Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: ehunt on April 24, 2014, 01:52:03 pm
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Consider the following card:
Terminal Gold Gainer - 5
(Type: Action)
Gain a gold.
Let's imagine a game between Sarah and Laura, where Sarah opens Soothsayer/- and Laura opens TGG/-, and they purchase nothing but money thereafter.
After opening: Laura's shuffle should go substantially better than Sarah's thanks to the extra card in one hand. Laura also cycles slightly faster.
After second shuffle: Laura's shuffle and Sarah's should go equally well; both have a gold in the deck. Laura has one extra card, but is still (very slightly) ahead in the cycling.
After third and subsequent shuffles: Sarah's shuffle is expected to be better than Laura's on average, with the advantage compounding with each shuffle; moreover, Sarah cycles more.
We expect Sarah to cruise to victory.
Now allow Laura to pick up a terrible trasher, e.g. trade route, on the second shuffle. Who do we expect to win? I think it is not so obvious. Laura's cycling is better, and she is limiting the damage to her deck to one junk card (as opposed to one junk card per shuffle) which is negated by one extra card per shuffle. However, there is the risk of terminal collision or drawing trade route without a curse or estate, and there is a risk of losing on points from the curses or the missing estates.
At any rate, it's close.
Allow Laura to pick up forager on the second shuffle and I would guess her win percentage is over 50%; with junk dealer I'd push it to very high.
So, the natural question is, granting that Soothsayer is usually but not always a little better than it, how good is TGG? My inclination is to believe that TGG is terrible, e.g. in the bottom half of 5 cost cards for sure.
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At 5 TGG would be competitive with Harvest. At 4 it would be quite mediocre.
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now you're underrating the power of cursing. remember than whenever you trash a curse with forager or trad route, you are effectively using up 2 cards for a small benefit (or no benefit at all with trade route), and you have to spend money on a trasher which could otherwise be an economy card.
soothsayer isn't that bad, it really isn't, and it's way better than TGG
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So, the natural question is, granting that Soothsayer is usually but not always a little better than it, how good is TGG? My inclination is to believe that TGG is terrible, e.g. in the bottom half of 5 cost cards for sure.
I could be way off here but TGG feels comparable to Explorer in run-of-the-mill BM. Pro vs Explorer: Always get gold instead of Silver. Con: No immediate benefit. I think maybe I'd want TGG early in the game but Explorer later? But if there's a decent engine available I probably don't look too hard at either one.
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Why is Laura playing TGG and not Teresa or Ted?
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Why is Laura playing TGG and not Teresa or Ted?
Why would Laura play Ted?
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At 5 TGG would be competitive with Harvest. At 4 it would be quite mediocre.
Probably not that bad. Competitive with Counting House maybe. It definitely has some use cases.
Soothsayer comes out good because it can be used in all these use cases, plus it gets the ones where cursing is good enough to offset the benefit of the extra card, so even though it may be of similar value when you're focused just on the Gold gain, it just has way more total use cases.
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Why is Laura playing TGG and not Teresa or Ted?
Brian and Steve started a heavy metal band and are arguing over whether rehearsing makes them better or worse, while Jay is at a game store trying to blend in and get Laura the promos. So that's why they aren't playing. Teresa and Ted, I guess I haven't seen that episode.
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So, the natural question is, granting that Soothsayer is usually but not always a little better than it, how good is TGG? My inclination is to believe that TGG is terrible, e.g. in the bottom half of 5 cost cards for sure.
I could be way off here but TGG feels comparable to Explorer in run-of-the-mill BM. Pro vs Explorer: Always get gold instead of Silver. Con: No immediate benefit. I think maybe I'd want TGG early in the game but Explorer later? But if there's a decent engine available I probably don't look too hard at either one.
Yeah, I'd also compare this to Explorer.
One Soothsayer (without support) will probably never deals more than 5 curses in the whole game. Double Soothsayer might deal 7 or 8, if it is not contested. Any other curser, even the worst ones, will deal curses quicker and thus Soothsayer would deal even less curses.
Plus, there are more kingdom cards than just those two.
- With any kind of sifting, I'm pretty sure Soothsayer beats TGG, because then you could deal all the curses. Exception might be Stables as Soothsayer gives the other player a pretty good chance to hit $5 on his 3rd or 4th turn while the Soothsayer player will probably miss $5 before his second shuffle.
- Any reasonable trashing would be fine for TGG. Chapel, Steward, Remake, Junk Dealer and Upgrade, even Trader and Watchtower will all be fine enough to overcome the cursing. (That's only a claim, though)
- Any engine potential would be nice for TGG (but why would you buy TGG then?)
- Any other curser will outplay Soothsayer.
- In the end game of an engine mirror where both players can draw their whole deck reliably, Soothsayer would be far better than TGG - if there are still curses to be dealt.
So, I think, both cards would have strengths and weaknesses.
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Can Sarah pick up a trasher to trash her Estates and/or her Soothsayer?
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Can Sarah pick up a trasher to trash her Estates and/or her Soothsayer?
Sure. Thought experiments should still strive to control the variables.