-How does this compare to Smithy?
-How does this interact with other Journey token things?
-How important is the +Buy?
There is a good interaction with pilgrimage, if they should show up in the same kingdom. Ranger helps you get to more expensive cards and youŽll be very happy, when you can clone Kings Court and Platinum. The only other journey token card is Giant and I donŽt see a worthwile interaction with that card.
The +buy on the card is very useful, since you will end up with quite a bit of coins on the turn that you drew 5 cards.
Smithy is better for a reliable engine, which draws the whole deck every turn.
I like ranger more on boards with expensive cards like Platinum and Kings Court. Those extra 5 cards help a lot to reach that threshold.
The card is a little bit like Tactician. You have one turn that is worse to get an amazing second turn.
Even if you gain 3 $5 cost cards in a turn, that is well worth the two-turn $8 investment.
I've played with Ranger exactly once. In that game, Port was also available. I dinked around with Swamp Hag and Guide and all the fancy new action card that I had never played with before. My opponent did something similar, but I did it better as I came in second.
But my third opponent utilized Port. Since he could get villages so easily, he managed to kick off quite often (he had a few Guides) draw his deck, then play one more Ranger to flip his Journey Token face down.
I have concluded (and I may be incorrect) that Ranger is better than Smithy if you have more village support.
As I said in some other thread about a completely different card, the worth of Ranger is more than the sum of its parts. It's simply much easier to fire off your engine when your first draw is a ludicrous 5 cards, even if you burn an Action to reverse the token later. The +2 Buys you get with your two plays is also really nice since you often would spend terminal space on +Buy cards if you had to. So despite it drawing on average 2.5 cards per play, I think it is a very powerful draw card in certain circumstances - basically whenever you want to draw a lot of cards at once to make sure you play your engine components in the right order or get to them in time.
It should be added that it's also riskier than Smithy, in that if your engine ever whiffs, it can be a lot harder to get back on track. Ranger is more reliable than Smithy if you can play it for +5 cards to start, letting you draw the rest of your deck to do awesome stuff and flipping your Journey token again to set up for the next turn. But if you ever fail to follow through and flip that token, it'll be a disaster.
As I said in some other thread about a completely different card, the worth of Ranger is more than the sum of its parts. It's simply much easier to fire off your engine when your first draw is a ludicrous 5 cards, even if you burn an Action to reverse the token later. The +2 Buys you get with your two plays is also really nice since you often would spend terminal space on +Buy cards if you had to. So despite it drawing on average 2.5 cards per play, I think it is a very powerful draw card in certain circumstances - basically whenever you want to draw a lot of cards at once to make sure you play your engine components in the right order or get to them in time.