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ednever

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Short Article on Advisor
« on: August 16, 2013, 07:08:17 pm »
+26

Advisor

The subject of bad advice memes the world over. Advisor is to Lab how Envoy is Hunting Grounds. But where Envoy gives you the best 4 of 5 cards (20% of your best cards), Advisor gives you only the best 2 of 3 (33% of your best cards gone). That difference is as important to how Advisor is played as the extra action is. Read on young grasshopper!


So is Advisor a good card?

Like most cards in Dominion (exceptions: Wharf, Cursers, Goons, etc.) "It depends."

In Advisor's case it depends more than most.

Because you are losing a third of your best cards, one of three things need to be true in order for Advisor to be viable:

(1) The difference between your best cards and your average/bad cards is low (i.e., you have trashed all your bad cards, so anything you draw is pretty good)
(2) Your ratio of good:bad cards is high (i.e., you don't have very many bad cards, or you have a LOT of average/good cards so you rarely get stuck with two bad cards in an Advisor draw)
(3) You have cards that don't care about quality - they just want quantity (i.e., Cellar, Warehouse, Vault, etc.)

Three specific notes worth mentioning:
(1) Cantrips are fantastic.
If your three cards drawn are Spy, Pearl Diver and Menagerie - then there isn't much your opponent can do to stop you from getting two average cards (rather than 2/3 of your worst cards). This also means that Advisors are synergistic: If you draw an Advisor with an Advisor, it makes for a tough call on which card for your opponent to discard (if your deck is well set-up for Advisors then they should likely discard the Advisor...)

(2) "Key" Cards are a bane
If you have a key power card, you can bet your bottom dollar it will be discarded when you play Advisor. The only way you will get it is if you draw it in your initial hand, or you get it with one of your other draw cards. So Advisor works better with cards you want to SPAM (Minion, cantrips as per above, Lab, Wharf, etc.) than cards you want one or two of (Cursers, Tactician (but see special case below), Militia, etc.)

(3) Drawing your deck
One special case to the needing a consistent deck is if you have enough horsepower to draw your whole deck. In this case you play the Advisors first to get as much as you can in your hand, and then finish it off with your other draw cards (you definitely need at least cantrips to make this work). Tactician can help a lot here. If Double Tactician is Kingdom friendly then starting with a ten card hand helps you draw everything a lot easier. Even if your other Tactician is being discarded - it doesn't matter if your other cards can pick it up later.

When to buy Advisor
Usually in the mid game after you've got a deck set up that supports it. At the start of the game you have a bad deck (Coppers and Estates) with a few good cards you have just bought. An early Advisor is a good way to have those key early cards discarded. Wait until you have a high density of valuable cards, or after you've trashed your deck down so the initial coppers and estates are pretty much gone.


The End Game
The other thing Advisor needs is a way to green fast. As soon as you start adding green to your deck Advisor turns into a way to get lots of green in your hand. You need a solution before you start heading down the Advisor path:

(1) A way to handle the green (Crossroads, Cellar, Warehouse, etc.)
(2) A way to avoid greening for a long time (Basically being able to end in one or two mega turns)


Concluding Thoughts
In the right situations Advisor is a Lab for $4 - which is pretty spectacular. You can pick it up with Workshop or Ironworks. Caravan is already a power $4 card and it is nowhere near as good as Lab in most cases. So when Advisor is, it can be bonkers.

In the wrong situation (slogs for example) Advisor is worse than useless. It actually can cause you to miss your best cards and get stuck with hands full of Estates and Curses.


Advisor works with:

Good Trashing
Cheap Cantrips
Spamable cards
Mega turns (including Tokens - see there was a reason Advisor was in the Guilds Expansion)
The ability to draw your entire deck


Advisor works poorly with:

Slogs
"Key Cards" that are significantly better than your average (including many attacks)
Cards you only want 1-2 of in your deck (Sea Hag for example)


Sample Games:
Just one for now: http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130816/log.516d0e09e4b082c74d7aacc1.1376692666755.txt

-=-=-=-
Comments welcome and will be included in edits.

Ed
« Last Edit: August 16, 2013, 07:33:10 pm by ednever »
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blueblimp

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #1 on: August 16, 2013, 07:21:41 pm »
0

Advisor is to Lab how Envoy is the Smithy. But where Envoy gives you the best 4 of 5 cards (20% of your best cards), Advisor gives you only the best 2 of 3 (33% of your best cards gone). That difference is enough that Envoy is priced the same as Smithy, but Advisor would be a terrible card if it were priced at $5.
This analysis is missing that Envoy draws 4 cards net after the discard, more than Smithy's 3, while Advisor's 2 net-after-discard is the same as Lab's 2. It's not about percentages.

In the case of Envoy, its discard penalty is necessary because drawing 4 is quite strong. It's Hunting Grounds's vanilla bonus and that costs $6. Council Room draws 4 but has a severe penalty. Wharf draws 4 over the course of two turns, and is one of the strongest cards in the game.

If anything, I'd say Advisor is to Lab as Envoy is to Hunting Grounds, but that's not a perfect comparison either, because of the percentages, as you point out. Also being non-terminal helps Advisor a lot, so at least you're not drawing actions dead ever.
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ednever

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #2 on: August 16, 2013, 07:29:00 pm »
0

Good point. It is more Hunting Grounds than Smithy. Updated now!
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StrongRhino

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #3 on: August 16, 2013, 08:29:14 pm »
0

Also, Envoy gives you the worst 4 of 5 cards, not the best.
Nice article though, advisor is an interesting card.
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DG

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #4 on: August 16, 2013, 08:34:58 pm »
0

Parental Advisory - Explicitly bad content.

I see the advisor as a really bad card that can sometimes be fixed by good play. If you want it to draw treasure then even a moat is better, so the advisor must fit with action cards. However whatever you want to do to your deck the advisor ensures that the cards you want to do it with are in the discard pile. Even if you buy cards to fix the advisor's problems the advisor might put those solutions into the discard pile for you. So a goons or bishop might stop your deck choking on green cards but only if you get to play them. 

Quote
If you draw an Advisor with an Advisor, it makes for a tough call on which card for your opponent to discard (if your deck is well set-up for Advisors then they should likely discard the Advisor...)

I think this is the acid test for an advisor. If you can't get into this situation then you probably shouldn't be buying advisors. I think the positive feedback on drawing advisors can be quantified as well. If your opponent has the choice of discarding a good card or an advisor then they are weighing up drawing two poor cards vs one good card. However if one of those poor cards is still an advisor then it becomes three poor cards vs one good card, and if there still an advisor left it becomes four poor cards vs one good card, and so on.
« Last Edit: August 16, 2013, 09:12:35 pm by DG »
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eHalcyon

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #5 on: August 16, 2013, 08:39:40 pm »
+1

On your "three things", 1 and 2 are pretty similar in meaning.  Basically you want a homogeneous or high quality deck.  You have to be careful with the third thing -- even if you just care about quantity, note that those specific cards can themselves be discarded.  Having a big hand is not as great for you if I discard the Vault from your Advisor draw.

The article could mention how to play Advisor.  Generally speaking, you probably want to play Advisor as early as you can.  For example, if you have Advisor and Village in hand, playing the Advisor first gives the opponent less information.  If Advisor draws 2 terminals, maybe they should leave you with both if one of them ends up a dead card.
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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #6 on: August 17, 2013, 09:13:00 pm »
0

Where did the Advisor meme go...
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Awaclus

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #7 on: August 17, 2013, 09:45:34 pm »
0

What about Advisor/Chapel opening? If you connect them, it's great, and if you don't, you don't have to play the Advisor. I think it's better than Silver/Chapel for Advisor decks, because trashing Estates is so much more better than trashing Coppers than it usually is, but worse than gainer/Chapel. However, I'm not at all confident about this, so any input from more experienced players would be highly appreciated.
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blueblimp

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #8 on: August 17, 2013, 11:20:27 pm »
+2

What about Advisor/Chapel opening? If you connect them, it's great, and if you don't, you don't have to play the Advisor. I think it's better than Silver/Chapel for Advisor decks, because trashing Estates is so much more better than trashing Coppers than it usually is, but worse than gainer/Chapel. However, I'm not at all confident about this, so any input from more experienced players would be highly appreciated.
Opening Chapel, your major problem is getting enough buying power after trashing your coppers. I can't see how Advisor would help with this much.
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PSGarak

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #9 on: August 18, 2013, 12:06:32 am »
+2

Fun combo: Advisor/Crossroads. It's strategically similar to (3) Cards that don't care about quality, in that you don't mind getting Advisored into a handful of estates. But the real fun is the headgames your opponent gets caught up in, trying to figure if you have an Crossroads in hand and whether making you discard your estate is actually a good play.
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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #10 on: August 18, 2013, 02:37:21 am »
+1

Open Advisor/Chapel, play Advisor turn 3, opponent forces you to discard Chapel, curse your "bad luck"
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Awaclus

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #11 on: August 18, 2013, 10:48:32 am »
0

Open Advisor/Chapel, play Advisor turn 3, opponent forces you to discard Chapel, curse your "bad luck"
You don't have to play the Advisor.
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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #12 on: August 18, 2013, 11:47:28 am »
0

Open Advisor/Chapel, play Advisor turn 3, opponent forces you to discard Chapel, curse your "bad luck"
You don't have to play the Advisor.

So if you draw it with no Chapel on T3 you don't play it? (And if you draw it on T4 with Chapel yet to come you certainly don't?) Sounds like it has significantly higher odds of going to waste than Silver. And as blueblimp said, even at its best it doesn't really address the core Chapel problem, so it seems rather high-risk low-reward.
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Awaclus

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #13 on: August 18, 2013, 02:17:40 pm »
0

Open Advisor/Chapel, play Advisor turn 3, opponent forces you to discard Chapel, curse your "bad luck"
You don't have to play the Advisor.

So if you draw it with no Chapel on T3 you don't play it? (And if you draw it on T4 with Chapel yet to come you certainly don't?) Sounds like it has significantly higher odds of going to waste than Silver. And as blueblimp said, even at its best it doesn't really address the core Chapel problem, so it seems rather high-risk low-reward.
Yeah, unless you're sure that getting the extra dollars is worth having your Chapel miss your first reshuffle. And it does address the "core Chapel problem" when successful; at first, you're trashing Estates instead of Coppers, which lets you purchase more buying power pretty fast. The odds of failing are relatively high, but they're lower than 50%, and while the reward is low, the disadvantage after failing is low as well.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #14 on: August 18, 2013, 03:05:49 pm »
+1

Open Advisor/Chapel, play Advisor turn 3, opponent forces you to discard Chapel, curse your "bad luck"
You don't have to play the Advisor.

So if you draw it with no Chapel on T3 you don't play it? (And if you draw it on T4 with Chapel yet to come you certainly don't?) Sounds like it has significantly higher odds of going to waste than Silver. And as blueblimp said, even at its best it doesn't really address the core Chapel problem, so it seems rather high-risk low-reward.
Yeah, unless you're sure that getting the extra dollars is worth having your Chapel miss your first reshuffle. And it does address the "core Chapel problem" when successful; at first, you're trashing Estates instead of Coppers, which lets you purchase more buying power pretty fast. The odds of failing are relatively high, but they're lower than 50%, and while the reward is low, the disadvantage after failing is low as well.

If the benefit of opening Advisor/Chapel is that you get to trash Estates, then Scout serves that purpose even better.  But since you'll want to be trashing Coppers eventually anyway, it doesn't actually help you that much to trash Estates first.  Moreover, if that's the benefit of Advisor, then the reward is even smaller because you could draw Chapel with your Estates even without Advisor, and you might miss all your Estates even with Advisor.  The only use case where Advisor is beneficial is when you draw it with Chapel and then Advisor draws you Estates.

I think the benefit of opening with Advisor would be to let you trash a little more quickly by cycling your deck, as well as the fact that Advisor itself will be good in a trimmed deck.

But the risk is too high.  If you draw Advisor before Chapel, it is just a dead card.  If you draw Advisor with your Estates, that's a dead hand!  The disadvantage after failing is NOT low.  Chapel games tend to be fast so having a dead hand like that could be game over right there.
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ednever

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #15 on: August 18, 2013, 05:23:25 pm »
0

It's even worse than that.

If you draw Advisor and Chaptl together on Turn 4, you may not want to play Advisor. It causes a reshuffle and will cause both the Advisor and Chaple to miss Turn 5 (and maybe 6).

It may be the right chocd to play the Advisor, but the fact it's not obviously better means that its one more case where the purchase sure isn't helping you.

Ed
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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #16 on: August 19, 2013, 01:18:43 pm »
0

Any thoughts on opening advisor?  I often do it on engine boards with some trashing just for the cycling, but I don't know if this is wise.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #17 on: August 19, 2013, 02:06:27 pm »
+2

Any thoughts on opening advisor?  I often do it on engine boards with some trashing just for the cycling, but I don't know if this is wise.

Did you read the discussion about Advisor/Chapel?  I feel that the benefit of increased cycling does not make up for the potential disaster of drawing your trasher with Advisor and getting it discarded.  If you draw Advisor first and opt not to play it, then it's just a dead card and possibly a dead hand, which is also very bad.
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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #18 on: August 21, 2013, 09:12:26 am »
0

Great article! I'll be sure to use it next time I see Advisor on the board.
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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #19 on: August 21, 2013, 10:27:01 am »
0

Any thoughts on opening advisor?  I often do it on engine boards with some trashing just for the cycling, but I don't know if this is wise.

It just doesn't make much sense, does it? You have few useful cards, your opponent will surely discard them. Advisor is like anti-Wandering Minstrel (undless you search for golds in a ruinsed deck.
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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #20 on: August 21, 2013, 11:06:44 am »
+11

Because you are losing a third of your best cards, one of three things need to be true in order for Advisor to be viable:

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Awaclus

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #21 on: October 15, 2013, 06:48:00 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.
« Last Edit: October 15, 2013, 06:51:29 am by Awaclus »
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SCSN

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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #22 on: October 15, 2013, 10:12:09 am »
0

Against Militia, you want variety

Unless you also have Menagerie, I don't see why?
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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #23 on: October 15, 2013, 10:21:55 am »
+1

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.
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Re: Short Article on Advisor
« Reply #24 on: October 15, 2013, 10:26:40 am »
0

Against Militia, you want variety

Unless you also have Menagerie, I don't see why?
Maybe he means grouping of good cards, like how you'd rather have a few Golds than a bunch of Silvers in that you need GGS to be able to Province after a Militia anyway.
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