My overall argument is that +card and +coin are actually pretty close in power on a terminal card. Card is better overall, but coin is not far behind can become preferable depending on the board.
As I already pointed out, Wharf and Merchant Ship are the clearest illustration of why cards are superior to coins. Of course you can analyze the duration effect of both cards as double Peddler respectively double Lab but this doesn't change the fact that cards are usually better than coins. You wanna get through your deck and usually draw something better than copper midgame.
On a sidenote, I think that it is moderately irrelevant to make this seperation between terminal and non-terminal. Of course you need to stick with this assumption to maintain your argument as everybody knows that Lab is far better than Peddler.
So that was a typo in your previous post then. Just checking.
Card is better than coin. I'm not arguing that. But the gap is smaller and fuzzier when it comes to terminals, as demonstrated by my gradient of vanilla examples above (PPE: and re-quoted below). Wharf vs. Merchant Ship are not as relevant to the degree of power difference here because they have a non-terminal component. And in the end, they both cost $5. The difference between Wharf and Merchant Ship is smaller than the difference between Lab, Peddler and Silver.
If you're going to call the importance of terminality irrelevant, you should provide a counterexample. I've already provided evidence for this commonly accepted understanding.
Of course there is nothing wrong with an engine that consists of some villages and some terminal coin cards like Pirate Ship or Harvest or whatever. But usually you want the virtual coins if anywhere on your villages and terminal draws just to terminally draw. As faust has pointed out, the mixture of both seems to be inferior to the pure versions. For example a mixture between Merchant Ship and Wharf sounds pretty weak (it'd probably still be a 5$ but most of the time inferior to either of the individual cards) to me. It neither has enough draw power nor does it provide enough coins to make you able to run a pure engine instead of getting some gold.
That is ALSO something that I already pointed out. You keep arguing against me with stuff I wrote first. It is a confusing style of rhetoric.
About Mercenary, this is obviously a joke. Very often you do not have an extra action when you draw with this card. As it is first and above all a trasher it illustrates that DXV has not done any real mixture between terminal draw and virtual coins except for a trasher which rarely can use its little bonus. Ample of terminal draws, ample of terminal silvers and other terminal virtual coins, only one mixture of both. The reason for this fact is faust's point: the mxiture of both is weak.
Is it terminal draw? Does it provide virtual coins? Then it is a REAL mixture between terminal draw and virtual coins and a counterexample to your earlier claim. And again, faust's point was my point first. Man, I'll even quote myself. It is literally right above the snippet you quoted.
The theoretical terminal +$3 is relevant because it is another step on subbing vanilla bonus for vanilla bonus. Here they all are:
A) +3 cards: Smithy, a decent $4 card
B) +2 cards, +$1: the first form of Plantation, under debate
C) +1 card, +$2: something that shouldn't exist
D) +$3: a theoretical decent $5 card
All of one or the other is preferable because you'll buy that card for a specific purpose and being a generalist is generally less useful. Option C is a special case of unfunness because +1 card isn't enough to be helpful for draw in an engine and can hurt you when you draw something dead. Option B is still OK though. I agree that it's weaker than a flat +3 cards, but it's still OK. +2 cards can suffice for an engine and +$1 is an OK extra bonus.
And for fun, I'll also quote this instance of you arguing at me with my own point, in case I was too subtle about it earlier:
The relevant issue seems to be, as always, not these theoretical musings but the empirical facts, i.e. what Asper told about playtesting: that the Winter/Summer part of Plantation is played most often.
Also note that it will usually be in its stronger version for more than half the game since you won't be playing it much in Spring, if at all, and the on-gain effect will also tilt time in its favour.
I guess I should be happy that you agree with my ideas when it's not me posting them?
This pseudo-complaining about the combination of +Cards and +Coins has gone on long enough. If you don't like it, there are two options here: don't buy it when it's in the Kingdom; or suggest something to Cookie and Asper that will make it better without increasing the word count or changing the flavor - if you do an amazing job, they've been known to thoroughly investigate suggestions. If you can't do better, I suppose you also would never buy Pawn and choose +1 Card and +(1), lest you become a hypocrite; sometimes you just want a card and a coin. (INB4: "Pawn isn't terminal draw.")
The "discussion" has devolved from being constructive criticism and clarifications to arguing over a moot point. If you want to continue debating the relative power of the four possible combinations of +Cards and +Coins totaling 3 bonuses, start a new thread in the appropriate location - I doubt saying "I don't like it" will change the card text.
I apologize for being aggressive, but Weavile have been know to have short tempers, and you guys are diluting my enjoyment.
I appreciate the sentiment, but this isn't even close to being a derailment. Why stop relevant discussion? I think the card works so I'm going to defend it.