Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion Articles => Topic started by: DG on October 25, 2012, 08:46:02 am
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Depending upon how you look at it, this is either a very simple or a very complex card. At its simplest it can be a very straightforward card to buy and play. At its most complicated it can provide many options for card play and deck construction. I suspect though it will be simple far more often than it will be complicated.
I think the place to start looking at Band of Misfits is at the card play, which is an unusual place to start. You have the choice to play the band of misfits as any cheap card in the supply. This means that when you have two terminal actions in hand with a cheap village in the supply you can play the band of misfits as a village for the extra actions. When you have no terminal cards in your hand you can use the band of misfits as a cheap terminal in the supply, and so on. This flexibility can make deck building quite simple since you can add band of misfits to a balanced deck and it will most likely remain a balanced deck, if not better. This is only true however if there is a good selection of cheap actions cards in the kingdom: something with +coins, something with +actions, maybe something with +cards or +buy, etc. Flexibility in providing or using actions is possibly the best feature of the band of misfits.
What you gain in flexibility however you could lose in power. Being able to play a mountebank is generally better than being able to play a band of misfits as either a sea hag or navigator. Five cost cards are usually very strong and the decision to buy them ahead of a band of misfits can be simple. If there are no strong 5 cost cards in the kingdom then the band of misfits might again be simple purchase since you might otherwise have bought one of the cheaper cards instead. In the middle though there will be a small number of fiendish purchasing decisions where you are effectively weighing up a strong single card against variations from a choice of weaker cards.
The band of misfits doesn't need any specific kingdom cards to work and will behave differently in different kingdoms. The better the variety of cheap cards in the supply however the more chance the band of misfits has to provide value. You might draw a hand that could use a chancellor, or a bureaucrat, or a thief, or a shanty town, or a remodel, or a cellar, so never rule any card out even if you wouldn't purchase it for that particular deck. Even a feast could even let you gain a duchy on the last turn. Taking that concept further, the more dependent a card is upon any specific hand the more benefit you can gain from having band of misfits in your deck instead of the card itself. Specific examples might be
- cards that rely heavily on the draw such as baron or coppersmith
- cards you might only want to play early in the game such as moneylender or trader
- cards you might only want to play for late game vp such as bishop or feast
- cards you might only want to play to redress an opponent's attack such as watchtower or lookout
I will however single out a few kingdom cards. The option to play the band of misfits as a death cart will be strong, especially when you don't want to add two ruins to your deck by gaining a death cart. Throne room and procession are two cards that are heavily reliant on good draws but can provide more value than another 5 cost card if you can play band of misfits for their action in the right hand. Band of misfits will suit conspirator decks since it can either start or continue the conspirator chains, reducing the risks of bad draws, and you could well be willing to pay 5 or 6 coins for these engine components anyway.
The conspirator deck does highlight one risk though. Once a card's supply pile is empty the band of misfits cannot act as that card. This will affect key cards like conspirators but also some common utility cards such as villages, particularly in multi player games. It is also worth remembering that the band of misfits cannot act as silver. Sometimes a simple silver will be better in hand than a versatile action card, especially if you find yourself repeatedly playing your band of misfits as a low reward +action card.
If we return however to the card play we can see where the final complications come from. Band of Misfits increases the potential card plays from a hand, since you not only have to sequence your actions but now also choose what the actions are. Whilst this may perplex artificial intelligence I suspect that human intelligence will enjoy the challenge.
Edit - incorporated some valuable feedback into the article 26/11/12
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I think it's worth mentioning that it's great with a 5/2 opening. You can pick up BoM if you want to build an engine and want a trasher to enable that. But that trasher will get in the way later on. That's the case with Moneylender, Chapel or Lookout on the board to name a few.
That's also true for another ocassional useful cards, like opening 5/2 with Baron and King's Court on the board. You can then buy BoM instead of Baron and use it as Baron if you would reach $7, otherwise you can maybe still use it as Monument or something similar.
I'm not sure if it's worth it, but it might be nice to buy BoM as Treasure Map.
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I think it's worth mentioning that it's great with a 5/2 opening. You can pick up BoM if you want to build an engine and want a trasher to enable that. But that trasher will get in the way later on. That's the case with Moneylender, Chapel or Lookout on the board to name a few.
That's also true for another ocassional useful cards, like opening 5/2 with Baron and King's Court on the board. You can then buy BoM instead of Baron and use it as Baron if you would reach $7, otherwise you can maybe still use it as Monument or something similar.
I'm not sure if it's worth it, but it might be nice to buy BoM as Treasure Maps.
You would still need to pair Band of Misfits with a real Treasure Map.
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Yes, I know. Maybe I wrote an "s" too much, but you have one "dead" card less in your deck. But, like I've said, I'm not sure if it's worth the risk/effort.
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I'm finding it difficult to see how you can write an article an a card whose strategy is literally "depends on the kingdom."
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Also, you generally do want to add the Ruins to your deck with Death Cart, because you need something to trash to it.
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I'm finding it difficult to see how you can write an article an a card whose strategy is literally "depends on the kingdom."
I did find it very difficult and I freely admit there is a shortage of specific detail within that article.
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I definitely admire you for trying, but I feel like this card's surface hasn't even been scratched... it may very well be the most complicated card in Dominion. On that note, man, BoM is my favorite trasher ever. So much better than actually buying a Chapel if you can swing it.
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I feel like this card's surface hasn't even been scratched... it may very well be the most complicated card in Dominion.
That's true but so far I've found it incredibly easy to play.
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I'm finding it difficult to see how you can write an article an a card whose strategy is literally "depends on the kingdom."
I did find it very difficult and I freely admit there is a shortage of specific detail within that article.
It's definitely a very good card. Perhaps a discussion of what kingdoms Band of Misfits works best in would be of merit.
What Band of Misfits does is give you more control over your deck, and lessens the effect of shuffle luck. It is always exactly what you need it to be.
Combos: cheap Village/Draw engings; Procession/Fortress/$6 card; Death Cart; Chapel; Sea Hag - it does very well replicating cards you don't want in your deck in mid- or late-game, like Cursers, heavy Trashers, or Treasure-specific Trashers.
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One limitation of BoM is that in a circumstance where you have enough money and buys to pick up engine components at their actual value, you would likely prefer to do that over buying a BoM. BoM trades cost for flexibility, but flexibility is more or less a luxury unless the kingdom has cards with which BoM works exceptionally well.
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So then what are some examples of decks or combos which actually need BoM, rather than just using BoM to guarantee consistency? Death Cart seems like a good example.
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If you're playing a variant of Dominion where every kingdom card is available and the piles are infinite, then a deck of all BoM is pretty awesome.
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It may be worth mentioning a combo/interaction between BoM and Throne Room. Not only the rules question for what happens when you Throne a BoM, but also using BoM as a Throne Room that can provide a benefit when you don't collide it with another action.
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Some other thoughts on <$5 cards that go with BoM. These categories overlap in some deep ways.
- Cards that are strongest for a limited period of time. Coppersmith and Baron are good openers but sometimes weak later. Remodel and Tournament have late-game utility but sometimes aren't so good early. Use BoM to cover both! Other people have mentioned early-game trashers, another good example.
- Cards with conditional benefits that depend on shuffle luck; even if they're too unpredictable to warrant buying the card itself. Shanty Town in an engine. Thief on the off chance you've been counting your opponent's cards and you know there's a Gold there. Any combo without an engine to support it (someone mentioned Throne Room). Weak but occasionally-useful cards like Cellar or Crossroads. Counters like Watchtower against Militia, or Wishing Well against Ghost Ship.
+Buy sources, especially weaker ones, belong in this category AND the category of cards that are only good for a limited time. In the early game an extra buy often goes to waste, but in the late game you don't want to spend a $7 turn on a Herbalist or something. So what do you do? Of course you buy BoM in order to use it as Herbalist only on turns where you need +Buy. Later you can conveniently pick up one or two real Herbalists with the +Buy from BoM; and then you'll have a full engine with BoM tossed in for reliability!
- Strong, especially non-drawing terminals, along with nonterminals to use as a "backup plan". Do you want to buy tons of Militias and not worry about collisions? (Or buy ANY militias in a 4P game BoM has it covered!
You could do this cheaper with Scheme but Scheme isn't always available. Scheme is also a little less powerful I think. Sometimes it comes up before your Militia and you have to wait; sometimes it comes up after your Militia and you don't get an extra attack. And when they come up at the same time, it's a plain +1/+1, whereas BoM presumably gives you some cantrip benefit on the side. I don't know if all of this justifies costing $5 instead of $3 but it's better than nothing.
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I think that Scheme is actually an interesting comparison to BoM. Both make your engine more reliable at the cost of sacrificing a little power - you could have had an extra copy of your key engine card or of a powerful 5-cost, but instead you're choosing to have some more reliability or flexibility.
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One type of card that I think BoM does not tend to work well with are villages - those especially tend to pile out over the course of the game, and then BoM just becomes a cantrip at best depending on the kingdom.
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Just played a couple games of BoM + Procession, and man is this a good combination on some boards. One board had money lender and smithy as well, as well as Altar, Squire, and market square to make a nice sequence. The real power of BoM really does come from powerful, conditional $4's, as conditional $4's rarely run out of the supply.
Obviously the board I had was ridiculous, but even just having say baron AND moneylender, or salvager+cheap-engine-component, seems worth 5.
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Just making sure, when you're processioning a band of misfits, you know you can't play it as 2 different cards, right? (It remains the chosen card until it leaves play, and it doesn't leave play between playing it the first and second times.)
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Of course I knew that. The combo just makes BoM better, because Procession is so conditional usually (easy to draw dead).
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Speaking of Procession, I think there's an interesting contrast between Procession and BoM. To grossly oversimplify, BoM likes finely tuned combo decks where it can provide much-needed reliability. Procession on the other hand is very powerful but terrible for reliability, because not only does it come up dead, but it tends to change your deck composition unpredictably depending on what you draw it with. (In some decks you might have enough control to choose your Procession targets reliably, but the easiest Procession decks, outside of special combos like Fortress, are just sort of mishmashes of strong cards.)
When they're in the same game, they seem to compensate for each other's weaknesses. You can play BoM as Procession when you want power. But BoM provides reliability in multiple ways: it can act as something other than Procession if you don't have a Procession target; and it allows you to effectively play Procession as a Throne Room or better, if desired, by turning the target into BoM. BoM might also allow you to set up finicky combos that would otherwise require a more carefully constructed deck than Procession can provide. (Though Procession+X might be the strongest combo out there anyway.)
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Can anyone who has played band of misfits as tournament say whether it is worthy of a special mention?
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I think say this about BoM, it is really hard to know when to buy and when not to buy. Sometimes, it is obvious like when you have Squire, Fishing Village, Smithy, Woodcutter, Sea Hag, etc. Other times, the $4 and less are good but it is competing with other strong $5's like Count or Governor. I have played many games on Goko with the card. Seriously, it is hard to write a strategy article about it because the question is when to buy it and when not to buy it. Sometimes, you also have to think about what action to play it as, but I have found that aspect of BoM rather easy to use. I believe BoM has an odd distinction of being an awful $5 buy to an amazing powerful $5 buy all depending on the board. Okay, many cards are like that but BoM moreso.
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I have just used Band of Misfits as a Treasure Map enabler.
http://dominionlogs.goko.com//20121128/log.50893139a2e67cff211cd7e5.1354126069665.txt
The board contained 8 actions costing 4 or less, Band of Misfits and Trading Post. I opened Silver/Silver and got first Band of Misfits turn 3. Then I got $4 for next turn, first though about taking another Silver, but saw Treasure Map and thought "this will be just one dead card if they don't line up, and chances are good that they will, as I'll have more Band of Misfits.
They lined up earlier than I expected, I got 4 Gold turn 7. Other than that, I used Band of Misfits as Moneylender till I had Copper, as Swindler later, as Village when two of them collided, as Armory on my last turn to gain an extra Estate. And of course the bot used it as Thief trying to get at least some of Gold I had plenty of :)