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Awaclus

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Counting House
« on: September 03, 2014, 06:41:15 am »
+9

The old article is a bit outdated, so I feel like it's time to write a new article.



What is Counting House?
It's essentially a +X Cards effect. Only it draws from your discard pile instead of your deck, and it always draws Coppers. You probably already knew this, but I wanted to say it anyway, because it is easy to focus too much on the Copper part and forget about the part that actually increases your hand size.


When should you ignore Counting House?
Counting House is a card that's hard to utilize. As the old article mentions, just buying one in hopes of high +coins is going to fail in most decks — CH just isn't strong enough to be a big money enabler and in engines where you draw most of your deck anyway, it's not going to be of much use. In other words, you should never go for Counting House unless there is a particular reason why Counting House works on that board.

So, when is Counting House actually useful?


Counting House as a +$
This is bad in most decks, but there are some edge cases. With great support, such as Beggar or Candlestick Maker, a strategy centered around this can do well in an otherwise weak kingdom, but not if there are other decent options. Here's how you play it with CSM, and with Beggar, it's similar, but you don't need that many Beggars.

Another edge case is when you're getting hit by Copper junking attacks, such as Mountebank, and you can't deal with the junk otherwise. In this case, you definitely want the attack, and you probably want the Counting House later.

Non-terminal +buy can be excellent here, since it lets you buy extra Coppers and later, more green cards with your big Counting House turns. Terminal +buy is a lot worse, because you can't play both that and CH on the same turn without a splitter, and lining up the splitter, the +buy and the Counting House is difficult in a deck full of Copper.

These kinds of strategies are usually resilient to most attacks for obvious reasons, but you should watch out for Pillage and sometimes Enchantress. For the same reason why you're not too worried about junking, greening early is often a good idea in these games.

It's also usable in the Hunting Party stack (well, at least if the Hunting Party stack itself is better than other strategies on the board), where it guarantees a Province turn as long as you just have at least one Silver in your deck and are able to play enough HPs to discard your deck. The downside is that you don't get any other benefits, such as the +VP from Monument etc, and it's more expensive than many other alternatives for the terminal slot, but the upside is that you don't have to buy a Gold at all.


Counting House as a +Card
This has the potential to be extremely good. There are two ways to utilize this:

1) Taking Coppers from your discard pile, then triggering a reshuffle mid-turn. This greatly reduces the number of cards you have to draw with other cards when you're trying to draw your whole deck, so it can be useful when you're having trouble drawing your deck given the kingdom. It needs a payload that really makes it worth it, though, and it should be noted that if your engine relies on this, you can't, pardon the pun, count on being able to go off every turn, so either it needs to be a megaturn payload or you need lots and lots of time.

2) Actually taking advantage of the Coppers in your hand. The most effective thing is if you can discard the Coppers for some benefit, then draw them with Counting House, then discard them again for more benefit (repeat as many times as you have +actions available). For example, you can use Counting House with Cellar to draw cards from your deck, allowing you to build an engine with no other +card, or Secret Chamber to give you lots of coins, letting you use that as your payload. Storeroom is great here, since it does both.

Here, Copper might or might not be a good addition for your deck. If your engine is strong, you can power up your Secret Chamber-style payload by adding extra Coppers, and for the Cellar draw engine thing, you want to maintain a good balance between Coppers, Cellar variants, Counting Houses and splitters. But if your engine isn't too strong, then adding extra Coppers has the potential to make it not work. If you're using it for making the Coppers miss the mid-turn reshuffle, then Copper is obviously bad as the purpose of your CH is to get rid of the Copper anyway.

Militia makes the Cellar thing a lot more clumsy, and these kinds of engines are also more vulnerable to junking than engines usually are.


Counting House with Travelling Fair
This is a thing.


In general
Any strategy with Counting House in it becomes a lot better when you gain some control over when to draw your Counting House. Therefore, cards such as Watchtower, Inn, Scheme and Haven are good in Counting House decks. Colony games are usually more favorable for CH strategies, since they benefit from longer games.


So, that's it.
« Last Edit: June 25, 2016, 06:16:31 pm by Awaclus »
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Re: Counting House
« Reply #1 on: September 03, 2014, 08:19:44 am »
+1

What do you think about Counting House in province games vs colony games? 

I think that boards that are conducive to CH strategies tend to work better on Colony Boards.  The AI/Jog game was on a colony board.  I recently played a game on a colony board where my opponent's CH strategy vs mountebank was a great idea and probably would have won had there been no trashing on the board.  Basically, I think when you are going to have those 11 coppers in your deck (because of mountebank, for example) CH can be a terrific card.  But when you only need to get 8, other strategies probably tend to be a bit faster and CH loses a lot of its value.
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Re: Counting House
« Reply #2 on: September 03, 2014, 08:31:11 am »
+2

Also, if you want examples of good CH games I played a great one with HvB.  [video of the game]  I used CH primarily as the +card, as you mentioned, using warehouse, wandering minstrel, and storeroom as my primary enablers. 
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Awaclus

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Re: Counting House
« Reply #3 on: September 03, 2014, 09:02:30 am »
0

What do you think about Counting House in province games vs colony games? 

I think that boards that are conducive to CH strategies tend to work better on Colony Boards.  The AI/Jog game was on a colony board.  I recently played a game on a colony board where my opponent's CH strategy vs mountebank was a great idea and probably would have won had there been no trashing on the board.  Basically, I think when you are going to have those 11 coppers in your deck (because of mountebank, for example) CH can be a terrific card.  But when you only need to get 8, other strategies probably tend to be a bit faster and CH loses a lot of its value.
Oh, I thought I wrote that in the article. Apparently I erased the part and forgot to type it again. Yes, CH is definitely better in Colony games.
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DG

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Re: Counting House
« Reply #4 on: September 03, 2014, 09:21:10 am »
+3

+buys
early greening
strength vs attacks, junking, spies, saboteurs, pillage, militia
multiplayer attacks - unable to build conventional economy
anything that can put counting house on top of the deck  - scavenger, royal seal, develop, herald

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Awaclus

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Re: Counting House
« Reply #5 on: September 03, 2014, 06:39:02 pm »
0

+buys
early greening
strength vs attacks, junking, spies, saboteurs, pillage, militia
multiplayer attacks - unable to build conventional economy
anything that can put counting house on top of the deck  - scavenger, royal seal, develop, herald
Good points. I added stuff about +buys, early greening and attacks. I already mentioned cards that topdeck Counting House, and I don't know anything about multiplayer so I'm not going to write about it.
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Re: Counting House
« Reply #6 on: September 03, 2014, 08:30:37 pm »
0

I got clobbered by Counting House / Scheme on a Colony board in a memorable GokoDom game. My strategy was surely pretty stupid (I was going Duchy / Duke for some reason...) but I gained a newfound respect for Counting House that day.
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jomini

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Re: Counting House
« Reply #7 on: September 04, 2014, 04:19:08 pm »
0

Cache is a good addition to Chouse decks. In the mid to late game when you are buying provinces, but not yet dabbling in duchies you can add a gold (next shuffle is easier to hit provinces/duchies) while this turn you get +2$ to any Chouses you play before the shuffle. It competes directly with Chouse, but once you have enough Chouses it can be better than duchy. Cache/Chouse is much better in Colony games where you want to build value longer and juicing later Chouse plays in a shuffle.

Also, remember where you are in a shuffle when you are playing copper bloat. It is completely worth it to buy coppers in a CHouse game. Once you hit the last expected shuffle (or maybe the one before that). You should only be buying green/copper - so be sure which is more valuable. With pure copper/Chouse you can have at most $4 not already in your discard and it should not be hard to figure that I will get Chouse, green $2 so I should buy a copper now to: get a duchy (when I have 2 other coppers in the discard) or get a province (5 other coppers). Sacrificing a late game copper buy for an estate can lose you the game.

On the flip side, if you are already likely at your price point ($5, $8, $11 or $6/$4 for kingdom VP; $10, $15, etc. if you have +buys) then grabbing an estate for tie breaker can be huge. On the last shuffle of the game (and likely the one before), you can increase your odds of winning a bit by asking if 1 VP now is worth sacrificing odds of 2 or 5 VP later; in Colony games you may even want to skip Duchy buys in order to have better chances of getting a colony later in the shuffle.
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Awaclus

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Re: Counting House
« Reply #8 on: September 04, 2014, 08:33:07 pm »
0

It is completely worth it to buy coppers in a CHouse game.
Only in some situations.
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jomini

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Re: Counting House
« Reply #9 on: September 06, 2014, 12:15:57 am »
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It is completely worth it to buy coppers in a CHouse game.
Only in some situations.


Hence why that sentence resides in a paragraph that starts with "Also, remember where you are in a shuffle when you are playing copper bloat." And then goes on to talk about scenarios where you are looking at hitting specific price points.

Now sure there are other times to jack up on copper. For instance, if you are doing Cellar/Chouse and you know that you have both coming next turn, buying a copper gives you effectively a free one-shot lab for gaining a copper. Weak, but completely worth it in the late game.

The point is that the value of copper buys varies heavily with when a reshuffle will occur. Yes copper buys add bloat (so don't do them enough copper, whatever amount that is, is already in your discard ... but juicing the next 4 turns when the game is late and you have bloat & CHouse /buys (e.g. Hamlet) is pretty big. So too can be setting up a big turn in a Chouse-draw engine or megaturn combo.
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Re: Counting House
« Reply #10 on: September 10, 2014, 08:58:30 am »
0

Secret Chamber seems kind of... silly.  What do you get for discarding a card to SC?  $1.  What does a Copper give you when played?  $1.  Really doesn't matter all that much, unless you can manage to play more than one Counting House.
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Awaclus

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Re: Counting House
« Reply #11 on: September 10, 2014, 09:56:37 am »
0

Secret Chamber seems kind of... silly.  What do you get for discarding a card to SC?  $1.  What does a Copper give you when played?  $1.  Really doesn't matter all that much, unless you can manage to play more than one a Counting House.
FTFY.
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Re: Counting House
« Reply #12 on: September 10, 2014, 11:34:01 am »
+1

I think Bank is really worth mentioning as additional payload for CH in an engine, because it gives a LOT of money.

I think what you say here:
Quote
1) Taking Coppers from your discard pile, then triggering a reshuffle mid-turn.
is extremely helpful, not only to set up a decent next turn, but also to finish to draw the other good cards in your discard.
I think a decent way to look at this usage is to think CH as a sifter (+money). However, this looks like one of the decks that are extremely hard to play even decently (I am not even aiming at optimally), because one wrong play and your whole deck can fall apart for a couple of turns.
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