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[Beyond Awesome]

Personally, I prefer Shanty Town over Village most of the time, and I open with it a lot of times. It is so good when you open with it because the majority of time its a la for $3 and then if you play it and get actions afterwards, it also acts as a village. Shanty Town took me a while to figure out, but the key is simply to not get too many of them (usually). Village offers no benefit except adding +Action. Usually, other villages will be on the board.

As far as Walled Village over Procession. There are a lot of games, I don't need it. Sometimes, keeping the actions is more important than throning them and maybe getting something that costs $1 more. There are situations where Procession is really good. But, you are more likely to have a use for Walled Village over Procession. However, I would put Walled Villages useful pretty much on the same level as vanilla village.  Also, not many people own Walled Village. It is the least owned promo among players. The sample size is very small for that card. I know some games, people might buy it because they never played with it before.

Also, Governor is towards the top, but if you see the sample size, it is more limited due to being harder to get as a promo that you can't pay cash for.

[Moneymodel]

Damn you! Sorry fellow conspirators, I did what I could to prevent the public from finding out that Adventurer is the key to the top 100

[JacquesTheBard]

Most of the comments on Shanty Town seem to boil down to "Shanty Town > Village." I don't buy it: there is no board with both in which I would touch Shanty Town with a 10 foot pole. Doesn't it not draw more often than it does draw? It's easily the best village if your cards line up exactly right, but given how reliability mattered so much with the relative ranking of the other cards, like Procession, this list becomes even more confusing.

Sorry to seem so bitter about this, but if I'm just straight up wrong about Shanty Town being bad, it's a bit of a blow to my Dominion ego. If Shanty Town is a good card and I still hate it as much as I do, doesn't that make me a stupid and incompetent player?

[LastFootnote]

Most of the comments on Shanty Town seem to boil down to "Shanty Town > Village." I don't buy it: there is no board with both in which I would touch Shanty Town with a 10 foot pole. Doesn't it not draw more often than it does draw? It's easily the best village if your cards line up exactly right, but given how reliability mattered so much with the relative ranking of the other cards, like Procession, this list becomes even more confusing.

Sorry to seem so bitter about this, but if I'm just straight up wrong about Shanty Town being bad, it's a bit of a blow to my Dominion ego. If Shanty Town is a good card and I still hate it as much as I do, doesn't that make me a stupid and incompetent player?

Shanty Town is great if you're really lucky!

But more seriously, I prefer Shanty Town to Village when there is little to no trashing. In those cases Shanty Town fires more often than not. There are also some rare cases where an early glut of Actions makes Shanty Town reliable. Like, play a Crossroads early and then play all your terminals in your hand and play the Shanty Town last. Draw more cards and repeat. I had that work for me recently, but maybe I just got lucky.

[Beyond Awesome]

Shanty Town is a very good card to open with.

[JacquesTheBard]

Okay, those are pretty good arguments. I'll be more open-minded to using the card in the future, I suppose.

On a subjective level, though, I still enjoy playing with a typical +1 Card village on most boards. Weird question: is it "wrong" for me to prefer using a card that the forum considers bad? If I naively opened Scout on a 4/3, is that something to be ashamed of? Am I reading too much into this?

I would still rather see Procession on the board than Walled Village. I would rather see a Village than a Shanty Town, or a Fairgrounds than a Farmland. That better Dominion players than I seem to feel the opposite makes me feel embarrassed and stupid, like I'm doing a disservice to the game and its strategy by preferring the wrong cards. Does anyone else ever experience this?

[TheOthin]

The thing to keep in mind that this "would rather see on the board" is very different from "would be most likely to buy when it shows up". Shanty Town is a great example of this, actually. If you're trying to build an engine with a bunch of terminals and there's only one village, your engine would be much better if that village was Village rather than Shanty Town. But that difference probably won't stop you from buying Shanty Town, so it's basically irrelevant to this data.

This raises a big question, when comparing to the rankings, of whether this is a bug or a feature.

[markusin]

You know, in the presence of other villages, Shanty Town acts as a Lab a lot more reliably. Basically you can pick up both Villages and Shanty Towns, expecially if one runs out. Shanty town has the advantage of being more useful when action density is low. I think you'd rather have +1 card Villages for Smithy-Village type engines, but there are plenty of other kinds of engines that can use Shanty Town to good effect. Even with an abundance of +actions though, you want to minimize Shanty Town collisions with itself, so be sure to limit how many of them you get.

[TheOthin]

Funny thing about the Shanty Town collisions. Shanty Town does block other Shanty Towns from working, but if two collide and one gets blocked by the other but the second one activates, you get +2 Cards for two Shanty Towns, much like if they were both Villages. There are other problems like having to get other Actions out of your hand (which the extra Shanty Town helps mitigate) and of course you're averaging fewer than one card per Shanty Town if you collide more than two together. But it does reduce the concern.

[markusin]

Funny thing about the Shanty Town collisions. Shanty Town does block other Shanty Towns from working, but if two collide and one gets blocked by the other but the second one activates, you get +2 Cards for two Shanty Towns, much like if they were both Villages. There are other problems like having to get other Actions out of your hand (which the extra Shanty Town helps mitigate) and of course you're averaging fewer than one card per Shanty Town if you collide more than two together. But it does reduce the concern.

That's right. The issue is you'd need to rely on this kind of collision for it to be better than Necropolis if Shanty Town was your only village and you want to play multiple terminals every turn. Also a hand of 2 terminals and 2 Shanty Towns is awful.

[TheOthin]

Hmm. So we've noticed how non-terminals and especially villages are bought much more often than the rankings suggest, but there's another trend that stands out and seems linked: terminal draw takes a lot of hits, especially Torturer. A lot of Attacks fell relative to the rankings, especially junkers, and Torturer in particular really requires support to get multiple plays. But simpler terminal draw like Smithy and Watchtower also fell a lot. Terminal draw is especially dependent on villages, and I'm thinking they may have been overrated due to taking village support for granted, the same reasoning that may have lead to underrating villages themselves.

[eHalcyon]

Also, not many people own Walled Village. It is the least owned promo among players. The sample size is very small for that card. I know some games, people might buy it because they never played with it before.

Since the data is from top 100 players, I doubt people are buying them for the sake of novelty.

[Awaclus]

Also, not many people own Walled Village. It is the least owned promo among players. The sample size is very small for that card. I know some games, people might buy it because they never played with it before.

Since the data is from top 100 players, I doubt people are buying them for the sake of novelty.

Well, there probably is a decent number of people there who never played on Iso. I think it's unlikely that the effect is big enough to make a significant difference, but some people are probably buying it more when it's in the game because they rarely play with it.

[liopoil]

Prince is definitely inflated by the novelty factor. Top 100 or not, I'm making the cool new card work.

[eHalcyon]

Prince, sure.  But Walled Village is neither new nor particularly interesting, so I wouldn't expect novelty to push it much.  Prince is both the newest card and also crazy enough to want to try, even if it's no good on that board.

[Titandrake]

As a top 100 player, I buy cards for novelty a lot more than I should. Give me a plausible argument for buying Bureaucrat or Taxman and I'll go for it and lose...

[HiveMindEmulator]

As a top 100 player, I buy cards for novelty a lot more than I should. Give me a plausible argument for buying Bureaucrat or Taxman and I'll go for it and lose...

This. Top 100 doesn't mean you're trying to do the best thing all the time.

[eHalcyon]

OK, but I'm still not buying it for Walled Village. 

[Titandrake]

OK, but I'm still not buying it for Walled Village. 

Alright, that's fair. Walled Village is still the lowest +2 Actions card, only Tribute is lower and that's conditional, and that makes sense to me. However, it's still good enough to be worth picking up if there aren't other villages, which is why it's so high up.

Procession is so low because it's just not quite there on enough boards. I also think it's still not very well understood, it's difficult to decide if a Procession deck is good enough unless it's very blatant, and riskier cards will be bought less often.

[BraveBear]

I'm surprised there are almost 900 kingdoms out there that someone thought it was okay not to buy wharf.....

[HiveMindEmulator]

Procession is so low because it's just not quite there on enough boards. I also think it's still not very well understood, it's difficult to decide if a Procession deck is good enough unless it's very blatant, and riskier cards will be bought less often.

I would think that the effect of avoiding cards that are not well understood and wanted to try to make them work might somewhat cancel each other out.

[luser]

Could you generate same statistic for people with different levels to see what weaker players over/underrate?

As for ranking problem is that it measures how often is card addition to deck rather than how good it is.

So you need to take results with grain of salt. Inspired by village/shanty town discussion I could also prove.

That probably best card is silver as its bought in almost all games.
Without considering involuntary gain ruins would be one of best cards.
That duchess is better than merchant ship.
That moat is better than journeyman.
That hamlet is second best village.

It reminds me councilroom statistics that could be used for similar conclusions. For example best buy was curse as everybody who bought curse won.

[HiveMindEmulator]

That hamlet is second best village.

Hamlet is the 4th ranked village on the list, and it's better than all the ones below it. Cheapness is a very valuable asset for villages.

[ben_king]

Could you generate same statistic for people with different levels to see what weaker players over/underrate?

I actually have this data calculated and ready to report.  Would the mods prefer that I post it in this topic or create a new topic for it?

[Donald X.]

Could you generate same statistic for people with different levels to see what weaker players over/underrate?

I actually have this data calculated and ready to report.  Would the mods prefer that I post it in this topic or create a new topic for it?

This place is not so heavily moderated for this to be an issue. Look in your heart.