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« on: August 06, 2012, 01:40:20 pm »
Graverobber - Okay. So it's a trash-digger, or an Action-only Expand. The Expand part looks quite good because trashing a $3/$4 cost for a $6/$7 cost is always nice. But that's the ideal scenario. Odds are, you primarily trash $2 to $4 costs for a $5 cost, and that's basically a Remodel. The trash-digging seems useful as a way to make the card not useless if you don't have an action to trash, and also as a way to funnel actions back into Graverobber. Except your opponents can take the trashed cards as well, and you might not even want the trashed actions if they would clog your deck up with too many terminals. If there's a good $6/$7 cost action, worth going for. Otherwise, it really isn't.
(EDIT: I didn't realize you could gain any card, not just an Action. Well, that makes the Expanding part better. Still, the only parts that make it better than Remodel for me is $3 cost -> Gold, $5 cost -> Province, and the Action -> Action mentioned above. I still think it won't be that good, it's more of an end-game accelerant than anything. You have to want to load up on Actions to make it useful.)
Poor House - Fun with Vault and trashing if you have +Actions. Easy to pick up with +Buy, really easy in fact. I think it'll be the Crossroads of the set: in the right kingdom, very good. Otherwise, very lackluster.
Sage - Doesn't like Big Money that much. Well, let me revise that. You can play it in Big Money, but odds are you'll find a Silver. So it acts like a Silver that cycles your deck. That might be enough to make it worth picking up actually. In engines, it's much nicer because you can skip through those Coppers and Estates to find an Action. It's difficult to use this as a tutor, since you need no cards above $3 besides the ones you want. It's sort of like Scheme, now that I think about it. Doesn't take space in your deck, but it helps with consistency. Weaker than Scheme, but not by much. And fun with a Sage - $4 terminal silver opening. Sage - Militia could be quite ugly if you get the Turn 3 Militia, Turn 4 Sage finding Militia.
Feodum - Hm. Pure Big Money gets 6-9 Silver, and BM + X gets less than that, unless you use a Silver gainer like JoaT. So, you really need ways to get Silver, but there's only so much Feodum trashing you want. Unless you have Graverobbers. It feels like a slog card where you want to stall out the game, since there's little chance of being able to rush all the Silvers you want and having the +Buy to end the game. But I'm not convinced you'll be able to get enough Silvers to make this worth it, even in the long run. Maybe with Trader, or a Dark Ages enabler. But otherwise, this will probably be used for the trashing ability more than anything else.
Cultist - Tricky. By itself, it's a weaker witch. If you choose to flood the deck with Cultists, they act as Labs, but take up your action, so it's harder to add other actions. That's some neat flavor right there. Based on the Ruins so far, Cultists are going to be good. I mean, sure they aren't -1 VP, and they can be played for minor benefit, but Cultists hand them out much better than Witches. I'm not sold on the pure Cultist deck, because like a Lab chain you preferably want +Buy. So you'll draw all these cards, including your +Buy, and then have no actions. Still, a strong card.
Ruins - They're neat, what can I say. Obviously not nearly as bad as Curses, and in some rare cases you might want to buy them if there's no +Buy in play. Bad for terminal collisions. Bad for engines too, unless you have way too many actions, which . Easier to counter than Curses, but you'll still try to hand them out most of the time.
Squire - Wow, I thought +2 Action +$1 and some other bonuses was a middle $3 card, since Fishing Village is so good. But turns out it's a $2? Well, whatever. The Attack portion depends on the kingdom obviously. Needs TFB to work well, because otherwise I don't think it's worth it to buy Squire, wait for it to collide with a trasher, and then lose your Squire for an attack that costs $5 or something. Buying silvers seems so much faster. Still, the utility of Squire is quite nice. Not the best $2, but has the utility you need. About equal to Pawn in power level.
Hermit/Madman - Trashes Estates really well. And actually, all the other "trash this card for bonus" cards from Dark Ages that we've seen. Although Madman looks awesome, not buying anything for a turn is a big tempo loss, and I'm not sold on that. Especially because Madman is one-shot. You want to skip an early turn when you have no money, but the early turns are really important for setting up your deck. The gaining might offset that, but then you're still not getting anything super great by gaining a $3 or less. I suspect it'll be used more for enabling the "When you trash" cards rather than for Madmen, unless you have enough +Action and gainers to make losing a buy worth it.
Rats - I don't know what to think of it. I mean, non-terminal trashing is nice and all, but the Rat gaining seems like it would get out of hand unless you have other trashers. Depends on what other neat stuff is in Dark Ages, the on trash benefit is nice.
Pillage/Spoils - Targetted discard hurts a lot, but the one-shot nature makes it okay. I think it'll be useful as an early $5, since the Spoils will give you a nice chance of getting a Gold. Compare to Trading Post. Not as good as TP early on, but drops off less over the course of the game.
Shelters - There isn't much point in judging them based on power level, since everyone starts out with them anyways. So the question is, how much will they change the game? Necropolis will probably change it the most, it makes double terminal openings more feasible. That's a good thing, especially for Dark Ages with the whole upgrading theme. You need lots of actions for that. Overgrown Estate is alright, but won't be a key piece. Hovel is interesting as a way to add a VP tiebreaker without gunking up the deck. Not sure how I feel about these tbh.
