Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion Articles => Topic started by: WanderingWinder on June 13, 2012, 12:35:12 pm
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Wharf is arguably the best card in the game which you cannot use to give a curse to your opponent. It's great for big money. It's great for engines. It's not great in rushes, but then, it's pretty good at beating them.
Hunting Party is pretty clearly the second-best non-attack $5 (if we call IGG an attack here anyway, which is not technically true - and these might be better than IGG anyway). And it's entirely outclassed by wharf, pretty much all around.
Now, why is wharf so powerful? Basically, it's a Council Room that's split over two turns, with an extra buy, and most importantly, which doesn't lab your opponent. If you play one every turn, it's EXACTLY like CR minus the drawback (and with an extra buy). And Council Room is already a decent card, even with the drawback. Now, you do potentially need more wharves than you would council rooms to pull it off. But in practice, this isn't much of an issue most of the time, - you can actually get way more wharves than CRs without collision being a huge issue, thanks to the duration-ness - and giving your opponent free labs is much more important. Breaking down wharf itself, we see that it's moat with a buy right now, which isn't so special but not totally terrible, but essentially a worker's village+smithy combo guaranteed with each other next turn. And wharf has all kinds of other comparative advantages to council room as well. If there are actions you want to have played before your last terminal, wharf is a better way to do it, because you get significant amount of that draw at the beginning of your turn. This is a strength for engines, mostly, but also good in big money.
Money
If you believe the simulators - and for big money matchups, they're not perfect, but you largely should - wharf is the 5th-best single card for big money, after (go figure) Young Witch, Witch, Mountebank, Sea Hag. Yes, it beats familiar. Pretty handily actually. And the thing is, with most of the cursers, 1 curser into wharf is going to be very good on such boards anyway.
Now, how do you want to play Wharf for money? Well, there are actually several viable ways, depending a bit on what your opponent does. But in general (and say for a mirror), you want to get a couple wharves before gold, pretty much no matter what, and then get a good bit of money, with a third and maybe fourth wharf, before turning for green. In fact, it almost plays a little like an engine, because whereas with something like Smithy/BM, you want to green pretty fast - only a couple silvers and a gold is enough - with wharf, it's even a little stronger, typically, to build up a little extra more buying power before turning green. This also lets you take advantage of all those extra buys you probably have.
What works with wharf in money? Well, the first, obvious thing are your special treasures. Wharf and fool's gold is silly strong. Wharf gives you the two things that FG wants - +buys and big handsizes. Similarly, bank and wharf love each other. To a lesser extent, venture and cache can be nice, if you have lots and lots of wharves already and hit $5, and I guess Royal Seal and... Stash, which is more or less silver for you in these decks. It also works with good utility BM cards, like JoaT, though remember that wharf is the star here - doublejack with a little wharf support is not so good as wharf with jack support.
How good is Wharf-Big money? It's stronger than other money strategies, first off. It's also stronger than most simple combos. Chancellor/Stash, Treasure Map/Warehouse, Tactician/Vault, fuhgeddaboudit. Hunting Party + Terminal Silver? You need something like baron or monument to make it worth it. Embassy/Tunnel? Not unless you stop the wharf player from buying tunnels to pad his score. Native Village/Bridge... maybe. It's hard to tell. But probably Wharf dude can get a lead and then you have to be VERY careful about piles. Golden Deck... okay, you got me. Usually.
Engines
Like most draw cards, building an engine is not going to just materialize out of sticking in a village. Wharf/Money beats Village/Wharf, typically unless that village produces money for you. Bazaar and festival probably give you some modest gains over straight money, even without other help, and fishing village... well, fishing village is fishing village.
Bigger exceptions to this rule, though, come in the form of the $2 villages. Native village and hamlet are nice things to pick up with a spare buy here and there, and they're cheap enough that you can cobble together an engine pretty nicely with all your spare buys. Crossroads is the real star, though, giving three actions and, moreover, taking advantage of your bigger handsizes itself, as the green you'll pick up can really really help. Also, I'd be remiss to not mention border village. Very very often, you want to buy wharf on $6 anyway. The BV is a big bonus.
Engine-wise also, what the card gives you is zillions more cards. Other card draw qua card draw isn't necessarily bad, but you usually want wharf instead. Now, if it holds a good attack, a la margrave or ghost ship, you might make an exception for a copy or two. But the bread-and-butter of the engine should almost always be wharf, because it's just more powerful.
It's also important to note that wharf engines build a good bit differently than those based around other draw cards. Basically, you need fewer villages and/or can support more other terminals. The reason for this is that you only need to actually play half of your mighty nice draw cards every turn, even while reaping the benefits of those you played last turn. So when I build a wharf engine, I usually start Wharf-wharf-village-wharf and then alternate. Well, okay, usually it's more complicated, because I want to get other stuff, too, but you really don't need that many villages to support the draw part of your engine. And the +buys are very nicely and plentifully built in.
And now, a word from our sponsors about trashing. Trashing helps you here, as it does with most engines. But enormous trashing isn't as big a deal here as it often is, as you can easily end-up over-drawing, and you don't have that much time to out-run the big money. Furthermore, you generally want your trashing to do something useful for you later on. So remake has good utility, as does steward. Chapel a bit less so. Ambassador, as normal, is good (but watch out for wharf/money decks - they can soak ambassador attacks pretty well). But something like lookout, moneylender, spice merchant, trade route... well, it's not that they're useless. But generally, the plusses they give you are fairly minor for the time investment, given how much you have to put into them anyway.
Okay, but what other stuff can make you want to go engine over money with wharf? A LOT. Coppersmith can be worth its weight in gold pretty often. Outpost hands are at least normal sized, often larger. Any kind of discard attack is good - you won't need many copies of it. Cards that like big handsizes are good too - bank is still great here, forge can be, etc. Indeed, most kinds of cards with nice effects will make the engine at least reasonable. Some won't - cards like minion and lab don't do you nearly as many favours as they normally do, something like fortune teller is still weak, and tactician... well, you're basically losing half of wharf's advantage with tactician. Which doesn't mean it's never worth it, but once again, it's comparatively much weaker.
Works with:
Bank
Fool's Gold
Crossroads
In engines with coppersmith, outpost, most anything good.
Doesn't work with:
Hunting Party
Lab
Minion
Most other terminal draw
(It's not really that ^^these things are really actively bad, just they don't really help, at least not nearly to the extent they normally do)
Tactician
Mega-rush strategies, like Ironworks/Gardens
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Engines
Okay, but what other stuff can make you want to go engine over money with wharf? A LOT. Coppersmith can be worth its weight in gold pretty often. Outpost hands are at least normal sized, often larger. Any kind of discard attack is good - you won't need many copies of it. Indeed, most kinds of cards with nice effects will make the engine at least reasonable. Some won't - minion doesn't do you many favours, something like fortune teller is still weak. Trashing helps you, but enormous trashing isn't as big a deal here as it often is, as you can easily end-up over-drawing, and you don't have that much time to out-run the big money.
Very great article as always Mr. WW.
I just like to say I could have read this paragraph and thought you were talking about engines in general. The big difference for me that wharf has, is that any engine with wharves come prepared with +buys. Many other engines need to make some sort of sacrifice to get the +buy in there (say having to buy a woodcutter, festival instead of FV, etc.)
You can gain parts faster (more than 1 a turn), allows you to go for mega-ish turns and MEGA turns, can sneak in 3-piles MUCH easier. The +buy will also take advantage of banks, coppersmith, anything that benefits from large hands.
I know that's what you were trying to get at though, as you allude that all other card drawers don't work well with wharf because it trumps them all.
With the "works with" section. That engines line sounds funny, do I have a better choice of words... No. I did understand what you meant though.
Also an explanation of why tactician is a nombo in the article would be good. I know that its because having two hand increasers decreases the marginal benefit of each. It might just leave some readers to think they are always horrible together without a reason (and the reason is what will teach readers).
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Also an explanation of why tactician is a nombo in the article would be good. I know that its because having two hand increasers decreases the marginal benefit of each. It might just leave some readers to think they are always horrible together without a reason (and the reason is what will teach readers).
Well, also because what do you do if you draw Tactician on your post-Wharf turn? The chief benefit of Wharf is that it gives you a 7-card hand next turn; in typical cases having Tactician in that 7-card hand means either the Tactician is a dead card or the Wharf is going to waste.
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If you have a double tactician type deck anyway, wharf can certainly help a lot. The extra card draw and buys can help set up the deck faster and draw it more consistently. Double tact decks often like both card draw and buys, so wharf is good there. Now if it's only a single tact deck, well then they sort of conflict.
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Wharf is arguably the best card in the game which you cannot use to give a curse to your opponent.
Chapel? King's Court? Goons?
Hunting Party + Terminal Silver? You need something like baron or monument to make it worth it.
Hunting Party stacks are one of the very few things that can often beat Wharf-BM: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110707-115501-0bdcba0b.html Granted, they are not necessarily better than Wharf engines, but it's not always so clear cut which of those two cards you want to emphasize. (Though looking at this board again, the right answer may have in fact been Wharf engine with a bit of HP/TR support and a Coppersmith linchpin, something both of us neglected.)
Like most draw cards, building an engine is not going to just materialize out of sticking in a village. Wharf/Money beats village/money, typically unless that village is fishing. There's probably a couple little exceptions in the form of festival and (moreso) bazaar, but you want to get wharves so much before these, that unless you are hitting 5 an awful lot, your gains from doing this aren't going to be super-great without more help.
Wharf/Bazaar is definitely a thing. I mean, sure it prefers some help, but the bar is so so low that I'd pretty much automatically go engine with those two, planning on double-Province turns. Wharf/Festival much less so: Festival's +Buy is superfluous, and the extra $1 doesn't make up for the lack of +Card: you need a much stronger reason to go engine with Festival as your Village. Here's a pretty simple example: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120531-143122-c4f3e730.html
What do you think about Border Village-Wharf?
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If you have a double tactician type deck anyway, wharf can certainly help a lot. The extra card draw and buys can help set up the deck faster and draw it more consistently. Double tact decks often like both card draw and buys, so wharf is good there. Now if it's only a single tact deck, well then they sort of conflict.
I suppose, but doesn't any +card work just as well there? I find that wharf engines are better because essentially you falter less with a 7 card (or 9, etc.) then a 5 card hand which is a big deal. The difference from 10 to 12 isn't such a big deal as you SHOULD have the cards to complete your engine regardless.
Although I agree that wharf helps you get to that spot faster than say rabble or embassy.
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Wharf is arguably the best card in the game which you cannot use to give a curse to your opponent.
Chapel? King's Court? Goons?
These are the other three that I think you can make cases for, hence the 'arguably'.
Indeed, wharf is probably second, maybe third for me. KC-goons-Wharf-Chapel, though it's not so clear. Depends on the board ;)
Hunting Party + Terminal Silver? You need something like baron or monument to make it worth it.
Hunting Party stacks are one of the very few things that can often beat Wharf-BM: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110707-115501-0bdcba0b.html Granted, they are not necessarily better than Wharf engines, but it's not always so clear cut which of those two cards you want to emphasize. (Though looking at this board again, the right answer may have in fact been Wharf engine with a bit of HP/TR support and a Coppersmith linchpin, something both of us neglected.)
Sure. But hunting party needs more help, and needs wharf to not have as much help. Indeed, I think throne room is a much more important card here than hunting party. The poit is that an engine, almost certainly an engine including wharf, should win here. Wharf engines are one of the things that most often are able to beat Wharf/BM, ironically?
Like most draw cards, building an engine is not going to just materialize out of sticking in a village. Wharf/Money beats village/money, typically unless that village is fishing. There's probably a couple little exceptions in the form of festival and (moreso) bazaar, but you want to get wharves so much before these, that unless you are hitting 5 an awful lot, your gains from doing this aren't going to be super-great without more help.
Wharf/Bazaar is definitely a thing. I mean, sure it prefers some help, but the bar is so so low that I'd pretty much automatically go engine with those two, planning on double-Province turns. Here's a pretty simple example: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120531-143122-c4f3e730.html
What do you think about Border Village-Wharf?
Border-Village wharf is pretty strong, and I guess I ought to flick it in there, since you want to buy wharf on $5 so darn often anyway. Bazaar-Wharf, with NO help, I think it depends on the draw you get whether you want any bazaars. But you know, there's almost always SOME help for the engine. Indeed, with even moderate help, I go for an engine or a quasi-engine with the wharf and village. There is usually some help. I guess it depends on the village. Ranking the villages for Wharf, I'd go Fishing, Border, Crossroads, Bazaar, Hamlet, Native, Festival, Vanilla, Farming, Walled, Worker's. The thing is, walled and worker's tend to be almost not at all more helpful than a normal village here. Festival is around the dividing line where I start to think that you need some non-trivial help for BM-Wharf to not be significantly better than engine wharf.
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Does University/Wharf deserve a mention? Is it actually good? -- I find that I like University a bit too much so I always go for it with Wharf out.
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If you have a double tactician type deck anyway, wharf can certainly help a lot. The extra card draw and buys can help set up the deck faster and draw it more consistently. Double tact decks often like both card draw and buys, so wharf is good there. Now if it's only a single tact deck, well then they sort of conflict.
I suppose, but doesn't any +card work just as well there? I find that wharf engines are better because essentially you falter less with a 7 card (or 9, etc.) then a 5 card hand which is a big deal. The difference from 10 to 12 isn't such a big deal as you SHOULD have the cards to complete your engine regardless.
Although I agree that wharf helps you get to that spot faster than say rabble or embassy.
I'm not saying wharf is the star here, tactician still is. But wharf fulfills 2 roles that you typically want, cards and buys. And yeah, the next turn benefit isn't as great when you already have a large hand, but it's still +4 cards, sort of, which is huge. So I guess we are mostly agreeing here. The job wharf would have here isn't too hard to replace with other cards, but i think wharf still does the job better than most other things.
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Does University/Wharf deserve a mention? Is it actually good? -- I find that I like University a bit too much so I always go for it with Wharf out.
Uni/Wharf is very strong, but I think it still needs a little help to be better than wharf/BM. That said, you almost always have the help you need somewhere in the 8 other cards.
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Does University/Wharf deserve a mention? Is it actually good? -- I find that I like University a bit too much so I always go for it with Wharf out.
Uni/Wharf is very strong, but I think it still needs a little help to be better than wharf/BM. That said, you almost always have the help you need somewhere in the 8 other cards.
I disagree. It takes so long to set-up - I think you need a good deal of help.
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My rule of thumb for Uni: You want 2 valuable-in-multiple 5s for university to be worth it, with some possible exceptions for crap like City
And Hunting Party is still better than IGG, as referenced by our recently HP-Baron versus IGG rush game :P (OK, HP needs a decent support +2$ to beat IGG... but probably cutpurse, monument, Horse Traders, Militia all work)
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If you have a double tactician type deck anyway, wharf can certainly help a lot. The extra card draw and buys can help set up the deck faster and draw it more consistently. Double tact decks often like both card draw and buys, so wharf is good there. Now if it's only a single tact deck, well then they sort of conflict.
I suppose, but doesn't any +card work just as well there? I find that wharf engines are better because essentially you falter less with a 7 card (or 9, etc.) then a 5 card hand which is a big deal. The difference from 10 to 12 isn't such a big deal as you SHOULD have the cards to complete your engine regardless.
Although I agree that wharf helps you get to that spot faster than say rabble or embassy.
I'm not saying wharf is the star here, tactician still is. But wharf fulfills 2 roles that you typically want, cards and buys. And yeah, the next turn benefit isn't as great when you already have a large hand, but it's still +4 cards, sort of, which is huge. So I guess we are mostly agreeing here. The job wharf would have here isn't too hard to replace with other cards, but i think wharf still does the job better than most other things.
Right I think we are pretty much agreeing except I'm thinking more in terms of relative output (the relative output of wharf is lower when going for double tactician than say a normal engine), whereas you are still arguing total output (because if wharf and rabble were there, I would want wharf).
I always wonder if it is better to describe cards in marginal, relative, or total/absolute power cards have when interacting with other cards.
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You mention bank in bm, but it's worth mentioning with engines as well.
With bank/wharf, any source of +actions makes the engine super powerful. It may be worth an article all to itself on how to play it. It's a question of how long you wait before you green and mega turn. Ie. you draw $21. Do you pick up two provinces and the last festival (assuming all the wharfs are already gone), or do you pick up 3 more banks and have $57 next turn to really destroy it.
You really need to know what your opponent can pull off and be watching the piles carefully.
Ed
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A couple of other points:
Wharf absolutely loves peddlers in either BM or engine situations: your odds of dead drawing them are low, your odds of getting them for free are high (two durations is enough to knock down the starting price), and the odds of having buys with nothing better to use them on are even higher.
Another very strong help to wharf is cellar. It is cheap enough to buy with spare buys and given your large starting hands you effectively double your cycle rate for the "price" of one card. With BM you can toss coppers and green to hit wharves and treasure and missing fewer reshuffles with your wharves. With engines you can just keep cycling and ensure that your engine components do not miss reshuffles. Wharf is a poster child for the case when cellar beats warehouse handily.
Throne room is very strong in wharf engines. One of the big problems with using TR as a village in an engine is that in order to fire off you need to hit 2 TRs and a draw in the starting hand; that requires either huge trashing, top deck control (e.g. haven, mandarin, courtyard), very strong non-terminal sifting, or large starting hands to have good odds of hitting TR/TR/draw. With TR/wharf you start with 9 cards, more than trebling the odds of hitting TR/TR combos. Wharf is also one of the few BM decks that might benefit from TR.
Another good complement is HoP. With just standard treasures, wharf and HoP you can nab an extra wharf/Hop each turn. With just three non-terminals (even scout)/kingdom treasures, HoPs can become provinces. Wharf is among the, if not just the, best enablers of HoP megaturns outside of engines. For kingdoms with just 2 non-terminals/treasures, you can also opt for a megaturn with a single non-terminal card (preferably draw) like courtyard.
Another big area where wharf isn't good (or more aptly the other strong cards don't work well with wharf) is with the other diversity rewarding cards. Menage rarely hits without heavy trashing that wharf just doesn't need. Harvest competes hard with wharf in price and runs into two big problems: wharf games are quick so you tend not build up diversity and wharf games may result in you having fewer than 4 cards in your deck/discard during play. Fairgrounds is much more board dependent; wharf is fast so you tend not to have lots of time to buy another 6 or 11 unique cards if there are no 2s or 3s out; on the flip side, the +buy/+cards can quickly let you nab a few 2s and a curse making fairgrounds extremely cost effective.
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I think the enlarged hand size on the following turn is key to a lot of things you can do with a wharf that you can't do with other drawing cards. The most extreme example is king's court with wharf in a kingdom with few (or no) +actions. If you can play king's court wharf on one turn then you have 11 cards drawn in hand next turn, perhaps giving a high chance of king's court on king's court next turn for what should be a game winning turn.
Another example would be a wharf deck with no village cards but some +action cards such as warehouse. A council room in a similar deck would always risk drawing the warehouse with no action left to use it since the council room will be in a five card hand and then draw four more. In a wharf deck however you often play with seven card hands and the wharf only draws two more cards when played. The odds of the wharf drawing the warehouse dead is far less than the council room, its closest cousin.
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You mention bank in bm, but it's worth mentioning with engines as well.
With bank/wharf, any source of +actions makes the engine super powerful. It may be worth an article all to itself on how to play it. It's a question of how long you wait before you green and mega turn. Ie. you draw $21. Do you pick up two provinces and the last festival (assuming all the wharfs are already gone), or do you pick up 3 more banks and have $57 next turn to really destroy it.
You really need to know what your opponent can pull off and be watching the piles carefully.
Ed
If this is a question, you've almost certainly played wrong, methinks. If you're to the point where you've bought ALL the wharves and ALL the festivals, the provinces ought to be more run out than this. Maybe in a colony game? MAYBE? Any other engineers want to help me out on this point?
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My rule of thumb for Uni: You want 2 valuable-in-multiple 5s for university to be worth it, with some possible exceptions for crap like City
And Hunting Party is still better than IGG, as referenced by our recently HP-Baron versus IGG rush game :P (OK, HP needs a decent support +2$ to beat IGG... but probably cutpurse, monument, Horse Traders, Militia all work)
Heh, I'm not so sure. Baron is basically the best support, and I played that quite badly on how I contested. Yes, there it's likely better. But baron is a HUGE help for you there - lets you skip gold, which mitigates the effect of the curses rather a lot.
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How much support does (plain) village/wharf/BM need to beat wharf/BM?
Obviously bank is enough. I would think as little as peddler is enough.
One more point that might be worth mentioning, on a mistake I have seen frequently:
You typically don't want any trashing in a wharf game. Not in Wharf/BM, but typically also not in a wharf engine. The strong draw of wharf lets you skip over all your bad cards, and is so fast, that you won't make up the time needed trash down early, and to rebuilt your buying power later.
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How much support does (plain) village/wharf/BM need to beat wharf/BM?
Obviously bank is enough. I would think as little as peddler is enough.
Peddler... maybe. Just maybe. Highway can often work well, bridge, coppersmith as mentioned, any discard attack, I think these are the big ones. Of course, I don't know what you mean by village/wharf/bm. I assume it's a village/wharf engine? I just don't know why you call it BM. Whatever. In fact, far from being obvious that bank is enough, I think that it's pretty squarely not - it helps the BM player a LOT.
One more point that might be worth mentioning, on a mistake I have seen frequently:
You typically don't want any trashing in a wharf game. Not in Wharf/BM, but typically also not in a wharf engine. The strong draw of wharf lets you skip over all your bad cards, and is so fast, that you won't make up the time needed trash down early, and to rebuilt your buying power later.
Check out the last line of the article proper. I address this.
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I still think you need to convey more how broken the card is. Like every other sentence should be 'Yes, Wharf is that sick".
The simulator plays Wharf strategies quite well so a lot of information can be gathered that way.
And great article btw.
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One more point that might be worth mentioning, on a mistake I have seen frequently:
You typically don't want any trashing in a wharf game. Not in Wharf/BM, but typically also not in a wharf engine. The strong draw of wharf lets you skip over all your bad cards, and is so fast, that you won't make up the time needed trash down early, and to rebuilt your buying power later.
Check out the last line of the article proper. I address this.
Oh, I missed that, but I think you really undersell the case. I mean, even a moneylender usually isn't worth the terminal action in a wharf deck.
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I think this could use a little clarification:
"Wharf/Money beats village/money, typically unless that village is fishing."
I assume you mean that Wharf/BM beats Wharf/Village, unless the village is fishing. Village/money isn't something I'm familiar with as a Dominion concept generally (ala BM).
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Isn't village/money usually called village idiot?
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Isn't village/money usually called village idiot?
Er, okay, I guess I am familiar with it, just not as a strategy anyone would compare Wharf/BM against. ;)
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I think this could use a little clarification:
"Wharf/Money beats village/money, typically unless that village is fishing."
I assume you mean that Wharf/BM beats Wharf/Village, unless the village is fishing. Village/money isn't something I'm familiar with as a Dominion concept generally (ala BM).
You assume correctly.
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One more point that might be worth mentioning, on a mistake I have seen frequently:
You typically don't want any trashing in a wharf game. Not in Wharf/BM, but typically also not in a wharf engine. The strong draw of wharf lets you skip over all your bad cards, and is so fast, that you won't make up the time needed trash down early, and to rebuilt your buying power later.
Check out the last line of the article proper. I address this.
Oh, I missed that, but I think you really undersell the case. I mean, even a moneylender usually isn't worth the terminal action in a wharf deck.
No kidding. Moneylender's pretty terrible. In fact, trade route may be the only trasher that's worse here. I'm thinking more like steward/remake/chapel.
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You mention bank in bm, but it's worth mentioning with engines as well.
With bank/wharf, any source of +actions makes the engine super powerful. It may be worth an article all to itself on how to play it. It's a question of how long you wait before you green and mega turn. Ie. you draw $21. Do you pick up two provinces and the last festival (assuming all the wharfs are already gone), or do you pick up 3 more banks and have $57 next turn to really destroy it.
You really need to know what your opponent can pull off and be watching the piles carefully.
Ed
If this is a question, you've almost certainly played wrong, methinks. If you're to the point where you've bought ALL the wharves and ALL the festivals, the provinces ought to be more run out than this. Maybe in a colony game? MAYBE? Any other engineers want to help me out on this point?
Bad example. I didn't put much thought into the line "last festival".
I've played wharf+village+bank a few times. (been beaten by it the first few times). Never with festival, I just needed a $5 card to make the math I had already done work.
What was common in all these games was:
1- all the wharfs were gone
2- all the villages were gone
3- the banks made for some huge mega turns
4- both players were contesting the same strategy
Interesting you say that wharf+bank > wharf+bank+village
It seems possible now that I think about it, but it would never occur to me to play it in a game.
What do the simulators say on the two optimized strategies? (I imagine it would be hard to program the w+b+v as the timing on when to clean pug the green vs picking up more banks is not entirely clear - at least to me. I could do alright in a game I think, but I'd have a hard time articulating the green buy rules)
Ed
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Made some major revisions/additions. Let me know what you think.
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You mention bank in bm, but it's worth mentioning with engines as well.
With bank/wharf, any source of +actions makes the engine super powerful. It may be worth an article all to itself on how to play it. It's a question of how long you wait before you green and mega turn. Ie. you draw $21. Do you pick up two provinces and the last festival (assuming all the wharfs are already gone), or do you pick up 3 more banks and have $57 next turn to really destroy it.
You really need to know what your opponent can pull off and be watching the piles carefully.
Ed
If this is a question, you've almost certainly played wrong, methinks. If you're to the point where you've bought ALL the wharves and ALL the festivals, the provinces ought to be more run out than this. Maybe in a colony game? MAYBE? Any other engineers want to help me out on this point?
Bad example. I didn't put much thought into the line "last festival".
I've played wharf+village+bank a few times. (been beaten by it the first few times). Never with festival, I just needed a $5 card to make the math I had already done work.
What was common in all these games was:
1- all the wharfs were gone
2- all the villages were gone
3- the banks made for some huge mega turns
4- both players were contesting the same strategy
Interesting you say that wharf+bank > wharf+bank+village
It seems possible now that I think about it, but it would never occur to me to play it in a game.
What do the simulators say on the two optimized strategies? (I imagine it would be hard to program the w+b+v as the timing on when to clean pug the green vs picking up more banks is not entirely clear - at least to me. I could do alright in a game I think, but I'd have a hard time articulating the green buy rules)
Ed
I guess my point is, I don't see why the villages should run out here. You're spending SO much time building up your engine, it's hard to believe you shouldn't be doing some greening in there. And wharf engines typically don't need so many villages, at least unless there's some kind of other terminals you want to play lots of, too. Like, goons could make this very true, but then why did you ever buy a bank? So I'm a bit confused.
The simulator thing... well, there's two issues here. One, you'd just have to take a long time optimizing both things. Two, and more important, there is going to be some lack as to how it plays the engine. Because when do you want to fire your engine? It is really dependent on the game state - how many points are left out there, how much will the extra build-up get you, and more important, what are the relative score, and how much juice does my opponent have left in the tank. In principle, you can make an adaptive bot to handle all this, but it's not easy, and quite time-consuming.
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Made some major revisions/additions. Let me know what you think.
You forgot to fix the "village idiot typo"
Wharf/Money beats village/money, typically unless that village produces money for you.
that was already mentioned although you even changed the subordinate clause! ;)
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Made some major revisions/additions. Let me know what you think.
You forgot to fix the "village idiot typo"
Wharf/Money beats village/money, typically unless that village produces money for you.
that was already mentioned although you even changed the subordinate clause! ;)
I feel like a right idiot. Should be fixed now.
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I've played wharf+village+bank a few times. (been beaten by it the first few times). Never with festival, I just needed a $5 card to make the math I had already done work.
What was common in all these games was:
1- all the wharfs were gone
2- all the villages were gone
3- the banks made for some huge mega turns
4- both players were contesting the same strategy
I'm pretty sure under these circumstances the answer to your initial question if one should either 2 Provinces and a $5 or 3 Banks should be clear in most cases: Go green (at least if you don't have a comfortable point lead for some reason so far)! If two stacks (Wharf and a village) are already empty and your opponent is playing a mirror matchup, you can't afford to buy 3 more Banks because in that case the Bank pile should be close to empty as well and your opponent could easily win by emptying the rest of it and buying one green card.
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I've played wharf+village+bank a few times. (been beaten by it the first few times). Never with festival, I just needed a $5 card to make the math I had already done work.
What was common in all these games was:
1- all the wharfs were gone
2- all the villages were gone
3- the banks made for some huge mega turns
4- both players were contesting the same strategy
I'm pretty sure in this case the answer to your initial question if one should either 2 Provinces and a $5 or 3 Banks should be clear in most cases: Go green (at least if you don't have a comfortable point lead for some reason so far)! If two stacks (Wharf and a village) are already empty and your opponent is playing a mirror matchup, you can't afford to buy 3 more Banks because in that case the Bank pile should be close to empty as well and your opponent could easily win by emptying the rest of it and buying one green card.
Yeah this scenario should definitely include buying 8 estates. I mean you should be pretty close to the number of buys. Or buying 4 of a third pile (to end it) and buying 1 province etc.
I think the overall article Ed is looking for is Engine Endgame. That is, How can I end the game this turn with me winning. But also How can I end the game my turn so that my opponent can't end the game on his/her turn with him/her winning
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Hunting Party is pretty clearly the second-best non-attack $5 [...] And it's entirely outclassed by wharf, pretty much all around.
Hunting Party + Terminal Silver? You need something like baron or monument to make it worth it.
Doesn't work with:
Hunting Party
[...]
(It's not really that ^^these things are really actively bad, just they don't really help, at least not nearly to the extent they normally do)
I think I disagree about Hunting Party being normally outclassed by Wharf.
Sure, Wharves will usually beat Hunting Party + terminal Silver as you say. But the thing is, on a board with Hunting Party and Wharf, there is a very strong terminal addition for your Hunting Party stack: Wharf itself! Or to be more exact, two Warves to enable you to play one every turn.
I think in the absence of villages (and also absent cursers, Throne Room, Governor and Goons off the top of my head), my first $5/6 buys would be in this order:
Wharf - Gold - 3-4 Hunting Parties - Wharf - as many Hunting Parties as I can get before I need to go green.
(I would expect the one early Gold to help a lot to make good use of the 2nd Wharf buy, be it for Hunting Party+Silver initially or two $5s after that.)
I haven't simulated it though. I just wanted to do so but realized that it is quite complicated because you have to make multiple rules to tell the bot how to use multiple buys. For instance, if you get $10 with two buys in the mid-game, the usual rule to buy a Province as a first priority would do that and waste the two additional $2. With Hunting Party and Wharf on the board, though it would definitely be stronger to buy two of them.
Did you (or someone else) already do that work and program sensible rules to simulate it?
I don't feel like doing it myself now. But unless you can prove me wrong with hard numbers, I think I am going to stand by my intuition that Hunting Parties plus 2 Wharves should get a higher winning probability than going all Wharf (and no Hunting Party) out of most boards. 8)
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This one
<player name="Wharf/HP"
author="WanderingWinder"
description="The optimized Wharf strategy that buys no other actions.">
<type name="TwoPlayer"/>
<type name="Bot"/>
<type name="BigMoney"/>
<type name="Province"/>
<type name="UserCreated"/>
<type name="Optimized"/>
<type name="SingleCard"/>
<buy name="Gold">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Wharf"/>
<operator type="greaterThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
</condition>
<condition>
<left type="countAvailableMoney"/>
<operator type="equalTo" />
<right type="constant" attribute="9.0"/>
</condition>
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Province">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Gold"/>
<operator type="greaterThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Gold"/>
<buy name="Wharf">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Hunting_Party"/>
<buy name="Silver"/>
</player>
wins by a \mu (3% or so) against the default Wharf bot. (It's just the default Wharfbot that buys just 2 Wharfs and HPs afterwards)
Edit: The Problem with HP/wharf is that it will trigger the reshuffle (with all Wharfs and HPs in play) if the HPs have drawn the whole deck. Especially for the simulator, as it will always play the HPs.
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The Problem with HP/wharf is that it will trigger the reshuffle (with all Wharfs and HPs in play) if the HPs have drawn the whole deck.
Very good point, I hadn't thought of that before making my assessment! That changes it, Hunting Parties plus 2 Wharves are probably inferior two a more Wharf-based deck then.
But I still think adding one or two Hunting Parties (or even Labs!) may well be superior to going exclusively for Wharves on $5 buys (without villages). At least if you hit $5 or exact multiples often enough.
Especially for the simulator, as it will always play the HPs.
Unfortunately not playing an excess Hunting Party doesn't help much - one would have to not play the Wharf which really makes the whole concept moot.
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Hunting Party is pretty clearly the second-best non-attack $5 [...] And it's entirely outclassed by wharf, pretty much all around.
Hunting Party + Terminal Silver? You need something like baron or monument to make it worth it.
Doesn't work with:
Hunting Party
[...]
(It's not really that ^^these things are really actively bad, just they don't really help, at least not nearly to the extent they normally do)
I think I disagree about Hunting Party being normally outclassed by Wharf.
Sure, Wharves will usually beat Hunting Party + terminal Silver as you say. But the thing is, on a board with Hunting Party and Wharf, there is a very strong terminal addition for your Hunting Party stack: Wharf itself! Or to be more exact, two Warves to enable you to play one every turn.
I think in the absence of villages (and also absent cursers, Throne Room, Governor and Goons off the top of my head), my first $5/6 buys would be in this order:
Wharf - Gold - 3-4 Hunting Parties - Wharf - as many Hunting Parties as I can get before I need to go green.
(I would expect the one early Gold to help a lot to make good use of the 2nd Wharf buy, be it for Hunting Party+Silver initially or two $5s after that.)
I haven't simulated it though. I just wanted to do so but realized that it is quite complicated because you have to make multiple rules to tell the bot how to use multiple buys. For instance, if you get $10 with two buys in the mid-game, the usual rule to buy a Province as a first priority would do that and waste the two additional $2. With Hunting Party and Wharf on the board, though it would definitely be stronger to buy two of them.
Did you (or someone else) already do that work and program sensible rules to simulate it?
I don't feel like doing it myself now. But unless you can prove me wrong with hard numbers, I think I am going to stand by my intuition that Hunting Parties plus 2 Wharves should get a higher winning probability than going all Wharf (and no Hunting Party) out of most boards. 8)
No, I haven't simulated it. I don't see why I'd need to simulate it - it seems eminently clear to me that hunting party is sub-optimal here, and it doesn't appeal to me to spend a long time to try optimizing something that I'm pretty sure will not be as good as a simpler strategy anyway. I mean, I write these articles to try to be helpful to people and share my knowledge. It doesn't appeal to me to do a lot of extra work just to appease you - sorry ;) You can go on thinking that, if you want to.
But I mean, my point is, when do you get the wharves, and when do you get the hunting parties? You get 2 wharves, then HPs? Okay... But I mean, when do you get money? How many HPs do you think you have time to buy? Why do the HPs even help you that much? I guess this last thing is my big point. They just don't. You're drawing so much money anyway, it doesn't give you much beneficial draw, comparing to what you get from another gold or wharf. And so maybe they help you get a wharf played every turn - except, this isn't that big a deal anyway. Can there be a situation where HP helps you for Wharf/BM? Sure, probably, SOMEWHERE. But much less than something like, say, venture. And the benefit is EXTREMELY marginal. Also, you'll trigger reshuffles off that wharf play. A LOT.
Last point is that there's no one who is going to prove you wrong with hard numbers. It's theoretically possible, but only mathematically with extremely complex calculations that are just way way way too time-consuming and boring for anyone to actually make. Simulator data, while useful, does not provide 'hard numbers' or 'prove' almost anything really useful (though it points you in the right direction!), because you're limited by what you feed it in. Garbage in, garbage out. And you can't exhaust all the alternatives to make *sure* that you're not missing the brilliant combination of buy rules to make everything click.
-
This one
<player name="Wharf/HP"
author="WanderingWinder"
description="The optimized Wharf strategy that buys no other actions.">
<type name="TwoPlayer"/>
<type name="Bot"/>
<type name="BigMoney"/>
<type name="Province"/>
<type name="UserCreated"/>
<type name="Optimized"/>
<type name="SingleCard"/>
<buy name="Gold">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Wharf"/>
<operator type="greaterThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
</condition>
<condition>
<left type="countAvailableMoney"/>
<operator type="equalTo" />
<right type="constant" attribute="9.0"/>
</condition>
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Province">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Gold"/>
<operator type="greaterThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Gold"/>
<buy name="Wharf">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Hunting_Party"/>
<buy name="Silver"/>
</player>
wins by a \mu (3% or so) against the default Wharf bot. (It's just the default Wharfbot that buys just 2 Wharfs and HPs afterwards)
Edit: The Problem with HP/wharf is that it will trigger the reshuffle (with all Wharfs and HPs in play) if the HPs have drawn the whole deck. Especially for the simulator, as it will always play the HPs.
This loses pretty badly against the most recent Wharf bot I've posted:
<player name="WharfWW"
author="WanderingWinder"
description="The optimized Wharf strategy that buys no other actions.">
<type name="Province"/>
<type name="UserCreated"/>
<type name="TwoPlayer"/>
<type name="Bot"/>
<type name="BigMoney"/>
<type name="Optimized"/>
<type name="SingleCard"/>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="equalTo" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
<condition>
<left type="countVP"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="countMAXOpponentVP"/>
</condition>
<condition>
<left type="countVP"/>
<operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
<right type="countMAXOpponentVP"/>
<extra_operation type="minus" attribute="3.0" />
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Province">
<condition>
<left type="getTotalMoney"/>
<operator type="greaterThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="16.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Wharf">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="countCardTypeInDeck" attribute="Treasure"/>
<extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="8.0" />
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Gold"/>
<buy name="Wharf">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="countCardTypeInDeck" attribute="Treasure"/>
<extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="4.0" />
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Silver"/>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
</player>
Something like 54-40.
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This loses pretty badly against the most recent Wharf bot I've posted:
Same modification to it
- <buy name="Wharf">
- <condition>
- <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
- <operator type="smallerThan" />
- <right type="countCardTypeInDeck" attribute="Treasure"/>
- <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="4.0" />
- </condition>
- </buy>
+ <buy name="Wharf">
+ <condition>
+ <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
+ <operator type="smallerThan" />
+ <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
+ </condition>
+ </buy>
+ <buy name="Hunting_Party"/>
and it wins again (44-50)
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This loses pretty badly against the most recent Wharf bot I've posted:
Same modification to it
- <buy name="Wharf">
- <condition>
- <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
- <operator type="smallerThan" />
- <right type="countCardTypeInDeck" attribute="Treasure"/>
- <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="4.0" />
- </condition>
- </buy>
+ <buy name="Wharf">
+ <condition>
+ <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
+ <operator type="smallerThan" />
+ <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
+ </condition>
+ </buy>
+ <buy name="Hunting_Party"/>
and it wins again (44-50)
First, it took me a second to see you're talking about my bot and not yours.
Second, it's actually only 48-45 if you sim it over long enough periods?
Third, You can get bigger gains out of just optimizing wharf better.
Fourth, the make-sure-you-have-two-wharves-before-grabbing-HP rule is essentially irrelevant.
Fifth, like I said, really small improvement in fringe area, something like venture is bigger.
Edit: Most important of all, this is just a wharf deck that occasionally, quite rarely, buys HP. Certainly not a HP stack or a HP deck.
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First, it took me a second to see you're talking about my bot and not yours.
Second, it's actually only 48-45 if you sim it over long enough periods?
Third, You can get bigger gains out of just optimizing wharf better.
Fourth, the make-sure-you-have-two-wharves-before-grabbing-HP rule is essentially irrelevant.
Fifth, like I said, really small improvement in fringe area, something like venture is bigger.
Edit: Most important of all, this is just a wharf deck that occasionally, quite rarely, buys HP. Certainly not a HP stack or a HP deck.
It was 10.000 sim. Don't really want to argue here, I also didn't really believe in HP/Wharf. I just wanted to see if the same modification I mentioned for the first bot also worked here, and they kind of did. I honestly didn't really see the first buy rule for Wharf, just scrolled to the "if #Wharf < #treasure/4"-clause as before and replaced it with the "if #Wharf < 2" clause, adding HP and run the sim. Didn't looked at what happens above.
So there probably also is some space for improvement in this variante of the bot.
And it does not buy HP so rarely. I only have a N=50 statistics here, but in these games it buys HP in 70% of the games. Half of the time just one, other half mostly 2. So yeah, it's not the typical HP-stack, would also be surprising in these fast games. But it seems like you can play HP in the Wharf-deck, and get something with about equal strength. It also beats the weaker HP-terminal Silvers.
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First, it took me a second to see you're talking about my bot and not yours.
Second, it's actually only 48-45 if you sim it over long enough periods?
Third, You can get bigger gains out of just optimizing wharf better.
Fourth, the make-sure-you-have-two-wharves-before-grabbing-HP rule is essentially irrelevant.
Fifth, like I said, really small improvement in fringe area, something like venture is bigger.
Edit: Most important of all, this is just a wharf deck that occasionally, quite rarely, buys HP. Certainly not a HP stack or a HP deck.
It was 10.000 sim. Don't really want to argue here, I also didn't really believe in HP/Wharf. I just wanted to see if the same modification I mentioned for the first bot also worked here, and they kind of did. I honestly didn't really see the first buy rule for Wharf, just scrolled to the "if #Wharf < #treasure/4"-clause as before and replaced it with the "if #Wharf < 2" clause, adding HP and run the sim. Didn't looked at what happens above.
So there probably also is some space for improvement in this variante of the bot.
And it does not buy HP so rarely. I only have a N=50 statistics here, but in these games it buys HP in 70% of the games. Half of the time just one, other half mostly 2. So yeah, it's not the typical HP-stack, would also be surprising in these fast games. But it seems like you can play HP in the Wharf-deck, and get something with about equal strength. It also beats the weaker HP-terminal Silvers.
Ok, We must have different bots here, because I just spot-checked 20 games. 4 of them had HP bought.
About equal strength, maybe. But I guess the thing here is, HP doesn't appreciably help here, as it does with most every other deck.
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Ok, We must have different bots here, because I just spot-checked 20 games. 4 of them had HP bought.
<player name="WharfWW/HP"
author="WanderingWinder"
description="The optimized Wharf strategy that buys no other actions.">
<type name="TwoPlayer"/>
<type name="Bot"/>
<type name="BigMoney"/>
<type name="Province"/>
<type name="UserCreated"/>
<type name="SingleCard"/>
<type name="Optimized"/>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="equalTo" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
<condition>
<left type="countVP"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="countMAXOpponentVP"/>
</condition>
<condition>
<left type="countVP"/>
<operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
<right type="countMAXOpponentVP"/>
<extra_operation type="minus" attribute="3.0" />
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Province">
<condition>
<left type="getTotalMoney"/>
<operator type="greaterThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="16.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Wharf">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="countCardTypeInDeck" attribute="Treasure"/>
<extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="8.0" />
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Gold"/>
<buy name="Wharf">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Hunting_Party"/>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Silver"/>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
</player>
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About equal strength, maybe. But I guess the thing here is, HP doesn't appreciably help here, as it does with most every other deck.
One could also phrase it like this:
In the cases we are talking about HP is just as good as the very strong Wharf.
;)
Buying, say, Silver instead of HP or Wharf would quite certainly be clearly worse.
-
But I guess the thing here is, HP doesn't appreciably help here, as it does with most every other deck.
One could also phrase it like this:
In the cases we are talking about HP is just as good as the very strong Wharf (because it doesn't matter much if you buy HP or Wharf).
;)
Buying, say, Silver instead of HP or Wharf would quite certainly be clearly worse.
No, I mega-disagree, because that's only true AFTER you've bought a couple wharves.
-
No, I mega-disagree, because that's only true AFTER you've bought a couple wharves.
Yes, but that was the case we were talking about now as far as I am concerned. (What do you mega-disagree with?)
I already admitted that my earlier idea of emphasizing HP over Wharf was probably not good (primarily because I didn't think of Wharf triggering the reshuffle).
But I still maintain that one or two HPs can be a good idea if you already have many Wharves.
But maybe we don't have a disagreement at all here and are just arguing semantics.
-
No, I mega-disagree, because that's only true AFTER you've bought a couple wharves.
Yes, but that was the case we were talking about now as far as I am concerned. (What do you mega-disagree with?)
I mega-disagree with "In the cases we are talking about HP is just as good as the very strong Wharf (because it doesn't matter much if you buy HP or Wharf)." I guess that's fine. But such cases are only possible via big wharf.
I also wanna contend that with other cards, HP tends to be less important. But whatever, not a big difference here.
-
I just re-read the article. It's really excellent now - not sure I have seen another article with so much useful advice.
Maybe Cellar deserves a mention in "works with" - it's really nice with the large handsizes, and allows you to go fishing for the next Wharf.
(A cellar goes fishing to find a wharf?? I just wrote this?)