baker is a great BM card, actually. there's been a major shift in BM thinking that i think hasn't reached some of f.ds yet. to explain:
something many of the top players have figured out by now, that took me a while to catch up on, is that most non-drawing BM is better than most terminal draw BM. i had always thought it was the other way around, but the simulators have uncovered some pretty shocking results. did you know that dungeon-BM beats embassy-BM if both open 4/3? or that navigator-BM beats smithy-BM? or that swamp hag-BM beats cultist-BM?
i think a big reason for this is that the non-drawing strategies give you a lot more flexibility, since you have a far lower risk of terminal collision. you can add other helpful supporting players like haven, scary endgame weapons like salvager, or even a bit of early trashing! the terminal draw strategies are forced to be monolithic, which is how we had long thought BM should be played...but we're now learning that optimal BM has more room for variety and adaptation to game state than the conventional wisdom would tell you.
baker is tremendous in this regard since it's non-terminal. you get flexibility with the amount of money you spend each turn, *and* with your options for additional action cards. a double-province turn is feasible with something like bridge on the board, or any trash-for-benefit.
i noticed in my own games that i would consistently ignore baker on money boards in favor of big draw...and usually lose to opponents who rushed bakers. even mass candlestick makers would beat me in these situations! that's what initially opened my eyes to all of this, and my success has increased greatly since then.
baker-BM is a bit trickier to play correctly than most, which i think is part of why it's still underrated. here are some helpful ground rules:
- good trashing helps a lot. baker is similar to jack & gold-gainers in that regard, but trashing is even better in this case since baker is a cantrip. this makes it easier to line up the trasher with junk cards compared to most other BM strategies, and the trashing also carries more benefit since it can allow you to play 4 or 5 bakers in a turn (vs. 1 jack). and the beauty of coin tokens is that you can often trash and still get a baker that turn!
for example, on the 2-card kingdom of baker & remake, i would open remake/silver and keep the token. with junk dealer, open junk dealer/silver then rush bakers with future $5s. and so on.
- the tokens offer plenty of room for mistakes, but you can do fine sticking to some simple rules for them. if you have $3 before tokens, take a silver. if you have $4, always spend the 1 token for a baker. if you have $5, do not spend a token for gold unless the bakers are gone! baker is almost as good as gold here and is a much more limited pile, so you need to attack those. if bakers have run out and you don't feel you have enough gold to start greening yet, then you can spend 1 token for a gold. and of course, when greening, you want to use all your tokens to grab provinces early then base future token decisions on the game state. knowing when to stockpile for one more province vs. grabbing duchies now is an important skill.
- as strong as baker is, you definitely still want some gold before greening. in a very thin deck, just 1 gold is fine. without trashing you'll probably want 2-3. i used to make the mistake of not getting any gold, and that's a one-way ticket to frowntown.
- if your opponent is playing a different money strategy and ignoring bakers, you'll probably want to start greening after 5-6 bakers and the amount of gold described above.
see, who said money had to be boring~?
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Topic: The Dominion Cards Lists 2016 Edition: $5 Cards (Read 104114 times)