Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: itchiko on May 07, 2013, 01:37:25 pm
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Just because i am really curious "bad" cards in Dominion and Scout is the most clear example of one.
I know that sometime scout will not do anything for you and be even worse than a copper but there is some situation were it is useful:
- Dual victory/action or Victory/treasure cards where it is actually useful to draw them.
- Slug game with lot's of victory cards in the deck where scout can actually improve next hand enough to make a difference (eg: duke/duchy slug)
Problem is even in those cases where Scout is useful, the opportunity cost is hard on the poor card that nobody buy it anyway.
So what do you think would be the decent cost of scout so that you will actually buy some on regular basis in the cases were it is useful?
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At any price, assuming it's useful enough. The problem is that those situations are rare.
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The thing is, you'd buy Scout if it were useful, and you won't buy it if it weren't. Altering its cost won't change that. The biggest problem is that Scout doesn't draw a card if it doesn't pick anything up, so I wouldn't take it even if it came for free a lot of the time.
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Slight modification of the poll to add an "Not even at 0$" Option
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I guess for $2 just before the reshuffle in the end game when you don't yet want to buy an Estate. For $3 you probably always prefer Silver unless you're doing stuff with Poor House.
But really, I don't think the card would be overpowered at all had it costed $0.
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The thing is, you'd buy Scout if it were useful, and you won't buy it if it weren't. Altering its cost won't change that. The biggest problem is that Scout doesn't draw a card if it doesn't pick anything up, so I wouldn't take it even if it came for free a lot of the time.
Exactly. To fix Scout, you don't need to change its cost, you need to change its text. Would making it a cantrip be enough?
Or what about:
+1 Action
Look at the top 4 cards of your deck. Put them back in any order.
+1 Card
That actually fits with the name a little better, and I think might be an okay card, even at $4. But maybe too similar to Cartographer?
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The thing is, you'd buy Scout if it were useful, and you won't buy it if it weren't. Altering its cost won't change that. The biggest problem is that Scout doesn't draw a card if it doesn't pick anything up, so I wouldn't take it even if it came for free a lot of the time.
That's not exactly true at least it depends what you define as useful.
A usefulness of a card is the modification of either:
a) the mean buying/gaining power production of a random 5 card hands
b) the chance for a random 5 card hands to reach a certain buying/gaining power treshold
As thus defined scout usually does have an negative impact on point a and a positive one on point b but not enough to be considered useful.
But i am talking about condition were usefulness of scout is a given. Let's a Duke/Duchy deck using horse trader. In middle game having a scout in your deck is probably better than having the exact same deck without the scout but will you buy a scout anyway?
My guess is no.
Because even in those cases the usefulness of Scout is still low enough than the opportunity cost is way too high. I think even in those situation. Scout will fail the silver test (so for me it's cost should be lower than 2). But i was interesting about people thought about it.
maybe i should have written the poll question as if you were to design Scout as an home brew card (supposing it didn't exist in the game already) how would you have priced it?
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I answered "Not even at $0."
There is no price at which I would buy Scout on a regular basis.
Note that even a free card has an opportunity cost, because it still costs "a buy."
Now, if I could gain Scout absolutely for free, without using a buy, at the end of my turn (similar to Duchess), I'm certain that in most games I would take at least one at some point.
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The poll is worded confusingly though. Scout is purchased at 4$ on a "regular basis" in scrying pool games..
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Scout is probably stronger at cost 4 than cost 3. It would get bought more often at cost 2 and would be situationally stronger than a vagrant. It really needs extra capability though, such as an option to discarding curses and victory cards.
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I still think giving it +$1 is the easiest fix. It's probably a decent $4 card at that point.
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my personal fix on the card would be to give it +1 card and change the special text to only look at 3.
So basically you draw the first card from the 4 even if it is not a victory card.
But anyway that wasn't really the point of the poll.
The poll is worded confusingly though. Scout is purchased at 4$ on a "regular basis" in scrying pool games..
Sorry i will try to word things better next time. I must admit i wasn't thinking about the scrying pool engine at all when setting it up.
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I am tempted to vote "not even at $0", because it's scout you know, our scapegoat.
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I am tempted to vote "not even at $0", because it's scout you know, our scapegoat.
Especially for this reason, I assume no one, yeah no one, could put it last on the Qvist's favourite ranking cards list, even behind Black Market or (ok, this one is personal opinion) Possession
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The thing is, you'd buy Scout if it were useful, and you won't buy it if it weren't. Altering its cost won't change that. The biggest problem is that Scout doesn't draw a card if it doesn't pick anything up, so I wouldn't take it even if it came for free a lot of the time.
Exactly. To fix Scout, you don't need to change its cost, you need to change its text. Would making it a cantrip be enough?
Or what about:
+1 Action
Look at the top 4 cards of your deck. Put them back in any order.
+1 Card
That actually fits with the name a little better, and I think might be an okay card, even at $4. But maybe too similar to Cartographer?
The fixed Scout is Vagrant.
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Scout's problem isn't the cost. Let it look at five cards and have it also bring in curse cards and you've got a good card.
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Scout costs the same amount as Gardens and Silk Road. I think that makes some difference. There's gotta be some kind of +buy heavy deck that can get so many Gardens and Silk Roads that it is picking up 1$ Scouts over coppers when it has a spare buy. The coppers slow down your cycling so that you can't use your +buy sources to fatten your deck even more.
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The thing is, you'd buy Scout if it were useful, and you won't buy it if it weren't. Altering its cost won't change that. The biggest problem is that Scout doesn't draw a card if it doesn't pick anything up, so I wouldn't take it even if it came for free a lot of the time.
Exactly. To fix Scout, you don't need to change its cost, you need to change its text. Would making it a cantrip be enough?
Or what about:
+1 Action
Look at the top 4 cards of your deck. Put them back in any order.
+1 Card
That actually fits with the name a little better, and I think might be an okay card, even at $4. But maybe too similar to Cartographer?
The fixed Scout is Vagrant.
And that's a $2 card.
Draw 0-4 Victory cards (with reordering): $4
Draw 1-2 cards, one of which is a bad card: $2
:o ???
KC-ing a Vagrant leaves you with a 6-9 card hand, 3 of which could potentially be bad.
KC-ing a Scout leaves you with a 3-15 card hand, 12 of which could be bad, but only VP cards, not even Hovel makes the cut.
I like the first option better.
The thing with Scout is that you might think it makes the next turn great, hooray! But with a fairly normal and random distribution of VP cards you might draw 1 or 2 from it and that's just plain awful. This means the net effect of Scout is basically zero: Instead of getting the Estate in your next hand, you get it in this one. And I don't like buying cards that often have a net effect of zero, certainly not for $4 which is a pretty competitive price point. You could get a Silver for less!
Compare it to Pearl Diver, once you find a bad card on the bottom of your deck (or good one that you want to leave), its net effect becomes zero (barring KC, TR, etc.) and that too is a $2 card.
Playing Scout and drawing zero cards (happens often enough I suspect) is basically the same as playing Ruined Village, a $0 card that's dealt out as punishment.
Its opportunity cost just kills it, more so than its actual cost. By the time it could actually be useful, during the end game in which you're flooding with green, you'd rather spend that $5 on a Duchy or that $4 on Estate/Silk Roads/Gardens/Feodum/Great Hall/Tunnel, or of course: Silver.
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I've been thinking about starting a topic on this myself. I would have called it "the redemption of Scout".
And I think with the current text, it's a $2 card.
Maybe the playtesters were really into great halls when they were trying out scout.
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By the time it could actually be useful, during the end game in which you're flooding with green, you'd rather spend that $5 on a Duchy or that $4 on Estate/Silk Roads/Gardens/Feodum/Great Hall/Tunnel, or of course: Silver.
That's why I voted 1$. You can't afford a Victory card for 1$.
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I think it's the wrong question, given that you want to ask about opportunity cost. Opportunity is as much, if not more, about buys than it is about money. If I only have 1 buy, it makes no different if Scout costs $0 or $4; I'm not going to buy it (unless I can't buy anything else). To remove the problem of opportunity cost, you either need to give Scout a "when you buy this, +1 buy" or ask about "when would you take Scout if it had a Duchess-like text that let you take one whenever you gain a [victory card maybe?]).
If I could really get a Scout for free ($0, when you buy this, +1 buy), I would want 1-2 of them in almost any deck, so long as it had at least a couple VP cards in it, or a couple cards that care about the order of my deck (any cantrip will do). I think the times that it helps you out would outweigh the times that it is just a Ruined Village.
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Or what about:
+1 Action
Look at the top 4 cards of your deck. Put them back in any order.
+1 Card
That actually fits with the name a little better, and I think might be an okay card, even at $4. But maybe too similar to Cartographer?
What about a reverse Warehouse or Courtyard-like seeder card? :>
+1 Action
+4 cards
Put 2 cards from your hand on top of your deck.
edit: 3 cards, not 2. I suck at typing numbers. :-þ
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That would be pretty amazing - that's a lab with a bonus.
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Yeah, now we're in $6 territory.
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Scout is a great card to mass-ambassador to your opponent once all the curses are gone.
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I think scout should be the same except that it searches like 7 or so cards instead of 4.
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That would be pretty amazing - that's a lab with a bonus.
That was a typo. It should be 'put 3 from your hand on top of your deck'. As I said, sort of like some reverse Warehouse.
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Or what about:
+1 Action
Look at the top 4 cards of your deck. Put them back in any order.
+1 Card
That actually fits with the name a little better, and I think might be an okay card, even at $4. But maybe too similar to Cartographer?
What about a reverse Warehouse or Courtyard-like seeder card? :>
+1 Action
+4 cards
Put 2 cards from your hand on top of your deck.
edit: 3 cards, not 2. I suck at typing numbers. :-þ
Unfortunately, this kind of non-terminal Courtyard isn't a good idea in practice. Often you'd be chaining them, and it gets really tiresome repeatedly putting back cards that you immediately draw with your next copy. I know this from experience.
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Or what about:
+1 Action
Look at the top 4 cards of your deck. Put them back in any order.
+1 Card
That actually fits with the name a little better, and I think might be an okay card, even at $4. But maybe too similar to Cartographer?
What about a reverse Warehouse or Courtyard-like seeder card? :>
+1 Action
+4 cards
Put 2 cards from your hand on top of your deck.
edit: 3 cards, not 2. I suck at typing numbers. :-þ
Unfortunately, this kind of non-terminal Courtyard isn't a good idea in practice. Often you'd be chaining them, and it gets really tiresome repeatedly putting back cards that you immediately draw with your next copy. I know this from experience.
Well, it might still be better than scout and in the worst case it is 'draw the best card of your next four' and in the best case it is 'seed yourself with three cards you want next turn or do not need this turn (like that scout you want to chain :p) and follow up with a terminal'.