Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: ehunt on March 21, 2022, 12:36:25 pm
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attn: between the name and the art you would think there was +buy but there isn't
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Actually, in terms of the name, it's just balancing out exactly when "Merchant" cards have +buy or not.
Has +1 Buy:
Merchant Guild
Wine Merchant
Silk Merchant
No +1 Buy:
Merchant
Merchant Ship
Merchant Camp
Sometimes +1 Buy:
Spice Merchant
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I know Fishing Village is a strong $3, but Merchant Camp is so inferior to Fishing Village that it seems like it should be a $2. Or, alternately, Merchant Camp could have had the +Buy that some might expect, and retain its cost of $3.
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During previews, I learned I almost never wanted to topdeck for the Voyage turns (but that’s more a quirk of Voyage with engine-y cards). I wonder if there are situations where it really shines. I would probably grab a Merchant Camp with a double-Tac or Minion deck, but only one. And yeah, I forget it’s a 3-cost, because it feels like 2.
A +Buy feels right, I think? Take away 1 Action if that’s too powerful?
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During previews, I learned I almost never wanted to topdeck for the Voyage turns (but that’s more a quirk of Voyage with engine-y cards). I wonder if there are situations where it really shines. I would probably grab a Merchant Camp with a double-Tac or Minion deck, but only one. And yeah, I forget it’s a 3-cost, because it feels like 2.
A +Buy feels right, I think? Take away 1 Action if that’s too powerful?
Certainly replacing an action with a buy would make it way weaker than it is now?
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During previews, I learned I almost never wanted to topdeck for the Voyage turns (but that’s more a quirk of Voyage with engine-y cards). I wonder if there are situations where it really shines. I would probably grab a Merchant Camp with a double-Tac or Minion deck, but only one. And yeah, I forget it’s a 3-cost, because it feels like 2.
A +Buy feels right, I think? Take away 1 Action if that’s too powerful?
Certainly replacing an action with a buy would make it way weaker than it is now?
I suppose it would. I was thinking it would give it more situations to be useful in, while still being weak. But mostly I was concerned a topdecking mini-Festival would be too cheap at 3.
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I mean, adding a Buy to Merchant Camp would give it the exact same top as Villa, which costs $4. Of course the mini-Festival is not usually why you buy Villa.
But yeah I agree, Merchant Camp is definitely on the weaker side. Having one you can always top deck is okay for reliability, but if there's another $3 or $4 cost Village, I'm probably using that for my +Actions over Merchant Camp (which if you're not top decking, is basically a weaker Squire).
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During previews, I learned I almost never wanted to topdeck for the Voyage turns (but that’s more a quirk of Voyage with engine-y cards). I wonder if there are situations where it really shines. I would probably grab a Merchant Camp with a double-Tac or Minion deck, but only one. And yeah, I forget it’s a 3-cost, because it feels like 2.
A +Buy feels right, I think? Take away 1 Action if that’s too powerful?
If you could get the +1 Card token on it, I feel that would make it incredibly strong. A Treasury that can always self-topdeck, even when buying victory cards, and gives you extra actions
But otherwise, I feel like it's often decent in the early game, giving you a greater reliability while you're assembling your engine, but I rarely buy more than one, and once you've got a good engine going, it loses its value
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I’m actually kind of curious if DXV considered trying it in one of the new split piles. Just having 4 copies seems great here. Plus it could have guaranteed some interesting synergy, so you’re happier to grab it.
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I mean, adding a Buy to Merchant Camp would give it the exact same top as Villa, which costs $4. Of course the mini-Festival is not usually why you buy Villa.
Yes, but Villa's on-gain effect means that it effectively only costs $3 (as you get $1 back from playing it). And of course buying Villa also gets you +2 Actions, +1 Buy immediately.
So even at $3 with an extra +Buy, Merchant Camp would still struggle to compete with Villa.
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A single merchant camp is almost always worth buying. Having one Merchant camp can prevent you from ever drawing terminal draw without an action which is a huge deal.
Also a few ways can make it really OP. For example with mouse it can be any 2 or 3 cost that top decks itself.
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A single merchant camp is almost always worth buying. Having one Merchant camp can prevent you from ever drawing terminal draw without an action which is a huge deal.
My initial response to this was that many kingdoms can make do without the extra reliability, especially when sacrificing a little cycling to have it.
But then it occurred to me that maybe my thinking is backwards here. Maybe the presence of Merchant Camp in the kingdom means you can over-terminal early and often, which can be very powerful on many boards. Hmm…we just might be pre-judging this card, and we’ll see the meta shift on it sooner or later.
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I’m actually kind of curious if DXV considered trying it in one of the new split piles. Just having 4 copies seems great here. Plus it could have guaranteed some interesting synergy, so you’re happier to grab it.
Yeah, why does Tent exist? Doesn't play well with anything else in the pile, and is nearly useless by itself.
Replacing Tent with Merchant Camp would've freed up a kingdom card to print something interesting on.
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I’m actually kind of curious if DXV considered trying it in one of the new split piles. Just having 4 copies seems great here. Plus it could have guaranteed some interesting synergy, so you’re happier to grab it.
Yeah, why does Tent exist? Doesn't play well with anything else in the pile, and is nearly useless by itself.
Replacing Tent with Merchant Camp would've freed up a kingdom card to print something interesting on.
Agreed that Tent is kind of terrible.
I don't think Merchant Camp would work on a split pile though. If it's the only Village, then winning the Merchant Camp split could easily be game-deciding if there's only 4 of them. And that's particularly a problem for 3-player games. Also it would have the "get one, then rotate the rest away" issue that Student has.
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Villages which don't draw cards are usually not that great though (thinking about Necropolis), that +1 card might not seem significant, but it can be really helpful.
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Villages which don't draw cards are usually not that great though (thinking about Necropolis), that +1 card might not seem significant, but it can be really helpful.
It's true, but there are enough boards where any +Action is good enough, especially if there is good nonterminal draw (like Scrying Pool, Hunting Party) and/or trashing. A good design should account for these.
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I’m actually kind of curious if DXV considered trying it in one of the new split piles. Just having 4 copies seems great here. Plus it could have guaranteed some interesting synergy, so you’re happier to grab it.
It probably came up at some point, but no, I always wanted a full pile of them.
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I’m actually kind of curious if DXV considered trying it in one of the new split piles. Just having 4 copies seems great here. Plus it could have guaranteed some interesting synergy, so you’re happier to grab it.
It probably came up at some point, but no, I always wanted a full pile of them.
OK, cool. And like I said above, I think the meta could change soon regarding this card, as people learn its presence can enable significant over-terminalling. But it will be interesting to see a time where gaining much more than one Merchant Camp will be a solid strategy. (My initial thought is maybe guaranteeing 5¢ every turn in a slog.)
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I wonder if there are situations where it really shines.
With Way of the Owl. Two copies gives you +1 Card (more if you discarded), +$1 each turn, and each copy after that gives you +$1, +1 Action each turn.
Way of the Chameleon can turn them into discount, stackable Barracks.
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A single merchant camp is almost always worth buying. Having one Merchant camp can prevent you from ever drawing terminal draw without an action which is a huge deal.
Also a few ways can make it really OP. For example with mouse it can be any 2 or 3 cost that top decks itself.
I totally disagree. Drawing a non-drawing card each turn significantly reduces cycling. That is definitely not something you always want.
And I 100% agreed with this at first. (I assume you read the other comments above, including mine.) Now let’s destroy the usual engine-formula you might tend to follow. Imagine building a deck with 50 - 100 % more terminal actions than usual. That could be crazy powerful on some boards! I’m theory-crafting that could be possible on a significant number of kingdoms when Merchant Camp is around, by just buying one copy.
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My impression is that attacking yourself with Relic every turn is a significant drawback, and there were a few times when it arguably made sense not to topdeck the card--for example I have three stop cards left in my deck, and I'm desperate to draw one of my sifters next turn.
And if this is the only village and you're trying to draw deck, the lack of draw is also very significant. Village+Smithy nets two cards, while Merchant Camp+Smithy nets only one card, so you basically need twice as many components to draw deck. If your payload is terminal, you need Merchant camps to support them, meaning you have more stop cards, and need even more components. If you have so many components, you're already decently reliable, and the topdecking is redundant. I'd be curious to go through the calculations to see what component densities make topdecking bad, even.
Merchant Camp seems best with big draw cards like Hunting Grounds. Since their draw is so strong, you need fewer components, but then low component density hurts reliability. Merchant Camp helps to offset that, but I think it's outclassed by the likes of Coin of the Realm.
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I did some quick calculations to figure out the probability of drawing Merchant Camp plus Smithy in your starting hand, and then comparing to Village plus Smithy. This is imagining some sort of judgment match and you can only pick one or the other. There are 3 free parameters in the calculation, the number of villages/merchant camps, the number of Smithies, and the number of other stop cards.
Generally, Merchant Camp has better probabilities compared to Village when you have few villages/merchant camps compared to smithies, and when you have higher stop card density. At 10 stop cards, you're ambivalent when there are about 5 smithies and 5 villages/merchant camps. When you have a lot of Merchant Camps (say, 4 more Merchant Camps than Smithies in a deck with 10 stop cards), it's better not to topdeck, and you'd much rather they be villages.
Of course, the calculation doesn't cover what happens after the first village/smithy collision.
In the head to head with Village, I think Merchant Camp is favored by the following:
- Bigger draw cards, which support higher stop card densities.
- Thinner decks with fewer components. These support a higher stop card density because the starting 5 card hand is a greater proportion of your draw.
- Non-terminal payoff. Terminal payoff requires more merchant camps, and if you have that many you'd really rather they be villages.
But really it probably shines outside of the deck-drawing paradigm. For instance, suppose you shuffle once every N turns. The number of terminals your deck can support, with perfect shuffle luck, is N plus the number of villages. So, fewer shuffles per turn means you can support a higher terminal to splitter ratio, and that favors Merchant Camp. Furthermore, you can play a single Merchant camp N times per shuffle. So you could support more terminals more reliably with fewer components.
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I’m actually kind of curious if DXV considered trying it in one of the new split piles. Just having 4 copies seems great here. Plus it could have guaranteed some interesting synergy, so you’re happier to grab it.
Yeah, why does Tent exist? Doesn't play well with anything else in the pile, and is nearly useless by itself.
Replacing Tent with Merchant Camp would've freed up a kingdom card to print something interesting on.
Tent is more reliably good than Garrison. If you think tent is bad is probably because you’re not considering that a lot of the time the 4 or other 3 card cost you get is non-terminal. It’s as good as getting 2 silver early since it too decks and shows up more often. A decent amount of the time you end up trashing or just discarding it later in game but that really isn’t a big downside.
All Treasure starters such as Quarry and Talisman as well as almost any one with an action such as Bounty Hunter, Church, or Goatherd make a tent absolutely worth considering. Tent helps you hit off not only more 5s but makes it easier to hit 4 on turns when you’re trashing with Goatherd or other similar cases.
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I know Fishing Village is a strong $3, but Merchant Camp is so inferior to Fishing Village that it seems like it should be a $2. Or, alternately, Merchant Camp could have had the +Buy that some might expect, and retain its cost of $3.
Thinking about this point more, adding a +Buy to Merchant Camp would lead it to be extremely strong with Gardens (open four merchant camps, then keep topdecking them while using all spare buys on Coppers while buying Gardens followed by Estates) and possibly some other alt-VP like Silk Roads. So changing Merchant Camp's cost to $2 seems like it would have been the simplest solution.
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A single merchant camp is almost always worth buying. Having one Merchant camp can prevent you from ever drawing terminal draw without an action which is a huge deal.
Also a few ways can make it really OP. For example with mouse it can be any 2 or 3 cost that top decks itself.
I totally disagree. Drawing a non-drawing card each turn significantly reduces cycling. That is definitely not something you always want.
And I 100% agreed with this at first. (I assume you read the other comments above, including mine.) Now let’s destroy the usual engine-formula you might tend to follow. Imagine building a deck with 50 - 100 % more terminal actions than usual. That could be crazy powerful on some boards! I’m theory-crafting that could be possible on a significant number of kingdoms when Merchant Camp is around, by just buying one copy.
Sure. For example I might want that Merchant Camp in a Mountebank Kingdom once I got the second Mountebank.
Then again the risk of collision might be outweighed by the disadvantage of anti-cycling.
So no, I definitely disagree with the notion that the card is crazy powerful compared to other splitters. Cycling matters a lot, especially while you build up.
I said on the right board. Definitely agreed on the building first part. And if there’s decent +Action availability, then the Merchant Camp is easily skippable. But I’m imagining many other deck types, where you could over-terminal early and often, and then throw in a Merchant Camp before shuffle #x. Non-terminal draw, money+X, draw to X, and just any of my favorite terminals that just get nastier the more they’re spammed. Your example is great, but still thinking a little small (or could be my hubris); so not just collision risk-management, but building a deck with much less caution for adding terminals so that you see them more often while still being able to fire off your engine because topdecked splitter, while also needing a few less overall splitters.
Idk, maybe I have it all jumbled in my brain how effective this strategy is in practice. I would love to pick Freaky’s brain on how Merchant Camp enables overterminaling. (See https://dominionstrategy.com/2021/03/09/guide-to-engines/ (https://dominionstrategy.com/2021/03/09/guide-to-engines/)) But he’s not active on the forums. Maybe someone could hit Freaky up on Discord and see if he has anything to say.