hey, getting back to the root of things: I was arguing Jack of all Trades has more dead draw than IGG. Can we concede that it does?
That's also what the thread's about in the first place, I don't know how this tangent got so crazy.
That's not at all what the thread was about in the first place. The thread is about IGG leading to boring games. I guess TINAS said it's not as bad as other cards, including Jack and Ambassador (in terms of causing boring games). Then the discussion forked to whether or not these cards cause more boring games.
My opinion is that neither do, because you only buy 1-2 Ambassadors or 1-2 Jacks, and then transition. Ambassador transitions into really interesting stuff, and while Jack might not transition into engines, there are definitely a variety of choices for midgame cards since you can buy stuff for $5, so you end up with less mirrors.
The idea that doubleJack is unbeatable and immutable is completely ridiculous. People saw some simulation thread where it beats a lot of strategies which don't involve Jack and blew it out of proportion. If you add a Jack to any of those strategies, a lot of them beat doubleJack. Jack is an opening which can lead into any sort of action-light, money-heavy strategy. IGG is basically a complete strategy, since it dictates all your $5 buys for the whole game.
This, this, this. Jack is indeed a strong enabler for money strategies, and good against many attacks, but there are many things that beat DoubleJack- sometimes a good engine, sometimes a single Jack plus a couple other useful actions. I know many of us got caught up in the simulator results and just started assuming that JoaT was super-powerful and made the game boring, I know I sure did. But we were wrong. Jack is good but it's not
that strong, and there are things you can add to it.
But as much as Jack doesn't bother me nearly as much as it used to, IGG still sucks. Yes, there is a little bit of room for strategy in IGG rushes: what to open on 4/3 (Cutpurse is an absolutely elite opener in IGG games BTW), how much copper to get, when to transition to green. And the card's okay on the 20 or so percent of boards where IGG is worth buying but not rushing (I'd say 55 percent of the time the rush is obviously dominant, and 25 percent of the time it's completely skippable). But there's very little room for creativity in IGG games beyond these few little tweaks; what strategy it permits is stunted and one-dimensional compared to other cards. I agree that IGG leads to boring games; it is my least-favorite card in all of Dominion (in terms of "fun" rather than strength, obviously).
ETA: I have to also admit that there's another good thing about Jack: its presence made me realize that Bureaucrat could be used effectively, in much the same way Vault led me to start buying Secret Chamber in the right situations.