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[Heisenberg]

Urchin/Mercenary

Urchin is one of the most despised cards in dominion.  The reason for this is simple.  It is often a card you will pay the price for ignoring, and you mostly rely on luck to collide urchins and get the mercenary.  Here is a link to an article with urchin collision probabilities(http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=10550.msg349881#msg349881).  With no draw or engine present on the board it can lead to a rather claustrophobic game in which you will begin every hand with 3 or 4 cards.  It can also lead to difficult decisions, for example:  You have a village, mercenary and a few junk cards in hand and your opponent plays mercenary.  You now have to decide if you want to just mercenary trash and blindly dead draw, or play village and risk have to trash a more useful card in order to activate mercenary.

Why is Urchin/Mercenary so critical?  When can I ignore it?

The most critical aspect of urchin/mercenary is the trashing.  The discard attack can also be brutal at times.  So, the combination of thinning and limiting your opponent’s next turn makes getting a mercenary a critical step in building a winning deck.  So, in order to consider ignoring urchin/mercenary there has to be more efficient trashing (chapel/remake, steward, possibly forager), also, if there is another hand reduction attack (goons, militia, or ghost ship).
One other thing to consider with urchin/mercenary whether to get a second mercenary.  Generally this is preferred because you will play mercenary more often and therefore thin more quickly.  However, this is a situational decision.

How do I navigate an Urchin/Mercenary game if there’s no way to increase my hand size?

An urchin/mercenary game with no draw is never a pleasant experience.  What to look for in this scenario is non-terminal money (Market, Grand Market, Treasury, Bazaar, Ironmonger etc).  Oasis is also a consideration, though you don’t really want to decrease your hand size more than it already is.  If there are cantrips for payload then you should be mindful of the number of stop cards in your deck.  If you know you will start every hand with 4 cards, then you don’t want more than 3 stop cards.  Once you have trashed down, mercenary becomes a stop card.

Urchin/mercenary can’t itself win you the game, but it’s often the most critical component of building a deck that does win you the game.

Works well with?

-Beggar?  Can provide mercenary fuel in an engine, but is more of a situational kingdom dependent component of a mercenary engine
-Fortress, also serves as Mercenary fuel

Doesn’t work well with

-More efficient trashers i.e. chapel, remake, steward, possibly forager

Counters to Mercenary

-Menagerie
-Haven (Prepare for a better turn next hand by giving a little of this hand)
-Draw to size X (Library, Jack of all Trades, Watchtower)
-Horse Traders
-Any form of draw in an engine

[jsh357]

Great start.  I would add a bit about how mercenary can mitigate or even take advantage of the damage from junking attacks.

[Robz888]

This is a good start to an article.

Basically, you almost always have to go for Mercenary, I think. Exceptions could be, as you note, stronger trashing, like Chapel and Steward. I don't quite think Remake/Forager are good enough. Masquerade and Ambassador, you probably want to combine with Urchin.

Urchin/Merc pushes you to engine, because if you are going to start every hand with only three cards, you're never going to do anything with just a bunch of good treasures and terminals. That said, the absence of a viable engine does not necessarily excuse you from going for Merc. Often the trashing and attack is still worthwhile.

I think it's also important to note that when you are building an engine, after you have used Mercenary to thin your deck and are drawing everything, you will often want to spend free buys on 2 Coppers, so that you can continue to punish your opponent turn after turn.

[werothegreat]

*thumbs up*

This article should also address how many Urchins you want to get, when you want to trash Mercenary to itself, when you want to stop using Mercenary, if at all, or how to keep Mercenary going.

[Mic Qsenoch]

I strongly dislike the sentence "you mostly rely on luck to collide urchins and get the mercenary." Not because it's untrue, but because it's trivially true of every single interaction in Dominion which relies on lining things up and is not special for Urchin. People cry like babies over their Urchins but this is just a core component of the game of Dominion: you shuffle cards and then good/bad stuff happens for you.

I think you have undersold the +$2 which is a critical part of why Mercenary is nuts. Yes I'd like to trash two cards and afford a $4-$6 card. That sounds like a cool turn to me.

Don't think Beggar is a special interaction worth mentioning, maybe it works out occasionally but I'm not a real believer. Same goes for suggestions of buying Coppers which is often not worth the decrease in consistency or use of buys for just one extra card discarded. These are definitely options to keep in mind but I don't believe they're important.

I would make clear that the Counters section just means "counters to hand size reduction." Because almost all of the things listed are going to push you towards getting Mercenary for the trashing. I also find Horse Traders to be way oversold as a counter to hand size reduction. The reaction is a nice bonus when various attacks are played a lot, but discard attacks have got be the worst for Horse Traders because it's action part is so card greedy. And of course the HT itself is a stop card with respect to draw.

[LastFootnote]

I would make clear that the Counters section just means "counters to hand size reduction." Because almost all of the things listed are going to push you towards getting Mercenary for the trashing. I also find Horse Traders to be way oversold as a counter to hand size reduction. The reaction is a nice bonus when various attacks are played a lot, but discard attacks have got be the worst for Horse Traders because it's action part is so card greedy. And of course the HT itself is a stop card with respect to draw.

Horse Traders can be a fantastic counter to attacks that make you discard down to 4 cards in hand. I agree that it's not nearly as stellar against attacks that make you discard down to 3.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Horse Traders can be a fantastic counter to attacks that make you discard down to 4 cards in hand. I agree that it's not nearly as stellar against attacks that make you discard down to 3.

The reaction can be a very nice thing. But I sometimes see people in games taking this idea to extremes by stocking up on several HTs. Then these people are "defended" (woohoo blue cards react!) from discard attacks but of course their decks suck because they are full of HTs. Usually the most important factor in deciding on HT is whether the action part is good for you.

Not intended as a contradiction of LF's post in any way.

[SCSN]

Urchin is one of the most despised cards in dominion.

That most people lack any kind of taste is depressing enough, but has this really to be highlighted at the beginning of an article? I personally love the card and reading this just saddens me!

I strongly dislike the sentence "you mostly rely on luck to collide urchins and get the mercenary." Not because it's untrue, but because it's trivially true of every single interaction in Dominion which relies on lining things up and is not special for Urchin. People cry like babies over their Urchins but this is just a core component of the game of Dominion: you shuffle cards and then good/bad stuff happens for you.

This, x10.000. Thanks for saving me some typing.

Also, the impact of the turn number at which you gain your first Mercenary is ridiculously oversold.

One other thing to consider with urchin/mercenary whether to get a second mercenary.  Generally this is preferred because you will play mercenary more often and therefore thin more quickly.  However, this is a situational decision.

Unless you want to argue that everything in Dominion is flat out a situational decision (which would make the above point superfluous fluff), this is about as far from a situational decision as you can get. Two Mercenaries are simply mandatory, and getting two should be your top priority whenever you want one at all.

One of the biggest recurring mistakes I see is people not buying a 3rd Urchin after connecting on T3 or 4. The purpose of the 3rd Urchin is not to speed up the time of your first connection, but to get to a deck containing two Mercs as quickly as possible.

Pretty much the only exception to this is if you already trashed down with e.g. Chapel and only use the Mercenary for its discard attack.

[DG]

The urchin/mercenary relationship is a little complicated, to say the least. Mercenaries are weak once you are playing with less than 5 card hands and the first cards your opponents are likely to attack you with are urchin and mercenary themselves. This has the biggest impact in multiplayer where opposing urchins/mercenaries can shut each other down whilst players with other strategies prosper.

Building up a sustainable deck after the mercenaries have finished trashing is important too. Even if your opponents are notionally behind, they may still be able to regularly trash cards and attack with their mercenaries. If your deck can't function properly under those attacks then the opponents will catch up.

[AdamH]

I strongly dislike the sentence "you mostly rely on luck to collide urchins and get the mercenary." Not because it's untrue, but because it's trivially true of every single interaction in Dominion which relies on lining things up and is not special for Urchin. People cry like babies over their Urchins but this is just a core component of the game of Dominion: you shuffle cards and then good/bad stuff happens for you.

This, x10.000. Thanks for saving me some typing.

Also, the impact of the turn number at which you gain your first Mercenary is ridiculously oversold.

I think this needs some justification. It doesn't feel good to be forced into buying more Urchins on T3/T4 when your opponent collides their Urchins and can start picking up components, thinning, and attacking you (so you can't pick up components) two, three, four, or even more turns before you can. Many other boards offer the opportunity for good/bad draws to help come back from this, but Mercenary has this built into it. And yeah there was nothing you could have done in most cases.

Maybe you guys don't mind it so much, but many people do. I'd guess that the list of people who dislike this especially is longer than the list of people who don't.

[Awaclus]

I think most of the swinginess comes from having your Mercenary hand hit by your opponent's Mercenary (whose Mercenary hand was unaffected). A 5-card-hand with Mercenary is probably a $5 hand, but a 3-card-hand with Mercenary requires quite a bit of luck to hit $5.

[Heisenberg]

With chapel as a trasher, you can play dominion.  With urchin/mercenary, dominion plays you, meaning within your first 2 shuffles you have to purchase 3 urchins.  Then get them to collide to get 2 mercenaries.  If you deviate from this you will likely lose.  Not until this happens can you actually make decisions yourself about how to proceed towards winning.  This is why people who do dislike the card dislike it.

[LastFootnote]

With chapel as a trasher, you can play dominion.  With urchin/mercenary, dominion plays you, meaning within your first 2 shuffles you have to purchase 3 urchins.  Then get them to collide to get 2 mercenaries.  If you deviate from this you will likely lose.  Not until this happens can you actually make decisions yourself about how to proceed towards winning.  This is why people who do dislike the card dislike it.

I also dislike how much your opponent's Mercenaries shut down your own Mercenary hands, often resulting in a sizable advantage for whoever draws theirs first. But I made a whole thread about that earlier, so I'll say no more now.

[WanderingWinder]

Re: Urchin being swingy. It's a swingy card. It's swingier than most other cards, because 5/11 to collide is about as close to 50% as we get, which means we're 60/121 or just under 50% to have one player hit on that first reshuffle and the other not, which is about as high as you get for a big swing. And it is a big thing. Of course you still need to play well, but getting to play your Mercenary a shuffle faster is a really big deal, because it snowballs (mostly with the thinning). This is really not all that dissimilar to having a Chapel miss the shuffle for one player and not for the other, or on some boards, having 5/2 vs 4/3. The bigger thing is, there's lots of other scenarios like this - I hit 5/5 on turns 3/4, you hit 6/4. Or worse, you hit 4/4. Or sometimes 4/4 is fine. You hit your Smithy at the top of a shuffle, mine was later in - this can easily put you a full turn ahead, as you get to your reshuffle faster. But people don't complain about those kinds of things nearly as much - I assume it's because it doesn't fell as bad. When you're getting hit by a merc, you know, and you feel it, mostly because of the attack, I think. The other way, it still feels like you're buying cards, feels like more of a game.

tl;dr Merc is a bit swingier than average, but not tons - it just feels that way for psychological reasons.


My bigger problem with the card is that it's super strong, and a bit too straightforward. You buy urchin/urchin/urchin/X on your first four buys pretty much every time, you collide AFAP, you start trashing down, then whatever else you are doing starts to matter (and if one of you has done the first few steps 'better' (i.e. luckier) than the other, game might well be over). In this way, it's most similar to Cultist, Rebuild, Ambassador, and Governor, in my eyes - not coincidentally, we've made a list of many of my least favorite cards. They all tend to dominate the game, and it's really hard to get away from them.


As for the actual article, I want:

• How many Urchins do I get if they don't collide?
• When, if ever, do I get Urchin without really intending it to be Merc?
• Is that other trashing really good enough to not Merc (I'm not sold)?
• Which other attacks do you consider using to collide with your Urchins instead of going mass Urchin?
• When do I trash cards to Merc which aren't complete junk? (comes up when you really need the cash; also should mention that extra mercs turn into junk, thus trashable, once you've thinned)
• The question of whether to get a second Merc should be supplanted by something like '2 is the default, you might (rarely) get more with more trash targets, might stop at 1 if you're somehow mostly trashed by time of second collision.

[Robz888]

My bigger problem with the card is that it's super strong, and a bit too straightforward. You buy urchin/urchin/urchin/X on your first four buys pretty much every time, you collide AFAP, you start trashing down, then whatever else you are doing starts to matter (and if one of you has done the first few steps 'better' (i.e. luckier) than the other, game might well be over). In this way, it's most similar to Cultist, Rebuild, Ambassador, and Governor, in my eyes - not coincidentally, we've made a list of many of my least favorite cards. They all tend to dominate the game, and it's really hard to get away from them.

I agree with the rest of what you said, but Governor? You have to make tons of difficult, strategic decisions with Governor, do you not? Perhaps Governor has become more straightforward since I last played with it (Isotropic!) but I would generally say it's comparable to those in terms of power but not necessarily swinginess.

[SCSN]

I strongly dislike the sentence "you mostly rely on luck to collide urchins and get the mercenary." Not because it's untrue, but because it's trivially true of every single interaction in Dominion which relies on lining things up and is not special for Urchin. People cry like babies over their Urchins but this is just a core component of the game of Dominion: you shuffle cards and then good/bad stuff happens for you.

This, x10.000. Thanks for saving me some typing.

Also, the impact of the turn number at which you gain your first Mercenary is ridiculously oversold.

I think this needs some justification. It doesn't feel good to be forced into buying more Urchins on T3/T4 when your opponent collides their Urchins and can start picking up components, thinning, and attacking you (so you can't pick up components) two, three, four, or even more turns before you can. Many other boards offer the opportunity for good/bad draws to help come back from this, but Mercenary has this built into it. And yeah there was nothing you could have done in most cases.

What would it take to convince you you are wrong? What about a series of 20+ speed-played Urchin games where you get a guaranteed T3 collision (we both pass from your T3 onwards until you connect), that I manage to at least tie?

[WanderingWinder]

My bigger problem with the card is that it's super strong, and a bit too straightforward. You buy urchin/urchin/urchin/X on your first four buys pretty much every time, you collide AFAP, you start trashing down, then whatever else you are doing starts to matter (and if one of you has done the first few steps 'better' (i.e. luckier) than the other, game might well be over). In this way, it's most similar to Cultist, Rebuild, Ambassador, and Governor, in my eyes - not coincidentally, we've made a list of many of my least favorite cards. They all tend to dominate the game, and it's really hard to get away from them.

I agree with the rest of what you said, but Governor? You have to make tons of difficult, strategic decisions with Governor, do you not? Perhaps Governor has become more straightforward since I last played with it (Isotropic!) but I would generally say it's comparable to those in terms of power but not necessarily swinginess.

Oh, I don't feel like I have a great grasp on Governor per se, but I don't think that there are really lots of meaningful, difficult decisions with Governor. You kind of just go for it. Your strategy is basically "win the governor split as much as possible, oh hey look the game is ending". Ambassador actually has more strategic decisions, I think, by a pretty wide margin. And Cultist seems less swingy? Governor is really swingy - how does your money fall out for you making $5 a lot, or $7 with a governor and a silver to remodel, get that double Governor hand? Or do you get 4s and 6s and whatnot? When do I draw my Governors - top of a shuffle or bottom? (This makes a HUGE difference). And Governor makes the game a lot shorter which way ups the chances that one bad draw is just game-ending. Drawing into a big hand with no governors left is really crushing, but usually you need to go for it, since drawing into more governors is so so good. And then at the end, you can't really play for a long game, you kind of just have to go for it, and sometimes hope they don't have it.

[JW]

Re: Urchin being swingy. It's a swingy card. It's swingier than most other cards, because 5/11 to collide is about as close to 50% as we get, which means we're 60/121 or just under 50% to have one player hit on that first reshuffle and the other not, which is about as high as you get for a big swing. And it is a big thing. Of course you still need to play well, but getting to play your Mercenary a shuffle faster is a really big deal, because it snowballs (mostly with the thinning). This is really not all that dissimilar to having a Chapel miss the shuffle for one player and not for the other, or on some boards, having 5/2 vs 4/3.

To elaborate a bit: if you buy Chapel and a non-drawing card, Chapel has a 1/6 chance to miss the shuffle (which is a reason to combine it with nonterminal draw if available). Additionally, you have a 1/6 chance of a 5/2 opening as opposed to 4/3. So the likelihood of one player getting a good outcome and the other a bad outcome with Chapel or 5/2 vs. 4/3 is lower than with Mercenary. E.g., the chance for one player to have 5/2 and the other 4/3 is 5/6 * 1/6 * 2= 5/18= 27.8%.

But colliding early isn't everything. And while Urchin is strong, games with it play out differently based on the rest of the Kingdom.

Edit: Since 5-Aug-2013, Stef has won 74.8% of his 163 Urchin games, which is well above his overall win rate (http://www.2pih.com/cardAnalyzer.php). In fact, for Kingdom cards that he has played over 100 games with in that time, the only card I see that he has done better with is Wishing Well (76.2%).

[WanderingWinder]

Re: Urchin being swingy. It's a swingy card. It's swingier than most other cards, because 5/11 to collide is about as close to 50% as we get, which means we're 60/121 or just under 50% to have one player hit on that first reshuffle and the other not, which is about as high as you get for a big swing. And it is a big thing. Of course you still need to play well, but getting to play your Mercenary a shuffle faster is a really big deal, because it snowballs (mostly with the thinning). This is really not all that dissimilar to having a Chapel miss the shuffle for one player and not for the other, or on some boards, having 5/2 vs 4/3.

To elaborate a bit: if you buy Chapel and a non-drawing card, Chapel has a 1/6 chance to miss the shuffle (which is a reason to combine it with nonterminal draw if available). Additionally, you have a 1/6 chance of a 5/2 opening as opposed to 4/3. So the likelihood of one player getting a good outcome and the other a bad outcome with Chapel or 5/2 vs. 4/3 is lower than with Mercenary. E.g., the chance for one player to have 5/2 and the other 4/3 is 5/6 * 1/6 * 2= 5/18= 27.8%.

But colliding early isn't everything. Since 5-Aug-2013, Stef has won 74.8% of his 163 Urchin games, which is above his overall win rate (http://www.2pih.com/cardAnalyzer.php). And while Urchin is strong, games with it play out differently based on the rest of the Kingdom.

Sure. There's definitely not zero skill involved with the card, and that skill is going to be relevant. Stef having a higher winrate with the card than on average doesn't actually show that colliding isn't everything - he could have a little bit of luck colliding first over 163 games, there's always colliding but then having it miss the shuffle, sometimes you don't go for Urchin (hey that's a thing - or maybe his opponents mistakenly didn't), or he could just be WAY better when both collide or both miss - but it's definitely not just game over then-and-there. It is a massive advantage though.

[Beyond Awesome]

I just want to say it took me a very long time to realize how powerful this card is.

[SCSN]

Hey look at this:

The occasions where you want to open Urchin/Urchin are pretty uncommon, the number where you want to open Urchin/Urchin/Urchin has got be close to zero. You get no economic development that way.

[AdamH]

I strongly dislike the sentence "you mostly rely on luck to collide urchins and get the mercenary." Not because it's untrue, but because it's trivially true of every single interaction in Dominion which relies on lining things up and is not special for Urchin. People cry like babies over their Urchins but this is just a core component of the game of Dominion: you shuffle cards and then good/bad stuff happens for you.

This, x10.000. Thanks for saving me some typing.

Also, the impact of the turn number at which you gain your first Mercenary is ridiculously oversold.

I think this needs some justification. It doesn't feel good to be forced into buying more Urchins on T3/T4 when your opponent collides their Urchins and can start picking up components, thinning, and attacking you (so you can't pick up components) two, three, four, or even more turns before you can. Many other boards offer the opportunity for good/bad draws to help come back from this, but Mercenary has this built into it. And yeah there was nothing you could have done in most cases.

What would it take to convince you you are wrong? What about a series of 20+ speed-played Urchin games where you get a guaranteed T3 collision (we both pass from your T3 onwards until you connect), that I manage to at least tie?

Well I'm not quite sure yet what I'm being convinced of, TBH. I gave my opinion and I don't know yet if anyone else shares it. You used the phrase "ridiculously oversold" which means we need to first come up with how it's being sold, then you need to show me that the truth is some "ridiculous" amount different than that (which also needs to be defined).

Let's say that my stated opinion is exactly what the community thinks (or close to it). 20 Urchin games where I collide on T3/T4 and you don't would probably be OK, though if you make me play them quickly that's not going to work. I also am going on vacation for a week soon so this may not be feasible to do any time soon.

They also probably shouldn't be big money games, advantages categorized in turns are much more significant in engines.

[AdamH]

Hey look at this:

The occasions where you want to open Urchin/Urchin are pretty uncommon, the number where you want to open Urchin/Urchin/Urchin has got be close to zero. You get no economic development that way.

I pretty strongly disagree with this statement. Does MQ still feel this way?

[SCSN]

I pretty strongly disagree with this statement. Does MQ still feel this way?

He still has an iso avatar of a Base card, so I doubt he's amenable to change!

[JW]

Hey look at this:

The occasions where you want to open Urchin/Urchin are pretty uncommon, the number where you want to open Urchin/Urchin/Urchin has got be close to zero. You get no economic development that way.

I pretty strongly disagree with this statement. Does MQ still feel this way?

MQ definitely feels differently now, that's why SCSN was highlighting it (since they took opposite positions on Urchin 2 years ago and MQ now advocates something very close to SCSN). See above in this thread or MQ from 6 months ago:

Urchin/Merc is crazy good, so unfortunately (if one doesn't like it) a lot of boards require going for it. From a strategy point of view, the simple answer is just "you have to go for Mercenary." The Merc on play effect is incredibly strong the first few times you do it. Trash two cards and probably buy a $5, that's nuts. And of course Urchin's cantripiness, and the Merc trashing means the attacks get played a lot more often, you can be constantly under attack.

Getting Mercenary first is a huge boost, but getting it second usually means you are able to attack longer into the game. In some situations that late attack hurts more. I have lost or nearly lost a lot games by blowing it after getting a huge lead with Merc luck because I didn't account for my opponent attacking me late into the game. It's very easy to green too early once you have a clean Merc deck because you feel way ahead. I would advocate being patient in Mercenary games, take your time and build. This is true of Goons/Militia/Ghost Ship games too.

I don't have any special insights into how to counter it, it's a discard attack so there are the obvious things like draw to X. I think a lot of people forget how good the Lab variants are against discard attacks in general. The best way to beat discarders is to draw your deck. I don't believe much in the fill your deck with ok junk approach to fighting discarders, it's almost always better to try and thin and have 3 really awesome cards in hand.

If you want to ignore Merc entirely, you probably need to wait for a special board: one that doesn't reward deck thinning. Something like Duke maybe.