Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: tko on June 16, 2011, 05:05:45 pm

Title: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: tko on June 16, 2011, 05:05:45 pm
I played this Kingdom today (not on isotropic):
    Farming Village, Harvest, Horse Traders, Hunting Party, Jester, Minion, Nobles, Pawn, Steward, Swindler

I bought 1 Minion and a couple times regretted it as opponent's Horse Traders would both improve their hand and counter the discard option.  Later, I even discarded Minion with my own Horse Traders so I didn't give the benefit to my opponents since the VP race was so tight.

In this kingdom, if your opponents have Horse Traders, would you avoid Minion?

Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: fp on June 16, 2011, 05:19:39 pm
With this board, Minion is still a good buy. While you may give your opponents a free draw here and there, Minion combined with Farming Village, and the +$ actions and Pawns/Horse Traders for buys would make for some pretty big turns.

All in all, I am not a big fan of Horse Trader, in general, at best it is like a Silver with a +1 buy that costs you an action. The boast it gives in the early game is enough to justify buying one in your opening, but all in all, I do not find it a reasonable deterrent for playing attack cards.

The Horse Trader is probably MOST effective about a slew of Minions. But in a game with no trashing, the Horse traders are not going to hit that often.

The key thing about this board, however, is that there is a Hunting Party which is often superior to Minion (because it fetches up your cool cards faster). I would go with Hunting Party of as the first $5 buy, and problem stick with it.

Verdict: Avoid the Minion because you have slightly better options.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: boloni on June 16, 2011, 05:25:19 pm
If your opponents don't buy swindlers, minions are still a good option in this kingdom. But you have to play a minion deck(trash copper/estates and buy no (or very few) treasure cards) to make use of them.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: rod- on June 16, 2011, 05:31:34 pm
With hunting party as a (more than) viable alternative to minion, i would gladly avoid minions to leave my opponents with weakened horse traders.  Would probably even open horse traders/silver to get started on the hunting party train asap and dissuade them from transitioning into minion themselves.  3c/e+silver+ht=hp ; hp+regular hand+ht/silver=gold seems like a strong first few turns.

Of course, my "effect with" for minion is -1.5, so i try to avoid the card as often as posssible
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: krawhitham on June 16, 2011, 05:59:56 pm
Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?

Simple answer: No.

Why? Well why shouldn't such a strong card like Minion have a strong counter? New cards should be challenging your assumptions about existing cards.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: DG on June 16, 2011, 08:09:50 pm
The minion has a number of effects.
- It can provide a simple +2 coin.
- It can discard your hand and give you 4 more cards.
- It can discard your opponent's hand and they draw 4 more cards.
- If have a lot of minions in your deck you can get a lot of +2 coins, a lot of drawing 4 new cards, and only one discard of your opponent's hand.

The horse traders only defends against the attack portion, and has to be in hand, so the minion can still work for the other benefits. If you have a lot of minions those benefits are strong.

Your example kingdom is pretty complicated with the variety of attack cards. It's hard to predict what an opponent would buy and you'd therefore need to counter their deck as you go along. If you let an opponent buy up most/all the minions you'd probably still lose on most kingdoms with horse traders, but here the swindler and jester make a difference.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: Mean Mr Mustard on June 16, 2011, 08:34:26 pm
Also, if the other four cards in your hand suck than using the HT isn't really a boon.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: guided on June 16, 2011, 08:53:09 pm
My only game-balance complaint with any Dominion card is that Minion's attack is too strong. I'm thrilled to see a really solid counter for it now in Horse Traders. The card almost seems purpose-designed to neuter Minion.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: tko on June 16, 2011, 09:18:51 pm
More information... this was a 3-player game and it seemed like Horse Traders appeared more often because my opponnent's both bought some.  I agree with the points that Hunting Party is a better 5-buy and I should have bought that instead.  Minion gave me some cool turns like Nobles for 2 actions/Pawn/Pawn/Minion for a new hand, but even with those cool turns, I felt like I was giving my opponents too much benefit.  Maybe it's late game, when I discarded my Minion on purpose with Horse Traders, that it's stronger because the opponent has more green to discard.

Thanks for the feedback!
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: Stoc on June 16, 2011, 09:44:11 pm
With +actions available, HT has pretty good synergy with minion . HT's drawback of discard is mitigated by minion's redraw. You could add HTs to your own deck instead of worrying about being countered by them.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: Saucery on June 16, 2011, 10:50:40 pm
I've had a few games where horse traders/village/minion outperformed minion only.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: WanderingWinder on June 16, 2011, 11:07:47 pm
The minion has a number of effects.
- It can provide a simple +2 coin.
- It can discard your hand and give you 4 more cards.
- It can discard your opponent's hand and they draw 4 more cards.
- If have a lot of minions in your deck you can get a lot of +2 coins, a lot of drawing 4 new cards, and only one discard of your opponent's hand.

The horse traders only defends against the attack portion, and has to be in hand, so the minion can still work for the other benefits. If you have a lot of minions those benefits are strong.

Your example kingdom is pretty complicated with the variety of attack cards. It's hard to predict what an opponent would buy and you'd therefore need to counter their deck as you go along. If you let an opponent buy up most/all the minions you'd probably still lose on most kingdoms with horse traders, but here the swindler and jester make a difference.
It does more than just defend though. Any time you play minion, they get the benefit
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: Elyv on June 17, 2011, 12:32:55 am
I've had a few games where horse traders/village/minion outperformed minion only.
I'd expect it to, it's not hard to make a minion engine get above 8, and the extra buy from horse traders helps there.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: Death to Sea Hags on June 17, 2011, 01:06:10 pm
Also, if the other four cards in your hand suck than using the HT isn't really a boon.

If the rest of your hand sucks when Minioned, you've still got two pretty good options. 

(1) you could reveal the HT, and get $3 for some crap + coppers.  You might even draw something decent from the HT when it comes back.
(2) NOT reveal the HT: this is a free discard of a crap hand.  HT lets you take advantage of Minion to pick the hand you want to play.  That's pretty awesome.

If you've got more than one HT in your deck, then option (2) becomes even better: you might draw another HT in the second hand, and when your opponent plays another Minion (don't they always?) you'll get to draw back up to 5 cards next turn.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: nemryn on June 17, 2011, 02:33:35 pm
Also, if the other four cards in your hand suck than using the HT isn't really a boon.
If the rest of your hand sucks when Minioned, you've still got two pretty good options. 

(1) you could reveal the HT, and get $3 for some crap + coppers.  You might even draw something decent from the HT when it comes back.
(2) NOT reveal the HT: this is a free discard of a crap hand.  HT lets you take advantage of Minion to pick the hand you want to play.  That's pretty awesome.

If you've got more than one HT in your deck, then option (2) becomes even better: you might draw another HT in the second hand, and when your opponent plays another Minion (don't they always?) you'll get to draw back up to 5 cards next turn.
What? Horse Traders doesn't prevent the discard or anything. Except possibly for some corner cases, setting aside the Traders, then getting it back + another card is better than discarding it with the rest of your hand.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: drg on June 17, 2011, 02:39:05 pm
Minion is such a ridiculously strong card that generally cannot be ignored, it'd be good to have ways to counter it imo.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: Axe Knight on June 17, 2011, 04:11:00 pm
I would say it counters Minion quite well.  But also:

Do Moat and Lighthouse too effectively counter all attacks as to make them useless as attacks?
Does Watchtower too effectively counter Mountebank?

etc...

Sure, you get to draw an extra card with the Horse Traders, but that means in a multiplayer game, it can't "react" again for the remainder of the round.  So if I'm player A, and B plays a Minion, I discard my Horse Traders, but it doesn't do much when C plays his...
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: nemryn on June 17, 2011, 04:22:11 pm
Sure, you get to draw an extra card with the Horse Traders, but that means in a multiplayer game, it can't "react" again for the remainder of the round.  So if I'm player A, and B plays a Minion, I discard my Horse Traders, but it doesn't do much when C plays his...
Except it does, by taking you down to four cards, so that Minion doesn't do anything.

(Which is the bit I was missing in my earlier response to Death to Seas Hags's post, so ignore that one.)
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: theory on June 17, 2011, 04:25:54 pm
I would say it counters Minion quite well.  But also:

Do Moat and Lighthouse too effectively counter all attacks as to make them useless as attacks?
Does Watchtower too effectively counter Mountebank?

etc...

Sure, you get to draw an extra card with the Horse Traders, but that means in a multiplayer game, it can't "react" again for the remainder of the round.  So if I'm player A, and B plays a Minion, I discard my Horse Traders, but it doesn't do much when C plays his...
The difference is that Horse Traders is actually useful, whereas Moat, Lighthouse, and Watchtower, for the most part, represent bad cards that you have voluntarily taken on in order to avoid even worse cards.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: guided on June 17, 2011, 05:15:24 pm
You underrate Lighthouse so hard, theory :P It's almost as good as Silver even when there are no attacks, so it's about 10x better than Moat as an actual defense against attacks. And it's a really good defense in decks that draw a lot of cards since it's much easier to get protected by it than to get protected by Moat in your 5-card hand.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: theory on June 17, 2011, 05:37:54 pm
I agree that it's the best defense out there.  But it's obviously a bad card in the sense that you wouldn't buy it if you weren't being attacked.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: guided on June 17, 2011, 05:40:10 pm
An early Lighthouse is worth a $2 buy early in the game on almost every board. It's among the better $2 cards even when there are no attacks. Really: It's almost as good as Silver.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: theory on June 17, 2011, 05:53:16 pm
I think you underestimate the cost of taking up a slot in hand.  It's the Lookout principle, basically.  Similarly, Fishing Village is pretty awful if you don't have any worthwhile terminals. 

It's better than not buying anything, usually, but I would generally take Pawn or Haven over Lighthouse throughout the game unless I was being attacked.  Perhaps on a 5/2 I would take ___/Lighthouse over ___/Haven, but past the very first turns I would prefer to keep my deck flowing.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: guided on June 17, 2011, 06:16:46 pm
Fishing Village costs $3. Lighthouse costs $2. I'm talking about spending exactly $2 on the card, at a point in the game where you'd be happy to buy Silver. Passing rather than taking Lighthouse with a 5/2 can only be classed as an obvious blunder. The assertion was that it was a bad card you'd only buy to defend against attacks, and to be blunt that's simply wrong. Adding $1 to your next hand early in the game is not a small effect.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: tko on June 29, 2011, 09:28:06 am
With +actions available, HT has pretty good synergy with minion . HT's drawback of discard is mitigated by minion's redraw. You could add HTs to your own deck instead of worrying about being countered by them.
I took your advice and tried the synergy of +actions, Minions, and Horse Traders in this game:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110628-031953-eae20046.html
 (http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110628-031953-eae20046.html)
I thought they worked excellent together.  I went overboard on both Turns 11 and 12 buying another Farming Village and Horse Traders... on Turn 12, I should have got a Province and I'm lucky I won by getting a Province/Dutchy buy to end the game.  Other potential mistakes:  Turn 9, I trashed Loan#2 with Loan#1... either I shouldn't have bought Loan#2 (is that the mistake?), or I should have discarded Loan#2 since I still had Coppers in my deck.
Title: Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?
Post by: DG on June 30, 2011, 05:20:47 pm
Quote
Turn 9, I trashed Loan#2 with Loan#1... either I shouldn't have bought Loan#2 (is that the mistake?)
Two loans can be problematic. If one draws the other then neither will work before your next shuffle. If there's a good alternative purchase then take the alternative. Loans can be great in minion decks for thinning copper however they often get discarded and not played, or when they do get played they might force an unwelcome reshuffle.