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« on: July 15, 2024, 10:13:00 pm »
The general consensus (e.g. the Glicko) seems to be that Remake is a good card, far better than Remodel, and the win rate seems to bear this out...but looking at what it does, I am having trouble seeing why.
Yes, it trashes an extra card each time you play it, and can "safely" trash Coppers even with no decent 2s in the kingdom, but that comes at a significant cost to building your engine:
-It turns Estates into 3s, whereas Remodel turns them into 4s. Often, your engine needs 4s, or needs 5s and 4s provide a good way to achieve this (e.g. a Militia to slow down your opponent in the process, or a Poacher to help bring you up to 5 without adding load to your engine like a Silver would, or a Moneylender to trash Coppers while helping you get those 4-cost engine pieces).
-If you do want 3s, Remake leaves you with a 2-card hand that probably can't get them early on. Remodel leaves you with a 3-card hand that probably can.
-And, of course, you do need payload both to help you build your engine and then to win the game with it, so more Copper trashing means you'll have to buy more Silvers or other payload cards, which both (usually) cuts into the deck control gains from Copper-trashing and slows down your engine construction. Not by enough to make removing Coppers from your deck a bad thing, by any means, but enough to reduce its benefit.
For example, let's say you draw your Remake or Remodel once with an Estate and 3 Coppers, and once with 4 Coppers.
The Remake will, over those 3 turns, trash 3 Coppers and turn that Estate into, say, a Silver (because if you're trashing 3 Coppers, you can no longer afford anything above 4 unless you get some more coin in your deck). It won't be able to buy anything on either of those turns.
The Remodel will turn the Estate into, say, a Smithy, buy a Village on that same turn, and then on the 4-Copper turn buy another engine piece (maybe another Smithy, maybe a Worker's Village, etc.). It doesn't need to buy Silvers, since without Copper trashing (or with slow and coin-giving Copper trashing such as via Moneylender), drawing the deck will ensure enough coin to keep getting stuff.
So the Remake has reduced the deck size by 2 more (not counting the engine pieces), but the Remodel has 3 extra engine pieces and $1 more of payload. Most engines should be able to get at least 2 cards of deck control with 3 engine pieces...
And in the midgame, Remake fares even worse. A classic midgame Remodel move might be trashing a $3 to get a $5, whereas a Remake might trash a $3 for a $4 and a $4 for a $5...basically the same, except that it means that now you also sent a $4 from your hand to your discard, which is obviously a downside.
Late-game, Remake provides good pile control...but Remodel can mill the Provinces, and can turn Gold into them, so it seems that Remodel should have the advantage then too.
So how, in a typical kingdom, is Remake better than Remodel? (There will be cases where Remodel is better, such as if you're trying to build a draw-to-X engine and absolutely need to get rid of those Coppers, but I'd think those shouldn't be common enough to have a major impact on overall strength.)