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[Seprix]

        Farming Village's ability is overrated by a lot of new players. In the Qvist rankings (2014), it’s 28th in the $4 cost category out of 57 total cards. Farming Village costs an extra $1 (compared to Village) for a guaranteed drawing of a treasure or an action. While you might have visions of skipping tons of Victory Cards to get to that crucial Action card, it usually doesn't work out that way. Farming Village's ability makes this card possibly one of the worst Villages in Dominion in terms of cost/ability. Does this mean Farming Village is awful? Well, no.

   In a game with good solid trashing, you’re not going to use that guaranteed draw to great effect until the endgame. But if both you and your opponent have gained a decent amount of VP cards, Farming Village does in fact become better as time goes on if the game lasts that long. You're not really buying this card for it's special effect, you're buying it for the +Action. Anything you get extra is a nice bonus of possible extra reliability in draw.

   In the second scenario, when skipping a bunch of junk really matters (assuming there is no trashing), Farming Village is usually bad, since you’ll still be likely just drawing a copper. Even though you might skip a Curse with it's guaranteed good draw, is it even worth buying in such a game? If you're not going to build an engine, you should probably avoid this card.

   Farming Village's ability can softly counter attacks that interact with the top card of your deck like Fortune Teller, Bureaucrat, Sea Hag, Spy and (sometimes) Scrying Pool, not to mention Farming Village more than softly counters Rabble. Farming Village likes Kingdoms with treasure trashing in particular, since you can simply trash all coppers you would otherwise draw. Alt-VP is also something slightly more forgiving in games with Farming Village. A nice synergy with Farming Village is Apothecary, since green cards can clog it’s copper draw up, and Apothecary draws the coppers you don’t want to hit with Farming Village. However, a seemingly nice combination of Tunnel activating and Farming Village can often be a trap, so be careful when both cards are on the board. Also beware interactions with Farming Village and cards that actually want Victory Cards in hand, such as Tournament, Baron, and Crossroads.

     Even though Farming Village's signature ability is not often that significant until the late game, it is still a village, and thus should be treated as such. As a result, barring a few exceptions, wherever you should or shouldn't buy a vanilla village, is what you should do with this card.


Works with: Engines, Apothecaries, Topdecking attacks, money trashers, deck inspectors

Conflicts with: Slog games, BM games, Cards that want Victory Cards in hand

[Seprix]

I've been revising this one for months on my own, and I think I covered all the relevant bases.

[jsh357]

I think you are underselling how useful Villages are by taking a strictly negative tone toward the card. I agree with you that it's usually one of the weakest villages, but a village is a village and those are really good cards. You will quite gladly spend $4 on villages most of the time, and the only time Farming Village's cost vs. a cheaper village matters is if said village exists in the same kingdom. Plus, $4 is not exactly a hard value to hit. You can easily get $4 without even adding treasures to your initial deck.

You also left out an anti-synergy to bear in mind with Farming Village: Crossroads, Baron, Tournament, Explorer.

[Seprix]

I think you are underselling how useful Villages are by taking a strictly negative tone toward the card. I agree with you that it's usually one of the weakest villages, but a village is a village and those are really good cards. You will quite gladly spend $4 on villages most of the time, and the only time Farming Village's cost vs. a cheaper village matters is if said village exists in the same kingdom. Plus, $4 is not exactly a hard value to hit. You can easily get $4 without even adding treasures to your initial deck.

You also left out an anti-synergy to bear in mind with Farming Village: Crossroads, Baron, Tournament, Explorer.

Everyone already knows what villages do. Do I really have to point it out? I added things about $4 price point not being too hard to hit already, but perhaps the tone can be changed a bit. I'll look over it.

I can add those anti-synergies, but I don't want my article to be filled with everything at once. I would like it to be not too complex in nature.

[jsh357]

I think you are underselling how useful Villages are by taking a strictly negative tone toward the card. I agree with you that it's usually one of the weakest villages, but a village is a village and those are really good cards. You will quite gladly spend $4 on villages most of the time, and the only time Farming Village's cost vs. a cheaper village matters is if said village exists in the same kingdom. Plus, $4 is not exactly a hard value to hit. You can easily get $4 without even adding treasures to your initial deck.

You also left out an anti-synergy to bear in mind with Farming Village: Crossroads, Baron, Tournament, Explorer.

Everyone already knows what villages do. Do I really have to point it out?

I can add those anti-synergies, but I don't want my article to be filled with everything at once. I would like it to be not too complex in nature.

I know that people know what Villages do. However, your article feels like its entire purpose is to roast Farming Village, when really it is a useful card, even if its bonus isn't all that great.

To your second point, simply adding "cards that want Victory cards in hand" to the list of anti-synergies takes up next to no space and is an entirely relevant thing to mention in an article.  The audience for an article like this is newer players, and that is the sort of thing they might not be taking in to consideration when evaluating the card.  If someone considered that idea 'too complex' they probably need to go back to grade school.

[Seprix]

I think you are underselling how useful Villages are by taking a strictly negative tone toward the card. I agree with you that it's usually one of the weakest villages, but a village is a village and those are really good cards. You will quite gladly spend $4 on villages most of the time, and the only time Farming Village's cost vs. a cheaper village matters is if said village exists in the same kingdom. Plus, $4 is not exactly a hard value to hit. You can easily get $4 without even adding treasures to your initial deck.

You also left out an anti-synergy to bear in mind with Farming Village: Crossroads, Baron, Tournament, Explorer.

Everyone already knows what villages do. Do I really have to point it out?

I can add those anti-synergies, but I don't want my article to be filled with everything at once. I would like it to be not too complex in nature.

I know that people know what Villages do. However, your article feels like its entire purpose is to roast Farming Village, when really it is a useful card, even if its bonus isn't all that great.

To your second point, simply adding "cards that want Victory cards in hand" to the list of anti-synergies takes up next to no space and is an entirely relevant thing to mention in an article.  The audience for an article like this is newer players, and that is the sort of thing they might not be taking in to consideration when evaluating the card.  If someone considered that idea 'too complex' they probably need to go back to grade school.

I changed the context a bit with subtle wording changes, referencing FV's ability rather than FV itself. Also, I put more emphasis than I did on FV's being a village in the first place. There isn't much to talk about in regards to FV in comparison to other Villages, so I decided to talk about how underwhelming FV's signature ability really was. I think this is the correct call, especially since this card can be overrated by newer players.

[jomini]

Another nice niche are cases of top decking. Courtyard here is the big one. Normally using Courtyard for engine draw is pretty harsh in the late game. Each addition village/Courtyard is just an overpriced, less reliable Lab. Farmv tends to allow you turn late game Courtyards effectively into Smithies when you top deck a Green that Farmv will then discard. Cards that require you to place a card on deck top (e.g. Mandarin, Count) get a lot better when Farmv can burn past a province to draw something more useful. In addition to Apothecary, Navigator can make Farmv a Lost city or better effectively. When you can reasonably ensure that Farmv will flip a green, then it gets a LOT better.

Another case where skipping the green becomes more important are for Lib/Wt draw engine. If you've got a big deck (say 20 cards), each green in your hand may represent not -1 card of draw, but perhaps as much as -4. Even with low odds of skipping a green, when you do it can be the difference between a double colony turn and a singleton.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, a lot of the competing villages are better for the first village or two, but nowhere near as good for third and fourth village purchases.

For example, Worker's village is clutch because you get a +buy without having to lose tempo on acquiring it. However the second +buy is worth vastly less and the third is rarely useful at all in an engine. Yeah it can be important near end game if you are clogged with stop cards and can no longer draw your deck ... but barring odd engine setups many of those stop cards are what Farmv skips; far better to have a higher chance at hitting a full engine turn than to be assured you can go Duchy+Estate on a busted lat game hand. Likewise, Plaza also suffers from heavily diminishing returns, sure it is nice to have some coin tokens to smooth buying power ... but if you are trashing out your coppers it becomes less and less useful to buy 3 and 4 Plazas where the odds that the 4th Plaza will ever discard a treasure. Walled village becomes progressively worse as well. Sure early on it can make it certain that you hit Torturer + some other card (e.g. Steward or another Torturer), but once you have your 4th Wallv you aren't going to use that ability ever again. Tr runs into trouble if you have too many of them and not enough cards that draw so you definitely want to mix in Farmv in a lot of engines that use Tr as the main "village". Even Fortress suffers from diminishing returns; ignoring the no Tfb boards and edgecases like Count, you can pretty easily get to a point where you don't need more chances to TfB a Fortress but would prefer the extra 1/3rd or whatever of a card that FarmV gives; particularly if you are able to gain villages with a low opportunity cost (e.g. Iw, Haggler). Mining village, well sure you can burn them at game end to either gain an extra green or two ... or again make something of a busted post-engine turn ... but past 4, there just isn't as much utility in stockpiling more. Pretty much the only $4 village that is actively better as village 5 and onwards is Wandering minstrel.

In most engine decks you want to swap to Farmv if given the choice for all your later villages unless you can use your green (e.g. Remodel Prov->Prov), aren't getting any (e.g. Goons, Monument, win on Curses), or have other ways of dealing with it (e.g. Nv, Island, Bish). Sure Hamlet might be more cost effective and you buy it on a $2 (or a vanilla on a $3), but if you just "need a village" normally from the mid-game on, you want to swap from Wv or Wallv to Farmv. Farmv actually has an ability that can be useful, whereas the rest just don't.

Depending on engine dynamics, Farmv can even start beating out $5 villages. An extra Festival is not worth a lot if you have a tight $16 engine, sure an $18 engine could squeek out a win from a clutch estate buy ... but you are running the risk of a complete whiff with needing 1 more card of draw net for the deck and lowering the search space to match a starting village with +draw; evening Fishing village can fall into the trap of depleting your draw and lower the odds that your engine hits. An extra Bandit camp becomes worse than worthless if you have a well oiled engine and either no +buy (or anything else to use up the extra Spoils) or exactly one +buy. Adding just one more Bazaar can often be a bad idea, you can't even buy an estate at $17.

Late game it is a really dicey option to go for a benefit that might let you grab an extra estate vs a benefit that might save a busted two province engine turn. When you are actually choosing between multiple villages, you normally want the other village first, maybe even second or third, but often want to go Farmv from then on down.

[Seprix]

Well, yes. Any card is good in the right situation.

[vsiewnar]

Does Farming Village get around that -1 Card token introduced in Adventures? It looks so to me though I'm not 100% sure on that.

[Seprix]

I didn't write this with Adventures in mind. If I have time, I'll look into that.

[jomini]

Well, yes. Any card is good in the right situation.

More the point is that the "right situation" for Farmv tends to be the 3rd or 4th village against the other $4 village. All of the other $4 village bonuses tend to suffer from diminishing returns as you build out your engine and then cash out with big green. Farmv is the exact opposite, it has increasing returns in the late game. On a double $4 village board, going Farmv on the back half is something you need a good reason not to do.

[jsh357]

Does Farming Village get around that -1 Card token introduced in Adventures? It looks so to me though I'm not 100% sure on that.

It does

[pubby]

Ghost Ship should be mentioned as an attack countered by Farming Village.

Conflicts with: Slog games

I don't think this is true. You don't want Farming Village in every slog, but when you do, it's one of the better villages. Look at it this way: if you're not drawing your entire deck then skipping over bad cards is about as good as drawing them. So if Farming Village skips over a curse, it's about the same effect as an activated City. If it skips over two curses then it's much better than an activated City.

[LastFootnote]

Does Farming Village get around that -1 Card token introduced in Adventures? It looks so to me though I'm not 100% sure on that.

It does

If by "get around" you mean does it draw you a card despite the token on your deck? Yes, it does. But it doesn't remove the token.

[vsiewnar]

I wasn't the clearest with the last post. I did mean drawing a card in spite of the token without removing it. Thanks. Perhaps this ability is worth mentioning then.

[GendoIkari]

For one thing $4 and $3 are extremely close in cost. You can't just say "$1 more". $1 more than $4 is a lot, $1 more than $3 is not.

Second, you say that in a clogged deck you're likely to just draw Copper anyway, so it's not that good. But it's not "just drawing Copper", it's drawing Copper after discarding some number of junk cards. Even if you didn't draw anything, discarding 2 junk cards from the top of your deck is way better than just drawing 1 junk card.

Disclaimer; posting from my phone, that's why there's no icons or card links in my post.

[Seprix]

For one thing $4 and $3 are extremely close in cost. You can't just say "$1 more". $1 more than $4 is a lot, $1 more than $3 is not.

Second, you say that in a clogged deck you're likely to just draw Copper anyway, so it's not that good. But it's not "just drawing Copper", it's drawing Copper after discarding some number of junk cards. Even if you didn't draw anything, discarding 2 junk cards from the top of your deck is way better than just drawing 1 junk card.

Disclaimer; posting from my phone, that's why there's no icons or card links in my post.

Yes, but how often is it going to skip a junk card? Not too often. And will you have multiple actions to make it worth using FV? Likely not.

[eHalcyon]

For one thing $4 and $3 are extremely close in cost. You can't just say "$1 more". $1 more than $4 is a lot, $1 more than $3 is not.

Second, you say that in a clogged deck you're likely to just draw Copper anyway, so it's not that good. But it's not "just drawing Copper", it's drawing Copper after discarding some number of junk cards. Even if you didn't draw anything, discarding 2 junk cards from the top of your deck is way better than just drawing 1 junk card.

Disclaimer; posting from my phone, that's why there's no icons or card links in my post.

Yes, but how often is it going to skip a junk card? Not too often. And will you have multiple actions to make it worth using FV? Likely not.

How often depends on what your deck is clogged with.

[ehunt]

personal narrative! I once won a Torturer game on isotropic because I picked farming village and my opponent picked worker's village. He blamed the shuffler and ragequit. I was annoyed because I thought it was our village choices.

but seriously, farming village is a nice bonus. i mean, it's no plaza or wandering minstrel; it's definitely better than walled village, it's probably worse than mining village, but involves so much less annoying clicking that often it's the better buy anyway.

[Seprix]

personal narrative! I once won a Torturer game on isotropic because I picked farming village and my opponent picked worker's village. He blamed the shuffler and ragequit. I was annoyed because I thought it was our village choices.

but seriously, farming village is a nice bonus. i mean, it's no plaza or wandering minstrel; it's definitely better than walled village, it's probably worse than mining village, but involves so much less annoying clicking that often it's the better buy anyway.

'Better buy because less clicking on Goko'

I cannot disagree with this statement.

[markusin]

Farming Village is to Village about what Vagrant is to a $1 Cantrip (Farming Village -> Village ≈ Vagrant -> $1 Cantrip).

Both Farming Village and Vagrant are about the same as their cheaper counterpart, but occasionally you get good value out of one of your copies (skipping junk like a starting Estate in the case of FarmV and drawing junk with Vagrant). For a card like Farming Village that's desirable anyway for the action splitter effect, that sounds pretty legit. That it's in range of Workshop/IW/Armory and maybe other stuff like Haggler when you buy a $5 makes it quite fair as well. Farming Village also has the benefit of making it a bit less likely to stall while greening when you have a bunch of them.

[GendoIkari]

but involves so much less annoying clicking that often it's the better buy anyway.

Indeed, which is why Scrying Pool and Hamlet are such terrible cards!

[markusin]

but involves so much less annoying clicking that often it's the better buy anyway.

Indeed, which is why Scrying Pool and Hamlet are such terrible cards!

In Scrying Pool's case, being slow to resolve reminds you why Scrying Pool is such a good card when it's played against you. A real "I want you to remember the one card that beat you" kind of thing.

[Co0kieL0rd]

I don't think it makes a lot of sense to compare Farming Village to Native Village for their ability to deal with Estates and other junk. Sure, NV can pseudo-trash Estates but that only works if you have a (non-terminal) deck inspector and, more importantly, if you do this you cannot use NV for its other purpose of saving payload cards to use later throughout the game as effectively. Even if it works, this only emphasises how different a NV-centric strategy is from a FV engine. There's no FV-centric strategy but FV is a pure engine component and should be compared to such. NV engines are harder to build and, while NV is also (kind of) a sifter, when you use it to sift your junk it still nets you -1 card in your hand. FV sifts and always draws. Yes, NV is a better pseudo-trasher provided theres good deck inspection, but it's still much worse than FV in most other scenarios.

[Dingan]

Farming Village is a Village when you don't have any junk.
Fortress is a Village when there are no trashers.
Wandering Minstrel is a Village when you only have actions.
Border Village is a Village when you don't want any <$6 cards (Ok, this is pretty rare).
Etc.

(Of course, these are ignoring things like Apprentice, Salvager, etc.)

My point: yes, FV is probably a below-average $4 village.  That is, its amount of specific uses (seekers, Tunnel, top-deck counter) is low compared to other $4 villages.  But any village is either "more" or "less" useful than it normally is, depending on the board.  And a village is a village.  Who can honestly say they've never payed $6 for a Necropolis Nobles, anyways?

[Awaclus]

Wandering Minstrel is a Village when you only have actions.

WM is still better than a Village in that case. You get to look at the cards and reorder them.

[Seprix]

Farming Village is a Village when you don't have any junk.
Fortress is a Village when there are no trashers.
Wandering Minstrel is a Village when you only have actions.
Border Village is a Village when you don't want any <$6 cards (Ok, this is pretty rare).
Etc.

(Of course, these are ignoring things like Apprentice, Salvager, etc.)

My point: yes, FV is probably a below-average $4 village.  That is, its amount of specific uses (seekers, Tunnel, top-deck counter) is low compared to other $4 villages.  But any village is either "more" or "less" useful than it normally is, depending on the board.  And a village is a village.  Who can honestly say they've never payed $6 for a Necropolis Nobles, anyways?

You're completely missing the point of this article.

[Chris is me]

I don't think this is a really helpful article. It seems less like an informational guide on how to best use and evaluate Farming Village, and more like a manifesto on how overrated you think the card is. You might as well have written "I Hate Farming Village" over and over again.

Yes, Villages aren't great buys when you don't need a Village, and no, Farming Village's effect isn't particularly good. But other than for clarification purposes, shouldn't articles talk more about when you *do* want the card and how to use it?

[Seprix]

I don't think this is a really helpful article. It seems less like an informational guide on how to best use and evaluate Farming Village, and more like a manifesto on how overrated you think the card is. You might as well have written "I Hate Farming Village" over and over again.

Yes, Villages aren't great buys when you don't need a Village, and no, Farming Village's effect isn't particularly good. But other than for clarification purposes, shouldn't articles talk more about when you *do* want the card and how to use it?

I attempted to take a lot of the bite out of the article. I hope that helps a bit. That's what peer review is for.

EDIT: More edits. Some phrases are not consistent with the edits.

[dghunter79]

Wandering Minstrel is a Village when you only have actions.

WM is still better than a Village in that case. You get to look at the cards and reorder them.

They're all Wandering Minstrels.

[werothegreat]

* Farming Village makes engines possible in curser games
* Farming Village can keep an engine consistent late game
* Farming Village hard counters Rabble and Fortune Teller, sometimes Ghost Ship

On the other hand:
* Farming Village trips over Ruins
* Farming Village really isn't doing anything Village wouldn't in heavy trashing games

Farming Village likes engines with only Treasure trashing.  It also lets you consider adding alt-VP to an engine, particularly Vineyard.

[eHalcyon]

* Farming Village trips over Ruins

No more than regular villages...

[Seprix]

Not sure what else this 'article' needs.