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[werothegreat]

I mean, think about it.  You'd never buy it for $3, and if you buy it for more than $3, you're inundating your deck with non-Bane cards - the more use you get out of Masterpiece, the less likely it is you'll have it in hand when someone else plays Young Witch.

[SirPeebles]

But Silver flooding could be nice in a nasty Curse slog.

[AJD]

I'm still voting for Embargo as worst Bane ever.

[Mr Anderson]

I agree that Embargo is the worst. It is a one-shot.

[liopoil]

moat is worst...

[Kirian]

Moat is down there too.

[LastFootnote]

I'm not sure it is the worst Bane ever. It's a Treasure, which is way easier on your deck than a terminal Action you didn't want. If you buy it for $4, you get a Silver with it. Could be a lot worse, I'd say.

[liopoil]

to explain:

consider a kingdom with young witch and every single other 2 and 3 cost in the game of dominion. The bane that makes young witch the strongest is obviously moat.

[Tables]

to explain:

consider a kingdom with young witch and every single other 2 and 3 cost in the game of dominion. The bane that makes young witch the strongest is obviously moat.

However, such a situation is purely hypothetical. In any game when Moat is the bane, well Moat doesn't get anything extra special about it* but it does mean Moat is in the game. That could matter if say there's other attacks, or if a flat +2 cards isn't terrible on the board. That doesn't mean Moat isn't necessarily the worst bane, but I would say Embargo is most likely less effective as a bane.


*excluding edge cases where blocking YW after the opponent discarded 2 cards is a notable edge

[SCSN]

to explain:

consider a kingdom with young witch and every single other 2 and 3 cost in the game of dominion. The bane that makes young witch the strongest is obviously moat.

Leaving aside that YW is completely ignorable in a kingdom with Scheme, Hamlet, Village, Forager and Watchtower, I don't see why this is true at all. If there's even just Village and some cheap source of +buy (Hamlet, CM, WV, Forager), I don't mind getting quite a few Moats, which would make YW pretty bad for you except that it has forced me to get some Moats over potentially available better drawers.

Embargo is clearly so much worse as a bane because you just don't want to keep it in your deck at all.

[liopoil]

well, the idea is that making embargo the bane DOES make me more likely to buy embargo, but if moat is the bane it doesn't make me more likely to buy moat.  I mean, in a game with embargo as bane and no moat in the kingdom, young witch is stronger than in a kingdom with moat as bane and no embargo. However, when comparing cards as bane, I'm thinking of comparing the difference between card X as bane and card X as not-bane to the difference between card Y as bane and card Y as not-bane

good point about being able to block after they discard, though that usually doesn't matter.

to explain:

consider a kingdom with young witch and every single other 2 and 3 cost in the game of dominion. The bane that makes young witch the strongest is obviously moat.

Leaving aside that YW is completely ignorable in a kingdom with Scheme, Hamlet, Village, Forager and Watchtower, I don't see why this is true at all. If there's even just Village and some cheap source of +buy (Hamlet, CM, WV, Forager), I don't mind getting quite a few Moats, which would make YW pretty bad for you except that it has forced me to get some Moats over potentially available better drawers.

Embargo is clearly so much worse as a bane because you just don't want to keep it in your deck at all.

Well, the idea is that you can get a few moats no matter what bane is, with the same effect. If embargo is bane, you have the option of getting that instead of moat to block young witch, in the very rare scenario where that is a good idea.

and yes, YW is bad in that kingdom, but that's not the point.

[SCSN]

well, the idea is that making embargo the bane DOES make me more likely to buy embargo, but if moat is the bane it doesn't make me more likely to buy moat.  I mean, in a game with embargo as bane and no moat in the kingdom, young witch is stronger than in a kingdom with moat as bane and no embargo. However, when comparing cards as bane, I'm thinking of comparing the difference between card X as bane and card X as not-bane to the difference between card Y as bane and card Y as not-bane

This is definitely the wrong way to look at it, otherwise you'd be forced to conclude that Fishing Village is a poor bane because you want to spam it anyway.

[liopoil]

I'm thinking of comparing the difference between card X as bane and card X as not-bane to the difference between card Y as bane and card Y as not-bane

This is definitely the wrong way to look at it, otherwise you'd be forced to conclude that Fishing Village is a poor bane because you want to spam it anyway.

making fishing village bane doesn't make me more likely to buy fishing village (well, it does slightly), but it makes me buying fishing village an EVEN BETTER choice than it was before, which makes fishing village a fine bane.

[SCSN]

The strength of a bane (other than Tunnel) should be determined by how bad of a purchase it makes YW compared to the situation where there is no bane at all and the card that would have been bane was removed completely from the kingdom.

Well, the idea is that you can get a few moats no matter what bane is, with the same effect.

If Moat ends up as bane, it wouldn't have been in the kingdom if something else had been selected as bane, because banes are selected after the 10 other cards. So by comparing kingdoms with Moat as bane to kingdoms where Moat is available but something else is bane, you're introducing such a gigantic sample bias as to render the comparison completely meaningless.

Given 10 random cards including YW but not {Moat, Embargo}, adding Moat as bane makes YW on average worse than adding Embargo as bane, thus Moat is the stronger one.

[liopoil]

ah, good point. That's not how I think of the bane selection happening, I think, "okay, kingdom of 11 cards, make one of them costing 2 or 3 the bane", but of course that's not how it works. so in that case, embargo is probably worst.

[markusin]

But Silver flooding could be nice in a nasty Curse slog.

[Davio]

I think Masterpiece is a decent enough bane (for $3 or more). Even if it's not a card you absolutely need, it rarely actively hurts like a terminal which you can't play due to collision.

[DG]

Masterpiece isn't such a bad bane at all. You wouldn't buy it for an opening 3 coins but it could come in useful mid game for 5 coins. If you were to just play young witch + treasure I'm guessing that a 5 coin masterpiece would be better than buying a second young witch and a 6 coin masterpiece would be better than gold. 

[AJD]

Moat is such a good Bane it even works on adult Witches!

[werothegreat]

Murrh.  I should just stick to making memes and navboxes and leave strategy to real Dominion players, shouldn't I?

[jaybeez]

Murrh.  I should just stick to making memes and navboxes and leave strategy to real Dominion players, shouldn't I?

If you never advance unsound arguments, you'll never reach an understanding of why your argument was wrong, and thus you'll never improve.  So, no, you should continue to make threads like this if you want.

Put another way, what's the point of having a forum for discussing strategy if nobody ever says something that's wrong?  Then the "discussion" would just be everyone agreeing with each other, and who does that help?

[Awaclus]

Well, Masterpiece isn't a very good bane (though not as bad as Embargo), it's just a very good counter to Young Witch, bane or not.

[SirPeebles]

You've also discovered another edge case whereupon one might spend $3 on a Masterpiece!  Which gave me an opportunity to use the word "whereupon".

[blueblimp]

I'm not sure it is the worst Bane ever. It's a Treasure, which is way easier on your deck than a terminal Action you didn't want. If you buy it for $4, you get a Silver with it. Could be a lot worse, I'd say.

Plus, if it banes a YW even once, that's sort of like trashing a Curse. So if you have $4 and spend it on a Masterpiece that happens to block a YW once, then it's vaguely like getting a Silver+Copper vs spending that $4 on a Silver and getting a Silver+Curse. (Of course, blocking that Curse later on is a lot less important than blocking it early, so the comparison isn't perfect.)

[Kirian]

Murrh.  I should just stick to making memes and navboxes and leave strategy to real Dominion players, shouldn't I?

If you never advance unsound arguments, you'll never reach an understanding of why your argument was wrong, and thus you'll never improve.  So, no, you should continue to make threads like this if you want.

Put another way, what's the point of having a forum for discussing strategy if nobody ever says something that's wrong?  Then the "discussion" would just be everyone agreeing with each other, and who does that help?

I disagree.

[NoMoreFun]

Masterpiece just being a Copper is a wasted design opportunity. I wish its top was something unique, even if it was ultimately about as powerful as a Copper.

[Archetype]

Hm but what to put there that hasn't already been done before? Maybe like 1$ "Reveal the top card of your deck, if it's a Silver, gain a Silver." Or something that doesn't make it strictly better than Silver, but can actually be an ok buy at $3.

[Awaclus]

I don't think Masterpiece should be any more complicated than it is.

[Warfreak2]

It's rubbish, but if you have a lot of money, you can justify the price tag. Art indeed :-p

[NoMoreFun]

I don't think Masterpiece should be any more complicated than it is.

I like how Stonemason is an actual, unique, card and not just a "deal". Even just a +buy, and/or making it an action that's "+2 actions, +$1" (so it antisynergises with its own overpay) would be better at making the situations where you buy masterpiece for $3 not vanishingly few.

The card as is could largely be replaced by a single card with a top half that says "When you would gain this, instead gain a Copper", and leave room for another card in the set. Same too with Cache, although being when gain instead of when buy and self containing the "good" effect means that there's more situations where the fact it's its own card matters.

[Awaclus]

I like how Stonemason is an actual, unique, card and not just a "deal". Even just a +buy, and/or making it an action that's "+2 actions, +$1" (so it antisynergises with its own overpay) would be better at making the situations where you buy masterpiece for $3 not vanishingly few.

I like how Masterpiece is an actual, unique, deal and not just a "card". You're not supposed to buy a Masterpiece for $3, much like you're not supposed to buy a Smithy for $3. Unless you've played a Highway (at least a couple of them for Masterpiece).

[NoMoreFun]

I like how Stonemason is an actual, unique, card and not just a "deal". Even just a +buy, and/or making it an action that's "+2 actions, +$1" (so it antisynergises with its own overpay) would be better at making the situations where you buy masterpiece for $3 not vanishingly few.

I like how Masterpiece is an actual, unique, deal and not just a "card". You're not supposed to buy a Masterpiece for $3, much like you're not supposed to buy a Smithy for $3. Unless you've played a Highway (at least a couple of them for Masterpiece).

Stonemason manages to be both at once.

[Awaclus]

I like how Stonemason is an actual, unique, card and not just a "deal". Even just a +buy, and/or making it an action that's "+2 actions, +$1" (so it antisynergises with its own overpay) would be better at making the situations where you buy masterpiece for $3 not vanishingly few.

I like how Masterpiece is an actual, unique, deal and not just a "card". You're not supposed to buy a Masterpiece for $3, much like you're not supposed to buy a Smithy for $3. Unless you've played a Highway (at least a couple of them for Masterpiece).

Stonemason manages to be both at once.

But the overpay part of Stonemason is so much simpler than Masterpiece. It's only natural that the on-play part of Masterpiece is simpler than Stonemason.

[NoMoreFun]

But the overpay part of Stonemason is so much simpler than Masterpiece.

Is it? They're both about as wordy, and while Masterpiece just has you consider how many silvers you want, Stonemason has you consider every card in the supply.

I'm sure that a slightly more complicated, unique card wouldn't change the fact you'd usually just buy Masterpiece for the Silvers.

The problem comes down to the fact that there's limited design space. If there were always more sets coming then it would be no issue.

[AJD]

But the overpay part of Stonemason is so much simpler than Masterpiece.

It is? Is "gain two Action cards costing $X" simpler than "gain X Silvers"?

[Awaclus]

Is it? They're both about as wordy, and while Masterpiece just has you consider how many silvers you want, Stonemason has you consider every card in the supply.

Yes, it is. The thing you're considering isn't "How much I want to overpay", it's "Do I want to purchase a Masterpiece/Stonemason considering that I can overpay this much this turn". The question is much harder for Masterpiece and requires considering every card in the supply as well (you don't want a Masterpiece if the board can't support a Masterpiece strategy).

[AJD]

Is it? They're both about as wordy, and while Masterpiece just has you consider how many silvers you want, Stonemason has you consider every card in the supply.

Yes, it is. The thing you're considering isn't "How much I want to overpay", it's "Do I want to purchase a Masterpiece/Stonemason considering that I can overpay this much this turn". The question is much harder for Masterpiece and requires considering every card in the supply as well (you don't want a Masterpiece if the board can't support a Masterpiece strategy).

I mean, I was interpreting "simpler" as meaning, just, 'easier to understand and describe what it does'. But surely Stonemason requires paying more attention to every other card in the supply than Masterpiece does—with Stonemason, you have to actually find out if there are Action cards you want costing $X. For Masterpiece, Silver is always there and almost always at least decent.

[Awaclus]

I mean, I was interpreting "simpler" as meaning, just, 'easier to understand and describe what it does'. But surely Stonemason requires paying more attention to every other card in the supply than Masterpiece does—with Stonemason, you have to actually find out if there are Action cards you want costing $X. For Masterpiece, Silver is always there and almost always at least decent.

For Masterpiece, first you have to know whether or not you want to be playing Big Money, and then you have to know whether or not you want to play a BM variant with a deck full of Silver instead of more variety. You have to take into account all of the cards for that. For Stonemason, if there are two actions you want at the same price, it's always good.

[dondon151]

But Stonemason can also gain you 2 more Stonemasons, and its strategic implication on any engine board is far more complex than Masterpiece (on a... Silver board?).

[Awaclus]

But Stonemason can also gain you 2 more Stonemasons

Well, that's complicated!

, and its strategic implication on any engine board is far more complex than Masterpiece (on a... Silver board?).

Not really, it just makes any existing engine stronger.

[dondon151]

It's complicated because it's more difficult to manage piles with Stonemason in the kingdom.

[Awaclus]

It's complicated because it's more difficult to manage piles with Stonemason in the kingdom.

More difficult to stop the game from threepiling, less difficult to make it threepile.