Count shouldn't be that low. I personally had it at #20 and even that is probably a bit too low.
I don't agree that Baker is that powerful. It's a pretty small build up for an engine at $5 it's still only a peddler variant. Coin tokens are a lot better then just a coin for the immediate benefit but unlike with Butcher it doesn't really change the way the card is used compared to its vanilla variant.
There are so many strong $5 cards that you usually want something else over it. The most game changing part of this is the setup coin token, which doesn't affect the power of the card itself.
I agree that Baker is overrated on this list (though it appears to be even higher in my ratings), but it is definitely used very differently than Peddler. If there's +buy, you can piledrive Bakers and get a virtual Province every turn until you're ready to end the game in a victory.
Also, the setup coin token does affect the power of the card itself. Imagine a Baker which gives 23847651898356 coin tokens instead of one as a setup effect, that effect would make Baker's top almost completely worthless (and a lot of other kingdom cards, too, but not all of them). The single coin token also affects things, on a much smaller scale.
you are completely right, and i am aware of both of those effects. But if the setup coin token affects the power of baker on the board compared to other cards than usually in a negative way, as Baker itself cant really get much out of that benefit.
The cases where you can actually piledrive bakers without getting far behind are very rare i think that only happens with 5 cost gainers like University maybe with ironworks + highway too (only if there is no + buy).
I think the stockpile coin token plan rarely is that strong with baker. I think it happens a lot more with Candlestickmaker or Merchant guild. Engines are good because their buying power per turn increases not only linearly. But from the point on you stockpile the cointokens(assuming you only build up more bakers from that point this advantage from engine ofer BM is lost so you should only do that once you finished building (ok, that's not completely true as you should already start with the token saving once you get close to finish building but still that doesn't deny my argument)
So what i want to say is those kind of engines aren't very fast and while building the Bakers advantage over Peddler isn't gamechanging. And you wouldn't get a Peddler on 5 that often.
rest doesn't look too bad, though maybe vault is a little bit too high. was it really 12 ranks better last time?
On isotropic there used to be stats collected on the win rates for each card. For each player, you could also see their success rate with each card and how well they did compared to the average. Most top players at that time had a very high success rate with vault compared to the average player. It was about the only thing you could pick out across all the top players.
i don't think that is an argument for the card being strong. I actually think if the same result shows up for the lower tier players that tells us more about the power of the card.
For example i'm pretty sure that top players like Stef, SCSN or Wandering Winder have a very high success rate with a card like Secret Chamber, and a much worse success rate with a card like Cultist.
The reason is that cards that are good only rarely request a higher skill to be played correctly.
And we all know: Cultist is very strong and Secret Chamber is pretty weak all in all