Peasant - B: Teacher may be a bit weaker and slower than Champion, but the Peasant line has some other strong options, like Disciple, which is an incredibly strong Throne Room variant. Why do you feel the Peasant line is so much weaker than Page?
Champion is a ridiculous card. It's like so unbelievably powerful that it's worth all of the trouble you go through to get it. I said that without adding any qualifications based on the kingdom, which I probably should have done, but I can't think of a deck where you wouldn't want a Champion in play given the choice, and the number of decks made viable by the presence of Champion is staggering. But you didn't ask about Champion.
Teacher is slower to get than Champion, so Champion's main weakness is exacerbated in the Peasant line. Yeah it's only slightly slower to actually get in your deck because the cards in the Peasant line cycle less, but I'm more talking about the fact that once you play Champion, you never have to draw it again, you never have to play it again, and you get her full effect right away. With the teacher, you have to draw him, play him, take him to the tavern and wait while he gets drunk (until the start of your next turn) for him to share just one of his lessons with you. That's SO SLOW, man. Then there's the fact that you have to wait at least TWO MORE TURNS to get the next token placed in the best case, and then you can't even get as much use out of that one because it has to go on a different card. The two best tokens are cards and actions, and if you are able to get back to your teacher in "only" two turns, then you are probably doing OK without those tokens, in which case why did you need Teacher?
The decks made viable by Teacher are far less than Champion, because they basically require a wa to slow the game down so you don't get beat by Big Money.
Yes, Disciple is a good card, but given the hoops you have to jump through to get it, it would be tough to rank that any higher than Throne Room.
Amulet is slightly weaker than Steward, but I'd pretty much always prefer opening Amulet/Steward to double Steward.
Who are you and what have you done with SCSN?
Lower than that strikes me as lunacy.
Oh, there you are
Amulet - C+: I guess I could understand it if people found it not strong enough for A-, but C+ is really radical in the other direction. Is there anything we missed?
Steward is a really good card. Like, I'd give it an A-. It's so good because it trashes cards lightning fast, and then once that happens, it draws cards instead of doing absolutely nothing. Trashing cards is really, really, really, like super-ultra good. Next to ending the game on a win, trashing cards is like the next best thing you can do in Dominion. It's so good. After that, the next thing is probably drawing cards (those two are very similar anyways). Steward is fast, and it does two awesome things, so it gets an A-.
Amulet doesn't draw cards, that's a big weakness compared to Steward. OK we already knew that. The main reason that it's multiple orders of magnitude worse than Steward is because of the trashing. Amulet is really, really bad at getting your deck thin. If you don't see your Amulet on turn 3, you are so, so, behind compared to like every other trasher you can open with, except for maybe Trade Route.
A double Steward opening is a totally reasonable thing because you get the chance of trashing four cards before you shuffle again. That's way more than three. I literally can't think of any draw where I'd be happy with an Amulet in my hand instead of a Steward if my goal is to get thin as fast as possible (which it almost always is these first few turns). There's this argument that Amulet doesn't ruin your trashing hands like Steward does, but I counter that argument by saying that the fact that it's Amulet by itself ruins those hands, where Steward always gives you the option of taking money and hitting $5 if you decide that's more important than trashing (which you never do, because it isn't, which is why Steward is way better). Amulet lets you get those all-important $3 cards. If $5 cards aren't important enough to slow your trashing for, which $3 cards are?
Maybe I'm being harsh, MAYBE Amulet deserves a B-, but definitely not anything higher. If I disagree with everyone on this, so be it; a year from now they'll call me a visionary, they'll make a Dominion card with my face on the artwork called Visionary. It will do something amazing. Wild speculation is fun!
Treasure Trove - A-: Is Treasure Trove really that dominant? I found it to be pretty underwhelming so far.
It's one of those cards that isn't really all that interactive, but you stick it in a Big Money deck and it's totally bonkers-sauce. It's like what people used to think of Jack -- "oh fiddle sticks! Big Money is too good here!" I dunno. I could be wrong on this one, maybe it's just a B+? Like, terminal draw plus this can get like 7 provinces in 12 turns or something. OK that's an exaggeration but it's pretty ridic.
