Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Let's Discuss ... => Topic started by: Seprix on April 08, 2016, 05:32:04 pm

Title: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: Seprix on April 08, 2016, 05:32:04 pm: (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/9/98/Library.jpg)

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero

Cicero doesn't seem to be very good at Dominion.

-How good is this card? Is it underrated, or is it as ignorable as it often is?
-Best case scenario for this card? Worst case scenario?
-Is $5 too pricey? Would $4 be broken?
-Adventures shenanigans?
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: AdrianHealey on April 08, 2016, 07:26:41 pm: Candlestickmaker, fishing villag/plaza and library is a thing.

And chapel to get rid of everything. And goons, maybe.

Library is great. Well designed, has it's usage, but definitely overpowered and 5 seems to me the correct price for it.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: LibraryAdventurer on April 08, 2016, 07:39:43 pm: Definitely not overprised at $5.
Library is awesome.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: Beyond Awesome on April 08, 2016, 10:50:56 pm: Quote from: AdrianHealey on April 08, 2016, 07:26:41 pm
Candlestickmaker, fishing villag/plaza and library is a thing.

And chapel to get rid of everything. And goons, maybe.

Library is great. Well designed, has it's usage, but definitely overpowered and 5 seems to me the correct price for it.

Please explain to me how this is overpowered. Pretty much it needs draw to X to be good which you already stated.

With that said, Library is an okay card. No complaints. I think it would fit in well in any set. That's all I have to say.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: SirSlugma on April 09, 2016, 12:19:33 am: Quote from: Beyond Awesome on April 08, 2016, 10:50:56 pm
Quote from: AdrianHealey on April 08, 2016, 07:26:41 pm
Candlestickmaker, fishing villag/plaza and library is a thing.

And chapel to get rid of everything. And goons, maybe.

Library is great. Well designed, has it's usage, but definitely overpowered and 5 seems to me the correct price for it.

Please explain to me how this is overpowered. Pretty much it needs draw to X to be good which you already stated.

With that said, Library is an okay card. No complaints. I think it would fit in well in any set. That's all I have to say.

I think he meant to say it would be overpowered at 4, in response to the original post. Because Library is fine enough, but certainly not a card anyone would call a powerhouse.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: Doom_Shark on April 09, 2016, 02:00:44 am: Can I just say that everyone loves his brother in blue, watchtower? Also, if ypu look at exactly what it gives you, a lot of times it could be considered a smithy variant. One that allows you to be (somewhat) selective. So yes, it would be overpowered at four.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: Davio on April 09, 2016, 03:30:20 am: This is a great card because it makes for a little different draw strategy.

Normal draw strategy is: Play Villages, play drawers (like Smithy, Margrave, etc.)
With this, you're effectively trying to get down to a single Library in hand at which point you can explode again.
That implode-explode pulsation is quite fun.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: AdrianHealey on April 09, 2016, 05:37:00 am: Quote from: SirSlugma on April 09, 2016, 12:19:33 am
Quote from: Beyond Awesome on April 08, 2016, 10:50:56 pm
Quote from: AdrianHealey on April 08, 2016, 07:26:41 pm
Candlestickmaker, fishing villag/plaza and library is a thing.

And chapel to get rid of everything. And goons, maybe.

Library is great. Well designed, has it's usage, but definitely overpowered and 5 seems to me the correct price for it.

Please explain to me how this is overpowered. Pretty much it needs draw to X to be good which you already stated.

With that said, Library is an okay card. No complaints. I think it would fit in well in any set. That's all I have to say.

I think he meant to say it would be overpowered at 4, in response to the original post. Because Library is fine enough, but certainly not a card anyone would call a powerhouse.

Yes, 'at 4' is mysteriously missing.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: Accatitippi on April 09, 2016, 07:18:37 am: Library is allright.
I sometimes lost games when I ignored it in favor of traditional +cards. If you can get "pulsating", as Davio put it, it's very powerful draw.
Definitely requires more skill to build with than Smithies.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: Aleimon Thimble on April 09, 2016, 07:45:13 am: The obvious base set combo is Festival-Library, probably the second most important card interaction after Workshop/Gardens. I think that even today, Festival is the perfect card to go with Library. Library is best with disappearing money and non-drawing Villages, and Festival is both AND adds in a buy to the mix.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: Awaclus on April 09, 2016, 07:59:04 am: Quote from: Aleimon Thimble on April 09, 2016, 07:45:13 am
The obvious base set combo is Festival-Library

That's an engine, not a combo.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: Aleimon Thimble on April 09, 2016, 08:01:56 am: Quote from: Awaclus on April 09, 2016, 07:59:04 am
Quote from: Aleimon Thimble on April 09, 2016, 07:45:13 am
The obvious base set combo is Festival-Library

That's an engine, not a combo.

It's both.

More precisely: the cards form a combo, but the deck type they create is an engine, not a 'combo deck'. The word 'combo' is confusing like that.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: ced on April 09, 2016, 09:44:19 am: Quote from: Aleimon Thimble on April 09, 2016, 07:45:13 am
The obvious base set combo is Festival-Library, probably the second most important card interaction after Workshop/Gardens. I think that even today, Festival is the perfect card to go with Library. Library is best with disappearing money and non-drawing Villages, and Festival is both AND adds in a buy to the mix.

Festival-Library isn't really a strong engine on its own. You'll probably need to buy some Silvers to buy all your 5-cost actions, eventually filling your deck with silvers and Festivals. All these stop cards mean that any starting hand without a Library is probably going to be a dud hand. You need something extra - sifters (so, Cellar for base set games) or nonterminal trashers work very well for helping find that first Library.

On top of that, it is hard to rely on Festival for all your +actions since it's difficult to quickly add both them and the Libraries to your deck at the same time at their pricepoint. Hence you'd like there to be a cheaper village to buy on weaker hands or with spare Festival buys.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: Chris is me on April 09, 2016, 09:59:08 am: Quote from: ced on April 09, 2016, 09:44:19 am
Quote from: Aleimon Thimble on April 09, 2016, 07:45:13 am
The obvious base set combo is Festival-Library, probably the second most important card interaction after Workshop/Gardens. I think that even today, Festival is the perfect card to go with Library. Library is best with disappearing money and non-drawing Villages, and Festival is both AND adds in a buy to the mix.

Festival-Library isn't really a strong engine on its own. You'll probably need to buy some Silvers to buy all your 5-cost actions, eventually filling your deck with silvers and Festivals. All these stop cards mean that any starting hand without a Library is probably going to be a dud hand. You need something extra - sifters (so, Cellar for base set games) or nonterminal trashers work very well for helping find that first Library.

On top of that, it is hard to rely on Festival for all your +actions since it's difficult to quickly add both them and the Libraries to your deck at the same time at their pricepoint. Hence you'd like there to be a cheaper village to buy on weaker hands or with spare Festival buys.

If you have a way to gain those $5s (Altar, University) it is very good, but otherwise it's pretty slow. You really want Festival / Watchtower or Fishing Village / Library to make it work.

Anyway, I really like Library when the board is right for it. You get a lot of deck control and Draw To X engines are so fucking cool. But it's pretty rare that the stars align.

Library is a surprisingly great BM card though - you will never collide multiple Library and you basically always get a 7 card hand regardless of attacks.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: eHalcyon on April 09, 2016, 11:32:10 am: Quote from: Chris is me on April 09, 2016, 09:59:08 am
Library is a surprisingly great BM card though - you will never collide multiple Library and you basically always get a 7 card hand regardless of attacks.

You may draw multiple Libraries at cleanup.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: schadd on April 09, 2016, 11:51:29 am: library is a situational card. unfortunately it doesn't have that many of its situations in base only, so it can make a bad impression. whereas smithy is pretty much always good as long as there is at least one player playing, because 3 is a good amount of cards to draw, library is only good when there are, quite roughly, 3ish cards that one would describe as Good With Library Cards. there are cards that look like they are those ones but are not: horse traders is an example. discard two cards, hey, that's what library likes, and i have another buy to get more Good With Library Cards! but in terms of actually, assuming that library is really your only good draw, then for this thing to work you need to, from the get go, draw two villages, horse traders, and library, and forget about whatever benefit you might get from playing the two cards you discarded (which is often not a concern but...). snore!

if you had a sour taste in your mouth after reading '2 villages' then you may be led to believe that most of the things that like library are non-terminal. the village ones that don't draw a card are fine but there aren't that many of them; warehouse and forager secretly library's best friends because they not only help out while increasing the amount of draw that library does, but also mitigate the biggest critical flaw library has which is that you need to draw quite well for it to work. also that library's other friends are expensive, which begs the question of whether they're true friends to begin with. library, like anal sex, is something that people seem to think you can just do without several stages of preparation.

however, when library talks she taaaaaaaalks; and when she walks she waaaaaaaaalks. if there's upwards of one village pile and all that jazz, it can draw 7 cards a lot of times, and there's even that weird other thing that it does that takes a lot of card text. vault/library is nothing less than an end goal of library, but it's really strong when that happens. but i urge you, reader, not to let god's light blind you. having ten pawns as well as library infrastructure and an other thing can double province consistently; two is a lot of provinces.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: schadd on April 09, 2016, 11:52:40 am: excuse me. tl;dr anal sex
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: Seprix on April 09, 2016, 12:24:09 pm: Are you okay? :(
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Base Set Cards: Library
Post by: Chris is me on April 09, 2016, 05:14:12 pm: Quote from: schadd on April 09, 2016, 11:52:40 am
excuse me. tl;dr anal sex

You're the best poster on this entire goddamned forum.