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Author Topic: Short Article on Advisor  (Read 24916 times)

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Awaclus

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #25 on: October 15, 2013, 10:27:22 am »
0

Against Militia, you want variety

Unless you also have Menagerie, I don't see why?

He means variance.  As in 3 good 2 bad >>> 5 average.
Yeah, that's what I mean.
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #26 on: October 15, 2013, 10:39:08 am »
0

Militia is a soft counter to Advisor decks. Against Militia, you want variety; when you're playing Advisor, you want to avoid variety. Thus, Militia forces the Advisor player to either build his deck sub-optimally for his own Advisors or against your Militia. It's not strong enough to completely ignore Advisor on a board where you normally would go for Advisors, but it's something you might want to consider and definitely get when you're playing against an Advisor player.

EDIT: Goons too, and other such attacks.

I think just the opposite, I believe the discard attacks make Advisor stronger. It's possible that I just played boards that were good for Advisor and had discard attacks, but my experience was that getting your hand size back up to a decent size was very useful to combat the attacks, and sometimes the only way to move beyond a BM deck. In the absence of any other draw it doesn't lead to you playing your discard attack less often because you either have the attack in your hand or you don't. It's $4 price point is also easy to hit while under attack. 
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Awaclus

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #27 on: October 15, 2013, 11:43:23 am »
0

Militia is a soft counter to Advisor decks. Against Militia, you want variety; when you're playing Advisor, you want to avoid variety. Thus, Militia forces the Advisor player to either build his deck sub-optimally for his own Advisors or against your Militia. It's not strong enough to completely ignore Advisor on a board where you normally would go for Advisors, but it's something you might want to consider and definitely get when you're playing against an Advisor player.

EDIT: Goons too, and other such attacks.

I think just the opposite, I believe the discard attacks make Advisor stronger. It's possible that I just played boards that were good for Advisor and had discard attacks, but my experience was that getting your hand size back up to a decent size was very useful to combat the attacks, and sometimes the only way to move beyond a BM deck. In the absence of any other draw it doesn't lead to you playing your discard attack less often because you either have the attack in your hand or you don't. It's $4 price point is also easy to hit while under attack.
You are partially correct, since discard attacks weaken some other strategies more than Advisor (mainly big money). This means that in the presence of a discard attack, Advisor becomes stronger in comparison to big money, but on the other hand, alt-VP strategies and Advisorless engines become much more attractive in comparison to both Advisor and big money.
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #28 on: October 15, 2013, 12:20:07 pm »
+1

Militia is a soft counter to Advisor decks. Against Militia, you want variety; when you're playing Advisor, you want to avoid variety. Thus, Militia forces the Advisor player to either build his deck sub-optimally for his own Advisors or against your Militia. It's not strong enough to completely ignore Advisor on a board where you normally would go for Advisors, but it's something you might want to consider and definitely get when you're playing against an Advisor player.

EDIT: Goons too, and other such attacks.

I think just the opposite, I believe the discard attacks make Advisor stronger. It's possible that I just played boards that were good for Advisor and had discard attacks, but my experience was that getting your hand size back up to a decent size was very useful to combat the attacks, and sometimes the only way to move beyond a BM deck. In the absence of any other draw it doesn't lead to you playing your discard attack less often because you either have the attack in your hand or you don't. It's $4 price point is also easy to hit while under attack.
You are partially correct, since discard attacks weaken some other strategies more than Advisor (mainly big money). This means that in the presence of a discard attack, Advisor becomes stronger in comparison to big money, but on the other hand, alt-VP strategies and Advisorless engines become much more attractive in comparison to both Advisor and big money.

Maybe Alt-VP, but I don't see why discard attacks in particular make Advisorless engines stronger than one that also incorporates Advisor. Why would that be the case? If you are building an engine, you don't rely on the "variance" spikes that you orginally said make Advisor bad against discard attacks. I don't see why Advisor is hurt by discard attacks more than any other particular card, but I can definitely see how Advisor helps mitigate the hand size reduction, so in any sense Advisor is made stronger by discard attacks. Why would discarders "counter" Advisor?

This is just a specific case of the general idea that discard attacks encourage engines, and Advisor is an engine card.
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Awaclus

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #29 on: October 16, 2013, 04:10:30 am »
0

Militia is a soft counter to Advisor decks. Against Militia, you want variety; when you're playing Advisor, you want to avoid variety. Thus, Militia forces the Advisor player to either build his deck sub-optimally for his own Advisors or against your Militia. It's not strong enough to completely ignore Advisor on a board where you normally would go for Advisors, but it's something you might want to consider and definitely get when you're playing against an Advisor player.

EDIT: Goons too, and other such attacks.

I think just the opposite, I believe the discard attacks make Advisor stronger. It's possible that I just played boards that were good for Advisor and had discard attacks, but my experience was that getting your hand size back up to a decent size was very useful to combat the attacks, and sometimes the only way to move beyond a BM deck. In the absence of any other draw it doesn't lead to you playing your discard attack less often because you either have the attack in your hand or you don't. It's $4 price point is also easy to hit while under attack.
You are partially correct, since discard attacks weaken some other strategies more than Advisor (mainly big money). This means that in the presence of a discard attack, Advisor becomes stronger in comparison to big money, but on the other hand, alt-VP strategies and Advisorless engines become much more attractive in comparison to both Advisor and big money.

Maybe Alt-VP, but I don't see why discard attacks in particular make Advisorless engines stronger than one that also incorporates Advisor. Why would that be the case? If you are building an engine, you don't rely on the "variance" spikes that you orginally said make Advisor bad against discard attacks. I don't see why Advisor is hurt by discard attacks more than any other particular card, but I can definitely see how Advisor helps mitigate the hand size reduction, so in any sense Advisor is made stronger by discard attacks. Why would discarders "counter" Advisor?
Because you'd rather have a hand of two Villages and a Torturer than a hand of three Advisors.
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Davio

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #30 on: October 16, 2013, 04:25:50 am »
0

Maybe it's good to differentiate between several types of engines.

In homogeneous engines, those that rely on multiples of the same card, Advisor is good, even against discard attacks, as there is less of a chance to see a critical card get discarded. These include Minion-engines or Grand Market stacks, etc. Let's say you reveal 2 GMs and an Estate, well, at least you get one GM and the Estate in hand, so you won't stop drawing once you hit that Estate with your GM. The odds of keeping the chain going are ok now that you've got that Estate in hand instead of on your deck.

With heterogeneous engines, those that rely on a couple of key cards to get the chain going, Advisor is more of a liability in general and more so against discard attacks. As mentioned, you'd rather have Village-Village-Torturer after a discard than Advisor-Advisor-Village. Most likely, you'll end up with a Village idiot style turn after your Torturers are discarded.
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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #31 on: October 16, 2013, 08:24:40 am »
+1

...
Because you'd rather have a hand of two Villages and a Torturer than a hand of three Advisors.

But in a Village-Torturer engine (and in all the other examples where you don't want Advisor against a discard attack), Advisor is pretty terrible in the first place, regardless of whether there's a discard attack or not, so I'm not seeing at all how discard attacks are specifically a counter to Advisor.
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blueblimp

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #32 on: October 16, 2013, 05:40:10 pm »
+2

...
Because you'd rather have a hand of two Villages and a Torturer than a hand of three Advisors.

But in a Village-Torturer engine (and in all the other examples where you don't want Advisor against a discard attack), Advisor is pretty terrible in the first place, regardless of whether there's a discard attack or not, so I'm not seeing at all how discard attacks are specifically a counter to Advisor.
The point is that decks that are good for advisor are bad against discard attacks. For example, over 9000 Pearl Divers? Great for Advisor. Bad against Militia. The presence of the discard attack makes you less inclined to pick up freebie cantrips, which makes your deck less suitable for Advisor, reducing the strength of the card.

I don't think this effect is ever going to be significant, but it does exist.
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #33 on: October 16, 2013, 07:33:09 pm »
0

The point is that decks that are good for advisor are bad against discard attacks. For example, over 9000 Pearl Divers? Great for Advisor. Bad against Militia. The presence of the discard attack makes you less inclined to pick up freebie cantrips, which makes your deck less suitable for Advisor, reducing the strength of the card.

I don't think this effect is ever going to be significant, but it does exist.

I still don't buy it. Cantrips are mostly bad against Militia in BM type situations because the lack of info about your next card really hurts (thus Pearl Diver sucking). I think that effect will be unnoticeable against an engine. And decks with Advisor don't really require a large number of cantrips, what they need badly is trashing ( and trashing is very good against discarding). But let's say the effect you're describing is real, do you think it outweighs the boost in strength that Advisor gets for mitigating the hand size reduction (and for engines being stronger in general with discarders)?
« Last Edit: October 16, 2013, 07:34:18 pm by Mic Qsenoch »
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florrat

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #34 on: October 16, 2013, 10:04:59 pm »
+1

( and trashing is very good against discarding)
Wait, what? Can you elaborate, because I think trashing is less important when your opponent plays discard attacks (of course, trashing is useful to play your own discard attacks more often). But suppose your opponent plays Militia every turn, then having 2 crappy cards in my 5-card hard hurt less because I have to discard two cards anyway... So I think trashing becomes (a little) less important with discard attacks.
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #35 on: October 16, 2013, 10:48:01 pm »
+4

( and trashing is very good against discarding)
Wait, what? Can you elaborate, because I think trashing is less important when your opponent plays discard attacks (of course, trashing is useful to play your own discard attacks more often). But suppose your opponent plays Militia every turn, then having 2 crappy cards in my 5-card hard hurt less because I have to discard two cards anyway... So I think trashing becomes (a little) less important with discard attacks.

Probably I should have phrased it better. Mostly I mean that trashing/discard attacks have a synergy that they both encourage engines or more controlled decks. "Against" is probably not the best word choice.

But trashing does help against the attack as well. The important thing about responding to discards isn't "avoid discarding good cards", it's "make sure the three cards you have left in hand are awesome". Trashing helps with this just by increasing the average usefulness of your cards. And if you want to respond to discard attacks with a draw engine of some sort, it's much easier to draw your deck and or connect your village/smithy variants if you've trashed down some, especially if you're starting from only three cards in hand.
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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #36 on: October 16, 2013, 11:00:25 pm »
+3

( and trashing is very good against discarding)
Wait, what? Can you elaborate, because I think trashing is less important when your opponent plays discard attacks (of course, trashing is useful to play your own discard attacks more often). But suppose your opponent plays Militia every turn, then having 2 crappy cards in my 5-card hard hurt less because I have to discard two cards anyway... So I think trashing becomes (a little) less important with discard attacks.

Probably I should have phrased it better. Mostly I mean that trashing/discard attacks have a synergy that they both encourage engines or more controlled decks. "Against" is probably not the best word choice.

But trashing does help against the attack as well. The important thing about responding to discards isn't "avoid discarding good cards", it's "make sure the three cards you have left in hand are awesome".
This is really important (and good), though I might phrase it more like "are going to get the job done" i.e. in a slog, if you can have the $4 for what you want from just treasures, this works, or if you're going to get an engine going off of [village]-[smithy]-[some engine card], that works really well too. Where you DON'T want to be is big money - I need to get 8 off of my 3-card hand without drawing? I better have a deck that's like 50% gold.

blueblimp

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #37 on: October 17, 2013, 02:32:01 am »
+1

The point is that decks that are good for advisor are bad against discard attacks. For example, over 9000 Pearl Divers? Great for Advisor. Bad against Militia. The presence of the discard attack makes you less inclined to pick up freebie cantrips, which makes your deck less suitable for Advisor, reducing the strength of the card.

I don't think this effect is ever going to be significant, but it does exist.

I still don't buy it. Cantrips are mostly bad against Militia in BM type situations because the lack of info about your next card really hurts (thus Pearl Diver sucking). I think that effect will be unnoticeable against an engine. And decks with Advisor don't really require a large number of cantrips, what they need badly is trashing ( and trashing is very good against discarding). But let's say the effect you're describing is real, do you think it outweighs the boost in strength that Advisor gets for mitigating the hand size reduction (and for engines being stronger in general with discarders)?
I'm not arguing about the strength of the effect at all, so I don't even want to go there. (I even said in my previous post that I think it's insignificant.) So let me lay out more explicitly the argument that some effect exists, since you seem to be disagreeing with that.

As you mention, cantrips obscure information about your hand. This means cantrips are bad against Militia in all situations, including engines. For example, in a Village-Smithy engine, you want to have both a Village and Smithy in hand to get things started. If your draw is 5 Pearl Divers, you have no ability to ensure that when hit by Militia.

On the flip side, when one of the cards Advisor flips up is a cantrip, your opponent is denied information. That cantrip is effectively a random card from your deck. The best case is having Advisor flip up three identical cantrips, in which case it's a lab. That's even better than having Advisor flip up three great-but-different cards, because in that case your opponent can still discard the one that would help you most. Therefore cantrips are good with Advisor. (Whether Advisor requires cantrips is irrelevant, and anyway I agree that Advisor doesn't require them.)

So we have two facts:
  • Adding cantrips to a deck makes that deck worse against Militia.
  • Adding cantrips to a deck makes that deck stronger with Advisor.
These are just two sides of the same coin: denying yourself information is bad, and denying your opponent information is good.

Here's why that indirectly makes buying Militia weaken your opponent's Advisors.
  • If you don't buy Militia, your opponent is free to add cheap cantrips to your deck without penalty, which makes Advisor stronger because they are good with it.
  • If you do buy Militia, your opponent might not want to add cheap cantrips to your deck, so without them, Advisor may be weaker in their deck than it otherwise would be.

Edit: Another example indirect anti-synergy would be Stables and Poor House. They don't directly interact much (and actually Stables's play effect may help Poor House by discarding treasure), but they like to live in different decks: Stables wants a deck that has decent treasure density, while Poor House wants all the treasure trashed.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2013, 02:35:32 am by blueblimp »
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #38 on: October 17, 2013, 09:55:45 am »
+2

Ok, the cantrip effect you describe is real. But the strength of the effect is super important to discuss! This is about strategy, so we need to know how much these considerations will influence the decision. Some people will take your post as vindication of the position "Militia is a soft counter to Advisor", despite the fact that you say the effect is negligible. I am trying to argue specifically against the statement "Militia is a soft counter to Advisor". So I am interested in the overall effect of hand-size reduction on Advisor's strength.

People should not look at boards with Militia and Advisor and say "Advisor is weaker here", this is incorrect. I want to suggest the exact opposite, that Militia's presence on a board is in general a reason to consider buying Advisors.
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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #39 on: October 17, 2013, 10:33:53 am »
0

One to note here is a bunch of advisors + vault. This quickly gets your deck rolling against Militia. Of course a few faults/golds are necessary to counter the fact that he is going to discard them.
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Awaclus

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #40 on: October 17, 2013, 11:09:15 am »
0

People should not look at boards with Militia and Advisor and say "Advisor is weaker here", this is incorrect.
But it isn't. People shouldn't look at boards with Militia and Advisor and say "I'm going to skip Advisor because of Militia", but people should look at boards with Militia and Advisor and say "I'm going to buy Militia because of Advisor".
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #41 on: October 17, 2013, 11:12:50 am »
0

People should not look at boards with Militia and Advisor and say "Advisor is weaker here", this is incorrect.
But it isn't. People shouldn't look at boards with Militia and Advisor and say "I'm going to skip Advisor because of Militia", but people should look at boards with Militia and Advisor and say "I'm going to buy Militia because of Advisor".

It's clear to me that our concepts of ideas like "card strength" and "counter" aren't compatible, so I'm done with this one.
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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #42 on: October 17, 2013, 11:38:08 am »
0

One to note here is a bunch of advisors + vault. This quickly gets your deck rolling against Militia. Of course a few faults/golds are necessary to counter the fact that he is going to discard them.
Warehouse would be a better example.

Advisor works well in general with cards that like big hands but don't care what cards they are (e.g. Vault), but you need a high density of those cards so that your opponent can't just skip them.  Those cards are (obviously) hurt by discard attacks.  At $5, it's hard to get a high density of vaults.  So I don't think advisor rescues a vault deck from militia attacks particularly well.  Vault works really well when it can just find that one gold - high card variance is no problem to a vault - while advisor works well in a completely different kind of deck. 
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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #43 on: October 17, 2013, 11:45:25 am »
0

Forge has a strong synergy with Advisor that might be worth mentioning in the "works well with" section.  Forge likes big hands full of junk, and then, if you manage to forge down, the result is an advisor-friendly deck.  (Forge also works well with workshops since it can turn two $4s into a province, and gainers are a reason to go for advisors.)

I can see a counter-argument in that if you need the forge to do your trashing, well, that's very late trashing, so maybe it's not an advisor board after all.  Forge is pretty weak in general, but it seems like this might be one of the cases where it can shine.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2013, 12:01:02 pm by flies »
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lespeutere

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #44 on: October 17, 2013, 02:00:41 pm »
0

Forge has a strong synergy with Advisor that might be worth mentioning in the "works well with" section.  Forge likes big hands full of junk, and then, if you manage to forge down, the result is an advisor-friendly deck.  (Forge also works well with workshops since it can turn two $4s into a province, and gainers are a reason to go for advisors.)

I can see a counter-argument in that if you need the forge to do your trashing, well, that's very late trashing, so maybe it's not an advisor board after all.  Forge is pretty weak in general, but it seems like this might be one of the cases where it can shine.

If your deck is in a position to consist of "big hands" full of junk, you have to get pretty lucky to hold (at least one) advisor and forge in one hand. Otherwise, Forge is most likely to be discarded (edge cases as usual: aside) and you'll probably only have one.
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