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[soulnet]

In a board without other cards that trash, can Rats be good?

I thought about this examples:


1. Scrying Pool. In this case, each Rats is almost a cantrip trasher, since SPs will draw extra Rats without problems.

2. Vineyards. Seems narrow, maybe a nice endgame move, but I cannot imagine feeling my deck with Rats that I cannot use from the go.

3. HoP and Fairgrounds for extra different names (I cannot imagine Menagerie working). HoP seems incredibly narrow, but maybe the best 8th card for the megaturn. Fairgrounds seems reasonable, although it would be an endgame purchase, almost a Victory card in a sense.

4. Hunting Party to reduce different names (reduce Coppers, Estates, Curses and Ruins into just Rats). This seems weak. Maybe to clear up Curses in an awful game like HP + Marauder. If it works, sounds like a nice find, but I cannot estimate its effectiveness.

5. Wishing Well and Mystic may have an easier time guessing. This seems like a total nombo, though.

6. Journeyman could have an easier way filtering. Again, sounds like a nombo.

7. Library will also filter better if we replace Estates, Curses and Coppers with Rats. Especially with non-drawing Villages, it could work. I imagine Rats being a nice mid-game addition to Festival/Library, to clear up and make room for the green.

From all of these, only 1 and 7 seem to me that are decen on themselves. Fairgrounds may have a room for Rats, but is just a dead $4 cost, if all the alternatives to reach 15 or 20 different names are expensive or Curses.

[Jimmmmm]

If you have plenty of Fortresses, Rats turns your bad cards into (sometimes) cantrips.

[scott_pilgrim]

I think I have pointed this out somewhere before, but Rats can actually benefit your deck without TfB, specific combos, things that like diversity, etc.  As an extreme example, imagine that you gain 100 curses every turn from an unlimited pile of curses.  Then you are clearly much better off with Rats than without, since they replace curses with Rats, and Rats are much better than Curses, since they help you to replace Curses with Rats.  Basically, if the rate at which junk is entering your deck is such that, even accounting for the rapid increases in the rate at which you gain Rats, your Rats (almost) always line up with a junk card, then it is better to have Rats than to not have Rats (and sometimes actually worth paying $4 to get one).  In these cases, you usually want to limit the rate at which Rats come into your deck as much as you can, while still playing them every time you see them.  Which means you want to have a big deck, and you want the game to end before you have more Rats than you like.  So I think in sloggy games where you have a big deck with lots of junk, it can be good to pick up a Rats late mid-game.  It's pretty rare for this to be the only reason you pick up Rats (it might happen on boards with Mountebank and a Looter or something), but it's an important thing to realize because combined with another reason to go for Rats, it can bump Rats up from a mediocre buy to a good buy.

[Holger]

Yes, if you can use a Rats (plus its "descendants") to trash a Curse only three times, it's already better than a Duchy (because of the triple card draw).

[heron]

Yes, if you can use a Rats (plus its "descendants") to trash a Curse only three times, it's already better than a Duchy three estates and an overgrown estate (because of the triple card draw).

[Holger]

Yes, if you can use a Rats (plus its "descendants") to trash a Curse only three times, it's already better than a Duchy three estates and an overgrown estate (because of the triple card draw).

Huh? Playing Rats on Curse doesn't increase the number of dead cards in your deck, only the one bought Rats does. So it corresponds to having 1 additional dead card (and +3 VP, just like buying a Duchy). Buying three or four Estates would be much worse...

[KingZog3]

Rats is a pretty good defense against Swindler. Not really worth buying only for that, but it is something you should consider on some boards.

[soulnet]

Rats is a pretty good defense against Swindler. Not really worth buying only for that, but it is something you should consider on some boards.

it is even better against saboteur, knights and rogue, but those are all cards that trash

[heron]

Yes, if you can use a Rats (plus its "descendants") to trash a Curse only three times, it's already better than a Duchy three estates and an overgrown estate (because of the triple card draw).

Huh? Playing Rats on Curse doesn't increase the number of dead cards in your deck, only the one bought Rats does. So it corresponds to having 1 additional dead card (and +3 VP, just like buying a Duchy). Buying three or four Estates would be much worse...

Whoops, yeah, you're right.

[A Drowned Kernel]

I have played particularly sloggy games where I have bought rats just for the curse-trashing.

[serakfalcon]

2. Vineyards. Seems narrow, maybe a nice endgame move, but I cannot imagine feeling my deck with Rats that I cannot use from the go.

Without trashing, rats in vineyard is definitely viable in the endgame. All you really want in the end for vineyard is +buy and potions, so if you can trash down a few coppers (which are mostly useless to you anyways) and pick up a few actions for free by using a cantrip, why not?

[Watno]

You can also use a single rats to piledrive a whole pile if you have your deck in hand, though this will trash a lot of your cards.

[serakfalcon]

You can also use a single rats to piledrive a whole pile if you have your deck in hand, though this will trash a lot of your cards.

Edgecase: You played all your other cards first (could work in a vineyard game with Black Market)
Edgecase Edgecase: you piledrive the entire rats pile in that turn

[Watno]

The problem is that you cam't play vineyard (but you could put them on Havens)

[AdamH]

I got totally crushed in this game because of Vault/Market Square where Rats was the only trashing available and I stupidly went for Cultist and Torturer. Procession was on the board but it didn't matter at all and he never bought one.

[silverspawn]

rats vineyard is very good. basically, once you have ~2 potions in your deck, you play rats everytime there's a card on your hand that's not rats, potion, or vineyard. buy vineyard every time you have a potion. the only problem is that, once you have no more non-rats-non-vineyard cards left in your deck, you can't do anything anymore, so you need something that ends the game for you. If you have enough cards to get all 20 rats and you buy all vineyards, you just need one more empty pile. if your opponent is giving out curses, you're already fine. it also works with other action cards, just don't trash them if rats are out or if you would get the rats anyway.

something that should work, but which i've never tried is to piledrive rats with a fortress, once you drew your whole deck. if you do this in a vineyard game, the only problem is again that you need to end the game somehow.

[Grujah]

Poorhouse engine to weed out copper? Or is that a nombo?

[Davio]

Poorhouse engine to weed out copper? Or is that a nombo?

I think a lot of Rats combos are actually nombos.

You're going to get to a point where you don't want to play Rats anymore. And then they're basically like Shelters in your hand.

I mean, for Poor House, you'd rather have no replacement card rather than a Rats instead of Copper. So this might be a good combo only if you can deal with the Rats later through regular trashing. But if you have strong regular trashing, you might want to skip Rats in the first place.

[Awaclus]

Poorhouse engine to weed out copper? Or is that a nombo?

I think a lot of Rats combos are actually nombos.

You're going to get to a point where you don't want to play Rats anymore. And then they're basically like Shelters in your hand.

I mean, for Poor House, you'd rather have no replacement card rather than a Rats instead of Copper. So this might be a good combo only if you can deal with the Rats later through regular trashing. But if you have strong regular trashing, you might want to skip Rats in the first place.

Having no replacement is better than having Rats, but having Rats is still better than having Copper. If you're drawing your deck anyway, Copper makes PH suck while Rats makes it viable, and Rats doesn't make drawing your deck any less likely to happen tnan Copper does. It might not be worth the time it takes, but it's certainly more useful than nothing.

[AdamH]

rats vineyard is very good. basically, once you have ~2 potions in your deck, you play rats everytime there's a card on your hand that's not rats, potion, or vineyard. buy vineyard every time you have a potion. the only problem is that, once you have no more non-rats-non-vineyard cards left in your deck, you can't do anything anymore, so you need something that ends the game for you. If you have enough cards to get all 20 rats and you buy all vineyards, you just need one more empty pile. if your opponent is giving out curses, you're already fine. it also works with other action cards, just don't trash them if rats are out or if you would get the rats anyway.

something that should work, but which i've never tried is to piledrive rats with a fortress, once you drew your whole deck. if you do this in a vineyard game, the only problem is again that you need to end the game somehow.

I've attempted this before, it completely blew up in my face. If this is possible to pull off, it's really difficult.

I think you have to gain a lot of cards first before getting any Rats, since if you don't do it this way, there won't be many times when you have no Potions or Vineyards in hand and other cards you want to trash. You have to have at least 29 cards in your deck for it to be even feasible to empty the Rats and Vineyard piles. Plus, it's really slow.

I think if you want to do this, you should already have piles close to empty and then get Rats as a last-minute points push. I would think this only works when you're already drawing a lot and the game is almost over, which makes me think this would see very limited use.

...if there's a better way that actually works, I'd like to know about it.

[Asper]

Just today i played a Rats game where i bought them without any trasher available and won (caveat: against bots).
The board included Warehouse, Scrying Pool, Rats and Secret Chamber.
Warehousing until you had a scrying pool in hand and then drawing allmost all my Rats (ended up with 14 of them in the end), i could discard them all with Secret Chamber. It was fun, though i guess a human player could have beat me, especially as there was no +buy to get a real benefit out of those +20$ hands
Definitely would have been better with Storeroom instead of SC Secret Chamber.

[Temron]

This game was from a while ago. Don't know how well I played it but this conversation reminded me of it. Shows Rats and Scrying Pool working well together.

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20140208/log.516d4177e4b082c74d7b6376.1391905152329.txt

No plus buy in this one and it was a Colony game.

[Davio]

Well, Rats and Fortress is cheating.

[dominion123]

Don't know if watchtower counts as a trasher (since swindler and saboteur has been brought up), but Rats + watchtower is pretty good.

[soulnet]

Don't know if watchtower counts as a trasher (since swindler and saboteur has been brought up), but Rats + watchtower is pretty good.

Yes it does, in the sense that the Rats are not untrashable.