Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion Articles => Topic started by: DG on October 17, 2012, 09:07:51 am
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An altar does play a bit like an expand and a lot like a remodel. Trash out bad cards for good ones. If you can trash out slow cards for fast cards the altar will be played more often and can refashion your deck. Cash in at the end by trashing for vp, in this case a duchy. So how does it differ?
An altar can be put into quite a poor deck, perhaps with curses, and immediately trash out rubbish for good cards. This is different from the stepwise improvement provided by a remodel or expand. Whilst a remodel or expand can trash mid cost cards for something better, the altar should always trash out junk and should therefore avoid terminal collision.
The biggest problem for an altar comes from the high cost of 6 coins. Gaining duchies in the final turns is handy but not enough to justify buying the altar and you simply might not be able to afford the altar in the early game, so it needs to be played repeatedly in the mid game to make a difference. Thankfully 5 cost engine cards often do pay off and can drive the repeated play of key cards like an altar. This suggests that the altar needs good action cards at cost 4/5 in the supply to drive an engine deck, and this is indeed one of the best uses for an altar. It is likely to perform worse in slow cycling treasure based decks where you are probably better served by gold.
The altar shares some of the same properties as other actions that gain cards up to a printed cost. It is improved with bridge and more notably highway. It can repeatedly gain the same card from the supply each time it is used. This allows it to create extreme decks heavily skewed towards a strategy and the altar can certainly create extreme action engines. I also wouldn't discount the altar from creating extreme green card decks or even an extreme treasure deck.
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I think the most effective use of Altar is to use it gain your big $5 engine piece while spending your small amount of coins on the $3-4 piece until you can consistently draw your deck and play the Altar every turn. Then use it to keep gaining engine pieces while acquiring some source of money to start buying victory cards. The beauty is that you just need to hit $6 once and then don't really need any money until you can consistently draw your whole deck.
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The beauty is that you just need to hit $6 once and then don't really need any money until you can consistently draw your whole deck.
Which is nice, since focusing on engine building would let you play Altar more.
So what helps get you an early $6? Here are the major contenders I can think of (I'm sure others can think of many more).
- Baron looks fantastic. Use your engine to help connect Baron to Estates later even if you start trashing them. It's probably often easy to build an engine that can overdraw to re-discard the same Estate repeatedly. Late-game Altars can gain you your payload as well as your engine if necessary, and Baron's +Buy can provide Coppers to trash with Altar if you run low.
- Quarry looks strong too. If you want to prioritize engine building over an economy then you might really need some help hitting $5, especially on Altar turns. Yeah it can't buy Gold but it's an Altar game: most likely you have good Actions you're happy to buy? Later you can trash the Quarry to Altar if you want.
- Mining Village looks plausible enough. It can be an engine piece, and you probably won't feel as bad about trashing your first one to buy the Altar as you would in a game with less card gain. These decks really want to end the game in a big flurry of Duchy gains and Mining Village trashing which will leave the deck in shambles; I'll leave it to better players to decide whether this is a positive or a negative.
- Count and Death Cart look good. Again, these decks will implode pretty quickly on command (especially Death Cart).
- Mandarin is an interesting question. It slows your opening down when Altar needs speed. On the other hand it would enjoy an engine game, and if you want Altar it's likely because there's something else interesting at $5 which you might happily buy on turn 2 after Mandarin.
- Cache and even Beggar are intriguing but probably not worth it. I don't place a lot of stock in Altar deck thinning even if you do manage to grab Altar on the first reshuffle, so these would really hurt. Although once you have Altar to take care of the serious deck building I imagine you safely can, and probably should anyway, spend a turn to buy Spice Merchant or Loan or Warehouse; perhaps the problem could be controlled this way.
- Contraband looks decent. Very likely you can take Gold if Altar gets blocked; and on a good Altar board there's likely something good at $5 if you don't hit $6. Later you can trash the Contraband. But I always want Contraband to be good, so I'm biased.
- Vault of course is absolutely reliable for hitting $6 and can work well with engines. But Vault might just compete with Altar, especially without +Action: do you need two different cards that give reliable $5 turns?
- Merchant Ship and Wharf are pretty decent I guess? Both good BM enablers so you have to watch out for that, but also sometimes you would like to have lots of them.
On the flip side, Altar seems to be rather in competition with a card like Horse Traders, which provides a legitimate alternate road to $5 hands but doesn't really help hit $6. I can't think of many other cards that help you hit $5 but not $6 (well, Feast and University) but I'm sure they exist. Obviously Altar also tends to compete with strategies that don't involve building a strong conventional early economy at all: Chapel, Potion, etc.
I think the most effective use of Altar is to use it gain your big $5 engine piece while spending your small amount of coins on the $3-4 piece until you can consistently draw your deck and play the Altar every turn.
Based on this, a few other combo ideas occur. Menagerie will love Altar's deck thinning, ability to gain lots of variety, and maybe even its handsize reduction. Of course lots of cheap good engine pieces are good here: Hamlet, FV, Watchtower, Squire (which could also be trashed into an Attack by Altar). But even typically weaker ones (Courtyard, Moat, Shanty) can be strong when paired with a plentiful power $5; and a $2 price point might be a perk while your economy is weak.
At least one Scheme is probably a must-buy. At minimum, if it gets you even one extra Altar play in the phase while you're setting the engine up, then you'll make up for the buy you spent on the Scheme so it's basically free. But beyond that, Scheme provides an alternative way to play the Altar every turn without getting an engine running quickly. This would, I imagine, let you use the Altar for some engine-incompatible plans (e.g. Dukes), or plans that just don't get your engine humming very quickly (City engines, and maybe some other super strong all-$5 engines where the payload is the only cheap card involved). Note also that an extra, permanently topdecked Scheme can be used as guaranteed Altar food, if that's worthwhile to you.
Altar robably goes well with Double Tactician under the right circumstances too. It probably gets rolling about as fast as most other Double Tac decks, since they all have to get a good payload assembled and buy two Tacticians. And once it starts you need very little or no more card draw because you're trashing almost as fast as you gain; so unless you're getting attacked your deck size will stay pretty close to what Tactician can handle.
It could maybe work well with Hermit/Madman: it's undoubtedly a great excuse to skip buys. Might help if your favorite $5 card gives +Actions to play both Altar and Hermit in the same turn?
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I've trashed coppers into Provinces when playing with Altar and Highway once. Get highways with altars, then use them to make altars stronger and let you turn coppers into Provinces. It felt pretty slick.
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After playing a bunch of Altar games, one of the few issues I noticed is whether there are multiple strong, mutually compatible $5s on the board.
* If there are not strong $5s, Gold is usually superior. Gold will pay off in the next shuffle; you don't benefit from Altar's gain until the shuffle after. That's a long time to wait for a mediocre $5, and the Gold is more useful for gaining $4s.
* If there's only one strong $5, and you would prefer it to Gold, you'll acquire it a shuffle faster by just buying the $5 rather than Altar.
* If there are multiple strong $5s, but they don't synergize (e.g., Mountebank and Witch), then you're still better off buying the $5 you want.
* If there are multiple strong $5s and they go together, then Altar becomes more appealing.
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I assume one $5 you won multiple of counts as well?
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I assume one $5 you won multiple of counts as well?
That tips in favor of Altar, but it depends on how many you want. If you want 2 or 3, Altar is less helpful than if you're trying to run the pile. If the $5 has a snowball effect (getting a lead means it's harder for your opponent to catch up), then Altar is less helpful. If you can cycle quickly, Altar is more helpful. If the deck thinning is helpful, then Altar is better.
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I don't think Altar should even be compared to Remodel and Expand. Altar's trashing and gaining are completely separate effects. The card you gain has nothing to do with the one you trash. You don't even have to trash a card in order to get the gaining effect.
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After playing a bunch of Altar games, one of the few issues I noticed is whether there are multiple strong, mutually compatible $5s on the board.
* If there are not strong $5s, Gold is usually superior. Gold will pay off in the next shuffle; you don't benefit from Altar's gain until the shuffle after. That's a long time to wait for a mediocre $5, and the Gold is more useful for gaining $4s.
* If there's only one strong $5, and you would prefer it to Gold, you'll acquire it a shuffle faster by just buying the $5 rather than Altar.
* If there are multiple strong $5s, but they don't synergize (e.g., Mountebank and Witch), then you're still better off buying the $5 you want.
* If there are multiple strong $5s and they go together, then Altar becomes more appealing.
Why would Gold be useful faster than Altar? You use Gold to buy a Witch; you get that Witch next shuffle. You use Altar to gain a Witch, you get that Witch next shuffle.
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Why would Gold be useful faster than Altar? You use Gold to buy a Witch; you get that Witch next shuffle. You use Altar to gain a Witch, you get that Witch next shuffle.
I'm assuming you're talking about my top bullet (leaving aside that Witch is a power $5 and that it has a snowball effect, so you'd just buy the Witch over the Gold as in bullet 2). If there aren't strong $5s, then Gold is really important. Gold helps you get to more Gold more than Altar helps you get to Gold.
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I wouldn't categorize Altar as a trash-for-benefit card because its benefit is independent of what it trashes, but it does share one critical property: While early-game it grabs engine components, late-game it can transition to picking up VP cards, in particular Duchies. While this has obvious implications for alt-VP decks, especially Duke, it's useful even in regular decks. If you're dancing around the Penultimate Province Rule, or trying to three-pile, being able to grab two Duchies per turn puts you at a distinct advantage. A slightly-above-average engine[1] is capable of grabbing Province+Duchy each turn in the end-game, which can sometimes be enough to compensate Altar being slower to get off the ground. The biggest caveat to doing this, is running low on things to trash, which might be hard to do if you've been playing Altar all game. On the other hand, it means that Altar may be worth picking up later in the game (although not commonly).
[1] That is to say, one that can reliably put up $8, plus an action and a copper to spare.
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Altar/Princess is just brutal; with a good engine, you may want to take Princess as your first prize in an Altar game.
Altar/Border Village is insanely good as you can get both the village and the draw in the same go - leaving you to buy Silver or whatever with your remaining coin.
Altar/Count is crazy good - Altar can run out of stuff to trash in ultra-thin decks, but Count gives you free coppers and makes for early 6 coin shots. Big trashing when the opportunity presents itself can make Altar show up all the time.
Some of the on-trash cards can be really strong - Squire is +action and can often be trashed for a big +cards attack (e.g. Rabble, Torturer, Minion), Market Square can let you stock up Gold really quickly and takes up no space when it doesn't collide, and Hunting Grounds is hugely reliable with a potential bonus duchy at end game.
Fairgrounds is also pretty nice for Altar. You often end up with a nice hodgepodge engine so you can play Altar often and you can stock up on unique cards or Fairgrounds at the price of copper.
Throne Room, Kc, and Procession can all make Altar games rather touchy. You can gain a LOT of cards quickly with Altar (even on an empty hand) and make 3-pile threats seemingly out of nowhere (e.g. Tr can gain 2 Altars this turn, gives you a potential gain of SIX , and if the other guy bought an Altar let's you pile a 6 coin stack with only one turn of "warning" and not touching your cash/buys). If your opponent is good at tracking 3-pile threats, you can raise a credible threat quite quickly and force them to green now or risk never.
Knights seem to work decently as Altar counters - Altar tends to thin your deck and fill it with stuff in the 5-6 price range. Knights can trash it right back out and may offer a better bonus than "trash one card". Of course an Altar player can swap over to gaining Knights to trash your Knights ... but then they had to sacrifice something "better" and may have problems with action conflicts.
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Why Altar / Princess? Unless there's KC on the board, I don't see how that's great. If you're using Altar to pick up 6's, then Bridge or Highway would do just as well (especially Highway since it's non-terminal).
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Altar/Princess is just brutal; with a good engine, you may want to take Princess as your first prize in an Altar game.
Altar/Border Village is insanely good as you can get both the village and the draw in the same go - leaving you to buy Silver or whatever with your remaining coin.
Altar/Count is crazy good - Altar can run out of stuff to trash in ultra-thin decks, but Count gives you free coppers and makes for early 6 coin shots. Big trashing when the opportunity presents itself can make Altar show up all the time.
Some of the on-trash cards can be really strong - Squire is +action and can often be trashed for a big +cards attack (e.g. Rabble, Torturer, Minion), Market Square can let you stock up Gold really quickly and takes up no space when it doesn't collide, and Hunting Grounds is hugely reliable with a potential bonus duchy at end game.
Fairgrounds is also pretty nice for Altar. You often end up with a nice hodgepodge engine so you can play Altar often and you can stock up on unique cards or Fairgrounds at the price of copper.
Throne Room, Kc, and Procession can all make Altar games rather touchy. You can gain a LOT of cards quickly with Altar (even on an empty hand) and make 3-pile threats seemingly out of nowhere (e.g. Tr can gain 2 Altars this turn, gives you a potential gain of SIX , and if the other guy bought an Altar let's you pile a 6 coin stack with only one turn of "warning" and not touching your cash/buys). If your opponent is good at tracking 3-pile threats, you can raise a credible threat quite quickly and force them to green now or risk never.
Knights seem to work decently as Altar counters - Altar tends to thin your deck and fill it with stuff in the 5-6 price range. Knights can trash it right back out and may offer a better bonus than "trash one card". Of course an Altar player can swap over to gaining Knights to trash your Knights ... but then they had to sacrifice something "better" and may have problems with action conflicts.
I have the feeling that your altars can somehow gain cards costing up to 6. :o Because I don't see any synergy between Altar and Border village. Also, princess + altar isn't that strong, as GendoIkari mentions.
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Altar/Princess is just brutal; with a good engine, you may want to take Princess as your first prize in an Altar game.
Altar/Border Village is insanely good as you can get both the village and the draw in the same go - leaving you to buy Silver or whatever with your remaining coin.
Altar/Count is crazy good - Altar can run out of stuff to trash in ultra-thin decks, but Count gives you free coppers and makes for early 6 coin shots. Big trashing when the opportunity presents itself can make Altar show up all the time.
Some of the on-trash cards can be really strong - Squire is +action and can often be trashed for a big +cards attack (e.g. Rabble, Torturer, Minion), Market Square can let you stock up Gold really quickly and takes up no space when it doesn't collide, and Hunting Grounds is hugely reliable with a potential bonus duchy at end game.
Fairgrounds is also pretty nice for Altar. You often end up with a nice hodgepodge engine so you can play Altar often and you can stock up on unique cards or Fairgrounds at the price of copper.
Throne Room, Kc, and Procession can all make Altar games rather touchy. You can gain a LOT of cards quickly with Altar (even on an empty hand) and make 3-pile threats seemingly out of nowhere (e.g. Tr can gain 2 Altars this turn, gives you a potential gain of SIX , and if the other guy bought an Altar let's you pile a 6 coin stack with only one turn of "warning" and not touching your cash/buys). If your opponent is good at tracking 3-pile threats, you can raise a credible threat quite quickly and force them to green now or risk never.
Knights seem to work decently as Altar counters - Altar tends to thin your deck and fill it with stuff in the 5-6 price range. Knights can trash it right back out and may offer a better bonus than "trash one card". Of course an Altar player can swap over to gaining Knights to trash your Knights ... but then they had to sacrifice something "better" and may have problems with action conflicts.
I have the feeling that your altars can somehow gain cards costing up to 6. :o Because I don't see any synergy between Altar and Border village. Also, princess + altar isn't that strong, as GendoIkari mentions.
Indeed, if he thought that they could gain cards costing up to 6; then the Princess makes sense. Though you still need a Village to play both of those on 1 turn.
Just thought of this though... KC, KC, Bridge, Altar, Altar. Gain 6 Provinces; buy a Duchy.
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Altar/Princess is just brutal; with a good engine, you may want to take Princess as your first prize in an Altar game.
Altar/Border Village is insanely good as you can get both the village and the draw in the same go - leaving you to buy Silver or whatever with your remaining coin.
Altar/Count is crazy good - Altar can run out of stuff to trash in ultra-thin decks, but Count gives you free coppers and makes for early 6 coin shots. Big trashing when the opportunity presents itself can make Altar show up all the time.
Some of the on-trash cards can be really strong - Squire is +action and can often be trashed for a big +cards attack (e.g. Rabble, Torturer, Minion), Market Square can let you stock up Gold really quickly and takes up no space when it doesn't collide, and Hunting Grounds is hugely reliable with a potential bonus duchy at end game.
Fairgrounds is also pretty nice for Altar. You often end up with a nice hodgepodge engine so you can play Altar often and you can stock up on unique cards or Fairgrounds at the price of copper.
Throne Room, Kc, and Procession can all make Altar games rather touchy. You can gain a LOT of cards quickly with Altar (even on an empty hand) and make 3-pile threats seemingly out of nowhere (e.g. Tr can gain 2 Altars this turn, gives you a potential gain of SIX , and if the other guy bought an Altar let's you pile a 6 coin stack with only one turn of "warning" and not touching your cash/buys). If your opponent is good at tracking 3-pile threats, you can raise a credible threat quite quickly and force them to green now or risk never.
Knights seem to work decently as Altar counters - Altar tends to thin your deck and fill it with stuff in the 5-6 price range. Knights can trash it right back out and may offer a better bonus than "trash one card". Of course an Altar player can swap over to gaining Knights to trash your Knights ... but then they had to sacrifice something "better" and may have problems with action conflicts.
I have the feeling that your altars can somehow gain cards costing up to 6. :o Because I don't see any synergy between Altar and Border village. Also, princess + altar isn't that strong, as GendoIkari mentions.
Indeed, if he thought that they could gain cards costing up to 6; then the Princess makes sense. Though you still need a Village to play both of those on 1 turn.
Just thought of this though... KC, KC, Bridge, Altar, Altar. Gain 6 Provinces; buy a Duchy.
First off... you'd have to trash the second Altar to the first one so you'd only gain 3 provinces and buy a duchy. Second off... those altars would be much better off as bridges....
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Altar/Princess is just brutal; with a good engine, you may want to take Princess as your first prize in an Altar game.
Altar/Border Village is insanely good as you can get both the village and the draw in the same go - leaving you to buy Silver or whatever with your remaining coin.
Altar/Count is crazy good - Altar can run out of stuff to trash in ultra-thin decks, but Count gives you free coppers and makes for early 6 coin shots. Big trashing when the opportunity presents itself can make Altar show up all the time.
Some of the on-trash cards can be really strong - Squire is +action and can often be trashed for a big +cards attack (e.g. Rabble, Torturer, Minion), Market Square can let you stock up Gold really quickly and takes up no space when it doesn't collide, and Hunting Grounds is hugely reliable with a potential bonus duchy at end game.
Fairgrounds is also pretty nice for Altar. You often end up with a nice hodgepodge engine so you can play Altar often and you can stock up on unique cards or Fairgrounds at the price of copper.
Throne Room, Kc, and Procession can all make Altar games rather touchy. You can gain a LOT of cards quickly with Altar (even on an empty hand) and make 3-pile threats seemingly out of nowhere (e.g. Tr can gain 2 Altars this turn, gives you a potential gain of SIX , and if the other guy bought an Altar let's you pile a 6 coin stack with only one turn of "warning" and not touching your cash/buys). If your opponent is good at tracking 3-pile threats, you can raise a credible threat quite quickly and force them to green now or risk never.
Knights seem to work decently as Altar counters - Altar tends to thin your deck and fill it with stuff in the 5-6 price range. Knights can trash it right back out and may offer a better bonus than "trash one card". Of course an Altar player can swap over to gaining Knights to trash your Knights ... but then they had to sacrifice something "better" and may have problems with action conflicts.
I have the feeling that your altars can somehow gain cards costing up to 6. :o Because I don't see any synergy between Altar and Border village. Also, princess + altar isn't that strong, as GendoIkari mentions.
Indeed, if he thought that they could gain cards costing up to 6; then the Princess makes sense. Though you still need a Village to play both of those on 1 turn.
Just thought of this though... KC, KC, Bridge, Altar, Altar. Gain 6 Provinces; buy a Duchy.
First off... you'd have to trash the second Altar to the first one so you'd only gain 3 provinces and buy a duchy. Second off... those altars would be much better off as bridges....
Don't know what I was thinking. Though had thought about the fact that more Bridges would be better than Altars there.
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I would say KC+Altar isn't all that great unless you can pick up a lot of cards. You need to first draw them together, then trash the other 3 cards they come up with. I think if you can safely KC an Altar, you didn't need the Altar to begin with. It's best if you can get it early and use it to set up and engine super fast. Buy the villages and Altar your Estates and coppers for the $5 component.