I've been seeing a lot of Hovel abuse lately and I feel an moral obligation to try to stop it. Yes, Hovel is the red-headed stepsister of the somewhat better Overgrown Estate and the far better Necropolis. But that doesn't mean you should treat it like crap.
To be fair, Hovel is more often a target of opportunity than a deliberate victim. You find yourself with two Coppers on turn 3 or 4, a Hovel in hand, and no decent $2 action on the board. Hey, why not buy an Estate?
So you burn down your Hovel, flaming peasants flee into the night, and you build a shiny new Estate in its place. Hooray!
But often enough, you find that Estate smirking up at you on some mid-game turn when you wanted to buy a green card anyway. So you play $6, buy a Nobles, and trash your... argh! You can't trash your Hovel because you already turned it into a goddamned Estate!
You're going to buy a bunch of VP cards eventually. You're likely to have that Hovel/Estate in hand during one of those turns. When that happens, you can get rid of it if it's still a Hovel, but you're stuck if you've already turned it into an Estate. So the question to ask yourself is, when that mid-game greening turn comes, how are you going to feel about having an extra Estate?
I find I want that mid-game Estate pretty rarely. Yeah, sometimes the game will to end at 24-25 with 4 Provinces each and that Estate will turns out to be the winning VP. But way, way more often, there's going to be some Duchy dancing, or there's a +Buy, or a gainer, or VP-tokens, or [insert interesting card here]. Then that 1 VP doesn't matter very much, but being one card slimmer in the mid-to-late game does.
It depends on the kingdom, of course. An early Hovel-to-Estate swap makes sense when you're going Rebuild or Ambassador, and it's at least plausible with Apprentice, Salvager, or Silk Road, or in a big nasty slog. But unless you have some definite use for that Estate in mind, you're usually better off saving your Hovel for later.
If you're not so sure, ask yourself a few questions when you're actually looking at the kingdom:
- "Will I be happy if my opponent Ambassadors me an Estate in the mid-game?"
- "Am I likely to be drawing late game hands with $12 and no +Buy?"
- "If we're greening and I find myself with an extra $2, would I buy an Estate?"
If the answer to these questions is a resounding "Yes!" then go ahead and swap your Hovel for an Estate. But if it's "No!" or "I'm really not sure," then do the right thing. Spare your peasants. Save your Hovel.
This is my first strategy article. Comments and advice are appreciated.