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[ehunt]

This thought experiment has the opposite conclusion as the other one.

Claim: either we should be buying Horse Traders for the reaction much more often than I thought, or Soothsayer is better than I thought.

[GeoLib]

The reaction only works if you have horse traders in hand when an attack is played and one of the cards in your new bigger hand is horse traders, so unless you want horse traders for its primary effect, that isn't very good. Soothsayer gives you the card every time it attacks.

[Awaclus]

The reaction only works if you have horse traders in hand when an attack is played and one of the cards in your new bigger hand is horse traders, so unless you want horse traders for its primary effect, that isn't very good. Soothsayer gives you the card every time it attacks.

Horse Trader's primary effect is pretty good in a hand of 6 cards. Anyways, it's terminal so you don't want too many of them.

[HiveMindEmulator]

The problem is that you have to buy the Horse Traders instead of something else. With opponent's Soothsayer, you can buy other useful cards and still get the draw.

[GeoLib]

The reaction only works if you have horse traders in hand when an attack is played and one of the cards in your new bigger hand is horse traders, so unless you want horse traders for its primary effect, that isn't very good. Soothsayer gives you the card every time it attacks.

Horse Trader's primary effect is pretty good in a hand of 6 cards. Anyways, it's terminal so you don't want too many of them.

I agree that HT's primary effect is pretty good, but then you aren't buying it just for the reaction as the OP suggested.

[markusin]

Revealing HT to an opposing Soothsayer leaves you with a 7 card hand. That's pretty good for HT if you can afford the extra terminal. On alt-vp card boards, Horse Traders is often a terminal of choice.

Now, why you'd get Horse Traders purely for the reaction is beyond me, as all it effectively does is replace itself as a reaction for non discard-to-3 attacks, and makes the discard-to-3 attacks give you a +1 card at the end. Little better than Moat. It's equivalent to getting Great Hall as a defense to non-discard attacks unless you want a big handsize regardless of card quality.

I just realized that Soothsayer must be really tough to ignore in 3-4 player games. Having a 7-8 card hand on turn 6 doesn't seem like it offsets the extra curses and the lack of Gold relative to your opponents in a 3-4 player game.

[cayvie]

Isn't the cleanest comparison not to Horse Traders, but to Laboratory?