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[Dingan]

My impression of this list so far... people really don't like payoff cards, particularly terminal payoff.  Counting house, harvest, wine merchant, mandarin, explorer, merchant ship.  There really aren't too many more (merchant's Guild, haggler, giant, depending on your definition, no I don't think mountebank counts).

I thought there were similar patterns in the $3 and $4 categories.  I guess people think terminal payoff is just bad?

Terminal payoff isn't bad in and of itself.  There is bad terminal payoff (Duchess, Mandarin, etc.) and good terminal payoff (Swindler, Mountebank, etc.).  It depends on the other stuff the card does.  And of course, they can always be compared to Silver.

[LastFootnote]

Trade is really bad because it is really hard to have 5$ and two cards you want to trade for silver. Raid seems better because it is easy in comparison to get lots of silvers in play when you have 5$. The attack is quite good.

You know Trade originally trashed your whole hand and gave you a Silver per card trashed. With just Smithy and Trade, you could pretty easily get 4 Provinces by turn 9.

[schadd]

The Best Cards - Part 1/8

The Best Cards - Part 2/8

ok i don't have much time
no, no, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, yes, yes, yes, sure, ok i guess, yes, yes, yes, yes.
thank you

[liopoil]

Okay, I buy that scavenger/stash is decent, but I'm willing to bet that there will usually be something better. Harvest is pretty bad, so I wouldn't have a problem with it being last. It can be fine with Scrying Pools, but then again what isn't?

But Cache has no business being in the bottom 5. It has MANY uses, including:

-Decks where you have lots of green/purple/brown, and so the copper isn't so bad.
-Decks where it's important to have junk to trash, e.g. mercenary, forager, etc.
-Watchtower/Trader
-Powerful draw engines that need to build payload quickly (Cache adds $5 to your deck for just $5, and is even non-terminal!)
-Copper cards, like Counting House, Miser, Coppersmith, and especially Apothecary. Okay, these are also weak cards except for apothecary.
-Thin decks that can get rid of the copper quickly, especially with Ambassador.
-Gardens/Duke, but the window where you want a Cache is probably pretty narrow here.

Don't hate on Cache man. I would go so far as to claim that it's better than every card currently in the bottom tier. Really, it's a $5 gold in decks that can deal with a couple coppers, which really is a lot of decks. Copper is not so bad.

[aku_chi]

Can somebody explain Rogue's low ranking to me?  I haven't played with it much, but it seems like a Dame Sylvia / Jester mix.  As a trasher, it's identical to Dame Sylvia, which is a pretty good card.  As a gainer, it seems at least as good as Jester in a 2-player game.  Even better if you have some trash for benefit synergy (Apprentice comes to mind).  Maybe your opponent plays around your Rogue by trashing Silvers.  Is that the reason for Rogue's low evaluation?  Is it the unreliability?

[jsh357]

Can somebody explain Rogue's low ranking to me?  I haven't played with it much, but it seems like a Dame Sylvia / Jester mix.  As a trasher, it's identical to Dame Sylvia, which is a pretty good card.  As a gainer, it seems at least as good as Jester in a 2-player game.  Even better if you have some trash for benefit synergy (Apprentice comes to mind).  Maybe your opponent plays around your Rogue by trashing Silvers.  Is that the reason for Rogue's low evaluation?  Is it the unreliability?

Well, for one, Rogue misses a lot in games without heavy trashing. It also has a tendency to hit crap like Silver that you don't want to gain from the trash, and your opponent can trash crap like Silver to ensure that happens. It's a good card for certain situations, but not too special in others. I believe it belongs in the lower tiers.

[Awaclus]

Well, for one, Rogue misses a lot in games without heavy trashing. It also has a tendency to hit crap like Silver that you don't want to gain from the trash, and your opponent can trash crap like Silver to ensure that happens.

And then you can't even get rid of it.

[funkdoc]

in the videos of top players i've seen, rogue is almost only used for the synergy with rebuild (obv its best purpose) or as a 5/2 opener on weaker boards

[DG]

Can somebody explain Rogue's low ranking to me?

I think that players who are unfamiliar with rogue can buy it in the wrong kingdoms and be disappointed by it. The attack isn't strong in many kingdoms. An opponent's strategy can really mess it up too by filling the trash pile with junk (so watch out when playing rogue against the Goko bots). In the right kingdoms, usually when it is gaining good cards, rogue can be essential.

[popsofctown]

Can somebody explain Rogue's low ranking to me?  I haven't played with it much, but it seems like a Dame Sylvia / Jester mix.  As a trasher, it's identical to Dame Sylvia, which is a pretty good card.  As a gainer, it seems at least as good as Jester in a 2-player game.  Even better if you have some trash for benefit synergy (Apprentice comes to mind).  Maybe your opponent plays around your Rogue by trashing Silvers.  Is that the reason for Rogue's low evaluation?  Is it the unreliability?

The thing is with Rogue, there's this worst case scenario where the first play, or the first two plays, is a terminal silver with no effect that costed you 5$.  And that's, like, really really bad, like, so bad right? There's a lot of other things going on with the card that might make it not as good as it looks, but that one, it's a big deal, that isn't brought up a lot.  If your opponent just bought an Explorer because they were afraid because whiffing Rogue is SO BAD, they play that silver once per shuffle for the rest of the game as an eternal and indefinite monument to their prudence over yours.  And we're talking about Explorer.

The thing with the comparison to Dame Silvia is that Dame Silvia is part of the Knights deck, the knights war, the knight metagame.  While Dame Silvia can whiff, and that's so bad, and it is indeed bad, I could also point out Alchemist could whiff on an early play and not get topdecked, and a ~6$ Lab is sooo bad.  But I would be missing out on the context of an Alchemist game where a critical mass of the cards interrelates, and that the board has this special engine available if I get a lot of these things, and if I'm going to get a lot of them then by necessity I have to get a first one, and so on and so forth.

[JacquesTheBard]

So, my input:

• Counting House's rating is a crime, especially after Stef's beautifully designed kingdom and the hilarious Traveling Fair combo.
• The bottom tier of $5 cards is flooded with Silver-With-Bonus cards. Among these, by a sizeable margin, Stash has the weakest bonus. Royal Seal isn't on the same level: topdecking the cards you gain is a very helpful thing.
• Wine Merchant in bulk is outstanding. I understand the bias against stopcards, but if you get your $ from a terminal action, this is easily one of the better ones to get it from. And it synergizes VERY well with TR variants.
• Trade is frustrating. Hitting $5 is challenging enough, and having trashable cards to spare on top of that is a tall order. IRL, however, it is very difficult to state just how radically this card can boost your economy. Estate to Silver adds $4 to your deck while keeping the card count completely identical. It's like getting 4 Peddlers at once. It absolutely does NOT belong this far down on the list.
• Explorer is fine. Why do people even complain about explorer. Gaining Silver to your hand is a decent effect. Gaining Gold to your hand is just stupid. It adds a LOT of value VERY quickly.
• I've been able to make some great decks with Rogue, but it needs to be treated as a gainer first and an attack second. In Dark Ages games especially, good cards WILL end up in the trash, and while Graverobber only topdecks the retrieved cards, Rogue gives $2 on top, which is not negligible. The combos involved are just too incredible. Do NOT ignore Rogue on a board with Knights. An asymmetrical Knight battle can be exacerbated to unbelievable levels when even trashed Knights go back into the Rogue player's deck. So yeah, I've had good times with Rogue.

[Davio]

Can somebody explain Rogue's low ranking to me?  I haven't played with it much, but it seems like a Dame Sylvia / Jester mix.  As a trasher, it's identical to Dame Sylvia, which is a pretty good card.  As a gainer, it seems at least as good as Jester in a 2-player game.  Even better if you have some trash for benefit synergy (Apprentice comes to mind).  Maybe your opponent plays around your Rogue by trashing Silvers.  Is that the reason for Rogue's low evaluation?  Is it the unreliability?

The thing is with Rogue, there's this worst case scenario where the first play, or the first two plays, is a terminal silver with no effect that costed you 5$.  And that's, like, really really bad, like, so bad right? There's a lot of other things going on with the card that might make it not as good as it looks, but that one, it's a big deal, that isn't brought up a lot.  If your opponent just bought an Explorer because they were afraid because whiffing Rogue is SO BAD, they play that silver once per shuffle for the rest of the game as an eternal and indefinite monument to their prudence over yours.  And we're talking about Explorer.

Rogue is good when you have multiple Rogues, which means trashing ánd gaining stuff from your opponent (and not losing by having your opponent do the same). I don't usually get just one Rogue.

[ehunt]

Rogue isn't terrible, but it's also not that low on this list, so I don't feel any sense of injustice.

One thing I would add; like Tribute, it's a hard card to control: everything it does is pretty good, but it's difficult to build a reliable strategy around it.

The initial hope is that you can use it like Saboteur to punish the opponent for failing to build a robust engine before greening, but at best you only get an attack in every other play, and then you'll have to deal with adding your opponent's crap into your deck. So this kind of thing only works with cards like King's Court around.

You most want it when it reliably gains you good cards (Rebuild games are a good example, but not the only example). Then the attack is more of a consolation prize.

[Beyond Awesome]

So, my input:

• Explorer is fine. Why do people even complain about explorer. Gaining Silver to your hand is a decent effect. Gaining Gold to your hand is just stupid. It adds a LOT of value VERY quickly.

[/li]
[/list]

You're right. Gaining gold usually is stupid. There is often something better to do.

[Davio]

But unlike Saboteur, it trashes stuff outright, there's no consolation other than getting your own Rogue and trying to get the stuff back.

Rogue is fun with Duchy/Duke. You could trash a Duchy and drop your opponent like 7 points (4 Dukes, 4 Duchies) with one play and potentially gain 7 points yourself (4 Dukes, 4 Duchies) for a swing of 14 points with 2 Rogues.

I agree though that it's certainly not superduper powerful and pales when compared to the more powerful $5 cards (lots of other powerful attack cards here and high utility cards like Wharf).

[markusin]

So, my input:

• Explorer is fine. Why do people even complain about explorer. Gaining Silver to your hand is a decent effect. Gaining Gold to your hand is just stupid. It adds a LOT of value VERY quickly.

[/li]
[/list]

You're right. Gaining gold usually is stupid. There is often something better to do.

Explorer Gold is a good source of trash-for-benefit fuel though. Explorer helps the engine made for consistency, say atrimmed a Fishing Village + Torturer deck, ramp up quickly in spending power once it's time to green.

[Qvist]

Part 3

[werothegreat]

Okay, Relic definitely deserves better. It can be quite oppressive if played consistently.

[mustang255]

I feel like Trade is way better than Trading Post.

Not having to add the (event) card into your deck is a pretty big advantage, even if it doesn't reduce the net size of your deck. You typically do not get that many truly effective uses out of Trading Post anyway, so the fact that you have to pay every time you use it isn't that harmful.

[markusin]

Okay, Relic definitely deserves better. It can be quite oppressive if played consistently.

It's like both of Minion's options in one card, but without the self-cycling. It doesn't cycle for your opponent though. I expect it to be ranked higher in the next list.

Maybe $5 Silver+ cards have made too bad a name for themselves.

[JacquesTheBard]

The fact that Relic and Stash cost the same is utterly absurd. Silver with a bonus can't be $4, and Relic is solidly a $5, but it still bugs me.

And I might as well add some further notes:

• The longer you plan to build (which is quite a bit on good engine boards) the better Treasury is. It's an extra $ on every single turn, which does way more to hit your price points than just another silver would.
• Outpost needs some sort of reliability aid such as Guide or Durations to really shine, but on these boards, it is basically the definition of a must-buy.
• Although $5 cards are generally WAY better than $4 cards, there will always be kingdoms where you sometimes buy a $4 card in place of a $5. And in 98% of these kingdoms, Band of Misfits is worth buying. That's quite a lot of boards.
• Treasure Trove is obscenely good in BM decks. That's not saying much given the major engine dominance in our metagame, but it does a LOT to help that strategy.

[werothegreat]

The fact that Relic and Stash cost the same is utterly absurd. Silver with a bonus can't be $4, and Relic is solidly a $5, but it still bugs me.

I think Stash could comfortably be without breaking anything.

[Donald X.]

I think Stash could comfortably be without breaking anything.

It would make those games worse for people who do not think every game is improved by Stash.

[Roadrunner7671]

I didn't vote Contraband first!

[funkdoc]

will be interesting to see how much higher embassy finishes than treasure trove...basically a measure of the value of being decent in engines