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101

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Engines that don't increase handsize

« on: July 05, 2018, 09:47:38 pm »

It is always blindingly obvious in context. If my writing offends you, don't read it.

No, it isn't. Especially when you're illiterate enough that you say "Msqr" instead of "MSqr".

Sure, we can all ignore you if that's what you want. But don't say you weren't warned.

Oh for Pete's sake. This is supposed to be a place to post for fun. If reading me isn't fun - STOP READING. This board takes itself way too seriously with people getting waaaaaaay too angry over trivial things. Man I miss the days when we could discuss Dominion without every thread having a scold come to tell us how we are not discussing it the right way.

It is too bad that people are so caught up in etiquette, how to be an elite player, respect fishing, and all this other BS. Just relax and enjoy discussing the game. Tolerate the people who disagree with you, be mature enough to know when to take breaks, and do not get caught up in doing it "right". This talk of having everyone start shunning is just utterly beyond reasonable.

102

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is Guardian useless without attacks?

« on: July 05, 2018, 09:38:09 pm »

That makes it worse in many senses than a delayed copper

Given that Guardian is an on-play delayed Copper with a cherry on top when you gain it, this statement is false.

Sorry, but no. A delayed copper is Caravan Guard. It literally gives you a copper next turn at no cost to this turn.

It's pretty obvious that that is not what delayed Copper means in this context. Copper comes at a cost. If Caravan Guard is a delayed Copper, then that would mean that Peddler is a regular Copper.

So you believe that Caravan is not a delayed Lab?

It is a Lab that has parts of its effect delayed. Den of Sin is a version where more is delayed.

What on earth is "more delayed"? Caravan gives you a net gain of cards next turn. DeS gives you net cards next turn. Caravan is nothing this turn and DeS gives you twice the bonus next turn.

103

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is Guardian useless without attacks?

« on: July 05, 2018, 09:35:47 pm »

Simple question for all then:

What does Delayed X mean?

I have ALWAYS used it mean something that happens next turn without a penalty and does the same thing as the card in question.

Caravan is a delayed Lab. The net effect of Caravan is gaining a lab effect with one turn of delay.

Wharf is a Moat/+buy now and a delayed pair of Labs (non-terminal Smithy, whatever)/+buy.

Merchant ship is a terminal silver now and delayed non-terminal Silver (I prefer to just say a delayed $2).

Bridge troll is gimped Bridge now and a gimped non-terminal bridge later.

Caravan guard, to me, is not a delayed Peddler because Peddler draws and that makes differences with things like -1 card tokens, Conspirators, and the like. It is delayed $1 and that seems to be the most sensible candidate for a strict "delayed copper" if we are going to mean that a delayed copper is anything that gives +1$ next turn. Delayed coin ... sure gimped delayed coin - that sounds more like how the card is actually played.

More importantly when playing Guardian you are not playing something that simply adds $1 to the next turn. Its reward comes directly out of the present hand. Hence why LFN thinks it is terrible on attack-less boards. It is useful on 5/2 openings sometimes precisely because it plays closer to Haven than it does to something like Amulet-for-cash. If you were ever going to Haven copper every turn, that is exceedingly close to how Guardian plays: take from this turn, give to next turn.

I have no idea what "delayed copper" is getting beyond a copper next turn. Unlike with virtually all the other durations it is pure penalty this turn. Guardian does absolutely nothing this turn without attacks. You can make some edge case parallels with Enchantress or Haunted woods - but the attacks are very non-trivial parts of their power.

104

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Engines that don't increase handsize

« on: July 04, 2018, 09:22:44 am »

Please dude for the love of god just type out your words, at least the first time you use them in a post.

It is always blindingly obvious in context. If my writing offends you, don't read it.

105

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is Guardian useless without attacks?

« on: July 04, 2018, 09:19:55 am »

That makes it worse in many senses than a delayed copper

Given that Guardian is an on-play delayed Copper with a cherry on top when you gain it, this statement is false.

Sorry, but no. A delayed copper is Caravan Guard. It literally gives you a copper next turn at no cost to this turn.

It's pretty obvious that that is not what delayed Copper means in this context. Copper comes at a cost. If Caravan Guard is a delayed Copper, then that would mean that Peddler is a regular Copper.

So you believe that Caravan is not a delayed Lab?

106

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is Guardian useless without attacks?

« on: July 04, 2018, 09:18:06 am »

Gbird: Not really.

You play it and your hand has 4 x [expected ultimate value of a card] as its average buying power.

Your next turn is 5 x [expected ultimate value of a card] + 1.

You average hand is simply 5x [expected ultimate value of a card].

This means that in the early game playing a Guardian roughly corresponds to decreasing your expected value of the first hand by ~$0.7 and increasing your next turn by 1. Over half the time your first turn will be average or below (thus moving you lower on your new average). Over half the time your second turn will be average or above (thus moving you towards a higher new average). This is generally good, but only marginally so.

But what if you get more than one Guardian?

If you play the same turn they much more dramatically move you away from the old average hand value (3x vs 5x +2).

If you continuously offset them you end up with 4x + 1. If your average buying power card is <1 then they move your average up. This is generally true only for the first shuffle or if you playing around with short term dead cards (e.g. Pot cards, Lurker). If x > 1 then you just decrease your average overall.

Note the above analysis holds only if you have exactly two hands in a shuffle. If you have a larger deck, then you will still be anti-smoothing, just with a different frequency.

What Guardian emphatically does not do is generally increase your average buying power hand like a delayed copper. After the on-buy bonus, Guardian requires sacrificing buying power one turn to gain it back the next turn. You have one or two shuffles where this helps you and after that it hurts.

Those shuffles tend to be some of the most important in the game and spiking >= $5 is so often important enough that Guardian beats nothing on a lot of $5/2 openings (the exact utility gets wonky as some $5s are so important to play ASAP, like Count, going from 1/11 chance of whiffing to ~1/6 is not worth the better odds of hitting a $5). Gaining more Guardians after the first is highly problematic because within 2 shuffles his anti-smoothing is going to be offset by a stronger deck due to whatever you are building out (e.g. Trashing estates, buying high value coin). AS LFN correctly points out, once you deck is generally good (i.e. hits your desired price point every turn on average), Guardian is not going to be that helpful and will lose against the option of gaining nothing.

Guardian can always be useful to spike a coin next turn ... but his on-play utility only becomes helpful when your deck's average buying power dips below $1/card again and your clutch price point is $5 (or below $0.8/card and your price point is $4). That is slog territory and you should be thinking hard about both Estates and Coppers as competing buys (also late slogs may be pure next-turn-spiking if you are not likely to shuffle through again).

Without attacks Guardian is weak. It is useful for spiking one more $ on buy and if you deck track that will cover well over 80% of when you should buy a Guardian on such a board. $5/2 "better than nothing" covers another 10%. Times when you buy two Guardians not for spiking are going to be getting well into edge case land (e.g. Silver gets Embargoed with Bandit camp).

107

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is Guardian useless without attacks?

« on: July 04, 2018, 08:55:11 am »

That makes it worse in many senses than a delayed copper

Given that Guardian is an on-play delayed Copper with a cherry on top when you gain it, this statement is false.

Sorry, but no. A delayed copper is Caravan Guard. It literally gives you a copper next turn at no cost to this turn.

Haven dumps a copper back to next turn as well, and like Guardian it reduces your current hand by one. Save can do likewise; nobody ever calls those delayed copper because they do not play like delayed copper.

We have plenty of actual "delayed copper" and Guardian is not it. Guardian anti-smooths your early buying power, taking from the play turn and moving to your duration turn.

LFN:
You have a Haggler in play with a copper - in general would would you: buy the silver/gain Guardian, buy silver/gain copper, buy nothing on no attack boards?

You open $5/2, no attacks, do you buy: the Guardian or nothing?

You are playing a Bandit camp/Alms/Moneylender/+buy game after how many silvers would you buy Guardian (0, 1, 2, ?

In general I will take silver/Guardian over silver/copper pretty much all the time and most of the time I will take that over nothing if I will take silver alone. Somewhere around 1/3 to 1/2 the time I will open Guardian on a 5/2, higher with weaker $5s.

The last is the hardest one, but generally I would say Guardian can be a reasonable move from 2/3 silvers in deck to 1/2 on maybe a quarter of boards.

By far and away, the most common reason to get a Guardian is spiking something next turn. Making a $3/4 into a curse/$5 would be worth a huge amount of the time so I routinely buy Guardian there.

Once I have Guardian in my deck, how do I play it? Not like it is delayed copper like Caravan guard nor like Haven/copper; instead I play like it anti-smooths my deck; this means that deck smoothing may be approached differently - Save an estate if Guardian is in the last hand of the shuffle to have much better odds of spiking a $6 or $7, alternate it with a Haven moving copper to smooth out when I am getting close to regular $5s. When you play Guardian it removes buying power from that turn and raw adds it to the next turn without penalty ... that just plays different than things which delay a copper.

108

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Engines that don't increase handsize

« on: July 01, 2018, 06:01:35 pm »

I'm skeptical that a Golden Deck can beat Big Money without Smithies, Libraries, or heavy trashing being involved.  So I didn't think it deserved a separate mention.

Okay, what BM deck beats Bish/Fort?

12 VP/turn is a huge payout even if you are accelerating their Smithy-BM.

Even something like Bish/Msqr/most any village works very well at crushing BM. Village -> Bish an estate/discard a Msqr (gain a G) -> Msqr (x2 if needed) -> Bish a gold. 5 VP per turn plus the 13 VP from trashing away the starting crud is pretty nice when BM is trying to burn through all eight Provs. You have 8 turns to make it through the Provs once the Bish player is at end game. That is very hard with pure BM to beat in the 7 or so turns before the Bish overtakes the province pile.

Other Golden decks - like Kc/Monument/trash (no draw) can likewise destroy BM. Something like Monastery is well more than enough setup for a quick Kc/Monument deck that hits 6 VP turn forever.

Something like Tomb/Fort/Forager can churn 4VP per turn exceedingly fast. Add in an Outpost or a Mission and you can again destroy the BM.

Sure your average Golden deck wants strong trashing or something else, but so too does your average BM.

109

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is Guardian useless without attacks?

« on: July 01, 2018, 05:44:53 pm »

Gbird: Not really.

You play it and your hand has 4 x [expected ultimate value of a card] as its average buying power.

Your next turn is 5 x [expected ultimate value of a card] + 1.

You average hand is simply 5x [expected ultimate value of a card].

This means that in the early game playing a Guardian roughly corresponds to decreasing your expected value of the first hand by ~$0.7 and increasing your next turn by 1. Over half the time your first turn will be average or below (thus moving you lower on your new average). Over half the time your second turn will be average or above (thus moving you towards a higher new average). This is generally good, but only marginally so.

110

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is Guardian useless without attacks?

« on: July 01, 2018, 05:31:58 pm »

Guardian is not a "delayed copper". It borrows a $ from this turn to put it into the next turn.

When you talk about the hand-gained Night cards you have to differentiate between what they do when you gain then and what they do when you play them after the first time.
In Kingdoms without attacks Guardian is an on-play delayed Copper and an on-gain extra Coin next turn. The former is pretty bad (and even 'prefer extremes to averages' arguments can rarely rationalize the existence of a delayed Copper in your deck; with a delayed Peddler like Caravan Guard that's a different ballgame) whereas the latter is pretty good.

A "delayed" copper, like any other delayed card would have that affect again and again. This is how we talk about Caravan being a delayed Lab or Wharf being a Moat now and a delayed Smithy.

On-buy you get a bonus coin. End of story. It has no interactions of the copper type (e.g. Gm) or even treasure types (e.g. Poorhouse). It does not enter your hand taking up space like a copper (e.g. Lib) or get played at the same time as a copper (e.g. Gm).

Quite literally Guardian takes up draw slot in your hand that all but always reduces your current buying power by at least $1 for much of the game. That makes it worse in many senses than a delayed copper or even a delayed coin (e.g. Caravan guard)

Guardian is not a "delayed copper". It borrows a $ from this turn to put it into the next turn.

These two things are not mutually exclusive.

For a lot of Dominion, you want more $3/5 odds and less $4/4 odds.

I still find this argument utterly unconvincing. Sure you usually prefer 3/5 to 4/4. But do you prefer 4/6 to 5/5? Do you prefer 7/9 to 8/8?

"A good hand and a bad hand are better than two average hands" is only true when your average hand is bad. And I think that in most cases, your average hand isn't bad enough to make this axiom valid.

EDIT: Put another way, I would rather have two good turns than a great turn and a mediocre turn. Mediocre turns can kill.

Funny it is almost as though I said, "for a lot of Dominion" swinging towards the extremes is better. I.e. basically every first shuffle in the game. Sure we can all come up with plenty of scenarios were we would prefer the constancy of regular cash and they would not even be edge cases ... but then you just buy a second Guardian or a copper and forget about it. When it matters most, on average you prefer the $3/5 over the $4/4. By the time your average hand is $5, you typically are drawing deck or have compensated regardless.

This is not to say that Guardian is good, only that its one-off bonus next turn and its push away from the mean are typically helpful enough to make it better than nothing (or another copper) if you open $5/2 or have $7/2 buys early enough in the game.

People here always seem to get caught up in "is this card good" rather than looking at the marginal utility of a card.  Would you generally take it for free with a good card (e.g. mandatory Haggler gain), would you take it for "free" (e.g. $2 with nothing else to buy at $2), would you take it over silver, would you take it over a bog standard card at $4 (e.g. Smithy or Cutpurse), would you take it over the average $5 (e.g. Chapel type power)? Each of those is a worthy question that requires some thought.

Me I place Guardian-without-attacks somewhere between I would take it off a Silver/Haggler (a board that is really bad for it) and I would take it over Silver on an exceedingly rare number of boards (e.g. ones particularly bad for silvers, like Bandit camp) and that covers ~95% of boards.

Just knowing that a card is weak means little. Knowing why it is weak and what makes it stronger, that helps you actually analyze boards optimally.

111

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is Guardian useless without attacks?

« on: June 30, 2018, 11:18:19 pm »

Guardian is not a "delayed copper". It borrows a $ from this turn to put it into the next turn. This decreases your odds of hitting the average coin value (e.g. $4) and increases your odds of hitting the extremes (e.g. $3/$5 and even more so $2/$6). For a lot of Dominion, you want more $3/5 odds and less $4/4 odds.

What is bad about Guardian is that it competes with Silver for basic cash generation. This means it can be worth it for just $2 as a gimped silver, but you rarely will want to buy Guardian for cash.

Gaining to hand makes it better than Silver for this shuffle so tactical buys abound.

Gaining to hand has the many uses already listed, another truly clutch one can be to be stack your cards-in-play for next turn count. Lamp and Leprechaun both can get some huge gains by seeding another card into the next turn if you have tracked your deck well enough to know what is (likely) coming. Changing a Hex to a Wish or flipping Lamp to three Wishes massively outweigh adding a dead card (at worst).

Another nice combo is with Courtier, gaining two bonuses can enable Courtier even if you never play the Guardian (e.g. Lib/Courtier with strong trashing).

112

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Engines that don't increase handsize

« on: June 27, 2018, 10:03:27 am »

So, I have noticed that people have said that engines don't necessarily require handsize increasers. I have always wondered how they were possible.

So far, I have come to the conclusions that trashing and/or sifting are necessary for a functioning engine, besides the usual village, payload, etc.

Is it actually possible to build engines without handsize increasers?
If yes, then are there any other components besides the ones listed that are either mandatory or help quite a bit?

Thanks!

Sure, cantrips like Market or Conspirator can generate cash with just 5 stop cards. In order to make that work you need something to get past the dross. Early on that means trashing, but for a long game you can actually get more out of sifting (Forum, for instance is absolutely clutch on a no-net-draw engine). You can also make headway with things like Tr/Chariot or Village/Bish that can generate VP and let your engine chug along while the other guy tries to burn through 8 provs with BM. You can also make extremely high space efficiency cards - like Forge/Fort work for generating provs.

No-net-draw does put more constraints on the engine - hand size reduction can be an absolutely brutal counter, trashing is perversely more useful early (each trash has much more impact on drawing your entire deck) and much less useful later (keeping around a dead trashing card drastically decreases the amount of green you can carry without a whiff). With sifting (e.g. Sentry) you can keep a no-net-draw engine alive much longer, but you should expect such an engine to die much more rapidly than the more traditional varieties. Likewise, you absolutely cannot rely on treasure as payload without elite level sifting. Using cash gets tricky if your cantrip cash is >$4 so you absolutely have to be savvy about how many silvers you buy and when/if you trash them (general rule of thumb is 2 silvers, trash them just before greening or when you fill all of stop slots).

In like fashion you need to be wise about the number of stop cards you are putting in the deck. Each stop card means that you have fewer slots for green before your deck becomes fragile. It can totally be worth it to run 2 or 3 stop cards (e.g. Uni x2/Pot) but 4 means you cannot green without risking whiffs and 5 means you risk them during the build up. Sifting can be helpful, but a lot of sifters (e.g. Cellar) reduce your hand size.

You can totally build engines without villages or draw, but you need to be much more careful about when and how many of each card you get. Space being at a premium does change your buy patterns.

113

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards

« on: June 18, 2018, 08:45:23 pm »

What newer players? This board chases the vast majority of them away.

This board doesn't chase new players away, it causes them to improve at the game to the point where they can no longer be considered new players.

Right, the board has seen a continuous upsweep in popularity and use. The average join date of posting members continues to decline. Why you can hardly post here with all the new players asking for rules clarifications we've all heard before or suggesting silly card combos that come up once in 1K games.

But seriously, I have no doubt that some players are just so enthralled with Dominion that they put up with the nitpicking, the endless meta-discussion, and the board's unhealthy obsession with becoming a "good player". That is much more a testament to how good Dominion is than how welcoming the board is to people who do not conform.

114

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards

« on: June 16, 2018, 10:51:22 am »

Sorry to continue further this meta-discussion, but I want to say that I did not intend to mock anybody with my post. I just wanted to point out that using that strange shorthand makes posts hard to read and confusing for newer players, so perhaps it is best avoided. (For instance, I just picked up this game and jumped in at the end of the thread, and it was not clear to me what card "mute" referred to until someone quoted that post and called it "Transmute.")

What newer players? This board chases the vast majority of them away.

Basically every single thread ends up with a bunch of people posting mockery/off topic/in-jokes/etiquette nitpicking. Rather than being a place where people come to discuss Dominion, this board has a highly unfortunate tendency to become a place about how you should discuss Dominion while fishing for up votes with snark. Most new players are not that invested and will never become posters here because they already have places in their life for making in-jokes and . The people who actually become "regulars" have a clear survivor bias and frankly stopped being "new players" long before they became regular posters.

115

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards

« on: June 16, 2018, 10:41:23 am »

But that's not really a helpful answer for what you asked. Cards to consider excluding for weakness (with the caveat that you'll miss out on those rare shining moments they have):

-Harvest-- top of the list for sure
-Transmute
-Counting House
-Navigator
-Fortune Teller
-Beggar
-Pirate Ship
-And obviously any of the cards cut out of base and Intrigue for being too weak

What about Mandarin? Without Capital on the board, it never seems attractive.

Maybe Dutchess? Possibly Fool just because it's so awkward?

Not saying these are good, but both have niche uses.

Mandarin is good tactical buy on some Colony or Dominate boards. Top decking Plats this way can well be worth it as the VP differential is pretty high between a Duchy now and a likely Colony next turn. Less commonly, it can be clutch for something like Vineyards with a +buy to make sure you grab something next turn. The best case scenario for this is something like Hop - GGSHop or similar can use Mandarin to top deck a Prov hand each turn. I will, very rarely, consider burning a $5 for something clutch like replaying two Idols  to give out the last curse. I have not tried enough, but he might actually combo with Goat enough to merit buying him more to more reliably feed the Goat. With deck tracking, he can be an absolutely clutch buy to hit an early Lamp/Wishes.

Mandarin is also useful for times when topdecking has very high value like Tournement, Moat/attacks, Pool/City quarter. It is just a highly gimped Count in this case, but that still is worth it if it is clutch to either have something in your hands between your turns or if whiffing is enough of a VP differential that overbuilding is worth it. He pairs well with Mystic, but competes at price point. With multiple plays, he is very good with Wwell, Herald, and a few other such things.

What hurts Mandarin is that if you are not using his on gain or top decking as something valuable for your deck, his space efficiency is worse than Silver - as a terminal action. That is harsh. He can let you smooth your cash points a bit ... but for $5 he is very weak if your deck has not real use for top decking or treasure recycling as such.

Duchess is most useful in games where gainers are absent. Duchess can let you gain fodder for a some big Tfb like Altar so you can keep use the trasher after your starting dross is gone. If you are still engine building you have to sacrifice a $5 gain now for two $5 gains later - not often a good bet with the three turn lag ... but actually useful once you want duchies. She is more nichely useful when actions are useful as such - Pool/discard for benefit, Sacrifice-as-only-village, and Gravedigger. More often she is useful to do a three pile (e.g. Duke/Duchy/Duchess, Igg/Duchy/Duchess). The terminal spy power is mostly useless, but a cheap terminal silver can be useful in all the places you would expect - Lib, Wt, Menage, Diplomat, etc.

Fool is an abysmal card. First boons swing wildly to start with, second Fool order often means that one player gets 5/6 boons to the other player's 3 in a shuffle. He would have been far better off with a mechanic where you are "found" from the woods if you discard the Fool without playing him.

116

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards

« on: June 13, 2018, 07:37:55 pm »

My wife and I played Dominion over Gchat when Dominion first came out and I was overseas; I will always think of these cards as we talk about them the fact that this is our private shorthand should not be that topic derailing. I type this up between doing other things so it is not like I am going to bother proof-reading a simple post that much nor try to be sure that things which are clear in context meat some arbitrary definition of reasonable abbreviations. Sorry, but f.DS is not that important to my life.

And yes Potions are Pots, just like how Settlers of Cataan somehow developed Sheep over Wool or how Puerto Rico magically had Chuts and 3Sug.

It is frankly sad how pretty much every thread on this board eventually has people come in who would rather mock than engage. Likewise how deviation from the groupthink is discouraged. Perhaps the boards would rather posters just stayed mute.

117

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards

« on: June 13, 2018, 09:00:18 am »

Not killing coppers directly is pretty irrelevant, being able to convert estates into Golds is extremely powerful; so much so that you will gladly grab a copper for the privilege. What is relevant is that the gold so ungodly slow that just about anything else is faster.

Aha, so Gold is extremly powerful yet also ungodly slow. Bit too schizophrenic for my taste.
Let's say it like this: Copper trashing is never irrelevant. If you cannot get rid of the Estates you still buy that Moneylender or that Baron and ignore Transmute. If you buy Potion for the sake of something else you still don't buy Transmute when you dud unless there is no trasher/sifter around and you really need a Curse trasher. Familiar games, there we have a niche for Transmute. Except for such rare circumstances it is simple bad, even if you could have it for free.

I mean, what more can you say. It is obvious that you somehow for some strange reasons love the card but objectively it is among the worst of the game. You can see that by the very simple fact that transmuting Coppers into Transmute is often bad which implies that the card is worse than Copper (or to be more precise, the net benefit of every Transmute beyond the first one is usually negative).

Mute is objectively the worst card in the game. It is too slow for what it does.

An inability to trash copper is not sufficient to doom a card. Rebuild does quite nicely without it. Jack does quite well without it. As long as estate trashing is coupled to something powerful enough, it is worthwhile as a to get that card.

Mute does not suddenly become good on boards with easy copper trashing. Say you open Counterfeit. All your coppers are trashable, when do you buy Mute? My answer is typically never. Spice merchant likewise has never tempted me to go Mute.

Heck, how often do you buy Mute with Donate? Copper trashing is trivial on Donate boards, but I have never seen an opponent go for Mute after they have a copper less deck.

Ultimately the real reason we know that copper trashing for something like Dismantle or Dev is less important than gaining off the estates is that you will virtually never trash a copper over bootstrapping your estates into better cards. It is far more effective on a hand of DCCCE to gain something even if you plan on buying a nice $2 (e.g. Squire). Nobody says, well I am trying to build a lean deck here so I will trash a copper rather than flip an estate to a gold and gain a copper. Killing coppers with Dev or Dismantle is a consolation prize when you cannot get the real value out of the card. After all, everyone buys these two on Donate boards unless there is something much more powerful around.

I mean seriously, suppose we "fixed" Mute by letting it flat trash a copper. Would you buy it then? You still gain Golds from green and duchies from actions, coppers just function like curses and go straight into the trash. All you have to do is burn your opening $4 on a pot, a first shuffle buy on a Mute and then you have a terminal trasher which gains gold and kills copper. And then once you play it, twice, on coppers - you are break even on card count. The third time you play it, on an estate, you then are starting to make headway with a deck better on cash density than you started with.

Even being able to trash copper would not fix Mute. It is so ungodly slow that you can just buy village/draw and come out ahead. Unless I am forgetting one obscure one, I would buy every single other trasher before I would buy a Mute that trashes coppers - it is that slow.

Sure trashing coppers would make Mute suck less, but that would not change how often people bought it. Game is over on most boards before a copper-trashing-Mute beats Trade route.

And this is what I like about Mute. It is a good object lesson for the price of SPEED.

Mute is slow, it sucks.

When Mute is faster, you can actually do something with it. Very few things give you duchy efficiency VP for a single terminal trash. I have won at least a half dozen games by snagging Mute when it doesn't suck because the stars align and I can get it for low opportunity cost.

Alchemist stack with a +buy? No buying power loss the turn I grab it. Every-other-turn after that I manage copper -> Duchy. That beats most non-attack terminal silvers.
Pool? Any $1P will be a Mute. Increased action density. Fodder for late game duchies. Golds instead of estates. This is all good unless I have some truly stiff competition for terminal actions.
Possession? Yes please, let me trash out all the treasures so you cannot buy provinces.
Vineyards? Spare +buy for an action worth 8/3 or even 4/3 VP after the Vineyards are piled? Yes. And trashing a copper becomes a no-brainer.
Lurker? Burn my Lurkers for late game duchies? Absolutely. I have won by Lurking a Mute on the final turn to take a 3 VP lead at least twice.
Forge? Forge EE -> Pot, buy Mute, Forge Pot -> Mill, Mute Mill -> Gold/Duchy; next turn Forge for Colony.

When Mute has actually worked (i.e. <2% of Mute games) it has not been when I could couple it with a copper only trasher but when I could get it without having to burn two full buys. It amazes me that highly ranked players won't Lurk for Mute when it is literally the only way to score more than 6 VP per turn on the board. This tells me that people don't understand why Mute sucks, just that it does.

118

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards

« on: June 12, 2018, 06:54:15 pm »

You are aware that you cannot gain Transmute in the opening, right? That Gold arrives in your hand after you have shuffled thrice (even in my hypothetical scenario in which you could open with Transmute the Gold would only arrive after you have shuffled twice, i.e. in a situation in which the average Coin yield certainly isn't 0.7 anymore). I'd rather buy Skulk, at least it does something useful when you play it and jumpstarts your economy kind of when you need it, like immediately.

Yes, I posted quite a bit about how the opportunity cost of Transmute - 3 full buys and shuffle before you see the gold - is what kills it. This is why it is not actively bad to pick up often on busted pot hands for things like Familiar, University, Alchemist, etc. Mute is much better (still weak) when your potion is already a sunk cost. It sucks precisely because on T3/4 Dismantle is getting a gold when you are buying the Mute. On T5-7 it finally gets a gold, by which time Dismantle has been played twice and is better on space efficiency.

No idea about what fan card you are talking. But the offical card Transmute is nearly always worse than the weakeast trashers in the game. Give me Sacrifice, give me Moneylender, give me Dismantle. Even Mine. They all help you to get rid of these cards called Coppers.
Perhaps Transmute is OK in some funky Duke games with some other Alchemy cards around, who knows. Even Copper can be a good card in Garden games. But then again Copper is nearly always better than Transmute anyway as it does at least a little bit of something constructive and above all it doesn't reproduce like crazy.

You discussed "if it costed [sic] $0". A $0 Mute would be bought on T1, played on T3, and would be better for your deck on T5-T6. T6-T7 it would fall around equal to Dismantle for bootstrapping at that point. Late game which one is better will depend on how flexible the board is and how easy/important Duchies are to get.

Not killing coppers directly is pretty irrelevant, being able to convert estates into Golds is extremely powerful; so much so that you will gladly grab a copper for the privilege. What is relevant is that the gold so ungodly slow that just about anything else is faster.

Which again is why you can win the odd game with Mute in a Potion friendly deck. $2P hand in an Alchemist match - Mute vs nothing can be Mute. Mute vs other weak $2s like Moat, Duchess, Embargo can even still be Mute sometimes. If there is no other way to get more than 6 VP turn ... yeah I will gamble on cannibalizing out a duchy late game if my deck can support the draw and take maybe a gold for my troubles. If it is Familiar and no other trashing? One trash offsets Mutes space-price, and I do not need too much luck to get enough VP from killing curses or Duchies from Familiars to make that work. And after all if I am hitting $2P I likely will hit the estate/curse next shuffle or am losing the curse split regardless - may as well go high variance.

The number one problem with Mute is that it is bootstrapping card which is unbearably slow. Just buying silvers is better than Mute for cash density with the stock card (at T5 XCCCE, Mute gives you $12/13, silvers give you $13/13 - this is the BEST possible case for Mute with otherwise equivalent shuffles). Making Mute faster would make it much better.

This is why I suggest on-buy play. You get a cash benefit better than Skulk one turn later, you actually beat silvers for cash density, and most importantly you can buy it late game or with spare buys to spike Duchies. Not a rock star card, not even something to build a deck around. Definitely something that would get bought a lot more than the bog standard Mute.

119

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards

« on: June 12, 2018, 02:50:19 pm »

The real problem for Mute on these boards is the same as always - opportunity cost.

I'd say that the real problem of Transmute is that it converts but doesn't thin. It wouldn't be bought that more often if it costed $0.

Nonsense. The effect of replacing an estate with a Gold is massive going from a raw $.7/card to a $1 per card. In comparison, this is exactly what you manage with Dismantle but you have one fewer copper. Dismantle breaks even on the second play if it trashes a copper, falls behind further on another estate, and only really comes out ahead once the estates are gone.

Now Dismantle is much more versatile as the game progresses, but Mute would own the early game. Exactly when this flips depends heavily on board, but I would guess around T6-7.

In the late game, Mute can get the advantage by being able to trash out cheap actions for duchies. This is not something to sneeze at. Other cards that accelerate your average cash are not particularly good at gaining green. Dismantle does, but Jack cannot, Dev is reasonably lousy (needing to kill a $4 and top deck a duchy, and whatever $3 is left). For a strong engine, you can hit Duchy every turn with mute for the price of 3 draw (Pot/Mute x2), 1 action, and a spare +buy. In comparison Count needs 2 draw (or trashing) and an action; cash needs 2 draw and a spare +buy; but both of those need to spend a turn (or two) of high value card gains when you might want to buy a Gov or some other power $5 (e.g. Den) instead. A zero cost Mute would be very nearly as good (2 draw, 1 action, 1 buy) late game at duchies as Count and almost as good as raw cash.

Mutes problem is that it plays like a bootstrap card to build deck value ... but is so slow that the game is well past the bootstrap stage when you start getting to play your gold. Not being able to trash coppers (well) is not that big of an issue - Jack is superb, and Trade is a beast even if you never burn a copper.

You can completely trounce people by using Mute on the odd board where you can gain it without burning a "real" turn, and it is the only way to gain more than 6 VP a turn.

Mute would be a perfectly fine (though not top tier) game accelerator with end game potential if it were not for the horrid opportunity cost of gaining it.

120

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards

« on: June 12, 2018, 11:47:12 am »

A general thought on Alchemy and cards that require a Potion to purchase. There are a number of really good cards here, but I think they get dissed because they require a Potion to purchase so we don't use them a lot since you generally need a few Potion Kingdom cards to make it worthwhile to buy a Potion.

That's a common misconception. Most of the Potion-cost cards avoid that issue by being strong in multiples; getting one Potion so you can get five Alchemists is a pretty strong move.

I agree, the idea that you need multiple Potion cards on the board before they are any good is just wrong. Apothecary, University, Alchemist, Scrying Pool, Familiar, Vineyard and to a lesser extent Golem and Possession are often worth it even if they are the only Potion card available. Only Transmute and Philosopher's Stone are useless on their own, but they are generally useless even if there are other Potion cards.

Mute is often worth it on a $1P hand on most potion boards. For Alchemist and Familiar it is often the best $2P buy. Yeah, it is dicey on Golem boards, but even there it can be the only way to gain extra VP in a turn (very powerful) and a very nice bootstrap to bigger economy if you can trash it out later. He is, of course, very nice on Pool boards giving both VP and higher action density. On a Familiar board it provides a much needed money density increase and after all, can kill curses. University can struggle to get cash quickly and again may not be able to net more than 6 VP a turn. Possession likes Mute because it can allow you to cripple your cash flow while depleting the duchies.

I have won a good number of games on potion boards where people will buy some marginal $2 or skip altogether rather than add in a Mute.

The real problem for Mute on these boards is the same as always - opportunity cost. Most of the time whatever other spammable card you want is going to preclude buying Mute. Nobody is giving up any of the other Pot cards for Mute in the early game. For the Golem and Possession openers, it is universally better to delay the pot until you can reliably hit Golem/Possession.

So Mute becomes a fallback buy on pot boards with busted hands and sometimes a tactical use of a spare +buy/pot. When is competing against things that cost $3 and both will be there on the same turn, it can come out ahead a reasonable amount of the time.

Try playing sometime where Mute cost 4 - it is better than Dismantle in the early game and may even be better in the mid-late game. Gaining it without having to give up two full buys or a power Pot buy is actually not that painful.

Again, Mute is still not in the top half of the cheap cards ... but it is not so far out of whack without the opportunity cost.

121

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat and potentially useful card interactions

« on: June 11, 2018, 08:52:26 pm »

I like lyles way better because you can just get a gold with cg and 3 coppers then donate trash everything except gold then use gold to get silver and then just go from there.

That's really slow. You want to keep at least 5 Coppers around on your first Donate, and you generally want that Donate to happen on turn 1.

I have actually done a real T1 Donate =)


Pouch/Courtier. T2 was $3/gold; pay off 4 debt. T3 was $3/gold, pay off 4 debt, buy a Shanty.

There are even a few $3s (e.g. Dev on the right board) or $4s (e.g. basically every time with Dismantle) that would would be a T1 Pouch/Donate. I would even Donate on $2 with something crazy like Page or Peasant. (particularly if the opponent buys a gainer).



I would say that in general Pouch/Donate is a very strong combo a lot of the time. You can both gain a useful card and Donate in the opening. This is particularly clutch if you have some $3/4 (e.g. Fortress/Dev, Prssn/Wshop) combo you want to run or if you get lucky enough to hit $5 with the Pouch in that hand and have a power $5 out (e.g. Courtier, Gov). It gifts you at least half a turn which is a massive speed up in already fast games.

122

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Fix the worst cards

« on: June 11, 2018, 11:37:08 am »

A few quick fixes:
Mute: pull the Nbrig trick and let it be played on the turn you buy it. T3 gain/trash is much better than T5. This also allows you tactically gain it replacing one dead card (estate) with another mostly dead card (Mute). It still has the weaknesses of Mute in your actual deck - terminal, cannot trash coppers quickly for benefit. But would allow us to play more with its bonuses without the full three shuffle delay. Still have to sacrifice a half a $5 so it the pot/Mute opening is something you have to weigh, but gets rid of the terribly slow on ramp. This would also make it much more viable for engines as again, you do not have to delay a full turn.

Royal seal: keep its current ability, allow it to also set aside your first buy and return it at the start of your next turn (six card starting hand). It gains the benefit of a Caravan, but does not stack and requires you to buy the card. Makes it a much better fit for engines, makes it much more powerful for money.

Mandarin: top deck treasures in play or place your deck in your discard; top deck a card or discard a card that is not a victory card. He retains most of the same fun interactions, gains a boost on opening, and stays a gimped gold (though less gimped on most junking boards). You would buy him for shuffle control much more often.

B-crat: if your opponent reveals no VP, +$1/+1 buy. This takes a lot of the swing out of early B-crat play - whiffing is now a chance to buy a $5 in most opening hands and in an engine he can be an interesting source of +buy. Reliable +buy in the midgame, and maybe needing stacking in the late game; which will eventually tank your engine. Could lead to hilarious green top decking to frustrate opponent +buys.

Philosopher's stone: I would make it an action/treasure. Action: +1$, gain a potion to your hand; treasure: +3$ per potion in play. You can still opt for spam decks, but you can also use it with engines either for value gain or as payload (gold equivalent cash density at $12/4, higher for higher price points). Also it now plays much nicer with other potion cards. Much faster play and also enables a potential fight over the potion pile =)

123

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Transmute here?

« on: June 03, 2018, 08:06:12 am »

Transmute here is competing against a couple of other very strong options:

Silver/Mint burns 4 (or 5) coppers so you can just mass Mint silvers/golds sooner. The silver VP will wrack up quickly ... but you can take an early Fairground to nab some of them with not too much tempo loss. Delaying the Mint until you can take out the potion has the trouble of needing to hit $4 in 4 cards. You either lose a silver (or gold) or need to wait until you have Market or Baker online - that is a lot of time drawing coppers. Say you play the Transmute once ASAP and bought silvers on the other two turns. Your total cash in deck is $14 over 14 cards. By T5 a Mint/Silver opening should be looking at three silvers most of the time (buy one to start and either buy one/Mint one, buy two, or mint two by T3). That gives you $9 over 10. That is pretty close and the Mint will be getting more reliable while the Mute will be getting less.  Using the Mint to thin down after that requires either burning a silver (undoing a good bit of your thinning) or waiting.

The other opening is Th/Silver. This can allow you to trash more coppers (5 being easy, 7 unlikely) and have a stronger card at game end with quicker +buy (e.g. getting Baker/Pawn). Again it is a LOT of turns before Transmute gets your deck that thin.

By the time you start buying estates for VP chips, I suspect the other guy will just have nabbed some green of his own.

Burning a full two turns on getting Potion then Mute is just so slow. I would be much more tempted to try the Mute run if I could cut that down a bit. E.g. something like Gear being out so I can hit Gear (return 2) -> Th -> Draw up to 9 cards, gain a Pot, buy Mint. Mute is massively better if the cost of acquiring it is not burning two full turns. 

Particularly with Fairgrounds out, I am not sold on needing to burn the Pot afterwards, I need 15 Uniques in this game. Assuming 6 from the stock cards that means I need 9 from somewhere else. Eventually I come down to Curse, Th, Ms, Cb, and Pot. Th is terrible if I plan on buying green to Mute or going copper -> Mute -> Duchy; better to spend a $5 on something else. Cb and Ms are both not bad, but do require me to forgo a duchy or maybe a gold buy; I suspect it will come down to shuffle timing of do I get both (trash the Pot), neither (keep the pot, gain a curse off a spare buy), or just one (keep the Pot).  Again tempo matters a lot, granted less with equivalent Prov/Fg piles, so I am not sure that waiting to kill the Pot is worth it.

I have actually considered calling Th/Mute a viable combo for engines. With an engine you can gain the pot, draw it, and get the Mute all in a single turn without sacrificing your main buy. You trade a gold now for three later and can even Mute the pot to a Duchy or Gold. Mute is vastly better in an engine as you have vastly better odds of lining up Mute/Green and can be sure for a while that buying an Estate with a spare $2 will turn into a gold next turn. Mute is a vastly better card (still in the bottom quarter) when you can gain it for less that giving up two turns worth of buying power.

124

Dominion General Discussion / Re: note to self

« on: March 28, 2018, 07:00:38 am »

when it's a shelters game and you draw two with hovel and you're like should I get an estate, first check if there is Baths

And regardless of whether it's there, don't get the Estate.

Unless you are able to Inherit something fun like Iw, Shepard, or Sir Martin. (Bonus points if you Inherit on T1/2 via Cursed gold). Or if you have a tight Upgrade deck. Or if you plan to Margrave -> Masq -> B-Crat -> Masq.

But yes, outside of edge cases, it is exceedingly rare to make that be more VP than a Duchy buy from the estate move.  Pretty much all the cases where you want to burn the Hov with an estate buy, you just want to buy estates regardless.

125

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Engine with no extra cards per turn?

« on: March 27, 2018, 08:48:46 pm »

Strong attacks can go a long ways, particularly if you can combo attacks. Something like Ghostship/Noble brigand can just flood the opponent's deck if you can play it consistently (and play Brigands first). Other combos like Gship/Masq or Rabble/Gship can be absolutely brutal and allow you to slowly close the gap with Duchies for a 6:2 province gap. A few attacks self-synergize (Rabble & Torturer) that are just absolutely brutal. Mass Hexes is really brutal if you can throw them every turn. Particularly nasty are VP-destroying attacks & combos (e.g. Swindler & $8s, Kc/Swindlers, Hwy/Giant, Possession & Amb/Masq) which can win in surprising circumstances (e.g. with other attacks to slow the Prov pile, you can build out Kc/Swindler to hit half a money deck; burning all their provinces and provinces).

Alt-VP are definitely worth a shot often. Getting Fairgrounds up to province equivalent is 12 turns; after that you need to pile those and then steal the final province. Call it 20 turns, but that actually compares decently with piling 8 provinces.  Nobles can be nice for giving you the ability to go down 2 provs without sacrificing draw ability. Distant lands give you 32 points, which lets you win against a 6:2 prov split. In general, people tend to underestimate how long it takes to pile 8 provinces and are also bad at shifting tactics to optimize either the province "rush" or point/turn maximization (e.g. when to Duchy on $5 or $6). Dominate and Colony easily give you enough VP & time to make a go of it. Mountain pass is also good for either: allowing you to generate VP without clogging the deck or, more importantly, buy an extra 2-3 turns off your opponent. Other options for alternative scoring can allow you to generate VP with your engine (e.g. Orchard, Museum).

VP chips from their many sources can also go a long way. Often better than anything you can get with just provinces.

Trashing/sifting also goes a long ways. Engines with Donate require very few turns to get running and you can just buy components on turns that fail to hit Prov.

Often the call is not between one easy example engine type and a non-engine, but between a couple cruddy types vs a decent money deck. Something like Duke/Nobles/Attack can let you outscore the province pile if the game lasts long enough, but also to be reliable enough to attack often while scoring VP and forcing your opponent to Duchy up (and giving you more turns).

Gaining an extra non-VP card makes this a much wider space. Gaining 2 components per turn (e.g. Haggler) can drastically reduce the time to getting the engine up and the VP deficit you need to surmount. Likewise, they can let you keep your engine go much longer (e.g. buying a Duchy/Duke each turn, splitting WS gains on Smithy/Village).

Engines need to either have accelerating growth (multiple components per turn) or effectively long games. There are many ways to get either, even without +buy or flexible gains.