Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: Burning Skull on September 14, 2017, 12:38:30 pm
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I would like to share an obsevation/provoke discussion.
After Guilds came out everybody became a Herald at heart. Community opinion on Heralds was pretty high, and stays so.
Which is I think is not exactly correct anymore.
In a lot of games recently I tend to skip/(be passive about) Heralds when any kind of other option is available.
This comes from the fact that latest expansions added a lot of ways to be in a precise control of your deck, and Heralds more frequently than not don't fit into the concept.
Obviously sometimes you just go for them because the exact order in which you play your actions doesn't matter all that much (no remodellers, no gainers, etc), and well, with a good action density they are Lost Cities most of the time.
Also, obviously a lot of combos remain (Apo, Cartographer, Minstrel, Secret Passage etc) where they are still super amazing.
Anyway, if in the past I was glad to have Heralds sleeping all over my bed, now they must be satisfied with a much more modest place on the rug.
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It could be that Adventures and Empires, two new expansions that see a lot of play right now, introduced a lot of powerful cards or combinations of cards that make Herald look a bit less crazy. Herald is also a card that only starts doing good stuff when you've already bought a lot of other actions, so the other actions might be mistaken for the star cards instead of Herald simply because you gained those "star cards" first.
New cards off the top of my head that possibly cast a big shadow over Herald due to having similarly powerful effects or their boost to deck reliability.
Adventures:
- Lost City
- Page line
- Peasant line
- Magpie (especially with +X tokens)
- Gear
- Lost Arts / Pathfinding
- Like, half of the other Events (Save, Bonfire, Scouting Party, Expedition, etc.)
Empires:
- Encampment
- Forum
- Donate
- Archive
- Overlord
- City Quarter
- Landmarks in general
Bonus/Other:
- Summon
- Edit: Sauna/Avanto
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And think about everything Dark Ages introduced, that doesn't see much action now, like Hermit/Madman and the empty-the-supply-really-fast tricks. Heralds are, still, a useful source of +Action when solid trashing is available.
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And think about everything Dark Ages introduced, that doesn't see much action now, like Hermit/Madman and the empty-the-supply-really-fast tricks. Heralds are, still, a useful source of +Action when solid trashing is available.
Didn't Villa help bring the empty-the-supply tricks down to like Turn 1? But even then, all the new tricks basically try to speed up the empty-the-supply shell that started with Dark Ages right?
Also, I still think Urchin/Mercenary is nuts.
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And think about everything Dark Ages introduced, that doesn't see much action now, like Hermit/Madman and the empty-the-supply-really-fast tricks. Heralds are, still, a useful source of +Action when solid trashing is available.
Didn't Villa help bring the empty-the-supply tricks down to like Turn 1? But even then, all the new tricks basically try to speed up the empty-the-supply shell that started with Dark Ages right?
Also, I still think Urchin/Mercenary is nuts.
You're entirely right. The point is, much of Dark Ages, just like Herald, has been left in the dark (ages) with newer cards that can empty the supply faster.
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Herald is a nice card. I still remember the first time I went for a double tactician deck with Herald. Man, that was a surprise!
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Sounds like a good article topic to me. Blindly buying Herald is pretty bad, IMO.
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It's on-buy bonus shan't be overlooked. I don't see how top-decking cards will ever not be relevant, no matter how wild card-shaped things get. And if anything, the Page and Peasant lines make Herald's on-buy (same goes for Inn, Scavenger, etc.) that much more powerful.
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Maybe I'm just not at that level of play yet but I still think Herald is amazing. Based on my experience, I'd say to be careful about it mainly if there's no trashing (especially if there's also junking) and with mandatory-trashing cards (particularly Remake, which ironically is a huge liability for exactly the same reasons it's so good at enabling Herald.)
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Maybe I'm just not at that level of play yet but I still think Herald is amazing. Based on my experience, I'd say to be careful about it mainly if there's no trashing (especially if there's also junking) and with mandatory-trashing cards (particularly Remake, which ironically is a huge liability for exactly the same reasons it's so good at enabling Herald.)
Herald is also just a nice spammable $4 cost card. It's a good card to gain en masse with Workshop and co. (including Engineer), as well as like Stonemason or whatever.
There are some nice tricks with the on-buy too, like topdecking Province+Tournament.
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I do find myself skipping Herald more often than I would've before those new sets, I think. Herald is a better Village when your deck is stuffed full of Actions and doesn't have a ton of draw, but there's so many more draw enablers now - City Quarter, Hireling, Haunted Woods, Enchantress and Expedition aren't all straight-up nombos, but they reduce the efficacy of Herald. Donate and Herald don't seem like they go together well. Throw in the fact that Herald was already dicey with any must-trash like Rats, Salvager, Bishop, etc. as well as any double Tacticians as mentioned above and yeah, there's a lot of places where I think it's skippable. It's still real powerful when it's not, though.
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I don't know, Herald is pretty good. Of the Guilds cards though, Advisor has gone up in value for me the most over the years. As for Herald, I think it's as good as it always has been.
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In six months we're gonna have the exact same thread about Sauna and Avanto. Just calling that one now.
Hype cycles happen. Herald is still really good though; it's Village and draw in one as long as you have a little thinning.
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In six months we're gonna have the exact same thread about Sauna and Avanto. Just calling that one now.
Hype cycles happen. Herald is still really good though; it's Village and draw in one as long as you have a little thinning.
Hype cycles happen. Sauna and Avanto are still really good though; they're Village and draw and thinning in one as long as you have... Wait.