Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Puzzles and Challenges => Topic started by: Flip5ide on June 11, 2014, 05:16:14 pm
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Okay guys, the challenge is simple: name a pair of kingdom cards of which, all edge cases considered, one is always preferable to have in hand. Prices and Possession are ignored.
Example:
Warehouse>Cellar
Noble Brigand>Thief
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but... neither of those is true
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but... neither of those is true
I prefer a thief on a platinum board. (not that I would buy the thief)
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So Expand > Remodel is all I can think of.
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Okay guys, the challenge is simple: name a pair of kingdom cards of which, all edge cases considered, one is always preferable to have in hand. Prices are ignored.
Example:
Warehouse>Cellar
Noble Brigand>Thief
These are bad examples. Cellar is better if you have a bigger hand. Thief is better when dealing with Platinum and alt Treasure.
In fact, there is no pair of cards where one is always better. Even something like Platinum vs. Copper is subject to the edge case where you are Possessed.
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Guilds (Taxman) edge-cases Platinum > Gold > Silver > Copper.
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I knew they didn't work, just illustrating what I meant. Originally I wrote "Possible candidates that don't actually work:"
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hunting grounds > smithy
workers village > village
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hunting grounds > smithy
workers village > village
Oh, yeah, Bazaar > Village as well
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hunting grounds > smithy
workers village > village
except i can come up with an edge case for hunting grounds where i have 3 cards left in my deck and i dont want to trigger a reshuffle
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And Walled Village > Village
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hunting grounds > smithy
workers village > village
Edge cases include Possession for both. For Smithy, there is reshuffle consideration. Also cases where you have to trash the card but don't want to get Duchy or 3 Estates. For Village, there is Forge with certain hands (applies for Village vs. all $4+ villages as well).
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hunting grounds > smithy
workers village > village
Edge cases include Possession for both. For Smithy, there is reshuffle consideration. For Village, there is Forge with certain hands (applies for Village vs. all $4+ villages as well).
We need not consider Possession for Edge Cases. Otherwise all discussion is moot.
Forge doesn't count because it was postulated that price does not matter.
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variety cards work for everything too.
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Squire > Necropolis. And, uh,.. lots of things are better than Ruins.
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Wait... what about Goons>Militia? :o
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Wait... what about Goons>Militia? :o
Nah, the extra +1 coin could get you from $7 to $8 to buy a game-winning Province.
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hunting grounds > smithy
workers village > village
Edge cases include Possession for both. For Smithy, there is reshuffle consideration. For Village, there is Forge with certain hands (applies for Village vs. all $4+ villages as well).
We need not consider Possession for Edge Cases. Otherwise all discussion is moot.
Forge doesn't count because it was postulated that price does not matter.
Pretty sure those stipulations weren't in the OP when I first read it. :P
lio is right that variety cards still edge case everything, but if you ignore those too, it makes the challenge pretty easy. It's not hard to find strictly better effects.
Pretty much every village+ > Village
Count > Mandarin (on-gain doesn't matter because this is about the card in hand)
Scrying Pool > Spy
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Wait... what about Goons>Militia? :o
Nah, the extra +1 coin could get you from $7 to $8 to buy a game-winning Province.
Goons and Militia both give +$2. You may be conflating it with Merchant Guild.
Oh, one more universal edge case -- you prefer not to have the "better" card vs. Masquerade, if your hand is that card + 4 even more important cards (e.g. Colonies).
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Wait... what about Goons>Militia? :o
Nah, the extra +1 coin could get you from $7 to $8 to buy a game-winning Province.
Goons and Militia both give +$2. You may be conflating it with Merchant Guild.
Oh, one more universal edge case -- you prefer not to have the "better" card vs. Masquerade, if your hand is that card + 4 even more important cards (e.g. Colonies).
Oh. In my head Goons was giving +$1.
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On-gain effect matters, because you could trash it and gain it from the trash with Graverobber in the same turn.
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Oh, one more universal edge case -- you prefer not to have the "better" card vs. Masquerade, if your hand is that card + 4 even more important cards (e.g. Colonies).
Works with ambassador too. So, list of cards we are ignoring:
Possession
Masquerade
Ambassador
Horn of Plenty
Fairgrounds
Menagerie
Hunting Party
Forge
Remake
Upgrade
Procession
Governor
And I'm probably forgetting some. Some of the above don't null all of them, but they null a lot of them.
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So I guess we're ignoring Remake/Upgrade (any other exact value upgraders I'm forgetting)? Because unless two cards have the same price there's almost always going to be a hypothetical situation where the different price points will matter.
(For example: Maybe I'd rather have a Militia in my hand than a Goons if I can Upgrade it into a Duchy.)
Edit: There goes liopoil, saying it more thoroughly and faster than me.
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Yeah, assume all prices are equal. And just ignore Possession.
Also: Chancellor is definitely worse than Scavenger as far as I can surmise.
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Edit: There goes liopoil, saying it more thoroughly and faster than me.
...I edited in Upgrade, procession, and remake off of your comment.
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Yeah, assume all prices are equal. And just ignore Possession.
Also: Chancellor is definitely worse than Scavenger as far as I can surmise.
Edge case where you don't want to discard you r deck and your entire discard is bad cards and you're forced to put one on top.
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Edit: There goes liopoil, saying it more thoroughly and faster than me.
...I edited in Upgrade, procession, and remake off of your comment.
haha, okay, no worries I just thought it was funny that we'd had the same thought.
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Yeah, assume all prices are equal. And just ignore Possession.
Also: Chancellor is definitely worse than Scavenger as far as I can surmise.
Edge case where you don't want to discard you r deck and your entire discard is bad cards and you're forced to put one on top.
Scavenger says "you may" so you can just take the +$2 in that edge case.
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Yeah, assume all prices are equal. And just ignore Possession.
Also: Chancellor is definitely worse than Scavenger as far as I can surmise.
Edge case where you don't want to discard you r deck and your entire discard is bad cards and you're forced to put one on top.
Scavenger says "you may" so you can just take the +$2 in that edge case.
You may put your deck into your discard pile. You have to topdeck a card.
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On-gain effect matters, because you could trash it and gain it from the trash with Graverobber in the same turn.
Good point.
And I'm probably forgetting some. Some of the above don't null all of them, but they null a lot of them.
Governor is another exact upgrader.
Also: Chancellor is definitely worse than Scavenger as far as I can surmise.
You can have a scenario where you've drawn your deck and the only stuff in your discard is junk, in which case you'd rather not top-deck anything.
A card that forces you to do something can't be strictly better than a card that doesn't make you do something (sort of edge case: extra coin is never bad, outside of already-omitted cases like Possession).
Hmm... thinking further on this, I guess Scrying Pool > Spy isn't always true, because SP could potentially trigger an unwanted reshuffle. Mehhh.
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Yeah, assume all prices are equal. And just ignore Possession.
Also: Chancellor is definitely worse than Scavenger as far as I can surmise.
not at all, scavenger forces you to put a card from your discard pile on top of your deck, which can totally be a bad thing
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Also: Chancellor is definitely worse than Scavenger as far as I can surmise.
Not if your deck and discard has only junk cards in it.
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Lab>Caravan (I'm sure there's some sort of edge case here)
However Baker>Peddler is pretty solid I'm sure
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Lab>Caravan (I'm sure there's some sort of edge case here)
However Baker>Peddler is pretty solid I'm sure
1) You want to draw the extra card on your next turn, not now.
2) Black Market.
There are times when you might want to trash the weaker card with Chapel but keep the stronger card in your deck for any two cards, so I guess no card is always preferable to have in hand.
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Mints, counterfeit, foragers, farmland, and fairgrounds can also create situations where you want worse seeming cards in hand (for trashing). Islands can put unwanted cards onto the island mat. By discarding cards from hand or putting them on top of your deck you can create situations where a poorer card gives a better result from saboteur type attacks, thief type attacks, swindlers, sages, rogues, lookouts, ironmongers, tributes, loans, doctors, jesters, trade routes, and so on.
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Lab>Caravan (I'm sure there's some sort of edge case here)
However Baker>Peddler is pretty solid I'm sure
1) You want to draw the extra card on your next turn, not now.
2) Black Market.
Easiest scenario for 1 is when you've already drawn your deck. Lab doesn't help you at all then, but Caravan still benefits your next turn.
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Some ideas that I bet have edge cases are
Black Market>Woodcutter
Nomad Camp>Woodcutter
Lab>Wishing Well
KC/TR
However I'm certain GM>Market.
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Um, the Black Market one is obvious. You want an extra buy for the supply, not what's in the Black Market deck.
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Lab > Wishing Well fails if you only have one card in deck and don't want to reshuffle.
KC > TR fails for the same reason (or others). You want to play a card twice (say, Lab to draw 4 card) but not three times.
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Lab > Wishing Well fails if you only have one card in deck and don't want to reshuffle.
KC > TR fails for the same reason (or others). You want to play a card twice (say, Lab to draw 4 card) but not three times.
The first case doesn't work. Wishing Well will still cause you to reshuffle because you MUST name a card and you MUST check to see if the top card matches, even if you name the Ace of Spades. You can fix this edge case by putting a second Lab in your hand with 3 cards in the deck. If you don't want to reshuffle, you can play WW first and then the second Lab. Two Labs would force you to reshuffle.
For the second case, the easiest example is forced trashing. You have two junk cards to Upgrade but you don't want the third play of it.
Nomad Camp>Woodcutter
Nomad Camp > Woodcutter doesn't work. They are equivalent once in your hand. If you want to take the on-gain into account via the possibility of trashing the card and then using Rogue, then there can be scenarios where you'd rather not top-deck the card. Also note that it has to be Rogue specifically, because Graverobber would top-deck the gained card either way.
Also, to head off another possible thought, Goons > Woodcutter doesn't work because there are some scenarios where you don't want your opponent to discard (e.g. Menagerie).
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Lab > Wishing Well fails if you only have one card in deck and don't want to reshuffle.
Wishing Well will trigger the re-shuffle anyway; you need something like Madman or Crossroads and just the wrong number of cards left in your deck.
PPE: eHalcyon's trick works too.
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Oh, one more universal edge case -- you prefer not to have the "better" card vs. Masquerade, if your hand is that card + 4 even more important cards (e.g. Colonies).
Works with ambassador too. So, list of cards we are ignoring:
Possession
Masquerade
Ambassador
Horn of Plenty
Fairgrounds
Menagerie
Hunting Party
Forge
Remake
Upgrade
Procession
Governor
And I'm probably forgetting some. Some of the above don't null all of them, but they null a lot of them.
I have another universal edge case, along the same lines as Masquerade/Ambassador. In a situation where you would want to trash the card, you would prefer not to have the "better" card trashed if your opponent has Graverobber or Rogue.
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Bridge>Woodcutter then.
And also Advisor>Lab. Edge case me.
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Bridge>Woodcutter then.
that's quite good. there are times though when you don't want costs to be reduced, f.e. with sage, TfB, or because it protects your opponent from knights and such.
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And also Advisor>Lab. Edge case me.
I assume you mean Lab>Advisor. But I think Advisor can be better because even a perfectly rational opponent can give you a card you like because of incomplete information. Or alternatively, Advisor can clear a bad card off the top of your deck. (Say there's three Coppers on top of your deck; Lab would just draw two of them, whereas Advisor would draw two of them and discard the third.)
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A few more:
Journeyman/Catacombs>Smithy always.
GM>Mystic
Lab>Vagrant
Alchemist>Lab
Treasury>Peddler
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Bridge>Woodcutter then.
And also Advisor>Lab. Edge case me.
I think you mean Lab>Advisor. And an edge case is easy: the last two cards in your deck are Curses, and you want them to miss the shuffle.
As for Bridge>Woodcutter, there's another fun edge-case that doesn't involve TfB: you want to overpay for Stonemason to gain multiples of something that currently costs $1. The Bridge makes that impossible.
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Bridge>Woodcutter then.
And also Advisor>Lab. Edge case me.
I think you mean Lab>Advisor. And an edge case is easy: the last two cards in your deck are Curses, and you want them to miss the shuffle.
As for Bridge>Woodcutter, there's another fun edge-case that doesn't involve TfB: you want to overpay for Stonemason to gain multiples of something that currently costs $1. The Bridge makes that impossible.
Unlocked Achievement: Obscure Edgecase.
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Lab > Wishing Well fails if you only have one card in deck and don't want to reshuffle.
KC > TR fails for the same reason (or others). You want to play a card twice (say, Lab to draw 4 card) but not three times.
The first case doesn't work. Wishing Well will still cause you to reshuffle because you MUST name a card and you MUST check to see if the top card matches, even if you name the Ace of Spades. You can fix this edge case by putting a second Lab in your hand with 3 cards in the deck. If you don't want to reshuffle, you can play WW first and then the second Lab. Two Labs would force you to reshuffle.
For the second case, the easiest example is forced trashing. You have two junk cards to Upgrade but you don't want the third play of it.
Nomad Camp>Woodcutter
Nomad Camp > Woodcutter doesn't work. They are equivalent once in your hand. If you want to take the on-gain into account via the possibility of trashing the card and then using Rogue, then there can be scenarios where you'd rather not top-deck the card. Also note that it has to be Rogue specifically, because Graverobber would top-deck the gained card either way.
Also, to head off another possible thought, Goons > Woodcutter doesn't work because there are some scenarios where you don't want your opponent to discard (e.g. Menagerie).
Good point on Wishing Well, thanks.
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A few more:
Journeyman/Catacombs>Smithy always.
GM>Mystic
Lab>Vagrant
Alchemist>Lab
Treasury>Peddler
Journeyman should work because you can choose to name a card not in you deck to be equivalent to Smithy.
Smithy > Catacombs when you would trash the card and you would not want to gain a card costing less than Catacombs.
Vagrant > Lab in situations similar to when Wishing Well > Lab, already discussed.
Treasury should work because you can choose not to put it back on top. But man, Peddler is such a stupid answer because it's whole schtick is its price, which we have to ignore for this puzzle.
Bazaar > Peddler
Market > Peddler
Grand Market > Peddler
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Counterfeit > Copper
Tunnel > Estate
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Counterfeit > Copper
Tunnel > Estate
As was pointed out earlier, no one treasure is always better than another treasure due toTaxman.
Copper > Counterfeit with Coppersmith
Estate > Tunnel with Baron
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Counterfeit > Copper
Tunnel > Estate
As was pointed out earlier, no one treasure is always better than another treasure due toTaxman.
Copper > Counterfeit with Coppersmith
Estate > Tunnel with Baron
Ah yes. True.
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And of course JoaT trumps every sub-5 action.
Except reactions. And a KC-KC bridge/highway sort of thing.
But is nobles better than smithy 100% of the time?
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But is nobles better than smithy 100% of the time?
You have a crossroads you want to play first, and drawing the extra card because of Nobles will trigger an unwanted re-shuffle (you have exactly three cards left in your deck before playing the Crossroads and Nobles/Smithy).
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And of course JoaT trumps every sub-5 action.
Except reactions. And a KC-KC bridge/highway sort of thing.
But is nobles better than smithy 100% of the time?
The JoaT one is a joke, right?
scott gives an example for Nobles. Another one is when the opponent has Tribute. If you only want to count cards in hand and not in your deck, you can do the same thing with opponent playing Ghost Ship first.
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Journeyman should work because you can choose to name a card not in you deck to be equivalent to Smithy.
Except that Journeyman shows your opponent what you're drawing. Maybe he needs to know whether you've got a Village, so that he knows how to respond to your first Torturer, or whatever.
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And of course JoaT trumps every sub-5 action.
Except reactions. And a KC-KC bridge/highway sort of thing.
But is nobles better than smithy 100% of the time?
The JoaT one is a joke, right?
scott gives an example for Nobles. Another one is when the opponent has Tribute. If you only want to count cards in hand and not in your deck, you can do the same thing with opponent playing Ghost Ship first.
Also jester, giving curse is better than gaining extra smithy.
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Gah, meant to say Band of Misfits, not JoaT.
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BoM doesn't work because the supply pile of the card you want to play it as could be empty. Another universal edge case: In your deck you have three cards, a, a, and b. a is supposedly strictly better than b. You play wishing well and draw a, and now you you can't guarrantee getting your wish right. You would prefer b in your hand because then you can get your wish right.
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Counterfeit > Copper
Tunnel > Estate
Moneylender, Baron.
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And of course JoaT trumps every sub-5 action.
Except reactions. And a KC-KC bridge/highway sort of thing.
But is nobles better than smithy 100% of the time?
Nope, Bureaucrat.
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universal edge case
Okay, now I've seen everything.
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universal edge case
Okay, now I've seen everything.
All cases were created edgy, but some are more edgy than others.
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Gah, meant to say Band of Misfits, not JoaT.
If the piles run out then it's not as good as the actual card.
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Gah, meant to say Band of Misfits, not JoaT.
If the piles run out then it's not as good as the actual card.
Or if there are five Highways in play.
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Witch>Young Witch
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Witch>Young Witch
Tunnel, Menagerie.
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You guys are forgetting Fairgrounds. When you have 6 fairgrounds, Curse>Colony if Curse is your 10th, 15th, 20th, etc. card
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You guys are forgetting Fairgrounds. When you have 6 fairgrounds, Curse>Colony if Curse is your 10th, 15th, 20th, etc. card
It was explicitly excluded, because it can be made to be an edge case for wanting an arbitrary card X over another arbitrary card Y always.
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The challenge also states that it only cares about having one in hand
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Grand Market>Conspirator
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Grand Market>Conspirator
Don't want to draw a card.
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Diadem>Masterpiece
Peddler>Oasis?
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Peddler>Oasis?
Tunnel
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Diadem>Masterpiece
Peddler>Oasis?
Definitely not Peddler>Oasis. Being allowed to discard can be good for you, and not just because of Tunnel. Menagerie, for example.
Diadem>Masterpiece is really good, but I don't think it 100% holds up. Maybe it's an Ambassador game where junking is a high priority (How/why did I get a Diadem in such a game? Who knows). I can Ambassador my opponent the Masterpiece, but I'm stuck with my Diadem.
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Diadem>Masterpiece
As already discussed, Taxman. For this specific case, there's also Mint (can't mint a Diadem).
In order for A > B to be true (barring the universal edge cases), we need these to be true:
1. A and B share the same card types, which matters for Tribute and Jester.
2. A and B are not Treasure cards, which matters for Taxman.
3. A can do everything that B does, or else you will sometimes prefer B to do its special thing.
4. A does not force you to do anything that B doesn't also.
3 prevents a coin token card from being better than a standard virtual coin card, because you may prefer the virtual coin when using Black Market. Same goes for a card B that has you discard when card A doesn't, due to Tunnel.
4 covers a lot of stuff you might not expect. If it forces you to draw or even reveal an extra card, that can be undesirable for reshuffle considerations. If it forces you to attack, that can be bad because your opponents may have reactions that benefit them. If it forces you to play an extra card or to topdeck something, well there are situations where you don't want those things either.
4 doesn't cover extra coins (virtual or token), because having more money to spend never hurts you. It doesn't cover extra buys or actions for the same reason.
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Can someone explain the Taxman caveat to me?
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Can someone explain the Taxman caveat to me?
Yes.
You want to trash a specific card to make your opponent discard it.
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Can someone explain the Taxman caveat to me?
Silver isn't better than copper in your hand because your opponent could have a hand with coppers and no silver and you want them to discard it.
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Can someone explain the Taxman caveat to me?
Having any Treasure in hand in place of anything else changes how a Taxman attack affects you. If you have Plat or Copper and oponent attacks by trashing Plat, having a Plat effectively gives you $0 (because you have to discard it) and having a Copper effectively gives you $1.
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That's a major stretch. Besides, you can't lose Diadem to Taxman.
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That's a major stretch. Besides, you can't lose Diadem to Taxman.
It works both ways. If you have a Taxman, you can play it with a Copper to force opponents to discard Copper. This is preferable to playing Taxman-Diadem which doesn't hurt opponents other than making them reveal their hands.
Doesn't matter if it's a stretch. Edge cases are stretches by definition.
Diadem>Masterpiece
Peddler>Oasis?
Definitely not Peddler>Oasis. Being allowed to discard can be good for you, and not just because of Tunnel. Menagerie, for example.
Diadem>Masterpiece is really good, but I don't think it 100% holds up. Maybe it's an Ambassador game where junking is a high priority (How/why did I get a Diadem in such a game? Who knows). I can Ambassador my opponent the Masterpiece, but I'm stuck with my Diadem.
We already identified Ambassador as a "universal edge case" that can always make a "better" card worse.
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Revised list of cards we have to ignore for there to be any cards strictly better than another:
Possession
Masquerade
Ambassador
Horn of Plenty
Menagerie
Hunting Party
Forge
Remake
Upgrade
Governor
Procession (only for actions)
Taxman (only for treasures)
Rogue (only for cards costing 3+)
Graverobber (only for cards costing 3+)
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Procession should say "(only for Actions)"
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Should also add Remodel, Expand, Bishop, Salvager, etc. Anything that cares about card cost in its text.
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Revised list of cards we have to ignore for there to be any cards strictly better than another:
Possession
Masquerade
Ambassador
Horn of Plenty
Menagerie
Hunting Party
Forge
Remake
Upgrade
Governor
Wishing Well
Mystic
Procession (only for actions)
Taxman (only for treasures)
Rogue (only for cards costing 3-6)
Grave Robber (only for cards costing 3-6)
Graverobber is only one word. The cost restriction doesn't apply because of cost reduction. Well, I guess you can say "for cards costing $3+" because it'll never be able to bring back cards costing less.
Why are we ignoring Mystic and Wishing Well?
Should also add Remodel, Expand, Bishop, Salvager, etc. Anything that cares about card cost in its text.
Ignoring the cost of a card is primarily to remove cards that care about fixed costs, like Forge, Remake, Upgrade. These cards can sometimes make a cheaper card more useful than a more expensive card. With all these TfB, higher cost is always better. Trashing a $5 card with Expand is always better than trashing a $4 card, in terms of what you can gain from Expand.
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Graverobber is only one word. The cost restriction doesn't apply because of cost reduction. Well, I guess you can say "for cards costing $3+" because it'll never be able to bring back cards costing less.
Why are we ignoring Mystic and Wishing Well?
Right, I knew that. Fixed
mystic and wishing well:Another universal edge case: In your deck you have three cards, a, a, and b. a is supposedly strictly better than b. You play wishing well and draw a, and now you you can't guarrantee getting your wish right. You would prefer b in your hand because then you can get your wish right.
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I love that the challenge has changed into constructing this list:
Revised list of cards we have to ignore for there to be any cards strictly better than another:
Possession
Masquerade
Ambassador
Horn of Plenty
Menagerie
Hunting Party
Forge
Remake
Upgrade
Governor
Wishing Well
Mystic
Procession (only for actions)
Taxman (only for treasures)
Rogue (only for cards costing 3+)
Graverobber (only for cards costing 3+)
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mystic and wishing well:Another universal edge case: In your deck you have three cards, a, a, and b. a is supposedly strictly better than b. You play wishing well and draw a, and now you you can't guarrantee getting your wish right. You would prefer b in your hand because then you can get your wish right.
Ah, right. I wonder if that's too broad though. Can't a similar argument be made for any card that cares about cards in your deck? Herald, Golem, Doctor.
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mystic and wishing well:Another universal edge case: In your deck you have three cards, a, a, and b. a is supposedly strictly better than b. You play wishing well and draw a, and now you you can't guarrantee getting your wish right. You would prefer b in your hand because then you can get your wish right.
Ah, right. I wonder if that's too broad though. Can't a similar argument be made for any card that cares about cards in your deck? Herald, Golem, Doctor.
I don't see it with those cards. Can you explain?
Although it is true that for any two cards a and b, if the bonus a gives over b is useless to you this turn but might not be next turn you would rather draw b.
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mystic and wishing well:Another universal edge case: In your deck you have three cards, a, a, and b. a is supposedly strictly better than b. You play wishing well and draw a, and now you you can't guarrantee getting your wish right. You would prefer b in your hand because then you can get your wish right.
Ah, right. I wonder if that's too broad though. Can't a similar argument be made for any card that cares about cards in your deck? Herald, Golem, Doctor.
I don't see it with those cards. Can you explain?
Although it is true that for any two cards a and b, if the bonus a gives over b is useless to you this turn but might not be next turn you would rather draw b.
In my deck I have cards A, A, B and B, with A > B. I may prefer having Bs in my hand so that my Golem can hit A instead.
In my deck I have cards A and B, with A > B. I may prefer having B in my hand so that my Herald can play A from the deck.
For both of the above, it works best with terminals to remove the possibility of playing the cards in your hand after Golem. Even so, it should be possible to construct edge cases where the order of play matters, or cases where you wouldn't want to play the cards left in your hand even if you have the actions for it (reshuffle considerations, for example).
For Doctor -- in my deck I have cards A, B and C, with A > B. Both B and C are junk cards I want to trash from my deck. I may prefer to have B in my hand so that I know to name C when I play Doctor.
I say "junk card" for the example but you could create edgy edge cases where you still want to trash a decent card.
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I interpreted the puzzle as: you're playing a game of Dominion, and a genie pops up and says "I can turn any card X in your hand into card Y, but it will turn back into X at the end of your turn (and you can accept this offer as many times as you like this turn)." Which (if any) pairs of cards, X and Y, are such that you would make this deal in any situation, given that none of the cards on liopoil's list are in the kingdom or Black Market deck?
So if that's how the puzzle is interpreted, the Golem and Herald cases don't work, because the assumption is that replacing X with Y doesn't affect what is remaining in your deck.
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I interpreted the puzzle as: you're playing a game of Dominion, and a genie pops up and says "I can turn any card X in your hand into card Y, but it will turn back into X at the end of your turn (and you can accept this offer as many times as you like this turn)." Which (if any) pairs of cards, X and Y, are such that you would make this deal in any situation, given that none of the cards on liopoil's list are in the kingdom or Black Market deck?
So if that's how the puzzle is interpreted, the Golem and Herald cases don't work, because the assumption is that replacing X with Y doesn't affect what is remaining in your deck.
In this case WW and mystic don't work either. And actually, I like this definition, so I'll take them off the list.
Also, I'm not convinced that those cards work universally. Take village and worker's village for example - play order can't matter.
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I interpreted the puzzle as: you're playing a game of Dominion, and a genie pops up and says "I can turn any card X in your hand into card Y, but it will turn back into X at the end of your turn (and you can accept this offer as many times as you like this turn)." Which (if any) pairs of cards, X and Y, are such that you would make this deal in any situation, given that none of the cards on liopoil's list are in the kingdom or Black Market deck?
So if that's how the puzzle is interpreted, the Golem and Herald cases don't work, because the assumption is that replacing X with Y doesn't affect what is remaining in your deck.
In this case WW and mystic don't work either. And actually, I like this definition, so I'll take them off the list.
Also, I'm not convinced that those cards work universally. Take village and worker's village for example - play order can't matter.
Hmm...
My hand is Village-Village-Golem-Diadem and my deck is WV, WV and 4 Copper in an unknown order. I want to maximize my number of actions to get more value out of Diadem. This means that I should play Golem first, because I will get fewer +actions if my Villages draw Worker's Village. I prefer having WV in hand over Village because of the possibility that Golem sifts through 2 Copper and I would prefer to leave Villages unplayed than trigger a reshuffle (but I am willing to risk it with the initial Golem play).
I think that works. :P
Even if the examples aren't universal, they still cut out a large swath of possibilities.
scott_pilgrim is right though, and I think I may have been thinking that way subconsciously, which is why I questioned WW and Mystic on the list.
This discussion has gotten more interesting than I thought it would. "Universal edge case" is my favourite oxymoron for the day.
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Scavenger>Duchess
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Scavenger>Duchess
Scavenger doesn't let you sift the next card. It also doesn't force your opponent to look at a card, which may force them to reshuffle.
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So I guess another way of putting it is, a pair of cards (card X and Card Y) which, if both in your hand, you would always play one over the other.
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So I guess another way of putting it is, a pair of cards (card X and Card Y) which, if both in your hand, you would always play one over the other.
I think only Haven makes you play a card over another (see its official FAQ).
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Wouldn't this puzzle be easier if the only cards in the Kingdom were the two (or more) in question? Otherwise every answer relies on the other 8 more than the two in question.
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My first ever post (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=3880.msg83449#msg83449) on these forums was on how to construct a strictly better card.
Summary: Take an Action-Victory card, and publish a new one with "+1 victory token" attached. Don't change the name.
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After Guilds being published, can we consider "Take a Coin token" under the same premise?
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After Guilds being published, can we consider "Take a Coin token" under the same premise?
No. In a Possession game you might not want your deck to be producing coin at all, let alone coin tokens.
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Aside from that one case, which is rare enough, I think it fits. To invalidate the Victory tokens you just need a card that can trade/spend them.
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On-gain effect matters, because you could trash it and gain it from the trash with Graverobber in the same turn.
You can't gain from the trash with Graverobber given the challenge's stipulations. Graverobber requires a cost condition be met, and we are ignoring cost.
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My first ever post (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=3880.msg83449#msg83449) on these forums was on how to construct a strictly better card.
Summary: Take an Action-Victory card, and publish a new one with "+1 victory token" attached. Don't change the name.
But is it still strictly better if the extra VP tokens influence your opponent to, say, break PPR when they normally wouldn't when you yourself can't get the last Province? Like, if the extra token gives you a 4VP lead instead of a 3VP lead, your opponent is more likely to break PPR. Maybe you don't want that.
It's a "Play Adventurer before Poor House" kind of edge case tough.
While on the subject, Princess > Bridge without Throne Room and variants.
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On-gain effect matters, because you could trash it and gain it from the trash with Graverobber in the same turn.
You can't gain from the trash with Graverobber given the challenge's stipulations. Graverobber requires a cost condition be met, and we are ignoring cost.
Hmm... while you are technically correct (the best kind of correct), the point of ignoring costs was so to remove a universal edge case of, say, Upgrade. The edge case with Border Village > Worker's Village comes because you can trash Border Village, gain Border Village, and gain a Wharf or something, so it's better to have in your hand, even though Worker's Village's effect is better. Costs are involved there, but they aren't the source of the edge case.
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Vault>Secret Chamber
Noble Steed>Laboratory
Torturer>Smithy
Prince>Scheme? This new card is technical as heck.
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Vault>Secret Chamber I'd rather not trigger that reshuffle
Noble Steed>Laboratory This seems right
Torturer>Smithy My opponent has Trader, or Menagerie
Prince>Scheme? I'd rather play my other action this turn and next, rather than next turn and every later turn
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Vault>Secret Chamber
Noble Steed>Laboratory
Torturer>Smithy
Prince>Scheme? This new card is technical as heck.
Are you checking the rules I already mentioned?
Vault also fails because it gives opponents a benefit. Also, SC has a reaction.
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Butcher > Remodel ?
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Easy puzzle: What is a case, besides all those possession/fairground type cases (as well as king's court, throne room, procession, prince, etc.) where highway is better than peddler on a board with no plus buy or cost-dependents?
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Easy puzzle: What is a case, besides all those possession/fairground type cases (as well as king's court, throne room, procession, prince, etc.) where highway is better than peddler on a board with no plus buy or cost-dependents?
any gain?
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Gain is always cost dependent, yes?
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Easy puzzle: What is a case, besides all those possession/fairground type cases (as well as king's court, throne room, procession, prince, etc.) where highway is better than peddler on a board with no plus buy or cost-dependents?
Highway does not come knocking the door during a nap.
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Easy puzzle: What is a case, besides all those possession/fairground type cases (as well as king's court, throne room, procession, prince, etc.) where highway is better than peddler on a board with no plus buy or cost-dependents?
Poor House
Swindler, when you're going for Duchy/Duke (or does this count as a cost-dependent?)
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Poor House is what I was going for. I don't really see how Swindler is affected, can you explain?
EDIT: Oh, I see, yeah, I meant assuming that both cost the same.
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Poor house I guess is when you accidentally herald into it with 5 treasures in hand?
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Yep. And just in general; you can play highway and have the extra coin, whereas you can't do the same thing with peddler, since it will just get lost with poor house
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How do Poor House and Highway work together?
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How do Poor House and Highway work together?
Not at all. Peddler and Poor House, on the other hand, have a negative interaction sometimes.
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in my free time, i always produce money and destroy it with poor house. it's super fun
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How do Poor House and Highway work together?
Not at all. Peddler and Poor House, on the other hand, have a negative interaction sometimes.
Actually, that's what I meant by that
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So I'm not seeing how Highway can be anti-synergistic at all with Poor House..?
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So I'm not seeing how Highway can be anti-synergistic at all with Poor House..?
There isn't a way. The question was how Highway could be better than Peddler (with a bunch of restrictions to rule out some easy answers). The answer is that Peddler has a negative interaction with Poor House while Highway does not.
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So I'm not seeing how Highway can be anti-synergistic at all with Poor House..?
There isn't a way. The question was how Highway could be better than Peddler (with a bunch of restrictions to rule out some easy answers). The answer is that Peddler has a negative interaction with Poor House while Highway does not.
also, it's way cooler to play 8 highways and buy a province for 0$ then to play 8 peddlers and pay 8$ for it
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Butcher > Remodel ?
Looks solid to me. But I bet someone will come up with an edge case.
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I'm pretty certain that IRL you would never prefer to have a Duchy in hand than a Province, but might sometimes prefer the opposite due to Tournament (i.e. Province > Duchy).
On Goko, however, your opponent plays a Tournament, with a Bureaucrat and some other terminal in hand. If you have a Province, then Goko will ask you whether you want to reveal it, thus informing your opponent that you have a Victory card in hand, and so causing them to play the Bureaucrat instead of the other terminal. (And for whatever reason you consider this worse than them getting +Card +1$ (or it's a 3+ player game and someone else has already revealed)).
A similar situation arises with Young Witch to give a situation where you would prefer Duchy to Tunnel.
On the other hand, I can't find an edge case to counter Estate > Duchy in hand, though maybe someone else can.
(you can replace Duchy with any other pure Victory card with no interactions with other cards)
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On the other hand, I can't find an edge case to Estate > Duchy, though maybe someone else can.
baron
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On the other hand, I can't find an edge case to Estate > Duchy, though maybe someone else can.
baron
That was the whole reason of why Estate > Duchy rather than Estate = Duchy. Edited for clarity.
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On the other hand, I can't find an edge case to Estate > Duchy, though maybe someone else can.
baron
That was the whole reason of why Estate > Duchy rather than Estate = Duchy. Edited for clarity.
ahh, okay. Rebuild would make you prefer to have a duchy in hand if it is a mirror and you are trying to win the duchy split. However, you also have a province and so having your only duchy in hand lets you safely name province to insure you hit an estate.
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So I guess estate could always trump Duchy, Province, and Colony because of Baron and Duchy could do likewise because of Duke. And Province too because of Tournament?
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So I guess estate could always trump Duchy, Province, and Colony because of Baron and Duchy could do likewise because of Duke. And Province too because of Tournament?
very much so indeed yes thats correct
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On the other hand, I can't find an edge case to Estate > Duchy, though maybe someone else can.
baron
That was the whole reason of why Estate > Duchy rather than Estate = Duchy. Edited for clarity.
ahh, okay. Rebuild would make you prefer to have a duchy in hand if it is a mirror and you are trying to win the duchy split. However, you also have a province and so having your only duchy in hand lets you safely name province to insure you hit an estate.
This doesn't work with scott pilgrim's "genie" interpretation of the question, which is the one I would use. Also, it's to do with TfB, and thus cost (if Estates cost 5 you wouldn't have this problem).
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I think a compelling case can be made with the Ruins:
1. Chancellor is strictly better than Abandoned mine. It has "you may" so we can always just play one as $2 while the other is $1. Throne rooms, golems, etc. should not matter.
2. Necropolis is strictly better than Ruined village. +2 actions vs +1.
3. Festival is strictly better than Ruined market.
4. Great hall is strictly better than Ruined library.
There are plenty of other things that give the exact same benefit and give you more flexibility or additional rewards.
In like fashion, Farmland, ignoring price, is strictly worse than Province in hand. Province may activate other cards (Explorer, Tournament), but Farmland does not. Without price concerns, Farmland cannot become anything Province cannot. The only way to trigger an on buy effect is to Ambassador over two, which doesn't happen when you have only one in hand. Province is, of course, worth more VP.
Alchemist should be strictly superior to Laboratory aside from price concerns. It has the same effect, but might also be able to be top decked if the player desires it after having drawn and played a potion. Likewise Trusty Steed is strictly better than Laboratory outside of cost - you can always get Lab effect, but with a bonus action (+1 action) and more flexibility (you can choose to not get the +action and just do +2 cards/+$2).
Festival is strictly better than Necropolis as is University.
Outside of price, I believe Treasury is strictly better than Peddler - the Treasury does everything the Peddler does in hand, but you may choose to top deck it later (or not). Market would also be strictly better outside of universal edge cases.
Grand market should be strictly better than Market ignoring price.
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Festival is strictly better than Necropolis as is University.
University is not strictly better because of the card gain.
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Festival is strictly better than Necropolis as is University.
University is not strictly better because of the card gain.
Its an optional card gain, so University would be strictly better
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Festival is strictly better than Necropolis as is University.
University is not strictly better because of the card gain.
Its an optional card gain, so University would be strictly better
My mistake, I have actually never noticed it.
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The only way to trigger an on buy effect is to Ambassador over two, which doesn't happen when you have only one in hand. Province is, of course, worth more VP.
I don't think any on buy effects take place with Ambassador. I could be wrong.
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In like fashion, Farmland, ignoring price, is strictly worse than Province in hand. Province may activate other cards (Explorer, Tournament), but Farmland does not. Without price concerns, Farmland cannot become anything Province cannot. The only way to trigger an on buy effect is to Ambassador over two, which doesn't happen when you have only one in hand. Province is, of course, worth more VP.
Well, edge case: Your hand is Province, Ironmonger, Copper, Copper, Copper and it's a tournament game. Your opponent plays a Bureaucrat, you put the Province on top of your deck. He then plays a spy and makes you discard it. On your turn, you play Ironmonger, drawing the top card of your deck, an Estate and revealing a Laboratory for +1 Action.
Now, if you had a Farmland, and your opponent may not discard it with Spy, so now when you play Ironmonger, you draw the Farmland, reveal the Estate, discard it, and draw the Lab. You can then play the Lab, drawing your next two cards, Province and Tournament. (Or whatever.)
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I think a compelling case can be made with the Ruins:
1. Chancellor is strictly better than Abandoned mine. It has "you may" so we can always just play one as $2 while the other is $1. Throne rooms, golems, etc. should not matter.
2. Necropolis is strictly better than Ruined village. +2 actions vs +1.
3. Festival is strictly better than Ruined market.
4. Great hall is strictly better than Ruined library.
Best effort so far. However:
2. Necro often has to be remade/upgraded into Estate. Usually, you would rather trash it outright.
And, they all fall to Masquerade edge cases. For example, 4. Hand of all victory points. Opponent Masquerades. You must pass him a point (great hall) which gives him the win. Ruined library in hand would be better.
If the OP didn't require the cards to be in hand, Sab and Rogue would be possible edge case creators, as well.
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I think a compelling case can be made with the Ruins:
1. Chancellor is strictly better than Abandoned mine. It has "you may" so we can always just play one as $2 while the other is $1. Throne rooms, golems, etc. should not matter.
2. Necropolis is strictly better than Ruined village. +2 actions vs +1.
3. Festival is strictly better than Ruined market.
4. Great hall is strictly better than Ruined library.
Best effort so far. However:
2. Necro often has to be remade/upgraded into Estate. Usually, you would rather trash it outright.
And, they all fall to Masquerade edge cases. For example, 4. Hand of all victory points. Opponent Masquerades. You must pass him a point (great hall) which gives him the win. Ruined library in hand would be better.
If the OP didn't require the cards to be in hand, Sab and Rogue would be possible edge case creators, as well.
I think both those edge cases are excluded by the premise of the puzzle. The first depends on their costs, and the second holds true for any set of superior cards.
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Any reasonable definition of "strictly better" has to exclude Possession/Masquerade/Ambassador, as well as the card's cost. I would argue that "Opponents are more likely to discard it with Spy" also should be excluded.
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I think a compelling case can be made with the Ruins:
1. Chancellor is strictly better than Abandoned mine. It has "you may" so we can always just play one as $2 while the other is $1. Throne rooms, golems, etc. should not matter.
2. Necropolis is strictly better than Ruined village. +2 actions vs +1.
3. Festival is strictly better than Ruined market.
4. Great hall is strictly better than Ruined library.
Best effort so far. However:
2. Necro often has to be remade/upgraded into Estate. Usually, you would rather trash it outright.
And, they all fall to Masquerade edge cases. For example, 4. Hand of all victory points. Opponent Masquerades. You must pass him a point (great hall) which gives him the win. Ruined library in hand would be better.
If the OP didn't require the cards to be in hand, Sab and Rogue would be possible edge case creators, as well.
I think both those edge cases are excluded by the premise of the puzzle. The first depends on their costs, and the second holds true for any set of superior cards.
I don't see why Masq is excluded. The OP talks explicitly about cards in hand. That clearly allows for Masq edge cases. Maybe you would prefer a Death Cart edge case? I would rather have the bad action on hand to trash with Death Cart and the good action in deck to play later.
Any reasonable definition of "strictly better" has to exclude Possession/Masquerade/Ambassador, as well as the card's cost. I would argue that "Opponents are more likely to discard it with Spy" also should be excluded.
I disagree strongly about the cost being excluded. Cost matters a lot. See for example, rats. I think strictly better is only useful as a term when discussing fan card pitfalls. Agree about possession, Masq, amb, though.
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Any reasonable definition of "strictly better" has to exclude Possession/Masquerade/Ambassador, as well as the card's cost. I would argue that "Opponents are more likely to discard it with Spy" also should be excluded.
Well, but only because of Tournament. Otherwise they'd keep the Province on top as well. And since Tournament was the reason you wanted it in hand in the first place, I think it's okay here.
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The only way to trigger an on buy effect is to Ambassador over two, which doesn't happen when you have only one in hand. Province is, of course, worth more VP.
I don't think any on buy effects take place with Ambassador. I could be wrong.
Suppose that all ten copies of a card with an on-buy effect have been purchased. You want to trigger this on-buy effect anyway. The only way you can do it is if you have Ambassador and two copies of that card in your hand in a 2p game. You Ambassador both copies. One goes to your opponent but the other one remains in the supply, allowing you to buy it that turn to trigger the effect.
Any reasonable definition of "strictly better" has to exclude Possession/Masquerade/Ambassador, as well as the card's cost. I would argue that "Opponents are more likely to discard it with Spy" also should be excluded.
I disagree that cost should be excluded. "Strictly better" should include price, and if we want to ignore the cost to purchase (or gain) the card then we should use the term "strictly better effect". These separate terms are useful when discussing fan cards. Strictly superior and strictly inferior cards simply shouldn't exist, other than cards that are meant to be junk (e.g. Ruins, Curse). Cards with strictly inferior/superior effects can be used to estimate an appropriate cost for fan cards (e.g. village+ cards are often strictly superior to Village and so should cost more than $3).
Moreover, the cost of a card does have other impacts that should be considered, even though we have to exclude it for the purpose of this challenge. Ignoring the cost of Farmland really hurts evaluation of it, for example, because Farmland->Province is a key part of Farmland's use.
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The only way to trigger an on buy effect is to Ambassador over two, which doesn't happen when you have only one in hand. Province is, of course, worth more VP.
I don't think any on buy effects take place with Ambassador. I could be wrong.
Suppose that all ten copies of a card with an on-buy effect have been purchased. You want to trigger this on-buy effect anyway. The only way you can do it is if you have Ambassador and two copies of that card in your hand in a 2p game. You Ambassador both copies. One goes to your opponent but the other one remains in the supply, allowing you to buy it that turn to trigger the effect.
Just having one is enough, as every opponent may have Lighthouse in play.
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I guess what I mean by cost is, you can't say that Province for $7 isn't strictly superior to Province for $8, because $8 Province gives you more if you Salvage it. Similarly Estate for $3 is strictly worse even though you might be forced to Remake it and have better targets.
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I disagree that cost should be excluded. "Strictly better" should include price, and if we want to ignore the cost to purchase (or gain) the card then we should use the term "strictly better effect". These separate terms are useful when discussing fan cards. Strictly superior and strictly inferior cards simply shouldn't exist, other than cards that are meant to be junk (e.g. Ruins, Curse). Cards with strictly inferior/superior effects can be used to estimate an appropriate cost for fan cards (e.g. village+ cards are often strictly superior to Village and so should cost more than $3).
Moreover, the cost of a card does have other impacts that should be considered, even though we have to exclude it for the purpose of this challenge. Ignoring the cost of Farmland really hurts evaluation of it, for example, because Farmland->Province is a key part of Farmland's use.
The problem with including price is that it creates universal edge cases about three piling that don't care at all about the card mechanics.
You hold Butcher/X, but two piles are empty, you are tied but lose on tie breaker, and your opponent will win next turn if it happens. We some tinkering we can make just about any card X strictly better based solely on Price. $2 - $6, all allow you to Butcher a card into a VP card, end the game and win. For VP cards we set things up so a different card at the same prince point has more points (e.g. Butchering Garden -> Silk Road or Silk Road -> Garden is better). For $7 cards we just give you two coin tokens and say you need to hit $11 to win. With $8 we give you one. With $9 we give you zero. With few exceptions, you can set it up so that a card at any given price point is better than any other card - pretty much regardless of the text on the card.
For $0 cards, we just set it up so you need to Remake it and a curse (for the 1 VP swing) into the last two Poor houses with your three card hand.
Now sure you might be able to Butcher a Catacomb into $4 and come out the same, but we can also set things up like Forge/X/Y where you need a specific price point to get the game winning card (e.g. if Y is 4 and you can win by grabbing the last province only a $4 will do, likewise if Y is 3P then only a $1 will let you gain the last Golem for the win).
By taking cost into account I can make A is strictly better than B in some situation, B is strictly better than C in some situation, and C is strictly better than A in yet one more - and do that all based just on price.
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The problem with including price is that it creates universal edge cases about three piling that don't care at all about the card mechanics.
This is why I made a distinction between "strictly better" and "strictly better effect".
You hold Butcher/X, but two piles are empty, you are tied but lose on tie breaker, and your opponent will win next turn if it happens. We some tinkering we can make just about any card X strictly better based solely on Price. $2 - $6, all allow you to Butcher a card into a VP card, end the game and win. For VP cards we set things up so a different card at the same prince point has more points (e.g. Butchering Garden -> Silk Road or Silk Road -> Garden is better). For $7 cards we just give you two coin tokens and say you need to hit $11 to win. With $8 we give you one. With $9 we give you zero. With few exceptions, you can set it up so that a card at any given price point is better than any other card - pretty much regardless of the text on the card.
This description is a bit convoluted. Garden->SR or vice versa says nothing about price because they both cost $4. Your $7+ example makes no sense because the $8 card can fill in for the $7 card just as well. You can switch to using Upgrade though, but that's certainly something worth considering that can make you prefer a $7 card over a card at another price point.
I haven't quoted all your examples but they aren't really any different. Again, I made a distinction between "strictly better" and "strictly better effect", and I explained why such a distinction is helpful in comparing cards (especially fan cards).
By taking cost into account I can make A is strictly better than B in some situation, B is strictly better than C in some situation, and C is strictly better than A in yet one more - and do that all based just on price.
You're abusing the term "strictly", which should mean "in every situation". If A is only better than B in some situations, it isn't strictly better. It's merely better in that situation. And that's fine. Absolutely price can make some cards better in a specific situation. The easiest example for this is Forge; we don't need all the hyper-specific examples you gave above.
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You're abusing the term "strictly", which should mean "in every situation". If A is only better than B in some situations, it isn't strictly better. It's merely better in that situation. And that's fine. Absolutely price can make some cards better in a specific situation. The easiest example for this is Forge; we don't need all the hyper-specific examples you gave above.
This is actually a perfectly fine way to use "strictly": "In situation X, card A is strictly better than card B" is well defined and meaningful: in situation X, there's nothing you'd like better about B than A. This is in contrast with "In situation X, card A is better that card B", which could mean that B has some better aspects and A has some better aspects, but you like A better on the whole.
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Eh, fair enough.
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Eh, fair enough.
Your picture is still wrong. Change it please. Thanks.
(Bringing this across threads!)
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Any reasonable definition of "strictly better" has to exclude Possession/Masquerade/Ambassador, as well as the card's cost. I would argue that "Opponents are more likely to discard it with Spy" also should be excluded.
I disagree that cost should be excluded. "Strictly better" should include price, and if we want to ignore the cost to purchase (or gain) the card then we should use the term "strictly better effect". These separate terms are useful when discussing fan cards.
Yes. But we're not discussing fan cards here. theory's original statement was pretty clearly meant as 'in the context of this question, any reasonable definition of "strictly better" has to exclude... etc'.
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Dominion is strictly better than __________?
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Dominion is strictly better than __________?
Dominion', which is just like dominion except that smithy allows you to look at the top 3 cards of your deck before drawing them
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Any reasonable definition of "strictly better" has to exclude Possession/Masquerade/Ambassador, as well as the card's cost. I would argue that "Opponents are more likely to discard it with Spy" also should be excluded.
I disagree that cost should be excluded. "Strictly better" should include price, and if we want to ignore the cost to purchase (or gain) the card then we should use the term "strictly better effect". These separate terms are useful when discussing fan cards.
Yes. But we're not discussing fan cards here. theory's original statement was pretty clearly meant as 'in the context of this question, any reasonable definition of "strictly better" has to exclude... etc'.
Well we've already compiled a list for that.
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I haven't read the whole thread, but the answer to the OP is definitely "none". If we are allowing "all edge cases considered", then we have to include the cost of the card, because we might want to trash it to a Remodel or something. Thus Expand and Remodel don't work as a pair.
Also, drawing more cards isn't always better, because you might not want to reshuffle.
*Edit* I misread "prices don't matter" in the OP as "prizes don't matter". I was confused as to why he was excluding prizes.
In that case, the answer is basically "all $4 and $5 Villages".
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So is there a situation where Laboratory isn't better than Vagrant or Wishing Well?
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So is there a situation where Laboratory isn't better than Vagrant or Wishing Well?
yes, when you don't want to draw another card because you know it is a good card and would rather it be in your next hand. Or when you want to know the top card of your deck for native village or something.
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So is there a situation where Laboratory isn't better than Vagrant or Wishing Well?
yes, when you don't want to draw another card because you know it is a good card and would rather it be in your next hand. Or when you want to know the top card of your deck for native village or something.
Or you just don't want to trigger a reshuffle.
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So is there a situation where Laboratory isn't better than Vagrant or Wishing Well?
yes, when you don't want to draw another card because you know it is a good card and would rather it be in your next hand. Or when you want to know the top card of your deck for native village or something.
Or you just don't want to trigger a reshuffle.
Well, Vagrant and Wishing Well look at the top card, so will trigger that shuffle. Unless you're considering playing more potential drawing cards after.
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So is there a situation where Laboratory isn't better than Vagrant or Wishing Well?
yes, when you don't want to draw another card because you know it is a good card and would rather it be in your next hand. Or when you want to know the top card of your deck for native village or something.
Or you just don't want to trigger a reshuffle.
Well, Vagrant and Wishing Well look at the top card, so will trigger that shuffle. Unless you're considering playing more potential drawing cards after.
Yeah, I just finished reading page 1 where the same thing was said and refuted, so I came here to delete my post, but too late I guess.
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A few more:
Journeyman/Catacombs>Smithy always.
GM>Mystic
Lab>Vagrant
Alchemist>Lab
Treasury>Peddler
Not sure if already refuted, but.. GM Mystic and Lab Vagrant don't work for the same reason as lab Wishing Well... Sometimes you'd rather have the card next turn than this turn, and possible unwanted reshuffling when combined with something like lab.
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Revised list of cards we have to ignore for there to be any cards strictly better than another:
Possession
Masquerade
Ambassador
Horn of Plenty
Menagerie
Hunting Party
Forge
Remake
Upgrade
Governor
Procession (only for actions)
Taxman (only for treasures)
Rogue (only for cards costing 3+)
Graverobber (only for cards costing 3+)
Also Apprentice. (Cheaper cards avoid triggering reshuffles.)
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So is there a situation where Laboratory isn't better than Vagrant or Wishing Well?
yes, when you don't want to draw another card because you know it is a good card and would rather it be in your next hand. Or when you want to know the top card of your deck for native village or something.
Or you just don't want to trigger a reshuffle.
Well, Vagrant and Wishing Well look at the top card, so will trigger that shuffle. Unless you're considering playing more potential drawing cards after.
Yeah, I just finished reading page 1 where the same thing was said and refuted, so I came here to delete my post, but too late I guess.
Well I was the one that got refuted the first time, so I had to jump on it here :)
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A few more:
Journeyman/Catacombs>Smithy always.
GM>Mystic
Lab>Vagrant
Alchemist>Lab
Treasury>Peddler
Not sure if already refuted, but.. GM Mystic and Lab Vagrant don't work for the same reason as lab Wishing Well... Sometimes you'd rather have the card next turn than this turn, and possible unwanted reshuffling when combined with something like lab.
And I'd like to see you Remodel that Treasury into a Province without cost reducers.
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A few more:
Journeyman/Catacombs>Smithy always.
GM>Mystic
Lab>Vagrant
Alchemist>Lab
Treasury>Peddler
Not sure if already refuted, but.. GM Mystic and Lab Vagrant don't work for the same reason as lab Wishing Well... Sometimes you'd rather have the card next turn than this turn, and possible unwanted reshuffling when combined with something like lab.
And I'd like to see you Remodel that Treasury into a Province without cost reducers.
We already ruled out using cost-specific cards because they create universal edge cases (e.g. sometimes you need a specific cost for Forge; you may prefer to Apprentice a lower cost card so as not to trigger a reshuffle).
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The problem with including price is that it creates universal edge cases about three piling that don't care at all about the card mechanics.
This is why I made a distinction between "strictly better" and "strictly better effect".
Purchase price is only part of the concern with cost. With a Haggler in play and having bought a colony "price" is meaningless, but there are times I want any $4 over any possible $5; most obviously with Forge. Price has to be ignored or I can edge case any cards of differing price. Woodcutters vs Festival is literally the same effects +extra actions, but if we concern ourselves with price (even ignoring purchase price), there are times where Woodcutters beat Festival.
This description is a bit convoluted. Garden->SR or vice versa says nothing about price because they both cost $4. Your $7+ example makes no sense because the $8 card can fill in for the $7 card just as well. You can switch to using Upgrade though, but that's certainly something worth considering that can make you prefer a $7 card over a card at another price point.
They are convoluted to avoid easy edge-casing. The point being cards like Remake, Forge, Upgrade, Governor, Apprentice, Graverobber, Rogue, Knights, Sab, etc. all can create edge cases where point values make things difficult.
You're abusing the term "strictly", which should mean "in every situation". If A is only better than B in some situations, it isn't strictly better. It's merely better in that situation. And that's fine. Absolutely price can make some cards better in a specific situation. The easiest example for this is Forge; we don't need all the hyper-specific examples you gave above.
Not at all. If A is strictly better than B, then A > B holds in all possible situations. Festival > Woodcutters is true for all non-nearly universal edge cases (e.g. Possession wants crappy cards in your deck, you want to pass something worse with Masq, $3 + Peddler = colony with Forge). VP card > Curse actually only holds true for a subset of all possible game states; first you have to ignore game states where grabbing a curse can be good of its own right (Ambassador/Fairgrounds/Mountebank, etc.). Then you need to get rid of times where 3-piling makes curse buying the right move. Then you need to get rid of cases where you care only about the fact that curse is 0 cost card (e.g. an Embargoed curse pile makes curse "buys" better for Trader). Then you need to get out into the weeds where stuff cares about the fact that curses are worth 0 (e.g. Remake, Upgrade, etc. when Poor house needs to be gained and the copper pile is empty).
Any rubric that allows us to say that Woodcutters > Festival or Curse > anything else is likely just showing us near universal edge cases.
Ignoring worth has its own problems, most notably Peddler has major issues where stuff that has some additional effect is "strictly better", but Peddler can be bought in bulk or bought cheap but trashed high, but the answer is either "nothing is strictly better than anything else" or we adopt some basic guidelines (which due to the richness of Dominion need to be pretty long) to ignore the near universal edge cases.
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I'm not sure what your point was then. We'd already been discussing "universal edge cases" since the start of the thread.
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Either way, Festival>Woodcutter is a good one.
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Walled Village > Village
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Baker > Peddler
I mean sure Baker has the setup clause, but otherwise they function similarly enough.
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Baker > Peddler
I mean sure Baker has the setup clause, but otherwise they function similarly enough.
Black Market.
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Ignoring universal edge cases and on-gain effects, but not on-trash effects, I came up with the following list: (ignoring Ruins and non-Action cards). This is mostly a compilation of things already mentioned in this thread with a few I've added myself.
Bazaar, Worker's Village, Walled Village, Mining Village, Plaza > Village, Border Village
Grand Market, Market, Treasury, Bazaar > Peddler
Grand Market > Market
Festival > Woodcutter, Nomad Camp
Goons > Militia
Alchemist, Trusty Steed > Laboratory
Expand, Butcher > Remodel
Count > Mandarin
Festival, University > Necropolis
Anyone want to edge case any of these, or add to the list?
edit: removed Fortress, as discussed further down, and Squire, which clearly has a potential on-trash penalty (e.g. hit by Swindler with Swindlers and Curses out, only other attack on the board is Sea Hag).
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Ignoring universal edge cases and on-gain effects, but not on-trash effects, I came up with the following list: (ignoring Ruins and non-Action cards). This is mostly a compilation of things already mentioned in this thread with a few I've added myself.
Bazaar, Worker's Village, Walled Village, Fortress, Mining Village, Plaza > Village, Border Village
Grand Market, Market, Treasury, Bazaar > Peddler
Grand Market > Market
Festival > Woodcutter, Nomad Camp
Goons > Militia
Alchemist, Trusty Steed > Laboratory
Expand, Butcher > Remodel
Count > Mandarin
Squire, Festival, University > Necropolis
Anyone want to edge case any of these, or add to the list?
I maintain you can not ignore on-gain effects, because the card can be trashed (from your hand) and gained (from the trash) during your turn. E.g., Border Village.
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Baker > Peddler
I mean sure Baker has the setup clause, but otherwise they function similarly enough.
Black Market.
So... Apparently the rule book for Guilds says you can't spend coin tokens when you play Black Market. I did not know that...
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Ignoring universal edge cases and on-gain effects, but not on-trash effects, I came up with the following list: (ignoring Ruins and non-Action cards). This is mostly a compilation of things already mentioned in this thread with a few I've added myself.
Bazaar, Worker's Village, Walled Village, Fortress, Mining Village, Plaza > Village, Border Village
Grand Market, Market, Treasury, Bazaar > Peddler
Grand Market > Market
Festival > Woodcutter, Nomad Camp
Goons > Militia
Alchemist, Trusty Steed > Laboratory
Expand, Butcher > Remodel
Count > Mandarin
Squire, Festival, University > Necropolis
Anyone want to edge case any of these, or add to the list?
So tell me... is there a case where Fortress is worse than Village?
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Ignoring universal edge cases and on-gain effects, but not on-trash effects, I came up with the following list: (ignoring Ruins and non-Action cards). This is mostly a compilation of things already mentioned in this thread with a few I've added myself.
Bazaar, Worker's Village, Walled Village, Fortress, Mining Village, Plaza > Village, Border Village
Grand Market, Market, Treasury, Bazaar > Peddler
Grand Market > Market
Festival > Woodcutter, Nomad Camp
Goons > Militia
Alchemist, Trusty Steed > Laboratory
Expand, Butcher > Remodel
Count > Mandarin
Squire, Festival, University > Necropolis
Anyone want to edge case any of these, or add to the list?
So tell me... is there a case where Fortress is worse than Village?
You want to procession it then play a draw to x card afterwards.
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Ignoring universal edge cases and on-gain effects, but not on-trash effects, I came up with the following list: (ignoring Ruins and non-Action cards). This is mostly a compilation of things already mentioned in this thread with a few I've added myself.
Bazaar, Worker's Village, Walled Village, Fortress, Mining Village, Plaza > Village, Border Village
Grand Market, Market, Treasury, Bazaar > Peddler
Grand Market > Market
Festival > Woodcutter, Nomad Camp
Goons > Militia
Alchemist, Trusty Steed > Laboratory
Expand, Butcher > Remodel
Count > Mandarin
Squire, Festival, University > Necropolis
Anyone want to edge case any of these, or add to the list?
So tell me... is there a case where Fortress is worse than Village?
You want to procession it then play a draw to x card afterwards.
That's no answer. You can easily draw to x anyway and then play Fortress to replace itself (or play the Fortress first, whatever). You'll have the same number of non-Fortress cards. But there is at least one edge case in the direction you were going: your hand is Procession, Library, Fortress/Village, and five junk cards. You'd like to upgrade via Procession, and then you desperately want to draw your Storeroom to recycle all this junk for coins. All the cards remaining in your deck are actions, so if you Procession Village and have seven cards left, you can use Library to home in on the one card you wanted; getting the Fortress back in your hand leaves you with eight cards and a dead Library.
Or, a more mundane edge case: you've built a BM/Smithy deck, and your opponent has used Ambassador (or Swindler, whatever) to give you a Fortress which is just getting in the way by drawing itself dead. Now he plays a Bishop: you'd rather your Fortress were a Village.
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Edge Case Level: Impressive.
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Ignoring universal edge cases and on-gain effects, but not on-trash effects, I came up with the following list: (ignoring Ruins and non-Action cards). This is mostly a compilation of things already mentioned in this thread with a few I've added myself.
Bazaar, Worker's Village, Walled Village, Fortress, Mining Village, Plaza > Village, Border Village
Grand Market, Market, Treasury, Bazaar > Peddler
Grand Market > Market
Festival > Woodcutter, Nomad Camp
Goons > Militia
Alchemist, Trusty Steed > Laboratory
Expand, Butcher > Remodel
Count > Mandarin
Squire, Festival, University > Necropolis
Anyone want to edge case any of these, or add to the list?
So tell me... is there a case where Fortress is worse than Village?
You want to procession it then play a draw to x card afterwards.
That's no answer. You can easily draw to x anyway and then play Fortress to replace itself (or play the Fortress first, whatever). You'll have the same number of non-Fortress cards. But there is at least one edge case in the direction you were going: your hand is Procession, Library, Fortress/Village, and five junk cards. You'd like to upgrade via Procession, and then you desperately want to draw your Storeroom to recycle all this junk for coins. All the cards remaining in your deck are actions, so if you Procession Village and have seven cards left, you can use Library to home in on the one card you wanted; getting the Fortress back in your hand leaves you with eight cards and a dead Library.
It was that type of situation I was talking about. I thought that posting the simple answer would be enough.
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Ignoring universal edge cases and on-gain effects, but not on-trash effects, I came up with the following list: (ignoring Ruins and non-Action cards). This is mostly a compilation of things already mentioned in this thread with a few I've added myself.
Bazaar, Worker's Village, Walled Village, Fortress, Mining Village, Plaza > Village, Border Village
Grand Market, Market, Treasury, Bazaar > Peddler
Grand Market > Market
Festival > Woodcutter, Nomad Camp
Goons > Militia
Alchemist, Trusty Steed > Laboratory
Expand, Butcher > Remodel
Count > Mandarin
Squire, Festival, University > Necropolis
Anyone want to edge case any of these, or add to the list?
So tell me... is there a case where Fortress is worse than Village?
You want to procession it then play a draw to x card afterwards.
That's no answer. You can easily draw to x anyway and then play Fortress to replace itself (or play the Fortress first, whatever). You'll have the same number of non-Fortress cards. But there is at least one edge case in the direction you were going: your hand is Procession, Library, Fortress/Village, and five junk cards. You'd like to upgrade via Procession, and then you desperately want to draw your Storeroom to recycle all this junk for coins. All the cards remaining in your deck are actions, so if you Procession Village and have seven cards left, you can use Library to home in on the one card you wanted; getting the Fortress back in your hand leaves you with eight cards and a dead Library.
It was that type of situation I was talking about. I thought that posting the simple answer would be enough.
I think if you had said "Library" instead of "Draw to x", then it would have been enough. But Library is the only draw to x where it matters.
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Ignoring universal edge cases and on-gain effects, but not on-trash effects, I came up with the following list: (ignoring Ruins and non-Action cards). This is mostly a compilation of things already mentioned in this thread with a few I've added myself.
Bazaar, Worker's Village, Walled Village, Fortress, Mining Village, Plaza > Village, Border Village
Grand Market, Market, Treasury, Bazaar > Peddler
Grand Market > Market
Festival > Woodcutter, Nomad Camp
Goons > Militia
Alchemist, Trusty Steed > Laboratory
Expand, Butcher > Remodel
Count > Mandarin
Squire, Festival, University > Necropolis
Anyone want to edge case any of these, or add to the list?
So tell me... is there a case where Fortress is worse than Village?
Yes. Swindler. When Fortress is Swindled you can be forced to gain more Fortresses. This makes your deck larger over time and decreases the chance that Swindler will hit Prince/Peddler to get a mandatory province or reduces the odds that you will have some killer reaction card in hand over time.
E.g. You have a Feodum/Beggar setup. Your opponent swindles Feodums into Fortresses. He hits the first Fortress he gives you, you get a bonus new Fortress. Odds of your opponent triggering your Beggars go down with every Fortress added to the deck. Up until your opponent is forced to swindle a Fortress into a Feodum, you'd much rather have a higher concentration of Beggars than having more Fortresses.
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Ignoring universal edge cases and on-gain effects, but not on-trash effects, I came up with the following list: (ignoring Ruins and non-Action cards). This is mostly a compilation of things already mentioned in this thread with a few I've added myself.
Bazaar, Worker's Village, Walled Village, Fortress, Mining Village, Plaza > Village, Border Village
Grand Market, Market, Treasury, Bazaar > Peddler
Grand Market > Market
Festival > Woodcutter, Nomad Camp
Goons > Militia
Alchemist, Trusty Steed > Laboratory
Expand, Butcher > Remodel
Count > Mandarin
Squire, Festival, University > Necropolis
Anyone want to edge case any of these, or add to the list?
So tell me... is there a case where Fortress is worse than Village?
Yes. Swindler. When Fortress is Swindled you can be forced to gain more Fortresses. This makes your deck larger over time and decreases the chance that Swindler will hit Prince/Peddler to get a mandatory province or reduces the odds that you will have some killer reaction card in hand over time.
E.g. You have a Feodum/Beggar setup. Your opponent swindles Feodums into Fortresses. He hits the first Fortress he gives you, you get a bonus new Fortress. Odds of your opponent triggering your Beggars go down with every Fortress added to the deck. Up until your opponent is forced to swindle a Fortress into a Feodum, you'd much rather have a higher concentration of Beggars than having more Fortresses.
Edgy.
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Easier edge case (and also better, because the card is in hand and not in deck) is Rogue. You may want to avoid attacking with Rogue (because you would discard two Curses that your Rabbles let there). You have Forager in hand. You could trash Village and regain it with Rogue, but trashing Fortresses leaves the trash with nothing to gain, so you are forced to attack.
Menagerie is a reason to want a card out of your hand, and you can get rid of Village by trashing it, but not Fortress. But we were already ruling out Menagerie.
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yall...
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Could someone make a list of all the "strictly better" found? I think we have:
walled/workers/mining village/bazaar/plaza > village > ruined library
grand market > market > peddler > ruined library
treasury/bazaar > peddler
festival > woodcutter > abandoned mine/ruined market
chancellor > abandoned mine
festival/university> necropolis > ruined village
level 3/2 city/alchemist/noble steed > laboratory (although cities have the problem of ambassador...)
expand/butcher> remodel
goons > militia
journeyman > smithy (... it does give some information to your opponent)
count > mandarin (unless black market and rogue/graverobber get involved, maybe? I can edit this out)
EDIT: oh hey, navical did this in the last post of page seven, now I feel smart and useful.
EDIT 2: I think it would be interesting to ignore taxman to compare the different treasures.
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baker > peddler
No, not with black market, as the coin token from baker can't be spent in Black Market, but $1 from Peddler can.
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baker > peddler
No, not with black market, as the coin token from baker can't be spent in Black Market, but $1 from Peddler can.
So does Highway>Peddler hold up?
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baker > peddler
No, not with black market, as the coin token from baker can't be spent in Black Market, but $1 from Peddler can.
So does Highway>Peddler hold up?
No. It's possible that the Stonemason you want to overpay for already costs $0.
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baker > peddler
No, not with black market, as the coin token from baker can't be spent in Black Market, but $1 from Peddler can.
So does Highway>Peddler hold up?
No. It's possible that the Stonemason you want to overpay for already costs $0.
It still lowers the cost of the thing you gain to gain though.
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baker > peddler
No, not with black market, as the coin token from baker can't be spent in Black Market, but $1 from Peddler can.
So does Highway>Peddler hold up?
Throne room/king's court/procession
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baker > peddler
No, not with black market, as the coin token from baker can't be spent in Black Market, but $1 from Peddler can.
So does Highway>Peddler hold up?
No. It's possible that the Stonemason you want to overpay for already costs $0.
It still lowers the cost of the thing you gain to gain though.
Right. And you can't overpay $0, which was the point. If you play Highway/Peddler/Copper, you can gain three Stonemasons for $2 and one buy. With Highway/Highway/Copper, you need three buys and $3.
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that's actually one of the more relevant edge cases. I recall a bunch of games where I couldn't use the overpay because the card I wanted cost 0$
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baker > peddler
No, not with black market, as the coin token from baker can't be spent in Black Market, but $1 from Peddler can.
So does Highway>Peddler hold up?
No. It's possible that the Stonemason you want to overpay for already costs $0.
It still lowers the cost of the thing you gain to gain though.
Right. And you can't overpay $0, which was the point. If you play Highway/Peddler/Copper, you can gain three Stonemasons for $2 and one buy. With Highway/Highway/Copper, you need three buys and $3.
Right. I actually was thinking more that it doesn't matter if stonemason is $0, only if the other card is as well, since Awaclus said Stonemason costing zero.
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baker > peddler
No, not with black market, as the coin token from baker can't be spent in Black Market, but $1 from Peddler can.
So does Highway>Peddler hold up?
No. It's possible that the Stonemason you want to overpay for already costs $0.
It still lowers the cost of the thing you gain to gain though.
Right. And you can't overpay $0, which was the point. If you play Highway/Peddler/Copper, you can gain three Stonemasons for $2 and one buy. With Highway/Highway/Copper, you need three buys and $3.
Right. I actually was thinking more that it doesn't matter if stonemason is $0, only if the other card is as well, since Awaclus said Stonemason costing zero.
I was originally going to write Masterpiece, then I realized that it's more relevant for Stonemason and changed the card, but forgot to change the rest of the sentence.
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iso>goku?
meh edge case if you want to play with bots.
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iso>goku?
meh edge case if you want to play with bots.
That cannot be, iso 9000, while goku>9000
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So unless someone can convince me that there actually is a scenario where a player trying to win would rather not have to put a card on top of your deck, I'm sticking with the assertion that Scavenger is strictly better than Chancellor.
There are just some things that are always good, like virtual coins, coin tokens +buy, and +actions, without the presence of Possession, etc. of course.
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Say my deck has 8 silver and two curses in it, and my discard has 8 curses. I would rather chancellor on the deck than scavenger there.
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Say my deck has 8 silver and two curses in it, and my discard has 8 curses. I would rather chancellor on the deck than scavenger there.
You should have bought a Witch yourself.
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Say my deck has 8 silver and two curses in it, and my discard has 8 curses. I would rather chancellor on the deck than scavenger there.
You should have bought a Witch yourself.
I have tried my best, and lost the curse split 10-0. It was familiar (edit: the card, not the situation :P) though, which makes more sense. I still ended up winning :D
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Say my deck has 8 silver and two curses in it, and my discard has 8 curses. I would rather chancellor on the deck than scavenger there.
You should have bought a Witch yourself.
who cares about curses when I have chancellor and scavenger for cycling?
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Say my deck has 8 silver and two curses in it, and my discard has 8 curses. I would rather chancellor on the deck than scavenger there.
What would your respective plans/mindsets be if you had to use Chancellor and if you had to use Scavenger?
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Say my deck has 8 silver and two curses in it, and my discard has 8 curses. I would rather chancellor on the deck than scavenger there.
What would your respective plans/mindsets be if you had to use Chancellor and if you had to use Scavenger?
I don't understand. The reason I want chancellor on the deck is because with scavenger I have to either discard good cards or put a curse on top of my deck.
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Say my deck has 8 silver and two curses in it, and my discard has 8 curses. I would rather chancellor on the deck than scavenger there.
What would your respective plans/mindsets be if you had to use Chancellor and if you had to use Scavenger?
Here's a more specific scenario. My hand is a Curse, three Coppers, and X, where X is Chancellor/Scavenger; my discard pile is just a single Curse, because my opponent played a Witch last turn. I would like to play my X so I can buy a Duchy. But the rest of my deck is entirely full of good cards, so I don't want to discard the deck and mix all these bad cards (including my new Duchy) in. But if X is Scavenger, I still have to top a Curse for no reason.
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Say my deck has 8 silver and two curses in it, and my discard has 8 curses. I would rather chancellor on the deck than scavenger there.
What would your respective plans/mindsets be if you had to use Chancellor and if you had to use Scavenger?
Here's a more specific scenario. My hand is a Curse, three Coppers, and X, where X is Chancellor/Scavenger; my discard pile is just a single Curse, because my opponent played a Witch last turn. I would like to play my X so I can buy a Duchy. But the rest of my deck is entirely full of good cards, so I don't want to discard the deck and mix all these bad cards (including my new Duchy) in. But if X is Scavenger, I still have to top a Curse for no reason.
right, but he asked about topdecking, so I gave a scenario where you get something equivalent to what you said no matter what.
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also if your discard pile is just a single curse you probably are willing to discard your deck
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also if your discard pile is just a single curse you probably are willing to discard your deck
No, because (as I mentioned in my example) you're also shuffling in your awful hand and the Duchy you're buying, if you discard your deck. That's a lot worse than just one card. But whatever; you can put nine Curses in the discard and have the same situation but even more so.
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Ignoring universal edge cases and on-gain effects, but not on-trash effects, I came up with the following list: (ignoring Ruins and non-Action cards). This is mostly a compilation of things already mentioned in this thread with a few I've added myself.
Bazaar, Worker's Village, Walled Village, Mining Village, Plaza > Village, Border Village
Grand Market, Market, Treasury, Bazaar > Peddler
Grand Market > Market
Festival > Woodcutter, Nomad Camp
Goons > Militia
Alchemist, Trusty Steed > Laboratory
Expand, Butcher > Remodel
Count > Mandarin
Festival, University > Necropolis
Anyone want to edge case any of these, or add to the list?
edit: removed Fortress, as discussed further down, and Squire, which clearly has a potential on-trash penalty (e.g. hit by Swindler with Swindlers and Curses out, only other attack on the board is Sea Hag).
Scrying Pool > Spy
if we're talking purely about "action" part of the card, then Oracle>Moat, Steward > Moat and Fishing Village > Lighthouse
as mentioned, Journeyman/Catacombs > Smithy
And I'm not sure if these are included into universal edge cases, but Peddler works way better with trash for benefit cards than Market, Treasury, GM and Bazaar. For example, it can easily be Butchered into a Province, Expanded into a Colony, Salvaged for 8 coins, Apprentice for +8 cards etc.
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if we're talking purely about "action" part of the card, then Oracle>Moat, Steward > Moat and Fishing Village > Lighthouse
as mentioned, Journeyman/Catacombs > Smithy
And I'm not sure if these are included into universal edge cases, but Peddler works way better with trash for benefit cards than Market, Treasury, GM and Bazaar. For example, it can easily be Butchered into a Province, Expanded into a Colony, Salvaged for 8 coins, Apprentice for +8 cards etc.
Oracle > Moat can be edge-cased as the Oracle attack can help your opponent (say for instance opponent's deck is, in order, Estate Gold Gold Gold, and opponent has 5 money and a cantrip in hand).
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Scrying Pool > Spy
Edge case: You have $8 already, the top card is an Estate. Spy lets you know what the card underneath the Estate is before you have to decide if you want it in your next hand or not, Scrying Pool doesn't.
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So unless someone can convince me that there actually is a scenario where a player trying to win would rather not have to put a card on top of your deck, I'm sticking with the assertion that Scavenger is strictly better than Chancellor.
Apart from what was mentioned above, such a scenario happens regularly in the early game: When I open Scavenger/X and the two cards collide on T3, I certainly don't want to topdeck a Copper or Estate, but there's nothing else in the discard.
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So unless someone can convince me that there actually is a scenario where a player trying to win would rather not have to put a card on top of your deck, I'm sticking with the assertion that Scavenger is strictly better than Chancellor.
Apart from what was mentioned above, such a scenario happens regularly in the early game: When I open Scavenger/X and the two cards collide on T3, I certainly don't want to topdeck a Copper or Estate, but there's nothing else in the discard.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140823/log.5062f3dc51c3843e7939eb9f.1408832404984.txt Turn 3
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When does Mystic become worse than GM? Just give me a specific scenario. And for Kings Court > Throne Room as well.
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When does Mystic become worse than GM? Just give me a specific scenario. And for Kings Court > Throne Room as well.
Mystic < GM when you want to be sure to draw a card or want to have +Buy... KC > TR when you want to play a card one extra time....
Or maybe you actually mean, when is Mystic better and when is TR > KC. For both, you can create scenarios with reshuffles.
Mystic > GM when there is 1 card left in your deck, you don't want to trigger a reshuffle and you have it in hand with TR. TR-GM would cause a reshuffle, but TR-Mystic would not if you purposefully name an impossible card both times.
TR > KC when you play it on a draw card and KC would cause an unwanted shuffle on the third play.
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When does Mystic become worse than GM? Just give me a specific scenario. And for Kings Court > Throne Room as well.
Mystic < GM when you want to be sure to draw a card or want to have +Buy... KC > TR when you want to play a card one extra time....
Or maybe you actually mean, when is Mystic better and when is TR > KC. For both, you can create scenarios with reshuffles.
Mystic > GM when there is 1 card left in your deck, you don't want to trigger a reshuffle and you have it in hand with TR. TR-GM would cause a reshuffle, but TR-Mystic would not if you purposefully name an impossible card both times.
TR > KC when you play it on a draw card and KC would cause an unwanted shuffle on the third play.
Actually with TR+Mystic, you can name the correct card the second time without triggering the reshuffle.
With TR > KC, you might have 2 bad cards and a trasher in hand; you don't want to play the trasher 3 times.
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TR is also better than KC whenever you "don't care" which one you have (for example, when you have Silver, Copper, Copper, Militia, TR in hand and you're going to buy a Province that turn), because it doesn't have "may" so you can't misclick!
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Even without reshuffle considerations, if you have Mountebank and 3 Coppers, TR is enough to buy the last Province and win, while KC may give the opponent the extra cards to pump up his 8 Gardens and make you lose the game, Province or no Province. There are also scenarios in which you would like to play Beggar twice but not three times (you want $6 now, but not the extra unnecessary Copper), scenarios in which you want to play any forced trasher a specific number of times (Trade Route or Forager for cash would not even be that edgy).
Some other Attacks that junk can deplete piles if you play them more than necessary. Also, stacking too many plays of any gainer may be bad for your deck and/or your pile status.
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TR is also better than KC whenever you "don't care" which one you have (for example, when you have Silver, Copper, Copper, Militia, TR in hand and you're going to buy a Province that turn), because it doesn't have "may" so you can't misclick!
Plus, maybe you just don't want the analysis paralysis of deciding whether or not to actually play your Action, so you play Throne Room and let Throne Room make the decision for you.
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When does Mystic become worse than GM? Just give me a specific scenario. And for Kings Court > Throne Room as well.
Mystic < GM when you want to be sure to draw a card or want to have +Buy... KC > TR when you want to play a card one extra time....
Or maybe you actually mean, when is Mystic better and when is TR > KC. For both, you can create scenarios with reshuffles.
Mystic > GM when there is 1 card left in your deck, you don't want to trigger a reshuffle and you have it in hand with TR. TR-GM would cause a reshuffle, but TR-Mystic would not if you purposefully name an impossible card both times.
TR > KC when you play it on a draw card and KC would cause an unwanted shuffle on the third play.
Actually with TR+Mystic, you can name the correct card the second time without triggering the reshuffle.
How does this work? if there is nothing in your deck and you name a card. even if you name a impossible card don't you have to shuffle your discard pile into the deck so that you can reveal the card?
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When does Mystic become worse than GM? Just give me a specific scenario. And for Kings Court > Throne Room as well.
Mystic < GM when you want to be sure to draw a card or want to have +Buy... KC > TR when you want to play a card one extra time....
Or maybe you actually mean, when is Mystic better and when is TR > KC. For both, you can create scenarios with reshuffles.
Mystic > GM when there is 1 card left in your deck, you don't want to trigger a reshuffle and you have it in hand with TR. TR-GM would cause a reshuffle, but TR-Mystic would not if you purposefully name an impossible card both times.
TR > KC when you play it on a draw card and KC would cause an unwanted shuffle on the third play.
Actually with TR+Mystic, you can name the correct card the second time without triggering the reshuffle.
How does this work? if there is nothing in your deck and you name a card. even if you name a impossible card don't you have to shuffle your discard pile into the deck so that you can reveal the card?
There is one card left.. you look at it, don't draw it with Mystic. Grand Market makes you draw it, and then draw another one on the next play.
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there is one card in your draw pile. you play TR, Mystic, Mystic. For the first Mystic, you name scout. The card flips Copper. For the second Mystic, you name Copper. The card flips Copper, and you put it in your hand. Now your draw pile is empty, and you didn't reshuffle.
PPE WW :c
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there is one card in your draw pile. you play TR, Mystic, Mystic. For the first Mystic, you name scout. The card flips Copper. For the second Mystic, you name Copper. The card flips Copper, and you put it in your hand. Now your draw pile is empty, and you didn't reshuffle.
That example is wrong. As soon as you name Scout, Robz's ghost appears and takes away all your Dominion boxes while saying "that's why you can't have nice things". So, you never get to play Mystic for the second time.
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Ah I misunderstood. I thought he was saying something like if you guess it right twice it won't trigger the shuffle. Thanks
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I think this whole list dissolved down to these concrete comparisons (ignoring cost, as stated) that I can remember from this thread:
Goons>Militia
Expand>Remodel
Nobles>Necropolis (sure there is an edge case here)
Walled Village, Worker's Village, Bazaar, etc.>Village
Bazaar, Market, GM>Peddler
...And possibly Diadem>Copper,Silver
Am I wrong with the last one?
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...And possibly Diadem>Copper,Silver
Am I wrong with the last one?
Counting House doesn't work on Diadem....
But if you are comparing Copper in hand to Diadem in hand, then Coppersmith.
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I think this whole list dissolved down to these concrete comparisons (ignoring cost, as stated) that I can remember from this thread:
Goons>Militia
Expand>Remodel
Nobles>Necropolis (sure there is an edge case here)
Walled Village, Worker's Village, Bazaar, etc.>Village
Bazaar, Market, GM>Peddler
...And possibly Diadem>Copper,Silver
Am I wrong with the last one?
I'd rather have a Necropolis in my deck than a Nobles if my opponent is playing Tribute. In hand, I'd prefer a Necropolis if I need to play Crossroads for actions but don't want to trigger a shuffle (Edit okay this one makes no sense I can just play the Nobles for actions first). The list goes on.
And there was a generic edge case for Treasures already: because of Taxman, no Treasure is ever strictly better than another: if what I really need is to force my opponent to discard a Silver, then having a Diadem does me no good.
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Followers>Witch, entertain me with an edge case.
Noble Steed > Laboratory, no edge case here.
Hunting Grounds > Smithy, probably an edge case.
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Followers grap(s) the last estate, causing you to lose on a three pile ending.
HG smithy is like a lot of other cards that force a bad reshuffle. In this case,it can also be trashed by knight, forcing you to draw green.
Noble steed is a name i like a lot.
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Followers>Witch, entertain me with an edge case.
You don't want the Estate in your deck? Actually, that's pretty much every time so it probably doesn't count as an edge case.
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You could probably rule out a lot of examples by thinking about them a little, especially when the edgecase is really obvious like it is for followers. even the discard can totally be an advantage for draw-to-x, menagerie
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You could probably rule out a lot of examples by thinking about them a little, especially when the edgecase is really obvious like it is for followers. even the discard can totally be an advantage for draw-to-x, menagerie
Not everyone is as smart as you.
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You could probably rule out a lot of examples by thinking about them a little, especially when the edgecase is really obvious like it is for followers. even the discard can totally be an advantage for draw-to-x, menagerie
Not everyone is as smart into Dominion as you.
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Noble Steed > Laboratory, no edge case here.
I feel like there has to be something with something like Black Market+Diadem+Poor House, but I can't think of anything yet...
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Diadem>Masterpiece
As already discussed, Taxman. For this specific case, there's also Mint (can't mint a Diadem).
In order for A > B to be true (barring the universal edge cases), we need these to be true:
1. A and B share the same card types, which matters for Tribute and Jester.
2. A and B are not Treasure cards, which matters for Taxman.
3. A can do everything that B does, or else you will sometimes prefer B to do its special thing.
4. A does not force you to do anything that B doesn't also.
3 prevents a coin token card from being better than a standard virtual coin card, because you may prefer the virtual coin when using Black Market. Same goes for a card B that has you discard when card A doesn't, due to Tunnel.
4 covers a lot of stuff you might not expect. If it forces you to draw or even reveal an extra card, that can be undesirable for reshuffle considerations. If it forces you to attack, that can be bad because your opponents may have reactions that benefit them. If it forces you to play an extra card or to topdeck something, well there are situations where you don't want those things either.
4 doesn't cover extra coins (virtual or token), because having more money to spend never hurts you. It doesn't cover extra buys or actions for the same reason.
I posted this checklist much earlier in the thread. It should help you, Flip5ide.
Trusty Steed > Laboratory passes these tests.
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how about a card that doesn't ignore the universal edge case? even if two cards cost the same, and have the same name, the better card could still be bad for the fact that it makes your opponent buy it incorrectly. or, your opponent will discard the better card with his spy, but he will let you keep the weak card, even though it's correct play to discard either.
so, you need a card that's better without anyone realizing it. silently replace great hall in a game with a great hall. the great hall has "+1 Card, +1 Action, worth 1VP" It also has "+1 VP" on play, but that's not printed on the card. You also can't let the players know what changed at the end of the game, because that might affect their psyche for the next game. because the new card has to look exactly like the old card anyway, you don't even have to design a new one. just switch them without doing anything. if a player wins by this effect, which is reasonably likely, he won't ever know. but you will know. He will have won. at least, in your head. because great hall is strictly!!!!! better than great hall.
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how about a card that doesn't ignore the universal edge case? even if two cards cost the same, and have the same name, the better card could still be bad for the fact that it makes your opponent buy it incorrectly. or, your opponent will discard the better card with his spy, but he will let you keep the weak card, even though it's correct play to discard either.
so, you need a card that's better without anyone realizing it. silently replace great hall in a game with a great hall. the great hall has "+1 Card, +1 Action, worth 1VP" It also has "+1 VP" on play, but that's not printed on the card. You also can't let the players know what changed at the end of the game, because that might affect their psyche for the next game. because the new card has to look exactly like the old card anyway, you don't even have to design a new one. just switch them without doing anything. if a player wins by this effect, which is reasonably likely, he won't ever know. but you will know. He will have won. at least, in your head. because great hall is strictly!!!!! better than great hall.
What...?
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You could probably rule out a lot of examples by thinking about them a little, especially when the edgecase is really obvious like it is for followers. even the discard can totally be an advantage for draw-to-x, menagerie
I literally just posted those examples to keep the thread going. Feigning ignorance a little.
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You could probably rule out a lot of examples by thinking about them a little, especially when the edgecase is really obvious like it is for followers. even the discard can totally be an advantage for draw-to-x, menagerie
I literally just posted those examples to keep the thread going. Feigning ignorance a little.
Why? If the thread has run its course, let it die peacefully.
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actually, my example doesn't work because of masquerade/rogue trash->gain. the +1 VP needs to be on buy instead, then it should be perfect.
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You could probably rule out a lot of examples by thinking about them a little, especially when the edgecase is really obvious like it is for followers. even the discard can totally be an advantage for draw-to-x, menagerie
I literally just posted those examples to keep the thread going. Feigning ignorance a little.
Why? If the thread has run its course, let it die peacefully.
.... RIP thread
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I just said that cards can't be strictly better if they don't share the same type. The reason they can't be strictly better is because there are lots of cards that care about type, so there are situations when you would, for example, prefer to have a Curse to a Copper.
It is possible there is a type pairing that doesn't actually matter, but I can't think of anything at the moment.
What is a plausible edge case where you would prefer a curse to a copper, barring Fairgrounds, Masquerade, etc.?
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I just said that cards can't be strictly better if they don't share the same type. The reason they can't be strictly better is because there are lots of cards that care about type, so there are situations when you would, for example, prefer to have a Curse to a Copper.
It is possible there is a type pairing that doesn't actually matter, but I can't think of anything at the moment.
What is a plausible edge case where you would prefer a curse to a copper, barring Fairgrounds, Masquerade, etc.?
I frequently trash Coppers over Curses in Mountebank games.
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I just said that cards can't be strictly better if they don't share the same type. The reason they can't be strictly better is because there are lots of cards that care about type, so there are situations when you would, for example, prefer to have a Curse to a Copper.
It is possible there is a type pairing that doesn't actually matter, but I can't think of anything at the moment.
What is a plausible edge case where you would prefer a curse to a copper, barring Fairgrounds, Masquerade, etc.?
I mean, this is a question about what is and isn't allowed for this definition.
I think it is reasonable to restrict cases where the only reason you want one card over another is because it is a different card (Fairgrounds, Menagerie, ect) This is an obvious restriction because you aren't really preferring B over A, but rather preferring anything that is not A over A.
I think it is also reasonable to restrict cases where you want a worse card. (Possession, Masquerade, Opponent's Tribute, Ect.) I don't even think this case has any merit, because it isn't describing a case where card B is better than card A, but rather just a situation where you happen to prefer the card that is worse. (This should really cover situations where you would prefer to draw less cards due to shuffle timing also.)
The grey area is regarding cards that care about specific cards or types of cards. Does Tournament's existence make a VP card that costs $8 and is worth 7VP not strictly better than Province? I think people will have differing opinions here. If you don't think this one counts, then Awaclus' example doesn't either. Personally I think everything within the scope of the official cards is fair game outside of the above exclusions. Off the top of my head, Poor House is another reason to prefer Curse over Copper.
I think the only worthwhile discussion here is what is the point of "strictly better" in the first place. "Strictly better" is usually part of discussing how to properly price fan cards. If your card is strictly better than Laboratory (+2 cards +2 actions) you probably need to price it higher than $5 or add some sort of penalty.
But... Does this have any merit that "almost strictly better" doesn't. Probably not beyond puzzle threads like this one. No one is going to say that the $8/7VP Super Province is a good card just because you might prefer Province on a Tournament board.
So what's my point... I don't know anymore. Somehow I got into an argument about "strictly better". My opponents have the opinion (I think) that Copper is strictly better than Curse because the edge cases are too insignificant. My opinion is that strictly means no edge cases. Ultimately Witherweaver suggested that "not having another strictly better discussion is strictly better than having one" which I can certainly agree with.
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I don't even think this case has any merit, because it isn't describing a case where card B is better than card A, but rather just a situation where you happen to prefer the card that is worse. (This should really cover situations where you would prefer to draw less cards due to shuffle timing also.)
But how do you define "better"?
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Better (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/better)
Edit: In all seriousness, I don't think my statement there is that complicated or confusing. I don't think those so called "Edge Cases" have merit. This is the same as saying Colony is better than Estate - Edge Case: it is in my opponents deck! No, the Estate isn't "better", it is "better" for me if my opponent has the card that is not "better". It does not change the relative worth of the two cards, it only describes a scenario where the worse card is preferred.
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Better (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/better)
How do you apply those definitions to Dominion?
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Mandarin and Count.
Notice that the question was about which one was strictly better to have in your hand, and the only thing that makes count not strictly superior to mandarin is mandarins on-buy effect.
There are also obvious ones, like expand/remodel.
Also, depending on what you mean by "ignoring prices", peddler and market.
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So here's something I put together showing what's strictly better than what among official Action cards with vanilla on-play effects (and choices of vanilla on-play effects), considering ONLY on-play effects and ignoring edge cases.
Relevant to recent debates here? Not especially.
Useful? Not really.
Mildly interesting to look at? Sort of, maybe!
(http://i.imgur.com/L1GrmUd.png)
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So here's something I put together showing what's strictly better than what among official Action cards with vanilla on-play effects (and choices of vanilla on-play effects), considering ONLY on-play effects and ignoring edge cases.
Relevant to recent debates here? Not especially.
Useful? Not really.
Mildly interesting to look at? Sort of, maybe!
(http://i.imgur.com/EPkzRo5.png)
Worker's Village is strictly better than Village.
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Worker's Village is strictly better than Village.
Good catch - fixed.
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Worker's Village is strictly better than Village.
Good catch - fixed.
I don't see Count > Mandarin, which should be included if you are only considering on-play effects.
You might want to specify which edge cases you are excluding.
Edit: Great Hall should probably have many more lines going to it. You're missing Pearl Diver and Vagrant, just to name a couple.
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And, of course, we've talked about how Ruins are better than their counterparts.
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Worker's Village is strictly better than Village.
Good catch - fixed.
I don't see Count > Mandarin, which should be included if you are only considering on-play effects.
It's only vanilla (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Vanilla) cards.
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Worker's Village is strictly better than Village.
Good catch - fixed.
I don't see Count > Mandarin, which should be included if you are only considering on-play effects.
It's only vanilla (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Vanilla) cards.
Oops, missed that.
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And, of course, we've talked about how Ruins are better than their counterparts.
How can ruins be better than their counterparts? Maybe I could buy the others, but Ruined Market > Pawn? I believe Pawn should be strictly better than Ruined Market, now that I think about it.
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And, of course, we've talked about how Ruins are better than their counterparts.
How can ruins be better than their counterparts? Maybe I could buy the others, but Ruined Market > Pawn? I believe Pawn should be strictly better than Ruined Market, now that I think about it.
Can't draw Pawn with Vagrant!
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So here's something I put together showing what's strictly better than what among official Action cards with vanilla on-play effects (and choices of vanilla on-play effects), considering ONLY on-play effects and ignoring edge cases.
You can remove the line from Market to Abandoned Mine because they're already connected via Pawn.
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Intrigue > Base?
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Intrigue > Base?
No, because Scout is not strictly better than Woodcutter.
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Isotropic > Goko.
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You'd need to ignore name-caring cards, too. Worker's Village is strictly better in hand than Village almost all of the time, but not if the other 4 cards in your hand are Menagerie, Worker's Village, Copper, and Estate.
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You'd need to ignore name-caring cards, too. Worker's Village is strictly better in hand than Village almost all of the time, but not if the other 4 cards in your hand are Menagerie, Worker's Village, Copper, and Estate.
Only if the card on top of your deck is another Copper or Estate.
Of course, to be fair it's better to not have to worry about that. And technically speaking it's also better to not have to play a Worker's Village right then anyway.
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You'd need to ignore name-caring cards, too. Worker's Village is strictly better in hand than Village almost all of the time, but not if the other 4 cards in your hand are Menagerie, Worker's Village, Copper, and Estate.
This has been brought up every time there is a new page..
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Can anyone find a case where Butcher is worse than Remodel?
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Can anyone find a case where Butcher is worse than Remodel?
Barring Menagerie, Fairgrounds, Harvest and Horn of Plenty?
Well, there might be a scenario where you might want to Forge Remodel instead of Butcher.
Also, with some cost reduction active (all cards cost exactly 2 coins less) your Remodel is safe from Knights or Saboteur atacks, while Butcher is not.
But that is all pure wankery :)
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Time to bring Adventure cards into this thread.
Hero > Mint (Bring me an example where it is better to reveal a treasure from your hand.)
Messenger > Chancellor
Artificer > Peddler
Everything strictly better than Village > Port
EDIT: Hero > Mint does not work if you want to activate Conspirator and do not want a treasure.
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So Adventures now makes some of the cards that were strictly better no longer strictly better. Thanks to Storyteller, a free coin can hurt you through reshuffles. And a free action can hurt you through Diadem and Storyteller and reshuffles. So Bazaar > Village is out.
Messenger isn't Greater than Chancellor. In your hand they are identical. When buying you may or may not want the on buy effect.
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Chancellor doesn't give +buy.
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Chancellor doesn't give +buy.
Oops.
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Can anyone find a case where Butcher is worse than Remodel?
Can we count Prince? Or does that violate the 'cost is irrelevant' principle?
Also, there's the edge case online where you've already played Throne Room. Since Remodel's ability is mandatory, you can't misclick and not upgrade that Gold into a Province, while you can accidentally not trash the Gold with Remodel.
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Can we count Prince?
I think the more interesting question is, can we prince Count?
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Can anyone find a case where Butcher is worse than Remodel?
Your opponent in a real-life game KCed 8 Bakers last turn, so you have to sigh exasperatedly and get out the poker chips.
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Can anyone find a case where Butcher is worse than Remodel?
If you have one of each, and you want a Bank, and you can only play one, and you currently don't have any coins?
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Can anyone find a case where Butcher is worse than Remodel?
If you have one of each, and you want a Bank, and you can only play one, and you currently don't have any coins?
That's a cost thing, a "universal edge case" which was already covered in this thread and ruled out for the purposes of the puzzle. Otherwise, there are lots of cases where you'd rather have a $4 card instead of a $5 card in hand (e.g. Forge, Upgrade).
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Gold is strictly better than Gold, Platinum is strictly better than Gold?
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Gold is strictly better than Gold, Platinum is strictly better than Gold?
Storyteller, when you don't want to cause a reshuffle.
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Gold is strictly better than Gold, Platinum is strictly better than Gold?
Storyteller, when you don't want to cause a reshuffle.
How about 'Gold is strictly better than Silver in your buy phase, Platinim is strictly better than Gold in your buy phase?
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You want to Counterfeit one of them, Platinum is already in the Trash, Gold is not in the Trash, and you don't want to beef up your opponent's Foragers.
Also with Counterfeit, you want to put a Gold (or Silver) in the Trash rather than a Platinum, so that your opponent's Rogue won't be able to attack you.
Alternately, you want to beef up the Foragers that will be in your upcoming Outpost hand.
More importantly, you played Navigator this turn, so you know that you will have 5 Market Squares in your next hand. You also know (for example, from a 3rd player's Cutpurse) that your opponent has a Noble Brigand. You have no other cards in your deck or discard pile. You want to trigger the Market Squares, so you want Gold or Silver to be in your discard pile (and thus, next turn's deck), rather than Platinum.
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You want to Counterfeit one of them, Platinum is already in the Trash, Gold is not in the Trash, and you don't want to beef up your opponent's Foragers.
Also with Counterfeit, you want to put a Gold (or Silver) in the Trash rather than a Platinum, so that your opponent's Rogue won't be able to attack you.
Alternately, you want to beef up the Foragers that will be in your upcoming Outpost hand.
More importantly, you played Navigator this turn, so you know that you will have 5 Market Squares in your next hand. You also know (for example, from a 3rd player's Cutpurse) that your opponent has a Noble Brigand. You have no other cards in your deck or discard pile. You want to trigger the Market Squares, so you want Gold or Silver to be in your discard pile (and thus, next turn's deck), rather than Platinum.
Remember, prices and wanting differently-named cards are ignored.
The Forager examples have to do with having differently-named Treasures in the trash, and don't count because then Menagerie and Fairgrounds would be universal edge cases.
The Rogue example has to do with prices, which also doesn't count or cards like Upgrade or Forge would be near-universal edge cases.
The Noble Brigand example is valid (and can be simplified by adding topdecking instead of an empty deck and whatnot). Noble Brigand can trash Gold but not Platinum, so if for whatever reason you want your opponent's Noble Brigand to trash your treasure (Market Square is a good reason), Gold is better than Platinum
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In my example, instead of saying Navigator, I should have specified a third player's Bureaucrat or Cutpurse; oh well.
But doesn't Raid+Feodum make it impossible for another treasure to be strictly superior to Silver?
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In my example, instead of saying Navigator, I should have specified a third player's Bureaucrat or Cutpurse; oh well.
But doesn't Raid+Feodum make it impossible for another treasure to be strictly superior to Silver?
Those are based on the name of the card again; which has to be ignored for these purposes.
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Can anyone find a case where Butcher is worse than Remodel?
Your opponent in a real-life game KCed 8 Bakers last turn, so you have to sigh exasperatedly and get out the poker chips.
Or those Pogs you have collecting dust somewhere.
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So here's something I put together showing what's strictly better than what among official Action cards with vanilla on-play effects (and choices of vanilla on-play effects), considering ONLY on-play effects and ignoring edge cases.
Relevant to recent debates here? Not especially.
Useful? Not really.
Mildly interesting to look at? Sort of, maybe!
(http://i.imgur.com/ueU9TwW.png)
peddler>abandoned mine is missing
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That chart is also missing Lost City>Laboratory, Lost City>Village, Lost City>Moat.
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Hunting Grounds isn't strictly better than Smithy ::)
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Anything that can cause unfortunate reshuffles aren't strictly better than things that can't. With one card in your draw pile and a discard pile full of junk, Ruined Library is better than Smithy.
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Anything that can cause unfortunate reshuffles aren't strictly better than things that can't. With one card in your draw pile and a discard pile full of junk, Ruined Library is better than Smithy.
Except you have to throw out a few of the "always true" edge cases to have a discussion about cards being "strictly better" at all. Much like we are ignoring that for almost all of the pairs of cards in that chart, you could prefer the "worse" card due to a TfB card like Forge.
...but, I am not getting into a "strictly better" argument ever again, so if you disagree with me, I graciously pre-concede the debate to you.
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Anything that can cause unfortunate reshuffles aren't strictly better than things that can't. With one card in your draw pile and a discard pile full of junk, Ruined Library is better than Smithy.
If you read this thread, you would see that this has already been discussed. Woodcutter isn't even strictly better than Abandoned Mine, because maybe you're going to play Storyteller and trigger an unwanted re-shuffle from the extra coin. And really, it is impossible for any card to be strictly better than a differently named card, because there are always times when the name of a card can make it preferable to another card (Fairgrounds, for example). Earlier in the thread, people discussed which of these edge cases are worth consideration in a practical use of "strictly better", because it's obvious that there would never really be any use for the term if it is to be interpreted literally.
If you prefer, you can think of Rubby's chart as showing you which cards' vanilla effects are subsets of which other cards' vanilla effects.
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Anything that can cause unfortunate reshuffles aren't strictly better than things that can't. With one card in your draw pile and a discard pile full of junk, Ruined Library is better than Smithy.
If you read this thread, you would see that this has already been discussed. Woodcutter isn't even strictly better than Abandoned Mine, because maybe you're going to play Storyteller and trigger an unwanted re-shuffle from the extra coin. And really, it is impossible for any card to be strictly better than a differently named card, because there are always times when the name of a card can make it preferable to another card (Fairgrounds, for example). Earlier in the thread, people discussed which of these edge cases are worth consideration in a practical use of "strictly better", because it's obvious that there would never really be any use for the term if it is to be interpreted literally.
If you prefer, you can think of Rubby's chart as showing you which cards' vanilla effects are subsets of which other cards' vanilla effects.
Maybe I just don't remember or haven't read the thread carefully enough, but I thought that "names of cards" and "costs of cards" were what had been called out as specific things that would be ignored in the question of "strictly better". If that's true, then it's completely valid to point out that +3 card is not strictly better than +2 cards.
After all, avoiding extra draw is the basis for saying that Storyteller and Diadem cause problems.
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In fact, if you do say that prices and names (and Possession) are the only edge cases to ignore, then I do believe that the only real strictly better situations I can think of are:
Butcher > Remodel
Expand > Remodel
Worker's Village > Village
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Mining Village > Village
Wishing Well > Ruined Library
Hamlet > Ruined Library
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Mining Village > Village
Wishing Well > Ruined Library
Hamlet > Ruined Library
Mining Village you are correct. But The other 2 no... Wishing Well can cause an unwanted reshuffle just like Moat vs Ruined Library. For Hamlet, that extra action can cause an unwanted reshuffle if you play Storyteller then Diadem.
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Mining Village > Village
Wishing Well > Ruined Library
Hamlet > Ruined Library
Mining Village you are correct. But The other 2 no... Wishing Well can cause an unwanted reshuffle just like Moat vs Ruined Library. For Hamlet, that extra action can cause an unwanted reshuffle if you play Storyteller then Diadem.
You're right about Hamlet, but what if you wish for the ace of spades when you play Wishing Well?
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In fact, if you do say that prices and names (and Possession) are the only edge cases to ignore, then I do believe that the only real strictly better situations I can think of are:
Butcher > Remodel
Expand > Remodel
Worker's Village > Village
By those rules, I think Mining Village > Village also applies.
Unless you also put click efficiency in the equation, of course.
Edit: I answered just half an hour too late.
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Well, actually:
Most cantrips>Ruined Library.
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Well, actually:
Most cantrips>Ruined Library.
Actually no. If you play a cantrip, then play Storyteller and discard a Diadam for three cards, you might cause an unwanted reshuffle.
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Mining Village > Village
Wishing Well > Ruined Library
Hamlet > Ruined Library
Mining Village you are correct. But The other 2 no... Wishing Well can cause an unwanted reshuffle just like Moat vs Ruined Library. For Hamlet, that extra action can cause an unwanted reshuffle if you play Storyteller then Diadem.
You're right about Hamlet, but what if you wish for the ace of spades when you play Wishing Well?
Revealing the extra card will still trigger the reshuffle.
@Gendo I don't remember if we concluded whether reshuffle triggering should be considered, but it was certainly discussed. We were thorough.
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Mining Village > Village
Wishing Well > Ruined Library
Hamlet > Ruined Library
Mining Village you are correct. But The other 2 no... Wishing Well can cause an unwanted reshuffle just like Moat vs Ruined Library. For Hamlet, that extra action can cause an unwanted reshuffle if you play Storyteller then Diadem.
You're right about Hamlet, but what if you wish for the ace of spades when you play Wishing Well?
Revealing the extra card will still trigger the reshuffle.
Also, even without that, the extra action still causes the Storyteller/Diadem issue. Thus why Pearl Diver doesn't win against Ruined Library.
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In fact, if you do say that prices and names (and Possession) are the only edge cases to ignore, then I do believe that the only real strictly better situations I can think of are:
Butcher > Remodel
Expand > Remodel
Worker's Village > Village
If Coppers, Curses, and Estates are all gone, Remodel can trash Copper/Curse to nothing, but Expand cannot.
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In fact, if you do say that prices and names (and Possession) are the only edge cases to ignore, then I do believe that the only real strictly better situations I can think of are:
Butcher > Remodel
Expand > Remodel
Worker's Village > Village
If Coppers, Curses, and Estates are all gone, Remodel can trash Copper/Curse to nothing, but Expand cannot.
That would be a three pile end game. The game would be over.
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In fact, if you do say that prices and names (and Possession) are the only edge cases to ignore, then I do believe that the only real strictly better situations I can think of are:
Butcher > Remodel
Expand > Remodel
Worker's Village > Village
If Coppers, Curses, and Estates are all gone, Remodel can trash Copper/Curse to nothing, but Expand cannot.
That would be a three pile end game. The game would be over.
But it could still happen during a turn, if the third pile were emptied that turn. So then you just need to find a reason that being forced to gain a (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/32/Coin3.png/16px-Coin3.png) instead of nothing could hurt you. And I can think of one...
After doing the Remodel/Expand, you then play Ambassador to return 2 Curses to the pile. Thus preventing the game from ending on a 3-pile. The game goes a few more turns, and that Silver that you were forced to gain stops your engine from drawing what it needs.
Edge case accepted, well done singletee.
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In fact, if you do say that prices and names (and Possession) are the only edge cases to ignore, then I do believe that the only real strictly better situations I can think of are:
Butcher > Remodel
Expand > Remodel
Worker's Village > Village
If Coppers, Curses, and Estates are all gone, Remodel can trash Copper/Curse to nothing, but Expand cannot.
That would be a three pile end game. The game would be over.
But it could still happen during a turn, if the third pile were emptied that turn. So then you just need to find a reason that being forced to gain a (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/32/Coin3.png/16px-Coin3.png) instead of nothing could hurt you. And I can think of one...
After doing the Remodel/Expand, you then play Ambassador to return 2 Curses to the pile. Thus preventing the game from ending on a 3-pile. The game goes a few more turns, and that Silver that you were forced to gain stops your engine from drawing what it needs.
Edge case accepted, well done singletee.
Then why would you play Expand?
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In fact, if you do say that prices and names (and Possession) are the only edge cases to ignore, then I do believe that the only real strictly better situations I can think of are:
Butcher > Remodel
Expand > Remodel
Worker's Village > Village
If Coppers, Curses, and Estates are all gone, Remodel can trash Copper/Curse to nothing, but Expand cannot.
That would be a three pile end game. The game would be over.
But it could still happen during a turn, if the third pile were emptied that turn. So then you just need to find a reason that being forced to gain a (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/32/Coin3.png/16px-Coin3.png) instead of nothing could hurt you. And I can think of one...
After doing the Remodel/Expand, you then play Ambassador to return 2 Curses to the pile. Thus preventing the game from ending on a 3-pile. The game goes a few more turns, and that Silver that you were forced to gain stops your engine from drawing what it needs.
Edge case accepted, well done singletee.
Then why would you play Expand?
You're still replacing a Curse with a Silver.
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Also, a simpler edge case: It's a 5 player game, which means 4 piles need to drain instead of 3.
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I was thinking 5-player game, or you don't want the Silver clogging your Venture chains.
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I was thinking 5-player game, or you don't want the Silver clogging your Venture chains.
Oh right, even if the game does end during this same turn, that Silver in your deck could cost you the game with Venture.
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I was thinking 5-player game, or you don't want the Silver clogging your Venture chains.
I agree that you don't want an expand in a 5 player game where the first three piles to empty are copper, curse, and estate, but my reasoning I think is a little different ;)
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If we're ignoring names entirely, then Counterfeit > Copper.
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If we're ignoring names entirely, then Counterfeit > Copper.
I think we should ignore names generally, i.e. for cards that only care about name (e.g. Fairgrounds, Menagerie), but not for cards that actually care about specific cards, e.g. Baron, Coppersmith.
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If we're ignoring names entirely, then Counterfeit > Copper.
I think we should ignore names generally, i.e. for cards that only care about name (e.g. Fairgrounds, Menagerie), but not for cards that actually care about specific cards, e.g. Baron, Coppersmith.
Hmmm... So this makes me realize that we (or at least I) didn't include any VP cards on the list. If I had, I'd say Colony>Province>Duchy>Estate. But I guess you're saying that Estate doesn't fit in there, because Baron? I suppose that's a fair point.
*Edit* Actually, I definitely agree with you about Copper. It's not really directly related to a naming thing, it just happens to be true that Copper can be worth more than (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f7/Coin1.png/16px-Coin1.png) sometimes. Thus it can be better than Counterfeit.
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If we're ignoring names entirely, then Counterfeit > Copper.
I think we should ignore names generally, i.e. for cards that only care about name (e.g. Fairgrounds, Menagerie), but not for cards that actually care about specific cards, e.g. Baron, Coppersmith.
Hmmm... So this makes me realize that we (or at least I) didn't include any VP cards on the list. If I had, I'd say Colony>Province>Duchy>Estate. But I guess you're saying that Estate doesn't fit in there, because Baron? I suppose that's a fair point.
*Edit* Actually, I definitely agree with you about Copper. It's not really directly related to a naming thing, it just happens to be true that Copper can be worth more than (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f7/Coin1.png/16px-Coin1.png) sometimes. Thus it can be better than Counterfeit.
It's up for discussion of course. I'm not sure if I've even given a suitably clear dividing line.
Some other cards that care about specific cards include Inheritance, Feodum, Counting House. Duchy might not fit in that VP set either because of Duke, nor Province because of Tournament.
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Beef is strictly better than Chicken ;)
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Beef is strictly better than Chicken ;)
But chicken wings.
It's not strictly better at all. It really depends on the plate.
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The only basic cards that can be done like that are Platinum>Gold. Copper has Coppersmith/Counting House, Silver has Feodum, Estate/Duchy/Province are all referenced, as is Curse, by Mountebank/Quest.
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The only basic cards that can be done like that are Platinum>Gold. Copper has Coppersmith/Counting House, Silver has Feodum, Estate/Duchy/Province are all referenced, as is Curse, by Mountebank/Quest.
Well, there's also Taxman for all treasures, but maybe that should fall under the Fairgrounds clause.
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Platinum instead of gold can also trigger an unwanted shuffle if Storytellered, if we are still caring about that.
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Having computers shuffle for you is strictly better than having to shuffle IRL.
Also, a computer's memory for what I did with my Pawns is strictly better than my memory.
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The only basic cards that can be done like that are Platinum>Gold. Copper has Coppersmith/Counting House, Silver has Feodum, Estate/Duchy/Province are all referenced, as is Curse, by Mountebank/Quest.
You opponent's turn, you are 9 points ahead and there is one Colony left. You know that your opponent's deck is 10 Ventures/Noble Brigand and a bunch of other actions/green cards. Opponent plays Noble Brigand, revealing your Colony/Gold, trashing Gold and gaining it. He then plays Venture, reveals the gained Gold, and has $5. If that Gold of yours had been a Platinum, your opponent would not have gained it and could have triggered his Venture chain, producing $11 and buying the last Colony.
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I love how a newbie who's not familiar with f.ds and reads this thread would conclude that gold>platinum and cantrips suck because, gosh!, all those unwanted resuffles must really be bad, since everybody's fretting about them.
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I love how a newbie who's not familiar with f.ds and reads this thread would conclude that gold>platinum and cantrips suck because, gosh!, all those unwanted resuffles must really be bad, since everybody's fretting about them.
Well, that might be the case if this was in the Dominion General discussion forum, but it's in Puzzles and Challenges. It should be pretty obvious that this is not strategy discussion, but puzzle discussion.
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Having computers shuffle for you is strictly better than having to shuffle IRL.
Also, a computer's memory for what I did with my Pawns is strictly better than my memory.
Edge case: The computer was programmed by Goko/Making Fun.
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Platinum instead of gold can also trigger an unwanted shuffle if Storytellered, if we are still caring about that.
Same deal with Grand Market vs Market, Bazaar vs Village, and so on, sometimes you don't want that extra card drawn.
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Platinum instead of gold can also trigger an unwanted shuffle if Storytellered, if we are still caring about that.
Same deal with Grand Market vs Market, Bazaar vs Village, and so on, sometimes you don't want that extra card drawn.
So I guess it also applies to, say, Necropolis versus Ruined Village, because of the Storyteller/Diadem interaction. Or Festival versus Woodcutter.
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Platinum instead of gold can also trigger an unwanted shuffle if Storytellered, if we are still caring about that.
Same deal with Grand Market vs Market, Bazaar vs Village, and so on, sometimes you don't want that extra card drawn.
So I guess it also applies to, say, Necropolis versus Ruined Village, because of the Storyteller/Diadem interaction. Or Festival versus Woodcutter.
Yup. I think we're down to Mining Village, Worker's Village, and Butcher as the only cards that work.
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Platinum instead of gold can also trigger an unwanted shuffle if Storytellered, if we are still caring about that.
Same deal with Grand Market vs Market, Bazaar vs Village, and so on, sometimes you don't want that extra card drawn.
So I guess it also applies to, say, Necropolis versus Ruined Village, because of the Storyteller/Diadem interaction. Or Festival versus Woodcutter.
Yup. I think we're down to Mining Village, Worker's Village, and Butcher as the only cards that work.
Is there reason why Messenger isn't better than Woodcutter, Chancellor and Nomad Camp? (I think we're ignoring on-gain abilities, yes?)
Or Walled Village?
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Compiling everything I've seen in the thread, I get this list:
Mining Village, Plaza, Walled Village, Worker's Village > Village
Artificer, Market, Treasury > Peddler
Goons > Militia
Alchemist > Laboratory
Butcher > Remodel
If we don't consider on-buy effects:
Messenger > Chancellor, Woodcutter
Port = Village
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Compiling everything I've seen in the thread, I get this list:
Mining Village, Plaza, Walled Village, Worker's Village > Village
Is there some obscure edge case where Fortress is a worse card than Village?
Artificer, Market, Treasury > Peddler
Baker comes really close, but it antisynergizes with Black Market and Storyteller :(
Port = Village
Also Border Village.
Pretty sure Trusty Steed > Lost City works.
How about Nobles > Necropolis? Edit: Never mind, I think Bureaucrat kills this one.
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Trusty Steed isn't always better than Lost City. Sometimes you want your opponent to draw a card. It can cause a bad shuffle, or mess up their Library engine.
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If we ignore on-gain effects, then Trusty Steed is better.
Also, because of Vagrant, none of the other cards are strictly superior to any Ruins. Otherwise, all of these would work...
Herbalist, Peasant, Merchant Guild, Pawn > Abandoned Mine
Storeroom, Pawn > Ruined Market
Cellar, Pawn > Ruined Village
Pawn > Ruined Library
On another note
Journeyman > Smithy works, right?
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In order for A > B to be true (barring the universal edge cases), we need these to be true:
1. A and B share the same card types, which matters for Tribute and Jester.
2. A and B are not Treasure cards, which matters for Taxman.
3. A can do everything that B does, or else you will sometimes prefer B to do its special thing.
4. A does not force you to do anything that B doesn't also.
3 prevents a coin token card from being better than a standard virtual coin card, because you may prefer the virtual coin when using Black Market. Same goes for a card B that has you discard when card A doesn't, due to Tunnel.
4 covers a lot of stuff you might not expect. If it forces you to draw or even reveal an extra card, that can be undesirable for reshuffle considerations. If it forces you to attack, that can be bad because your opponents may have reactions that benefit them. If it forces you to play an extra card or to topdeck something, well there are situations where you don't want those things either.
4 doesn't cover extra coins (virtual or token), because having more money to spend never hurts you. It doesn't cover extra buys or actions for the same reason.
Gonna quote this again. The only update for adventures is that 4 does cover extra coins and extra actions because of Storyteller. Extra Buys are still always good. I didn't mention it before, but extra VP tokens are fine too.
People have been ignoring on-gain effects recently, but Witherweaver pointed out early on (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11280.msg387269#msg387269) that it does matter because you could trash and gain the card from the trash with Graverobber in a single turn.
I think singletee's list looks right.
Compiling everything I've seen in the thread, I get this list:
Mining Village, Plaza, Walled Village, Worker's Village > Village
Is there some obscure edge case where Fortress is a worse card than Village?
Fortress breaks #4 in my list above. It forces you to put it back into your hand when you trash it. Why would this be a bad thing? Maybe you'd prefer a lower hand-size for a draw-to-X card. Maybe you want it in the trash in order to block Rogue (e.g. your opponent's because a village is the thing you mind losing the least, or your own because you don't want to flip any of your opponents cards).
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Journeyman > Smithy works, right?
I don't think so because you might want to draw the top 3 cards of your deck (to avoid a shuffle), but you have at least 1 of every card that you can name in your deck, so you can't guarantee you'll draw the top 3 cards.
Also, not sure if it applies to the "rules", but I would think (not revealing) > (revealing).
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If you play a Plaza and there's a 10% chance the card will be better than the coin, you'll discard the card, but 10% of the time you'd rather have had a normal Village.
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Journeyman > Smithy works, right?
I don't think so because you might want to draw the top 3 cards of your deck (to avoid a shuffle), but you have at least 1 of every card that you can name in your deck, so you can't guarantee you'll draw the top 3 cards.
Also, not sure if it applies to the "rules", but I would think (not revealing) > (revealing).
You can name the Ace of Spades, but you can never have one in your deck. The issue is with revealing the cards.
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Journeyman > Smithy works, right?
I don't think so because you might want to draw the top 3 cards of your deck (to avoid a shuffle), but you have at least 1 of every card that you can name in your deck, so you can't guarantee you'll draw the top 3 cards.
Also, not sure if it applies to the "rules", but I would think (not revealing) > (revealing).
You're allowed to name anything. You can name the Ace of Spades.
But revealing is indeed covered by the rules. Journeyman forces you to reveal cards instead of just drawing them, which gives your opponents more information, which means it's not strictly better than Smithy.
If you play a Plaza and there's a 10% chance the card will be better than the coin, you'll discard the card, but 10% of the time you'd rather have had a normal Village.
Plaza doesn't force you to discard anything. It is Village plus an additional, fully optional ability, so it is a strictly better effect than Village (not counting universal edge cases like Possession).
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People have been ignoring on-gain effects recently, but Witherweaver pointed out early on (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11280.msg387269#msg387269) that it does matter because you could trash and gain the card from the trash with Graverobber in a single turn.
I think singletee's list looks right.
If we consider that, it does some funky things with cost, because not all cards can be regained from the trash (cards that are more expensive than $6 in most cases, cards that cost $2 or less and potion-cost cards in all cases). If we consider cost in general, then no cards are strictly better than other cards (the trivial example is Upgrade).
It also impacts Singletee's list, because you can trash and regain a Laboratory, but you can't do that with an Alchemist.
But sure, it matters for comparing cards where both parts can be trashed and regained. That's true I guess.
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You can name the Ace of Spades
Oh, that's why that is there?!?! I never realized, haha. I always thought it was just a for-funzies feature Goko/MF put in, like as a joke or something. I guess it says "Name a card", not "Name a Dominion card", so technically you could say the Queen of hearts or something. Or Hologram Raichu.
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You can name the Ace of Spades
Oh, that's why that is there?!?! I never realized, haha. I always thought it was just a for-funzies feature Goko/MF put in, like as a joke or something. I guess it says "Name a card", not "Name a Dominion card", so technically you could say the Queen of hearts or something. Or Hologram Raichu.
I like to name the Platinum Yendorian Express Card.
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People have been ignoring on-gain effects recently, but Witherweaver pointed out early on (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11280.msg387269#msg387269) that it does matter because you could trash and gain the card from the trash with Graverobber in a single turn.
I think singletee's list looks right.
If we consider that, it does some funky things with cost, because not all cards can be regained from the trash (cards that are more expensive than $6 in most cases, cards that cost $2 or less and potion-cost cards in all cases). If we consider cost in general, then no cards are strictly better than other cards (the trivial example is Upgrade).
It also impacts Singletee's list, because you can trash and regain a Laboratory, but you can't do that with an Alchemist.
But sure, it matters for comparing cards where both parts can be trashed and regained. That's true I guess.
Yeah, all the cost-specific stuff is included in the universal edge cases. Remodel, Forge, Swinder... there are lots. Some other universal edge cases include variety-caring cards (e.g. Fairgrounds, Menagerie) and Possession. A list was compiled earlier in this thread.
But "Graverobber for on-gain effect" isn't a universal thing. And you're right, it does have an impact on stuff like Lab vs. Alchemist.
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If you play a Plaza and there's a 10% chance the card will be better than the coin, you'll discard the card, but 10% of the time you'd rather have had a normal Village.
Plaza doesn't force you to discard anything. It is Village plus an additional, fully optional ability, so it is a strictly better effect than Village (not counting universal edge cases like Possession).
But you can make the right decision and still come out worse off some of the time than if you had a normal Village. So sometimes it's better not to be given the decision, you just don't know until later.
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If you play a Plaza and there's a 10% chance the card will be better than the coin, you'll discard the card, but 10% of the time you'd rather have had a normal Village.
Plaza doesn't force you to discard anything. It is Village plus an additional, fully optional ability, so it is a strictly better effect than Village (not counting universal edge cases like Possession).
But you can make the right decision and still come out worse off some of the time than if you had a normal Village. So sometimes it's better not to be given the decision, you just don't know until later.
That has nothing to do with the concept of "strictly better". If you want, you can just pay Plaza exactly as a Village! If we accept your argument as a qualification, than no card ever is "strictly better" because a player can make the wrong choice with it. You'd have to say that Worker's Village is not strictly better than Village because a bad player could choose to use the +Buy to buy Copper every time.
It also sounds like you misunderstand how Plaza works. After you draw, you may discard a Treasure from your hand to gain a coin token. Most of the time you'll just be discarding Copper and then deciding whether to use the coin token when the Buy phase starts.
But even if it was something like this:
+2 action
Choose one: +1 Card, or discard the top card or your deck and take a coin token.
That's still a strictly better effect than Village. You can resolve to always play it as Village (i.e. take the +1 card) unless you are 100% sure that the second choice is better. The fact that you have that choice makes it strictly better.
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If you play a Plaza and there's a 10% chance the card will be better than the coin, you'll discard the card, but 10% of the time you'd rather have had a normal Village.
Plaza doesn't force you to discard anything. It is Village plus an additional, fully optional ability, so it is a strictly better effect than Village (not counting universal edge cases like Possession).
But you can make the right decision and still come out worse off some of the time than if you had a normal Village. So sometimes it's better not to be given the decision, you just don't know until later.
It's doesn't matter, because you can resolve to always play it as a normal village unless you are 100% sure it cannot result in something worse for you. For example, only use it to discard a potion you don't need and that won't get reshuffled at the wrong time because you discarded it. Only use the resulting coin token if you are ending the game.
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If you play a Plaza and there's a 10% chance the card will be better than the coin, you'll discard the card, but 10% of the time you'd rather have had a normal Village.
Plaza doesn't force you to discard anything. It is Village plus an additional, fully optional ability, so it is a strictly better effect than Village (not counting universal edge cases like Possession).
But you can make the right decision and still come out worse off some of the time than if you had a normal Village. So sometimes it's better not to be given the decision, you just don't know until later.
That has nothing to do with the concept of "strictly better". If you want, you can just pay Plaza exactly as a Village! If we accept your argument as a qualification, than no card ever is "strictly better" because a player can make the wrong choice with it. You'd have to say that Worker's Village is not strictly better than Village because a bad player could choose to use the +Buy to buy Copper every time.
It also sounds like you misunderstand how Plaza works. After you draw, you may discard a Treasure from your hand to gain a coin token. Most of the time you'll just be discarding Copper and then deciding whether to use the coin token when the Buy phase starts.
But even if it was something like this:
+2 action
Choose one: +1 Card, or discard the top card or your deck and take a coin token.
That's still a strictly better effect than Village. You can resolve to always play it as Village (i.e. take the +1 card) unless you are 100% sure that the second choice is better. The fact that you have that choice makes it strictly better.
I understand what strictly better means, and I understand what Plaza does.
Okay, consider a Village that also had the effect, "You may flip a coin. If you flip heads, +2 VP. If you flip tails, -1 VP (whatever that means)." Clearly it's usually better to flip the coin, but in doing so you risk repeatedly flipping tails. I don't think it's enough to say, "Well you could have just never flipped the coin." If optimal use of the card can have a negative effect (compared to the card we're comparing it to), I'd say it's not strictly better.
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I understand what strictly better means, and I understand what Plaza does.
Okay, consider a Village that also had the effect, "You may flip a coin. If you flip heads, +2 VP. If you flip tails, -1 VP (whatever that means)." Clearly it's usually better to flip the coin, but in doing so you risk repeatedly flipping tails. I don't think it's enough to say, "Well you could have just never flipped the coin." If optimal use of the card can have a negative effect (compared to the card we're comparing it to), I'd say it's not strictly better.
Except it is strictly better, because you could resolve to never use the coin flip effect except when it would 100% benefit you. And yes, even with this randomness, I can design an edge case to make that happen:
- Two piles are empty and there's only one Ruins remaining.
- You are first player but 1VP behind.
- Your hand is all junk, you have $0.
Now you can safely use this ability for a chance at winning a game you are guaranteed to lose otherwise. Strictly better.
But even accepting your argument, Plaza isn't like that. There is no coin flip involved.
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How come cost is a universal edge case, but type isn't?
There's cards that share the same cost and cards that share types.
No 2 different costs can be strictly better than the other, but I'm pretty sure the same goes for types.
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Jimmmmm is strictly better than Jim.
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Jimmmmm is strictly better than Jim.
I'm strictly better than you.
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How come cost is a universal edge case, but type isn't?
There's cards that share the same cost and cards that share types.
No 2 different costs can be strictly better than the other, but I'm pretty sure the same goes for types.
We don't say that about the cost itself. "Universal edge case" was the term we ended up using for specific cards that can always be used to make one card better than another one which would otherwise be strictly superior. For example, Possession is a universal edge case because I would want a weaker card in hand when you play Possession. Likewise, the other universal edge cases also provide ways of making a card with a strictly inferior effect better to have in hand.
We name cost-caring cards like Forge, Remake, Upgrade as "universal" edge cases because they can make you prefer having (for example) Village over Mining Village. Yes, there are cards that share the same cost, but no such pair of cards in Dominion will have one be strictly superior than the other. That's also the reason why we are just discussing strictly superior effects rather than strictly superior cards.
By contrast, not counting type as a universal edge case doesn't invalidate every potential case of one card being strictly superior. It's not universal.
I found this difficult to explain. Does that make sense?
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Worker's Village isn't strictly better than Village because it's cost is different.
So Upgrade and Remake might prefer a normal Village.
And Village can be better if it's the Bane.
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I understand what strictly better means, and I understand what Plaza does.
Okay, consider a Village that also had the effect, "You may flip a coin. If you flip heads, +2 VP. If you flip tails, -1 VP (whatever that means)." Clearly it's usually better to flip the coin, but in doing so you risk repeatedly flipping tails. I don't think it's enough to say, "Well you could have just never flipped the coin." If optimal use of the card can have a negative effect (compared to the card we're comparing it to), I'd say it's not strictly better.
Except it is strictly better, because you could resolve to never use the coin flip effect except when it would 100% benefit you. And yes, even with this randomness, I can design an edge case to make that happen:
- Two piles are empty and there's only one Ruins remaining.
- You are first player but 1VP behind.
- Your hand is all junk, you have $0.
Now you can safely use this ability for a chance at winning a game you are guaranteed to lose otherwise. Strictly better.
But even accepting your argument, Plaza isn't like that. There is no coin flip involved.
Plaza is technically strictly better than Village, but in practice it's possible to make all the right decisions and lose because you had a Plaza when you would have won with a Village.
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Worker's Village isn't strictly better than Village because it's cost is different.
So Upgrade and Remake might prefer a normal Village.
And Village can be better if it's the Bane.
And that's why cost-caring cards are universal edge cases, which we've already discussed at length.
Not sure if anybody's brought up the Bane issue before. That'll have to be another thing we add to the universal edge case list.
I understand what strictly better means, and I understand what Plaza does.
Okay, consider a Village that also had the effect, "You may flip a coin. If you flip heads, +2 VP. If you flip tails, -1 VP (whatever that means)." Clearly it's usually better to flip the coin, but in doing so you risk repeatedly flipping tails. I don't think it's enough to say, "Well you could have just never flipped the coin." If optimal use of the card can have a negative effect (compared to the card we're comparing it to), I'd say it's not strictly better.
Except it is strictly better, because you could resolve to never use the coin flip effect except when it would 100% benefit you. And yes, even with this randomness, I can design an edge case to make that happen:
- Two piles are empty and there's only one Ruins remaining.
- You are first player but 1VP behind.
- Your hand is all junk, you have $0.
Now you can safely use this ability for a chance at winning a game you are guaranteed to lose otherwise. Strictly better.
But even accepting your argument, Plaza isn't like that. There is no coin flip involved.
Plaza is technically strictly better than Village, but in practice it's possible to make all the right decisions and lose because you had a Plaza when you would have won with a Village.
Well it's a good thing that strictness is very much a technical thing to discuss.
But I disagree. If you would have won with a village, then clearly you did not make the right decision somewhere along the line. Plaza doesn't have any sort of randomness attached to it that would lead you to make the right decision and come out for the worse.
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Well it's a good thing that strictness is very much a technical thing to discuss.
But I disagree. If you would have won with a village, then clearly you did not make the right decision somewhere along the line. Plaza doesn't have any sort of randomness attached to it that would lead you to make the right decision and come out for the worse.
You don't know the order of the cards in your deck; that could possibly lead you to prefer to not have discarded a treasure, even though probabilistically it would have been the right play. For example, you choose to discard a Copper because you have 100 cards in your deck and only one of them is a Spice Merchant. You then play a draw card and pick up the Spice Merchant, and now you regret having discarded the Copper.
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Well it's a good thing that strictness is very much a technical thing to discuss.
But I disagree. If you would have won with a village, then clearly you did not make the right decision somewhere along the line. Plaza doesn't have any sort of randomness attached to it that would lead you to make the right decision and come out for the worse.
You don't know the order of the cards in your deck; that could possibly lead you to prefer to not have discarded a treasure, even though probabilistically it would have been the right play. For example, you choose to discard a Copper because you have 100 cards in your deck and only one of them is a Spice Merchant. You then play a draw card and pick up the Spice Merchant, and now you regret having discarded the Copper.
If this is a big enough problem that you would lose the game, then discarding is the wrong choice. Instead, you can just always choose not to discard unless you are certain that Spice Merchant will not be drawn (usually because it's already in your discard).
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Well it's a good thing that strictness is very much a technical thing to discuss.
But I disagree. If you would have won with a village, then clearly you did not make the right decision somewhere along the line. Plaza doesn't have any sort of randomness attached to it that would lead you to make the right decision and come out for the worse.
You don't know the order of the cards in your deck; that could possibly lead you to prefer to not have discarded a treasure, even though probabilistically it would have been the right play. For example, you choose to discard a Copper because you have 100 cards in your deck and only one of them is a Spice Merchant. You then play a draw card and pick up the Spice Merchant, and now you regret having discarded the Copper.
If this is a big enough problem that you would lose the game, then discarding is the wrong choice. Instead, you can just always choose not to discard unless you are certain that Spice Merchant will not be drawn (usually because it's already in your discard).
I can make the probability of drawing Spice Merchant arbitrarily small by making my deck as large as I want. At some point, the expected payoff will have to be so small that taking the coin token is better on average.
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Well it's a good thing that strictness is very much a technical thing to discuss.
But I disagree. If you would have won with a village, then clearly you did not make the right decision somewhere along the line. Plaza doesn't have any sort of randomness attached to it that would lead you to make the right decision and come out for the worse.
You don't know the order of the cards in your deck; that could possibly lead you to prefer to not have discarded a treasure, even though probabilistically it would have been the right play. For example, you choose to discard a Copper because you have 100 cards in your deck and only one of them is a Spice Merchant. You then play a draw card and pick up the Spice Merchant, and now you regret having discarded the Copper.
If this is a big enough problem that you would lose the game, then discarding is the wrong choice. Instead, you can just always choose not to discard unless you are certain that Spice Merchant will not be drawn (usually because it's already in your discard).
I can make the probability of drawing Spice Merchant arbitrarily small by making my deck as large as I want. At some point, the expected payoff will have to be so small that taking the coin token is better on average.
And yet you can still follow that rule to only use the discard when you are entirely 100% certain.
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Regret based on future events can't be taken into account when determining strict betterness. If you did, it would be a totally universal edge case and no card could be better than another unless "you win" were printed on the former or "you lose" on the latter.
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Village is sometimes better than Worker's Village, because you could use the extra Buy to buy a Curse.
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Well it's a good thing that strictness is very much a technical thing to discuss.
But I disagree. If you would have won with a village, then clearly you did not make the right decision somewhere along the line. Plaza doesn't have any sort of randomness attached to it that would lead you to make the right decision and come out for the worse.
You don't know the order of the cards in your deck; that could possibly lead you to prefer to not have discarded a treasure, even though probabilistically it would have been the right play. For example, you choose to discard a Copper because you have 100 cards in your deck and only one of them is a Spice Merchant. You then play a draw card and pick up the Spice Merchant, and now you regret having discarded the Copper.
If this is a big enough problem that you would lose the game, then discarding is the wrong choice. Instead, you can just always choose not to discard unless you are certain that Spice Merchant will not be drawn (usually because it's already in your discard).
I can make the probability of drawing Spice Merchant arbitrarily small by making my deck as large as I want. At some point, the expected payoff will have to be so small that taking the coin token is better on average.
And yet you can still follow that rule to only use the discard when you are entirely 100% certain.
Right, I'm not claiming that you can't do that. I'm agreeing with Jimm that you can improve your chances of winning in some particular situation by having Plaza rather than Village, but it's possible that in that same situation, you will lose because you had Plaza rather than Village, if you choose to maximize your chances of winning.
Another way of putting it is, you can choose to either play Plaza as if it is a Village, or play it as if your goal is to win the game of Dominion. If you choose the former, then it is identical to Village. If you choose the latter, then there can be cases where you would have won if you had had Village rather than Plaza. That doesn't make Plaza "worse" than Village, and arguably it's still strictly better (depending on how "strictly better" is defined). But you seem to be denying that this is possible, which I disagree with.
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Well it's a good thing that strictness is very much a technical thing to discuss.
But I disagree. If you would have won with a village, then clearly you did not make the right decision somewhere along the line. Plaza doesn't have any sort of randomness attached to it that would lead you to make the right decision and come out for the worse.
You don't know the order of the cards in your deck; that could possibly lead you to prefer to not have discarded a treasure, even though probabilistically it would have been the right play. For example, you choose to discard a Copper because you have 100 cards in your deck and only one of them is a Spice Merchant. You then play a draw card and pick up the Spice Merchant, and now you regret having discarded the Copper.
If this is a big enough problem that you would lose the game, then discarding is the wrong choice. Instead, you can just always choose not to discard unless you are certain that Spice Merchant will not be drawn (usually because it's already in your discard).
I can make the probability of drawing Spice Merchant arbitrarily small by making my deck as large as I want. At some point, the expected payoff will have to be so small that taking the coin token is better on average.
And yet you can still follow that rule to only use the discard when you are entirely 100% certain.
Right, I'm not claiming that you can't do that. I'm agreeing with Jimm that you can improve your chances of winning in some particular situation by having Plaza rather than Village, but it's possible that in that same situation, you will lose because you had Plaza rather than Village, if you choose to maximize your chances of winning.
Another way of putting it is, you can choose to either play Plaza as if it is a Village, or play it as if your goal is to win the game of Dominion. If you choose the former, then it is identical to Village. If you choose the latter, then there can be cases where you would have won if you had had Village rather than Plaza. That doesn't make Plaza "worse" than Village, and arguably it's still strictly better (depending on how "strictly better" is defined). But you seem to be denying that this is possible, which I disagree with.
Again, if you accept this kind of argument, then no card could ever be strictly better than another by any reasonable definition. Even an imaginary card that is identical to Village except it optionally grants you +1VP token on play could be worse, because it could give you a VP lead that leads you to take a risk that loses the game for you.
I acknowledge that you could play Plaza such that you would have lost whereas you would have won with Village, but I disagree that this is a way in that Plaza is worse and I disagree that this will happen when you make the right choice. If you would have won with a regular Village, then you should have played your Plaza as a regular Village except when you are 100% sure that the discard won't come back to bite you later -- e.g. when you don't have any other action card to play after this -- which is still a strictly better effect than regular Village. This is just a question of YMOSL now. Don't blame the card for giving you a choice when this happens. Blame your choice.
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How come cost is a universal edge case, but type isn't?
There's cards that share the same cost and cards that share types.
No 2 different costs can be strictly better than the other, but I'm pretty sure the same goes for types.
We don't say that about the cost itself. "Universal edge case" was the term we ended up using for specific cards that can always be used to make one card better than another one which would otherwise be strictly superior. For example, Possession is a universal edge case because I would want a weaker card in hand when you play Possession. Likewise, the other universal edge cases also provide ways of making a card with a strictly inferior effect better to have in hand.
We name cost-caring cards like Forge, Remake, Upgrade as "universal" edge cases because they can make you prefer having (for example) Village over Mining Village. Yes, there are cards that share the same cost, but no such pair of cards in Dominion will have one be strictly superior than the other. That's also the reason why we are just discussing strictly superior effects rather than strictly superior cards.
By contrast, not counting type as a universal edge case doesn't invalidate every potential case of one card being strictly superior. It's not universal.
I found this difficult to explain. Does that make sense?
It makes perfect sense. Thanks :)
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You can name the Ace of Spades
Oh, that's why that is there?!?! I never realized, haha. I always thought it was just a for-funzies feature Goko/MF put in, like as a joke or something. I guess it says "Name a card", not "Name a Dominion card", so technically you could say the Queen of hearts or something. Or Hologram Raichu.
I like to name the Platinum Yendorian Express Card.
Nice reference.
I prefer to name the Race Card.
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Strictly worse is strictly better when you're possessed.
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Well it's a good thing that strictness is very much a technical thing to discuss.
But I disagree. If you would have won with a village, then clearly you did not make the right decision somewhere along the line. Plaza doesn't have any sort of randomness attached to it that would lead you to make the right decision and come out for the worse.
You don't know the order of the cards in your deck; that could possibly lead you to prefer to not have discarded a treasure, even though probabilistically it would have been the right play. For example, you choose to discard a Copper because you have 100 cards in your deck and only one of them is a Spice Merchant. You then play a draw card and pick up the Spice Merchant, and now you regret having discarded the Copper.
If this is a big enough problem that you would lose the game, then discarding is the wrong choice. Instead, you can just always choose not to discard unless you are certain that Spice Merchant will not be drawn (usually because it's already in your discard).
I can make the probability of drawing Spice Merchant arbitrarily small by making my deck as large as I want. At some point, the expected payoff will have to be so small that taking the coin token is better on average.
And yet you can still follow that rule to only use the discard when you are entirely 100% certain.
Right, I'm not claiming that you can't do that. I'm agreeing with Jimm that you can improve your chances of winning in some particular situation by having Plaza rather than Village, but it's possible that in that same situation, you will lose because you had Plaza rather than Village, if you choose to maximize your chances of winning.
Another way of putting it is, you can choose to either play Plaza as if it is a Village, or play it as if your goal is to win the game of Dominion. If you choose the former, then it is identical to Village. If you choose the latter, then there can be cases where you would have won if you had had Village rather than Plaza. That doesn't make Plaza "worse" than Village, and arguably it's still strictly better (depending on how "strictly better" is defined). But you seem to be denying that this is possible, which I disagree with.
Again, if you accept this kind of argument, then no card could ever be strictly better than another by any reasonable definition. Even an imaginary card that is identical to Village except it optionally grants you +1VP token on play could be worse, because it could give you a VP lead that leads you to take a risk that loses the game for you.
I acknowledge that you could play Plaza such that you would have lost whereas you would have won with Village, but I disagree that this is a way in that Plaza is worse and I disagree that this will happen when you make the right choice. If you would have won with a regular Village, then you should have played your Plaza as a regular Village except when you are 100% sure that the discard won't come back to bite you later -- e.g. when you don't have any other action card to play after this -- which is still a strictly better effect than regular Village. This is just a question of YMOSL now. Don't blame the card for giving you a choice when this happens. Blame your choice.
Here's an example where the correct Plaza choice makes you loose the game:
You have 0$ to spend and have reduced costs by 6. If you gain the last Colony or the 3 last Duchies you win, otherwise you loose. After playing Plaza and drawing a card you have Horn of Plenty and Great Hall in your hand. In your deck you have a Horn of Plenty and 2 Poor Houses, but you don't know the order of them.
If you discard Horn of Plenty to the Plaza, there's 67 % chance that you'll draw a Poor House and win and 33 % chance you'll draw the Horn of Plenty and loose.
If you don't discard Horn of Plenty to the Plaza, there's 67 % chance that you'll draw a Poor House and loose and 33 % chance you'll draw the Horn of Plenty and win.
So to maximise your chance of winning, the correct choice is to discard your Horn of Plenty. But if the top card of your deck is Horn of Plenty, then you would have been better off with a Village, so you didn't have the choice.
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Well it's a good thing that strictness is very much a technical thing to discuss.
But I disagree. If you would have won with a village, then clearly you did not make the right decision somewhere along the line. Plaza doesn't have any sort of randomness attached to it that would lead you to make the right decision and come out for the worse.
You don't know the order of the cards in your deck; that could possibly lead you to prefer to not have discarded a treasure, even though probabilistically it would have been the right play. For example, you choose to discard a Copper because you have 100 cards in your deck and only one of them is a Spice Merchant. You then play a draw card and pick up the Spice Merchant, and now you regret having discarded the Copper.
If this is a big enough problem that you would lose the game, then discarding is the wrong choice. Instead, you can just always choose not to discard unless you are certain that Spice Merchant will not be drawn (usually because it's already in your discard).
I can make the probability of drawing Spice Merchant arbitrarily small by making my deck as large as I want. At some point, the expected payoff will have to be so small that taking the coin token is better on average.
And yet you can still follow that rule to only use the discard when you are entirely 100% certain.
Right, I'm not claiming that you can't do that. I'm agreeing with Jimm that you can improve your chances of winning in some particular situation by having Plaza rather than Village, but it's possible that in that same situation, you will lose because you had Plaza rather than Village, if you choose to maximize your chances of winning.
Another way of putting it is, you can choose to either play Plaza as if it is a Village, or play it as if your goal is to win the game of Dominion. If you choose the former, then it is identical to Village. If you choose the latter, then there can be cases where you would have won if you had had Village rather than Plaza. That doesn't make Plaza "worse" than Village, and arguably it's still strictly better (depending on how "strictly better" is defined). But you seem to be denying that this is possible, which I disagree with.
Again, if you accept this kind of argument, then no card could ever be strictly better than another by any reasonable definition. Even an imaginary card that is identical to Village except it optionally grants you +1VP token on play could be worse, because it could give you a VP lead that leads you to take a risk that loses the game for you.
I acknowledge that you could play Plaza such that you would have lost whereas you would have won with Village, but I disagree that this is a way in that Plaza is worse and I disagree that this will happen when you make the right choice. If you would have won with a regular Village, then you should have played your Plaza as a regular Village except when you are 100% sure that the discard won't come back to bite you later -- e.g. when you don't have any other action card to play after this -- which is still a strictly better effect than regular Village. This is just a question of YMOSL now. Don't blame the card for giving you a choice when this happens. Blame your choice.
Here's an example where the correct Plaza choice makes you loose the game:
You have 0$ to spend and have reduced costs by 6. If you gain the last Colony or the 3 last Duchies you win, otherwise you loose. After playing Plaza and drawing a card you have Horn of Plenty and Great Hall in your hand. In your deck you have a Horn of Plenty and 2 Poor Houses, but you don't know the order of them.
If you discard Horn of Plenty to the Plaza, there's 67 % chance that you'll draw a Poor House and win and 33 % chance you'll draw the Horn of Plenty and loose.
If you don't discard Horn of Plenty to the Plaza, there's 67 % chance that you'll draw a Poor House and loose and 33 % chance you'll draw the Horn of Plenty and win.
So to maximise your chance of winning, the correct choice is to discard your Horn of Plenty. But if the top card of your deck is Horn of Plenty, then you would have been better off with a Village, so you didn't have the choice.
Right, but the question being asked is "Which card would I rather have in hand right now?", not "Which card would I like to have had given what happened afterwards?".
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Well it's a good thing that strictness is very much a technical thing to discuss.
But I disagree. If you would have won with a village, then clearly you did not make the right decision somewhere along the line. Plaza doesn't have any sort of randomness attached to it that would lead you to make the right decision and come out for the worse.
You don't know the order of the cards in your deck; that could possibly lead you to prefer to not have discarded a treasure, even though probabilistically it would have been the right play. For example, you choose to discard a Copper because you have 100 cards in your deck and only one of them is a Spice Merchant. You then play a draw card and pick up the Spice Merchant, and now you regret having discarded the Copper.
If this is a big enough problem that you would lose the game, then discarding is the wrong choice. Instead, you can just always choose not to discard unless you are certain that Spice Merchant will not be drawn (usually because it's already in your discard).
I can make the probability of drawing Spice Merchant arbitrarily small by making my deck as large as I want. At some point, the expected payoff will have to be so small that taking the coin token is better on average.
And yet you can still follow that rule to only use the discard when you are entirely 100% certain.
Right, I'm not claiming that you can't do that. I'm agreeing with Jimm that you can improve your chances of winning in some particular situation by having Plaza rather than Village, but it's possible that in that same situation, you will lose because you had Plaza rather than Village, if you choose to maximize your chances of winning.
Another way of putting it is, you can choose to either play Plaza as if it is a Village, or play it as if your goal is to win the game of Dominion. If you choose the former, then it is identical to Village. If you choose the latter, then there can be cases where you would have won if you had had Village rather than Plaza. That doesn't make Plaza "worse" than Village, and arguably it's still strictly better (depending on how "strictly better" is defined). But you seem to be denying that this is possible, which I disagree with.
Again, if you accept this kind of argument, then no card could ever be strictly better than another by any reasonable definition. Even an imaginary card that is identical to Village except it optionally grants you +1VP token on play could be worse, because it could give you a VP lead that leads you to take a risk that loses the game for you.
I acknowledge that you could play Plaza such that you would have lost whereas you would have won with Village, but I disagree that this is a way in that Plaza is worse and I disagree that this will happen when you make the right choice. If you would have won with a regular Village, then you should have played your Plaza as a regular Village except when you are 100% sure that the discard won't come back to bite you later -- e.g. when you don't have any other action card to play after this -- which is still a strictly better effect than regular Village. This is just a question of YMOSL now. Don't blame the card for giving you a choice when this happens. Blame your choice.
Here's an example where the correct Plaza choice makes you loose the game:
You have 0$ to spend and have reduced costs by 6. If you gain the last Colony or the 3 last Duchies you win, otherwise you loose. After playing Plaza and drawing a card you have Horn of Plenty and Great Hall in your hand. In your deck you have a Horn of Plenty and 2 Poor Houses, but you don't know the order of them.
If you discard Horn of Plenty to the Plaza, there's 67 % chance that you'll draw a Poor House and win and 33 % chance you'll draw the Horn of Plenty and loose.
If you don't discard Horn of Plenty to the Plaza, there's 67 % chance that you'll draw a Poor House and loose and 33 % chance you'll draw the Horn of Plenty and win.
So to maximise your chance of winning, the correct choice is to discard your Horn of Plenty. But if the top card of your deck is Horn of Plenty, then you would have been better off with a Village, so you didn't have the choice.
Right, but the question being asked is "Which card would I rather have in hand right now?", not "Which card would I like to have had given what happened afterwards?".
I'm not saying that Plaza isn't strictly better than Village.
And after reading it again I realize what eHalcyon was saying with his last post and agree with it.
I just simply saw a sub-puzzle that I thought was fun finding an answer to :)
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Worker's Village isn't strictly better than Village because it's cost is different.
So Upgrade and Remake might prefer a normal Village.
And Village can be better if it's the Bane.
And that's why cost-caring cards are universal edge cases, which we've already discussed at length.
Not sure if anybody's brought up the Bane issue before. That'll have to be another thing we add to the universal edge case list.
I understand what strictly better means, and I understand what Plaza does.
Okay, consider a Village that also had the effect, "You may flip a coin. If you flip heads, +2 VP. If you flip tails, -1 VP (whatever that means)." Clearly it's usually better to flip the coin, but in doing so you risk repeatedly flipping tails. I don't think it's enough to say, "Well you could have just never flipped the coin." If optimal use of the card can have a negative effect (compared to the card we're comparing it to), I'd say it's not strictly better.
Except it is strictly better, because you could resolve to never use the coin flip effect except when it would 100% benefit you. And yes, even with this randomness, I can design an edge case to make that happen:
- Two piles are empty and there's only one Ruins remaining.
- You are first player but 1VP behind.
- Your hand is all junk, you have $0.
Now you can safely use this ability for a chance at winning a game you are guaranteed to lose otherwise. Strictly better.
But even accepting your argument, Plaza isn't like that. There is no coin flip involved.
Plaza is technically strictly better than Village, but in practice it's possible to make all the right decisions and lose because you had a Plaza when you would have won with a Village.
Well it's a good thing that strictness is very much a technical thing to discuss.
But I disagree. If you would have won with a village, then clearly you did not make the right decision somewhere along the line. Plaza doesn't have any sort of randomness attached to it that would lead you to make the right decision and come out for the worse.
The randomness comes from not knowing what you'll draw.
Say you play a Plaza, and have only one Treasure in your hand, a Copper. You also have, say, a Ruined Library. The rest of your deck is almost all junk, so you know that if you keep the Copper in hand, there's only a very small chance that you'll draw your Stables and then with that draw enough to buy the last Province and win the game. Due to durations, you know you'll have $7 next turn, and you also know your opponent's deck well enough to know there's only a very small chance they'll be able to buy a Province on their next turn. So the right decision is to discard the Copper, getting you to $8 next turn, buy a Duchy and give up a very small chance of winning this turn for a very high chance of winning next turn.
And of course, by some miracle you would have drawn your Stables and then enough to buy a Province and your opponent got an unlikely Province hand, leaving you wishing your Plaza was a plain old Village instead.
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The randomness comes from not knowing what you'll draw.
Say you play a Plaza, and have only one Treasure in your hand, a Copper. You also have, say, a Ruined Library. The rest of your deck is almost all junk, so you know that if you keep the Copper in hand, there's only a very small chance that you'll draw your Stables and then with that draw enough to buy the last Province and win the game. Due to durations, you know you'll have $7 next turn, and you also know your opponent's deck well enough to know there's only a very small chance they'll be able to buy a Province on their next turn. So the right decision is to discard the Copper, getting you to $8 next turn, buy a Duchy and give up a very small chance of winning this turn for a very high chance of winning next turn.
And of course, by some miracle you would have drawn your Stables and then enough to buy a Province and your opponent got an unlikely Province hand, leaving you wishing your Plaza was a plain old Village instead.
Right, but the question being asked is "Which card would I rather have in hand right now?", not "Which card would I like to have had given what happened afterwards?".
You should be wishing that you had made a different choice, not that you weren't given a choice to begin with.
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The randomness comes from not knowing what you'll draw.
Say you play a Plaza, and have only one Treasure in your hand, a Copper. You also have, say, a Ruined Library. The rest of your deck is almost all junk, so you know that if you keep the Copper in hand, there's only a very small chance that you'll draw your Stables and then with that draw enough to buy the last Province and win the game. Due to durations, you know you'll have $7 next turn, and you also know your opponent's deck well enough to know there's only a very small chance they'll be able to buy a Province on their next turn. So the right decision is to discard the Copper, getting you to $8 next turn, buy a Duchy and give up a very small chance of winning this turn for a very high chance of winning next turn.
And of course, by some miracle you would have drawn your Stables and then enough to buy a Province and your opponent got an unlikely Province hand, leaving you wishing your Plaza was a plain old Village instead.
Right, but the question being asked is "Which card would I rather have in hand right now?", not "Which card would I like to have had given what happened afterwards?".
You should be wishing that you had made a different choice, not that you weren't given a choice to begin with.
I'm not wishing anything. I'm just saying with correct use of Plaza in that situation you lose, whereas with Village you win. Sometimes it's bad to be given a choice.
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Well it's a good thing that strictness is very much a technical thing to discuss.
But I disagree. If you would have won with a village, then clearly you did not make the right decision somewhere along the line. Plaza doesn't have any sort of randomness attached to it that would lead you to make the right decision and come out for the worse.
You don't know the order of the cards in your deck; that could possibly lead you to prefer to not have discarded a treasure, even though probabilistically it would have been the right play. For example, you choose to discard a Copper because you have 100 cards in your deck and only one of them is a Spice Merchant. You then play a draw card and pick up the Spice Merchant, and now you regret having discarded the Copper.
If this is a big enough problem that you would lose the game, then discarding is the wrong choice. Instead, you can just always choose not to discard unless you are certain that Spice Merchant will not be drawn (usually because it's already in your discard).
I can make the probability of drawing Spice Merchant arbitrarily small by making my deck as large as I want. At some point, the expected payoff will have to be so small that taking the coin token is better on average.
And yet you can still follow that rule to only use the discard when you are entirely 100% certain.
Right, I'm not claiming that you can't do that. I'm agreeing with Jimm that you can improve your chances of winning in some particular situation by having Plaza rather than Village, but it's possible that in that same situation, you will lose because you had Plaza rather than Village, if you choose to maximize your chances of winning.
Another way of putting it is, you can choose to either play Plaza as if it is a Village, or play it as if your goal is to win the game of Dominion. If you choose the former, then it is identical to Village. If you choose the latter, then there can be cases where you would have won if you had had Village rather than Plaza. That doesn't make Plaza "worse" than Village, and arguably it's still strictly better (depending on how "strictly better" is defined). But you seem to be denying that this is possible, which I disagree with.
Again, if you accept this kind of argument, then no card could ever be strictly better than another by any reasonable definition. Even an imaginary card that is identical to Village except it optionally grants you +1VP token on play could be worse, because it could give you a VP lead that leads you to take a risk that loses the game for you.
Exactly. If you consider how a card affects our decision making when determining what is strictly better, than even a "strictly better" Monument that gives 2VP instead on 1VP per play would not be strictly better because it can cause your opponent to fall further behind and take the risk of breaking PPR when he or she wouldn't have if you had played "original" monument, in a situation where your opponent breaking PPR costs you the game.
I would have to say worsened decision making would need to be a universal edge case. I mean, what about a village that optionally lets you see your opponent's hand, and doing so causes you make a different play than you normally would have and which nets a worse result?
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Strictly worse is strictly better when you're possessed.
You really have to ignore Possession (and Masq and card cost and the-card-is-worse-because-it-might-make-you-make-a-bad-decision) or you end up with precisely zero cards being strictly better than any other card.
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Strictly worse is strictly better when you're possessed.
You really have to ignore Possession (and Masq and card cost and the-card-is-worse-because-it-might-make-you-make-a-bad-decision) or you end up with precisely zero cards being strictly better than any other card.
So, in conclusion, there is no card that is universally better than any other card.
I'n glad it took us 15 pages to reach this development
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Strictly worse is strictly better when you're possessed.
You really have to ignore Possession (and Masq and card cost and the-card-is-worse-because-it-might-make-you-make-a-bad-decision) or you end up with precisely zero cards being strictly better than any other card.
So, in conclusion, there is no card that is universally better than any other card.
I'n glad it took us 15 pages to reach this development
15 pages backed by a long history of obsessing over edge cases.
There's an edge case for pretty much everything now it seems. It used to be the case that there was no real edge case for playing Adventurer before Poor House when revealing both to Golem, but Storyteller changed that.
IMB4 there's actually 8 pages.
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I feel like everything I said is being strawmanned. I never said (or even implied, I think) that Plaza is not strictly better than Village, or that you should ever buy Village over Plaza when universal edge cases are not considered. I said exactly what I said, that there are cases in which you would have been better off with Village than Plaza, given that you play optimally with both. Of course it is a universal edge case, I can construct a similar case in which Village is better than Worker's Village.
You should be wishing that you had made a different choice, not that you weren't given a choice to begin with.
There's no such thing as "wishing" in Dominion (unless you're playing Wishing Well). I won't be wishing I made a different choice. I'll be wishing the more likely thing happened, the one that I was playing too. I didn't make the wrong choice. The cards came up in the wrong order.
If I bet you $1,000 that you will not get a 6 when you roll a standard fair die, and you do get a 6, I won't regret making the bet, because I know I did the right thing. I'll be disappointed that it didn't work out, but if you offered to let me do it again, I totally would, because it's always going to be the right thing to do (unless I decide that losing $1,000 is 5 times worse for me than how good gaining $1,000 would be). If the ends justify the means, as you seem to be arguing, then there's no practical use of the term "optimal play", because the optimal play is (usually) only determinable in retrospect.
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Strictly worse is strictly better when you're possessed.
You really have to ignore Possession (and Masq and card cost and the-card-is-worse-because-it-might-make-you-make-a-bad-decision) or you end up with precisely zero cards being strictly better than any other card.
So, in conclusion, there is no card that is universally better than any other card.
I'n glad it took us 15 pages to reach this development
It's taking us 15 pages to find a definition of "strictly better than" which leads to interesting results and not simply "nothing!"
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Strictly worse is strictly better when you're possessed.
You really have to ignore Possession (and Masq and card cost and the-card-is-worse-because-it-might-make-you-make-a-bad-decision) or you end up with precisely zero cards being strictly better than any other card.
So, in conclusion, there is no card that is universally better than any other card.
I'n glad it took us 15 pages to reach this development
We already discussed this on like the first page man. And it was mentioned again repeatedly on the last page, where you commented.
I feel like everything I said is being strawmanned. I never said (or even implied, I think) that Plaza is not strictly better than Village, or that you should ever buy Village over Plaza when universal edge cases are not considered. I said exactly what I said, that there are cases in which you would have been better off with Village than Plaza, given that you play optimally with both. Of course it is a universal edge case, I can construct a similar case in which Village is better than Worker's Village.
Maybe you never said that, but others have, and that's the whole point of this thread. Jimmmmm's suggestion that Plaza isn't strictly superior is what started this whole line of discussion.
You should be wishing that you had made a different choice, not that you weren't given a choice to begin with.
There's no such thing as "wishing" in Dominion (unless you're playing Wishing Well).
It was a direct response to this:
leaving you wishing your Plaza was a plain old Village instead.
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Strictly worse is strictly better when you're possessed.
You really have to ignore Possession (and Masq and card cost and the-card-is-worse-because-it-might-make-you-make-a-bad-decision) or you end up with precisely zero cards being strictly better than any other card.
So, in conclusion, there is no card that is universally better than any other card.
I'n glad it took us 15 pages to reach this development
15 pages is strictly better than 1 page!
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Strictly worse is strictly better when you're possessed.
You really have to ignore Possession (and Masq and card cost and the-card-is-worse-because-it-might-make-you-make-a-bad-decision) or you end up with precisely zero cards being strictly better than any other card.
So, in conclusion, there is no card that is universally better than any other card.
I'n glad it took us 15 pages to reach this development
15 pages is strictly better than 1 page!
8 pages is strictly better than 15 pages!
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Strictly worse is strictly better when you're possessed.
You really have to ignore Possession (and Masq and card cost and the-card-is-worse-because-it-might-make-you-make-a-bad-decision) or you end up with precisely zero cards being strictly better than any other card.
So, in conclusion, there is no card that is universally better than any other card.
I'n glad it took us 15 pages to reach this development
15 pages is strictly better than 1 page!
8 pages is strictly better than 15 pages!
Clearly, strictly better is not transitive.
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1 champion is strictly better than 8 pages
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How come cost is a universal edge case, but type isn't?
There's cards that share the same cost and cards that share types.
No 2 different costs can be strictly better than the other, but I'm pretty sure the same goes for types.
We don't say that about the cost itself. "Universal edge case" was the term we ended up using for specific cards that can always be used to make one card better than another one which would otherwise be strictly superior. For example, Possession is a universal edge case because I would want a weaker card in hand when you play Possession. Likewise, the other universal edge cases also provide ways of making a card with a strictly inferior effect better to have in hand.
We name cost-caring cards like Forge, Remake, Upgrade as "universal" edge cases because they can make you prefer having (for example) Village over Mining Village. Yes, there are cards that share the same cost, but no such pair of cards in Dominion will have one be strictly superior than the other. That's also the reason why we are just discussing strictly superior effects rather than strictly superior cards.
By contrast, not counting type as a universal edge case doesn't invalidate every potential case of one card being strictly superior. It's not universal.
I found this difficult to explain. Does that make sense?
Exactly. To try and sum this up in 2 sentences: We want to ignore as few things as possible; cost, name, and Possession HAVE to be ignored because otherwise the answer is trivially "no card is strictly better than any other card." We don't have to ignore type to have this discussion, so we don't.
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Are Stash and Royal Seal strictly better than Silver?
And is Quarry strictly better than Copper?
EDIT: whoops, Feodum
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Are Stash and Royal Seal strictly better than Silver?
And is Quarry strictly better than Copper?
EDIT: whoops, Feodum
Taxman is enough to prevent any Treasure from being strictly better than another. Also, Stash having a different back can reveal info to opponents, and Quarry cost reduction can be a bad thing.
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Quarry cost reduction can be a bad thing.
But we're ignoring on-gain effects, right? So like, say I want to overpay for Stonemason to get 2 Pawns. Quarry would prevent that, but that's technically an on-gain thing, so doesn't count. The only reason I can think of why Quarry isn't SBT Copper is because you can play it during a Black Market, and then Salvagering actions later is not as good. Are there any other cases?
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Quarry cost reduction can be a bad thing.
But we're ignoring on-gain effects, right? So like, say I want to overpay for Stonemason to get 2 Pawns. Quarry would prevent that, but that's technically an on-gain thing, so doesn't count. The only reason I can think of why Quarry isn't SBT Copper is because you can play it during a Black Market, and then Salvagering actions later is not as good. Are there any other cases?
You have Talisman in play and you want exactly 1 copy of a 5- or 6-cost action.
Coppersmith.
Ignoring on-gain effects only refers to the card(s) under consideration.
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In a deck with only actions and treasures:
Worker's village is stricly better than farming village.
So is mining village.
Farming Village cares not about the -1 Card token.
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In a deck with only actions and treasures:
Worker's village is stricly better than farming village.
So is mining village.
Farming Village cares not about the -1 Card token.
Stupid adventurers.
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Artificer, Market, Treasury > Peddler
I disagree with that. You can Expand a Peddler to a Colony and Peddler is protected against Knights. It can also be converted to a Gold with Saboteur.
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Artificer, Market, Treasury > Peddler
I disagree with that. You can Expand a Peddler to a Colony and Peddler is protected against Knights. It can also be converted to a Gold with Saboteur.
The thread is about the on-play effect only. Card cost and several other factors (already discussed in this thread) have to be ignored or else there would be no cards at all that count as "strictly better".
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And none of these are strictly better or worse than Baker, because Baker's coin can't be spent by Black Market or Storyteller.
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And none of these are strictly better or worse than Baker, because Baker's coin can't be spent by Black Market or Storyteller.
And also because Baker lets me open $6 but nothing else does.
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And none of these are strictly better or worse than Baker, because Baker's coin can't be spent by Black Market or Storyteller.
And also because Baker lets me open $6 but nothing else does.
E d g e c a s e s
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The thread is about the on-play effect only. Card cost and several other factors (already discussed in this thread) have to be ignored or else there would be no cards at all that count as "strictly better".
That's like saying "the thread is about the correlation between hanging suicides and the US spending on science only. Other factors have to be ignored or else there would be no reason to believe that hanging suicides and the US spending on science are related in a meaningful way".
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That's like saying "the thread is about the correlation between hanging suicides and the US spending on science only. Other factors have to be ignored or else there would be no reason to believe that hanging suicides and the US spending on science are related in a meaningful way".
Trying to properly define "strictly better than" is strongly correlated with less fun discussion on f.DS.
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The thread is about the on-play effect only. Card cost and several other factors (already discussed in this thread) have to be ignored or else there would be no cards at all that count as "strictly better".
Magic players use the term "strictly better" way more than Dominion players do. And these communities overlap. So if you wish to communicate clearly with other people, I advise using "strictly better" to mean what Magic players use it to mean. As it happens they include cost, so if you want to ignore cost, you need a New Term.
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The thread is about the on-play effect only. Card cost and several other factors (already discussed in this thread) have to be ignored or else there would be no cards at all that count as "strictly better".
Magic players use the term "strictly better" way more than Dominion players do. And these communities overlap. So if you wish to communicate clearly with other people, I advise using "strictly better" to mean what Magic players use it to mean. As it happens they include cost, so if you want to ignore cost, you need a New Term.
Well, that's why I always say "strictly better effect". The OP isn't clear about it, but it has been discussed thoroughly in this thread multiple times because it keeps getting necro'd by people who don't read the exhaustive discussion that already happened before.
The thread is about the on-play effect only. Card cost and several other factors (already discussed in this thread) have to be ignored or else there would be no cards at all that count as "strictly better".
That's like saying "the thread is about the correlation between hanging suicides and the US spending on science only. Other factors have to be ignored or else there would be no reason to believe that hanging suicides and the US spending on science are related in a meaningful way".
I don't understand your comparison here at all.
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I don't understand your comparison here at all.
Imagine that the thread is called "Causes for hanging suicides". If you take into account the factor that there is basically no causal connection between hanging suicides and the US spending on science, you have to conclude that the US spending on science doesn't really seem to be related to hanging suicides, but if you just look at the number of hanging suicides and the US spending on science and ignore absolutely everything else, it might seem like those two are related in some way because they show an extremely similar development over time. Therefore, if you want your conclusion to be that the US spending on science and the number of hanging suicides are related, you have to ignore all the other data that contradicts the conclusion that you want to reach.
Similarly, you can choose to redefine the term "strictly better" in such a way that it will mean what you need it to mean for your preferred conclusion to be correct.
The comparison was admittedly poor, but unfortunately, all the concrete real life examples that I could think of where people have actually redefined terms to mean something else so that they can reach the kind of conclusions they want to reach were pretty RSP-y.
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I don't understand your comparison here at all.
Imagine that the thread is called "Causes for hanging suicides". If you take into account the factor that there is basically no causal connection between hanging suicides and the US spending on science, you have to conclude that the US spending on science doesn't really seem to be related to hanging suicides, but if you just look at the number of hanging suicides and the US spending on science and ignore absolutely everything else, it might seem like those two are related in some way because they show an extremely similar development over time. Therefore, if you want your conclusion to be that the US spending on science and the number of hanging suicides are related, you have to ignore all the other data that contradicts the conclusion that you want to reach.
Similarly, you can choose to redefine the term "strictly better" in such a way that it will mean what you need it to mean for your preferred conclusion to be correct.
The comparison was admittedly poor, but unfortunately, all the concrete real life examples that I could think of where people have actually redefined terms to mean something else so that they can reach the kind of conclusions they want to reach were pretty RSP-y.
I still don't think your comparison makes sense. The difference is that the answer to "what are the causes of hanging suicides?" is not simply "there are none". But that's the answer to the question in the OP, "what are some pairs of cards where one is strictly better than another?" And this was answered early on in the thread. Then the majority of the thread was about strictly better effects, including finding all the so-called "universal edge cases" that make the answer "none". In fact, some of these were even included in the OP:
Okay guys, the challenge is simple: name a pair of kingdom cards of which, all edge cases considered, one is always preferable to have in hand. Prices and Possession are ignored.
So no, I'm not redefining the term to support my conclusion. My conclusion about what this thread is about is based on the actual discussion that happened in this thread. Have you read it?
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So no, I'm not redefining the term to support my conclusion. My conclusion about what this thread is about is based on the actual discussion that happened in this thread. Have you read it?
I'm not accusing you of it, I'm accusing the entire thread.
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So no, I'm not redefining the term to support my conclusion. My conclusion about what this thread is about is based on the actual discussion that happened in this thread. Have you read it?
I'm not accusing you of it, I'm accusing the entire thread.
Well the thread has the answer at the start -- there is nothing that is strictly better than anything else in Dominion. But you can find cards that have strictly better effects, and it's an interesting question in itself what kind of stuff needs to be ignored, which is what a lot of the discussion was about. Or it was interesting, at least. Now it's just repetitive.
If your complaint is about the thread title, there's not much I can do about that.
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Is Crown > Throne Room ?
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Is Crown > Throne Room ?
Stuff trashes treasures.
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Courtier means that cards with different number of types can't be strictly better than each other, I think (+1 buy is the only option that can never backfire, no matter how weird the edge case).
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I think (+1 buy is the only option that can never backfire, no matter how weird the edge case).
+1 VP?
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...from those offered by Courtier :p
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Courtier means that cards with different number of types can't be strictly better than each other, I think (+1 buy is the only option that can never backfire, no matter how weird the edge case).
Well, the edge case for +1 Action being bad is extremely weird, requiring Diadem+Villa+Storyteller to convert it into a possibly unwanted +1 Card.
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Courtier means that cards with different number of types can't be strictly better than each other, I think (+1 buy is the only option that can never backfire, no matter how weird the edge case).
Well, the edge case for +1 Action being bad is extremely weird, requiring Diadem+Villa+Storyteller to convert it into a possibly unwanted +1 Card.
Welkom to the thread, I see you are fitting in perfectly!
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Courtier means that cards with different number of types can't be strictly better than each other, I think (+1 buy is the only option that can never backfire, no matter how weird the edge case).
Well, the edge case for +1 Action being bad is extremely weird, requiring Diadem+Villa+Storyteller to convert it into a possibly unwanted +1 Card.
You don't need Villa (you can play the Diadem with Storyteller itself), but otherwise you are right.