Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Let's Discuss ... => Topic started by: schadd on May 06, 2016, 04:21:32 pm
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(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/1/1c/Harvest.jpg)
let's do one of the boring ones today, because teasers. those were fun, right guys?
harvest isn't, though.
well, perhaps harvest is not that boring, by nature of being bad; sometimes the bad ones are the most irresistible (http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160505/log.0.1462488508245.txt). that said, games where you get harvest are generally ones where you aren't doing a whole lot, because if you are then why would you buy harvest.
perhaps fortunately and perhaps unfortunately, there isn't really a way to manipulate this one other than getting different cards; it is cornucopia at its truest form except for that it's bad.
i personally think it's a little better than we have it rated, but not by a lot, and well, differentiating between the bottom few cards is hard because we don't really tend to have a large sample size.
-what sort of deck that, while still eventually drawing itself, doesn't mind playing harvests before all the cards are gone?
-in what game have you made the best use of harvest? (if anyone at all would ever feel like looking for a log of that)
-did you forget about harvest before seeing this? i mean cornucopia is my favorite expansion but i had to check to make sure this was called 'harvest' and not some other thing
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Harvest is best in Thief games with lots of +Action and no other +(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/6/6d/Coin.png/16px-Coin.png), but plenty of draw, and maybe some +Buy.
In other words, I went through the entire Dominion Online Cornucopia Campaign without ever once buying a Harvest.
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Harvest is best in Thief games
So....never
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I find harvest one of the most underwhelming cards in dominion... I mean... Itīs rarely good, itīs unrealiable, and even when you get the most from it (all 4 coins) itīs still a bit lackluster for me... Even thief, when it hitīs your opponents gold or platina can be awesome, but harvest just never is. I just think that harvest needed something more, even if little...
Itīs only useful when you, for some reason, really really need that your coin income comes actions and not treasures, mostly pirate ship, and herald games come to mind. and even then there are silly things you have to worry, like not drawing your whole deck before playing it...
I had a league match recently where I bought harvest (herald was key) and found myself mostly wishing they were woodcutters (which were also avaiable), that says a lot...
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I don't own Cornucopia, so I don't play with its cards often. That said, I don't think I've ever bought Harvest.
It's probably the most blatantly underpowered card of all Dominion. (that is, you need to try Transmute and Scout a few times before it's clear how bad they are)
I don't want it early because it won't give much (2$ or 3 coins, at the cost of discarding one of my early buys), and later I'll prefer Gold because it's not terminal and works on an empty deck and I'm afraid that I'll be not left wondering whether I'll get enough money from Harvest to double Province.
Tribute, another very unreliable card, at least provides good rewards. Harvest's effect is comparable to a card that costs 1$, and its handicap is worse.
The art is very nice.
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I won a game with Harvest once. I don't remember how though. It was a sloggy 3-4p game, and Harvest gave me the $4 I needed to hit $8 like three times.
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I've found some good uses for Harvest, but I cannot remember how this was accomplished. I definitely played a game against a competent human player recently where this was a big help. Wish I'd saved the Kingdom.
I wonder how good it would be if it were +1 money and then +1 money for each different named card in the top 4.
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I have won a couple of games using Harvest, which is apparently more than most others can say. Every time, it has been because of Procession or King's Court. If there is no other virtual coin, then Harvest can be useful. Procession also helps with gaining them. I mean, there are King's Court engines where people buy Chancellor and Navigator just to king them, so why not Harvest, a card that at its best on average generates more +coin than almost all other actions in the game.
Harvest also has a place in weird good stuff decks where you have tonnes of actions and some amount of diversity (so that the expected value is at least 3). Might be a decent buy with Champion or Coin of the Realm in those decks? It usually has a lot of competition though, cause Harvest is underwhelming compared to virtually all other 5's and even many 4's and 3's.
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Harvest is one of my favourite cards from Cornucopia. It's usually ignorable, but when I see it one the board, I always try to see whether I can include it in my strategy. It has netted me a few wins :)
Perhaps Harvest excels best in an engine with high diversity, where optimal play includes buying many different cards. It should synergize well with other cards that reward variety - Menagerie, Fairgrounds, opponent's Swindler (to a degree) etc.
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Harvest isn't itself a bad card, it's just that there's always something else better. I bought one in a league match last week and it was working fine, giving me 3 or 4 coins each play, but I'd still have been better off with a second library instead.
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I think that, more than any other card, Harvest suffers from Gold always being available. Maybe Cache is worse in this regard. Most other $5 money-giving cards give you something that Gold doesn't. Often it's at least +1 Buy (Wine Merchant, Capital, etc.). Sometimes it's spreading out its $ over several turns (Merchant Ship, Merchant Guild). But Harvest just gives +$, and never more than +$4. Online, I generally only buy it if I'm going to throne it. IRL, I've replaced it with a stronger version.
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I think that, more than any other card, Harvest suffers from Gold always being available. Maybe Cache is worse in this regard. Most other $5 money-giving cards give you something that Gold doesn't. Often it's at least +1 Buy (Wine Merchant, Capital, etc.). Sometimes it's spreading out its $ over several turns (Merchant Ship, Merchant Guild). But Harvest just gives +$, and never more than +$4. Online, I generally only buy it if I'm going to throne it. IRL, I've replaced it with a stronger version.
Cache at least has Gardens games going for it over Gold.
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IRL, I've replaced it with a stronger version.
I'd be interested to hear what it is, if you don't mind sharing. We can hide in the Variants subforum if you don't want to do this in public.
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IRL, I've replaced it with a stronger version.
I'd be interested to hear what it is, if you don't mind sharing. We can hide in the Variants subforum if you don't want to do this in public.
My guess would be either to look at more cards, or to selectively discard revealed cards, rather than discarding all of them.
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I think that, more than any other card, Harvest suffers from Gold always being available. Maybe Cache is worse in this regard. Most other $5 money-giving cards give you something that Gold doesn't. Often it's at least +1 Buy (Wine Merchant, Capital, etc.). Sometimes it's spreading out its $ over several turns (Merchant Ship, Merchant Guild). But Harvest just gives +$, and never more than +$4. Online, I generally only buy it if I'm going to throne it. IRL, I've replaced it with a stronger version.
Cache at least has Gardens games going for it over Gold.
It's also better than Gold in other slogs, with Silk Road or Duke. If Copper is a good card, Cache is a good card.
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Harvest, pretty much the Adventurer of Cornucopia.
It's just so boring and lackluster.
It doesn't offer anything plain money doesn't (except for niche things like discarding Tunnels).
Revealing 4 is also often pretty nasty for reshuffles, in a sense that I'd rather draw 4 with Hunting Grounds to trigger a reshuffle than discard cards to trigger the same reshuffle. At least with the draw, you might be able to draw cards that draw cards and the reshuffle isn't that big of a deal.
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Harvest would be underwhelming, but just fine if it gave +1 Buy.
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Cache at least has Gardens games going for it over Gold.
I misread that as "garden gnomes".
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Cache at least has Gardens games going for it over Gold.
I misread that as "garden gnomes".
You know it's a good card when garden gnomes are going for it over Gold.
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My main experience with Harvest is Swindling people's $5s into it in the late game when I don't want to give them a Duchy. I've had several occurrences of them playing that Harvest for $4 and spiking a Province. That leads to the question: when is it good to give people Harvests?
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My main experience with Harvest is Swindling people's $5s into it in the late game when I don't want to give them a Duchy. I've had several occurrences of them playing that Harvest for $4 and spiking a Province. That leads to the question: when is it good to give people Harvests?
Always, unless there is a $5 that hurts them more (such as Cache in some situations), or another one that's even less useful (such as Mint).
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My main experience with Harvest is Swindling people's $5s into it in the late game when I don't want to give them a Duchy. I've had several occurrences of them playing that Harvest for $4 and spiking a Province. That leads to the question: when is it good to give people Harvests?
It depends on what that $5 card was that you Swindled, but there's a good chance they would have got that Province anyways (and maybe worse) if you'd left them with the card they originally wanted. Harvest is usually the worst $5 on the board, but sometimes it will still help them get a Province. Most $5's do.
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If Harvest said, "+$4, discard the top 4 cards of your deck" it would see about as much play. Which tells us something about the virtue of reliability, as Merchant Ship has a very similar effect and is very strong.
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I played a game where I used Harvest to great effect! Okay, this probably wasn't optimal, as I get 5 provinces by turn 15 which seems slow-ish (right?), but it felt good.
https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160512/log.0.1463065587696.txt
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I played an IRL game with one of my friends with Harvest and Tunnel on the board. So naturally I thought "Harvest sucks, I'm going for it." My friend decided to mirror me. Harvest hit $4 for every single play, except for twice it hit $3. The game was over so fast. So now Harvest has special place in my heart for being a big pile of $$ making power. ;)
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Cycle more to upgrade Travelers faster?
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Cycle more to upgrade Travelers faster?
and as a bonus travelers make for a bunch of differently named cards
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Cycle more to upgrade Travelers faster?
and as a bonus travelers make for a bunch of differently named cards
C-c-c-c-c-c---they display some nice synergy.
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Cycle more to upgrade Travelers faster?
As long as you can get them out of the trash with an inn or herald buy, sure.
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IRL, I've replaced it with a stronger version.
I'd be interested to hear what it is, if you don't mind sharing. We can hide in the Variants subforum if you don't want to do this in public.
You put one of the revealed cards back on your deck.
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Harvest is a very special card. Chancellor is a powerhouse compared to it.
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More fun: Reveal the top four cards of your deck; then trash them. +$2 per differently named card trashed.
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More fun: Reveal the top four cards of your deck; then trash them. +$2 per differently named card trashed.
So that's why Doctors are so rich!
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If Harvest said, "+$4, discard the top 4 cards of your deck" it would see about as much play. Which tells us something about the virtue of reliability, as Merchant Ship has a very similar effect and is very strong.
Merchant ship is very strong?
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I wonder if this card would be to over-powered if it discarded 5 cards.
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I wonder if this card would be to over-powered if it discarded 5 cards.
I thought you meant from hand at first.
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Seriously, Harvest is not that bad. Same power level as merchant ship, both shine in different situations. Both have the same use : getting more money than gold if you can play enough actions.
Excluding Big Money games (which are rarely a thing nowadays), it's extremely easy to get $4 from your harvest. If you hit $2 or $1 (!) it means that you bought harvest too early. Otherwise, you will always get $3+.
And I'm not talking about tunnel or deck-inspection tricks here. I tend to think the biggest downside oh harvest is the lack of +buy, which will make you prefer something like baron, horse traders or wine merchant as a source of money. But if you already have enough +buy, harvest is usually better than those three. I think harvest is best in average-engine games, or junking attack games with slow trashers.
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If Harvest had +Buy, it would have been an interesting Baron/Wine Merch variant.
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If Harvest had +Buy, it would have been an interesting Baron/Wine Merch variant.
If harvest cost 1$, it would have been a cool poor house variant.
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Seriously, Harvest is not that bad. Same power level as merchant ship, both shine in different situations. Both have the same use : getting more money than gold if you can play enough actions.
Excluding Big Money games (which are rarely a thing nowadays), it's extremely easy to get $4 from your harvest. If you hit $2 or $1 (!) it means that you bought harvest too early. Otherwise, you will always get $3+.
And I'm not talking about tunnel or deck-inspection tricks here. I tend to think the biggest downside oh harvest is the lack of +buy, which will make you prefer something like baron, horse traders or wine merchant as a source of money. But if you already have enough +buy, harvest is usually better than those three. I think harvest is best in average-engine games, or junking attack games with slow trashers.
The problem is that Harvest, like Tribute and other 'turn cards over on a deck, get stuff' cards, is quite unpredictable - in a deck with good variation, you should almost always get at least $2, usually $3, and sometimes 44. But you don't know before you take the Harvest plunge. In addition, it sorta nombos with itself - early game, without Shelters, your deck doesn't have enough variation to buy it, and then middle or late game, you are probably buying better stuff with your 5s. If it gave you +buy it might help you make your deck more amenable to Harvest.
I love when I can find a place for it because I do enjoy making it work, but it's not optimal in most decks.
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Still, it's the triggering reshuffles aspects which annoys me the most.
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I guess Harvest will be good if you hit exactly five in that kingdom:
Duchess
Scout
Sea Hag
Marauder
Harvest
Hamlet
Loan
Adventurer
Fortune Teller
Squire
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Still, it's the triggering reshuffles aspects which annoys me the most.
It's actually not bad at all. Quite the opposite, in fact: it's a great way to make sure that the harvest misses the shuffle. :P
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The problem is that Harvest, like Tribute and other 'turn cards over on a deck, get stuff' cards, is quite unpredictable - in a deck with good variation, you should almost always get at least $2, usually $3, and sometimes 44.
It's a lot more predictable than tribute : you know it will be money. And from my experience, it's usually $4, sometimes $3.
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I didn't see this interaction mentioned yet.
I've used Harvest with Herald. Having my deck consist of only actions made the heralds super strong, and the harvest provided the virtual money.
Only had to worry about playing the harvests before I ran out of deck to draw.
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In my opinion Harvest is mainly weak because afterwards three terminal Action cards have been published (Giant on average, Legionary, Courtier) which provide 3 and do something additional so Harvest sucks in comparison. Of course the other reason is that you mostly prefer non-terminal cards that provide coins.
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The problem is that Harvest, like Tribute and other 'turn cards over on a deck, get stuff' cards, is quite unpredictable - in a deck with good variation, you should almost always get at least $2, usually $3, and sometimes 44.
It's a lot more predictable than tribute : you know it will be money. And from my experience, it's usually $4, sometimes $3.
This depends heavily on the board:
1. No trashing. Okay, you start with 7 coppers. Say you have N cards. When you hit a copper, how likely are you to hit a second copper? Well assuming I did the permutations correctly, you need an N of about 26 cards to have better than 50% odds assuming no other duplicates. Reality is worse because you will be getting duplicates of other cards. Gaining 16 cards is looking at around T9 on a quick board to actually start paying out at $4.
2. Low draw control. If you can discard cards, life is fine, but Harvest has the trouble that if your intend to draw your deck and if it ends up being in the bottom 4 cards itself, it gets progressively worse. Say I want to hit double province and I expect to hit $3.5 per Harvest. This means I need to hit either 4 and some treasure or 5 ... but if my deck is only 16 cards (say I opened Remake/Ratcatcher) then I will completely whiff on one Harvest each turn. Getting enough Harvests to ensure big VP buys becomes somewhat self-defeating as they draw down your expectation value for each Harvest play. A thinner deck where you can more reliably draw several Harvests is also a deck where you are much more likely to get a complete $0 whiff on one or more Harvests.
3. +action requirements. At best, Harvest costs 2 actions, 1 buy and 2 draw to yield a province. Gold costs 0 actions, 1 buy, and 3 draw. There are a lot of boards where you will buy villages, and not want to burn all that on a Harvest. With only one village pile, but with terminal draw, light trashing, and +buy it is pretty steep to skip out on the draw. After all Smithy x2/Silver x4 is 2 actions, 1 buy, and 0 net draw, yet you need a good reason to go for it instead ditching some silver and using a gold.
On the positive side:
1. It is generally easier to gain $5 actions over $6 golds. Yeah a few cards (Mine, Tax collector, etc.) can go direct to gold, but you can snag Harvest from University, Smasoning gold, and Remodeling Silver. When you can drop it into an effective deck it can save a turn or two in ramp up (e.g. Kc/Artificer/Margrave can drop in Harvest mid-turn and quickly add $12 to the buy total). University can be absolutely insane here where you go from maybe $5 worth of buying power to something like $20 in mid-turn.
2. There are now a good number of VP setups where it is preferable to gold: Vineyards, Arena, Bandit fort, Basilica, Colonnade, Defile shrine, Museum, Orchard, Tower, Triumphal arch, and maybe wall.
3. With deck top sorting cards, it can be useful to clear dross off the top. E.g. Apothecary leaves you some green and two random cards - discard and forget it. Top deck a province with a Count or Mandarin - dump it for cash. Even Pearl diver can make tiny marginal improvements on its ability to skip dross.
All told Harvest is just not THAT much cheaper than Gold. In the early game you will NOT be hitting better than Gold all that often and will have plenty of terminal silver hands. Worse when you do hit big hands, it will almost always be because you dumped a card you wanted to play (like a non-terminal trasher). Late game, you can save a $1 now instead of gold and later you can spend an action ... to net maybe $1 more than Gold. Sometimes +actions are that cheap and Harvest is not bad. Other times Gold or even silver is vastly more action and space efficient.
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I used Harvest and some village (don't remember which) as my main source of income in a Bandit Fort game. I think it worked, because I won.
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Harvest has gotten a bad rap. I don't think it's the worst 5 in the game, and it might not even be in the bottom 10. In a decent treasureless engine with enough +actions it shouldn't be too hard to play it before you draw your whole deck. Or you can draw your deck, then discard some junk and harvest that. There are ways to make it work. At the very least, it's decent to pick up if there's nothing else going on on the board. That already makes it better than Cache, which you usually don't want even if there's nothing else going on.
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Harvest has gotten a bad rap.
I mean, it sucks! Adventures and Empires made deck-drawing much easier. And with 2E's of Intrigue and Base rolling out suddenly the contenders for worst (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7d/Coin5.png/16px-Coin5.png) dropped out. Compare Harvest to Liegonary, Harvest can only sometimes give (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f7/Coin1.png/16px-Coin1.png) more, and it doesn't have a killer attack! I'd definitely put it at the worst (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7d/Coin5.png/16px-Coin5.png).
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Harvest has gotten a bad rap.
I mean, it sucks! Adventures and Empires made deck-drawing much easier. And with 2E's of Intrigue and Base rolling out suddenly the contenders for worst (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7d/Coin5.png/16px-Coin5.png) dropped out. Compare Harvest to Liegonary, Harvest can only sometimes give (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/f/f7/Coin1.png/16px-Coin1.png) more, and it doesn't have a killer attack! I'd definitely put it at the worst (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7d/Coin5.png/16px-Coin5.png).
Compare Harvest with Courtier.
Harvest is better when you can easily get $3-$4 off it and you want to discard cards from the top of your deck for cycling purposes. The niche for Harvest is really narrow.
I suppose some $5 cost cards can be worse than terminal coin in certain kingdoms.
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Perhaps I misused the phrase "bad rap." I didn't mean to imply that Harvest is good, or even decent. I just think it's a bit better than its reputation. At the very least, I don't see how Cache could be considered better. Are there any uses at all for that piece of garbage, besides Swindling?
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Perhaps I misused the phrase "bad rap." I didn't mean to imply that Harvest is good, or even decent. I just think it's a bit better than its reputation. At the very least, I don't see how Cache could be considered better. Are there any uses at all for that piece of garbage, besides Swindling?
It's quite good with certain alt-VP, mainly Gardens, but also Duke. It has a variety of minor combos that it could be used with, like Watchtower, Keep, Labyrinth, Counting House, etc. The point is Chache does certain things only Cache can really do, but anything Harvest does something else does better.
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Perhaps I misused the phrase "bad rap." I didn't mean to imply that Harvest is good, or even decent. I just think it's a bit better than its reputation. At the very least, I don't see how Cache could be considered better. Are there any uses at all for that piece of garbage, besides Swindling?
Cache got use in a recent game played by Adam Horton (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjD3aeQ8CvI) (Adam actually lost to the Cache strategy). I guess it was used as Rat food.
I once played a game where Harvest shined. I think it was a slog and I just needed something spiky. ETA: already mentioned that game in this thread, don't want to double count it.
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Cache is very marginally better than Silver for big money, and sometimes you play big money and sometimes you hit $5 and don't want another Action. It's also useful whenever you want to gain three cards for one buy for any reason and you don't really care what those cards are. If you have an overdrawing engine, Cache can give you $5 worth of economy on the spot and you can get rid of the Coppers later. It's not exactly a super strong card, but it's far from useless.
Harvest is really not at all far from useless.
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Worst cards in Dominion:
1. Transmute
2. Harvest
3. Pirate Ship