Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: Roadrunner7671 on November 23, 2015, 10:48:49 am
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Hello everyone! For some inexplainable reason you clicked on this thread. Maybe for a cheap laugh? Or maybe because you want to learn how to play better with Scout and identify its synergies on any given board. So, I'm here today to help you out! Because of time, I cannot put why each card is a synergy. If you have any questions about a certain card, feel free to ask below! I want the forum to appreciate the versatility and depth of Scout, once thought to be 'a bad card.'
Iguanaiguana will take my side on this. So will liopoli. So let's get started!
All synergies:
Cellar
Chapel
Moat
Village
Bureaucrat (Scout is a counter to it, not a combo with it.)
Gardens
Smithy
Spy
Throne Room
Laboratory
Library (Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. Scout and Library have a complicated relationship.)
Market
Witch
Adventurer
Courtyard
Pawn
Secret Chamber
Great Hall
Masquerade
Shanty Town (with no other actions in your hand.)
Steward
Swindler
Wishing Well
Baron
Conspirator
Ironworks
Mining Village
Duke
Minion
Torturer
Trading Post
Tribute
Upgrade
Harem
Nobles
Haven
Native Village
Pearl Diver
Lookout
Warehouse
Island
Salvager
Bazaar
Explorer
Ghost Ship (It counters Ghost Ship and synergies with it!)
Tactician (Iguanaiguana knows all about this.)
Treasury
Wharf
Apprentice
Vineyard
Apothecary
Scrying Pool
Alchemist
Familiar
Golem
Possession (it counters Possession)
Loan
Trade Route
Watchtower (Liopoli knows all about this.)
Bishop
Worker's Village
City
Rabble (Scout counters it and works with it!)
Vault
Venture
Grand Market
King's Court
Peddler
Hamlet
Menagerie
Farming Village
Horse Traders
Remake
Tournament
Young Witch
Harvest
Horn of Plenty
Hunting Party
Fairgrounds
Followers
Trusty Steed
I'm afraid we'll have to stop at Cornucopia. I will edit this in a few hours, see you all then!
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You forgot Remodel.
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(http://i.imgur.com/e34FB1R.jpg)
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You forgot Remodel.
I probably did.
How does it synergies with Scout? Because you can trash the Scout? Ha, ha.
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Please define "synergy" then let me look at this list. I mean, your list is so exhaustive I don't even know what synergy means anymore
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Please define "synergy" then let me look at this list. I mean, your list is so exhaustive I don't even know what synergy means anymore
It is better with a Scout than without a Scout. It benefits from Scout.
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You forgot Remodel.
I probably did.
How does it synergies with Scout? Because you can trash the Scout? Ha, ha.
You got it.
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Please define "synergy" then let me look at this list. I mean, your list is so exhaustive I don't even know what synergy means anymore
It is better with a Scout than without a Scout. It benefits from Scout.
That's a grotesquely silly definition of "synergy".
At the very least the combination of Scout + X has to be better than Cantrip + X because if you hadn't had the Scout in your hand you'd have the next card in your deck. Seen through this more restrictive definition, almost none of the cards you list would be synergetic.
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See SheCantSayNo? This makes Scout better than cantrips.
But you're right, I don't think synergy was the word I was looking for.
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Library (Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. Scout and Library have a complicated relationship.)
With all respect, here you're just parodying yourself. The best way Scout helps Library is by getting itself out of your hand. (the deck rearranging is just marginal to cases where you play Library with >5 cards in hand, since library without scout would have drawn the same 4 cards otherwise.)
The good news is that it doesn't really hurt library either. (except when you play Library with >5 cards in hand, since it can draw green that library wouldn't have reached otherwise).
If you're consistently playing Library for just one or two cards, then you should maybe have skipped library.
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Yeah. Library wasn't the best choice for this list.
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You forgot Remodel.
I probably did.
How does it synergies with Scout? Because you can trash the Scout? Ha, ha.
Dude, scout puts estates in your hand that remodel wants to trash! What a great helper card, I want one!
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Library (Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. Scout and Library have a complicated relationship.)
With all respect, here you're just parodying yourself. The best way Scout helps Library is by getting itself out of your hand. (the deck rearranging is just marginal to cases where you play Library with >5 cards in hand, since library without scout would have drawn the same 4 cards otherwise.)
The good news is that it doesn't really hurt library either. (except when you play Library with >5 cards in hand, since it can draw green that library wouldn't have reached otherwise).
If you're consistently playing Library for just one or two cards, then you should maybe have skipped library.
In a no green deck, scout lets you get a peek at the action cards you are going to be drawing with library such that you have better information on, for instance, whether you want to set aside some of those fishing villages to make sure you draw your second library or whether you are already drawing the second library so you don't need to set them aside.
8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)
Trolling is so fun. Thanks Roadrunner, for facilitating.
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on any given kingdom, when there's scout, there are almost always better things to spend $4 on.
You really have to set up a kingdom including crossroads, harem, nobles, great halls, baron AND distant lands, than you could consider a scout or two :-)
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Library (Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. Scout and Library have a complicated relationship.)
With all respect, here you're just parodying yourself. The best way Scout helps Library is by getting itself out of your hand. (the deck rearranging is just marginal to cases where you play Library with >5 cards in hand, since library without scout would have drawn the same 4 cards otherwise.)
The good news is that it doesn't really hurt library either. (except when you play Library with >5 cards in hand, since it can draw green that library wouldn't have reached otherwise).
If you're consistently playing Library for just one or two cards, then you should maybe have skipped library.
Upon rereading, I was unintentionally very unpolite here, my apologies.
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You guys shouldn't be analyzing the case of having a scout versus no scout, you need to look at having a scout versus having a good 4/3 cost card. This is where Scout loses miserably - it's rarely even better than Silver, and almost always worse than a cantrip would be.
Scout has synergy with... Grand Market? King's Court? Torturer? What the hell dude. You're just listing off literally any case when there is a chance Scout might maybe do something. Your fandom for this card has gotten completely ridiculous.
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on any given kingdom, when there's scout, there are almost always better things to spend $4 on.
You really have to set up a kingdom including crossroads, harem, nobles, great halls, baron AND distant lands, than you could consider a scout or two :-)
Throw in Ironworks for an extra boost to Scout and it should really become a desirable purchase.
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forced memes is vairy naice! i like! - borat
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In a technical sense, where we are looking for a net effect greater than the sum of the two parts, Scout does synergize with lots of stuff. Top deck ordering -> Draw is going to give you more than just draw and more than just Scout (e.g. think about playing draw -> Scout for the the non-synergy version).
However, the amount of synergy is pretty close to zero and while I would take Scout for "free" with a lot of cards, Scout has a very hard time clearing any sort of opportunity cost.
Early game, Silver gets you $5 and Scout, maybe increases your cycling (it can take green out of next hand so you have higher odds hitting $5 next turn, but rarely can it do so without making you lose a $5 this turn). Later on, Scout is pretty much only useful in engines ... but then it has to repeatedly compete with engine component buys.
Practically, you can see synergy with stuff that cares a lot about top decking & maybe + action (e.g. Golem, Journeyman, Wishing well) and dual-victory cards (Nobles, Harem, Great hall). Synergy that is worth buying Scout over other stuff (like villages), pretty much just a few cases come to mind: Mystic and Herald. Both care a lot about knowledge of the top deck and both become very powerful with a small number of Scouts. I am fairly sold on Mystic and Scout is actually a pretty good "spare" buy once the Heralds are gone, but most any other synergy is less power than any other cantrip or perhaps even most non-terminals.
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Strongest synergies are Junk Dealer and Rats.
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The strongest synergy with Scout is Swindler, because you can give Scouts to your opponent. The next strongest synergy is Chapel, so that you can get rid of the Scouts that your opponent gave you.
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The strongest synergy with Scout is Swindler, because you can give Scouts to your opponent. The next strongest synergy is Chapel, so that you can get rid of the Scouts that your opponent gave you.
But Junk Dealer and Rats mandate that you trash something, so you need something to trash.
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Watchtower (Liopoli knows all about this.)
This is absolute nonsense. Watchtower will have nothing to do with the likes of Scout. If you read my list of Watchtower synergies (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11867.0), you'll see that Scout is not on the list. Watchtower is so good that it doesn't need to fake interactions which aren't actually good. The list contains 88 cards, all perfectly legitimate synergies which I will defend to the death, and this was even before Adventures. Meanwhile I'd rather have a random card from my deck in my hand over scout in the majority of cases, with Watchtower in hand or with any of the other cards on this list.
Unless of course you mean that Watchtower can be used to trash scouts being ambassadored or swindled to you, in which case I agree.
EDIT: If Watchtower were removed I would be much more inclined to 'accept' this list.
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Well, Watchtower synergizes with Scout in the sense that together, they are better than the sum of their individual effects. A Scout hurts you much less when you also have Watchtower. It's just that it still hurts you.
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I think the categories of card that Scout combos well with are:
Cards that benefit from you knowing what's on top of your deck
Functional Alt-VP
Apothecary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYliQFwLoUc)
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The cards that actually make Scout a worthwhile purchase are:
Oh, and I almost forgot this one:
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Roadrunner, please, stop theory-crafting. Provide some logs where scout's deck-ordering or its draw made it a strong buy. More than the single one with Adam and apothecary.
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Scout works ok with rats so you can top deck junck/draw it and then trash it with rats. This works fine with butcher because scouts are practically free.
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Roadrunner, please, stop theory-crafting. Provide some logs where scout's deck-ordering or its draw made it a strong buy. More than the single one with Adam and apothecary.
If, I must be honest, this is a cooping method. I can't play Dominion Online. I also don't know how to link logs. So I have to settle for IRL Dominion and talking about Scout everywhere I go.
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I think the categories of card that Scout combos well with are:
Cards that benefit from you knowing what's on top of your deck
Functional Alt-VP
Apothecary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYliQFwLoUc)
Also cards that benefit from reordering your deck. Basically any cantrip combos with Scout. That combo just isn't strong enough to make up for Scout's overall weakness.
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Having a Scout is better than having nothing.
Having a Scout is almost never better than having something else.
You try pointing out "combos" with Scout every other day, but 90% of the time you simply ignore the fact that instead of getting Scout, you could have gotten something else. For almost any of the examples given, a Silver would have been a better purchase instead of Scout.
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Having a Scout is better than having nothing.
That's an edge case!
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Having a Scout is better than having nothing.
Is it? I would buy this if it drew a card, but it doesn't, so in a lot of decks it's worse than nothing.
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Having a Scout is better than having nothing.
Is it? I would buy this if it drew a card, but it doesn't, so in a lot of decks it's worse than nothing.
It is not, unless your deck is 25% green cards (which is almost never the case) or you can benefit from reordering the top cards enough for that to be worth more than the card you would have had in your hand instead of Scout. In a deck with a lot of Mystics, Scout is probably better than nothing. In a deck with a lot of Wishing Wells, it's probably roughly as good as nothing (depending on the rest of the deck too, obviously).
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Having a Scout is better than having nothing.
That's an edge case!
It's true, though. If you're running Tactician + Black Market, say, you need something to discard when you play Tactician. Without the Scout to discard, you'd have to not play something useful!
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Having a Scout is better than having nothing.
That's an edge case!
It's true, though. If you're running Tactician + Black Market, say, you need something to discard when you play Tactician. Without the Scout to discard, you'd have to not play something useful!
I don't like what this thread is turning into. You guys seem to love to kick things while they're down.
And I've started taking pictures of each board I win with Scout. I will post the kingdom and the number of Scouts I bought. So the infamous Roadrunner7671 will be back!
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Well, Watchtower synergizes with Scout in the sense that together, they are better than the sum of their individual effects. A Scout hurts you much less when you also have Watchtower. It's just that it still hurts you.
You're saying Scout+Watchtower together are better than just Watchtower alone as an individual part?
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When i say having a Scout is better than having nothing, i mean that a hand with four cards plus Scout is better than a hand with just four cards. The "something else" part applies to buying as well as to drawing.
I figured it was obvious from the rest of my post, but apparently the first sentence is a trigger.
Edit: Reading my post again, i see where i failed to get my point across. Oh well.
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You guys seem to love to kick things while they're down.
We can't help it that Scout isn't man enough to stand.
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When i say having a Scout is better than having nothing, i mean that a hand with four cards plus Scout is better than a hand with just four cards. The "something else" part applies to buying as well as to drawing.
I figured it was obvious from the rest of my post, but apparently the first sentence is a trigger.
Edit: Reading my post again, i see where i failed to get my point across. Oh well.
That's an odd argument to make in the context of Dominion though. Yes, freely adding Scout to a hand is often (but not always) better than the exact same hand minus Scout (ignoring that Scout will junk your deck afterwards), but that's not how Dominion works.
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When i say having a Scout is better than having nothing, i mean that a hand with four cards plus Scout is better than a hand with just four cards. The "something else" part applies to buying as well as to drawing.
I figured it was obvious from the rest of my post, but apparently the first sentence is a trigger.
Edit: Reading my post again, i see where i failed to get my point across. Oh well.
That's an odd argument to make in the context of Dominion though. Yes, freely adding Scout to a hand is often (but not always) better than the exact same hand minus Scout (ignoring that Scout will junk your deck afterwards), but that's not how Dominion works.
And that was kind of my point. roadrunner listed Pearl Diver, for example. And i say, yes, with Pearl Diver in hand, Scout does something useful. It's better to have that Scout than no card at all. But that doesn't make up for the card you could have had in your hand instead of the Scout, even without considering what you could have bought instead. My long pondering over how to write that in a comprehensive way apparently left me thinking i had said things i didn't say.
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Well, Watchtower synergizes with Scout in the sense that together, they are better than the sum of their individual effects. A Scout hurts you much less when you also have Watchtower. It's just that it still hurts you.
You're saying Scout+Watchtower together are better than just Watchtower alone as an individual part?
Except they antisynergize unless you use watchtower reaction to trash scout. With watchtower you draw upto 6, if you play scout before you will draw victory cards instead of something useful.
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Well, Watchtower synergizes with Scout in the sense that together, they are better than the sum of their individual effects. A Scout hurts you much less when you also have Watchtower. It's just that it still hurts you.
You're saying Scout+Watchtower together are better than just Watchtower alone as an individual part?
No.
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Well, Watchtower synergizes with Scout in the sense that together, they are better than the sum of their individual effects. A Scout hurts you much less when you also have Watchtower. It's just that it still hurts you.
You're saying Scout+Watchtower together are better than just Watchtower alone as an individual part?
No.
And the part I bolded...?
Oh, I get what you're saying. But I think a reasonable definition of synergy should also require the combination be better than each individual part on its own.
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Oh, I get what you're saying. But I think a reasonable definition of synergy should also require the combination be better than each individual part on its own.
Well, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that there's synergy between Scout and Watchtower. At least it's somewhat useful. When you have a Scout in your deck, Watchtower is a slightly better purchase than it normally is, and sometimes you receive a Scout in your deck without getting to have a say on the matter.
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Oh, I get what you're saying. But I think a reasonable definition of synergy should also require the combination be better than each individual part on its own.
Well, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that there's synergy between Scout and Watchtower. At least it's somewhat useful. When you have a Scout in your deck, Watchtower is a slightly better purchase than it normally is, and sometimes you receive a Scout in your deck without getting to have a say on the matter.
Heh, fair enough. :P
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There should be a tournament level rule: every player must have a scout or all victory cards and tokens are worth 0 at endgame. Also, it should cost 6 to balance all the synergies.
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There should be a tournament level rule: every player must have a scout or all victory cards and tokens are worth 0 at endgame. Also, it should cost 6 to balance all the synergies.
Big buff to trashing attacks though.
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In all seriousness: the redundancy rules from the Dominion card picker probably includes all the synergies:
\Only allow Scout if there is at least one Baron, Crossroads, Explorer, Hunting Party, Farmland, Menagerie, Mystic, Peddler, Tournament, Tunnel, Wishing Well, Action/Victory, or Treasure/Victory card.
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In all seriousness: the redundancy rules from the Dominion card picker probably includes all the synergies:
\Only allow Scout if there is at least one Baron, Crossroads, Explorer, Hunting Party, Farmland, Menagerie, Mystic, Peddler, Tournament, Tunnel, Wishing Well, Action/Victory, or Treasure/Victory card.
Scrying Pool, Apothecary, and Herald(maybe the list above doesn't include Guilds) synergizes with Scout as well. You'd probably need to combine the synergies above with one of the cards I mentioned before Scout is actually worth it.
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In all seriousness: the redundancy rules from the Dominion card picker probably includes all the synergies:
\Only allow Scout if there is at least one Baron, Crossroads, Explorer, Hunting Party, Farmland, Menagerie, Mystic, Peddler, Tournament, Tunnel, Wishing Well, Action/Victory, or Treasure/Victory card.
There are obvious antisynergies, in hunting party case scout is terrible as it could cause reshuffle of coppers, farmland is nombo unless you use it to change swindled scouts into gold, with menagerie its also terrible, it could only harm next turn by drawing green and instead you would have duplicate coppers there. No synergy with peddler, tournament is also nombo as you should buy additional tournament for better connection chance and scout without tournament is even more useless as normal when it prevents connecting province next turn. I have no idea how scout synergizes with tunnel.
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The Peddler 'synergy' seems to be that's Scout is a non-terminal. So it's the same kind of synergy Ruined Village has with Scout.
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The Peddler 'synergy' seems to be that's Scout is a non-terminal. So it's the same kind of synergy Ruined Village has with Scout.
Not entirely, no. Scouts main synergy with any cantrip is that it increases you initial search space by 60% to find some enabling card. For instance. Say my enabling card for Peddler is Sir Martin and his lovely +2 buys (it could also be Market or Margrave). Without Scout, I'm looking to play Peddler and hope he is in one of the 5 cards in my final hand (or that I chain Peddlers to hit him), with Scout I'm hoping that he is in one of the 8 cards I see. Even better, I can stack my deck a bit so I can play Scout -> Peddler -> Peddler -> Martin this turn and CCXXX next turn. I am much more likely to have a two or three peddler buying turn with Scout than nothing or most any other terminal $4; Silver is actively bad in a lot of these decks.
The problem is not that Scout is actively bad in a cantrip heavy deck, it is that you almost always want something else instead. For instance, instead of Sir Martin, say your activating card for Peddler is Squire, well in that case Scout competes directing with just buying another Sqr. Instead of trying to hit your 1 key card in 8, you are much better off trying one of your 2 key cards in 5. Roughly speaking, a second enabling card doubles your odds of lining things up, Scout is only competitive at lining things up if you expect to draw 3.5 cards or fewer (and if you are doing that you really want to make sure you have the attack as well). At some point, it is better to add Scouts than additional copies of a card (particularly if they are otherwise dead) ... but by that point you most often need to buying other things like VP, plats, or high end actions (e.g. Forge, Kc, Giant).
Scout's problem is the opportunity cost. When you want it, you want to buy something else first and Scout rarely has a good buying time except when you whiff on some price point or something else piles out.