Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Jfrisch]

   Draw engines, Decks where you aim to draw either all or much of your deck every turn,  are the most important Deck Archetype in Dominion. In high level play, more games will be Draw engines than any other type of deck and most of the key concepts of Dominion (Tempo/buy order/endgame play) show up in crystal clear form when playing one. Understanding which cards to buy in which order and with which proportions in order to optimally build a draw engine is something that every Dominion player, regardless of their strength, struggles with. The point of this article is much more modest. I want to give an idea of when Draw Engines exists, and what Kingdom Cards you need for them to be a strategy worth pursuing. Here are 3 things you need, and two things that, while not strictly necessary, are very useful for a Draw engine.

Needs:

1. Drawing power

   A draw engine is fundamentally based on drawing lots of cards so obviously you need cards that draw in order to power a draw engine. There are two different types of draw cards which can be used for a draw engine terminal and non-terminal. If the only type of draw card is Terminal, a card that which gives you no +actions, usually it needs to give you at least 3 cards¹ (For example, Smithy or Council Room) for a draw engine to be worthwhile. Building a draw engine on Witch, Moat, Steward, or Embassy alone is a losing proposition most of the time². With non-Terminal draw, drawing 2 cards, like Lab Hunting Party and Advisor is good enough. Sometimes, even a variable number of cards like Menagerie,Herald, City Quarters, or scrying pool,  will suffice.

2. Villages (Splitters)

   Almost always when you are building a draw engine you will want villages, (cards which give extra +actions), or other cards that let you play multiple actions (i.e. non-village splitters like Throne room or Herald). These are strictly necessary when your draw is terminal and, even when draw is non-terminal, there are almost always terminal actions you want to include in your engine. Ideally your village will give you extra effects (like workers village) but, to a surprising extent, different villages are often interchangeable. Village, Farming Village,  Bazaar, and Mining village, in particular often function same way in engines.

   If you do not see a village or another splitter you will usually need a very compelling reason, along with non-terminal draw to consider going for a draw engine.

3. Payload

   Draw Engines usually take time to build up. In general for an engine to be worthwhile there  needs to be something you can do with it better than just buying a single province per turn. This usually comes in at least one of the following forms; a Kingdom Cards that lets you buy multiple cards (+buy cards), an attack that you can play almost every turn, or an alternate form of victory points. While you need at least one of these payloads, It is even better to have multiple of them (for example, having both Militia and Market in the Kingdom).

   Strictly speaking, your +buy card does not need to say +buy. Black Market, Outpost, Possession, Horn of Plenty, and Duplicate can often be used as a payoff to make your engine. Being able to buy multiple cards is often very useful for building your engine as well, only gaining a single card a turn makes engines slower to build up. In some circumstances, a remodeller can also function as a +Buy. For example, Butcher will sometimes let you gain multiple provinces a turn.

   Attacks are a classic engine enabler. By slowing down your opponent, you gain more time to build up your engine before your opponent gains 6 provinces (the amount a non-engine player needs to win). While most attacks are good for engines, Trashing attacks (like Knights) and Discard attacks (Like Militia) and the stronger deck inspection attacks (Haunted Woods and Rabble) tend to be especially good. Cursing attacks tend to be more of a mixed bag because they also substantially inhibit the engine. Engines typically require some form of trashing or cycling in the presence of cursing attacks. However when both cycling and cursing or cycling and trashing are present Draw Engines are frequently a good idea.
Alternative VP is a classic engine enabler because it is much harder for your opponent to gain half of the VP on the board when there is more of it. When +buy is  present, essentially any Kingdom VP card will help an engine to thrive (Feodum excepted). When there is no +buy present, however, the Alt-VP must be valuable enough to be worthwhile. Examples of Alt-VP which can enable engines even with a lack of +buy are Castles/Fairgrounds/Colony/Conquest and Distant lands. The key point here, is that each of them will give 4 or more VP per card. (Duke, while theoretically enough points, is often too slow with a single buy for an engine to be worthwhile). Cards which give VP Tokens, like Monument and Bishop, are usually engine enablers to. Goons in particular deserves to be mentioned because Goons draw engines are almost always worthwhile whenever both a village and draw card are present.

Wants:

The following, while not strictly necessary for a draw engine, are very often useful for determining whether it is worth going for.

1. Trashing/cyclers:
   The principal difficulty with most draw engines is your initial cards. For a draw engine to be effective you need to be able to consistently play a village and a draw card from your starting hand. Coppers and Estates, simply put, get in the way. Trashing these cards gets them out of the way permanently and indeed even very weak trashers (like Remodel or Trade Route) can help enable engines. Non-terminal trashers (like forager or Rat Catcher)  or cards that trash more than one card (Like Amulet,Chapel or Steward) are very strong engine enablers. In general, when there is a non-terminal or multi-card trasher, along with the 3 necessary Draw engine components, a Draw Engine will be the best strategy.

   Cyclers, (cards which draw more than 1 card, but also discard at least 1), often function similarly to trashers, although they are generally weaker. Warehouse, Dungeon, Stables, and Cellar are examples of Cycling cards which will help you build an engine. Even cards which don’t discard from your hand can sometimes function like cyclers if they let you discard cards from the top of your deck (Wandering Minstrel and Cartographer are examples)

2:A way to get multiple engine components

   As mentioned earlier, it is harder to build an engine if you can only gain 1 engine piece per turn. Being able to quickly acquire many is therefore a huge boon. Gainers, for example Workshop, Ironworks ,Artisan, and Horn of Plenty, are an obvious and effective way to help build an engine. Remodelers (Remodel/Butcher/Salvager etc) are also effective at gaining a few cheap engine pieces and are helpful as trashers as well. Price decreasers (Bridge Troll/Bridge/Quarry/Highway) also are very useful for this purpose if plus buy is available on the board (as is always the case with Bridge and Bridge Troll).


When to Go for Draw engines:

   Draw engines,are the most powerful, and most played Deck type. Figuring out whether or not to go for a draw engine is very difficult and even the very best players regularly make mistakes. The following advice is thus, by its very nature, limited and often wrong. There will be exceptions where you should ignore it.

   First of all do not for a draw engine unless all 3 of the necessary components are present.
   When all 3 components are present and strong trashing is also present, go for the draw engine. When all 3 components are present, there is cycling, and there are gainers, go for the engine. When all 3 components are present and there is either cycling or ways to gain cheap engine components , and multiple types of payloads (i.e. attacks and multiple gains/ attacks and Alt VP)   go for the draw engine. When there are not cheap ways to gain multiple engine components and  there is not trashing or cycling, go for the engine only if there is a large potential payout (like Goons,Kings Court, or Colony) or if all three payouts are present along with high quality engine components (fishing village or royal carriage for example). Finally if in doubt, go for the draw engine because you will learn more if you do.


*1 Technically 2.5 cards per turn is fine (Ranger being the example). Also the cards drawn don’t all need to be in the same turn. Haunted Woods and Wharves are great for engines
*2 There are exceptions. Kings Court, Goons, and fishing village in particular often suffice to make these engines worthwhile.

[Jfrisch]

This is my first article in a while. It is designed more for beginners so while Thoughts are very much appreciated corner cases are fine and I don't feel the need to mentioned. Any suggestions for things I missed would be great. (Obviously other types of cards can be great for engines but I felt like this covered the core).

[Jack Rudd]

Cultist is, or at least can be, an exception to the +2 Cards rule, because of its special ability.

[Chris is me]

I don't think villages are a need, that depends on the drawing card itself and not inherently required for strategies that draw lots of cards. A strict reading of your article would have someone skip the draw engine on a Hunting Party + cantrip payload board for example. This isn't really a small corner case but a sizeable chunk of engines and boards.

[Qvist]

While I agree that for new player they should for terminal draw with +3 cards, +2 cards terminal draw engines can be the right thing to do, mostly if both the draw card and the village can easily be gained, e.g. with a Workshop variant, or even only one of them. And of course you need trashing, but that should be obvious. Like for example if the opponent plays a BM variant with an attack, then building a Moat engine is quite a reasonable thing to do as you are save from his attack AND can attack him every turn with this specific attack as well.

[Cave-o-sapien]

While I agree that for new player they should for terminal draw with +3 cards, +2 cards terminal draw engines can be the right thing to do, mostly if both the draw card and the village can easily be gained, e.g. with a Workshop variant, or even only one of them. And of course you need trashing, but that should be obvious. Like for example if the opponent plays a BM variant with an attack, then building a Moat engine is quite a reasonable thing to do as you are save from his attack AND can attack him every turn with this specific attack as well.

Yep. I've lost games to top players who managed to build "Weenie" draw engines with decent trashing on the board.

[Jfrisch]

I agree tiny engines can be great. I mention, in the article, that exceptions exist. Most boards they aren't that worthwhile.

When heavyish trashing, convenient gainers, and a worthwhile attack are present. That's a lot of factors in their favor.

[Awaclus]

There's a lot of good advice in the article, but I think the thing about terminal +3 cards vs +2 cards isn't very accurate. If your splitter doesn't draw (Throne Room counts as drawing for this purpose), then +2 cards can't increase hand size at all and +3 cards increases it by one, but if the splitter is, say, Village, then +2 cards already increases hand size by 1 and +3 cards increases it by 2. Actually, Village+Steward is better than Necropolis+Smithy because Necropolis + 4 Coppers + Smithy on top of deck sucks whereas Village + 4 Coppers + Steward on top of deck works out.

[Jfrisch]

I don't think villages are a need, that depends on the drawing card itself and not inherently required for strategies that draw lots of cards. A strict reading of your article would have someone skip the draw engine on a Hunting Party + cantrip payload board for example. This isn't really a small corner case but a sizeable chunk of engines and boards.

I agree non-term draw no village is an important scenario. I don't think most of those decks are draw decks, play like draw decks, or share a ton of useful strategy with draw decks. Most of them seem, to me, to play like good stuff decks. (i.e. they are BMish). Trashing tends to be less important, Gold tends to be good, you don't usually want a ton of gainers. There is little point to trying to draw your own deck.

Horn of Plenty Gives can give exceptions. Highway can give exceptions and Groundskeeper can give exceptions. But I stand by my point.
1. What payload do you imagine for a HP+cantrip deck? HP terminal silver usually plays as better to me. I don't agree that HP spam is much like a draw deck either. (Trashing is unimportant, you usually don't want gainers, usually go for single province).

[aku_chi]

I don't think villages are a need, that depends on the drawing card itself and not inherently required for strategies that draw lots of cards. A strict reading of your article would have someone skip the draw engine on a Hunting Party + cantrip payload board for example. This isn't really a small corner case but a sizeable chunk of engines and boards.

I agree non-term draw no village is an important scenario. I don't think most of those decks are draw decks, play like draw decks, or share a ton of useful strategy with draw decks. Most of them seem, to me, to play like good stuff decks. (i.e. they are BMish). Trashing tends to be less important, Gold tends to be good, you don't usually want a ton of gainers. There is little point to trying to draw your own deck.

There exist plenty of kingdoms where the optimal strategy involves trashing down and drawing your deck and playing a single terminal.  For an obvious example, consider a kingdom with Governor, Militia (or any handsize reducer), and Forager (or any non-terminal trasher).  If you aren't drawing your deck each turn, you will lose to someone who does.  These kingdoms aren't even that rare.  I estimate that ~10% of the draw engines I play are constrained to 1 terminal action.  And ~5-10% more are constrained to 2-3 terminal actions (Necropolis, Crossroads, Tactician, contested Sauna, contested Encampment, Prince).  So, I recommend moving the villages section to the "Wants" bucket.

[Chris is me]

I don't think villages are a need, that depends on the drawing card itself and not inherently required for strategies that draw lots of cards. A strict reading of your article would have someone skip the draw engine on a Hunting Party + cantrip payload board for example. This isn't really a small corner case but a sizeable chunk of engines and boards.

I agree non-term draw no village is an important scenario. I don't think most of those decks are draw decks, play like draw decks, or share a ton of useful strategy with draw decks. Most of them seem, to me, to play like good stuff decks. (i.e. they are BMish). Trashing tends to be less important, Gold tends to be good, you don't usually want a ton of gainers. There is little point to trying to draw your own deck.

Horn of Plenty Gives can give exceptions. Highway can give exceptions and Groundskeeper can give exceptions. But I stand by my point.
1. What payload do you imagine for a HP+cantrip deck? HP terminal silver usually plays as better to me. I don't agree that HP spam is much like a draw deck either. (Trashing is unimportant, you usually don't want gainers, usually go for single province).

This is quite the opposite of true - trashing is more important, gold is worse in these decks, they play less like BM than your average Village / Smithy does, etc.

Sorry for the short post, at work for now

[Jfrisch]

There exist plenty of kingdoms where the optimal strategy involves trashing down and drawing your deck and playing a single terminal.  For an obvious example, consider a kingdom with Governor, Militia (or any handsize reducer), and Forager (or any non-terminal trasher).  If you aren't drawing your deck each turn, you will lose to someone who does.  These kingdoms aren't even that rare.  I estimate that ~10% of the draw engines I play are constrained to 1 terminal action.  And ~5-10% more are constrained to 2-3 terminal actions (Necropolis, Crossroads, Tactician, contested Sauna, contested Encampment, Prince).  So, I recommend moving the villages section to the "Wants" bucket.

Its definitely a fair point. These decks exists and aren't vanishingly rarely. (The case with multiple terminal actions feels different though, I would definitely consider having encampment or crossroads on the board having a village.). I'll add a paragraph talking about it later.

taking it out of needs and into wants feels like a bad idea though. None of the needs are, strictly speaking, needs. (Even card draw, you can play a draw your deck engine with sufficient trashing).

[trivialknot]

Village/moat isn't a very good engine without support is that you need 5 village/moat pairs just to draw your starting deck, and more to draw any other stop cards you're using as payload.  So in a 2 player game, you basically run out of components before it becomes good.

But it's okay with support, such as sifting or trashing.  If you can cycle through or trash your starting cards, ~8 stop cards worth of payload is plenty.  For instance, Village/Oracle is pretty effective.

Also, if you're mentioning the drawbacks of a +2 card engine, it would make sense to also mention the drawbacks of handsize-decreasing splitters (e.g. Necropolis, Villa, Festival, Squire, Inn, Hamlet, CoTR, and Fishing Village). 

[crj]

Early in getting to grips with Dominion, I devised a way of thinking about things which was helpful to me at the time, and still pretty useful.

When thinking how particular cards might enable a draw-based engine, don't look at the raw +Card and +Action on the cards; look at the "cooked" figure: subtract 1 from each, to give the net change in the number of actions available and cards in hand that playing it will effect.

Viewed that way, a non-drawing terminal Action is -1 Card, -1 Action. A cantrip is neutral. A village is +1 Action. A Laboratory is +1 Card.

Moat is -1 Action, +1 Card and Smithy is -1 Action, +2 Cards. It's now clear that Village+Moat gives +1 Card where Village+Smithy gives +2 Cards. You'd have to play Village+Moat+Village+Moat to get the same benefit as Village+Smithy.

If you also factor in that having $5 to spend isn't a constant, flat 25% trickier than having $4, and that a single card like Laboratory is more dependable than the risk of drawing a hand with Moat but no Village or Village but no Moat, the relative prices of certain cards begins to make a lot more sense...

[faust]

Cultist is, or at least can be, an exception to the +2 Cards rule, because of its special ability.

Yeah, but then Cultist isn't really terminal either.

[DG]

Control can be a factor in allowing some engines to function. There's a wide variety of ways you can provide deck control but there are a lot of ways to set up the next hand with scheme, summon, royal seal, develop, herald, gear, transmogrify, tactician and so on.

[Beyond Awesome]

I like the article. I think a lot of people here make some valid points, so I would try and incorporate those ideas or reword parts of your article.

[pacovf]

I really enjoyed the article. I am really enjoying all the articles coming in right now, in fact. I hope it continues, because I am finding them immensely helpful!

[cascadestyler]

Worth mentioning that attacks (particularly discard attacks) are a very good boost to the power of a draw engine. One reason is that the drawing player can play their attacks more frequently as their deck cycles more quickly. Another is that a draw engine player is much less heavily hit by a discard attack before they start their turn than is a money-based player. Attacks also prolong the game generally, thus giving the draw engine player more time to set up and get going. That last point is also why alt-VP and victory token options favour draw engines. They will prolong the game, helping the slower-starting but late-charging draw engine. A route to victory that avoids buying provinces at all is also basically an auto-win for a draw engine against anyone playing a money strategy, because any money deck is dead as a door by the time it's nearly managed to deplete the province pile with no help from the engine player catching up.

The first time I ever saw Wild Hunt I didn't really read it properly and thought it looked super-weak and basically only useful if you fancied a $5 smithy (which isn't never). A savagely fast-starting BM option was on the board (can't remember what, but Jack or Embassy or one of the real humdingers) and I got to a 39-0 lead (6 Province buys) fairly quickly and then my opponent finally got his ludicrously complicated Wild Hunt / Royal Carriage / Crown / Upgrade / God Knows What Else / Some Mad Event I Hadn't Seen Before (he pretty much purchased every card on the board to make it work - this was a very non-obvious engine) strategy to fire off properly and he just raked in the VP tokens every turn while I just drew a load of nice $7 hands and punched the desk. I got one more province after a few turns which put the scare in him slightly and he played his ludicrous engine very slowly and carefully (for some reason he had to keep buying junk and trashing it each turn and it was all very impressive) while I just caught up on some emails and rolled in for my 2-second turns every few minutes, and he won comfortably. It was a stunning comeback but, to be fair, he was never actually behind. I may have been nearly 40 points up but failure was basically built into my strategy from the start by the presence of Wild Hunt.

[Jfrisch]

I have a paragraph about  Alt-VP, including VP chips,  and a paragraph about Attacks in the "Payload section". Is there a particular point I'm missing that you would like me to add?

[cascadestyler]

So you do. My bad :p