Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: Seprix on December 19, 2014, 02:01:56 pm
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This combo seems really good if you look at it. You Counterfeit coppers, getting rid of bad coppers and giving an extra buy and bonus cash for it! Soon, as you buy Ventures and stuff, Venture gets more and more powerful as you draw better and better coins, and Counterfeit continues to trash obsolete Copper and soon Silver while adding a +buy to boot. It seems like a deck with this caliber can beat a Smithy+BM deck.
The problem is that you have to get to 5. Not hard, once you get to $5, get a Counterfeit and just trash away Coppers, buying card drawing actions and getting enough money to buy Ventures and Counterfeits. That money quickly adds up to Golds and Platinums even.
So my question is this. Is there a better BM option to be had? How many Engines can this combo beat? It looks really good on paper (even if it's a bit hard to get to), but is it really good? What about other Trashing decks? can it beat those?
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Venture plays the treasure it finds, and Counterfiet only works on treasures in your hand.
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Venture plays the treasure it finds, and Counterfiet only works on treasures in your hand.
Ah. That's true. That lowers the value a bit, but my question still stands on how valuable this combo is.
Edited my first post, as you cannot use Venture to fish for Copper for Counterfeit to trash.
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Venture benefits from copper being trashed, period, regardless of how that trashing takes place. There's no special synergy between it and Counterfeit.
So you could pose the question: How good of a copper trasher is Counterfeit? And we all know it's pretty good. I'm not sure there's a need for more detail but feel free to get into it guys :)
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Venture fetches more Counterfeits to accelerate the trashing. So there's a little synergy there.
5$ card plus 5$ card combos have to be good because they are mutually exclusive. 4$ and 5$ card combos tend to be more valuable
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Counterfeiting Ventures in the endgame could be pretty strong.
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Venture fetches more Counterfeits to accelerate the trashing. So there's a little synergy there.
5$ card plus 5$ card combos have to be good because they are mutually exclusive. 4$ and 5$ card combos tend to be more valuable
Depends on how many Counterfeits you need, doesn't it? You can stock up on them better than their weaker counterpart Moneylenders, but still.
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Typically I think Moneylender/Venture is more powerful or viable than Counterfeit/Venture.
Sure Counterfeit is nice, but you usually can't buy it on T1/T2 and pretty reliably get 1 or even 2 ventures on T3/T4
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Make sure you play your ventures before the other treasures in your hand; unless of course you want to counterfeit the venture.
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Make sure you play your ventures before the other treasures in your hand; unless of course you want to counterfeit the venture.
Counterfeit is a "may play". Optional. Still gives you the buy even!
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Even if that's a misremembering of the card, it's still good advice because you have more information before you have to decide what to burn.
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But if you just played all of your Coppers, it's not super fun if your Venture hits a Counterfeit.
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But if you just played all of your Coppers, it's not super fun if your Venture hits a Counterfeit.
I'm not sure what this is responding to: I don't think anyone advocates starting with Coppers from hand, and Coppers found by Venture are inaccessible to Counterfeit.
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Even if that's a misremembering of the card, it's still good advice because you have more information before you have to decide what to burn.
True.
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But if you just played all of your Coppers, it's not super fun if your Venture hits a Counterfeit.
I'm not sure what this is responding to: I don't think anyone advocates starting with Coppers from hand, and Coppers found by Venture are inaccessible to Counterfeit.
I was responding to mpsprs.
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Awaclus and Qmech explain my post: you want to know how many coins you have when playing counterfeit, and you want all your treasures in hand in case you hit counterfeit. Sorry mpsprs ;)
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Venture benefits from copper being trashed, period, regardless of how that trashing takes place. There's no special synergy between it and Counterfeit.
So you could pose the question: How good of a copper trasher is Counterfeit? And we all know it's pretty good. I'm not sure there's a need for more detail but feel free to get into it guys :)
There is a small bit of additional synergy:
1. It is a +buy that Venture can draw. While Venture decks tend not to benefit terribly much for more coin that a province or colony, you gain some end game options (e.g. Duchy + Estate) that you lack with something like Moneylender or Loan. Most trashing cards with Venture need to collide with your coppers before the Ventures are played, so green limits your ability to weed out the last few coppers. Counterfeit lets you collide the coppers and itself or collide coppers and venture & skip past the green.
2. It is a treasure so you can mix it with dead draw for no ill effects. E.g. Smithy/Venture/Counterfeit can do the normal Venture/trash options, just with a couple of bigger hands every so often.
3. Late game, you can Counterfeit golds & silvers for tiebreakers. With Plats or Banks you can get an extra duchy or better with a bit of late game luck for win in a PPR type situation.
I'm still with everyone else that the price points are hard and a cheaper trasher is usually more cost effective. Beyond the obvious choices (e.g. Chapel, Count), I can't think of too many cards I'd buy over Counterfeit on a Venture board (where Venture is dominant) if I opened 5/2.
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Venture benefits from copper being trashed, period, regardless of how that trashing takes place. There's no special synergy between it and Counterfeit.
So you could pose the question: How good of a copper trasher is Counterfeit? And we all know it's pretty good. I'm not sure there's a need for more detail but feel free to get into it guys :)
There is a small bit of additional synergy:
1. It is a +buy that Venture can draw. While Venture decks tend not to benefit terribly much for more coin that a province or colony, you gain some end game options (e.g. Duchy + Estate) that you lack with something like Moneylender or Loan. Most trashing cards with Venture need to collide with your coppers before the Ventures are played, so green limits your ability to weed out the last few coppers. Counterfeit lets you collide the coppers and itself or collide coppers and venture & skip past the green.
2. It is a treasure so you can mix it with dead draw for no ill effects. E.g. Smithy/Venture/Counterfeit can do the normal Venture/trash options, just with a couple of bigger hands every so often.
3. Late game, you can Counterfeit golds & silvers for tiebreakers. With Plats or Banks you can get an extra duchy or better with a bit of late game luck for win in a PPR type situation.
I'm still with everyone else that the price points are hard and a cheaper trasher is usually more cost effective. Beyond the obvious choices (e.g. Chapel, Count), I can't think of too many cards I'd buy over Counterfeit on a Venture board (where Venture is dominant) if I opened 5/2.
1. Most of these things aren't special synergies; they are just things that are true about each card individually. The only one that seems OK is the last point (Counterfeit can trash Copper in hand when drawn by Venture), but I wouldn't really call that a special synergy.
2. That's not a synergy between Venture and Counterfeit; it's just a general synergy of treasures and terminal draw.
3. That doesn't even mention Venture.
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Venture benefits from copper being trashed, period, regardless of how that trashing takes place. There's no special synergy between it and Counterfeit.
So you could pose the question: How good of a copper trasher is Counterfeit? And we all know it's pretty good. I'm not sure there's a need for more detail but feel free to get into it guys :)
There is a small bit of additional synergy:
1. It is a +buy that Venture can draw. While Venture decks tend not to benefit terribly much for more coin that a province or colony, you gain some end game options (e.g. Duchy + Estate) that you lack with something like Moneylender or Loan. Most trashing cards with Venture need to collide with your coppers before the Ventures are played, so green limits your ability to weed out the last few coppers. Counterfeit lets you collide the coppers and itself or collide coppers and venture & skip past the green.
2. It is a treasure so you can mix it with dead draw for no ill effects. E.g. Smithy/Venture/Counterfeit can do the normal Venture/trash options, just with a couple of bigger hands every so often.
3. Late game, you can Counterfeit golds & silvers for tiebreakers. With Plats or Banks you can get an extra duchy or better with a bit of late game luck for win in a PPR type situation.
I'm still with everyone else that the price points are hard and a cheaper trasher is usually more cost effective. Beyond the obvious choices (e.g. Chapel, Count), I can't think of too many cards I'd buy over Counterfeit on a Venture board (where Venture is dominant) if I opened 5/2.
1. Most of these things aren't special synergies; they are just things that are true about each card individually. The only one that seems OK is the last point (Counterfeit can trash Copper in hand when drawn by Venture), but I wouldn't really call that a special synergy.
2. That's not a synergy between Venture and Counterfeit; it's just a general synergy of treasures and terminal draw.
3. That doesn't even mention Venture.
1. Oh please
What is needed to make Venture work? A method to make it more cost effective than other options. What does that in general (against say engines, slogs, and everything except BM decks)? Copper trashing. What happens in a Venture deck late game? Quite often you play (maybe) a single terminal and then draw enough cash for a Province or Colony. What is bad about that? Well if you are down you can't recover unless the opponent whiffs. What would help give you more options? A +buy. What would help more - why a +buy that you could draw with Venture that doesn't have to start in your hand or require an action to play. I mean it is like the +buy from Counterfeit is going to be more useful because you will draw it more often with Venture and Venture will be more useful because you can actually make a viable play that yields for 2 VP cards a turn most turns. It is almost like the aspect of one card (the +buy) gets added use by another (the digging for card type "treasure" from venture). It is like the net interaction is more than the sum of its components.
What other card gives you +buy that Venture can draw and use when it doesn't start in hand? Contraband. Which doesn't trash copper, juice late game turns, or actually, you know, let you go for effective two VP card buys. The only card in the game that does this is somehow not "special"?
2. Funny thing is, cards of similar types tend to work well together. Crossroads, for instance, likes green cards. Baron, likes keeping estates around. If you are already using Xroads, the opportunity cost of keeping estates around for Baron goes down. Again, the net result is stronger than simple summation. What else offers trashing and +buy? A bunch of crap that collides with dead draw (or any other useful terminals like attacks when you don't have villages in deck) - Salvager, Spice Merchant, and Forager. Why all of those tend to collide with power terminals that help enable Venture and won't let you get +buy late game. Well what about actionless trashing that Venture can draw? There is Loan. Which is terrible in venture games at clearing out the last few coppers (and is worse at it when you draw more) and can create all manner of havoc if it flips your gold or plat into the discard forcing an untimely reshuffle. I mean it is like a whole freaking class of Venture enablers also make Counterfeit better (more likely to have targets in hand when you draw up to 7 cards) and that again there is a nonlinear effect in doing that. Again, it just happens to be just about the only card that works with dead draw (or any decent terminal action) without villages - but not special.
3. You are right, I had assumed that the readers weren't braindead and understand that when Venture is even borderline viable, you typically have some payload cards that are decent value treasures where you can flex around them to buy multiple VP. In a mirror, it generally is worth it to have 1 gold instead of taking two additional turns to get 3 Ventures. In this case, if you are coming up on typical 27-27 tie, you might be able to Counterfeit a Gold (or even a Silver) if you draw it on your last turn and break the tie. But isn't this just the odds that you'd get to Counterfeit the Gold even if you didn't have Ventures in deck? Of course not, the odds that you will draw Counterfeit and Gold simultaneously (in any non-engine deck) is much lower than that you will draw Gold & Ventures on your final turn and dig out the Counterfeit.
Venture is a +buy, copper trasher, potentionally +coin that venture can draw and play with all dead cards. I mean seriously, if that isn't synergy - what the hell does Venture have special synergy with? Tunnel - meh Tunnel just needs to be discarded & the gold played. Mint? Ehh - Mint just needs strong treasures in tight decks. Navigator? Just needs cards that work well with deck ordering (like Vagrant or Ironmonger).
At the end of the day. A Venture deck is generally a deck that is going to use high quality treasure and dig past green while rapidly reusing a handful of high cost cards to wrack up more green (which it then mostly ignores; I'm also not discussing much a deck when Venture is being bought as basically just a better Silver). Shockingly Counterfeit helps Venture do all that. Shockingly, other cards that can do that (e.g. Mint) cannot do the other things Counterfeit can (albeit Mint does something else that is much stronger typically) - like offer options for 2 VP cards to be gained a turn, be played with strong terminals (like say Monument), or cash out on the final turn for bonus cash (maybe).
Now sure the main value is in the copper trashing and that isn't the most cost effective; but there are not too many copper trashers I'd take instead if I opened 5/2. That bespeaks a certain amount of synergy.
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The +Buy from Counterfeit is not better because you can draw it with Venture. The trashing from Counterfeit is not better because you can draw it with Venture. The Copper trashing is good for Venture, but that's not special -- Venture benefits as much from other Copper trashing.
Your second point is just about terminal draw, which is not an interaction between Venture and Counterfeit. Treasures can be better with terminal draw because they can't be drawn dead. That's it. You're saying that these two treasures have special synergy because they are both treasures? That's nonsense. Do Contraband and Cache have special synergy because they too can't be drawn dead with Smithy?
Your third point isn't a synergy either. Even without Venture on the board, Countefeit still allows you to get extra VP by trashing your Gold and Silver or other treasures. This is just what Counterfeit does, it has nothing to do with Venture.
Do Venture and Counterfeit have some synergy? Sure, because Counterfeit can trash Copper, Venture can draw Counterfeit, and Counterfeit can be played on Venture. But none of these qualities are special. Venture can draw other treasures for other bonuses; you don't need Counterfeit for that. Counterfeit is not the only viable Copper trasher for Venture. And Venture is not a uniquely good target for Counterfeit. Not to mention, all of these things had already been mentioned in the thread.
The fact that you'd open Counterfeit on 5/2 does not bespeak a special amount of synergy. It just says that Counterfeit is a good Copper trasher that has a lot of other utility as well (non-terminal +Buy and a TfB-like ability for extra end game juice). It isn't Venture that makes it a nice opening.
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I know how to really kick this combo up a notch... remove Venture.
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The +Buy from Counterfeit is not better because you can draw it with Venture.
Oh please. Let's assume we have a Venture deck - lots of Ventures digging through things to buy green. + Buy is assumed to be useful. What are the odds that a simple +buy (like say Festival) is going to be an option on a turn? The same as the odds of drawing my +buy in my starting hand. Say I have exactly 1 +buy. If I have 7 green, 6 Treasures, and one other card, then I will have exactly 33% odds of hitting my +buy when I need to go for something like Duchy/Estate. If I have Counterfeit as my +buy and just one gold, well there is about a 60% chance of drawing at least 2 Ventures; which means that we are around a 75% chance of having a +buy on "final" turns of the game.
Well what about a deck with Counterfeit as my only +buy, but also averaging a province a turn with high reliability? Well again if we assume 7/6/1 for other cards. Then It only has a 33% chance of hitting a +buy.
So Venture with any +buy other than Counterfeit/Contraband - 33% odds of being useful (and going down as deck size increases, like if you have cursing in play)
Counterfeit without Venture in play in a similar treasure based deck - 33%.
Odds with both - 75%.
Why it is like the odds of this outcome happening are higher than with either card alone or even some nonsensical summation of the two scenarios. It is almost like the sum of each effect is insufficient to explain the resulting outcome.
Now, is this a big synergy, no it is not hence why I explicitly said that this was a small synergy.
The trashing from Counterfeit is not better because you can draw it with Venture. The Copper trashing is good for Venture, but that's not special -- Venture benefits as much from other Copper trashing.
Bull.
Say I need to kill a final copper to get a reliable Venture deck. What are the odds of doing so with Moneylender? The odds that I draw Moneylender/C in one hand. What are the odds that I kill the Copper with a Counterfeit - the odds that I draw Counterfeit/C or that I draw Venture/C. Obviously the latter is more likely (having some non-zero increase in likelihood over Moneylender).
Does this sort of thing matter? At least at the margins. Take a similar case - Tunnel enablers. Sure Cellar can flip Tunnel, but it only has 4 chances to find the Tunnel. Warehouse gets 7. Similarly when you have a copper, you have 4 slots to hit a Moneylender to pair up. When you have a copper, you have 4 slots for a Counterfeit and some quite high chance of lining up C/Venture -> Draw Counterfeit -> Trash C.
The odds that an ability will be used is part of what defines synergy.
Your second point is just about terminal draw, which is not an interaction between Venture and Counterfeit. Treasures can be better with terminal draw because they can't be drawn dead. That's it. You're saying that these two treasures have special synergy because they are both treasures? That's nonsense. Do Contraband and Cache have special synergy because they too can't be drawn dead with Smithy?
Please, read better. I'm saying that there is a synergy between A and B (Venture and dead draw), between B and C (dead draw and Counterfeit), and between A and C (Venture and Counterfeit). Call each of these values x, y, and z. I assert that the total synergy is > x + y + z.
For the set of boards where Venture is dominant or close thereto, a large percentage will be enabled by some form of dead draw. Counterfeit, when it is also an option will hence synergize with just about all the non-copper trashing enablers of Venture.
Your third point isn't a synergy either. Even without Venture on the board, Countefeit still allows you to get extra VP by trashing your Gold and Silver or other treasures. This is just what Counterfeit does, it has nothing to do with Venture.
For Pete's sake this isn't hard. Counterfeit without Venture is only useful in such circumstances when you draw it in hand with the treasures. This could be 100% with deck drawing engines or megadrawing megaturns - and virtually none of those instances are when Venture is worth a damn. If Venture is good (as in better than a Silver with a slight bonus), then we are looking at situations where we won't be drawing deck.
Okay so what are the odds that on a "final" turn you will line up Counterfeit and a say a silver in a deck that reliably hits 8? Could be fiendishly low (e.g. a Masterpiece deck where you might have below 20% odds). With a venture deck it is again the union of drawing a Silver with counterfeit directly and drawing the Counterfeit with a Venture. Venture decks, ceteris parabis, ALWAYS have higher odds of drawing the Counterfeit than a comparably reliable treasure deck.
Duchess allows you to activate Tunnel, yet somewhere we have to look at how often that "allowance" is made.
Do Venture and Counterfeit have some synergy? Sure, because Counterfeit can trash Copper, Venture can draw Counterfeit, and Counterfeit can be played on Venture. But none of these qualities are special.
I'm sorry, what makes something magically "special"? Do Tunnel and Warehouse have "special" Synergy - because you know there a bajillion cards that can discard Tunnel - like Duchess. I guess we should ignore that as not being "special".
Do me a favor and give me a rigorous definition of "special". As is you are just playing around with a giant no-true-Scotsman
Venture can draw other treasures for other bonuses; you don't need Counterfeit for that. Counterfeit is not the only viable Copper trasher for Venture. And Venture is not a uniquely good target for Counterfeit. Not to mention, all of these things had already been mentioned in the thread.
However, Counterfeit is a uniquely good target for Venture. Exactly one other treasure can trash copper; it has a search space of 1 treasure excluding treasures in hand. Exactly oen other treasure offers +buy, but it is uniquely bad for Venture as forced play can utterly trash your end game. You could argue that HoP functions the same as +gain, but HoP really doesn't like the uniformity of most Venture decks (though it likes Venture as a cheap unique in other forms of decks).
What is is a uniquely good target for Venture? Not generally Talisman, Cache, Harem, Igg, Fg, Pstone, Spoils, or Contraband. Royal seal competes on price and doesn't do anything special when you buy a Venture or green. Hoard & Bank are maybes, but that puts Counterfeit in a fairly, what's the word, "unique" position.
I know how to really kick this combo up a notch... remove Venture.
And this is the big problem, though I would take Counterfeit over most other copper trashers to build a Venture deck, I would not take Venture as my payload when viable copper trashing is out. Counterfeit is normally at least decent at building engines and it needs to be a limited board or have some other Venture enabler to make me go Venture. Barring some other enabler (of which there are many that also support Counterfeit), then I don't see Counterfeit being enough to drive you to Venture.
If Venture is good enough for other reasons, I can see it driving you to Counterfeit.
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Hey, good point...
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Oh please. Let's assume we have a Venture deck - lots of Ventures digging through things to buy green. + Buy is assumed to be useful. What are the odds that a simple +buy (like say Festival) is going to be an option on a turn? The same as the odds of drawing my +buy in my starting hand. Say I have exactly 1 +buy. If I have 7 green, 6 Treasures, and one other card, then I will have exactly 33% odds of hitting my +buy when I need to go for something like Duchy/Estate. If I have Counterfeit as my +buy and just one gold, well there is about a 60% chance of drawing at least 2 Ventures; which means that we are around a 75% chance of having a +buy on "final" turns of the game.
Well what about a deck with Counterfeit as my only +buy, but also averaging a province a turn with high reliability? Well again if we assume 7/6/1 for other cards. Then It only has a 33% chance of hitting a +buy.
So Venture with any +buy other than Counterfeit/Contraband - 33% odds of being useful (and going down as deck size increases, like if you have cursing in play)
Counterfeit without Venture in play in a similar treasure based deck - 33%.
Odds with both - 75%.
Why it is like the odds of this outcome happening are higher than with either card alone or even some nonsensical summation of the two scenarios. It is almost like the sum of each effect is insufficient to explain the resulting outcome.
Now, is this a big synergy, no it is not hence why I explicitly said that this was a small synergy.
Your scenarios are contrived. You cannot just assume that you already have a deck full of Ventures and so much green that Ventures are particularly good. How did your deck get to that state? If you are playing well, you'll probably never end up with a deck of "7 green, 6 Treasures and one other card", especially where many of those Treasures are Ventures.
Bull.
Say I need to kill a final copper to get a reliable Venture deck. What are the odds of doing so with Moneylender? The odds that I draw Moneylender/C in one hand. What are the odds that I kill the Copper with a Counterfeit - the odds that I draw Counterfeit/C or that I draw Venture/C. Obviously the latter is more likely (having some non-zero increase in likelihood over Moneylender).
Does this sort of thing matter? At least at the margins. Take a similar case - Tunnel enablers. Sure Cellar can flip Tunnel, but it only has 4 chances to find the Tunnel. Warehouse gets 7. Similarly when you have a copper, you have 4 slots to hit a Moneylender to pair up. When you have a copper, you have 4 slots for a Counterfeit and some quite high chance of lining up C/Venture -> Draw Counterfeit -> Trash C.
The odds that an ability will be used is part of what defines synergy.
Moneylender is not the only Copper trasher. Chapel is a much better Copper trasher for Venture than Counterfeit is, simply because it is such a fast trasher at a non-competing price. Spice Merchant and Moneylender are arguably better simply because of their price point. Mint is arguably better because of its ability to quickly gain more Venture. And when you trash Copper, you are not always limited to the Copper that is in you hand. There are villages, and there are even cards that draw non-terminally. Imagine that!
Please, read better. I'm saying that there is a synergy between A and B (Venture and dead draw), between B and C (dead draw and Counterfeit), and between A and C (Venture and Counterfeit). Call each of these values x, y, and z. I assert that the total synergy is > x + y + z.
For the set of boards where Venture is dominant or close thereto, a large percentage will be enabled by some form of dead draw. Counterfeit, when it is also an option will hence synergize with just about all the non-copper trashing enablers of Venture.
Please write better? You wrote:
It is a treasure so you can mix it with dead draw for no ill effects. E.g. Smithy/Venture/Counterfeit can do the normal Venture/trash options, just with a couple of bigger hands every so often.
Your point there is that there is synergy between Venture and terminal draw, and between terminal draw and Counterfeit. In both cases, it seems merely because the non-draw card is a treasure and thus does not hurt when drawn dead. The point says nothing about the interaction between Venture and Counterfeit, and if there is more to it, you did not explain it.
The set of boards where Venture is dominant is tiny, and Counterfeit does not increase it by much. It probably decreases it, actually. I'll talk about the comparison to Tunnel enablers at the end.
For Pete's sake this isn't hard. Counterfeit without Venture is only useful in such circumstances when you draw it in hand with the treasures. This could be 100% with deck drawing engines or megadrawing megaturns - and virtually none of those instances are when Venture is worth a damn. If Venture is good (as in better than a Silver with a slight bonus), then we are looking at situations where we won't be drawing deck.
Okay so what are the odds that on a "final" turn you will line up Counterfeit and a say a silver in a deck that reliably hits 8? Could be fiendishly low (e.g. a Masterpiece deck where you might have below 20% odds). With a venture deck it is again the union of drawing a Silver with counterfeit directly and drawing the Counterfeit with a Venture. Venture decks, ceteris parabis, ALWAYS have higher odds of drawing the Counterfeit than a comparably reliable treasure deck.
Duchess allows you to activate Tunnel, yet somewhere we have to look at how often that "allowance" is made.
Sure the chance is higher! Venture draws Counterfeit, so you have an added chance of drawing Counterfeit via Venture. And Venture is a treasure, so that's an additional target that could appear in hand for Counterfeit to target. But the increase is usually not significant enough to warrant calling out.
In a Masterpiece deck, chances are that your Venture will draw Silver, not Counterfeit. (And man, you usually would not want Masterpiece in a Venture deck at all. Silver isn't good enough to want Venture pulling it in.)
I'm sorry, what makes something magically "special"? Do Tunnel and Warehouse have "special" Synergy - because you know there a bajillion cards that can discard Tunnel - like Duchess. I guess we should ignore that as not being "special".
Do me a favor and give me a rigorous definition of "special". As is you are just playing around with a giant no-true-Scotsman
Dunno how rigorous I can be, but will do at the end.
However, Counterfeit is a uniquely good target for Venture. Exactly one other treasure can trash copper; it has a search space of 1 treasure excluding treasures in hand. Exactly oen other treasure offers +buy, but it is uniquely bad for Venture as forced play can utterly trash your end game. You could argue that HoP functions the same as +gain, but HoP really doesn't like the uniformity of most Venture decks (though it likes Venture as a cheap unique in other forms of decks).
What is is a uniquely good target for Venture? Not generally Talisman, Cache, Harem, Igg, Fg, Pstone, Spoils, or Contraband. Royal seal competes on price and doesn't do anything special when you buy a Venture or green. Hoard & Bank are maybes, but that puts Counterfeit in a fairly, what's the word, "unique" position.
Counterfeit is not uniquely good for Venture. Counterfeit is good when you particuarly need Copper trashing or +Buy, but those are often available through other means. Hoard is good when you want a way to gain more Gold (and this can be good for Venture, because it means more good treasures to draw). Bank is usually a good target because Venture in hand will become 2+ treasures in play, thus buffing Bank. Platinum is usually a good target because of just how much it is worth. It is funny that you put down Royal Seal for its price when Counterfeit also costs $5.
So here's the thing about "special" synergy. When we talk about card combos, we talk about combos that are game defining, or cards that are particularly good at enabling another card. Let's go back to Tunnel enablers now. When you see Duchess and Tunnel on the board, you do not think, "hey, Duchess mean that Tunnel is viable". But if you replace Duchess with Warehouse or Storeroom, suddenly that option is stand-out amazing. Just by adding either of these two to the board, Tunnel can go from a waste of time to a competitive strategy. That's the kind of synergy worth calling out.
Counterfeit is strong enough that you often want it on its own. But on a board where you don't want Counterfeit, adding Venture is unlikely to change that.
Venture is usually ignorable. Adding Counterfeit makes Venture a little more viable, but that's only because it adds Copper trashing. Copper trashing is not unique to Counterfeit, Counterfeit does not do it significant better for Venture than other cards, and it was pointed out in this thread long before your post anyway. Despite that, it still does not make Venture appreciably more attractive as a strategy because Counterfeit competes on price point and Venture would prefer earlier, faster trashing. Moreover, Counterfeit could very well strengthen non-Venture strategies even more!
This was the point made by MicQ. Counterfeit alone is often better than Counterfeit+Venture. And you admit as much yourself:
Barring some other enabler (of which there are many that also support Counterfeit), then I don't see Counterfeit being enough to drive you to Venture.
If Venture is good enough for other reasons, I can see it driving you to Counterfeit.
Like, you say right there -- you want another enabler. Counterfeit is not enough for Venture.
Your last line is off though. Venture doesn't push you to Counterfeit because Counterfeit is usually good on its own.
You know, maybe I misunderstood your original intention. Maybe you were just trying to squeeze out tiny "synergies" just for the edge-case-y quality of them. It just didn't make sense to me because your point 1 had as much synergy as, say, "Duchess synergizes with Market Square because it provides extra coin that you can spend with the +Buy". And your points 2 and 3 didn't speak to the interaction between Venture and Counterfeit at all.
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jomini is not trying to argue that counterfeit/venture is a strong strategy. He is saying that the two synergize with each other, moreso than other copper trashers do. His scenarios are contrived, but that is to make the benefit more obvious. The benefit is still there even when you have 7 coppers and only a couple ventures, it is just less visible. Counterfeit/venture is stronger than moneylender/venture or spice merchant/venture. On a board with no real draw or a really strong BM/rush strategy, I'd be willing to bet that counterfeit/venture is often the right call.
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Insert Michael Jackson/Popcorn meme here.
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jomini is not trying to argue that counterfeit/venture is a strong strategy. He is saying that the two synergize with each other, moreso than other copper trashers do. His scenarios are contrived, but that is to make the benefit more obvious. The benefit is still there even when you have 7 coppers and only a couple ventures, it is just less visible. Counterfeit/venture is stronger than moneylender/venture or spice merchant/venture. On a board with no real draw or a really strong BM/rush strategy, I'd be willing to bet that counterfeit/venture is often the right call.
Counterfeit is better than Moneylender or Spice Merchant, period. Their interaction with Venture is not the reason behind that. But the price point means that the latter two may be better than Counterfeit when paired with Venture. If they were all on the board and there is nothing better, probably you want one of the $4 trashers as well as Counterfeit. And I think it would have to be an incredibly weak board for Counterfeit-Venture to be competitive. For Counterfeit+X Big Money, I think there are many cards that would do better than Venture.
As for contrived scenarios, well, there are also scenarios where Counterfeit is actively bad for Venture. Venture shines in decks that are heavily greened and/or junked, because you only need to draw one Venture to cascade into the rest. But Counterfeit can stop that chain. Counterfeit's ability to duplicate a treasure card does not add value if you Venture into it with no other treasure cards in hand, or if you only have another Venture in hand (and only Ventures in deck that would have been drawn anyway). And in a Venture deck like that, the +Buy doesn't come into play because you won't even be hitting $10, let alone $13 or $16.
Anyway, my original response to jomini was not to say that the two cards have no synergy. I was just noting that his 3 points didn't add anything new to the thread, and 2 of them weren't even about synergy between Venture and Counterfeit.
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In those cases where Venture is good, Counterfeit makes it much better for all the reasons jomini said. Counterfeit by itself doesn't make Venture good, so you probably need some additional trashing or possibly just cycling to get your counterfeit plays more often.
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In those cases where Venture is good, Counterfeit makes it much better for all the reasons jomini said. Counterfeit by itself doesn't make Venture good, so you probably need some additional trashing or possibly just cycling to get your counterfeit plays more often.
Really? I'd say maybe slightly better, not much better. And I think that when Venture is good, I'd often rather have Venture draw more Ventures rather than stop on Counterfeit.
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I feel like I'd have to break every single argument of this debate down to properly explain my opinion about this debate, and I'm too lazy for that, but I'll state it anyway. If you approach the question "does Cf have more synergy with Venture than other Copper trashers" in a really narrow perspective, jomini is right. There are some synergies which can be useful in rare cases.
If you're looking for any sort of advice about the game though, eHalcyon is right. This combination is basically irrelevant. Both cards cost 5$, and that's way more important than all of the synergies that Cf has over other copper trashers. If you really want a Venture deck, if anything that's a reason not to buy Cf and rather buy other trashers, because you want your 5$'s to get Venture. In the end, you may still buy both. If there's chapel, you're not going to buy Cf for this combo.
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In those cases where Venture is good, Counterfeit makes it much better for all the reasons jomini said. Counterfeit by itself doesn't make Venture good, so you probably need some additional trashing or possibly just cycling to get your counterfeit plays more often.
Really? I'd say maybe slightly better, not much better. And I think that when Venture is good, I'd often rather have Venture draw more Ventures rather than stop on Counterfeit.
Yeah but the choice is between stopping on coppers or stopping on Counterfeit and killing coppers. You have 7 Venture stops to start with, it takes exactly one play to get back to 7 stops and everything else is gravy - not bad for a de facto silver.
Like I said, these aren't huge swings we are talking about, they are "small synergies"; something that might tip me toward Venture/X where some other copper trashing (say maybe Junk Dealer) wouldn't. Counterfeit is just about the best kingdom treasure for Venture - Bank and Hoard being other good options obviously, but it really does have everything Venture wants - get rid of coppers, a reliable +buy, and getting to play it often (rather than skipping past it during the buy phase).
The fact that one of the better synergy cards for Venture is still pretty weak shows that Venture isn't often a card to build a deck around, not that the synergy isn't there.
But the price point means that the latter two may be better than Counterfeit when paired with Venture. If they were all on the board and there is nothing better, probably you want one of the $4 trashers as well as Counterfeit. And I think it would have to be an incredibly weak board for Counterfeit-Venture to be competitive. For Counterfeit+X Big Money, I think there are many cards that would do better than Venture.
Yeah, for price reasons, you can readily argue that Moneylender is better. And I might well go Moneylender/Counterfeit/Venture to quickly polish off the coppers. Of course, I'd be much more likely to go Smithy/Venture/Counterfeit as I can more reliably hit $5 and will cycle much faster.
As for contrived scenarios, well, there are also scenarios where Counterfeit is actively bad for Venture. Venture shines in decks that are heavily greened and/or junked, because you only need to draw one Venture to cascade into the rest. But Counterfeit can stop that chain. Counterfeit's ability to duplicate a treasure card does not add value if you Venture into it with no other treasure cards in hand, or if you only have another Venture in hand (and only Ventures in deck that would have been drawn anyway). And in a Venture deck like that, the +Buy doesn't come into play because you won't even be hitting $10, let alone $13 or $16.
Balderdash. Counterfeit is a may card. If I draw it with no other treasures, well it is a stop card, but I tend to only get rid of my coppers (the worst stop cards) by using Counterfeit or some braindead obvious card that can fast trash them (e.g. Mint or Chapel). Worst case scenario is that I hit it for $1 coin, which is not actively bad (just not as good say having bought a silver or another venture instead).
As far as the +buy. Consider: you are down by 3 points (your opponent has a duchy). You draw $8 with (Counterfeit is played as just $1 +1 buy). There are two provinces left. Do you buy the province? Well if you do, your opponent, who also went Venture, then has extremely high odds of winning next turn (buying the last province and winning by 3) or do you buy Duchy (leaving a tie which your opponent can also win) or go Duchy/Estate for $7 & 2 buys?
And this is not exactly uncommon if Venture is strong. In these cases, you often end up with a reliable deck (as green matters very little) but no ability to snag 2 VP cards in a turn. So you can end up with close scores where an extra estate makes a world of difference on the "final" type turns of the game. Further, unlike with a lot of decks, strong Venture decks suffer very little with end game estate padding.
Is this strong enough to go Venture? No. But it is enough to give me pause when choosing between Junk Dealer and Counterfeit as my copper trashing for a Venture deck.
Your scenarios are contrived. You cannot just assume that you already have a deck full of Ventures and so much green that Ventures are particularly good. How did your deck get to that state? If you are playing well, you'll probably never end up with a deck of "7 green, 6 Treasures and one other card", especially where many of those Treasures are Ventures.
Ugg, are you being willfully obtuse? I did that so I could freaking get a deck of 15 cards to make the MATH EASY. The point is, you can use any numbers you like - 8 green, 5 treasures, 2 other cards - the result is still the same in general (just different magnitude). Venture/Counterfeit leads to faster Copper trashing than Venture/Junk Dealer (yes, trashing estates is worth something, but so is getting $2 from a trashed copper instead of 0). Any board where I'm even considering building a Venture deck is one where Counterfeit is going to be relatively better - it will get played effectively more often. The question becomes is it worth spending a $5 (instead of a $4 or $3), and that will be highly situationally dependent (as after all, Venture decks very quickly hit $5 reliably, particularly if you have nice "silver" killing coppers).
Moneylender is not the only Copper trasher. Chapel is a much better Copper trasher for Venture than Counterfeit is, simply because it is such a fast trasher at a non-competing price
Thank you Captain Obvious. I've already acknowledged that there are better copper trashers out there - e.g. Mint which I have specifically already mentioned as being "much stronger typically". I have just noted that Counterfeit, while having the downside of being at a bad price point, is stronger on end game flexibility and on lining up copper trashing (having an effectively larger search space in Venture decks). Chapel, Steward, Remake, Upgrade, etc. are all likely better cards for Venture decks, they just don't synergize with Venture - you don't see them more often (slightly less actually) and they don't add as much to the deck.
So here's the thing about "special" synergy. When we talk about card combos, we talk about combos that are game defining, or cards that are particularly good at enabling another card. Let's go back to Tunnel enablers now. When you see Duchess and Tunnel on the board, you do not think, "hey, Duchess mean that Tunnel is viable". But if you replace Duchess with Warehouse or Storeroom, suddenly that option is stand-out amazing. Just by adding either of these two to the board, Tunnel can go from a waste of time to a competitive strategy. That's the kind of synergy worth calling out.
Counterfeit is strong enough that you often want it on its own. But on a board where you don't want Counterfeit, adding Venture is unlikely to change that.
Venture is usually ignorable. Adding Counterfeit makes Venture a little more viable, but that's only because it adds Copper trashing. Copper trashing is not unique to Counterfeit, Counterfeit does not do it significant better for Venture than other cards, and it was pointed out in this thread long before your post anyway. Despite that, it still does not make Venture appreciably more attractive as a strategy because Counterfeit competes on price point and Venture would prefer earlier, faster trashing. Moreover, Counterfeit could very well strengthen non-Venture strategies even more!
Copper trashing alone is far, far too little to go Venture. For obvious reasons, stuff like Transmute, Stonemason, Rats, and Remodel are not strong enough to go Venture. Counterfeit is one of the better Copper trashing because it:
1. Has better odds of killing Copper in a Venture deck.
2. Is not a dead card late game (still worth 1$ +1 buy)
3. Decent odds that you can cannibalize a big treasure on your last turn for extra VP gain to break parity.
All of those are more likely/frequent thanks to the synergy between Venture and Counterfeit. Adding in the fact that Counterfeit, like all kingdom treasures, synergizes well with terminals means that you don't have competition between Copper trashing & some other enabler. I'm far more likely to build Venture decks around Venture/Counterfeit/X than Venture/Moneylender/X because X can be a LOT more things.
Your last line is off though. Venture doesn't push you to Counterfeit because Counterfeit is usually good on its own.
Oh it absolutely does. Counterfeit is good enough I might want it anyways. Okay, so let's say those are all boards where Counterfeit is a given. What are the marginal ones where it isn't?
Ones where it competes with other trashing that might also be viable - say I have Junk dealer or Salvager out; would I take Counterfeit over either of those? Depends. Counterfeit is faster at buying payload (one more buck for copper vs Junk dealer and two vs Salvager), but cannot trash the Estates. Venture adds an option that might be good with enablers (Mint, Mine, dead draw, discard attacks, top deck mucking attacks, etc.).
You know, maybe I misunderstood your original intention. Maybe you were just trying to squeeze out tiny "synergies" just for the edge-case-y quality of them. It just didn't make sense to me because your point 1 had as much synergy as, say, "Duchess synergizes with Market Square because it provides extra coin that you can spend with the +Buy". And your points 2 and 3 didn't speak to the interaction between Venture and Counterfeit at all.
Nope, point 1 is pretty straight up. Assume +buy is useful. One +buy card gives you whatever advantage a +buy has only on turns you draw and play it. For everything but Contraband (the worst late game +buy) Venture decks only see the +buy some small fraction of the time (33% say for a ballparking). Venture and Counterfeit see the +buy most turns. You are at least twice as likely to hit your Counterfeit in the clutch with Venture as you are anything else for most Venture setups.
What about Counterfeit without Venture? Again you only see the value of +buy on the hands you hit it. So say I go Counterfeit/Masterpiece. I only get the +buy when I draw the Counterfeit - call it 33%.
So deck with Venture/random +buy - I get the advantage of having +buy maybe 33% of the time. (deck built to draw $8 fairly reliably).
Deck with Countefeit/treasure- I get the advantage maybe 33% of the time.
Deck with Venture/Counterfeit - maybe 75% of the time.
I get more out of the mix than I get from simple additive effects.
2 and 3 are cases where Counterfeit does its normal thing (above and beyond copper trashing) more often and more reliably than without Venture. Comparable cards (Mine, Junk dealer) do not do their thing more often or more reliably (slightly less on both counts).
None of these are enough to say Venture + Counterfeit -> GO! But they do inform play and make boards like Terminal draw/Venture/Counterfeit more viable.
So here's the thing about "special" synergy. When we talk about card combos, we talk about combos that are game defining, or cards that are particularly good at enabling another card. Let's go back to Tunnel enablers now. When you see Duchess and Tunnel on the board, you do not think, "hey, Duchess mean that Tunnel is viable". But if you replace Duchess with Warehouse or Storeroom, suddenly that option is stand-out amazing. Just by adding either of these two to the board, Tunnel can go from a waste of time to a competitive strategy. That's the kind of synergy worth calling out.
So in other words, useless hand waiving.
Tunnel enablers range from Duchess (search space 1, with bonus for opponents) to 9 (Embassy). We have cards that hit every single point in between does this BS "specialness" stop at Inn (searching 6 cards, no +buy) or 4 (say Horse Traders with +buy or Cellar without it)? I mean basically this is just BS that means whatever you want it to mean. Certainly it misses every non-transitive interaction in Dominion (Transmute - always sucks so it has no synergies - so shut up about Scrying Pool)
The fact is, of copper trashers, Counterfeit is the one that gains the most from Venture. Some are stronger such that even with synergy you can safely pick up Chapel (you know the single most cost effective card in the game) instead. But yeah Venture does say go Counterfeit over Junk dealer. Frankly, your definition has jack all to do with "synergy" as a meaningful concept - it just is method of saying "how strong are these two" except in unclear language.
These are, say it with me, small synergies that show up only at the margins. In most games, player skill is by far more dominant so you won't see them. But if you are playing among equal skill levels, then these sorts of things matter in a small percentage of games. Will it win you a game? This particular combo, maybe once every 10K or 20K games. Will looking at these sorts of marginal gains as a general pattern win you games? Yes likely one every 20 or 50.
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hey I said debate twice in the same sentence.
jomini, you're being kinda rude.
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Yeah but the choice is between stopping on coppers or stopping on Counterfeit and killing coppers. You have 7 Venture stops to start with, it takes exactly one play to get back to 7 stops and everything else is gravy - not bad for a de facto silver.
We were talking about when Venture is already good, which assumes that Copper trashing isn't a problem to begin with. If we are talking about Copper trashing, that point was brought up in this thread long before your first post.
Balderdash. Counterfeit is a may card. If I draw it with no other treasures, well it is a stop card, but I tend to only get rid of my coppers (the worst stop cards) by using Counterfeit or some braindead obvious card that can fast trash them (e.g. Mint or Chapel). Worst case scenario is that I hit it for $1 coin, which is not actively bad (just not as good say having bought a silver or another venture instead).
As far as the +buy. Consider: you are down by 3 points (your opponent has a duchy). You draw $8 with (Counterfeit is played as just $1 +1 buy). There are two provinces left. Do you buy the province? Well if you do, your opponent, who also went Venture, then has extremely high odds of winning next turn (buying the last province and winning by 3) or do you buy Duchy (leaving a tie which your opponent can also win) or go Duchy/Estate for $7 & 2 buys?
And this is not exactly uncommon if Venture is strong. In these cases, you often end up with a reliable deck (as green matters very little) but no ability to snag 2 VP cards in a turn. So you can end up with close scores where an extra estate makes a world of difference on the "final" type turns of the game. Further, unlike with a lot of decks, strong Venture decks suffer very little with end game estate padding.
Is this strong enough to go Venture? No. But it is enough to give me pause when choosing between Junk Dealer and Counterfeit as my copper trashing for a Venture deck.
I think you are misunderstanding what I mean when I say it is a stop card.
In our contrived scenarios, we have a bunch of Ventures in a heavily greened and/or junked deck. You are saying that Counterfeit's +Buy and treasure-throning abilities can give you the opportunity to eke out an extra VP buy. I am saying that Counterfeit can get in the way of a Venture chain. In such a junked Venture deck, my goal is to draw at least one Venture, which will proceed to reliably draw my other 7 Ventures and allow me to buy a Province. Counterfeit is a stop card in this chain, preventing me from reaching the other Ventures in my deck.
Ugg, are you being willfully obtuse? I did that so I could freaking get a deck of 15 cards to make the MATH EASY. The point is, you can use any numbers you like - 8 green, 5 treasures, 2 other cards - the result is still the same in general (just different magnitude). Venture/Counterfeit leads to faster Copper trashing than Venture/Junk Dealer (yes, trashing estates is worth something, but so is getting $2 from a trashed copper instead of 0). Any board where I'm even considering building a Venture deck is one where Counterfeit is going to be relatively better - it will get played effectively more often. The question becomes is it worth spending a $5 (instead of a $4 or $3), and that will be highly situationally dependent (as after all, Venture decks very quickly hit $5 reliably, particularly if you have nice "silver" killing coppers).
I am saying that your scenarios are not generally applicable. Venture-Counterfeit may be faster trashing than with Junk Dealer, but that's not saying much because Venture-Junk Dealer isn't a notable combo either. If you're already considering Venture, that suggests that you already have strong early Copper trashing from another source, which makes Counterfeit even less desirable because it competes with Venture at $5.
Thank you Captain Obvious. I've already acknowledged that there are better copper trashers out there - e.g. Mint which I have specifically already mentioned as being "much stronger typically". I have just noted that Counterfeit, while having the downside of being at a bad price point, is stronger on end game flexibility and on lining up copper trashing (having an effectively larger search space in Venture decks). Chapel, Steward, Remake, Upgrade, etc. are all likely better cards for Venture decks, they just don't synergize with Venture - you don't see them more often (slightly less actually) and they don't add as much to the deck.
I appreciate the name-calling.
What you are saying here is that cards like Chapel and Steward are better trashers for Venture, but there is no synergy there and they "don't add as much to the deck". Counterfeit, on the other hand, has synergy despite being worse at trashing. These statements are almost contradictory. As it is, you are describing synergies that are not applicable to real strategy. The upsides of Counterfeit that you mention (utility and flexibility) are inherent to Counterfeit itself. That's not synergy, it's just Counterfeit being Counterfeit.
(Side note: was that "they don't add as much to the deck" line meant to be a pun? Chapel doesn't add as much because it's a trasher? Counterfeit adds more because it has +Buy? :P)
Copper trashing alone is far, far too little to go Venture. For obvious reasons, stuff like Transmute, Stonemason, Rats, and Remodel are not strong enough to go Venture. Counterfeit is one of the better Copper trashing because it:
1. Has better odds of killing Copper in a Venture deck.
2. Is not a dead card late game (still worth 1$ +1 buy)
3. Decent odds that you can cannibalize a big treasure on your last turn for extra VP gain to break parity.
All of those are more likely/frequent thanks to the synergy between Venture and Counterfeit. Adding in the fact that Counterfeit, like all kingdom treasures, synergizes well with terminals means that you don't have competition between Copper trashing & some other enabler. I'm far more likely to build Venture decks around Venture/Counterfeit/X than Venture/Moneylender/X because X can be a LOT more things.
Transmute, Stonemason... these cards are not strong, early Copper trashers. Why not compare to the ones you've already mentioned? Chapel? Steward? If I look to these actual competitive cards, Counterfeit is one of the weaker Copper trashers for Venture because it competes with Venture at $5. The conflict between Moneylender and a terminal X matters far less than the conflict between the two treasures at $5.
Oh it absolutely does. Counterfeit is good enough I might want it anyways. Okay, so let's say those are all boards where Counterfeit is a given. What are the marginal ones where it isn't?
Ones where it competes with other trashing that might also be viable - say I have Junk dealer or Salvager out; would I take Counterfeit over either of those? Depends. Counterfeit is faster at buying payload (one more buck for copper vs Junk dealer and two vs Salvager), but cannot trash the Estates. Venture adds an option that might be good with enablers (Mint, Mine, dead draw, discard attacks, top deck mucking attacks, etc.).
Uh, we can agree to disagree. If I am choosing between Counterfeit and another trasher, Venture probably isn't the tipping point. I'm far more likely to be looking at the rest of the board.
Nope, point 1 is pretty straight up. Assume +buy is useful. One +buy card gives you whatever advantage a +buy has only on turns you draw and play it. For everything but Contraband (the worst late game +buy) Venture decks only see the +buy some small fraction of the time (33% say for a ballparking). Venture and Counterfeit see the +buy most turns. You are at least twice as likely to hit your Counterfeit in the clutch with Venture as you are anything else for most Venture setups.
What about Counterfeit without Venture? Again you only see the value of +buy on the hands you hit it. So say I go Counterfeit/Masterpiece. I only get the +buy when I draw the Counterfeit - call it 33%.
So deck with Venture/random +buy - I get the advantage of having +buy maybe 33% of the time. (deck built to draw $8 fairly reliably).
Deck with Countefeit/treasure- I get the advantage maybe 33% of the time.
Deck with Venture/Counterfeit - maybe 75% of the time.
I get more out of the mix than I get from simple additive effects.
This boils down to "Venture can draw Counterfeit" and "Counterfeit is good".
I'll also note that all your calculations seem to assume that you only have a single copy of the +Buy card, which only serves to make the single Counterfeit look more reliable. In a real deck, you can get multiples of a cheap +Buy card and have it be more reliable than a single Counterfeit.
2 and 3 are cases where Counterfeit does its normal thing (above and beyond copper trashing) more often and more reliably than without Venture. Comparable cards (Mine, Junk dealer) do not do their thing more often or more reliably (slightly less on both counts).
None of these are enough to say Venture + Counterfeit -> GO! But they do inform play and make boards like Terminal draw/Venture/Counterfeit more viable.
OK, but that's not what you said when you made your initial 3 points. If I quoted your third point, nobody would guess that it had anything to do with Venture. Even in context, it says absolutely nothing about reliability or frequency of play.
Even considering that, it's not really worth calling out. It boils down to "Counterfeit is a treasure". I can name a few other cards that do their normal thing more often and more reliably thanks to Venture: Talisman, Quarry, Royal Seal, Contraband. I still would not call them synergies. Counterfeit is better, but those things that you get to do with it are not synergy, they are just Counterfeit being Counterfeit.
(Also, how is Mine comparable to Counterfeit?)
Tunnel enablers range from Duchess (search space 1, with bonus for opponents) to 9 (Embassy). We have cards that hit every single point in between does this BS "specialness" stop at Inn (searching 6 cards, no +buy) or 4 (say Horse Traders with +buy or Cellar without it)? I mean basically this is just BS that means whatever you want it to mean. Certainly it misses every non-transitive interaction in Dominion (Transmute - always sucks so it has no synergies - so shut up about Scrying Pool)
The fact is, of copper trashers, Counterfeit is the one that gains the most from Venture. Some are stronger such that even with synergy you can safely pick up Chapel (you know the single most cost effective card in the game) instead. But yeah Venture does say go Counterfeit over Junk dealer. Frankly, your definition has jack all to do with "synergy" as a meaningful concept - it just is method of saying "how strong are these two" except in unclear language.
These are, say it with me, small synergies that show up only at the margins. In most games, player skill is by far more dominant so you won't see them. But if you are playing among equal skill levels, then these sorts of things matter in a small percentage of games. Will it win you a game? This particular combo, maybe once every 10K or 20K games. Will looking at these sorts of marginal gains as a general pattern win you games? Yes likely one every 20 or 50.
The line is fuzzy, but yes -- a synergy is not worth calling out if it is not viable in competition. If it only makes an impact in 0.01% of games (this is using your numbers), it is not "synergy as a meaningful concept". Otherwise, we are talking about synergies like Market Square+Duchess (because, man, +Buy is good when you have extra coin to spend, and Duchess produces virtual coin).
Here's how I break it down:
(1) Venture doesn't like Copper. Counterfeit can trash Copper.
(2) Venture draws treasure cards. Counterfeit is a strong treasure card that could be drawn by Venture.
That's about the extent of the synergy, but (1) was mentioned very early and there are many better trashers anyway, (2) is just about what Venture and Counterfeit each do on their own, and these synergies mean very little under the shadow of the competing price point.
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I think everybody has a decent understanding of this alleged combo, but just finding it hard to put it in words.
And then it starts to spin off into useless tangents.
Discussing 2-card combos is just a bad idea in general. Sooner or later one or both of these two cards gets replaced by other cards which do the same thing, trying to prove some kind of point that the combo isn't that great.
> Counterfeit-Venture is pretty good!
< Yeah? Well, how about Chapel-Venture?
> Hmm, not as good as opening Chapel-Mountebank!
< You're right! Wait, what were we talking about again?
There are no 2-card kingdoms and while combos do point toward synergies (some obvious, some a bit more hidden), they're not the definitive strategy on every board they both appear on.
Yes, if both Counterfeit and Venture are on a very very very weak board (say just villages or vp cards), I'd probably buy 1 Counterfeit and multiple Ventures.
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I think everybody has a decent understanding of this alleged combo, but just finding it hard to put it in words.
And then it starts to spin off into useless tangents.
Discussing 2-card combos is just a bad idea in general. Sooner or later one or both of these two cards gets replaced by other cards which do the same thing, trying to prove some kind of point that the combo isn't that great.
> Counterfeit-Venture is pretty good!
< Yeah? Well, how about Chapel-Venture?
> Hmm, not as good as opening Chapel-Mountebank!
< You're right! Wait, what were we talking about again?
There are no 2-card kingdoms and while combos do point toward synergies (some obvious, some a bit more hidden), they're not the definitive strategy on every board they both appear on.
Yes, if both Counterfeit and Venture are on a very very very weak board (say just villages or vp cards), I'd probably buy 1 Counterfeit and multiple Ventures.
While I agree that there's way too much emphasis on this kind of stuff, I think it's because most of the stuff isn't actually combos. It goes to your "...one or both of these two cards gets replaced by other cards which do the same thing". Village+Smithy isn't a combo, it's just the cards doing what they do, and those modes of things don't conflict.
There are a few true combos, though, that I think are worth knowing and discussing, not because they're just the best thing every time, but because something based around them often is, and it takes just about that specific combination to make it happen. Native Village/Bridge, Hermit/Market Square, and Chancellor/Stash (ok, Scavenger works there) are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head. Masquerade pins would work too, I suppose.
But the rest of it, it's just cards doing what they do, and having a broad understanding of different things you can try to do (i.e. engines and rushes and slogs) is basically going to get you where you want to be more than focusing on specific combinations.
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Of those three, only Hermit-Market Square is the one I would consider a real "hidden" combo, mostly because executing the combo requires such exact parameters.
But NV-Bridge, well, that just flows from the fact that it's superduper good to play multiple Bridges in a single turn.
What I mean is, it's probably more useful to discuss a single card and which (kinds of) cards it synergizes with than to pick 2 (or even more) cards specifically.
Picking 2 cards often means focusing on one of those cards at which point a single card article would be better.
And with so many cards, you don't often run into the combos as much as you used to when the card pool was much smaller.
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Village+Smithy isn't a combo, it's just the cards doing what they do, and those modes of things don't conflict.
I disagree here, though of course it really just depends what's meant by "combo". I don't think of a combo as necessarily implying a whole strategy itself. Yes, Village/Smithy is not a (viable) strategy, but it is a combo that can form a part of a larger strategy.
What I take "combo" to mean is "more than the sum of its parts", or what would be called "complementary goods" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_good) in economics. This is true for Village/Smithy because the more Villages you have in your deck, the more adding Smithies helps you, and the more Smithies you have in your deck, the more adding Villages helps you. This is because Smithy shores up key weaknesses of Village (e.g. that Village doesn't give you a way to do anything with your excess actions) and Village shores up key weaknesses of Smithy (e.g. that Smithy can draw cards dead).
The examples you give, such as NV/Bridge, are rare cases where two cards not only combo, but form an entire strategy.
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Village+Smithy isn't a combo, it's just the cards doing what they do, and those modes of things don't conflict.
I disagree here, though of course it really just depends what's meant by "combo". I don't think of a combo as necessarily implying a whole strategy itself. Yes, Village/Smithy is not a (viable) strategy, but it is a combo that can form a part of a larger strategy.
What I take "combo" to mean is "more than the sum of its parts", or what would be called "complementary goods" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_good) in economics. This is true for Village/Smithy because the more Villages you have in your deck, the more adding Smithies helps you, and the more Smithies you have in your deck, the more adding Villages helps you. This is because Smithy shores up key weaknesses of Village (e.g. that Village doesn't give you a way to do anything with your excess actions) and Village shores up key weaknesses of Smithy (e.g. that Smithy can draw cards dead).
The examples you give, such as NV/Bridge, are rare cases where two cards not only combo, but form an entire strategy.
By your definition of Combo, every village combos with every terminal action. If EVERYTHING combos, it's not a useful term to discuss.
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Village+Smithy isn't a combo, it's just the cards doing what they do, and those modes of things don't conflict.
I disagree here, though of course it really just depends what's meant by "combo". I don't think of a combo as necessarily implying a whole strategy itself. Yes, Village/Smithy is not a (viable) strategy, but it is a combo that can form a part of a larger strategy.
What I take "combo" to mean is "more than the sum of its parts", or what would be called "complementary goods" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_good) in economics. This is true for Village/Smithy because the more Villages you have in your deck, the more adding Smithies helps you, and the more Smithies you have in your deck, the more adding Villages helps you. This is because Smithy shores up key weaknesses of Village (e.g. that Village doesn't give you a way to do anything with your excess actions) and Village shores up key weaknesses of Smithy (e.g. that Smithy can draw cards dead).
The examples you give, such as NV/Bridge, are rare cases where two cards not only combo, but form an entire strategy.
The term I've usually seen for that sort of thing is synergy, not combo.
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Yeah but the choice is between stopping on coppers or stopping on Counterfeit and killing coppers. You have 7 Venture stops to start with, it takes exactly one play to get back to 7 stops and everything else is gravy - not bad for a de facto silver.
We were talking about when Venture is already good, which assumes that Copper trashing isn't a problem to begin with.
Why on earth would we make such a silly assumption? If I hit a 5/2 or Baker is buried in the Bm deck, Counterfeit is perfectly strong of its own right. No sure, I'm most likely going to use a non-terminal "silver" copper trasher for engine work (where it handily gives me a +buy), but if the board doesn't support that, then we get to the part of dominion that requires serious strategy and skill.
If we are talking about Copper trashing, that point was brought up in this thread long before your first post.
I don't understand you. I posted that there exist several "small synergies", synergy is defined as "creation of a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts". Mathematically, the bullet points I've listed meet the dictionary definition and the effects are indeed greater than just summing the two cards. I've worked out actual numbers for you, yet somehow you can't seem to understand that we all understand that copper trashing is normally needed to make Venture strong.
Venture is a weak card on pretty much every non-colony board. It doesn't get magically stronger, but combos that get magically stronger (like Nv/Bridge) don't require terribly much strategic thought. In spite of this, it is a good exercise to consider which cards would make it stronger and which of several options are the strongest. Most boards in dominion have at least two options for some component of a strategy - do I want Cultist or Witch, Farming Village or Fortress?
I think you are misunderstanding what I mean when I say it is a stop card.
No I understand, because somehow I've played Venture many, many times. The problem is that you are grasping at straws to come up with a scenario where Counterfeit is bad in a vain hope that you can pretend that this scenario is as likely to be bad for you as being able to get two VP cards at game end and break parity. I fully understand that you want to use the laughably moronic 8 Venture deck which is vast overkill in terms of reliability. Somehow the fact that I have repeatedly stated that these are mirrors and have specifically talked about buying provinces with fewer than 8 treasures, you decided to make up your own scenario that is utterly farcical.
So here is a simple setup for you, I open 5/2 with Haven/Counterfeit/Venture. You have some other comparable setup - single copper trasher and no Counterfeit. If our decks are comparable and Venture is worth it, we split the ventures 5/5. So now we gain provinces whenever our hands have 2 Ventures and most times when we have Venture/another treasure. When the odds are against us we get duchy. It comes down to a pair of provinces and we need to duchy dance. With these, idiotically typical Venture decks, would you rather hold the +buy Treasure (so you can get duchy + estate and break parity), or have a mostly dead copper trasher & maybe a random +buy?
I am saying that your scenarios are not generally applicable. Venture-Counterfeit may be faster trashing than with Junk Dealer, but that's not saying much because Venture-Junk Dealer isn't a notable combo either. If you're already considering Venture, that suggests that you already have strong early Copper trashing from another source, which makes Counterfeit even less desirable because it competes with Venture at $5.
Is there a reason you are unwilling to reply to what I've actually said using the common English definition of words? I've never said Venture/Counterfeit is "much of a combo" nor have I ever said that it is generally applicable. I have continuously said that if Venture is otherwise strong, then the synergies of Counterfeit are important. When I straight up say things like "once every 10K or 20K games" would you do me a favor and read them and then not post junk about "not generally applicable?
My point has always been that there are "small synergies". By definition they aren't going to be combos, but once people know the basic combos, it is the small synergies that tend to make or break decks. Should I go Squire or Hamlet? Both are strong, which has more synergies with what I'm doing? Or how about Jack vs Hermit as an opener; odds are my decision will be driven by what works just a bit better with Hermit. 99% of the choices we make when playing are not "combos", but recognizing and valuing accurately small differences is a huge leg up in the game.
I appreciate the name-calling.
I appreciate the inconsideration you've shown by repeatedly stuffing words into mouth when I specifically say things. "Not generally applicable" vs "once every 10K or 20K games". Name calling is far less rude that willfully refusing to debate the actual points your opponent makes.
What you are saying here is that cards like Chapel and Steward are better trashers for Venture
What I'm saying is that synergy is a measure of how much more you gain in function that just the sum of its parts. Chapel and Steward are better copper trashers - full stop. However their synergy with Venture is zip (or negative). You see them slightly less often in a Venture deck.
Counterfeit, on the other hand, has synergy despite being worse at trashing. These statements are almost contradictory. As it is, you are describing synergies that are not applicable to real strategy. The upsides of Counterfeit that you mention (utility and flexibility) are inherent to Counterfeit itself. That's not synergy, it's just Counterfeit being Counterfeit.
::) No, I'm using the word "synergy" correctly. As former military strategist, I can assure you that you are not. "Synergy" literally means that the whole is more than the sum of its part. Hence "small synergy". This is applicable, as noted maybe "once every 10K or 20K games". The exercise by which you determine that will show up most games.
Say Counterfeit has utility X. Chapel has utility Y. Venture has utility Z. The utility of Counterfeit+Venture > X + Z or is = X + Z + S1. Formally, that means synergy (S1) exists. Now say the utility of Chapel + Venture is slightly < Y + Z or = Y + Z - S2; there is, formally, no (or negative) synergy. Which is better, well that depends on if Y - S2 > X + S1. If Y >> X and X >> S1 ~= S2 then it is perfectly correct to say Venture and Counterfeit have more synergy, Chapel and Venture is stronger. Strength and synergy are very different things.
Transmute, Stonemason... these cards are not strong, early Copper trashers. Why not compare to the ones you've already mentioned? Chapel? Steward?
Because when I did you decided to keep ignoring the difference between strength and synergy. In general, cards that trash two or more Coppers are much stronger for Venture. Now would I certainly for Steward and use it as a Moat or Silver end game? Maybe, but the Math here is pretty hard. Yes Steward trashes out your coppers (and estates) faster, but it also results in a lot more sub $5 hands.
If I look to these actual competitive cards, Counterfeit is one of the weaker Copper trashers for Venture because it competes with Venture at $5.
This is a bit overblown. Take another good copper trasher - Spice merchant. When you play Spice Merchant he is effectively a copper (cards or coin). So your odds of hitting $5 on hands when you trash copper are lower. Counterfeit, when trashing copper, is a silver (much like Moneylender). Likewise, Counterfeit is less likely to miss a shuffle and more likely to be drawn mid game in a position where it can trash copper; this does translate in a make up $5 hand later (or better).
The conflict between Moneylender and a terminal X matters far less than the conflict between the two treasures at $5.
I remain unconvinced, that just depends so much or the board. Even a good Copper trasher like Spice Merchant will whiff on $5 or miss the shuffle. Both of those make it harder to stock up on Ventures and also make it longer before you can begin packing in the green. The bigger issue, by far, is that Moneylender can be an opening buy all the time while Counterfeit is most often T3/T4 and that may require a sliver purchase.
Uh, we can agree to disagree. If I am choosing between Counterfeit and another trasher, Venture probably isn't the tipping point. I'm far more likely to be looking at the rest of the board.
What, you mean it depends on the board? That I should consider how well Counterfeit works with the cards (like Venture) on the board? What if there are no combos? :P
All kidding aside, of course it depends on the board, but there will be, by definition, marginal cases that push you one way or another.
This boils down to "Venture can draw Counterfeit" and "Counterfeit is good".
No, Venture can draw Counterfeit, which leads to faster copper clearing, which leads to faster cycling. It also comes down to deck type. +Buy is very useful in more reliable decks (like Venture) as carrying around an extra estate (to break parity) is much less dangerous. It also has to do with the fact that because they share card type, they share a lot of broad strategic commonality.
I'll also note that all your calculations seem to assume that you only have a single copy of the +Buy card, which only serves to make the single Counterfeit look more reliable. In a real deck, you can get multiples of a cheap +Buy card and have it be more reliable than a single Counterfeit.
So what do you give up when spamming cheap +buy? I mean, sure if you have Hamlet or Pawn out, whatever, but there is an opportunity cost - particularly if we have a good Venture enabler that might conflict. Yes, I've chosen scenarios for illustration and not raw tactical demonstration. The point is, the math still points in the same direction - give the other deck 3 +buy and its reliability still isn't as good as one Counterfeit.
OK, but that's not what you said when you made your initial 3 points. If I quoted your third point, nobody would guess that it had anything to do with Venture. Even in context, it says absolutely nothing about reliability or frequency of play.
Actually it is, I have said, repeatedly that these are "small synergies". For some reason, in spite of me quoting that adjective repeatedly you continue to choose to ignore it. Now sure, I assumed that you had sufficient grasp of the context to know that Venture decks typically have one or two pig payload treasures and maybe 5 Ventures (with 5 Ventures you whiff so rarely, spending 3 turns to get up to 8 Ventures is not worth it). Likewise, I had assumed that people on the board would exhibit good enough faith to include the context or should I be less than clear to engage in good faith. Doing things like paying attention and not putting words in my mouth.
Even considering that, it's not really worth calling out. It boils down to "Counterfeit is a treasure". I can name a few other cards that do their normal thing more often and more reliably thanks to Venture: Talisman, Quarry, Royal Seal, Contraband. I still would not call them synergies. Counterfeit is better, but those things that you get to do with it are not synergy, they are just Counterfeit being Counterfeit.
Yeah, but none of their "Normal things" are really helpful in a Venture deck. Take Talisman. What could you possibly be buying that makes Talisman reliability strategically useful? I mean sure there is the odd Venture/Vineyard setup where you might want a huge number of cheap actions, but outside of really weird stuff like that - Talisman just slows down a Venture deck. Similarly Quarry, sure if I'm doing some bastard thing with Nobles, Great Hall, or Island ... but again it doesn't have synergy. Contraband, don't be silly. There is no worse card for a Venture deck. Play it and lose when your opponent locks you out of VP/Ventures.
The reason that actual synergy exists is that there is feedback. Venture finds Counterfeit -> Counterfeit is played more often; Counterfeit trashes Coppers -> Venture is played more often. The effect is slightly geometric rather than additive. That is textbook case of synergy.
(Also, how is Mine comparable to Counterfeit?)
Both increase the ratio of Venture (& payload treasures) to Coppers while not handicapping your current buying power. Additionally both can clear Silver out the deck.
The line is fuzzy, but yes -- a synergy is not worth calling out if it is not viable in competition. If it only makes an impact in 0.01% of games (this is using your numbers), it is not "synergy as a meaningful concept". Otherwise, we are talking about synergies like Market Square+Duchess (because, man, +Buy is good when you have extra coin to spend, and Duchess produces virtual coin).
I suggest you widen your perspective. In competition, the stuff you suggest is your baseline. Do you really think anyone playing competitively doesn't already have all the big combos memorized (and further let us recall that even the most powerful combos are going to show up so infrequently that they any individual one will get lost in the background noise). Synergy is precisely about when stuff adds up to more than the sum of its parts. There is no feedback in your duchess example, it is a simple additive effect.
Here's how I break it down:
(1) Venture doesn't like Copper. Counterfeit can trash Copper.
(2) Venture draws treasure cards. Counterfeit is a strong treasure card that could be drawn by Venture.
That's about the extent of the synergy, but (1) was mentioned very early and there are many better trashers anyway, (2) is just about what Venture and Counterfeit each do on their own, and these synergies mean very little under the shadow of the competing price point.
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And this is the problem, you are not using synergy in any way like its definition demands. Try this another way - if you were to make an ratio scale list of copper trashers Counterfeit would occupy some point on it. If we were to rerank the list only for boards where Venture is also present, Counterfeit will move up (but might not change ordinal rank). If we reranked the list only for boards where Venture is at least marginally viable (a minority of Venture boards), Counterfeit will change rankings.
This happens for pretty much every card. Transmute sucks, but does get better when Familiar is out - the opportunity cost for getting the Transmute goes down and you have a much stronger need for trashing. Scout is terrible, but it moves up from the absolute bottom when you have a viable Scrying pool deck (it still is rarely worth the opportunity cost, but it actually does make Pool more reliable and I will take it as freebie in Pool decks when I'm doing something like Develop or Haggler).
On most boards, there will be one or more cards that is slightly better than normal because it has some positive feedback with your deck (or some negative feedback on your opponent's deck). So please, don't take and go on about "special synergies" most of the synergies that win games are not special ones - but if you can optimize your deck 1% here, and .5% there, it does add up.
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Jomini. Dude. You're arguing with people way smarter at this game than you, and being kind of rude about it as well. Swallow your pride. It 'tis a game.
Also, if there are any mods reading this, I'd like this thread to be closed. I don't want to inspire any sort of fights around here.
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Why on earth would we make such a silly assumption?
Because that's what the conversation was about at that point. Counterfeit alone is not strong enough trashing for Venture. This is something you've already admitted in previous posts.
I don't understand you. I posted that there exist several "small synergies", synergy is defined as "creation of a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts". Mathematically, the bullet points I've listed meet the dictionary definition and the effects are indeed greater than just summing the two cards. I've worked out actual numbers for you, yet somehow you can't seem to understand that we all understand that copper trashing is normally needed to make Venture strong.
Well, I said previously that I may have misunderstood your intention, but you denied it. So it really does sound like you are just listing tiny synergies that have no actual application in a game. If that's the case, fine. You are correct, those are small synergies, but they are so small as to be meaningless for strategic decisions.
No I understand, because somehow I've played Venture many, many times. The problem is that you are grasping at straws to come up with a scenario where Counterfeit is bad in a vain hope that you can pretend that this scenario is as likely to be bad for you as being able to get two VP cards at game end and break parity. I fully understand that you want to use the laughably moronic 8 Venture deck which is vast overkill in terms of reliability. Somehow the fact that I have repeatedly stated that these are mirrors and have specifically talked about buying provinces with fewer than 8 treasures, you decided to make up your own scenario that is utterly farcical.
Man, I defined my scenario as contrived too. The point was that your contrived scenario was just as "laughably moronic". If you want, you can do something similar with fewer Ventures and a big treasure like Bank. Having the chain stop on a Counterfeit is just as bad then.
So here is a simple setup for you, I open 5/2 with Haven/Counterfeit/Venture. You have some other comparable setup - single copper trasher and no Counterfeit. If our decks are comparable and Venture is worth it, we split the ventures 5/5. So now we gain provinces whenever our hands have 2 Ventures and most times when we have Venture/another treasure. When the odds are against us we get duchy. It comes down to a pair of provinces and we need to duchy dance. With these, idiotically typical Venture decks, would you rather hold the +buy Treasure (so you can get duchy + estate and break parity), or have a mostly dead copper trasher & maybe a random +buy?
If you start with Counterfeit, we probably split Ventures 6/4 in my favour, and I have a better chance of getting my chain into Province. Or, quite possibly, I do some sort of big money thing which is still stronger than Counterfeit-Venture.
Is there a reason you are unwilling to reply to what I've actually said using the common English definition of words? I've never said Venture/Counterfeit is "much of a combo" nor have I ever said that it is generally applicable. I have continuously said that if Venture is otherwise strong, then the synergies of Counterfeit are important. When I straight up say things like "once every 10K or 20K games" would you do me a favor and read them and then not post junk about "not generally applicable?
My point has always been that there are "small synergies". By definition they aren't going to be combos, but once people know the basic combos, it is the small synergies that tend to make or break decks. Should I go Squire or Hamlet? Both are strong, which has more synergies with what I'm doing? Or how about Jack vs Hermit as an opener; odds are my decision will be driven by what works just a bit better with Hermit. 99% of the choices we make when playing are not "combos", but recognizing and valuing accurately small differences is a huge leg up in the game.
When you are arguing so vociferously about the synergies of these two cards, it really seems like you are thinking of them as a combo. As I said previously, I posited that I misunderstood your intention. Your arguments continue suggest that I was right, you just want to argue about tiny things that don't mean anything in a real game.
Whatever small synergies there may be, the $5 price point still means that Counterfeit does not fit into a Venture strategy. If Venture is otherwise strong, then Counterfeit isn't needed.
I appreciate the inconsideration you've shown by repeatedly stuffing words into mouth when I specifically say things. "Not generally applicable" vs "once every 10K or 20K games". Name calling is far less rude that willfully refusing to debate the actual points your opponent makes.
I've read everything you've written. I have responded directly to your words. If I have misinterpreted your words, I apologize, but I would appreciate it if you showed a modicum of respect and considered the possibility that your argument is unclear.
What I'm saying is that synergy is a measure of how much more you gain in function that just the sum of its parts. Chapel and Steward are better copper trashers - full stop. However their synergy with Venture is zip (or negative). You see them slightly less often in a Venture deck.
No, I think it is far more likely to have Chapel or Steward into a Venture deck compared to using Counterfeit in a Venture deck. Other top players have already said that Counterfeit+Venture is not a thing.
No, I'm using the word "synergy" correctly. As former military strategist, I can assure you that you are not. "Synergy" literally means that the whole is more than the sum of its part. Hence "small synergy". This is applicable, as noted maybe "once every 10K or 20K games". The exercise by which you determine that will show up most games.
Say Counterfeit has utility X. Chapel has utility Y. Venture has utility Z. The utility of Counterfeit+Venture > X + Z or is = X + Z + S1. Formally, that means synergy (S1) exists. Now say the utility of Chapel + Venture is slightly < Y + Z or = Y + Z - S2; there is, formally, no (or negative) synergy. Which is better, well that depends on if Y - S2 > X + S1. If Y >> X and X >> S1 ~= S2 then it is perfectly correct to say Venture and Counterfeit have more synergy, Chapel and Venture is stronger. Strength and synergy are very different things.
OK. It has small synergy. And it still doesn't matter for strategy discussion.
This is a bit overblown. Take another good copper trasher - Spice merchant. When you play Spice Merchant he is effectively a copper (cards or coin). So your odds of hitting $5 on hands when you trash copper are lower. Counterfeit, when trashing copper, is a silver (much like Moneylender). Likewise, Counterfeit is less likely to miss a shuffle and more likely to be drawn mid game in a position where it can trash copper; this does translate in a make up $5 hand later (or better).
I don't think it is overblown. I am deferring to the stronger players here, who have already said as much.
I remain unconvinced, that just depends so much or the board. Even a good Copper trasher like Spice Merchant will whiff on $5 or miss the shuffle. Both of those make it harder to stock up on Ventures and also make it longer before you can begin packing in the green. The bigger issue, by far, is that Moneylender can be an opening buy all the time while Counterfeit is most often T3/T4 and that may require a sliver purchase.
Again, I defer to stronger players who have said as much.
What, you mean it depends on the board? That I should consider how well Counterfeit works with the cards (like Venture) on the board? What if there are no combos? :P
All kidding aside, of course it depends on the board, but there will be, by definition, marginal cases that push you one way or another.
The point was that the other cases are likely to be far less marginal than Venture.
So what do you give up when spamming cheap +buy? I mean, sure if you have Hamlet or Pawn out, whatever, but there is an opportunity cost - particularly if we have a good Venture enabler that might conflict. Yes, I've chosen scenarios for illustration and not raw tactical demonstration. The point is, the math still points in the same direction - give the other deck 3 +buy and its reliability still isn't as good as one Counterfeit.
Yep, there is opportunity cost, but it is likely to be less than the opportunity cost of skipping Venture to pick up Counterfeit. The reliability is not clearly in favour of Counterfeit because there are so many other factors. The decks are not going to line up like your constructed scenarios.
Actually it is, I have said, repeatedly that these are "small synergies". For some reason, in spite of me quoting that adjective repeatedly you continue to choose to ignore it. Now sure, I assumed that you had sufficient grasp of the context to know that Venture decks typically have one or two pig payload treasures and maybe 5 Ventures (with 5 Ventures you whiff so rarely, spending 3 turns to get up to 8 Ventures is not worth it). Likewise, I had assumed that people on the board would exhibit good enough faith to include the context or should I be less than clear to engage in good faith. Doing things like paying attention and not putting words in my mouth.
Even with context, your third point said nothing about reliability or frequency of play. This is something you've fabricated in subsequent discussion. Your third point originally had nothing to do with Venture, and in context, still showed no relation to Venture.
I suggest you widen your perspective. In competition, the stuff you suggest is your baseline. Do you really think anyone playing competitively doesn't already have all the big combos memorized (and further let us recall that even the most powerful combos are going to show up so infrequently that they any individual one will get lost in the background noise). Synergy is precisely about when stuff adds up to more than the sum of its parts. There is no feedback in your duchess example, it is a simple additive effect.
There are plenty of people playing competitively who are still learning the baselines. When you start looking at more general cases and patterns and synergy, it still doesn't mean you are pulling out the microscope to analyze the 1/10,000 cases.
And sure, there's feedback in Duchess+Market Square. It's just tiny. Duchess has a spy effect, which synergizes with all cards that draw. And the virtual coin from Duchess and the +Buy from Market Square can allow you to improve your deck by buying other good cards, which in turn allows you to play Market Square and Duchess more often. ;)
I cede that Counterfeit has some synergy with Venture. That's been part of my arguments this whole time actually, and it's been part of the conversation from the very first post of the thread. But the small synergies between Counterfeit and Venture still mean nothing. I think silverspawn had it right in this post (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=12273.msg451095#msg451095).
And I stand by my original response to your original 3 points. Point 1 may indicate synergy, but it's so small as to not be worth talking about. Point 2 still does not read as synergy; the fact that both are Treasure does not make the sum greater than its parts. And point 3 has nothing to do with Venture at all. You've since argued that it's about reliability and frequency of play, but that concept is not there in the original point.
Jomini. Dude. You're arguing with people way smarter at this game than you, and being kind of rude about it as well. Swallow your pride. It 'tis a game.
Also, if there are any mods reading this, I'd like this thread to be closed. I don't want to inspire any sort of fights around here.
I appreciate the sentiment, but it's fine. Despite some minor name calling, I don't think it's been toxic. I don't think the thread needs to be closed. I don't know about jomini, but my blood is not boiling. It's nice to get into a big debate about Dominion once in a while, because otherwise I'm just hanging around in a Dominion Strategy Forum to post gifs in the Random Stuff thread. :P I respect the stuff that jomini contributes from time to time; I just think his first post in this thread was really, really poorly written. It ballooned weirdly from there, but I go with the flow.
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What I take "combo" to mean is "more than the sum of its parts"
That is exactly what a combo is. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. Village/Smithy fits and so is a combo. It's simply a common, obvious combo. We can distinguish that by calling it "common" or "obvious," contrasted with say "rare" or "subtle" combos.
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We can distinguish that by calling it "common" or "obvious," contrasted with say "rare" or "subtle" combos.
This community should co-opt the phrase "wombo combo" for this purpose.
"Dude, I pulled off this sick wombo combo last night.
"Yeah? Was it with Fox and Captain Falcon?"
"No, it was with Hermit and Market Square."
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I find it funny that when we were halfway through Page 1 of this thread, I considered replying further but thought to myself..
"Nah, I shouldn't bother, Counterfeit/Venture is way too small of a synergy to warrant further posts, I'll just ignore and let the thread die off"
Ahem.
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I'd classify Village/Smithy as being one example of a "generic combo"; the crucial factors that make the two cards work well together are that Village has +2 Actions and that Smithy has +3 Cards. You can replace Village with any other +2 Actions card and Smithy with any other +3 Cards card, and the cards will still go well together.
This is different from the specific combos such as Native Village/Bridge, Hermit/Market Square and Coppersmith/Counting House, where the combo relies on features that only the specific cards mentioned in it have.
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This is different from the specific combos such as Native Village/Bridge, Hermit/Market Square and Coppersmith/Counting House, where the combo relies on features that only the specific cards mentioned in it have.
I believe you meant to say, "wombo combos."
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I believe you meant to say, "wombo combos."
Ah, Smash Bros. A good game. With good combos. Wombo Combos. I have SSB4 for the 3DS if anyone wants to take me on.
I think this thread should be generally ignored now.
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I cede that Counterfeit has some synergy with Venture. That's been part of my arguments this whole time actually, and it's been part of the conversation from the very first post of the thread. But the small synergies between Counterfeit and Venture still mean nothing. I think silverspawn had it right in this post.
And I stand by my original response to your original 3 points. Point 1 may indicate synergy, but it's so small as to not be worth talking about. Point 2 still does not read as synergy; the fact that both are Treasure does not make the sum greater than its parts. And point 3 has nothing to do with Venture at all. You've since argued that it's about reliability and frequency of play, but that concept is not there in the original point.
The small synergies basically come up when you are asking the question "Which of these copper trashers do I use?" Compared to something similar, like say Junk dealer, Counterfeit is pretty strong for Venture decks. Likewise, if I'm weighing "Do I build a Venture deck or do I build a traditional engine" then in close cases the synergies may come up. Both of these specific cases are necessarily rare.
However, on most boards you will have competing components. Do I want my +buy to be Herbalist or Nomad camp? Do I want my draw to be Journeyman or Catacombs? Do I want my trasher to be Counterfeit or Junk dealer? This type of question comes up extremely often. So how do we answer that question?
What has the most marginal improvement.
So for Journeyman vs Catacombs, we want to look at what else we are doing. Both can let me skip some estates/coppers, but Catacombs can become a late game bonus estates if I have a Hermit I'm using to stock up on Hamlets. Or Journeyman can work a bit better if I'm not really interested in drawing my coppers (e.g. I'm building a Hop engine). Journeyman doesn't combo with Hop, but it has a bit more synergy than Catacombs.
Most games are not just a race to buy the combo cards as fast as luck allows. Most games, among skilled players, are about the weaker synergies and timing.
So this has been my point throughout, there is some small synergy between Venture and Counterfeit. It is a mostly useless "combo", but the process of deciding "Which of these copper trashers do I want with Venture?" is a specific case of "Which of [functional category] do I want with [dominant card(s)]?" - just like "Which [village] do I want with [Torturer]?"
So what do we actually do for this uncommon case? Well what is out on the board? Okay I want copper trashing for my Venture. Do I take Junk dealer or Counterfeit? Well, is there other +buy? If there is, how many of them can I realistically get? How often will I draw them at end game when I want flexibility from +buy? Will Junk dealer (and any other cards like +buy) conflict or work well with my Venture enabler (e.g. Warehouse in a Colony deck)? Will the ability to cannibalize my treasures at the end give me more end game flexibility.
Far from being "not mattering" it is exactly this sort of question that impacts a lot of strategy - like say every near mirror game ever played. Sure, I guess there is the odd soul who comes here instead of reading the Wiki looking for the well known and mostly blindingly obvious stuff (once you've played a couple of hundred games). But the small stuff does matter and is around thirdly important compared to shuffle luck and timing questions.
Again, I defer to stronger players who have said as much.
Ehh this highly overrated; strong players so rarely have matches of equal skill that their innate skill (particularly with respect to tacit understanding of timing) normally trumps a huge amount of card interaction. Elite players will typically play well & win even when they intentionally play weaker strategies. Stronger players evaluation of cards need to based in actual syllogistic logic if we are to truly know that it is the strategy that informs this, rather than just their non-strategic preferences coupled with extremely strong tacit knowledge.
Regardless, I'm still asking an open question: you have a 5/3 opening (Baker buried in a useless Bm deck) - you have Venture/Moneylender/Counterfeit/Trade Route/Junk dealer - what do you open? Is it Venture/Trade route (to trash out the coppers & estates while buying Ventures with ever 5? Is Moneylender/Silver & save the coin (for your next $4 and then buy a Venture) your option? I'm pretty confident the best move is Counterfeit/Silver and then buy Ventures while trashing coppers, but I'd be curious to here if you will go to the mat on the price conflict thing.
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So this has been my point throughout, there is some small synergy between Venture and Counterfeit.
And my point throughout has been that the relevant synergies were mostly covered by posts before yours, and that your points did not say what you have been arguing that they said. I never said that there weren't small synergies. Just that the ones that really mattered had already been stated.
Most games are not just a race to buy the combo cards as fast as luck allows. Most games, among skilled players, are about the weaker synergies and timing.
Far from being "not mattering" it is exactly this sort of question that impacts a lot of strategy - like say every near mirror game ever played. Sure, I guess there is the odd soul who comes here instead of reading the Wiki looking for the well known and mostly blindingly obvious stuff (once you've played a couple of hundred games). But the small stuff does matter and is around thirdly important compared to shuffle luck and timing questions.
Ehh this highly overrated; strong players so rarely have matches of equal skill that their innate skill (particularly with respect to tacit understanding of timing) normally trumps a huge amount of card interaction.
You seem to have some contradictions here. Among weaker players, small synergies will matter less because they'll be trumped by the various mistakes they make, or if one player just happens to recognize a big combo that another misses. I'm pretty sure you said as much previously, that these smaller synergies matter more at higher level play, when the little things count. And this is why I defer to stronger players on that.
Moreover, I agree that innate skill (e.g. with timing and tracking) trumps those tiny card interactions that you write essays about. That is why it is far more useful for developing players to focus on improving those things, rather than scratch out the tiniest synergies.
Regardless, I'm still asking an open question: you have a 5/3 opening (Baker buried in a useless Bm deck) - you have Venture/Moneylender/Counterfeit/Trade Route/Junk dealer - what do you open? Is it Venture/Trade route (to trash out the coppers & estates while buying Ventures with ever 5? Is Moneylender/Silver & save the coin (for your next $4 and then buy a Venture) your option? I'm pretty confident the best move is Counterfeit/Silver and then buy Ventures while trashing coppers, but I'd be curious to here if you will go to the mat on the price conflict thing.
What's the rest of the board? In all likelihood, those other 4 cards will have a better strategy than just Venture, especially with the abundant trashing options. This is especially true because you're including Black Market. You brush it off as a "useless" BM deck, but if the board has no better payload than Venture, the BM deck almost certainly has multiple cards worth shooting for.
If the best strategy really does center on Venture, I think I would go for Moneylender/Silver and save the coin token, using it to win the Venture split later. Moneylender is as good as Counterfeit for trashing Copper. Counterfeit has the edge in that it has +Buy (not as useful early on, since the primary target is $5) and doesn't require an action (not important if there are no other terminals you want to play).
Venture can draw Counterfeit, but this does not matter early on. Even with Counterfeit, your Venture is more likely to draw a Copper anyway, just like mine. I can pick up a Counterfeit after the Ventures are gone, if I really want one. Gold or even Duchy might be better though, at that point.
But that really does sound a bit ridiculous to me. I'd expect a Black Market engine to be way better, or else something with the 4 unspecified cards in the kingdom.
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Here's an open question for you. If Baker isn't conveniently in the Black Market, are you really going to hold off on Moneylender and spend your first $5 on Counterfeit?
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Here's an open question for you. If Baker isn't conveniently in the Black Market, are you really going to hold off on Moneylender and spend your first $5 on Counterfeit?
4/3 open Moneylender/Silver
5/2 open Counterfeit/[useful $2 like Haven or nothing]
For a Venture deck, early copper trashing is much better than later copper trashing. As I said previously, and you disagreed with, the big reason Moneylender works better is that you can more reliably open it; the only reason I bury the Baker coin is to remove starting hand variance without having to wade through the inevitable about the (quite correct) fact that Counterfeit/Baker is likely a better go than Counterfeit/Venture. I could hold out for for spending my first $5 on Counterfeit, but I'm not sure where we'd find a $4 that I think is strong enough to go it then Counterfeit but not so strong you'd skip Moneylender. Would you go Smithy or not? I'd be inclined to give Smithy/Counterfeit/Venture a go for fast cycling & fast copper trashing if we have Colonies in play.
This let's me clear out the final coppers faster, avoid having a truly dead card, and have the option to say trash out instead of a copper when I'd otherwise just be drawing $8. With a longer time horizon, I'd be fairly confident that skipping Moneylender is worth the risk of missing $5 on T3-T4 for better odds & more options later. Even if I do drop a 6-4 split, I'm still sitting pretty nice with Plats.
And my point throughout has been that the relevant synergies were mostly covered by posts before yours, and that your points did not say what you have been arguing that they said. I never said that there weren't small synergies. Just that the ones that really mattered had already been stated.
Your point throughout has been, "Most of these things aren't special synergies; they are just things that are true about each card individually. The only one that seems OK is the last point (Counterfeit can trash Copper in hand when drawn by Venture), but I wouldn't really call that a special synergy."
And throughout my point has been that these are small synergies of the type we most commonly face when have to make actual decisions in game.
You seem to have some contradictions here. Among weaker players, small synergies will matter less because they'll be trumped by the various mistakes they make, or if one player just happens to recognize a big combo that another misses. I'm pretty sure you said as much previously, that these smaller synergies matter more at higher level play, when the little things count. And this is why I defer to stronger players on that.
No, I have been very specific about these things. Among skilled play - where there is no unskilled play - small synergies and weighting cards for small synergies matters. If you take the top 10 players at Dominion and play matched hand tournaments, my guess is that game outcomes will be determined by:
1. Shuffle luck.
2. Timing choices.
3. Small synergy choices.
Shuffle luck one cannot learn. Timing choices are very hard to explicate - we've all seen times where optimal timing looks screwy as all get out - and not really easy to learn even if you just play a lot.
Strong players rarely have equal opponents, so yes if there is a bias towards certain playstyles among the elite, we will see them winning a lot of games even if their preferences shave a percentage point or two off their deck strength. When you have huge skill disparities, actual value of cards is much diminished in its utility. This should not surprise us - how rarely have long, long played cards stayed in the same ranking slots on the annual lists? If highly skilled players really did know actual card valuations down cold just from play, then those rankings should not change nor have significant deviation between top ranked players.
So yes, when discussing anything that improves the strength of you deck by less than, arbitrarily, 10% you just aren't going to see it in statistics from strong players. You are also going to have a real devil of a time sorting out if this is a preference which strong player skill overcomes or if the small effect is really of the magnitude that gut instinct tells strong players. Part of "it depends on the board" is learning how to make ranked order evaluations of things that are close, but not quite the same. Moneylender & Counterfeit are both copper trashers that act like Silver - when is one better than the other? It helps to consider small synergies - like how Moneylender works better (albeit still a bit less than normal during build up) with Wandering Minstrel than Counterfeit.
It is all well and good to say that learning the game should focus on major combos, timing, and the like ... but honestly most of the big combos have been flogged to death and there isn't any real strategy there anymore (barring the odd stuff like Hermit/Market Square). I wish we had more timing articles, but those are the sorts of things that tend to be hard to really quantify.
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4/3 open Moneylender/Silver
5/2 open Counterfeit/[useful $2 like Haven or nothing]
For a Venture deck, early copper trashing is much better than later copper trashing. As I said previously, and you disagreed with, the big reason Moneylender works better is that you can more reliably open it; the only reason I bury the Baker coin is to remove starting hand variance without having to wade through the inevitable about the (quite correct) fact that Counterfeit/Baker is likely a better go than Counterfeit/Venture. I could hold out for for spending my first $5 on Counterfeit, but I'm not sure where we'd find a $4 that I think is strong enough to go it then Counterfeit but not so strong you'd skip Moneylender. Would you go Smithy or not? I'd be inclined to give Smithy/Counterfeit/Venture a go for fast cycling & fast copper trashing if we have Colonies in play.
This let's me clear out the final coppers faster, avoid having a truly dead card, and have the option to say trash out instead of a copper when I'd otherwise just be drawing $8. With a longer time horizon, I'd be fairly confident that skipping Moneylender is worth the risk of missing $5 on T3-T4 for better odds & more options later. Even if I do drop a 6-4 split, I'm still sitting pretty nice with Plats.
When did I disagree that Moneylender can be opened more reliably?
If Smithy is available, Venture is not my top priority. I'd probably get a second Smithy and maybe a second Counterfeit before any Ventures, with Ventures after that being a consolation prize at $5 with nothing better to get.
But really, with Black Market, there is probably an engine to play.
Your point throughout has been, "Most of these things aren't special synergies; they are just things that are true about each card individually. The only one that seems OK is the last point (Counterfeit can trash Copper in hand when drawn by Venture), but I wouldn't really call that a special synergy."
And throughout my point has been that these are small synergies of the type we most commonly face when have to make actual decisions in game.
I refer you once again to your first post in this thread. That post was not about synergies between Venture and Counterfeit, big or small. What you wrote there is not what you have been arguing since. So yeah, most of those things weren't special synergies, they were just things that are true about each card individually.
And yeah, these small synergies that we've since discussed are not special. They are small and make very little difference in actual competitive play. As other players have said and you yourself have admitted, Venture-Counterfeit is not actually a thing.
No, I have been very specific about these things. Among skilled play - where there is no unskilled play - small synergies and weighting cards for small synergies matters. If you take the top 10 players at Dominion and play matched hand tournaments, my guess is that game outcomes will be determined by:
1. Shuffle luck.
2. Timing choices.
3. Small synergy choices.
Shuffle luck one cannot learn. Timing choices are very hard to explicate - we've all seen times where optimal timing looks screwy as all get out - and not really easy to learn even if you just play a lot.
You said that it is "highly overrated" regarding deference to stronger players. So what's that supposed to mean? I took it to mean that you wouldn't trust stronger players regarding these small synergies. This is in contradiction to the point that the small synergies are how top players distinguish themselves. If that is not what you meant, then my point (of deferring to those stronger players) stands.
Strong players rarely have equal opponents, so yes if there is a bias towards certain playstyles among the elite, we will see them winning a lot of games even if their preferences shave a percentage point or two off their deck strength. When you have huge skill disparities, actual value of cards is much diminished in its utility. This should not surprise us - how rarely have long, long played cards stayed in the same ranking slots on the annual lists? If highly skilled players really did know actual card valuations down cold just from play, then those rankings should not change nor have significant deviation between top ranked players.
I'm not sure of the relevance of this paragraph. The rankings change for many reasons:
1. There are still new cards. Guilds has only been available for one of Qvist's lists so far, so it hasn't fully shaken out. Those new cards also affect how older cards rank.
2. Qvist's lists also include weaker players and players who didn't submit their rankings before.
3. Even top players continue to improve their game. It is not a static thing.
The rankings between top players may differ because they personally value different
things when ranking the cards, like how often a card is good vs. how amazing a card is when it is good. And what they value more for ranking can change over time.
So yes, when discussing anything that improves the strength of you deck by less than, arbitrarily, 10% you just aren't going to see it in statistics from strong players. You are also going to have a real devil of a time sorting out if this is a preference which strong player skill overcomes or if the small effect is really of the magnitude that gut instinct tells strong players. Part of "it depends on the board" is learning how to make ranked order evaluations of things that are close, but not quite the same. Moneylender & Counterfeit are both copper trashers that act like Silver - when is one better than the other? It helps to consider small synergies - like how Moneylender works better (albeit still a bit less than normal during build up) with Wandering Minstrel than Counterfeit.
We're not looking at statistics from top players here, just opinions. Counterfeit-Venture is not a thing, and the small synergies you've been pushing just don't matter in real game situations.
It is all well and good to say that learning the game should focus on major combos, timing, and the like ... but honestly most of the big combos have been flogged to death and there isn't any real strategy there anymore (barring the odd stuff like Hermit/Market Square). I wish we had more timing articles, but those are the sorts of things that tend to be hard to really quantify.
There are plenty of synergies that aren't big combos while still not being of tiny significance. There are plenty of little things top players do that actually matter. There are plenty of little things worth considering. You talk about them plenty of times. This was not one of those times. :P
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When did I disagree that Moneylender can be opened more reliably?
[/quote]
"Transmute, Stonemason... these cards are not strong, early Copper trashers. Why not compare to the ones you've already mentioned? Chapel? Steward? If I look to these actual competitive cards, Counterfeit is one of the weaker Copper trashers for Venture because it competes with Venture at $5. The conflict between Moneylender and a terminal X matters far less than the conflict between the two treasures at $5."
"The bigger issue, by far, is that Moneylender can be an opening buy all the time while Counterfeit is most often T3/T4 and that may require a sliver purchase.
"
"Again [previous deferral was towards a negative assessment], I defer to stronger players who have said as much."
You have consistently held that the major reason Moneylender, a pretty much objectively weaker copper trasher, works better/more often is that it doesn't compete for Venture buys. I have held, consistently, that the biggest issue is that I can open Moneylender always and Counterfeit has to wait until T3/T4 most games.
If Smithy is available, Venture is not my top priority. I'd probably get a second Smithy and maybe a second Counterfeit before any Ventures, with Ventures after that being a consolation prize at $5 with nothing better to get.
For a game with Colonies out? Because my priorities would be Counterfeit -> Smithy -> Plat. With Counterfeit often able to double play Silvers, I can pretty quickly expect to nab Venture every hand and Plat most Smithy hands. A second Smithy doesn't add much here.
But really, with Black Market, there is probably an engine to play.
Why do you keep doing this? We all know that a typical Bm deck has enough villages/draw/payload to build at least a decent engine; I wanted the Baker coin so I could ask you a question about your preferences without getting bogged down in the question of how valuable the trashing is for opening vs second shuffle. Nobody here is an idiot and doesn't know how to play a Bm board.
So because I can't seem to get you to straightforwardly engage with the questions: the black market consists of Transmute, Gardens, Rats, Farmland, Scout, Great Hall, Sab, Silk Road, Possession, Vineyard, Tunnel, Fool's Gold, Peddler, Treasure Map, Talisman, Thief, Stash, Chancellor, Moat, Secret Chamber, Coppersmith, Pearl Diver, Duchess, Duke, and Baker
I refer you once again to your first post in this thread. That post was not about synergies between Venture and Counterfeit, big or small. What you wrote there is not what you have been arguing since. So yeah, most of those things weren't special synergies, they were just things that are true about each card individually.
"There is a small bit of additional synergy:"
Remind me again about how this is not about synergies big or small? Sure I had assumed that after delineating in the first line item that it would be clear we were talking about a type of deck where Venture is assumed to be good; hence stuff like A synergizes with B, B synergizes with C, therefor A synergizes with C would be obvious.
Now sure, I didn't go into great length about minor points, but the fact of the matter is that when Venture is strong, Counterfeit is among the strongest copper trashers - it gets played disproportionately often and it gives you flexibility - both what else can be thrown into the Venture deck (e.g. terminal draw) and what you can do at end-game (it more often than most other comparable options will give you a +buy).
Since then you've have decided that because these things happen with all treasures, they aren't "special synergies"; even though the Venture case is one where you have precisely the definition of synergy (total more than the sum of its parts). That is what I don't understand; I have always been talking about how if a Venture deck is a given, then this stuff pushes you to pick counterfeit over other options.
This will show up in 1/10,000 games, so you can ignore the specific card interactions and have really, really minimal impact on your play. Of course, you can completely ignore Stash/Chancellor (or Stash/Scavenger), Market Square/Hermit, Pstone/Herbalist, and Tactician/Bm (or Outpost sometimes) ... and it would effect <1% of your games too. The thing I do think is important is being able to approach a board where you have choices between cards that do close to the same thing. When is Treasury going to be stronger than Baker & vice versa? When is Rabble going to be stronger than Journeyman and vice versa? This going to depend a lot on stuff like card type (e.g. Rabble is a lot worse when the opponent is using Horse Traders a decent bit), how frequently will you get benefit from the secondary effects on the card (e.g. when will Rabble top deck green vs when will Journeyman skip dross), and which works best with other enablers for whatever your real payload is? Walking through these sorts of interactions does make you a better player; saying "meh all the copper trashers are the same" does not. I know you do this sort of thing when you read a real kingdom, I don't know why you can't get over your inability to see that Venture/Counterfeit is a rare specific instance of a general procedure.
You said that it is "highly overrated" regarding deference to stronger players. So what's that supposed to mean? I took it to mean that you wouldn't trust stronger players regarding these small synergies. This is in contradiction to the point that the small synergies are how top players distinguish themselves. If that is not what you meant, then my point (of deferring to those stronger players) stands.
When I've had these arguments about specific cards in the past, I've just played people and just about always the card interactions play out as logic dictates. But they are generally stronger Dominion players than me. How can they be stronger, but objectively wrong about the strength of card interactions they rarely see?
Largely because below a certain threshold it rarely matters to them. Their tacit knowledge is enough to carry them through unequal play and their tacit knowledge is often enough to pick out the small synergies without explicitly knowing they are doing it. Superb tactical play, which most of the regulars on this board manage routinely, does wonders even when you play a suboptimal strategy. As the gap in player skill increases, the relative strength of the cards played has less and less predictive power.
And yeah, these small synergies that we've since discussed are not special. They are small and make very little difference in actual competitive play. As other players have said and you yourself have admitted, Venture-Counterfeit is not actually a thing.
I still have no idea what makes something "special", you last attempt was pretty much useless. Are these "small synergies"? Yes. Does this example matter in competitive play, not really, but mostly because Venture is just that weak (you need a really constrained board to make a go of it). Does the ability to pick out small synergies when deciding between villages or between draw? Yes.
You said that it is "highly overrated" regarding deference to stronger players. So what's that supposed to mean? I took it to mean that you wouldn't trust stronger players regarding these small synergies. This is in contradiction to the point that the small synergies are how top players distinguish themselves. If that is not what you meant, then my point (of deferring to those stronger players) stands.
I don't trust them to explicitly know them. This is born out by past experiences. A lot of good players don't see small synergies or undervalue them, yet play them in practice. When they specifically talk about the actual value of things that show up in <1% of games, they are quite often wrong explicitly. Basically, people play better than they talk.
1. There are still new cards. Guilds has only been available for one of Qvist's lists so far, so it hasn't fully shaken out. Those new cards also affect how older cards rank.
And this would be a demonstration of fallacious player thinking. The vast majority of boards for any random old card will not contain a new card that significantly changes its strength (e.g. adding Masterpiece a Goons board doesn't do a lot to Goons' ranking). Rank ordering for the old cards should be largely unchanged by the mere addition of 13 cards. Players are often much better with their tacit knowledge (the skill they have at playing they cannot articulate) than with their explicit knowledge.
2. Qvist's lists also include weaker players and players who didn't submit their rankings before.
a. People on this board are very, very rarely weak players. The worst person who reads the board is likely on the stronger side of the dominion population.
b. We are talking some serious movement. Iw went up 17 places last year. Even if every single new ranker moved Iw up, that doesn't explain everything here.
3. Even top players continue to improve their game. It is not a static thing.
Yeah, but like, of virtually every other strategy game ever, the incremental improvements tend to be ever smaller and smaller. We are not yet seeing that with the cards.
The rankings between top players may differ because they personally value different
things when ranking the cards, like how often a card is good vs. how amazing a card is when it is good. And what they value more for ranking can change over time.
Indeed, which is why when a top player says "meh this doesn't matter", I'm not inclined to write the matter off. I've seen people change their tunes too often. You need to be able to say why this doesn't matter. Now sure in this particular case, Venture is weak enough that you really won't play this much ever, but the change in deck strength of going this instead of say Junk dealer/Venture is going to be of a magnitude that similar improvements with other cards on other boards would have significant impact. Again this is a particular case of a general set.
We're not looking at statistics from top players here, just opinions. Counterfeit-Venture is not a thing, and the small synergies you've been pushing just don't matter in real game situations.
We are looking at the recall and anticipation of top players, which shockingly tend to reflect their statistical experience.
So yes, I don't think this is one of those synergies that determines boards. Counterfeit is very, very rarely going to be a reason to go Venture. Venture will push you to go Counterfeit on those rare boards where Venture is good and you have other options for copper trashing.
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(http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lno2bdHupQ1qhaak6.jpg)
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Wow.
Just....... Wow.
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You have consistently held that the major reason Moneylender, a pretty much objectively weaker copper trasher, works better/more often is that it doesn't compete for Venture buys. I have held, consistently, that the biggest issue is that I can open Moneylender always and Counterfeit has to wait until T3/T4 most games.
I don't think those considerations are conflicting. The point is, you still open with Moneylender rather than waiting for Counterfeit, and Counterfeit is not a card that pushes you to a Venture strategy.
For a game with Colonies out? Because my priorities would be Counterfeit -> Smithy -> Plat. With Counterfeit often able to double play Silvers, I can pretty quickly expect to nab Venture every hand and Plat most Smithy hands. A second Smithy doesn't add much here.
Yes, I absolutely expect a second Smithy and a second Counterfeit to do more than the first Venture. Your priorities list doesn't even mention Venture. Smithy is better early on when you haven't finished trashing out the Coppers.
Why do you keep doing this? We all know that a typical Bm deck has enough villages/draw/payload to build at least a decent engine; I wanted the Baker coin so I could ask you a question about your preferences without getting bogged down in the question of how valuable the trashing is for opening vs second shuffle. Nobody here is an idiot and doesn't know how to play a Bm board.
So because I can't seem to get you to straightforwardly engage with the questions: the black market consists of Transmute, Gardens, Rats, Farmland, Scout, Great Hall, Sab, Silk Road, Possession, Vineyard, Tunnel, Fool's Gold, Peddler, Treasure Map, Talisman, Thief, Stash, Chancellor, Moat, Secret Chamber, Coppersmith, Pearl Diver, Duchess, Duke, and Baker
I am pointing it out because you are going to such great lengths to contrive this scenario. This is like that 0.01% of games that you yourself mentioned before. And hey, I did straightforwardly answer the question already. Did you skip that part?
"There is a small bit of additional synergy:"
Remind me again about how this is not about synergies big or small? Sure I had assumed that after delineating in the first line item that it would be clear we were talking about a type of deck where Venture is assumed to be good; hence stuff like A synergizes with B, B synergizes with C, therefor A synergizes with C would be obvious.
Here:
Point 1 may indicate synergy, but it's so small as to not be worth talking about. Point 2 still does not read as synergy; the fact that both are Treasure does not make the sum greater than its parts. And point 3 has nothing to do with Venture at all. You've since argued that it's about reliability and frequency of play, but that concept is not there in the original point.
I don't know how much clearer that can be. The third point isn't even a matter of opinion. It is clearly about Counterfeit alone.
This will show up in 1/10,000 games, so you can ignore the specific card interactions and have really, really minimal impact on your play. Of course, you can completely ignore Stash/Chancellor (or Stash/Scavenger), Market Square/Hermit, Pstone/Herbalist, and Tactician/Bm (or Outpost sometimes) ... and it would effect <1% of your games too.
All those things are actually combos. They are in an entirely different class than Counterfeit+Venture.
The thing I do think is important is being able to approach a board where you have choices between cards that do close to the same thing. When is Treasury going to be stronger than Baker & vice versa? When is Rabble going to be stronger than Journeyman and vice versa? This going to depend a lot on stuff like card type (e.g. Rabble is a lot worse when the opponent is using Horse Traders a decent bit), how frequently will you get benefit from the secondary effects on the card (e.g. when will Rabble top deck green vs when will Journeyman skip dross), and which works best with other enablers for whatever your real payload is? Walking through these sorts of interactions does make you a better player; saying "meh all the copper trashers are the same" does not. I know you do this sort of thing when you read a real kingdom, I don't know why you can't get over your inability to see that Venture/Counterfeit is a rare specific instance of a general procedure.
Because it is poorly done in this case. Let's go back to that toy kingdom you asked about. We assume that Venture is the key to this kingdom. This is a stretch already, but we'll go with it. I am choosing between Trade Route, Moneylender, Counterfeit and Junk Dealer. Trade Route is such a weak trasher that it can be easily tossed out in the face of the other options. Counterfeit and Junk Dealer both cost $5. Counterfeit has +Buy and more flexibility while Junk Dealer's main advantage is that it can trash Estates/Shelters. The choice between those two will depend on the other cards. With Venture in mind specifically, the advantage of trashing Estates isn't as big, so Counterfeit wins out. But Moneylender only costs $4 so the coin token can be saved to help win the Venture split. And as previously explained, Moneylender does pretty much as well as Counterfeit in the early game, so that makes it the better choice IMO.
All the small synergies you've posted about in this thread are dwarfed by other considerations.
When I've had these arguments about specific cards in the past, I've just played people and just about always the card interactions play out as logic dictates. But they are generally stronger Dominion players than me. How can they be stronger, but objectively wrong about the strength of card interactions they rarely see?
Largely because below a certain threshold it rarely matters to them. Their tacit knowledge is enough to carry them through unequal play and their tacit knowledge is often enough to pick out the small synergies without explicitly knowing they are doing it. Superb tactical play, which most of the regulars on this board manage routinely, does wonders even when you play a suboptimal strategy. As the gap in player skill increases, the relative strength of the cards played has less and less predictive power.
Am I reading correctly here that you consider yourself better than stronger players, and that they only beat you because of their better tactical play? It all sounds a bit arrogant. (Note: I see you clarified this a bit later on.)
I still have no idea what makes something "special", you last attempt was pretty much useless. Are these "small synergies"? Yes. Does this example matter in competitive play, not really, but mostly because Venture is just that weak (you need a really constrained board to make a go of it). Does the ability to pick out small synergies when deciding between villages or between draw? Yes.
I can agree with all of this. Which is why I don't understand why you've pushed so hard on this. I said previously that "special" here just means that it's worth consideration. And you say, right in this paragraph, that this is not really worth consideration in competitive play. So... yeah. This is it. This is what I've been saying.
I don't trust them to explicitly know them. This is born out by past experiences. A lot of good players don't see small synergies or undervalue them, yet play them in practice. When they specifically talk about the actual value of things that show up in <1% of games, they are quite often wrong explicitly. Basically, people play better than they talk.
Eh. OK, but I don't really agree. I mean, for this thread specifically, the conclusion that I am deferring to is actually the same you one that you yourself have just drawn -- that this example does not really matter in competitive play.
Rankings...
The insertion of 13 new cards changes rank, by definition. If I rank a new card #1, everything else shifts down. :P
There are plenty of players who are new to the board and have not yet improved. Remember when silverspawn argued vehemently that Lookout was the best trasher? Good times.
Regarding Ironworks, one possibility is that a lot of Dark Ages cards (new in the 2013 rankings) were overrated. Just skimming the list, I count at least 8 Dark Ages cards that pushed Ironworks down. As some of those went down, Ironworks went back up. Considering that, the jump for Ironworks is not as big.
Moreover, Dark Ages added a lot of cards that were better for engines. This, in turn, makes Ironworks better, since it excels at picking up cheap engine components.
But I think most of the movement is due to more players, and more players getting better. Also keep in mind that all the (relatively) weaker players from previous rankings are improving as well.
So yes, I don't think this is one of those synergies that determines boards. Counterfeit is very, very rarely going to be a reason to go Venture. Venture will push you to go Counterfeit on those rare boards where Venture is good and you have other options for copper trashing.
Agreed on the first part, not as much on the second. Already explicated above in discussion on your scenario. But you may disagree, since it sounds like you prefer Counterfeit over Moneylender. C'est la vie.
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(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/8/8d/Sea_Hag.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Sea Hag) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/c/c4/Tournament.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Tournament) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/9/9e/Young_Witch.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Young Witch) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/2/28/Counterfeit.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Counterfeit) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/8/8e/Mine.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Mine) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/e/ef/Venture.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Venture)
(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/f/fb/Embargo.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Embargo) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/4/4f/Lighthouse.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Lighthouse) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/f/f7/Develop.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Develop) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/5/50/Death_Cart.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Death Cart) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/9/93/Ironmonger.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Ironmonger)
My opponent bought Develop, then embargoed Develop and then Province.
So I thought, what can I do on this board that is tolerant of buying provinces with a curse? Counterfeit + Venture for 5 provinces on T16.
Log: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150301/log.50babbafe4b05a8d74969537.1425229435307.txt
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Nice! I think it's funny he embargoed Develop though.
Followers and YW seem irrelevant with Lightouse. I think you were right to go with a more heavy Econ game.