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[silverspawn]

In design terms, treasures don't need to be strong. They only have to be better than silver and they get bought. This is the case with stash, venture, and cache. As much as we'd like to fill our decks with exciting actions we know it doesn't always work.  Counterfeit, talisman, quarry, loan, and ill gotten gains can all in fact be worse than silver.

But Cache usually isn't better than Silver either. In BM games, buying Cache instead of Silver makes it harder to get the $1.6 per card that you need for Provinces (let alone Colonies); and in engines, you usually don't want that many Treasure cards either.
The only kingdom Treasure that's "strictly better"* than Silver is Stash, I think (Venture might not find a Treasure card in the deck).

*ignoring Feodum, of course

This isn't actually true, though. In general, buying Cache in a BM deck will help you buy Provinces and—importantly—Duchies. Cache combos with sifters, which Hinterlands is chock full of. In this regard, it is better than Masterpiece.

Also, Royal Seal is strictly better than Silver, barring cost and name-specific stuff. So is Harem.

I play Bureaucrat.

[popsofctown]

I'm curious about Cache vs. Duke.  I would figure that the player who bought Cache could get countered by the heavy commitment to the Duke stategy, and lose to Provinces/3 Duchies from the flexible opponent with the thinner deck, assuming any 5$ BM card (or, of course even better, engine card) was available.
But I definitely could be wrong (and am outranked etc).

I can more easily accept Cache/Duke beats BM Duke.

[silverspawn]

you definitely want cache over silver in a duke game. you probably want cache over gold in a duke game.

[KingZog3]

I'm curious about Cache vs. Duke.  I would figure that the player who bought Cache could get countered by the heavy commitment to the Duke stategy, and lose to Provinces/3 Duchies from the flexible opponent with the thinner deck, assuming any 5$ BM card (or, of course even better, engine card) was available.
But I definitely could be wrong (and am outranked etc).

I can more easily accept Cache/Duke beats BM Duke.

No, I agree that if there's a possibility of a good engine, you should go for the engine and only go Duke/Duchy in response to what your opponent does. But with no engine, Cache is quite good for Duke games, Gardens BM too.

[enfynet]

+1 Card
+1 Action

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[popsofctown]

you definitely want cache over silver in a duke game. you probably want cache over gold in a duke game.

I was more interested in Cache vs. Margrave BM in a Duke game, as an example. 5$ vs. 5$ not 5$ vs. 3$

[Holger]

In design terms, treasures don't need to be strong. They only have to be better than silver and they get bought. This is the case with stash, venture, and cache. As much as we'd like to fill our decks with exciting actions we know it doesn't always work.  Counterfeit, talisman, quarry, loan, and ill gotten gains can all in fact be worse than silver.

But Cache usually isn't better than Silver either. In BM games, buying Cache instead of Silver makes it harder to get the $1.6 per card that you need for Provinces (let alone Colonies); and in engines, you usually don't want that many Treasure cards either.
The only kingdom Treasure that's "strictly better"* than Silver is Stash, I think (Venture might not find a Treasure card in the deck).

*ignoring Feodum, of course

This isn't actually true, though. In general, buying Cache in a BM deck will help you buy Provinces and—importantly—Duchies. Cache combos with sifters, which Hinterlands is chock full of. In this regard, it is better than Masterpiece.

Yes, but sifters are abundant only in Hinterlands, not in full random games. Why do you think Cache makes it easier to buy Provinces than Silver in BM? It's another $3 spread over another two cards, corresponding to an average $1.5 per card only. Does the increased variance make up for this shortcoming?

Also, Royal Seal is strictly better than Silver, barring cost and name-specific stuff. So is Harem.

Right, I almost expected I had forgotten some; I had only considered those Treasures that DG listed. Still, Royal Seal proves that a $5 card that's strictly better than Silver needn't be any good.

you definitely want cache over silver in a duke game. you probably want cache over gold in a duke game.

Agreed. You also want Cache over Gold whenever you like to get extra Coppers, but that doesn't happen too often either. Most of the time, it's clearly worse than Gold, which isn't such a good design for a $5 card IMO.

[DG]

Yes the simulator shows cache giving an advantage in big money games.

[silverspawn]

I was more interested in Cache vs. Margrave BM in a Duke game, as an example. 5$ vs. 5$ not 5$ vs. 3$

margrave wins here. your opponent isn't getting to 5$ with a 3 card hand all that often, even if it's the best 3 cards out of 6. but if it's another terminal draw, you might want to have cache instead.

[theblankman]

I was more interested in Cache vs. Margrave BM in a Duke game, as an example. 5$ vs. 5$ not 5$ vs. 3$

margrave wins here. your opponent isn't getting to 5$ with a 3 card hand all that often, even if it's the best 3 cards out of 6. but if it's another terminal draw, you might want to have cache instead.

I suspect many of the $5-cost terminal-draw attacks win... Witch, Ghost Ship, Torturer, Cultist, maybe Rabble... which ones am I missing? 

[silverspawn]

I was more interested in Cache vs. Margrave BM in a Duke game, as an example. 5$ vs. 5$ not 5$ vs. 3$

margrave wins here. your opponent isn't getting to 5$ with a 3 card hand all that often, even if it's the best 3 cards out of 6. but if it's another terminal draw, you might want to have cache instead.

I suspect many of the $5-cost terminal-draw attacks win... Witch, Ghost Ship, Torturer, Cultist, maybe Rabble... which ones am I missing?

well if there are no villages, you definitely want at least a ghost ship/torturer/witch before you go into dukes, and if there's cultist you're probably going to play a cultist slog.  but you can still buy a cache after that, especially in case of witch/cultist you're going to need more economy than just a bunch of silvers

[theblankman]

I guess in a Witch or Cultist game, the coppers from the first Cache or two might even bring up your average card value by offsetting worse junk.  But you'll also have an empty Curse or Ruin pile hastening the endgame, so I suspect the window in which Cache > Duchy/Duke is fairly short. 

The handsize attacks combined with Cache and Duke are more interesting (I count Torturer with no villages as a handisze attack because I usually see people discard rather than take the Curse when they know they won't get tortured again).  How many attacks to buy before Cache, and how many Caches before green (if any), are both tough calls. 

Rabble without villages... probably not great, but in an alt-VP game it does have more green to hit.  I think I'd buy it over Cache in a Duke game but I'm not sure that's right. 

[soulnet]

Rabble without villages... probably not great, but in an alt-VP game it does have more green to hit.  I think I'd buy it over Cache in a Duke game but I'm not sure that's right.

I am pretty sure that, in the absence of other actions, even a Smithy is better than Cache (at least the first one, and probably the second one too).

[serakfalcon]

For me, the issue is none of these cards happen in a vacuum. In a slog game (say, margrave and no villages) You're only going to be able to sustain 2 terminals early, and 3-4 terminals late in the game. Of course you pick up margrave or smithy or whatever hand size increaser at first, but cache becomes useful if you couldn't hit 6 and you don't care about the extra copper so much since it's a slog game. I love cache with trader or watchtower, it works well enough with horn of plenty and fairgrounds while still providing buying power, it can be a great buy with gardens.

I feel that a lot of analyses miss two things, first that a card isn't useless even if you can't build a whole strategy around it, but some cards in dominion are just generally helpful: at the right time in the game, a smart buy will make the difference between winning and losing, but because the effects of other cards are stronger the subtle effects get ignored. In the case of cache, if your deck can consistently hit 5 but not 6 and you already have enough terminals in a slog game, you could consider cache. I'd consider it to be about even with silver, except that it increases the variance of your deck, which can be a good thing.

Which brings me to my second point: Averages are nice but you can't spend too much time looking at averages, because in Dominion a single lucky turn can make or break the game. So, while you can't rely on a lucky turn to happen, you can build your deck to increase the chances, or at least make it possible. I think it's a mistake to assume that when someone 'gets lucky' and pulls off an amazing turn, that skill had nothing to do with it- they had to build their deck in such a way to allow that turn to happen, gambling that the game would last long enough for them to get lucky eventually. Cache is a card that can help with that- sure the coppers aren't great, but if you couldn't hit 6 that +$3 may come in handy when you need it. If you didn't buy the card you wouldn't have the opportunity. Granted I rarely buy cache but I don't buy explorer much either, but both cards have won games for me, and I've lost games to cache strategies, I definitely think there is strategic space for it.

on another note, it's not correct to assume that if cache, or any other card was not in dominion, that the replacement for it would have been any better. Both better and worse (and better but more evil (rebuild)) cards have made it into dominion, odds are cache would be replaced by a card with a similar level of strength.