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Dominion General Discussion / Re: How is Vassal (with suitable support) not overpowered/undercosted?
« on: February 02, 2024, 03:29:35 pm »I constantly overvalue Vassal, I want it to always work.But terminal space is limited and Vassal gambles with that valuable resource.Vassal is far less reliable than Conspirator. You also seriously misevaluate terminal Silver, no way you would ever pay $3 for such junk.
I would say that Vassal is differently unreliable than the Conspirator. Conspirator is basically all-or-nothing; once you've got it going, it goes indefinitely, but if you don't you've got a dead turn. Vassal is easier to get up to a 5 or 10% chance of hitting than Conspirator is, harder to get up to an 80-90% chance, easier to get up to 100% but that won't last unless you have a way to turn $ into VP without adding greens to your deck, and can take the occasional miss more easily.
No, no way I would pay $3 for a terminal silver, that's true. (Well, unless I had a lot of VP-on-buy effects). I could get a regular silver for that value, of course I wouldn't pay $3 for a terminal silver, and I never said I would.
But if I had it in my deck for some reason and hit it with a sentry? It would be a very non-obvious call whether to trash it or not. And if I only had $2 and it was that or nothing...again, a non-obvious call.
And that means that it may very well be viable as the low end of a $3 card.
So I totally disagree, Vassal is virtually always inferior to Conspirator.
Well, that's really the question: How limited is terminal space?
If you can get an extra terminal space for the price of a silver, that doesn't really seem that limited. Especially since getting one village for every 2 or 3 vassals will probably be enough in many engines.
I mean...it's definitely a resource, but one that seems to be costed as significantly cheaper than cards (the upside to your gamble).
That's only if Village is also in the kingdom. Not all kingdoms have a lot of free villages around.
The questions around Vassal are basically,
* how much gambling can I afford with my terminal space?
* can I expect to usually play all my Vassals before I draw my deck?
* Is there a better effect to use my terminal space on?
I do think there are boards where Vassal is better than Conspirator, but it's primarily on boards where you can set-up the topdeck to reduce the gambling risk (i.e Sentry, Artisan, etc.), and on board where it costing $3 vs $4 actually matters (enough +buy). The fact that you have to gamble with Vassal is what makes it hard to just shovel into decks - when Vassal misses it really sucks.