If there are no objections, I'll put this up on the wiki? Think it's in good shape now.
I don't know if I exactly object, but I still don't think the article is, uh, very helpful? I'd actually prefer either of Stef's versions.
I like the article as it is. Yes, you always can do better, but its definitely a good article with a lot of useful information. Don't forget the most players are not L40+ (including Wero) and haven`t played thousands of games.
I felt like the feedback was quite harsh partially and also felt a little bit ashamed when i saw that some better players were making fun of this article in a stream chat. In my eyes this is a little bit disrespectful to Wero, who made an effort with this article.
I'm really not trying to be mean to Wero here - I am sure he has put effort into it, and I don't want to belittle that. That does not, however, mean that the article is good. That's not at all meant to be an assault on him, but what do you want me to do? Say that I think it is good when I don't? He specifically asked for opinions, and I gave mine.
I mean, first of all, there's some stylistic fluff (e.g. "It's a smithy on steroids") which I don't think adds to anything, but that is really rather irrelevant, and I don't find it necessarily detracts from the article. But there are other things. For instance, saying that getting one is tricky seems misleading - it's not harder to get than any other $6. His explanation for how to get to $6 is not what you want to do, perhaps even more than half the time. It's pretty important to note, I think, that you dodn't need to blitz for the card. You can usually build up the rest of your deck, and then once you are making $6 naturally, start thinking about getting the card. Going very far out of your way to get to $6 for this is almost certainly wrong. Furthermore, you don't care at all whether that money is coming from action cards or engine components or whatever. It's more about building a deck which will function well, and when you do that, the money will come easily, as you're always going to be able to find some source or other.
Next thing he says is that after you have one Hunting Grounds, it makes the next one much easier - well, maybe true, but this is true of most cards which aren't green, since your deck is improving - saying you'll be drawing most of your deck. Well, one Hunting Grounds simply won't draw most of your deck unless you've trashed down, and while you can be drawing most of your deck by then anyways, that will again be mostly due to whatever else you're doing, not becuase you've gotten this oen golden card like the article implies. This is
*A* draw card, pretty much like any other. There's not a particular qualitative difference.
After this, he says that you don't want as many Hunting Grounds as you do Smithies. I actually don't think that's true. Yes, sometimes you will get fewer Hunting Grounds because you need to do other things right now, the game is ending, or what have you. But the thing is, my gut tells me that instead of skimping on these, you actually just want to use the extra cards to build up more payload. More actual draw cards gives you more reliability, as you're less likely to stall out. He gives a "quantify this" example of 3 Village and 3 Smithy vs 2 Village and 2 Hunting Grounds, seemingly concluding that the Hunting Grounds route is better. However, I have the feeling that the Smithy route is actually better here quite a significant percentage of the time. More villages and smithies means you are more likely to get what you need together. And though the overall cost is $3 more, it's probably actually easier to get the villages and smithies, if you are starting from the beginning of the game. Hunting Grounds will often be the better option
once you have gotten to the point you're drawing your deck anyway, and are picking up payload and need to still have the ability to draw all these extra cards you're getting.
Next, he talks about when you should trash it. He starts off by saying that "more than any other card, Hunting Grounds can be turned into VP". First of all, I don't think this is true - Platinum is basically always scoring you more, for one - but it also misses the point. There are two things about the on-trash benefit. One is, I am ending the game right now (not "think I can", but KNOW I can because I have calculated), and getting 3 estates helps me chug through that pile really quickly. The other is, I have built an engine which is nice and trim and drawing itself, I have some trash-for-benefit (Salvager, Butcher, and Apprentice really come to mind), and I am running out of fuel for that trash-for-benefit. Getting this extends my fuel more than most other cards would, because I can trash this, get $6 of benefits, then trash the duchy, get $5 more of benefits. Making some kind of value play of grabbing points with this is not terribly where you want to be - it's not about the points - especially if the game is going on longer. When you build an Hunting Grounds deck, it's usually the deck that doesn't want to be clogged with green cards, especially while getting rid of your draw at the same time. So the whole "about to shuffle" thing just gets people thinking about entirely the wrong thing - if you are "about to shuffle", you probably shouldn't trasht he HG at all. Of course this is all general, and there are lots of exceptions. The specific examples of cards to use with this also don't do anything special - Stonemason usually leads to pile endings, where gaining 3 duchies is
usually not going to be as much of a thing as piling out - which makes me want to look at 5 estates as the real threat. Of course 3 duchies may well come up, too, but without a plan to end the game, this can be really disastrous. Remodel and Farmland are not the trash-for-benefit cards which really accentuate the trash ability of HG; you can score a random extra 3 points, but you don't do that as a strategy, just as a 'oh hey I can score 3 more on the turn I end the game by emptying provinces' since you probably don't want to do that before. And Hermit wanting to trash this is DEFINITELY not worth mentioning - Hunting Grounds decks are going to have the HG in the discard SUPER rarely, and you are getting no benefit at all from trashing it other than the 3 points. This really is one of the worst as well as the most unlikely cases.
Finally, I am not a fan of synergy and anti-synergy sections in general nowadays, but on top of that a little, I really dislike the "engines with coin-producing pieces" note. It's not even clear that what he means by this is that the cards which give +action and draw are also producing money, but that is irrelevant if it is what he's going for - again, it doesn't matter where the money comes from - and if he just means you need money of some sort anyway, well, almost any engine has that, and the ones that don't will be perfectly happy with Hunting Grounds, jsut like any other. Also, "Remodelers" is just worse than "Trash for Benefit", since the trash for benefit cards which aren't Remodel variants are generally even a little better for Hunting Grounds than the ones which are. But beyond this, I don't think I would include that, because it seems to me that it implies that you really want to use the trash benefit of Hunting Grounds for it to be worth it as a card, which isn't true - it is really predominantly a draw card.