| #33 ▼3 Rabble (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 52.4% ▼1.9pp / Unweighted Average: 54.1% / Median: 52.4% ▼2.6pp / Standard Deviation: 20.2%
After being 4 ranks better, Rabble dropped basically where it was. It was voted 6 times below 20% and 14 times above 80%. It would be 4 ranks better in the unweighted ranking.
The attack of one Rabble may even be worse than a Fortune Teller, as it can't guarantee to hit. It's not a very good opener, especially with good trashers, but gets stronger and stronger in the late game. Rabble is stronger the more you play in one turn. If you build up a (Village-Smithy-like) engine and need good drawing power, Rabble is the way to go, because if your opponent goes green too early, he gets bad hands regularly pretty soon and you may crush him. Your Rabbles can hit him even stronger than any other discarding attack, because he has at best only 2 good cards in hand. But beware of Farming Village, which is a very effective counter. And if you don't need the drawing power, you can skip over Rabble, because one Rabble isn't that strong per se.
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| #32 ▼5 Count (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 54.6% ▼0.8pp / Unweighted Average: 53.4% / Median: 52.3% ▼6.0pp / Standard Deviation: 23.4%
Count has nearly the same average value, but is 5 ranks worse than last year. It was voted 9 times below 20% and 18 times above 80%.
The 9 different options are not so powerful for a card costing $5, but its flexibility makes it good. The $3 coin option let you have either a Horse Traders effect without +Buy or a Mandarin or let you gain a Copper. If you use Count as virtual money in an engine, then the Mandarin effect is probably best as you can put a village or another card you don't need back and safe for next turn. If you use Count in alt VP games, gaining a Copper is not really a disadvantage. The discarding option is probably the weakest although you can choose it if you really don't need those 2 cards or have a Tunnel in hand. If you open 5/2 the trash your hand option can be really powerful and is similar strong as a 5/2 with Trading Post. Keep in mind that putting back a Copper is mostly worse than gaining a Copper if you want to trash starting cards with it. But mostly you want to safe a card for next turn if you want to choose that option. Discarding two cards is here mostly the weakest option too unless you really want to use Count to only trash 2 cards and discard 2 cards. Gaining Duchies is of course really powerful with Duke, Silk Road, Ill-Gotten-Gains or Rebuild and can pretty strong in the end game when Duchy dancing. Although a terminal Gold seems to be more powerful, think it through! If you end up buying a Duchy anyways you wasted 2$. So, all in all not a particular power card, but can be very good on a 5/2, in Alt-VP games - especially Duke and in most end game scenarios.
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| #31 ▲2 Horn of Plenty (Cornucopia) Weighted Average: 54.6% ▲4.1pp / Unweighted Average: 52.9% / Median: 53.9% ▲7.2pp / Standard Deviation: 22.7%
Horn of Plenty is again slightly better than the year before. It was very close, but it is only 0.02pp better than Count. It would be 3 ranks lower in the unweighted list. It was voted 10 times below 20% and 14 times above 80%.
Horn of Plenty is one of the cards that are very hard to master. On average boards it's similar to Ironworks and often too slow. But if you can build a decent engine with several different cards involved (and that is the hardest part), then HoP is very powerful. With one Horn of Plenty and a good engine the game can end in like 3-4 turns as you can gain more Horn of Plenties pretty fast and then gain a lot of Provinces in a mega turn. The problem is to build such an engine and prepare the mega turn before the opponent gets a too big Province lead. But even without a megaturn, Horn of Plenty is very useful, something that's often ignored. It has a high opportunity cost, but a non-terminal gainer, that can't even be drawn dead can make a difference in an engine game where engine pieces are not that expensive.
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| #30 ▼7 Bandit Camp (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 54.6% ▼5.0pp / Unweighted Average: 54.5% / Median: 56.9% ▼8.1pp / Standard Deviation: 19.9%
Bandit Camp is significantly worse than last year, 7 ranks and 5pp. It was only 0.01pp better than Horn of Plenty and therefore only 0.03pp better than Count, so these 3 cards are really close together. It would be 2 ranks higher in the unweighted list. It was voted 6 times below 20% and 10 times above 80%.
The obvious comparism to Bandit Camp is Bazaar. You get one-shot Golds instead of $1. Which one is better? Of course it depends... While Bazaar is an obvious Engine Card, Bandit Camp can be very good incorporated in a money-ish approach. The Spoils ramp your economy fast for early Golds or Provinces. But Bandit Camp is also especially good with +Buys as you won't waste money from the Spoils. And with trashing in draw engines where you draw your whole deck, you probably want to play your Spoils each time to keep your deck thin. So the Spoils make your draw engine more unreliable. But if you are still able to draw your deck, then Bandit Camp effectively gives you $3 instead of $1 and is way better than Bazaar. But if your engines falls apart, it's hard to get it back running.
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| #29 ▼12 Vault (Prosperity) Weighted Average: 55.7% ▼12.4pp / Unweighted Average: 56.2% / Median: 56.9% ▼16.4pp / Standard Deviation: 22.8%
Vault is one of the big losers this year. It lost 12 ranks and over 12pp, that's a lot. It would be still 3 ranks higher in the unweighted list. It was voted 9 times below 20% and 22 times above 80%.
The +2 Cards that make the difference between Secret Chamber and Vault are very important to make Vault a much better card than Secret Chamber. With every play of Vault you are guaranteed a Gold or even better - a Grand Market. And if you have a Gold in hand or draw one you can buy a Province for sure. This makes Vault a great counter to cursing attacks and is still great after you've gone green. No surprise your opponent has the chance to make his hand better too, because this effect is very strong. This effect makes it also a good card for Duke. Like Secret Chamber it's also good if you can draw your whole deck for example with Scrying Pool, discard all actions for a lot of money, just to draw all actions again with another Scrying Pool. Similar to this, it's great in Double Tactician decks. Another combo is Vault/Tunnel and with Tunnel you could even profit from your opponents' Vaults. The big downside of this card is that it's very vulnerable to discarding attacks.
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| #28 ▼3 Bazaar (Seaside) Weighted Average: 55.8% ▼0.6pp / Unweighted Average: 55.1% / Median: 55.4% ▼1.3pp / Standard Deviation: 16.5%
Bazaar is now better than Bandit Camp. But it also lost a few ranks while having nearly the same average. It would be one rank better in the unweighted list. It has a very low deviation with only one vote below 20% and only 7 votes above 80%.
Bazaar is a village with an additional coin. At first glance a village for $5 looks really expensive. But if you see it as Cantrip Money + Bonus card like Market the additional Action is really one of the best bonuses. Especially in engines virtual money is pretty handy and more Bazaars help you to get easily even more Bazaars. Not much more to say about this vanilla card.
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| #27 ▲12 Knights (Dark Ages) Weighted Average: 57.1% ▲9.5pp / Unweighted Average: 53.9% / Median: 55.4% ▲8.7pp / Standard Deviation: 22.3%
Knights are a big winner of this list. They are 12 ranks and nearly 10pp better than last year. It would be 4 ranks lower in the unweighted list, so it's underrated by newer players. It was voted 9 times below 20% and also 9 times above 80%.
Many already said about Rogue applies also to the Knights. This is the highest rated trashing attack, but is still only average. They only hit cards costing between $3 and $6 and your opponent can choose if you hit two possible targets, 2 big downsides, but unlike Rogue at least they can attack every time you play them. Another downside, especially in multiplayer games is that it gets trashed if another Knight is trashed, but this makes it also an interesting pickup purely for defense. The different bonuses are probably responsible for the high deviation and it's what makes this card either ignorable or very strong. We look deeper into the different Knights another time, but if you get Dame Anna early or can get Sir Michael who can double attack, this can make a big difference. But when Sir Martin is the one on top, you don't want to be the one who opens the way to stronger Knights for other players. Like very trashing attack this card is very strong if you can guarantee to play at least one Knight every turn and can be devastating in thin decks as you are basically guaranteed to hit good cards and is ignorable in other cases.
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| #26 ▼2 Duke (Intrigue) Weighted Average: 57.4% ▲0.4pp / Unweighted Average: 53.1% / Median: 58.5% ▲0.2pp / Standard Deviation: 24.9%
Duke is slightly better, but still lost 2 ranks in comparism to last year. It would be 7 ranks lower in the unweighted ranking, so it's criminally underrated by newer players. It has the third highest deviation in this list as it was voted 18 times below 20% and 17 times above 80%.
With Duke on the board the objective often is that you need to get the Duchies and Dukes as fast as you can. Similar to Gardens or Silk Road rushes you need good supporter cards which help you getting to $5 even if you're already greening, like Vault, Hoard, Count, Duchess, Horse Traders and Silver-gainers like Explorer or Haggler to just name a few. Duke can be very strong as it can easily be worth 6-8 VP if your opponent doesn't deny your strategy and is better than Province in those cases. 3-piling isn't that hard afterwards as there are 2 piles already gone. The problem is to realize when a board is a good Duke board. With good attacks (Curser and Handsize-Reducer) and especially Swindler or Knights as Counter, you really have to be careful and want to ignore Dukes. What makes Duke strong is that you have to consider it in every game and can be a nice Plan B if you're behind in a mirror game and don't want to contest Provinces anymore. Why? 5 Provinces are worth the same as 5 Duchies and 3 Dukes, so that's only 3 cards more, but each of them costs way less. Your opponent has then the tough decision if you can outrace you with Provinces or if he has to contest you on Duchies (and Dukes).
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| #25 ▲3 Highway (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 57.5% ▲2.1pp / Unweighted Average: 58.6% / Median: 60.0% ▲3.3pp / Standard Deviation: 19.8%
Highway is only 0.16pp better than Duke. It's 3 ranks and 2pp better than last year. It was voted 11 times below 30% and would be one rank higher in the unweighted ranking.
Highway is highly dependant for supporter cards to make it useful. One vanilla Highway is bad and even worse than Market or Treasury, it's just a Peddler, so basically only worth $4. It seems similar to Bridge, but in fact it isn't. You can use it as a cantrip Bridge, but most of the times this isn't worth it, because you need +Buy and either need a small deck to play multiples or big drawing power what also means you need villages. So that is really slow. The only real combo is Highway/Market (or Worker's Village or Market Square) in a small deck. But you can do things with Highway what would be very difficult with Bridge. It can combo nice with trash-for-benefit cards, so you can at best replace Coppers with Provinces. Its best use may to use it with cards with fixed cost in the card text like Saboteur, Smugglers, Feast, Ironworks, Horn of Plenty, Altar etc to gain (or trash) Provinces with these cards. So while it can be worse than Market or Treasury it can - unlike those cards - really shine in some situations.
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| #24 ▼6 Embassy (Hinterlands) Weighted Average: 58.5% ▼9.6pp / Unweighted Average: 57.6% / Median: 60.9% ▼11.4pp / Standard Deviation: 22.0%
Embassy is significantly worse than last year, nearly 10pp and 6 ranks. It would be one rank lower in the unweighted list and was voted 15 times below 30%.
Embassy is a great Big Money card. An early Embassy is so good that your opponent gets a Silver for free. The mix of a terminal drawer and a Warehouse-like filter makes it that powerful. Yes, basically it's only +2 cards, but every time you play it, you can choose the best 6 cards out of 9 cards. Similiar to Envoy: If you have 5/2 and have the luck to draw it on turn 3, you may draw it in turn 4 and 5 again and will probably have already a huge lead, due to quick cycling. But it is also decent in engines if you can guarantee to draw it with a village.
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| #23 Baker (Guilds) Weighted Average: 60.3% / Unweighted Average: 62.4% / Median: 63.1% / Standard Deviation: 19.8%
Baker is the third out of 5 Guilds cards. It would be 2 ranks higher in the unweighted list. It was voted only 6 times below 30%.
Coin tokens are powerful, therefore Baker is powerful as well, the highest rated Market variant in this list. As Baker is a cantrip it rarely hurts in a deck and coin tokens are useful no matter if you add it to a money-centered deck or an engine. It's also a good addition in Double Tactician decks if you have additional buys as you can delay your Province buys by a few turns. The additional setup coin token doesn't affect the power of the card, but at least you can always open with it if you want to.
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