Mystic
A Mystic-heavy deck benefits from Scout. Imagine your hand is 4 Mystics, Scout. Playing the Scout lets you draw four new cards. The catch is that 4 Mystics guarantee you to draw 3 cards anyway, so Scout effectively never gets better than a Lab here, and getting the Lab effect requires a very high Mystic density. Still, sometimes it is good enough.
Mystic
A Mystic-heavy deck benefits from Scout. Imagine your hand is 4 Mystics, Scout. Playing the Scout lets you draw four new cards. The catch is that 4 Mystics guarantee you to draw 3 cards anyway, so Scout effectively never gets better than a Lab here, and getting the Lab effect requires a very high Mystic density. Still, sometimes it is good enough.
Wait, what? 4 Mystics guarantees you draw 2 cards, not 3. Unless there's something I'm missing.
Typo or not, it's still misleading. I remember talking about this before and nobody really listening, but I'll give it another shot. Ahem.
You don't need four Mystics in hand with your Scout in order for the combo to pay off, thanks to Scout's reordering. If you have even a single Mystic in hand, you can use Scout to put another Mystic on top of your deck. And then that Mystic that you draw with the first Mystic will also be guaranteed to hit, since you still know the top few cards of your deck (unless you drew a lot of Victory cards with Scout, in which case you already got great value). Or if you don't need the Mystics this hand, you can put a Treasure on top and draw that! Whatever benefits you most at the time.
This is too mean.
Can't Scout combo with any cards that have +cards?
Play Scout with $7 in hand, put Copper on top instead of a Gold, play Pearl Diver.
This example obviously works if you need a Village/draw card and you have a Scout and a cantrip in your hand.
But you get to save a Gold, or kick off!This is too mean.
Can't Scout combo with any cards that have +cards?
Play Scout with $7 in hand, put Copper on top instead of a Gold, play Pearl Diver.
This example obviously works if you need a Village/draw card and you have a Scout and a cantrip in your hand.
The problem is those benefits don't nearly make up for the fact that you Minion attacked your starting hand that turn by buying Scout.
This is too mean.
Can't Scout combo with any cards that have +cards?
Play Scout with $7 in hand, put Copper on top instead of a Gold, play Pearl Diver.
This example obviously works if you need a Village/draw card and you have a Scout and a cantrip in your hand.
This is too mean.
Can't Scout combo with any cards that have +cards?
Play Scout with $7 in hand, put Copper on top instead of a Gold, play Pearl Diver.
This example obviously works if you need a Village/draw card and you have a Scout and a cantrip in your hand.
I appreciate articles showing the most epic logs with the discussed card. So could someone please post a couple of games where Scout isawesomereally goodnot much worse than a laboratoryeasilyon a regular basismore than once?
This one is for Roadrunner.
Inheritance
We start out with what is probably one of the strongest Scout combos. If you use Inheritance to transform your Estates into useful actions, then Scout actually picks up the good stuff. For maximum effect you want the inherited card to be nonterminal, so that you can really load up on them.
The problem with the combo is that you need to spike $7, and picking up a Scout will certainly not help you do that. So don't pick up Scout before you inherit. But after the Inheritance, inherited Estates themselves compete with Scout for the buy. You should always carefully evaluate whether another Estate is not better for your deck than the Scout.
You also don't mention Scout/Crossroads (jomini mentioned this too), which I feel like at least deserves a nod here. My opinion is that Scout/Crossroads is only useful in puzzles where you can assume you get perfect shuffle luck. The problem is that Scout is just as likely to hurt a Crossroads for your next hand as it is to help a Crossroads in your current hand.
Prince: I'm pretty sure just Princing one of your other terminals is just better in every case.Absolutely not. Prince can only hit cards that are $4 or under. Often the card you want to mass play costs more than that. The obvious example I have done is something like Prince/Scout/Goons/Catacombs (might have been some other Smithy-variant at $5/$6). Yes, I'd have also Princed Ruined village there, but getting even 3 Goons in play is 12 points, minimum, in the final hand.
As for Scrying Pool, I think there's an interesting math problem to do with this one: given a deck with A Scrying Pools, B other action cards, C Scouts, D victory cards, and E other cards, I wonder if you can choose A, B, D, and E so that your maximum expected draw on a turn shows up when C is not zero. I'm sure it can be done and I would expect that answer to result in a deck where I ask myself "why am I trying to draw this deck with Scrying Pool?" or "Don't I already have half of the available VP by now?"Well the simplest thing is what Davio mentioned - what else are you going to get instead? Pool drastically lowers Scout's opportunity cost because Silver tends to be a net negative for Pool decks. If the big complements to pool all fall at $5 or higher, Scout is better than Silver, Estate, or even a lot of cheap terminals. Say I'm building Pool/Margrave/Bazaar. I absolutely will grab Scout at $4 if it is just competing against Silver.
In any case, I don't know that anyone knows the answer to this question for sure, and it seems speculative enough to me that I think a little more research should be done before putting that section into an article.
You also don't mention Scout/Crossroads (jomini mentioned this too), which I feel like at least deserves a nod here. My opinion is that Scout/Crossroads is only useful in puzzles where you can assume you get perfect shuffle luck. The problem is that Scout is just as likely to hurt a Crossroads for your next hand as it is to help a Crossroads in your current hand.
Xroads/Scout is only useful if you are already deck draw. The best option is something like Tr/Xroads/Scout where you load down on green and play a bunch of Xroads to draw deck. This is still not obviously better than big money, but your criticism is only valid if you aren't drawing deck.
QuotePrince: I'm pretty sure just Princing one of your other terminals is just better in every case.Absolutely not. Prince can only hit cards that are $4 or under. Often the card you want to mass play costs more than that. The obvious example I have done is something like Prince/Scout/Goons/Catacombs (might have been some other Smithy-variant at $5/$6). Yes, I'd have also Princed Ruined village there, but getting even 3 Goons in play is 12 points, minimum, in the final hand.
Well the simplest thing is what Davio mentioned - what else are you going to get instead? Pool drastically lowers Scout's opportunity cost because Silver tends to be a net negative for Pool decks. If the big complements to pool all fall at $5 or higher, Scout is better than Silver, Estate, or even a lot of cheap terminals. Say I'm building Pool/Margrave/Bazaar. I absolutely will grab Scout at $4 if it is just competing against Silver.
Scout's main problem is that early game it is almost strictly inferior to Silver. Late game it is almost strictly inferior to engine components (and is most often inferior to $4 engine components in the early game). That is many, many boards where Scout is obviously worse the entire game.
The boards that violate this are either ones where some aspect of Scout is actually exceedingly powerful on that board (e.g. Prince/Scout/Goons/all terminals) or where all competing cards are gone (e.g. Smithy/Village/Iw with both the first two piles empty).
Under "getting green" and "discard for benefit" I feel like you didn't mention the best synergies here: Warehouse/Dungeon. This seems way better than Storeroom, though still probably not actually viable.Also there is problem that you would draw more from another crossroads, assuming that there is some support as pure scout-crossroads is worse than bm.
You also don't mention Scout/Crossroads (jomini mentioned this too), which I feel like at least deserves a nod here. My opinion is that Scout/Crossroads is only useful in puzzles where you can assume you get perfect shuffle luck. The problem is that Scout is just as likely to hurt a Crossroads for your next hand as it is to help a Crossroads in your current hand.
I think the "ruined village" section isn't adding anything of value, or at least it's misleading:
The Peddler/Conspirator thing necessarily requires Scout to be the only other non-terminal on the board. In the case of Conspirator, I don't know what deck you can play where Scout and Conspirator are the only non-terminals and you actually want to go for this, it seems way worse than Big Money (edge case me, I dare you!). In the case of Peddler, Silver does almost the same job in cost reduction: since there are no other non-terminals, your +Buy has to be terminal which means only two Peddlers per turn max. I'm having trouble coming up with decks here that beat Big Money as well.
Prince: I'm pretty sure just Princing one of your other terminals is just better in every case.
Tokens: It's better to put them on the already-good card rather than Scout.
I mean, you allude to these, so I think you already know this. But if you know these aren't actually good, then I think you should just say they aren't actually good up-front in the article, rather than try and find some edge-case that doesn't exist. Even if the edge-case existed, I don't think that would belong in the article.
As for Scrying Pool, I think there's an interesting math problem to do with this one: given a deck with A Scrying Pools, B other action cards, C Scouts, D victory cards, and E other cards, I wonder if you can choose A, B, D, and E so that your maximum expected draw on a turn shows up when C is not zero. I'm sure it can be done and I would expect that answer to result in a deck where I ask myself "why am I trying to draw this deck with Scrying Pool?" or "Don't I already have half of the available VP by now?"
How often would you take a Scout if it came for free on every green card purchase, Duchess style?Every. Single. Time.
Under "getting green" and "discard for benefit" I feel like you didn't mention the best synergies here: Warehouse/Dungeon. This seems way better than Storeroom, though still probably not actually viable.Also there is problem that you would draw more from another crossroads, assuming that there is some support as pure scout-crossroads is worse than bm.
You also don't mention Scout/Crossroads (jomini mentioned this too), which I feel like at least deserves a nod here. My opinion is that Scout/Crossroads is only useful in puzzles where you can assume you get perfect shuffle luck. The problem is that Scout is just as likely to hurt a Crossroads for your next hand as it is to help a Crossroads in your current hand.
Adam: Goons engines just churn points compared to much of anything else. With trashing, I can churn 9 VP per turn and attack you every turn. Piling down 8 provinces instead of 4 takes a lot longer with Smithy-BM variants Prince of Scouts is one of the slowest Goons engines, but Goons engines are just that good. BM is, much, much worse when it cannot start faltering and slowly drags it way across the 41 VP line.
Using Tr with the Scout/Xroads is to allow you greater flexibility. Ideally you want more Xroads than Scouts, but you run into problems that having hands with just Xroads lowers your draw potential. Tr gives you the choice if you track your deck of loading up on green first (Tr -> Scout), or drawing for more (Tr -> Xroads); Tr is also phenomenal at getting you value out of the green you draw (e.g. Tr/Baron/Xroads is almost good enough to play on its own, using Scout would make it a pretty decent-ish engine).
That's actually a pretty decent card, I like it, having it draw Curses as well is a big boon.But it doesn't combo with Scout.
As for the theory card, I think it's a bit broken. If you have under 4 junk cards in your deck, you get to rearrange your entire deck! At least discard the other revealed cards.No, if you have under 4 non-junk cards in your deck, you get to rearrange your entire deck. To be more precise, you draw all the junk, and rearrange the 0-3 remaining non-junk cards on top of your deck.
Cost 4.+1 Action
Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal four cards that are either Actions or Treasures. Place the revealed Actions and Treasures on top of your deck in any order. Put the other revealed cards in your hand.
How well does Advisor combo with Scout? Advisor decks choke on green, and even failing to hit green Scout rearranges your deck so you can make your Advisor draw a bit better. The main problem I see is that you'd almost never want a Scout instead of another Advisor.
Adam: Goons engines just churn points compared to much of anything else. With trashing, I can churn 9 VP per turn and attack you every turn. Piling down 8 provinces instead of 4 takes a lot longer with Smithy-BM variants Prince of Scouts is one of the slowest Goons engines, but Goons engines are just that good. BM is, much, much worse when it cannot start faltering and slowly drags it way across the 41 VP line.
Using Tr with the Scout/Xroads is to allow you greater flexibility. Ideally you want more Xroads than Scouts, but you run into problems that having hands with just Xroads lowers your draw potential. Tr gives you the choice if you track your deck of loading up on green first (Tr -> Scout), or drawing for more (Tr -> Xroads); Tr is also phenomenal at getting you value out of the green you draw (e.g. Tr/Baron/Xroads is almost good enough to play on its own, using Scout would make it a pretty decent-ish engine).
Suffice it to say that I think you're overestimating these decks, but I can't really say because I don't know the climate of the games: It's difficult for me to talk about the Goons thing without knowing a whole kingdom (a kingdom with less than 10 cards is OK) but what would convince me is seeing that Goons engine beat BM with Goons when played properly.
The Crossroads deck with Baron, well that needs some treasure-trashing and probably another village to work (I don't think Throne Room cuts it unless you're pairing it with Scout as its only non-terminal).
What do you think is good BMGoons play against even the slowest and crappiest Goons engines?
With Prince of Scouts/Goons you will be attacked every turn after what T12? If you are doing BMGoons, that means the only way you can buy provinces is with Gold x2/Goons. It is a lot of turns to either get Gold density that high or hit those odds against turns when you have under 40% gold in deck. You need 8 turns with $8 from 3 cards, that is just an awful lot.
What do you think is good BMGoons play against even the slowest and crappiest Goons engines?
With Prince of Scouts/Goons you will be attacked every turn after what T12? If you are doing BMGoons, that means the only way you can buy provinces is with Gold x2/Goons. It is a lot of turns to either get Gold density that high or hit those odds against turns when you have under 40% gold in deck. You need 8 turns with $8 from 3 cards, that is just an awful lot.
Can I assume you're talking about a 3-card kingdom with Prince, Scout, and Goons? I mean, I assumed there would be some trashing here that help you out a lot, but OK.
But yeah in that kingdom, I believe the best strategy involves getting like three or four Goons at some point and then lots of Golds and Provinces after that without ever getting Prince or Scout. With no trashing, even this Prince of Scouts thing is going to have a hard time playing Goons every turn. Yeah it takes a while, but what is the Prince of Scouts thing doing? Does it aim for Double Goons turns? I don't see that being reliable at all. Actually, something this simple could potentially be simulated, though I may buy a couple more Goons as the BM+Goons player in reaction to this being my opponent's strategy. Like maybe a fifth in that case.
But what is the Goons "engine" player buying to get points? Treasures? That has to be better than more Scouts. So it's starting to look like a Big Money deck at this point anyways, just one that takes the worst possible route to double Goons turns. I just don't think it's good enough and now I think only a simulation would convince me that I'm wrong.
If you add in trashing then it's a different conversation. I guess you add Chapel? I dunno, I'm still not convinced it's better than BM+Goons although it's much harder to prove that.
I do not remember what the trasher was, Chapel or Doc I think (I know I was using it to kill at least two coppers per turn in the late game).What do you think is good BMGoons play against even the slowest and crappiest Goons engines?
With Prince of Scouts/Goons you will be attacked every turn after what T12? If you are doing BMGoons, that means the only way you can buy provinces is with Gold x2/Goons. It is a lot of turns to either get Gold density that high or hit those odds against turns when you have under 40% gold in deck. You need 8 turns with $8 from 3 cards, that is just an awful lot.
Can I assume you're talking about a 3-card kingdom with Prince, Scout, and Goons? I mean, I assumed there would be some trashing here that help you out a lot, but OK.
But yeah in that kingdom, I believe the best strategy involves getting like three or four Goons at some point and then lots of Golds and Provinces after that without ever getting Prince or Scout. With no trashing, even this Prince of Scouts thing is going to have a hard time playing Goons every turn. Yeah it takes a while, but what is the Prince of Scouts thing doing? Does it aim for Double Goons turns? I don't see that being reliable at all. Actually, something this simple could potentially be simulated, though I may buy a couple more Goons as the BM+Goons player in reaction to this being my opponent's strategy. Like maybe a fifth in that case.
But what is the Goons "engine" player buying to get points? Treasures? That has to be better than more Scouts. So it's starting to look like a Big Money deck at this point anyways, just one that takes the worst possible route to double Goons turns. I just don't think it's good enough and now I think only a simulation would convince me that I'm wrong.
If you add in trashing then it's a different conversation. I guess you add Chapel? I dunno, I'm still not convinced it's better than BM+Goons although it's much harder to prove that.
Under "getting green" and "discard for benefit" I feel like you didn't mention the best synergies here: Warehouse/Dungeon. This seems way better than Storeroom, though still probably not actually viable.Also there is problem that you would draw more from another crossroads, assuming that there is some support as pure scout-crossroads is worse than bm.
You also don't mention Scout/Crossroads (jomini mentioned this too), which I feel like at least deserves a nod here. My opinion is that Scout/Crossroads is only useful in puzzles where you can assume you get perfect shuffle luck. The problem is that Scout is just as likely to hurt a Crossroads for your next hand as it is to help a Crossroads in your current hand.
No. Xroads 1 draws you 3 (number of cards you search) * % green in deck. Xroads 2 draws you (3 + xroads 1) * % green.
For instance. if my deck is 33% green. Xroads 1 will draw me 1 card and Xroads 2 will draw me 1.33 cards for a total of + 2.33 cards at the price of two actions (the +3 being flat and non-scaling).
Scout/Xroads draws 4 * %green from the Scout's draw power and 7 * %green from the Xroads that is played next. Basically any card in the Scout search space draws twice.
With 33% green this works out to be 4/3 cards drawn by the Scout and then 7/3 being drawn by the crossroads for a total of 11/3 or 3.66 cards. This also takes one fewer action and lets you sort the top deck on hands with limited draw (so you can draw some more).
In general, if x is the percent green the two xroads in hand will draw 3x +(3+3x)x or 6x + 3x^2 while Scout/xroads will draw 11x. Scout/Xroads then draws more IFF:
11x >= 6x+3x^2
11 >= 6 + 3x
5/3 >= x
as 1 >= x >= 0 there should be no deck composition where Scout/Xroads hands are expected to draw less than Xroads x2.
Under "getting green" and "discard for benefit" I feel like you didn't mention the best synergies here: Warehouse/Dungeon. This seems way better than Storeroom, though still probably not actually viable.
You also don't mention Scout/Crossroads (jomini mentioned this too), which I feel like at least deserves a nod here. My opinion is that Scout/Crossroads is only useful in puzzles where you can assume you get perfect shuffle luck. The problem is that Scout is just as likely to hurt a Crossroads for your next hand as it is to help a Crossroads in your current hand.
Also there is problem that you would draw more from another crossroads, assuming that there is some support as pure scout-crossroads is worse than bm.
No. Xroads 1 draws you 3 (number of cards you search) * % green in deck. Xroads 2 draws you (3 + xroads 1) * % green.
For instance. if my deck is 33% green. Xroads 1 will draw me 1 card and Xroads 2 will draw me 1.33 cards for a total of + 2.33 cards at the price of two actions (the +3 being flat and non-scaling).
Scout/Xroads draws 4 * %green from the Scout's draw power and 7 * %green from the Xroads that is played next. Basically any card in the Scout search space draws twice.
With 33% green this works out to be 4/3 cards drawn by the Scout and then 7/3 being drawn by the crossroads for a total of 11/3 or 3.66 cards. This also takes one fewer action and lets you sort the top deck on hands with limited draw (so you can draw some more).
In general, if x is the percent green the two xroads in hand will draw 3x +(3+3x)x or 6x + 3x^2 while Scout/xroads will draw 11x. Scout/Xroads then draws more IFF:
11x >= 6x+3x^2
11 >= 6 + 3x
5/3 >= x
as 1 >= x >= 0 there should be no deck composition where Scout/Xroads hands are expected to draw less than Xroads x2.
Thats both correct and completely useless. You are just counting case when you have scout with crossroads in hand with no other support, which is like hoping that treasure maps will collide. You don't account for hands with one or two scouts in hand but no crossroads, and that with some support you want to play engines draw most with third crossroads which you couldnt do if you draw scout instead crossroads.
Leave the forum for a year or two and people start rewriting your scout article. #hurtfeelingsThen I have a challenge for you, Mr. Powerman!
I appreciate articles showing the most epic logs with the discussed card. So could someone please post a couple of games where Scout isawesomereally goodnot much worse than a laboratoryeasilyon a regular basismore than once?
I appreciate articles showing the most epic logs with the discussed card. So could someone please post a couple of games where Scout isawesomereally goodnot much worse than a laboratoryeasilyon a regular basismore than once?
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120713-195219-c6ef8676.html
Scout is unbeatable here. I've posted this game about four thousand times but it's worth it.
How often would you take a Scout if it came for free on every green card purchase, Duchess style?
I'm pretty sure that I would not be buying an Estate on turn 1 even if it came with a free Scout, unless there was something *really* good to Inherit.How often would you take a Scout if it came for free on every green card purchase, Duchess style?
This would make a 5/2 split maybe better as you can get an estate to pick up a scout and then a 5 (or another scout if you really want to keep your hands concentrated).
This one is for Roadrunner.
2015: the year in which one newcomer inspires an entire forum of people to have endlessly looping conversations about the most uninteresting topic possible within the passion they all share.
I applaud you, Roadrunner. You've got skillz.