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Author Topic: Digging Vagrant more powerful?  (Read 8164 times)

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AJD

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Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« on: September 19, 2013, 01:35:09 am »
0

Quote from: Donald X.
Vagrant: It's a Lab where the extra card is always bad. Actually that would be more powerful
—Secret History of Dark Ages

...Wait, is that true? If Vagrant were a Lab where the extra card is always bad—i.e., if it were +1 card, +1 action, dig for a Ruins, Shelter, Curse, or Victory card—wouldn't the main result of that be making you miss your good cards a lot of the time? Kind of like a worse Advisor (or anti–Hunting Party). There are boards where increasing your handsize is more important than not skipping your good cards, but it's not obvious to me that there are enough such boards to make Digging Vagrant more powerful than Vagrant.

I dunno, maybe Donald just meant "+1 Card, +1 Action, +1 more card which magically is always a bad card that coincidentally happened to be on your deck" would be more powerful, which I suppose is the case.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #1 on: September 19, 2013, 01:43:11 am »
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It's not strictly more powerful, but I'm pretty sure it's more powerful for more practical purposes. Technically you're "skipping" good cards, but it's not like you're skipping the good cards and never going to see them again. It's only the extra card that's guaranteed to be junk. All of your other sources of card draw (including drawing 5 at the end of your clean-up phase) actually become more likely to be non-junk, since the digging vagrant picked out the junk.
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qmech

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #2 on: September 19, 2013, 03:46:11 am »
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...Wait, is that true? If Vagrant were a Lab where the extra card is always bad—i.e., if it were +1 card, +1 action, dig for a Ruins, Shelter, Curse, or Victory card—wouldn't the main result of that be making you miss your good cards a lot of the time?

I'm always slightly confused by this objection to digging; sometimes you skip good cards, but sometimes you see your good cards more often.  You are going to get more variance—are there cases where this is particularly unhelpful?  I can possibly see it with Cursers early game.  Perhaps missing your Mountebank is more bad than playing it twice is good.
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Davio

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #3 on: September 19, 2013, 04:23:55 am »
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Well, consider the early game where acceleration is good. I highly doubt whether it's even true that you can play your good cards less, I would even think you get to play them more often.
There was a "proof" about Venture some time ago that it didn't really change the contents of your deck in any way or skip good cards more often than they were played.

So, after debunking that myth, let's look at the endgame. You now have considerably more bad cards, so you'll accelerate less, but you'll dig up the dirt and skip it from your next hand (if you don't reshuffle during clean-up of course) and this is generally good. Consider a hand of 5 Vagrants which turns into 5 random cards and 5 bad cards. Without a reshuffle it leaves the rest of the deck with a considerably higher quality.

It's kind of like what Scout wanted to be. The trick is probably not to overdo it, since there's no use if you're going to keep shuffling the bad cards in after your turn.
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Warfreak2

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #4 on: September 19, 2013, 07:25:07 am »
+2

Here's a simple way to understand the effect digging has on your deck contents: if you cut your deck at a random point, the quality in the half you take will on average be the same as the entire deck, because you're just choosing a random set of cards out of your whole deck. However, if you cut your deck at the point where you find your first Curse, you are now choosing a random set of cards out of your whole deck minus that Curse. Imagine your deck only contains one Curse: a digging Vagrant always leaves you with a random set of cards guaranteed not to contain a Curse. Likewise, if Copper is a worse than average card, when Venture hits a Copper it (on average) slightly improves your deck quality. Sage and Golem on average decrease your deck quality, but not by very much, and they increase the quality of the current turn by a lot more.
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SirPeebles

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #5 on: September 19, 2013, 07:56:38 am »
+9

We were getting dangerously close to having a dozen people all post the same thing, so here's a pirate:

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pacovf

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #6 on: September 19, 2013, 08:23:31 am »
+3

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1914.0

EDIT : I use the term "bad cards" to refer to "Curse, Ruins, Shelter or Victory cards".

If there's EXACTLY ONE "bad card" in your drawing deck (not your whole deck), it will take it away, so the proportion of "bad cards" in your drawing deck is reduced -> good effect

If there's MORE THAN ONE "bad card" in your drawing deck, it doesn't affect the proportion of "bad cards" in your drawing deck at all -> neutral effect (the mathematical demonstration is in the link up there)

If there's exactly ZERO "bad cards" in your drawing deck, you will have to shuffle your discard pile, and then you will find yourself with more, or at least just as many, "bad cards" than before (since you had zero...) -> bad effect

Because of the number of "bad cards" that are in your deck (you start with three estates, and it usually grows from there), you will usually find yourself in the second case, so vagrant that digs for "bad cards" doesn't really improve your deck quality.


A vagrant that digs for bad cards would be better because it always increases your hand size, and because it offers you some choices (abandoned mine, province for tournament/explorer, etc), and for the cycling effect, not because it improves the quality of your deck. A vagrant that digs for a bad card and then shuffles the revealed cards back into the drawing deck would improve your draw deck, though.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2013, 10:56:24 am by pacovf »
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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #7 on: September 19, 2013, 09:48:11 am »
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If it dug for a "bad" card, it wouldn't combo with Mystic anymore, which it what I use it for most often. It would probably be more powerful overall, though, combining with various sifters and cards that trash from your hand.
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AJD

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #8 on: September 19, 2013, 10:02:54 am »
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Well, consider the early game where acceleration is good. I highly doubt whether it's even true that you can play your good cards less, I would even think you get to play them more often.
There was a "proof" about Venture some time ago that it didn't really change the contents of your deck in any way or skip good cards more often than they were played.

Hmm so. I get that, but I'm stuck on this:

If you have a deck where your only draw comes from Vagrants, you will see all of your cards in hand each reshuffle, including your Curses and Shelters but also including your Mountebank and Platinums.

If you have a deck where your only draw comes from Digging Vagrants, then each reshuffle, you will still see all your Curses and Shelters, but you have some nonzero probability of missing your Mountebank and Platinums. And all the cards you have a nonzero probability of missing are better than all the cards you're guaranteed to see.

Is the paradox resolved just by the fact that you cycle faster, and thus you have more reshuffles, and this compensates for the fact that on some shuffles you skip good cards?
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SirPeebles

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #9 on: September 19, 2013, 02:22:49 pm »
+1

Well, consider the early game where acceleration is good. I highly doubt whether it's even true that you can play your good cards less, I would even think you get to play them more often.
There was a "proof" about Venture some time ago that it didn't really change the contents of your deck in any way or skip good cards more often than they were played.

Hmm so. I get that, but I'm stuck on this:

If you have a deck where your only draw comes from Vagrants, you will see all of your cards in hand each reshuffle, including your Curses and Shelters but also including your Mountebank and Platinums.

If you have a deck where your only draw comes from Digging Vagrants, then each reshuffle, you will still see all your Curses and Shelters, but you have some nonzero probability of missing your Mountebank and Platinums. And all the cards you have a nonzero probability of missing are better than all the cards you're guaranteed to see.

Is the paradox resolved just by the fact that you cycle faster, and thus you have more reshuffles, and this compensates for the fact that on some shuffles you skip good cards?

Those extra Curses that you are seeing are bonus draws.  Unless you planning on using the Curse while it is in your hand, or trigger a reshuffle, Digging Vagrant would just as well discard the dug card when it is junk rather than draw it.
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Asper

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #10 on: September 19, 2013, 03:03:45 pm »
+1

If there's exactly ZERO "bad cards" in your drawing deck, you will have to shuffle your discard pile, and then you will find yourself with more, or at least just as many, "bad cards" than before (since you had zero...) -> bad effect

Unless you are greening, the cards in your discard are often better on average than your deck. Cycling is not a bad effect.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2013, 03:04:47 pm by Asper »
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blueblimp

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #11 on: September 19, 2013, 05:17:47 pm »
+1

If there's exactly ZERO "bad cards" in your drawing deck, you will have to shuffle your discard pile, and then you will find yourself with more, or at least just as many, "bad cards" than before (since you had zero...) -> bad effect

Unless you are greening, the cards in your discard are often better on average than your deck. Cycling is not a bad effect.
That's true, but pacovf was just addressing whether it's cleaning your draw deck for you. Cycling is a separate consideration, and yeah it's usually a good thing (but not always). Triggering a reshuffle also causes the contents of your hand to miss the shuffle, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad.
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Davio

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #12 on: September 20, 2013, 03:06:27 am »
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Cycling is very hard to write any proofs about, I think.

How about when you are getting X Curses every run through?
How much good cards would you need to come out ahead after a cycle and what is the minimum quality of those cards?
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #13 on: September 20, 2013, 05:33:50 am »
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http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1914.0

If there's EXACTLY ONE "bad card" in your drawing deck (not your whole deck), it will take it away, so the proportion of "bad cards" in your drawing deck is reduced -> good effect

If there's MORE THAN ONE "bad card" in your drawing deck, it doesn't affect the proportion of "bad cards" in your drawing deck at all -> neutral effect (the mathematical demonstration is in the link up there)

If there's exactly ZERO "bad cards" in your drawing deck, you will have to shuffle your discard pile, and then you will find yourself with more, or at least just as many, "bad cards" than before (since you had zero...) -> bad effect

Because of the number of "bad cards" that are in your deck (you start with three estates, and it usually grows from there), you will usually find yourself in the second case, so vagrant that digs for "bad cards" doesn't really improve your deck quality.


A vagrant that digs for bad cards would be better because it always increases your hand size, and because it offers you some choices (abandoned mine, province for tournament/explorer, etc), and for the cycling effect, not because it improves the quality of your deck. A vagrant that digs for a bad card and then shuffles the revealed cards back into the drawing deck would improve your draw deck, though.

At the risk of bringing up more Venture discussion (ugh), this "digging vagrant" is different from Venture because it does it during your action phase and keeps the junk card in your hand. With Venture, once you're done venturing, your turn is pretty much over (you just buy stuff); but with digging vagrant, you can subsequently play other drawing actions, which now can't draw the junk and thus have their draw improved.
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AJD

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #14 on: September 20, 2013, 05:34:01 pm »
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If you have a deck where your only draw comes from Vagrants, you will see all of your cards in hand each reshuffle, including your Curses and Shelters but also including your Mountebank and Platinums.

If you have a deck where your only draw comes from Digging Vagrants, then each reshuffle, you will still see all your Curses and Shelters, but you have some nonzero probability of missing your Mountebank and Platinums. And all the cards you have a nonzero probability of missing are better than all the cards you're guaranteed to see.

Is the paradox resolved just by the fact that you cycle faster, and thus you have more reshuffles, and this compensates for the fact that on some shuffles you skip good cards?

Those extra Curses that you are seeing are bonus draws.  Unless you planning on using the Curse while it is in your hand, or trigger a reshuffle, Digging Vagrant would just as well discard the dug card when it is junk rather than draw it.

Yabbut... that's also true for regular Vagrant, and it doesn't skip your good cards. So is "skip exactly one bad card, with a nonzero probability of skipping good cards" that obviously better than "skip zero good cards, with a nonzero probability of skipping exactly one bad card"?
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SirPeebles

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #15 on: September 20, 2013, 05:50:13 pm »
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If you have a deck where your only draw comes from Vagrants, you will see all of your cards in hand each reshuffle, including your Curses and Shelters but also including your Mountebank and Platinums.

If you have a deck where your only draw comes from Digging Vagrants, then each reshuffle, you will still see all your Curses and Shelters, but you have some nonzero probability of missing your Mountebank and Platinums. And all the cards you have a nonzero probability of missing are better than all the cards you're guaranteed to see.

Is the paradox resolved just by the fact that you cycle faster, and thus you have more reshuffles, and this compensates for the fact that on some shuffles you skip good cards?

Those extra Curses that you are seeing are bonus draws.  Unless you planning on using the Curse while it is in your hand, or trigger a reshuffle, Digging Vagrant would just as well discard the dug card when it is junk rather than draw it.

Yabbut... that's also true for regular Vagrant, and it doesn't skip your good cards. So is "skip exactly one bad card, with a nonzero probability of skipping good cards" that obviously better than "skip zero good cards, with a nonzero probability of skipping exactly one bad card"?

Well clearly it isn't obvious one way or the other.  Probablity does not seem to be intuitive for humans.  But one can check that, speaking in terms of expected outcomes, the two variants have no difference unless a reshuffle is triggered.  If a reshuffle is triggered, and if your discard and discard started with equal average quality, then the reshuffled deck will be cleaner than what you started with.  Since the digger triggers more reshuffles, that is a plus.  Of course, these reshuffles miss any cards in hand/play.

If you had enough diggers, they could comb through, draw all of your junk into your hand, and then trigger a cleansed reshuffle.  That would probably be rare though, unless an engine is used to gather your diggers, in which case your engine would miss that shuffle too.
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pacovf

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #16 on: September 21, 2013, 11:13:41 am »
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At the risk of bringing up more Venture discussion (ugh), this "digging vagrant" is different from Venture because it does it during your action phase and keeps the junk card in your hand. With Venture, once you're done venturing, your turn is pretty much over (you just buy stuff); but with digging vagrant, you can subsequently play other drawing actions, which now can't draw the junk and thus have their draw improved.

The venture and the digging vagrant cases are the same, neither of them "clean" the draw deck of their respective type of card, unless there's exactly one card of that type in your draw deck. Blueblimp's demonstration doesn't take into account what you are doing with your draw deck, only its composition. It does increase the variance in the number of times you are going to see a specific card, though, I don't know if that is what you meant ?

I for one don't mind more venture discussion, but maybe it's because this is only the third I've read.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2013, 11:15:45 am by pacovf »
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DG

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #17 on: September 21, 2013, 11:42:45 am »
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Let's not get a venture discussion because people make statements that are not strictly correct and this leads to confusion. It's already happened in this thread but I will not open that can worms. The effects of a venture on your deck (in general), your current draw deck, and your hand are all slightly different.

This sort of hunting party for bad cards is not good economy by itself. It is only good when combined with trashing and discarding but that alone may have made it too unbalanced. The other use is presumably to collect bad cards in your hand and ensure that you reshuffle before the end of your turn, which doesn't sound so ridiculous when you consider how similar they are to hunting parties.
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manthos88

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #18 on: September 25, 2013, 05:05:13 pm »
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Man, you re talking about a $2 card, that is a cantrip. How much more than that could it possibly do (think of Pearl Diver, for example)?? What it basically does, is that it can possibly clear your deck from your "junk". Of course, just one of them won't help, -you 'll probably need 2-3 of them at least to do something, -and you will also probably need an engine to make them work. Additionally, you can make a strategy based on Vagrants. For example, you can combine them with Crossroads for greater drawing power, or you can rely on them to find your ruins for your Death Cart to trash. Additionally, you could buy a few Curses/Ruins when you have trashers that need target (Forager, Trade Route, etc) and find them with the help of your Vagrants.
And other than that, it's always a welcome help for those strategies that want big handsize (Vault, Warehouse, etc) and it can prove to be a great card when there are no filterers on the board...

I like Vagrant, in general. It's cheap and it's what im definitely gonna buy for $2, when i have a +Buy left, or when i'm not sure what i want to buy.
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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #19 on: September 26, 2013, 04:08:36 am »
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Here's a simple way to understand the effect digging has on your deck contents: if you cut your deck at a random point, the quality in the half you take will on average be the same as the entire deck, because you're just choosing a random set of cards out of your whole deck. However, if you cut your deck at the point where you find your first Curse, you are now choosing a random set of cards out of your whole deck minus that Curse. Imagine your deck only contains one Curse: a digging Vagrant always leaves you with a random set of cards guaranteed not to contain a Curse. Likewise, if Copper is a worse than average card, when Venture hits a Copper it (on average) slightly improves your deck quality. Sage and Golem on average decrease your deck quality, but not by very much, and they increase the quality of the current turn by a lot more.

This is completely right and should be the end of the discussion.
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DG

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #20 on: September 26, 2013, 07:35:14 am »
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Quote
This is completely right and should be the end of the discussion.

No it isn't right but it should still be the end of he discussion! Go back and look at the previous threads. The maths is more complicated and has been fully thrashed out before.
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blueblimp

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #21 on: September 26, 2013, 11:57:43 am »
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Here's a simple way to understand the effect digging has on your deck contents: if you cut your deck at a random point, the quality in the half you take will on average be the same as the entire deck, because you're just choosing a random set of cards out of your whole deck. However, if you cut your deck at the point where you find your first Curse, you are now choosing a random set of cards out of your whole deck minus that Curse. Imagine your deck only contains one Curse: a digging Vagrant always leaves you with a random set of cards guaranteed not to contain a Curse. Likewise, if Copper is a worse than average card, when Venture hits a Copper it (on average) slightly improves your deck quality. Sage and Golem on average decrease your deck quality, but not by very much, and they increase the quality of the current turn by a lot more.

This is completely right and should be the end of the discussion.
I know it's popular in internet arguments to make this sort of statement but it doesn't add any value to the discussion.
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XerxesPraelor

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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #22 on: September 26, 2013, 12:05:41 pm »
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Sorry. To add something, I think that a digging Vagrant would be way too powerful for $2. Laboratory acts like it lots of the time, it works super-amazingly with things that like hand-size, and it cleans the junk from your deck for future drawing-actions. Way too good for $2.
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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #23 on: September 26, 2013, 01:16:08 pm »
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So at what price X would

Digging Vagrant: $X
+1 card
+1 action
Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a Curse, Ruins, Shelter, or Victory Card.  Place that card in your hand and discard the rest.

be balanced?
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Re: Digging Vagrant more powerful?
« Reply #24 on: September 26, 2013, 01:45:27 pm »
+1

So at what price X would

Digging Vagrant: $X
+1 card
+1 action
Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a Curse, Ruins, Shelter, or Victory Card.  Place that card in your hand and discard the rest.

be balanced?
$3. There is little point in having it cost $4 (I don't think that a double opening will cause problems).
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