Now that we have a bit of experience with Hinterlands, it might be interesting to revisit the Top 5 lists that were featured on the site earlier this year, and see if any Hinterlands cards deserve to be Best or Worst at their price points. I suppose we could talk about Cornucopia again as well, since most of those lists predate Cornucopia's release. Might as well give my thoughts first.
The $2sFrom Cornucopia,
Hamlet obviously deserves a spot on the Best list; I don't think Hinterlands' shiny new trap cards change its placement at #2 behind only Chapel there. Cheap, flexible, and combo-licious.
The Hinterlands cards are trickier. As much as
Crossroads is not half as good as it looks, it may still squeak onto the Top 5 on the strength of $2 cards generally having puny effects to go with their puny price. It probably edges Native Village out of the Honorable Mention spot? Remember that I'd still also like to find space for Lighthouse. I'd also definitely put
Duchess on the Worst list, in fact I think it just might edge out Secret Chamber and Pearl Diver to claim the #1 spot. If Pearl Diver is mainly an exercise in "just how weak and inconsequential we can make a cantrip", Duchess does the same thing for terminal silver. I guess it's sometimes worth picking up with a Duchy in lumpy, Action-light decks, but its presence has virtually no potential to change whatever strategy the other nine cards present. While
Fool's Gold is also usually a pretty bad card, it actually does have potential to reshape and dominate strategies on favorable boards, and in recognition of that I'd probably keep it just above the Worst list.
The $3sCornucopia comes through with another top card:
Menagerie is for sure neck-and-neck with Fishing Village for the #3 spot behind Ambassador and Masquerade.
Fortune Teller is weak but not weak enough to make the Worst list; it's better than several cards which missed the Worst list first time around, like Smugglers and Black Market.
There is one Hinterlands card that I would definitely put on these lists:
Develop is IMO the very worst $3 card in the game. Yes, really! I get that it can have combo potential; I was even beaten by Develop once or twice. But it takes Hinterlands' trickiness and difficulty-to-play to an absolute extreme. It's so slow on Coppers and Estates, try it on a $3 and you'll end up top-decking Estates after a while, try it on a good card and maybe you're building your engine more but at the expense of losing a good card that you could have played for advantage this turn. In short, there are so many ways to play this card poorly, and so few ways to play it well; it's also very slow in a set that mostly rewards fast BM strategies. I feel that I'm not experienced or good enough to play Develop well, so I just avoid it and that works out well most of the time. Given how many games I've played, I think that's a damning indictment of the card. The other Hinterlands cards probably don't make any lists:
Oracle is about on par with Fortune Teller, weak but not weak enough.
Tunnel is actually quite good, as it's becoming rarer and rarer to find setups where you can't leverage its Reaction ability to get piles of Gold (Embassy and Cartographer are two of my favorite ways to do this), so I'd consider it for the Best list, but competition is stiff, as the top 4 are pretty much set in stone and we haven't even made room for Steward yet.
The $4sOkay, the $4s need a total rehaul. The Best list should be dominated by new cards, as
Remake,
Tournament, and
Jack of All Trades are simply miles better than anything we'd seen before at that price point. Remake is an elite trasher, Tournament is Tournament, and JoaT is my new most hated card in the game for the manner in which it creates a lightning-fast and super-resilient BM deck, at least in Province matches- it
actually does what people erroneously thought Envoy did. They have to be the new Top 3, in some order.
The worst $4s also need a total rehaul, not so much because new cards have replaced old slots but because the original list was by far the weakest we've seen: no way Ironworks and Cutpurse belong anywhere near the bottom when the utter stinkers Coppersmith, Pirate Ship, and Scout were ignored, and Thief isn't "honorable mention" it's the worst card in the game at any price. There is one addition I would make, though: for all people were saying
Noble Brigand was supposed to be a strictly better Thief, turns out it's also incredibly weak. It does have the obnoxious potential to force a crippling 3/2 open if you buy it Turn 1 and get really lucky, but that's pretty much it for NB's power given how often the attack just fizzles, or oh no it takes a Silver which just doesn't hurt that much. I'd find room for it near the bottom, along with Thief, Pirate Ship, Scout, Treasure Map, and I dunno, maybe Bureaucrat or Talisman or Coppersmith can take Honorable Mention.
The $5sTheory originally made three lists here, so I'll keep with the split of attacks and non-attacks. There are two new $5 attacks to consider, both of which are better than Rabble and worse than the already-existent power Top 5. I'd give
Margrave the edge over
Jester for the privilege of Honorable Mention; its attack is weaker than Militia or Torturer for sure, but the +Buy is a pretty powerful incentive to go engine-building. Getting the Council Room-Militia combo in one card is nice.
For the best non-attacks, Cornucopia's
Hunting Party stands alone. Like, #1 better than Wharf alone. Like, good enough to crack a combined Top 5 list despite the power Attacks. I don't think I'd quite put any of Hinterlands' $5 cards on the Top Non-Attacks list, but
Stables and
Cartographer have to come close. Stables is, obviously, a strong Lab variant which gives you better cycling power at the expense of absolutely forcing a Treasure-heavy deck. (The net +Cards is the same as Lab, remember). Cartographer, obviously, blows Navigator out of the water; it is a great addition to virtually every single kind of deck, whether it be Action-heavy or BM.
Embassy is also nice; interesting that giving Silver is usually a nerf but can sometimes make it even stronger!
One other thing to consider with this list: does
Ill-Gotten Gains count as an Attack for our purposes? It gives Curses, so it's obviously getting bought with Attacking intent, but it doesn't say "Attack" on it. It seems to be a strong card that forces really weird games if you rush it, and I sure don't yet have a handle on how to play it well. Maybe it would make a Best of list, but can you really justify losing cards like Vault or Apprentice?
As for the worst $5s, I would definitely consider making room for both
Mandarin and
Cache: obviously they're useful sometimes, all $5 cards are, but those times are just so rare. My sense is that Mandarin is a good buy about as often as your opponent's Ghost Ship actually helps you: the on-gain effect is supposed to be its big plus, but frankly it's usually a detriment. And none of the terminal-treasure-no-other-bonus cards are that great, look at the mediocre Harvest and Merchant Ship. The stats seem to be bearing out my intuition that Cache is sub-Contraband-level bad: people don't buy it, and they lose when they do. My sense is that the Coppers are usually a big penalty, and on the rare occasions where they're good to have, then chances are you bought Cache because you screwed up: for example, you went Spice Merchant-Stables and need more fuel, probably shoulda just skipped the Merchant. Or hey, Cache is a great defense against Noble Brigand, woo I'm so excited. Cache is now my third least-bought card after Thief and Explorer, and I honestly can't point to a single game where I didn't get it, but wish I had bought one.
The $6-plussesI've said it before, I'll say it again, I'm a broken record: Harem and Nobles ought to be switched.
Other than that,
Border Village is a great card, IMO the second-best Village, and probably deserves Honorable Mention on the Best list, kicking off Harem (should have been Nobles, there I go again). As for the worst list, I'd put
Farmland somewhere on there; it's not a bad card but the competition is so stiff at this price point. The requirement that Farmland's insta-Remodel effect be
exactly two makes it a lot less flexible and difficult to play. Guess I'd put it at third, worse than all but Adventurer and… Harem.