Well then!
Graverobber: The fact that Graverobber only trashes Actions for benefit is, I think, going to be its big limitation. That means you need an Action-heavy deck for it to be worthwhile, and since you generally don't like getting rid of your hard-bought Actions, it'll be tough even then. Chaining Graverobbers up to Province just has to be slow and not actually worth it, like trying to build a Remodel deck. It looks to me like it needs other trashing actions to be useful most of the time- either early-game trashers you can trash for benefit (something like Steward is going to be good here, since you don't mind getting it back), or the canonical TFBs Salvager/Apprentice which like to trash good cards to begin with. And I'm sure there are Dark Ages-specific combos with cards we haven't seen yet. But my preliminary thought is that this is not a card I am going to buy that often.
Poor House: Holy Zounds! A $1 card! That gives you $4! Obviously super situational, but also pretty damn super when you can make it work. I'm generally skeptical about terminal treasure as a class of card (see the discussion about Merchant Ship and Harvest), but this has the potential to be such an incredible value. Obviously the havoc it wreaks with Upgrade/Remake is important to note- I'm inclined to think it just straightforwardly makes those two cards bad 99% of the time* when both are in the kingdom, and needs to be comboed with Villages and non-gaining trashers for full effect. I am going to have fun trying to make Poor House decks work if these cards ever become available in an online implementation.
*Or, at least, bad openers. It probably hurts Remake a lot more.
I am going to go ahead and say that Poor House is, at least for now, the best $1 card in the game bar none.
Sage: This card strikes me as something you do not want to buy in games where you also buy lots of Silver. If you have a couple top-tier Actions you want to play as much as possible, and lots of other dreck- Curse games perhaps, then Sage will be a great digger. If it just gets you Silver and stuff, okay maybe that's worth it in curse-filled slogs except why don't you just buy more Silver to begin with? And if you have lots of trashing and not much dreck, it's likely to be just a cantrip. I can see myself buying this more than Graverobber, but probably not all that often- again, unless Dark Ages leads to plenty of the sorts of games where Sage is likely to be best.
Oh, huh. Sage feels a little bit like a half-Golem to me. I could almost see a Sage/Counting House deck working.
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Feodum: Ew. Ew ew ew ew ew ew. I really don't like that this card exists in this form at ALL. I mean, sure of course there has to be a Treasure-counting alt VP card, but Silver-only still doesn't sit right with me even after Donald's explanation. He excluded Copper because it would be too similar to Gardens, but Silk Road already plays very similar to Gardens anyway, so since when is that a disqualifying factor? And I don't see why Kingdom Treasures need to be excluded, you don't always want them. (Heck, sometimes I don't want Gold.)
As for the pinata ability, it's a double-edged sword. Trashing Feodum for benefit for the Silvers and not actually going Feodum is, I suspect, going to be pretty slow and not necessarily better than just buying Silver to begin with. C.f. Treasure Map, which is a bad card that gets you four golds when you line it up: and lining up Feodum/Trasher is easier, but the immediate benefits are far lower, too. If you trash Feodum to get Silvers to feed your other Feodums, that's a tough tradeoff too. What it
does do, however, and I am frustrated just thinking about it, is throw a kick in the teeth of denial strategies. For example, Bishop is a great Gardens counter, but if you're going for a slim Bishop deck you may not be as able to just blithely buy and trash Feodums.
Obviously, it's going to be great with Silver-gainers like B-crat and Explorer; I suspect a Jack deck will still just want to go Province anyway, though I could see it possibly grabbing Feodums over Duchy in the endgame. In general this is a card that is going to be ill-suited to rush strategies, and instead feature mostly as cheap Duchies in silver-flood decks that get most of their points from Province. I can also predict with confidence that I'm going to hate this card.
Cultist: I don't see how this can be anything but super strong. While Ruins don't hurt nearly as much as Curse, a self-chainable junk-giving card that can find itself, and then gives you a bonus late-game when the Ruins are depleted, is going to dominate games nearly as much as Witch. (This is because the fact Curse being a dead card is usually even more harmful than the -1 VP.) I suspect chaining Cultists is going to be not very common in practice, because if all the players go Cultist like they probably should your deck is going to get junked up and it'll be hard to line them up often. The when-trash bonus, however, is going to be really nice in games with trashing, which balances the fact that the presence of trashing is obviously going to take the sting off of Ruins a bit when it exists.
Ruined Market: Yeah, as mentioned by others this is actually probably one of the more useful Ruins. These things may not be as bad as Curse, but I sure as heck won't want a deck full of them.
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Day 3!
Squire: Even without the on-trash ability, this looks like a nifty utility card for
both engines and alt-VP matchups. It can be half a Fishing Village if it collides with your other actions, it can be a mondo +Buy source (+2 Buys! It's finally been done!), and Silver gain for $2 is a darn good value in decks where you want to flood Silver. Compare
just the silver gain option to Explorer: it gives you $1 less this turn (don't forget it always gives you a buck), and for that meager downside it's $3 cheaper and does
so many more other things. So, as a Silver gainer for alt-VP it's a fantastic value. As A Village it's probably not a great value, but on boards where you need it it can't be much worse than the Natives; and the +Buys are great for both alt-VP and engine. All this, and flexibility, for $2? Seems damn strong for pretty much anything that isn't terminal draw BM.
And that's not even beginning to consider the on-trash effect! Yikes. I'm going to go ahead and say the on-trash effect is probably not nearly as powerful as it seems; it's the Treasure Map problem again that you have to line up your trasher and your Squire, which is often going to be an inefficient crapshoot. Also, you may be overpaying for Squire, and in many kingdoms there either won't be trashing or there won't be Attacks. (In general I'm not sure I like this proliferation of effects that are dead on certain boards, starting with Tunnel). I can see it being a really good way to slingshot up to Familiar or Goons, but even the $5 Attacks I think I'll usually want to just buy the old-fashioned way.
Hermit/Madman: I...uh...wuh...buh. I'm really not sure there's anything intelligent I can say about these two. I kind of expected to see a trasher that rooted through the discard, actually, so that's neat. The no-Treasure restriction makes it look JoaT-esque, and I could see it being used in that capacity (gain Silver, pitch Estate) on boring boards. There are also probably going to be lots of other good cheap cards to get out of Dark Ages (Poor House, Squire anyone?), so it'll have some extra flexibility in engines that way. But another thing I'm noticing is that the trashers we've seen so far- Graverobber, Hermit- both don't work on Coppers. With Dark Ages' theme of poverty, it might be hard to get rid of those Coppers in general, which will ding Poor House for sure (and a lot of other cards).
As for Madman, I just have no idea. When is it worth it to pass on your buy phase to get a Madman? Just how powerful
is it? Obviously it's powerful, but you've got to jump through a lot of hoops for a one-shot. I have no idea what do with it at all. (Actually, that's a lie. Horn of Plenty decks are going to
love Madman. But beyond that I'm totally stumped.)
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Day 4:
Rats: A cantrip trasher for $4. Pretty nice, huh. Except if it's your only source of trashing it really is just going to spread through your deck like a plague (har har), and you'll be left with either a lot of dead cards or trashing everything good. There's probably a way you can play with fire here- Bishop is the first thing that comes to mind- but my first impression is that you're likely to get burned pretty often if you go Rats. Definitely looks like it needs some other source of trashing to be viable, and if you have other trashing that makes it less attractive in the first place. My first impression is therefore that this is probably really weak, but it could infrequently usable be part of a coordinated trashing strategy with something that doesn't hit Copper, say (Hermit!), and then ends up spending most of its Actions keeping the rat problem in check. Which could work, but also could be more trouble than it's worth.
Pillage: Targeted discard! And the way to balance it is to make it a one-shot, that's actually kind of brilliant. At this point Donald is just pretty clearly f***ing with us. Tomorrow's preview is goin g to include a cantrip Moat, you heard it here first. Now, a one-shot $5 is hard to go for even if the shot is nasty, so it seems to include Spoils as a way to rebalance it. The combined effect of one-shot targeted discard, with an aftereffect of two Golds in your next pass through, is that this looks like something that's going to be
great for Big Money decks playing versus an engine. Knock out your opponents' key card, and get a one-time cash infusion sure to be good for a Province or two.
But it does nothing for you the turn you play it, which is more often than not the hallmark of a weak attack (Saboetur, Bureaucrat). A nasty, nasty card whose power level I am very unsure of.
Spoils: Now, see, it would've been great if Feodums counted Spoils. Though you'd have to store them up and not use them then. I wonder if all the Spoils-giving cards are one-shots that give Spoils to provide recompense for their fleeting nature, or if one of them gets you a Spoils and sticks around. That might make it easier to run this pile out. Obviously most decks will be thrilled to add some Spoils to their warchest, but relying on Spoils as your primary source of income could lead to nasty over-greening problems after they're gone.
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In general, yeah these Shelters are going to be better than Estates four you, yeah. Also, more $1 cards! Necropolis in particular looks like it's really nice for making double-terminal openings more viable, the other two will be good to get out of the way but I can imagine preferring Estate to them once in awhile. Shelters are going to really seriously hurt Remake, since getting Silver from your starting Estates is the reason it's so good; but on the other hand they will be yet another boost for Fairgrounds, even if 2/3 of them only actually benefit you as they leave your deck.