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[ehunt]

Also, Mint/Fool's Gold is now THE BEST opening if you take the median instead of the low within its range.

[kn1tt3r]

To be sure, I think Margrave is now clearly the 2nd strongest Smithy variant (after Torturer) for building an engine with multiple copies.

Don't see why. After the first played Margrave every new one actually helps your opponent by letting him filter his 3 card hand.

[chwhite]

I can't believe Jack of All Trades is even. I think it's probably the best 4 in dominion.

I think the Jack is being inflated a bit in our estimations because it plays best with BM, and simulation data is biased towards BM variants because they're easy to play.  At a minimum, I can't imagine it actually being better than Remake and Tournament.

Remember that it's fast in Big Money in the same way Envoy is fast in Big Money, and that's their main strength.  It's better against attacks, so it perhaps deserves to be a couple slots higher.  But both of those cards have problems in many setups IMO (granted I dislike Envoy more than most people).

[ehunt]

I forgot tournament. Although JoaT does seem to smoke followers...

edit: but that's a good point and makes sense that simulation data is biased toward big money.  Still, it's not just that JoaT naturally lends itself to big money, as does envoy, but it's also that JoaT makes big money very viable against even the meanest attacks, which envoy doesn't. Incidentally, envoy and remake are two of my least favorites. JoaT I'm still in puppy love with but may grow to dislike it if it's as powerful as I think.

[guided]

To be sure, I think Margrave is now clearly the 2nd strongest Smithy variant (after Torturer) for building an engine with multiple copies.

Don't see why. After the first played Margrave every new one actually helps your opponent by letting him filter his 3 card hand.

+Buy.

+Buy.

+Buy.

Say it to yourself a few times!

Also, the attack is 100 trillion times better than Smithy's attack.

[chwhite]

To be sure, I think Margrave is now clearly the 2nd strongest Smithy variant (after Torturer) for building an engine with multiple copies.

Don't see why. After the first played Margrave every new one actually helps your opponent by letting him filter his 3 card hand.

+Buy.

+Buy.

+Buy.

Say it to yourself a few times!

Also, the attack is 100 trillion times better than Smithy's attack.

If you consider Wharf to be a Smithy variant (as one ought to) then it is also better than Margrave, pushing it down to third.  I might consider Nobles as well, but Margrave is almost certainly a notch better, because, yeah, +Buy.

[guided]

If you consider Wharf to be a Smithy variant (as one ought to) then it is also better than Margrave, pushing it down to third.  I might consider Nobles as well, but Margrave is almost certainly a notch better, because, yeah, +Buy.

I wasn't considering Wharf, but it's certainly in the running. I actually wouldn't be totally surprised if Margrave is on par with Wharf.

[kn1tt3r]

To be sure, I think Margrave is now clearly the 2nd strongest Smithy variant (after Torturer) for building an engine with multiple copies.

Don't see why. After the first played Margrave every new one actually helps your opponent by letting him filter his 3 card hand.

+Buy.

+Buy.

+Buy.

Say it to yourself a few times!

Also, the attack is 100 trillion times better than Smithy's attack.

And why would you want 5 buys?

Sure, Margrave is good, but not specifically when played as an engine with multiple copies of it. That's what I was referring to.

[Epoch]

And why would you want 5 buys?

Oh, most of the time, you don't.  But building a two-card-engine is enough of a pain in the neck as-is.  Getting it and also finding some source of +buy is another hurdle.

And while you don't want 5 buys, you absolutely do want 2 buys.  Not having to detour, having those buys even if you don't draw up your entire deck, etc. is pretty crucial.

[Kuildeous]

Also, the attack is 100 trillion times better than Smithy's attack.

You owe me a new monitor, sir.

[guided]

Sure, Margrave is good, but not specifically when played as an engine with multiple copies of it. That's what I was referring to.

If you have multiple copies, you're likely to have one of them in hand! And on those crappy turns where you only draw your Smithy variant and don't draw your Village variant with it, Margrave provides a good attack (and a sometimes-critical +Buy) on your blind draw.

If you want to talk about 3-card combos, sure, a Village/Smithy engine with one or two Margraves is roughly as good and cheaper. But I had no intention of talking about 3-card combos. If you think a 2-card Village/Smithy engine is better than Village/Margrave, you're wrong. If you think Worker's Village/Smithy is better than Village/Margrave, well, you're almost certainly wrong there too.

[HiveMindEmulator]

The problem is that village/margrave will probably lose to margrave big money most of the time, which makes it's hard to call it a "good" combo.

The thing that makes torturer special is that it's attack is so strong that you can actually beat torturer big money in a province game by going torturer+village without even having any trashing or +buy. None of the other smithy variants can do that. Margrave has an attack, but it's not even close to being in the same league as torturer (because it's (1) weak, and (2) even weaker when stacked)

So while it may be the "2nd strongest Smithy variant (after Torturer) for building an engine with multiple copies", that statement should not be confused with meaning it's even close to as good as torturer. I haven't tested it out, but my feeling is that you probably need fishing village and/or really good trashing and/or alternative green cards to make it actually beat margrave big money in a province game.

[kn1tt3r]

What I tried to say is that a Village engine with 1-2 Margraves and 2-3 Smithies is stronger than with just spammed Margraves.

One consistently played Margrave every Turn is almost certainly the strongest Carddraw in the game, while several played Margraves are a far cry from that. It's somewhat similar to Council Room - it's really great, but in most games you just don't want too many of them, regardless of the fact that the chance of having one in hand is bigger with a ton of them in your deck.

[Geronimoo]

I lost a game yesterday where my opponent went single Margrave + money and I went for the Margrave engine hoping to catch up with the +buys and alternative green cards (Island, Harem). Most of the time this would work because the big money deck stalls on the greens, but my chained Margraves allowed him to sculpt his hand so he kept buying a Province each turn making it impossible for me to ever catch up. So be very careful with those Margraves!

[rspeer]

I can't believe Jack of All Trades is even. I think it's probably the best 4 in dominion.

I think the Jack is being inflated a bit in our estimations because it plays best with BM, and simulation data is biased towards BM variants because they're easy to play.  At a minimum, I can't imagine it actually being better than Remake and Tournament.

Remember that it's fast in Big Money in the same way Envoy is fast in Big Money, and that's their main strength.  It's better against attacks, so it perhaps deserves to be a couple slots higher.  But both of those cards have problems in many setups IMO (granted I dislike Envoy more than most people).

While missing the original context of the sentence, I agreed entirely with "I can't believe Jack of All Trades is even". Seriously. How did this card get here? Why does it even... be?

Jack can make the setup irrelevant, and in most province games it seems to do that. Playing like a simulator is in fact an option that people have, and if it wins, why not do it? (Besides that it's less fun.)

Envoy can at least be stopped by attacks. Jack shrugs off most attacks. It beats most chapel strategies because it tends to end the game while the chapel deck is ramping up. It loses to a pair of mountebanks in my simulator, but only by about 49-51, unless I've optimized my mountebank player badly. The only thing I've seen that solidly beats it is the "Banks and Wharves" strategy (which is golden if it's not being attacked).

I don't know what you propose to do with the Tournament to beat Jack. In Dominiate, you can choose the pre-defined strategies "DoubleJack" and "TournamentPlayer", and DoubleJack wins by at least a 2-1 margin. I don't see any tweaks to its tactics that help. There's a fairly simple reason why Jack beats Tournament: Tournament is pretty terrible when your opponent tends to buy provinces before you do!

[Geronimoo]

With just a little bit of tweaking I can get double Jack to beat double Mountebank 2-to-1 in my simulator. I think if Donald would have had access to a simulator in play testing he wouldn't have made it so powerful.

[DG]

I've actually lost of ton of jack of all trades games. The draws have been poor in most of them, whether it was from drawing three estates and two coppers on turn three, getting stuck with 4 to spend with festivals in the supply, or getting 7 every turn when buying provinces. Really not fun after a while. Enough excuses, I've also tried to push the boundaries of what I could do with the card and it has just been fitting like a square peg in a round hole.

[guided]

What I tried to say is that a Village engine with 1-2 Margraves and 2-3 Smithies is stronger than with just spammed Margraves.

I 100% agree with this but I wasn't talking about engines with hybrid card draw

HME: A Village/Margrave engine is going to want to have something else going on rather than just basic treasures, if it wants to outrace say single- or double-Margrave with no Villages. Same concept as Village/Wharf, which is also totally inferior to Wharf with no Villages in the absence of "something else". You're right to say Torturer is the only card that can make a strong Village/Smithy-variant engine with no other payload.

[Anon79]

Jack can make the setup irrelevant, and in most province games it seems to do that. Playing like a simulator is in fact an option that people have, and if it wins, why not do it? (Besides that it's less fun.)

Envoy can at least be stopped by attacks. Jack shrugs off most attacks. It beats most chapel strategies because it tends to end the game while the chapel deck is ramping up. It loses to a pair of mountebanks in my simulator, but only by about 49-51, unless I've optimized my mountebank player badly. The only thing I've seen that solidly beats it is the "Banks and Wharves" strategy (which is golden if it's not being attacked).

Another difference: Envoy is good at racing to 4 Provinces, but is pretty poor at finishing off the game if opponent is going for alternative Victory cards like Fairgrounds, or at Duchy dancing. Jack just keeps going.

[chwhite]

Yeah, after a few games with the Jack it is insanely good at fast Big Money rushes (way better than Envoy, which is annoying but at least much more avoidable) and horrible when you try to graft any sort of other engine on top of it (which I've tried to do several times as well).  You basically have to play like a simulator in order to use it well.

JoaT is the only card that, by itself, actively hurts the value of Dominion gameplay, as far as I'm concerned.  I will be vetoing it every single time (unless I have to kill a KC-Masq pin or something).

[ackack]

Yeah, after a few games with the Jack it is insanely good at fast Big Money rushes (way better than Envoy, which is annoying but at least much more avoidable) and horrible when you try to graft any sort of other engine on top of it (which I've tried to do several times as well).  You basically have to play like a simulator in order to use it well.

JoaT is the only card that, by itself, actively hurts the value of Dominion gameplay, as far as I'm concerned.  I will be vetoing it every single time (unless I have to kill a KC-Masq pin or something).

I agree with the general spirit of this, but I think that there are some cases where Jack can be useful as a supplement to something else. I imagine it would be a great bootstrap into an Apprentice heavy deck, for example. I had some success with it earlier with Wharf and Crossroads, though it might have been even better as pure Jack.

This expansion has a lot of distinctive cards, but after playing with them for a couple dozen games I'm not finding myself liking many of them much. JoaT is a good example of that.

[rspeer]

With just a little bit of tweaking I can get double Jack to beat double Mountebank 2-to-1 in my simulator. I think if Donald would have had access to a simulator in play testing he wouldn't have made it so powerful.

Can you post those strategies? The variants of double Jack and double Mountebank I've tried have all either been obviously suboptimal, or have split the wins about 50-50.

[mischiefmaker]

I was sure I had plenty of examples of JoaT games where I played it like a straight sim and got wrecked, but thanks to councilroom I find that's completely not true (either I didn't play it correctly, or I got beat by a Witch who opened 5/2, or, heh heh, I forgot it was a colony game).

However, I did find one game where I went double-Jack BM and got wrecked, by Hunting Party/Baron: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111024-084214-231561c1.html. Wow, is HP/Baron fast. (And more flexible in the end-game than straight HP-BM, which tends to slow down badly once you get duchies.)

Also, I haven't looked at this one closely enough to analyze it, but I went double-jack BM and almost lost to Spy/HP/Develop (he drew $6 and bought Duchy on turn 15, then drew $9; I bought the last province on turn 16): http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111026-202034-ca859ca6.html. Might Spy actually be an effective counter to Jack, or was there just a lot of luck in this game?

[Geronimoo]

With just a little bit of tweaking I can get double Jack to beat double Mountebank 2-to-1 in my simulator. I think if Donald would have had access to a simulator in play testing he wouldn't have made it so powerful.

Can you post those strategies? The variants of double Jack and double Mountebank I've tried have all either been obviously suboptimal, or have split the wins about 50-50.

I just released a new version of the simulator (which plays Jack even better against attacks). I've included the double Jack strategy as a default bot (just the name of the card). You'll see it now dominates double Mountebank.
You should upgrade automatically.

[guided]

I'm finally starting to grok the basic uses of some of the Hinterlands cards that had baffled me previously. I absolutely ran away with a game against another high-ranked player today buying nothing but Traders and Ill-Gotten Gains. This is despite drawing Trader + 4 Coppers the first 2 times it came up in my hand (declining to trash anything and taking another Trader instead). Man alive, I've got to say trashing IGG for 5 Silvers feels good It was pretty sweet too when he bought an IGG and I revealed Trader for a net result of "You waste $5 on a POS $2-value card and give me a Silver for free when it's not even my turn."

His comment early on was "Trader is very mediocre trashing I find," or something like that.. to which I later responded: I never bought it for the trashing, just the Silvers