.

Overall, Hermit is at its strongest in scenarios where the Madmen can be used effectively. As a trasher, it's certainly better than something like trade route, or even lookout. But better than Remake? Doubtful. I understand putting Madman in the top 50, but above Remake is just too implausible for me.

Nice to see the Knights get some respect, though.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Monument is hardly ignorable, but that's because its opportunity cost is so innocuous. It's a terminal $4, and a whole bunch of terminal $4s give +$2 as a vanilla bonus. It's not super spammable like Caravan or Ironmonger, but everyone picks it up because well why not. But Caravan and Ironmonger don't get brownie points for being spammable.

Having a low opportunity cost is a really good indication of card strength. If there's rarely a reason not to pick up the card then it's probably a very good card. And I think Caravan/Ironmonger should get brownie points for being spammable.

I also think Lab and particularly Ironmonger are too high for their vanilla-ness. Ironmonger is particularly not high impact. And while Lab is usually good, it's not as important as quite a few of the cards below it. The same argument you make about Monument > Sea Hag can similarly be made about most of the next 10 below Lab > Lab.

The vanilla cards get the shaft in these rankings usually because it's hard to see their impact on the game. One reason is that they get bought by both players in a large percentage of games so its hard to say "I won/lost because I ignored/bought Ironmonger". And I think that the attack cards or payloads that the vanilla cards enable just make a bigger psychological impact, not necessarily a bigger impact on game outcomes. My initial thoughts are to agree with HME, but maybe WW has it right.

Ironmonger deserves credit for being an extremely flexible opening card, you haven't locked your deck into any course and it gives you a nice level of freedom to adapt your play to your draws. This is a pretty big feature (Masquerade for #1). And the sifting effect is very strong for early game acceleration, and even if you are building an engine for picking out the terminals you want to draw into your hand.

[dondon151]

Having a low opportunity cost is a really good indication of card strength. If there's rarely a reason not to pick up the card then it's probably a very good card. And I think Caravan/Ironmonger should get brownie points for being spammable.

But at the same time, the effect of each single Caravan or Ironmonger pales in comparison to the effect of the first Sea Hag, Young Witch, Marauder, etc. I don't like to go into this sort of analysis because we're going to end up making arbitrary values for how much utility certain aspects of a card have. I would just rather compare cards by asking how much of an effect a certain card's presence in the kingdom has on a given game (by forcing the players to adapt to that card). A certain card being effective only when spammed is a feature of the card, not a nice little bonus.

[Polk5440]

I am not surprised WW has Monument so high. I remember quite a lot of recorded games WW played that hinged on buying Monument mid to late; of course WW often did that while his opponent didn't. After seeing so many of those outcomes, I have revised my opinion of the card up and think having Monument about on par with Sea Hag is probably right.

They are really different cards to play though --Sea Hag great early, Monument is often key late. Both at $4, though. Very interesting to compare them.

[Awaclus]

In my experience, which mostly comes from Base+Guilds games since I don't have any other expansions on goko so it's possibly not true when other expansions are mixed in, Soothsayer is basically a must buy no matter what when Baker is on the board, and depending on your strategy, it might be better than Witch when gained on t3/t4 but usually isn't, and after that, it's often ignorable even when it's the only curser. Getting a 5/2 on a Soothsayer/Chapel board without Baker is NUTS.

[timchen]

I would rank Ironmonger higher than lab.

Unless you have some discard-for-benefit or some card that directly interacts with copper, Ironmonger is a lab when revealing copper, and is better than lab when revealing a victory card. True in a slim engine deck it then may become a village, but village with some weak filtering at 4 is not that bad either.

Soothsayer has to be weaker than sea hag. I feel it is weaker even without drawing a card for your opponent.

[sudgy]

I've grown to like Ironmonger quite a bit.  I've used it as Villages without any Villages (not in engines, but in other action-heavy decks that rely on terminal actions), and it's a nice card in other situations too.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I would rank Ironmonger higher than lab.

Unless you have some discard-for-benefit or some card that directly interacts with copper, Ironmonger is a lab when revealing copper, and is better than lab when revealing a victory card. True in a slim engine deck it then may become a village, but village with some weak filtering at 4 is not that bad either.

So Ironmonger is as good as Lab in decks where Lab is meh (when you still have a bunch of Copper), but worse in decks where Lab is good (when you'd be drawing action cards).

[achmed_sender]

I like to compare Ironmonger with Herald.

Both are potentially villages and you need to have high action density to pull it off, but if you do, Herald is (lot) better. When not, Ironmonger is usually better. Then Ironmonger shines with dual types and is better after greening.

[timchen]

I would rank Ironmonger higher than lab.

Unless you have some discard-for-benefit or some card that directly interacts with copper, Ironmonger is a lab when revealing copper, and is better than lab when revealing a victory card. True in a slim engine deck it then may become a village, but village with some weak filtering at 4 is not that bad either.

So Ironmonger is as good as Lab in decks where Lab is meh (when you still have a bunch of Copper), but worse in decks where Lab is good (when you'd be drawing action cards).

But Ironmonger is a lot cheaper. Also I think if the action density is really really high lab is also not that good... your 5's probably will be spent mostly elsewhere.

 

[blueblimp]

I would rank Ironmonger higher than lab.

Unless you have some discard-for-benefit or some card that directly interacts with copper, Ironmonger is a lab when revealing copper, and is better than lab when revealing a victory card. True in a slim engine deck it then may become a village, but village with some weak filtering at 4 is not that bad either.

So Ironmonger is as good as Lab in decks where Lab is meh (when you still have a bunch of Copper), but worse in decks where Lab is good (when you'd be drawing action cards).

But Ironmonger is a lot cheaper. Also I think if the action density is really really high lab is also not that good... your 5's probably will be spent mostly elsewhere.

That seems like an overgeneralization, because often the action density may come partly from non-drawing actions (perhaps terminal too), in which case Lab will be critical. Goons-plus-villages is the most extreme example that comes to mind. Even if the actions are all cantrips, handsize increasing is still really important to avoid choking hard on green.

[Beyond Awesome]

Personally, I have found Ironmonger to be a power $4. You just need to keep track of your deck. If I need Villages, spam actions and Ironmongers. If not, buy two or three and it becomes a Lap for $4, sometimes even a double Lab. Ironically, in games where my opponent got 5/2 on a Cultist board and opened Cultist, I would open Ironmonger/Silver and end up winning those games. Well, I recall winning two such games.