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Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: werothegreat on May 19, 2015, 09:35:30 pm

Title: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: werothegreat on May 19, 2015, 09:35:30 pm
My, how the time flies!  This week we're taking a look at... Inn!

(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/1/1f/Inn.jpg)

Starting questions:
* Do you ever not shuffle in all Actions in your discard pile?
* When is the best time to gain an Inn?
* How does it compare to Lost City?
* Who wants to spend a weekend in that picture?
* Overall, is it an inn-teresting card?  *winks obnoxiously*
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: eHalcyon on May 19, 2015, 09:55:02 pm
Quote
* Do you ever not shuffle in all Actions in your discard pile?

Of course.

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* When is the best time to gain an Inn?

When there are a bunch of actions in the discard that you want to stack in your deck.  This will usually be just before the next reshuffle, when most of your deck is in your discard.

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* How does it compare to Lost City?

It's not really a useful comparison.  LC is a powerful village with an on-gain penalty.  Inn is a weak village with an on-gain benefit.

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* Who wants to spend a weekend in that picture?

brokoli

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* Overall, is it an inn-teresting card?  *winks obnoxiously*

:|



Other notes:

Inn's on-gain is less useful if you already have a strong, reliable engine.  If you are playing everything anyway, it doesn't put anything into your deck.  OTOH, it can be critical if you just need that one perfect turn to close out the game.  Timing is key though.

After it's in your deck, it's pretty weak as a village because it lowers your hand size.  It can still be useful if you don't mind (or actually want) the lower hand size, or if you need a splitter and there is no other, or if there are key cards that are worth sifting for.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: belugawhale on May 19, 2015, 10:44:56 pm
Inn general (pun intended), you will buy/gain Inn for its on-gain effect, since its on-play effect is weak for its cost (think Nomad Camp). I personally haven't played much with Inn, but it is useful for sifting and as a village. Beware reshuffles, because I have misused its effect to shuffle my half-built engine into my deck, and caused a reshuffle with all of my engine parts in my hand. :(
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: Awaclus on May 19, 2015, 10:49:08 pm
(pun intended)

Would you say that it was inntentional?
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: pacovf on May 19, 2015, 11:22:55 pm
If Inn is your only splitter, you might want to use its on-buy effect before you reach the end of your deck. Otherwise Inn will send back to the discard all those juicy Action cards it just stacked for you.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: RobertJ on May 20, 2015, 05:34:17 am
As eHalcyon already said, the on-gain effect is less useful if you already have a strong, reliable engine. Given that you don't have this, Inn is particularly useful on boards where you want to play multiples of some action in a turn. For example in a sloggy Goons kingdom, Inn may be the best way of getting a few multiple Goons turns.

A couple of tactical points (both rather obvious but they have caught me out before):   

- If you are buying Inn and other actions in the same turn then you probably want to buy the Inn last so you can shuffle your other actions in;
- Since Inn reduces your handsize, playing too many of them in a turn can be dangerous. In particular, be careful not to use your Inn to shuffle in too many Inns unless you've got some draw to go with them.


Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: brokoli on May 20, 2015, 06:24:04 am
Inn used to be a good avatar.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: Chris is me on May 20, 2015, 07:36:47 am
In my shitty opinion, the best way to think about Inn is that Inn is always best in decks when you have to line up particular Action cards with each other. This is obviously true for its on-gain effect, but also with how it plays as a sifting village.

On-gain, obviously you want to buy it near the end of a shuffle if possible, and you want to shuffle in Actions that you want to play together. You don't always want to shuffle all of them in; you want a good mix of each of the Actions you want to combine with each other, you want about one Village per terminal, etc. This is usually just common sense though.

Once it's in your deck, it king of plays like Warehouse, but it enables combos. You use it to find the cards you *must* pair together to make your deck work; maybe the King's Court and the Bridge, or maybe you can sift to a Smithy to get a larger hand size. It's a pretty bleh regular Village, since it reduces your hand size, so you can't just have a ton of Inn (unless the Inns themselves are the targets of the discard effect), but it is functional in decks with slight Trashing and good draw, or no trashing and great draw. It's essentially like you played Village, then a Dungeon. Not the worst two things in the world to combine into one card, but the hand size reduction does hurt.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: DG on May 20, 2015, 09:37:18 am
Good with/against junking attacks so you see your good cards more often. Bad against the militia family.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: jomini on May 20, 2015, 09:52:03 am
The big thing with Inn is that it can shave a number of turns off where your engine might hit, but is not yet assured. I get the most mileage out dumping engine components once or twice into the top deck (even at the expense of getting a better $5 village like Bazaar). As such it tends to be a bit better when I already have a lead and I want to tamp down variance. Things like shuffle up Inn/Village/Smithy/Steward are quite powerful at cycling the deck and getting stuff trashed faster.

Inn is also better than a second Curser or Looter in the mid-game. Winning the Curse split 6-4 is a pretty big thing with limited/no trashing and absolutely huge if that is coupled with no +buy/+gain. A 2 VP swing when you can't gain more than one VP card a turn is effectively a duchy that cycles (which is not bad at all in mucked up decks like those circumstances). The question of do I get a second Witch or Inn the first one up twice is a bit difficult. If you can manage an engine, Inn is normally better, but if you can't somewhere around Curse 4 it tends to be better to go for the the Inn. Definitely if you only will use the curser once more, Inn is better and depending on setup, it might be better even if you expect to curse just twice more. Rarely is Inn a good call if you expect to curse 3 more times.

As a village itself, it gets better with stuff that likes cycling and makes draw have a low opportunity cost. Shuffing Lib/Inn to the top lets you draw a lot of good cards and have very high odds of pulling cards currently in play (like say an Expand) next turn as you Lib/Inn will let you have a search space of 11(9). Inn drop in hand size is actually beneficial when you really want its on gain ability (early engine setup where you need to cycle to power cards) and draw is cheap. If you can just spam simple draw (like Smithy) cheap, Inn isn't bad either. 2 Inns/2 Smithies will draw draw 10 and leave you with 7 cards; you can do quite well at quickly setting up an engine with Workshop/Inn/Smithy and quickly draw all cards.

Inn, like all cards with on-gain bonuses, gets better with scaling TfB. It makes excellent Remodel/Bishop/Apprentice fodder as it is a card costs $5, but doesn't play at $5 value (Inn without on-gain should definitely be sub-$5).

Inn has a rare niche in allowing you to set up an "engine" or combo deck in the midst of otherwise impossible bloat. Like all attempts at this (Wt, Scheme, etc.) this is normally weak. But something like University/Rabble/Inn can allow you to use a $5 to place half your Unis/Rabble into an empty top deck, play them and then gain an Inn to top deck the other half. Yes this means you need 2x as many components ... but it can allow you to go for some engine combo after your deck has been bloated (e.g. Ambassador in 4er). Inn is also good at enabling Countinghouse engines. Inn + Chouse + Cellar + 2 other actions means that you can ensure every turn begins with a bunch of copper bloat in the discard, you can draw 15 cards with Chouse, and then draw your real cards without too much trouble. Inn also helps in that its discard ability allows you to seed your discard with the cards you need for your next turn for this sort of thing. Yes it costs $5 (via a buy or a gain) to do this, but that isn't that bad if you can't make a strong "engine" any other way.

Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: ipofanes on May 20, 2015, 10:13:37 am
The use as a village, when drawn from an action-card enriched pile, is not to be underestimated.

Having to discard two possibly useful action cards at the start of the combo pours some water into the wine, of course.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: werothegreat on May 21, 2015, 06:37:07 pm
So just played a Skype game with AHoppy that had both Inn and Lost City, as well as Giant and Bridge Troll and Relic and Royal Carriage and Expedition... suffice it to say neither of us bought an Inn.  I considered it a couple times, but there was never a point where I had a bunch of Actions in my discard pile with my deck low, since I was drawing pretty much my entire deck every turn.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: swedenman on May 22, 2015, 01:16:42 am
Starting questions:
* Do you ever not shuffle in all Actions in your discard pile?
* When is the best time to gain an Inn?
* How does it compare to Lost City?
* Who wants to spend a weekend in that picture?
* Overall, is it an inn-teresting card?  *winks obnoxiously*

Unless it's like 2 or 3 actions, you should pretty much always take the time to think about which ones you want to reshuffle. Maybe if all of them are Labs or something then maybe, but I mean you still don't want to make them all miss the shuffle.

The best time to gain an Inn? Sometimes you just get it when you need a village, sometimes you just get it when you need a sifter. If you want it primarily for the on-gain effect, it's usually best towards the end of your shuffle, as you're more likely to draw all of those actions together and pull off a monster turn. Just be careful that you don't make them all miss the shuffle and get stuck a billion bad turns in a row. I've on a number of occasions bought an Inn towards the end of the game as a means to setting up a game-ending turn.

It doesn't really compare to Lost City except in the sense that they can both be used as villages. Overall I'd say Lost City is a much better card, but Inn's on-gain ability can be game-changing.

Sure, I'd spend a week there. I love how isolated it looks. Pretty spooky.

Overall, I think it's a super innteresting card. It's (I'm pretty sure) the only village-sifter, and I think that's a neat concept. I also really love the on-gain effect. Knowing how to use it properly has made the difference in quite a few games that I've played. Really neat card.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: ConMan on May 22, 2015, 02:06:43 am
Overall, I think it's a super innteresting card. It's (I'm pretty sure) the only village-sifter, and I think that's a neat concept.
Depends on if you count Hamlet, although Inn is obviously a better sifter in exchange for the lack of flexibility that Hamlet offers.

If I'm buying Inn for its on-gain, then I would typically be picky about what cards I shuffle back in. Ideally, I'd do it such that I'm near-guaranteed to get a hand that will start a strong engine turn (so best case is having an empty deck and putting a couple of Inns and a couple of strong drawing cards back).
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: pedroluchini on May 22, 2015, 04:25:42 am
How much would Inn cost if it didn't have the when-gain ability?
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: LastFootnote on May 22, 2015, 04:38:33 am
How much would Inn cost if it didn't have the when-gain ability?

$4. It didn't have the on-gain ability for a long time and that's how much it cost.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: swedenman on May 22, 2015, 10:50:13 am
Overall, I think it's a super innteresting card. It's (I'm pretty sure) the only village-sifter, and I think that's a neat concept.
Depends on if you count Hamlet, although Inn is obviously a better sifter in exchange for the lack of flexibility that Hamlet offers.

Oh yeah, I'd count Hamlet.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: Awaclus on May 22, 2015, 11:04:25 am
Hamlet is not a sifter, it only draws 1 card.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: werothegreat on May 22, 2015, 11:16:31 am
Please let's not have that debate again.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: swedenman on May 22, 2015, 12:56:31 pm
Hamlet is not a sifter, it only draws 1 card.

So it sifts 1 card. Warehouse sifts 3, Inn sifts 2. They all reduce handsize, and they all let you switch out some number of cards for others. What exactly is your definition of a sifter?
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: werothegreat on May 22, 2015, 01:05:34 pm
Hamlet is not a sifter, it only draws 1 card.

So it sifts 1 card. Warehouse sifts 3, Inn sifts 2. They all reduce handsize, and they all let you switch out some number of cards for others. What exactly is your definition of a sifter?

A sifter that sifts one card is not a very good sifter.  Additionally, Hamlet is really more of a discard-for-benefit card, especially since the discard is optional.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: DG on May 22, 2015, 01:08:05 pm
Hamlet is not a sifter, it only draws 1 card.

So it sifts 1 card. Warehouse sifts 3, Inn sifts 2. They all reduce handsize, and they all let you switch out some number of cards for others. What exactly is your definition of a sifter?

The hamlet doesn't give any improvement in the cards drawn, even compared to not having the hamlet at all.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: AdamH on May 22, 2015, 01:19:43 pm
It's still a useful comparison to make, though: Hamlet sifts one card compared to Necropolis or Shanty-Town-that-you-never-intend-to-trigger. This effect can help you choose between Hamlet and these other cards when both are available.

It's not the biggest deal in the world, yeah. It's not the most useful comparison in the world to make, yeah. But to say it isn't there and that it can't be viewed as sifting is incorrect and will be misleading in these circumstances. I won't be buying Hamlet just for the sifting ability because that's not actually good, but that doesn't make it worth not talking about or not categorizing it correctly.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: Awaclus on May 22, 2015, 01:24:44 pm
Hamlet is not a sifter, it only draws 1 card.

So it sifts 1 card. Warehouse sifts 3, Inn sifts 2. They all reduce handsize, and they all let you switch out some number of cards for others. What exactly is your definition of a sifter?

Sifter is a card that, most importantly, helps you have your good cards in your hand more often. In that regard, it is similar to a trasher, but the main difference is that trashers remove the bad cards from your deck permanently while sifters keep them around and just skip over them. It is also similar to a drawer, but the main difference is that sifters remove bad cards from your shuffle by putting them into your discard pile while drawers put them into your hand. It's worth noting that Stables is both a drawer and a sifter.

Hamlet is not a sifter because it doesn't help you have your good cards in your hand more often. Combining Hamlet with terminal draw essentially results in a sifting effect (typically in addition to a drawing effect), though.


Another way of thinking of it is that sifting replaces bad cards in your hand with good cards. Hamlet doesn't replace bad cards in your hand with good cards, it replaces itself with a good card and then you get to discard the bad cards in your hand for other benefits.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: werothegreat on May 22, 2015, 02:01:45 pm
It's still a useful comparison to make, though: Hamlet sifts one card compared to Necropolis or Shanty-Town-that-you-never-intend-to-trigger.

Where were you when we were talking about Wandering Minstrel?  :P
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: -Stef- on May 22, 2015, 03:33:41 pm
The most important thing about Inn is that it's a village.
The second most important thing is that it's pretty good in a deck with some good and some bad cards.
(say... every deck you ever built on turn 5)

The on-gain ability can be an important factor in some games but that is much more rare then those two.
Don't let "but I have nothing important to shuffle back in now" stop you from buying an inn.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: swedenman on May 22, 2015, 05:24:37 pm
Hamlet is not a sifter, it only draws 1 card.

So it sifts 1 card. Warehouse sifts 3, Inn sifts 2. They all reduce handsize, and they all let you switch out some number of cards for others. What exactly is your definition of a sifter?

A sifter that sifts one card is not a very good sifter.  Additionally, Hamlet is really more of a discard-for-benefit card, especially since the discard is optional.

Well I never said the sifting was good. Trade Route isn't an exceptionally good trasher, but it's still a trasher. Hamlet is also a discard-for-benefit card, but cards can be multiple things. Obviously you don't buy Hamlet just for the sifting effect, but it's still there (provided you actually use one of the discard options). You're still discarding bad cards in favor of keeping good cards, and if that's not sifting then I don't know what is. Obviously Hamlet doesn't improve the cards in your hand relative to not having the Hamlet at all, but it does improve the quality of the cards in your hand relative to other disappearing villages, such as Necropolis or Festival.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: eHalcyon on May 22, 2015, 06:27:39 pm
Hamlet is not a sifter, it only draws 1 card.

So it sifts 1 card. Warehouse sifts 3, Inn sifts 2. They all reduce handsize, and they all let you switch out some number of cards for others. What exactly is your definition of a sifter?

A sifter that sifts one card is not a very good sifter.  Additionally, Hamlet is really more of a discard-for-benefit card, especially since the discard is optional.

Well I never said the sifting was good. Trade Route isn't an exceptionally good trasher, but it's still a trasher. Hamlet is also a discard-for-benefit card, but cards can be multiple things. Obviously you don't buy Hamlet just for the sifting effect, but it's still there (provided you actually use one of the discard options). You're still discarding bad cards in favor of keeping good cards, and if that's not sifting then I don't know what is. Obviously Hamlet doesn't improve the cards in your hand relative to not having the Hamlet at all, but it does improve the quality of the cards in your hand relative to other disappearing villages, such as Necropolis or Festival.

I've been thinking about this and I'm going to agree with those that say Hamlet isn't a sifter.  Is Secret Chamber a sifter?  You're still discarding bad cards in favour of keeping good cards there.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: Awaclus on May 22, 2015, 06:47:37 pm
Hamlet is not a sifter, it only draws 1 card.

So it sifts 1 card. Warehouse sifts 3, Inn sifts 2. They all reduce handsize, and they all let you switch out some number of cards for others. What exactly is your definition of a sifter?

A sifter that sifts one card is not a very good sifter.  Additionally, Hamlet is really more of a discard-for-benefit card, especially since the discard is optional.

Well I never said the sifting was good. Trade Route isn't an exceptionally good trasher, but it's still a trasher. Hamlet is also a discard-for-benefit card, but cards can be multiple things. Obviously you don't buy Hamlet just for the sifting effect, but it's still there (provided you actually use one of the discard options). You're still discarding bad cards in favor of keeping good cards, and if that's not sifting then I don't know what is. Obviously Hamlet doesn't improve the cards in your hand relative to not having the Hamlet at all, but it does improve the quality of the cards in your hand relative to other disappearing villages, such as Necropolis or Festival.

So, is Secret Chamber also sifting? You're discarding bad cards and keeping good cards in your hand.

It's true that Hamlet worsens the quality of the cards in your hand less than Necropolis does, but it doesn't make it a sifter. Village isn't a drawer either just because it has +1 card on it, and Pearl Diver isn't a splitter just because it has +1 action on it. They're compensation for what you lose, not something that makes you really want to buy the card. Trade Route is a weak trasher, but at least trashing is one of the primary reasons why you want it in your deck, so it is useful to classify it as a trasher. Classifying cards for reasons other than the reasons why you want to buy those cards is useless — we can say "Potion works well with sifters" because "sifters" means cards that you actually want to buy for their sifting effects. If Hamlet was classified as a sifter, we couldn't say that, because Potion doesn't have any special interaction with Hamlet.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: swedenman on May 22, 2015, 09:40:35 pm
What is with the fixation on semantics around here? Call it whatever you want, it does the same thing regardless. Relative to cards like Festival and Necropolis it absolutely has a sifting effect on top of being a disappearing village. Why does it matter if that's the reason I bought it? Maybe I bought Trade Route for the +Buy, that doesn't mean it's not a trasher. Don't agree with my terminology? Well who really cares, it's not like "Sifter" is a card type. Saying Potion works well with sifters is still fine. Someone who reads "This card works well with trashers" and automatically thinks that card works well with every single trasher is probably still a pretty low-level player.

As to Secret Chamber, I wouldn't really call it a sifter because it doesn't draw cards and consequently can't improve the quality of the rest of your hand upon playing it. I'd consider Vault a sifter, but I don't really care if there's a community consensus on it. It's just a poorly defined term, let's stop fussing over it.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: pacovf on May 22, 2015, 10:06:58 pm
It's just a poorly defined term, let's stop fussing over it.

Let's try to define it, then! Then the problem will go away.

Sifting: Any effect that replaces one or more cards from your hand with the same number of cards from your deck. The replaced cards cannot go back to your deck.

This wouldn't include Hamlet (because the drawing and the discarding are not related to each other), but neither would it include Cartographer. Is Cartographer considered a sifter?

Of course, this raises the question of how to split different effects granted by the same card (e.g., you could argue about whether Embassy is a sifter, with this definition).
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: Awaclus on May 22, 2015, 10:29:53 pm
What is with the fixation on semantics around here? Call it whatever you want, it does the same thing regardless. Relative to cards like Festival and Necropolis it absolutely has a sifting effect on top of being a disappearing village. Why does it matter if that's the reason I bought it? Maybe I bought Trade Route for the +Buy, that doesn't mean it's not a trasher. Don't agree with my terminology? Well who really cares, it's not like "Sifter" is a card type. Saying Potion works well with sifters is still fine. Someone who reads "This card works well with trashers" and automatically thinks that card works well with every single trasher is probably still a pretty low-level player.

As to Secret Chamber, I wouldn't really call it a sifter because it doesn't draw cards and consequently can't improve the quality of the rest of your hand upon playing it. I'd consider Vault a sifter, but I don't really care if there's a community consensus on it. It's just a poorly defined term, let's stop fussing over it.

Semantics is super interesting. It doesn't really matter what it has relative to cards like Festival and Necropolis; it absolutely does not have a sifting effect relative to buying nothing instead. The reason why it matters is that if the only reason why you're buying Hamlet is that you want sifting, you're making a horrible move since you would get the exact same amount of sifting by buying nothing in its stead. You might have bought Trade Route for the +buy, that doesn't mean it's not a trasher because there are times when people actually buy Trade Route for the trashing. Actually, cards that work well with "trashers" (say, engine components) tend to work well with every single trasher. Some trashers are better for the purpose of trashing cards than some others, but I don't think there is a single card you would classify as a trasher that does not trash more cards than simply not buying anything. No wait, actually I think the logic that says Hamlet = sifter (since it only sifts itself and nothing else) also implies that Pillage = trasher (since it only trashes itself and nothing else) so perhaps there are such cards after all.

Definitely, anyone who thinks that Pillage is a card that works well with cards that work well with trashers is proably still a pretty low-level player (well, ignoring the fact that Pillage works with engine components and trashers also work with engine components, but that's just a coincidence). But what is the purpose of ever calling Pillage a trasher when it shares none of the strategic roles of cards that actually trash cards from your deck?

Sifting: Any effect that replaces one or more cards from your hand with the same number of cards from your deck. The replaced cards cannot go back to your deck.

This wouldn't include Hamlet (because the drawing and the discarding are not related to each other), but neither would it include Cartographer. Is Cartographer considered a sifter?

Of course, this raises the question of how to split different effects granted by the same card (e.g., you could argue about whether Embassy is a sifter, with this definition).

Cartographer should count as a sifter, because it actually does the thing you want a sifter to do (put bad cards in your shuffle into your discard pile while replacing them with better cards). Your definition also classifies Oasis as a sifter, and I would say that Oasis shouldn't count as a sifter; it doesn't replace a bad card with a random card, it basically replaces a bad card with a Copper which is still a bad card.

I think Embassy is both a drawer and a sifter. Playing an Embassy is pretty much like playing a Moat and a Warehouse, and that's a drawer and a sifter, respectively.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: eHalcyon on May 23, 2015, 12:25:03 am
Like Awaclus said, semantics is interesting.

Here's my definition of sifting: discarding cards in order to improve the quality of cards in your hand or draw deck.  The improvement is contingent on specifically the discarding, meaning that your deck composition doesn't change.  Trashers and gainers don't count even though they also improve deck quality.

Here's how it applies to various cards:

Warehouse/Embassy/Inn -- These are sifters.  The discard is mandatory, which means that the improvement of your hand is contingent on the discard.

Pearl Diver -- No a sifter.  You don't discard.

Cellar -- Sifter!  You discard first in this case, which makes it very obvious that you need to discard to get the improvement.

Secret Chamber -- Not a sifter.  Your discarding does not improve the quality of your hand or your deck.  This is just discard-for-benefit.  It's worth noting that Cellar is also discard-for-benefit, but it qualifies as a sifter too because that benefit is cards.

Vault -- Not a sifter either.  You draw and you discard, but the discard does not improve your hand or your deck.

Cartographer -- This is a sifter.  You can discard cards from the top of you deck in order to improve your next hand.  Discarding is necessary to see improvement.

Wandering Minstrel -- Sifter in the same way as Cartographer.  Granted, there is an implied assumption here that leaving actions on top and discarding the rest is an improvement, but I think this is a reasonable assumption.

Artificer -- The discarding does not improve your hand.  It doesn't improve your deck either, other than the card gain that I've specifically excluded.  Therefore it is a discard-for-benefit, not a sifter.

Hamlet -- Much like Artificer, your discard does not improve your hand or deck.  Instead, it gives you +1 action or +1 buy.  Hamlet is thus a discard-for-benefit, not a sifter.  You may consider the +1 card to be the benefit required for my definition, but (again, like Artificer) you get that +1 card whether you discard or not.  That's why I don't consider it a sift.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: Marcory on May 23, 2015, 12:38:28 am
Under your categorization, would Scout be considered a sifter? Sure, the VP cards it draws aren't discarded until cleanup, but putting them into your hand does improve the quality of your deck, just as if you had discarded them with Cartographer, Warehouse, etc.

Also, if Scout is a sifter, then Survivors, Oracle, and possibly Vagrant should also be considered as such.

Would Navigator be a sifter? Or Scavenger?

(This post is not intended as a Scout joke, btw).
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: nate_w on May 23, 2015, 01:23:17 am
Under your categorization, would Scout be considered a sifter? Sure, the VP cards it draws aren't discarded until cleanup, but putting them into your hand does improve the quality of your deck, just as if you had discarded them with Cartographer, Warehouse, etc.

Also, if Scout is a sifter, then Survivors, Oracle, and possibly Vagrant should also be considered as such.

Would Navigator be a sifter? Or Scavenger?

(This post is not intended as a Scout joke, btw).

Survivors, navigator, and a component of oracle are all sitfers. As is spy and a component of scrying pool. 

I'm not sure how I would classify scout and vagrant because their direct effect is to draw, but that isn't what you usually want from them (except in like a great hall scout "combo"? I mean, what is it you actually are hoping scout does exactly?); their primary use is not to get green cards in your hand.  You want them out of your future draws. So sure, I guess I'd call them sifters since their real effect is making future draws better.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: eHalcyon on May 23, 2015, 01:40:41 am
Under your categorization, would Scout be considered a sifter? Sure, the VP cards it draws aren't discarded until cleanup, but putting them into your hand does improve the quality of your deck, just as if you had discarded them with Cartographer, Warehouse, etc.

Also, if Scout is a sifter, then Survivors, Oracle, and possibly Vagrant should also be considered as such.

Would Navigator be a sifter? Or Scavenger?

(This post is not intended as a Scout joke, btw).

Survivors and Oracle are sifters, no question.

Discarding is not a component of Scout's action, so I would not call it a sifter.  Neither is Vagrant, for the same reason.  That said, maybe my definition should be expanded to include them?  The expanded definition could call for the targeted (non-trashing) removal of cards.  This is usually discarding, but when dealing with the top of the deck it can also count drawing the cards into hand, as with Scout and Vagrant.  Ehh, kinda tricky.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: jomini on May 23, 2015, 10:41:29 am
I think the best definition of "sifter" is a card which increases the frequency with which you play (meaning more "is in your final hand state" and only has real trouble with Tunnel) your "good" cards relative to your "bad" cards without trashing or setting either aside.

So for the obvious cases, Survivors is obviously a sifter - if you see good cards you leave them, if you see bad ones you drop them and don't play the bad cards this shuffle.
Warehouse - draw more cards keep good cards, discard the lousy ones.
Inn - draw more cards, keep good cards, discard lousy ones

It also excludes pure draw. Smithy makes you see your golds more often, but also your coppers. The relative frequency of Gold vs Copper doesn't change (or Gold vs Estate). Scout would be pure draw and when Scout is worth getting (most often for "free" off a spare Iw or Prssn play but not even always then), you want it as draw. E.g. if I'm doing Xroads/Nobles, I want scout as draw. If I'm doing Iw/Tournament/Scout, I want my Scout to draw the Provinces/Duchies so I can play Province with my Tournaments. Vagrant is drawing as well, yes I have no green in my next hand, but only by dint of drawing it into this hand (Vagrant being like playing a Lab after being hit by B-crat).

This also then allows us to talk about mild sifting and anti-sifting:

Scavenger - usually a very mild sifter (discard your coppers/green/curses, be assured to hit the best card in your deck/discard next turn).
Chancellor/Messenger - an exceptionally mild sifter with deck tracking - basically it is like Survivors except for instead of looking at two cards vs rest of the (draw) deck, you are looking at draw deck vs deck. Most often this is too weak to care, but in some cases (e.g. Chancellor/Stash is an extreme case) it can become very strong sifting.

Anti-sifting is something that makes you see your good cards less often than your weak ones.
Loan is an anti-sifter. You see your good treasures and actions less often (thanks to discarding). This negative of Loan is made up by its ability to trash out your weak treasures and sometimes a very small bit by sifting past your green with late game shuffle dynamics.

Wandering Minstrel is a sifter for good actions (play them more often) and against green, but an anti-sifter for Ruins.

Venture is a sifter for good treasures against all actions and green (excepting Harem).

Sage is a sifter for high value cards against low value cards. So if you Fool's gold or Courtyard is your power card, Sage is an anti-sifter; if your power card is a Hag, then Sage is a sifter.


Hamlet this is mostly a drawing card (you don't have to discard anything you draw), but it can let you sift in some decks (discarding junk can enable terminal draw).
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: SCSN on May 23, 2015, 11:31:26 am
Loan is an anti-sifter. You see your good treasures and actions less often (thanks to discarding).

Nonsense.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: werothegreat on May 23, 2015, 11:37:42 am
What you're calling "anti-sifting" sounds a lot like "digging".
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: pacovf on May 23, 2015, 12:34:12 pm
It's hard to define a Sifter in a clear way that excludes both card draw and digging. I like Jomini's description, but it seems to include diggers, no?
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: eHalcyon on May 23, 2015, 12:54:43 pm
It's hard to define a Sifter in a clear way that excludes both card draw and digging. I like Jomini's description, but it seems to include diggers, no?

Diggers tend to be sifters, I think.

It's weird to call Loan an anti-sifter though.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: Awaclus on May 23, 2015, 01:16:50 pm
It's hard to define a Sifter in a clear way that excludes both card draw and digging. I like Jomini's description, but it seems to include diggers, no?

I don't think digging has to be excluded. Sage and Warehouse serve similar purposes in your deck. Jomini's definition is pretty good.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: jomini on May 23, 2015, 02:46:21 pm
Loan is an anti-sifter. You see your good treasures and actions less often (thanks to discarding).

Nonsense.

Bullocks.

Great, now we've settled that.

It's hard to define a Sifter in a clear way that excludes both card draw and digging. I like Jomini's description, but it seems to include diggers, no?

Digging, to me, is a subset of sifting (normal or anti). Digging cards serve the same function (get me the important cards, ignore the dross) and have many of the same drawbacks (e.g. they are vastly less useful if you've drawn your entire deck). Golem, for instance, sifts out non-actions to get to actions. Using Golem to dig up two Hunting Grounds as part of an engine isn't all that different than using two or three Warehouses to also play two Hgrounds.

It's hard to define a Sifter in a clear way that excludes both card draw and digging. I like Jomini's description, but it seems to include diggers, no?

Diggers tend to be sifters, I think.

It's weird to call Loan an anti-sifter though.
Just to be clear, Loan's primary use is as a trasher, the anti-sifting is a penalty that keeps Loan from being mispriced.

In general, only the strongest sifting competes with the weaker trashing in the early game (e.g. what sifter is better than Steward in the early game).  Loan makes you see big treasures more frequently as you trash coppers. In the mid-game when you might be a third or half drawing your deck, Loan becomes much more likely to be anti-sifting,  particularly if you need the $1 to hit a key price point. E.g. if you have two coppers left, two silvers , and a gold; Loan is much more likely to decrease the relative frequency of seeing a gold or silver to seeing the copper 60% of the time it flips a wanted treasure and 40% of the time it hits an unwanted treasure to trash; it always anti-sifts past actions)*. Late game, well that really depends on setup, but on second thought, I'd say that with deck tracking & mostly optional Loan play ... Loan becomes sifting again. The odds that it will flip important cards (like villages and draw) go down while the odds of it flipping green go up.

More often anti-sifting is something that makes cards combo poorly. For instance, Venture combos well with very few things in part because it anti-sifts actions which are most of the useful cards in Dominion. Similarly, Golem is a huge cost card that is pretty powerful, but if you overload on Golems they anti-sift each other. Sage can combo poorly with cost reducers (e.g. play two Bridges, Sages can become Ruined villages or maybe only grab provinces).


* yes I know it is oversimplified, but I'm already too long winded about deck tracking and shuffle timing and the like
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: swedenman on May 23, 2015, 05:18:34 pm
It doesn't really matter what it has relative to cards like Festival and Necropolis.

How does it not matter? If someone asked me what advantages Hamlet has over Festival, I would absolutely mention that Hamlet allows you to switch out the worst of your other 4 cards for the next card on your deck if you want, while still getting either the village or +Buy effect that Festival gives you. That's what sifting is. Why does a word only apply to a card if that's why you buy it? I'm not going to buy Hamlet just for the sifting, but if I'm trying to decide if I should buy a Hamlet or a Festival, then the additional sifting effect that you get with Hamlet that you don't get with Festival very well could influence that decision. Does that make it a "sifter"? Well I would say so, but I don't really care because that's just semantics and not really useful for strategic discussions. But to say it has no sifting properties is just incorrect.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: Awaclus on May 23, 2015, 05:31:06 pm
It doesn't really matter what it has relative to cards like Festival and Necropolis.

How does it not matter? If someone asked me what advantages Hamlet has over Festival, I would absolutely mention that Hamlet allows you to switch out the worst of your other 4 cards for the next card on your deck if you want, while still getting either the village or +Buy effect that Festival gives you. That's what sifting is. Why does a word only apply to a card if that's why you buy it? I'm not going to buy Hamlet just for the sifting, but if I'm trying to decide if I should buy a Hamlet or a Festival, then the additional sifting effect that you get with Hamlet that you don't get with Festival very well could influence that decision. Does that make it a "sifter"? Well I would say so, but I don't really care because that's just semantics and not really useful for strategic discussions. But to say it has no sifting properties is just incorrect.

Hamlet has no sifting properties. The fact that other cards are worse than nothing for the purpose of sifting doesn't mean that a card that is exactly as good as nothing is a sifter. Saying that it is, is as good as saying that it produces virtual coin (after all, it does produce more virtual coin than Storyteller and Poor House in the situations where those cards give you negative coins), or that it increases the costs of all cards (after all, it does increase the costs of all cards more than Highway does).
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: eHalcyon on May 23, 2015, 06:31:45 pm
How does it not matter? If someone asked me what advantages Hamlet has over Festival, I would absolutely mention that Hamlet allows you to switch out the worst of your other 4 cards for the next card on your deck if you want, while still getting either the village or +Buy effect that Festival gives you. That's what sifting is.

That's what sifting is, but that's not what Hamlet does.  You are not switching out the worst of your other 4 cards for the next card.  You don't discard for that card; you get it either way.  You are discarding that card for either +1 action or +1 buy, which is discard-for-benefit, or not discarding it at all.

Loan is an anti-sifter. You see your good treasures and actions less often (thanks to discarding).

Nonsense.

Bullocks.

Great, now we've settled that.

I think what SCSN is saying is that Loan is mathematically neutral.  You skip past good treasures and actions, but you also skip past Curses and Victory cards and other junk.  There was a big thread about this years ago.



Anyway, I think it's weird to call Loan an anti-sifter because, to me, sifting also implies cycling, so anti-sifting seems like it should be anti-cycling.  Loan is definitely not anti-cycling.  That's why I feels weird, though it might still be correct.  (Except that it's neutral.)

If I actually think about what an anti-sifter would be, the best example I can come up with is Rabble.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: swedenman on May 23, 2015, 10:03:57 pm
It doesn't really matter what it has relative to cards like Festival and Necropolis.

How does it not matter? If someone asked me what advantages Hamlet has over Festival, I would absolutely mention that Hamlet allows you to switch out the worst of your other 4 cards for the next card on your deck if you want, while still getting either the village or +Buy effect that Festival gives you. That's what sifting is. Why does a word only apply to a card if that's why you buy it? I'm not going to buy Hamlet just for the sifting, but if I'm trying to decide if I should buy a Hamlet or a Festival, then the additional sifting effect that you get with Hamlet that you don't get with Festival very well could influence that decision. Does that make it a "sifter"? Well I would say so, but I don't really care because that's just semantics and not really useful for strategic discussions. But to say it has no sifting properties is just incorrect.

Hamlet has no sifting properties. The fact that other cards are worse than nothing for the purpose of sifting doesn't mean that a card that is exactly as good as nothing is a sifter. Saying that it is, is as good as saying that it produces virtual coin (after all, it does produce more virtual coin than Storyteller and Poor House in the situations where those cards give you negative coins), or that it increases the costs of all cards (after all, it does increase the costs of all cards more than Highway does).

And I would think it worth mentioning that Hamlet leaves you with more virtual coin than cards that spend coins in the event that you were comparing the two. I wouldn't say it gives you "virtual coin" because that actually has a well-established meaning, but then again I'd say Poor House technically gives "virtual coin" even if it nets you $0, so maybe the technical terms have the potential to be misleading. You say Hamlet gives no sifting? Alright, well then Festival gives negative sifting and it's still a comparison worth making.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: shmeur on May 23, 2015, 10:37:36 pm
Hamlet isn't a sifter imo.  It's a cantrip.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: eHalcyon on May 23, 2015, 10:56:03 pm
It doesn't really matter what it has relative to cards like Festival and Necropolis.

How does it not matter? If someone asked me what advantages Hamlet has over Festival, I would absolutely mention that Hamlet allows you to switch out the worst of your other 4 cards for the next card on your deck if you want, while still getting either the village or +Buy effect that Festival gives you. That's what sifting is. Why does a word only apply to a card if that's why you buy it? I'm not going to buy Hamlet just for the sifting, but if I'm trying to decide if I should buy a Hamlet or a Festival, then the additional sifting effect that you get with Hamlet that you don't get with Festival very well could influence that decision. Does that make it a "sifter"? Well I would say so, but I don't really care because that's just semantics and not really useful for strategic discussions. But to say it has no sifting properties is just incorrect.

Hamlet has no sifting properties. The fact that other cards are worse than nothing for the purpose of sifting doesn't mean that a card that is exactly as good as nothing is a sifter. Saying that it is, is as good as saying that it produces virtual coin (after all, it does produce more virtual coin than Storyteller and Poor House in the situations where those cards give you negative coins), or that it increases the costs of all cards (after all, it does increase the costs of all cards more than Highway does).

And I would think it worth mentioning that Hamlet leaves you with more virtual coin than cards that spend coins in the event that you were comparing the two. I wouldn't say it gives you "virtual coin" because that actually has a well-established meaning, but then again I'd say Poor House technically gives "virtual coin" even if it nets you $0, so maybe the technical terms have the potential to be misleading. You say Hamlet gives no sifting? Alright, well then Festival gives negative sifting and it's still a comparison worth making.

That doesn't make sense at all.  Hamlet does not sift any more than Festival does.  Are you just ignoring my posts?

How does it not matter? If someone asked me what advantages Hamlet has over Festival, I would absolutely mention that Hamlet allows you to switch out the worst of your other 4 cards for the next card on your deck if you want, while still getting either the village or +Buy effect that Festival gives you. That's what sifting is.

That's what sifting is, but that's not what Hamlet does.  You are not switching out the worst of your other 4 cards for the next card.  You don't discard for that card; you get it either way.  You are discarding that card for either +1 action or +1 buy, which is discard-for-benefit, or not discarding it at all.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: swedenman on May 23, 2015, 11:55:15 pm
It doesn't really matter what it has relative to cards like Festival and Necropolis.

How does it not matter? If someone asked me what advantages Hamlet has over Festival, I would absolutely mention that Hamlet allows you to switch out the worst of your other 4 cards for the next card on your deck if you want, while still getting either the village or +Buy effect that Festival gives you. That's what sifting is. Why does a word only apply to a card if that's why you buy it? I'm not going to buy Hamlet just for the sifting, but if I'm trying to decide if I should buy a Hamlet or a Festival, then the additional sifting effect that you get with Hamlet that you don't get with Festival very well could influence that decision. Does that make it a "sifter"? Well I would say so, but I don't really care because that's just semantics and not really useful for strategic discussions. But to say it has no sifting properties is just incorrect.

Hamlet has no sifting properties. The fact that other cards are worse than nothing for the purpose of sifting doesn't mean that a card that is exactly as good as nothing is a sifter. Saying that it is, is as good as saying that it produces virtual coin (after all, it does produce more virtual coin than Storyteller and Poor House in the situations where those cards give you negative coins), or that it increases the costs of all cards (after all, it does increase the costs of all cards more than Highway does).

And I would think it worth mentioning that Hamlet leaves you with more virtual coin than cards that spend coins in the event that you were comparing the two. I wouldn't say it gives you "virtual coin" because that actually has a well-established meaning, but then again I'd say Poor House technically gives "virtual coin" even if it nets you $0, so maybe the technical terms have the potential to be misleading. You say Hamlet gives no sifting? Alright, well then Festival gives negative sifting and it's still a comparison worth making.

That doesn't make sense at all.  Hamlet does not sift any more than Festival does.  Are you just ignoring my posts?

How does it not matter? If someone asked me what advantages Hamlet has over Festival, I would absolutely mention that Hamlet allows you to switch out the worst of your other 4 cards for the next card on your deck if you want, while still getting either the village or +Buy effect that Festival gives you. That's what sifting is.

That's what sifting is, but that's not what Hamlet does.  You are not switching out the worst of your other 4 cards for the next card.  You don't discard for that card; you get it either way.  You are discarding that card for either +1 action or +1 buy, which is discard-for-benefit, or not discarding it at all.

Yikes, calm down. I'm not ignoring your posts, I just don't have a laptop right now and it's hard to respond to everybody on a cellphone.

I don't really think it matters what you're discarding the card for. If you actually do discard for the extra action, then it's no different from if you had gotten the +Action for free and discarded for the extra card instead. I'm more concerned with the actual effect than the exact text on the card. Sure, if you just play it as a cantrip then it doesn't sift at all, but if you actually use 1 of the discard effects then you've gotten part of the Festival effect, you end with the same handsize as if you had played Festival, but unlike Festival you've been given the opportunity to choose the best 4 out of 5 instead of just being stuck with some 4-card hand. So I don't see how you figure that Hamlet does no more sifting than Festival. Cartographer doesn't let you draw extra cards if you discard, but it's still a sifter.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: eHalcyon on May 24, 2015, 01:03:20 am
I don't really think it matters what you're discarding the card for. If you actually do discard for the extra action, then it's no different from if you had gotten the +Action for free and discarded for the extra card instead. I'm more concerned with the actual effect than the exact text on the card.

If you always got +Action and you could optionally discard to draw a card, sure, that second part is sifting.  Except that's not what the card does.  The actual effect is that you get the card either way and you can discard for Action or Buy.  That is discard for benefit.  The initial +1 Card has no bearing on it.

[/quote]Sure, if you just play it as a cantrip then it doesn't sift at all, but if you actually use 1 of the discard effects then you've gotten part of the Festival effect, you end with the same handsize as if you had played Festival, but unlike Festival you've been given the opportunity to choose the best 4 out of 5 instead of just being stuck with some 4-card hand. So I don't see how you figure that Hamlet does no more sifting than Festival. Cartographer doesn't let you draw extra cards if you discard, but it's still a sifter.[/quote]

Cartographer is a sifter because the discarding improves what you will draw.  Hamlet is not a sifter because the discarding doesn't have an impact on that at all, any more than Secret Chamber does.

I mean, right now you are arguing that Hamlet is a sifter based on something that Hamlet literally does not do (switching a bad card for a good card).  It's like saying Baron is a money-generating card that lets you discard for +1 Buy.
Title: Re: CARD OF THE WEEK #9: Inn
Post by: enfynet on May 24, 2015, 08:57:23 am
Sifting refines a sample, in this case cards, by removing junk you don't want. You will sometimes end up with less and you never end up with more.

Digging will increase your sample size, but doesn't always refine it, by adding specific items to the sample.