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[werothegreat]

Kneeling in this position gives me an incredible sense of deja vu...

-How good is this Event?
-Is it ever worth buying more than once in a turn?
-What cards interact interestingly with this?

[mameluke]

I'm surprised this event doesn't also put the revealed Victory cards into your hand (although, you can just discard them)

[Marcory]

The real question is, would Roadrunner buy two of these over an actual Scout.

[Roadrunner7671]

The real question is, would Roadrunner buy two of these over an actual Scout.

Ha ha, please. You think a petty event is anything compared to Scout? Scouting Party forces you to discard any juicy cards on top of your deck. Scouting Party is played in your buy phase, and it costs two coins each time!

Just because it has the word Scout in it doesn't mean it's automatically excellent

[BlackHole]

Just because it has the word Scout in it doesn't mean it's automatically excellent

Well, at least that's right

[J Reggie]

This is one of those events that feels more like a little rules change; whenever you have $2 left over and want to cycle this is great. I don't think I would often forego a good $2 card for this, but there might be times when I would get this and a good $2 card even if there was a $4 card I may have wanted.

[Marcory]

There's some synergy with some specific cards as well:

Doctor (topdeck two coppers or Estates, then buy Doctor)
Tunnel (obviously)
Stash (to trigger a reshuffle)
Inn (to put fewer cards in your deck so that its on-buy effect becomes even stronger, then buy Inn)
Scout (when your Scout had to put back garbage).

It also is a defense against top-decking attacks like Sea Hag, Rabble, Spy, Scrying Pool, Ghost Ship, Fortune Teller, etc.

It's also great in slogs when you didn't hit $3, or when you're greening and the Estates are out.

[Limetime]

Scouting party tunnel is a beast. I optimized it against double witch and it came out on top by like 68-30. Opening tunnel/scoutingparty*2 will get you a gold first shuffle and you will cycle super fast. Also it is a lot harder to play this than double witch so I am sure that it is actually more like 80-20.

[drsteelhammer]

It's also a great opener when you have a 5/2 and you want an Ambassdor/Masq/Steward. Not as good as Travelling Fair for these situations, but pretty good. Besides that, I don't think I've ever bought this besides just having 2$ leftover.

[Beyond Awesome]

I've bought this a few times, usually on a spare $2. This is not a standout event, bit not bad either.

[Titandrake]

This seems like a great way to seed your next turn in engines if you have enough cards left over. Buy with your last or 2nd-last buy (depending on if you need all buys) to seed your next turn with the actions you just bought.

The problem is that you need to be overdrawing and have lots of money, because odds are you could be picking up more engine pieces instead of spending $2 on pre-seeding.

[Limetime]

As long as you buy this every turn you feel about 2* as thin as you actually are. Strongly recommend forgoing somewhat usefully cards in favor of having a better turn next turn.
Really super good and underrated. One game i was buying it every turn and when I stopped I dude immediately. It felt like my deck had 5 extra junk in it.

[Psyduck]

This should also work well with Apothecary. Firstly, because Apothecary tends to leave green cards on top of the deck. Secondly, because with Apothecary you'll frequently spend $4p or more on Apothecary, so the extra $2 for Scouting Party don't hurt much.

[jomini]

By far, the biggest use for this is hitting $7 when you want to buy a $5 more than golds or any other option that might be in the Kingdom. If you are buying a Witch, well get her here 40% of a turn faster (just do not trigger a bad shuffle) & setup a turn to maybe buy a Rc or something else. Likewise, if you are Duchy dancing, then toss some green so you can actually hit $8 next turn.

You pretty much always want this when you have more cash & no viable alternative unless you are triggering bad reshuffles with it or maybe if you expect to be hit by Minion without being able to cycle back to good cards if you discarded them.

Beyond that, it is handy to setup Engines if you can get your kickoff components (e.g. Pool, Village/Smithy, etc.) into an empty discard/draw pile with just enough cards to force a 5 card shuffle with the event. It can be particularly nice if you can trigger shuffles while holding lousy cards like CCEEE.

So now for the fun stuff, where do you actually want this instead of other stuff that can help:
1. Rebuild. You quickly reach a point where more Es are dangerous, Silvers are not too likely to actually be played, and there is decent odds that you will have your Rebuild targets in hand when you have a Rebuild or two you want to play. By midgame, spare $2 and $4s should be used to setup strong hands to minimize flipping your rebuilds and also to eliminate hands like RebuildX3/EstateX2
2. Off a Kc/Scav deck to force a Shuffle so your Kc/Scav pairs are never in the same hand (only happens when you hit $2 in the two cards you do not control, but best 2 of 3 helps with that as well).
3. Deck control for Chouse decks. Dump the coppers, setup Hamlet/ChouseX2; churn to the end of your draw deck if you have 1 buy and no more Chouses left before the shuffle (e.g. Chouse for $12, churn 7 cards to get back to Province buying a turn sooner).
4. Removing green/junk from deck top when needed - Countering Rabble & friends, moving away unwanted Prizes, keeping only the important treasures (like Quarry) when you have bought a Mandarin.
5. Being really mean after your last Possession turn (double Pillage for $2, joy; pretty much nothing but dead draw for $4).
6. Fishing for high variance cards (e.g. Plats, Pstones, banes, Curses against a single Mountebank, Library/Hground in BM games).
7. Knight/Giant/Sab/Swindler defense when you will subsequently stack the top of your deck 5 deep (e.g. Alchemist, Treasury, Wt)
8. Traveller/Distant lands/etc. accelerator.
9. Post Tmap to fish for useful cards (e.g. +buy) or to cycle past useless gold.
10. Increase alignment odds, particularly with deck tracking (e.g. Tournament, Mint/Plat, Province/Explorer, Menage/Uniques).

[faust]

So now for the fun stuff [...]
1. Rebuild.

...

[jomini]

So now for the fun stuff [...]
1. Rebuild.

...

Just about anything that makes Rebuild games finish faster makes life more fun =)

[JThorne]

Setting up the next hand and controlling the reshuffle with a Counting House deck really is amazing. I recently played a Kingdom with Counting House, Beggar and Scouting Party. After the second reshuffle, every turn was CH, province, scouting party enough times to force the reshuffle before drawing (with all the copper still in play) and put the other CH on top.

But I do have to point out a couple of problem quotes:

3. Deck control for Chouse decks. Dump the coppers, setup Hamlet/ChouseX2

5. Being really mean after your last Possession turn (double Pillage for $2, joy; pretty much nothing but dead draw for $4).

Playing multiple Scouting Parties doesn't let you set up more than 2 cards on top of the deck. When you play the second one, you're looking at the top five cards, which include the two you just put back! You can't set up 3-card combos, and you can't stack 4 cards on a Possession turn.

In general, this is a pretty good event. Barring a power-2, it's almost always worth it with either an otherwise dead turn or some extra cash at the end of a buy. Virtually every deck archetype benefits from it. But I rarely go out of my way to play it; with 5, I'll almost always buy a 5 rather than Scounting Party/3. But because of that, unless it's the cornerstone of your strategy (see CH, Tunnel), it will often get skipped, pretty much getting played on exactly 2, or 10 (SP/Province), but SP/3 vs. a 5? SP/4 vs. a 6? SP/SP vs. a 4? SP/5 vs. a 7? (Maybe if it's Expand.) Maybe SP/5 vs. a 6. Maybe. Another thing that happens is if I hit a number that can only buy a terminal and I can't handle any more of them, this is a good alternative to making your deck worse.

[Seprix]

This is a higher skill card. I really like this Event, actually.

[jomini]

Setting up the next hand and controlling the reshuffle with a Counting House deck really is amazing. I recently played a Kingdom with Counting House, Beggar and Scouting Party. After the second reshuffle, every turn was CH, province, scouting party enough times to force the reshuffle before drawing (with all the copper still in play) and put the other CH on top.

But I do have to point out a couple of problem quotes:

3. Deck control for Chouse decks. Dump the coppers, setup Hamlet/ChouseX2

5. Being really mean after your last Possession turn (double Pillage for $2, joy; pretty much nothing but dead draw for $4).

Playing multiple Scouting Parties doesn't let you set up more than 2 cards on top of the deck. When you play the second one, you're looking at the top five cards, which include the two you just put back! You can't set up 3-card combos, and you can't stack 4 cards on a Possession turn.

Sure you can, just track your deck. You can drastically increase the odds because you know the cards you put back. If you have just one card you want to retain, you can use a second Sparty will relative safety. Knowing the last few cards on your deck goes a long way. Is it absolute? No. But you choose to take the second Sparty or not so you can get some very nice odds going. As far as Possession, again the point is that you choose to go for the second Sparty, this means that you can go past killer hands like Minion x4 until you do set up some nice dead draw. You need insanely high component density to get around worst 2 of 7 + 3 random.

[Roadrunner7671]

Another thought: Scouting Party isn't even that good. I pmayed an IRL game with liopoli and some non-forum user (who was pretty good). They both bought Scouting Party pretty much every turn, and seeing as the board was a Witch/Cultist/Trader/Save/Colony game, their buying power really suffered.

In the version that I remember, I never bought Scouting Party and tied Liopoli.

But this does not compare favorably to Scout.

[Chris is me]

Another thought: Scouting Party isn't even that good. I pmayed an IRL game with liopoli and some non-forum user (who was pretty good). They both bought Scouting Party pretty much every turn, and seeing as the board was a Witch/Cultist/Trader/Save/Colony game, their buying power really suffered.

In the version that I remember, I never bought Scouting Party and tied Liopoli.

But this does not compare favorably to Scout.

What a world we live in. There's a card with Scout in its name that everyone seems to like EXCEPT Roadrunner. How times have changed.

[eHalcyon]

Another thought: Scouting Party isn't even that good. I pmayed an IRL game with liopoli and some non-forum user (who was pretty good). They both bought Scouting Party pretty much every turn, and seeing as the board was a Witch/Cultist/Trader/Save/Colony game, their buying power really suffered.

In the version that I remember, I never bought Scouting Party and tied Liopoli.

But this does not compare favorably to Scout.

What about in the version that they remember?

Tied for first or tied for second?  If first, that shows that it's pretty good.  If it were Scout, they would have just lost outright!  If tied for second... well, a Scouting Party player won so...?

[liopoil]

In the version I remember, I only got scouting party occasionally just when I had an extra 2 coins. I got Save every turn. And I would have won if I had actually tried to end the game, or the third player was doing better. The game dragged on like 10 more turns than it naturally would because I just kept blindly greening and the third player's deck went nowhere. So Roadrunner pulled a crazy comeback and tied with me for first.

[ackmondual]

Since Scouting Party gives you +1 Buy, you can use it multiple times so long as you have the coins.  If you miss a Tunnel the first time, you're more likely to be able to hit a Tunnel, or more of them the 2nd time in-a-row

[Chris is me]

I have no idea why Roadrunner hates a card that's called Scout, is actually good, and hat I've bought every time it's appeared online at least once a game. You're basically paying to cycle faster, and that's fantastic. I love skipping 3 green cards with this in the late game too.