You always emphasize that you can just use the card as Necro without going into how bad that actually is. Any draw engine needs to combo splitters and drawers, and if you are forced to always play the card as Necro, that is miles worse than having Squire, Fishing Village, Villa or any other non-drawing village.
All these cards suffer from not being able to draw (decreases consistency and this the chance to match drawers and splitters) but at least they all provide some Coins or Buys. Necro does not and Necro+Smithy does only half the job as Village+Smithy does (plus the aforementioned matching Problem that even applies when you have a pretty good non-drawing village like Festival).
I simply don’t get your argument. This is pretty simple: either it is a Necro which is super bad or it is worse than Village (discard your best, draw two average cards). Optionality is usually worth something but here it is not as the options are additive.
You claimed that you should not add terminals to decks with Gatehouse ... but why would you then want a Village (that decreases the average card quality) in the first place?
No. You just cannot pick the extreme case I mentioned and then say, I emphasize it. What I have said is that you shouldn't ignore the possibility. I don't know whether the card works as it is, maybe not, and I have mentioned my uncertainty about it before. However, you also ignore the best case scenario; that is that there is no best card to discard because it has been already played. I think this is the critical point of the card. How often can a player manipulate their hand to reach this point.
Also, I haven't claimed that no terminal cards should be added; just that the player has to be more careful, i.e. adding less to their deck
Anyway, what do you think about the suggestion to reveal all, but one card? Would that work?
Why would I want to „manipulate my hand“ such that I have only bad cards in order to undo that via playing Gatehouse? Anti-sifting?
What you seem to have in mind is some unthinned deck with Gatehouses and some terminal Silvers like Mountebank or whatever. Well, you gotta be lucky to play Gatehouse, draw into Mountebank, play Gatehouse and so on. Shanty Town is far better suited for that job.
If I have to be „careful“ about adding terminals to my deck when I buy a splitter, there is something seriously wrong with this very splitter. It is like buying a screwdriver that comes with the disclaimer that you should be careful about using it on too many screws.