129
« on: August 06, 2012, 06:05:24 am »
Oh, I'm in. Where I'm from, they call this "theorycrafting." Always good for a laugh.
Okay, I'm not looking at anybody else's analysis until after I write mine, so apologies if I sound redundant.
Graverobber: This card seems like it will be very swingy. First, it lets you catapult $3 opening terminals into gold, if you are lucky enough to get a collision. Second, since you will probably have competition from other graverobbers, there could be a situation where one really good card in the trash could decide the game, and the first person to draw their graverobber will get it.
This card will also be super strong with throne room or king's court. A hand with TR+graverobber+$5 action could gain a province and leave the $5 on top of the deck for next turn. TR+graverobber+$3 could do the same with gold. Of course, those hands aren't easy to hit early -- but, again, I think that will add to the swinginess.
Poor house: I like the $1 cost, and I like the -1 treasure. I was waiting for cards that do that, and Dark Ages, with its "poor" theme, seemed like the place to do it. This would be really interesting for any actions/cards engine, since you won't have too many treasures in an engine deck. Stacking multiples of these will be powerful, even if you have a treasure or two.
Also, any card that lets you discard bunches of cards will obviously be a powerful combo: cellar and warehouse come to mind. Even cantrips with a discarding "downside" like oasis would be really powerful. I'm really curious how an oasis/PH opening could fare.
Sage: First thing that comes to mind: Don't buy silvers. There's no point to revealing a silver with the sage -- after all, if you'd bought a silver instead of the sage, you'd have the silver in hand already. The obvious utility of this card, in my mind, is smoothing an engine early on when trashing isn't available. Early game, it will jump over all your coppers and estates to pick up your other engine cards. Later on, as Donald pointed out, it gets tripped up by provinces, so the sage might be good grave robber fodder in the midgame.
Feodum: This is pretty vanilla -- like Donald said, it's sorta the last angle that wasn't done on card-counting victory cards. I understand why it doesn't count copper or gold, but it would be cool if it counted other treasures. Obviously, Trading Post combos with a Feodum deck and Trader is a super-mega-combo. I mean, Trade can make your deck explode into a shower of silver, so I wouldn't be surprised if you could get 6-point feodums using it. If these two cards are on the table, will they always be the dominant strategy?
Cultist: I like this card a lot. First of all, I really like the idea of a heterogeneous deck of curses. Somebody did that in a fan expansion and I thought it was a really cool and unexplored space. The card that happens to sit atop the ruins deck might actually affect your strategy, though probably only slightly. I also really like the idea that these curses aren't curses -- just much less useful cards.
As for the cultist itself, I feel like this will play somewhat like Minion, at least insofar as its effectiveness will increase as the cultist density increases. I guess they're really more like laboratories that are less flexible: you can't just insert a cantrip into a cultist deck and be on your way. Unless you're using villages, once you start the cultist chain, that's all you can play. We know that labs alone make for a mediocre engine, but these cultists come with a nice attack, so it will be interesting to see which is preferred if both are on the table. I'm guessing the cultist, because we know how powerful cursing attacks are.
Ruined Market: Well, this card is pretty straightforward. I'm curious if there's ever a situation where you'd rather buy a ruins than a copper. Obviously, Donald's hint implies that there will be a +1 card, +1 action, and +$1 ruins. I think the +1 buy is the most useful -- sometimes you really need that extra buy! Since this is a silly prediction thread, I'm going to guess at the names of these other ruins. +1 card = ruined laboratory, +1 action = ruined village, and +$1 = ruined house. I'm making this prediction on 8/7/12 -- hopefully I go at least 1 for 3!
Squire: Wow. When there are strong, expensive attacks on the table, this cards seems...really, really strong. Open chapel/squire, get a Goons on a lucky turn 3/4? That's a $4 jump. And it would get even crazier if a $7 attack ever came out. Cost aside, a turn 3 goons on a trimmed down deck would be pretty devastating. I feel like there should be a $5 limit on the gained card, or something.
Crazy TFB effect aside, the squire itself is pretty useful as an extra source of actions if your engine is too heavy on smithy-types and you can't afford a village that turn. In that way, it functions like a crossroads, which I think is already recognized as a great $2. Taken as a whole, I think squire will easily be one of the best $2 cards.
Note, by the way, that the cost exempts the squire from the gravedigger. I imagine we're going to see more self-upgrading cards at the $2 price point, specifically to avoid interaction with gravedigger.
Hermit: This card also seems very powerful. You will almost certainly be able to use it to replace estates with silvers every time you play it. The fact that you can trash a card from your discard makes collision much less of an issue. Once you've tossed your three estates, you can automatically trash this card to convert it into ...
Madman: OK, so this is basically a 1-shot mega-lab. If you have one of these in an engine deck, its minimum payoff is "+2 actions, +4 cards," and its maximum payoff is "dude, just put the rest of your deck into your hand." If your engine deck is decent, then you could easily have 7-10 cards in your hand from other labs/smithys before you play the madman. Think about that: +2 actions, +9 cards?! Well, I'd say the name is accurate. This sounds crazy. This card is basically a megaturn-enabler.
Oh, and by the way, if you open squire/hermit, then you can gain almost certainly gain any attack on the table by the second shuffle -- all you have to do is draw your squire before *or* with your hermit! Yikes. Or -- even better! Open hermit/hermit, use the first hermit you see to get a squire, and use the second to turn the squire you just gained into a goons. Ouch!
Rats: I really like the idea of this card. I think this is my favorite new card so far, for a couple reasons: first, even though it doesn't introduce new mechanics, it seems like it will completely change the way your game plays out. Second, it's so thematically perfect! The rats aren't a problem at first, but they will inevitably multiply to a point where you actively need to stamp them out of your deck. I also think rats go very well with ruins. In a deck that's ruined by ruins and/or curses, rats might be a very fast way to clear out the clutter if you have an effective plan for exterminating the rats.
A couple obvious observations: barring separate effects like watchtower, rats don't really reduce your deck size. (What a combo though...watchtower+rats = trashing lab!) In that sense, they aren't really trashers. They do, however, replace a useless card with a cantrip (i.e. more rats). The problem is, rats are only a cantrip as long as you have something to feed them. Eventually, when you run out of targets, the rats are as unplayable and useless as the cards they replaced. So they really only provide temporary relief from clutter -- you'll still need a strong trasher to deal with the rat problem, but it might be easier to get to the other trasher for a couple of shuffles, and that might be all the help you need. As a bonus, when you do manage to trash the rats, you get a card. The card is a minor benefit because nearly all trashers in the game are terminals, so you'll likely be drawing dead, but it does give you the chance for greater buying power.
This is a cool card. Donald has actually played with it, and if he likes it so much, then I'm confident that it will live up to my expectations.
Pillage: A one-shot super-nasty attack that also gives you two one-shot golds. Because of the one-shot nature of the card, it's really hard for me to judge when it will be worth it. The attack is definitely nasty: without doing the math, I imagine that you can easily demonstrate how much worse the average dominion hand is if you remove the best card. It will hurt a BM deck at any stage of the game, probably eliminating the chance of buying a gold early or a province late. For engine decks, this probably destroys a hand in the early and midgame, before the action density is so high that you'll have multiple villages and smithies in each hand.
But, on the other hand, $5 for a card you only get to use once is expensive, no doubt about it. Obviously, you don't get your money's worth if the attack is blocked, even with the spoils as a consolation prize. A successful block probably hurts a lot more than other attack cards. Secret chamber will gain a whole new meaning with this card: use secret chamber to make your current hand as bad as possible!
Spoils: These are an interesting idea. I like that there are multiple cards that give them out, as Donald mentioned. Obviously you'd almost always rather keep a gold around than see it disappear: it's a really rare engine deck that doesn't want at least a couple golds. These cards are clearly going to be more useful the sooner you get them: they can catapult you to actual golds much earlier than normal. Because of the interaction with Pillage, I feel like there will be a lot of opening luck: a 5/2 opening that grabs a pillage will probably see gold a lot faster than a 4/3 opening, both because of the attack and the spoils.
