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[Jorbles]

Lost this game by a point, but I thought the board was interesting enough to talk about.

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Alchemist, Fairgrounds, Feast, Forge, Pawn, Potion, Scrying Pool, Spice Merchant, Stables, Stash, and Steward

We had an asymmetrical start with me getting 5/2 and SadHolandaPanda getting 4/3. When I had initially seen the board I was considering playing a Alchemist/Scrying Pool hybrid strategy, but after getting the 5/2 start, I figured I'd be at a disadvantage if I didn't try something that involved a $5 card so I ended up opening Stables/Pawn and SadHolandaPanda opened Steward/Potion which I would likely have opened if I hadn't gotten 5/2.

I bought a second Stables and a Steward to start trashing with. I ended up using the Steward for the +$2 a little more than I thought I would once the game got going using it to try rushing the provinces hoping for a 5/3 Province split, especially once I saw that SadHolandaPanda was going for a pure Scrying Pool deck, which I figured would be a stronger end game engine.

I broke the PPR hoping to hit the 5/3 split and ended up barely losing on a 4/4 split when I missed the fifth Province and had to settle for a Duchy.

Questions I wanted to throw out there, if I'd had a 4/3 split, would an Alchemist/Scrying Pool hybrid strategy have been more effective than a pure Scrying Pool?
With the 5/2 split is a Stables engine my best strategy here? If I did it again I probably would have done the same thing, but picked up an extra Silver when given the opportunity instead of trashing Coppers and taking a Pawn. (As I did on turn 5). The Coppers aren't too bad when you need to discard them in order to use the Stables effectively.

[mnavratil]

I think that buying alchemists would just slow the scrying pools down too much. Given the available trashing with spice merchant and steward, I think scrying pool alone is reliable.

I also think just going BM with stables at $5 feels the fastest here. In that case I think getting a steward is OK, but most of the time would probably be used as a terminal silver anyway. On your turn 5, for instance, using the +2$ option on the steward and getting a stables would have been better than trashing and picking up a pawn.

[Fabian]

I think mnavratil pretty much has it right. Alchemists don't seem to add much to a possible Scrying Pool engine on this board, as far as I can tell. With a 5/2 opening, I'd be looking at a Stables/nothing opening, because I hate those "95% of the time they're cantrips with no downside or upside, and 2% of the time the extra buy is useful, but 3% of the time you need to draw 2 with Steward and you draw Pawn instead of Gold to get that last Province" type cards, like I feel a Pawn might/would be here. My gut just tells me that Pawn doesn't add anything to your deck here; with 4, you'd prefer (at least) Silver to Pawn+Pawn anyway, with 5 you'd prefer Stables or Duchy to Pawn+Silver, with 6 you'd prefer Gold, with 7 you'd prefer Gold or Duchy, with 8+ obviously Province. Then that one time you have Gold+Steward+Copper+Copper+Estate with one Province remaining and your 3 card deck consists of Gold+Pawn+Estate instead of Gold+Estate, you'll be kicking yourself pretty hard.

[DG]

My gut just tells me that Pawn doesn't add anything to your deck here

A pawn in a scrying pool deck is an extra card that can sometimes be drawn totally for free. If you use +1 action on each such pawn then you're still left with an extra card, extra buy, or extra coin.


If you look at how this game will finish it will probably be through buying provinces with gold. That style of drawing favours alchemists over scrying pools. I wouldn't rule out using a well thought out mix of drawing cards.

[Fabian]

Re: Pawn vs no-Pawn. I think the difference is small, but the potential upside of Pawn seems smaller to me than the potential downside of Pawn (see above). It's very possibly I'm dead wrong here.

Re: Alchemist vs Scrying Pool vs Hybrid. It seems to me that any hybrid would be slower/worse than the alternative to draw the entire deck. Again, I might very possibly be dead wrong.

[Jorbles]

I don't really see why a Scrying Pool strategy would be hindered by Alchemists, they're both actions and the goal of each is heavy drawing, plus they'd both be strong in an action heavy deck. The Scrying Pool attack isn't so great that I'd rather have it than an Alchemist.

[rinkworks]

With one Steward as your only terminal, I think the risk of drawing a Pawn dead is sufficiently tiny once you have a few Alchemists and/or Scrying Pools.  The Steward would then be a very small percentage of your total drawing power in this kind of deck, and lots of times you'd rather use it for one of its other two options anyway.  Particularly if you've wisely used the Steward to trash stuff early on, the Alchemists and Scrying Pools will draw all you need without the Steward.  That allows the Pawns to be played for Action + Coin/Buy.  This is more the case with a heavy Scrying Pool deck (where the Pawns get drawn for free) vs. a heavy Alchemist deck (where Pawns will be drawn as one of the fixed number of cards Alchemists can draw).  But the Pawn shouldn't hurt either.

In a deck where more of the drawing power comes from terminal drawers, I'd certainly be more reluctant to pick up Pawns with spare buys.

[mnavratil]

Jorbles didn't have a scrying pool deck though, he had a stables deck. I think the better debate is whether a pawn adds anything to a stables deck.

With scrying pool, you definately want the pawns. If you get your deck trashed sufficiently (with a combination of steward and spice merchant in this case) the goal should be to draw all the pawns and use them as 1 action/$1.

With the stables I don't know if it is better to go Stables/Nothing or stables/pawn. In this case the pawn is probably not adding anything to the deck. It is probably even debatable whether to grab a single steward over a silver in this case. Perhaps grabbing both the steward and the pawn is always bad?

[hobo386]

I might be wrong, but I would definitely go pawn/stables over nothing stables.  Even if you play it like a noob and use it for +1card/+1 action 90% of the time, at the end of the game, you can use it for +buy to snag an extra estate or duchy.

[ackack]

With the stables I don't know if it is better to go Stables/Nothing or stables/pawn. In this case the pawn is probably not adding anything to the deck.

No, adding the Pawn is definitely better than not. Stables is non-terminal, so you won't draw Pawns dead, and since you can play Pawn as a cantrip, you always have the option of cycling to the next card at the beginning of a hand if that's what you want. Thus there's no way in which it can hurt, and if you get the Stables going in a big way the +buy clearly has potential.

[mnavratil]

Playing with this in the simulator has single steward/stables beating pawn/stables, even with a 5/2 starting split (pawns definately do beat stables/nothing BTW).

So I guess the nest quesiton is whether stables/pawns/one steward beats stables/one steward. The simulator favors just the signle steward (no pawns), but I can't guarantee it is playing optimally. If the simulator is indeed correct you would be better going stables/nothing and picking up a single steward at 3 and then going BM stables from there.

[Geronimoo]

Steward and Pawn will not be plaed optimally by the simulator so I wouldn't draw too many conclusions out of those. The main reason to buy the Pawn is to get some extra buys in the end game, but that's something the simulator won't see (it will probably just cycle the Pawn)

[AJD]

No, adding the Pawn is definitely better than not. Stables is non-terminal, so you won't draw Pawns dead, and since you can play Pawn as a cantrip, you always have the option of cycling to the next card at the beginning of a hand if that's what you want. Thus there's no way in which it can hurt, and if you get the Stables going in a big way the +buy clearly has potential.

It's not quite true that there's no way it can hurt. You always have the option of cycling it to the next card if that's what you want; but there will be some times when you opt not to cycle it because of the uncertainty of what the next card is, even if it to do so would have been the best move. ...Right?

[DG]

If we're getting mathematically exact about this, then the pawns are not entirely a bonus draw with the scrying pool. If you play a scrying pool with pawn, copper on top of your deck then you inspect the pawn, keep it and stop at the copper. If there is no pawn on top of the deck (never bought) then you inspect and discard the copper and draw whatever is behind it. I'm guessing that this is only a marginal disadvantage and I'll let someone else calculate the exact effect.

[WanderingWinder]

No, adding the Pawn is definitely better than not. Stables is non-terminal, so you won't draw Pawns dead, and since you can play Pawn as a cantrip, you always have the option of cycling to the next card at the beginning of a hand if that's what you want. Thus there's no way in which it can hurt, and if you get the Stables going in a big way the +buy clearly has potential.

It's not quite true that there's no way it can hurt. You always have the option of cycling it to the next card if that's what you want; but there will be some times when you opt not to cycle it because of the uncertainty of what the next card is, even if it to do so would have been the best move. ...Right?

Well, if you're drawing with the steward, you could draw pawn dead. I just really doubt that's a significant enough factor to stop you from getting pawns, especially with good deck tracking.

[ackack]

Yeah, I'm speaking strictly about Stables/Pawn, not Steward.