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Author Topic: Nocturne Initial Impressions  (Read 53045 times)

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Jeebus

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Re: Nocturne Initial Impressions
« Reply #175 on: December 07, 2017, 10:19:12 am »
+1

Exorcist - Another card I thought would be strong, but I might reconsider.  It seems like it should be at least as good as Raze, but it's slowed down because it costs $4, and you don't get Will'o'wisp until the next shuffle.  I think you'd rather have a trasher that gave you economy instead of spirits.

Exorcist is turning into one of my favorite cards. So far I've won every game with it by opening with it, even in the face of other trashers. Too early to tell if it's a coincidence though. One Exorcist has gotta be better than one Raze though.

werothegreat

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Re: Nocturne Initial Impressions
« Reply #176 on: December 07, 2017, 10:49:37 am »
+2

I think Raider is being heavily underrated.  If you can trash away your Coppers, the Attack is quite powerful.
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jonaskoelker

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Re: Nocturne Initial Impressions
« Reply #177 on: December 07, 2017, 12:40:10 pm »
+1

If you can trash away your Coppers, the Attack is quite powerful.

Obvious statement is obvious: playing your Coppers is optional—as anyone who has played at least one Grand Market game probably knows.

Of course, if you can't trash your Coppers your ways of playing Raider reliably are twofold: either draw your deck and give up $7 worth of payload, or play something money-ish and have lots of Raiders (and abstain from playing your Copper). Neither of those seem particularly attractive.

The worthwhile point I can make, based purely on speculation, is that when you're drawing your deck but still have a few Coppers left (thanks to the trasher being slow, say), you should consider the trade-off between playing them vs. hitting harder with Raider.

though... if you're playing an engine mirror with a reasonably high payload-to-wheel card ratio, given that Raider is a Night card, I would think its most likely effect would be to make your opponent discard a payload card, which essentially means you make them build where they can overdraw their deck by one card.

More guessing time: in engine vs. money, if you can limit your payload to Gold and Raider, and have at least one Gold, the most likely effect of Raider is to make them discard either a Gold or their Smithy variant. Both of those effects seem like they should slow your opponent down quite a bit.

If anyone's experience confirms or refutes this, please share :)
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gloures

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Re: Nocturne Initial Impressions
« Reply #178 on: December 10, 2017, 02:01:24 am »
+9

I was initially a little skeptical about Nocturne, a good few cards seemed a bit like duds and Boons/Hexes seem to introduce to big of a random element. After the last few weeks of actually playing with Nocturne I can safely say that my skepticism is gone. Some Nocturne cards offer great tactical choices, and while there are some random elements, they are not as prominent as I initially suspected and ,also, even though, I believe there might be duds, a few of the cards I thought lowly of have grown on me over the last days, and most important of all I'm having a lot of fun playing in kingdoms with these cards!
So... After these few weeks playing I'll give my initial insights on these cards, do keep in mind that they might still be terribly wrong. I got carried away and decided to go a little more in depth here, sorry for the wall of text!

Druid- A combination of many cards in one, but it always has a buy so at the very least it can work like a Ruined Market...
I would divide the Boons in three categories, there's a few of them which make Druid an actual desirable card, a few of them that provide great support, they won't be the reason that you buy Druid, but are great boons to have as an option either to potentially save you from a dud, or to do something useful when you don't really want to do anything else and there's also a few boons that just make you sad to have as an option:
Makes you buy Druid Boons: Earth, Flame, Swamp
Support Boons: River, Sun, Wind, Field, Forest
Makes you Sad Boons: Moon, Sea, Sky, Mountain

Faithful Hound- You will either be very sad by having to use this as your draw, or you will use this in combos. Luckily there are quite a few nice combos for this doggy. Sifting cards stand out since you can make a nice increased iniatial handsize which these cards love. Forum stands out even more since  buys might otherwise cause some trouble. There are other tricks like Quest and Fool, but it's still not a great card.

Guardian - This actually plays somewhat different from Lighthouse, the timing on the buys is pretty crucial and not something I can claim to have really gotten the hang of yet. It's good to remember that it can't be drawn dead and that even without attacks the gain to hand can be useful in a late game dud.

Monastery- This is a very strong trasher, there are some nice tricks to do with it and in the right deck it can probably deal even with the most oppressive junkers. Do remember to trash the coppers from play tough...   

Pixie- The fact that you can wait till you find something you want makes Pixie a very nice card. Definitely one of the best 2-cost cantrips. Goat is nuts, but do keep in mind that it very often can help the Money strategy more than the Engine! One popular misconception is that money does not need trashing, but the actual problem is that money has a big tempo problem if going for trashing, since buys and terminal space is very limited, and good money is all about pressing really hard to keep an early lead. This is the reason that X/Trade is pretty much the best money variant for almost any X, with Trade money does not lose tempo by trashing.

Tracker- Topdecking is really nice, only reason Royal Seal gets so much hate is because the competition at 5 is so stiff, (and when it isn't then topdecking probably also isn't as nice), the boon can also be a nice bonus. If you aren't to pressed for terminal space having a Tracker will frequently be nice, better yet that since it comes with Pouch you will always have +buy available which can really reduce the opportunity cost of buying a Tracker. Pouch is a copper with a buy, when there's trashing available you will have to get a good reading on the kingdom to know if it's important to keep this or not.

Changeling- Really fun card, it's very good somewhat often, tough you'll probably won't end up buying it so much. Always keep an eyes on piles! When Changeling is good, there's a nice chance that it's pile will go down really fast, which in turn also causes the piles of it's most likely targets to go down fast, I have seen quite a few games where Changeling pileouts came out somewhat unexpectedly.

Fool- I think this might be a dud. Mostly because I don't think Lost in the Woods is really worth it, quite a few of the boons don't really love a 4 card hand. Most of the times I ended up getting this is because I felt like Lucky Coin had already given all the Silvers I needed and there was simply nothing better at 3. The on play effect is quite strong though and Lost in Woods grows in valor in slogs, but definitely one of the weaker cards here. Lucky Coin changes quite a bit how you approach openings, since it generally can provide all the early eco you need. It also really speeds up the game, specially Money based ones.

Ghost Town- A cool village, the +1 card at next turn definitely helps reliability a lot and the gain to hand makes it so sometimes you buy this even though you don't really need a village (specially in the endgame). The fact that it only gives +Actions every other turn can make it a bit wonky to build engines with this as your only village , specially if the pile is contested (even more so in multiplayer I guess). In general tough if a pile needs to be contested to make a strategy not work that's a testament to the strength of said card.

Leprechaun- this is a card that has grown on me, the Hexes don't hit as hard as I thought and Gold gaining can be quite nice. in a good engine this is very strong , but it can be good Gold gainer in slogs/money.

Night Watchman- A stronger card than I thought it would be, like Tracker does to Royal Seal, this shows that the biggest problem with Cartographer is the opportunity cost involved with the $5 price tag. Can set up future hands really nicely and speeds up cycling, the gain to hand is big since it has late game uses and can set up some really good early hands. Do keep in mind that it;s a stop card though so be careful to not go overboard with them.

Secret Cave- Secret cave can be a very good card if spiking an early 6 or 7 is really important, otherwise you will probably just get this as a $3 cantrip if you want to avoid Silver or to make it easier to activate your Magic Lamp. Magic Lamp is an awesome really fun card! And it's very very strong, you should probably aim to activate this every game and do not hesitate to do so even if it means not playing some good cards. I think that this might be even stronger than Goat.

Bard- Weak. The weakest card here., no matter what Awaclus says. You're only geeting this if you really want money from actions or if you have a lot of extra terminal space and the alternative is Silver.

Blessed Village- The fact that you can choose to gain the boon in the next turn makes almost all boons useful. And a Village will be pretty much always a good card. Among the $4 villages I think it would fall somewhat in the middle. One thing, try to remember to not play extra Coppers and such if you're planning to buy of these, quite a feel boons would benefit from that copper in hand.

Cemetery- This is a really strong thrasher if there ae any gainers. Otherwise it's a cool nice thrasher, but a bit wonky. It's still very strong tough. Haunted Mirror is nice and Ghost is quite strong, but I have seem people (myself included) go to great lenght to activate this and it just seemed not worth it.

Conclave- A village that let's you skip Silver, that's the main job Conclave does. It's quite nice early and you can probably activate one or two without much trouble later on. It will have a tough time making engines work by itself, but most engines can benefit from having one.

Devil's Workshop- A strong card, but really lacks flexibility. Imps are great, but there is a point where you have too many Imps in your deck, the Gold is a nice option to have and the regular gaining is good, but not something that will make you aim to gain less cards in a turn.

Exorcist- A cool card. As a thrasher it's somewhat slow, so I wouldn't put it with the best thrashers, but, all the cards it can gain are quite strong, Estate to Wisp and Silver to Imp are both really strong effects.

Necromancer- A weird card, I'm getting more and more convinced that it actually is a really strong card. The main reason is Zombie Apprentice, since you can pretty much trash an action for a really strong effect and then have the Necromancer act as a sort of stand in for said action, with multiple Necromancers and multiple action in the trash, they can even gain a lot of flexibility. I'm still kinda of getting the hang for the timing with this tough, quite a feel times I just skipped it because it just didn't seem right, but sometimes I just went for it anyway and I still have not regretted doing so. The shared pool of actions in the trash can count against it, but like I said with Ghost Town if something has to be mirrored to be countered than it shows that it's actually a really strong in the first place. Zombie Mason can get some early trashing if you need it and Zombie Spy is just sad.

Shepherd- I'll make one hot take here. Shepherd is strong, very strong, possibly the strongest card in Nocturne. It can work both in conventional engines, being a nice early sifter/draw, and making it harder to stall in the late game, and it also works very well in it's own crazy strategy we're you just have a deck full of green and lots of Shepherds, and just draw huge amount of cards with each play of Shepherd. You will need a few other cards though... By itself Shepherd/Money is pretty bad, you might even have a game where draws works perfectly and it seems good, but you'll more often be faced with hands of Shepherd with a bunch of Coppers or just Coppers and green. Luckily though a lot of things can help this Shepherd engine, anything that can trash coppers is really good, +Buy allows picking up estates together with other components, duration draw is nuts with Shepherd, cantrip money can also really help. Now I'd say that this deck usually tends  to neither end games incredibly fast or be very reliable, but it just scores so much points... It can easily overcome a 3-5 province split, and if it's down to duchy dancing there's a big chance it will prevail, a big factor for this is Pasture. Now Pasture isn't worth much without Shepherd, Estates are worth a little more, but you will still want to trash them ASAP,  now with Shepherd there's a very good chance that this will end up worth more than a Province since green cards become actually desirable in those decks. And best of all, there a few things that match the feeling of discarding 10+ cards to Shepherd...

Skulk- Like with other Hexers I still need to figure out just how valuable is Hexing. The Gold can be quite valuable and might even make this a good opener. The +buy makes it so there will frequently want this even if it's not very good.

Cobbler- It's expensive and not very fast, but on the right board it can be really good! The extra reliability it provides is great, but there's a good chance that it will not be able to compete with the other 5's on the board. On a side note I think that Shepherd/Cobbler might be the strongest two card combo in Nocturne.

Crypt- A very unique card. It's kinda of combination of pseudo-trashing and smoothing out money between turns. It works best when you have multiple copies, and you keep one copy of Crypt in your deck while the others are set aside. I've seen quite a few decks where this card really shows it's strength...

Cursed Village- A good comparison for Cursed Village is Minion, but work as non terminal draw that leave you with a fixed number of cards, it doesn't have an attack and self-synergy like Minion, but in compensation it works a lot better with terminal cards. I think this very strong and one of the very best villages in the game. I also really love playing with this card even tough the Hex gaining can be somewhat annoying since a few Hexes hit hard and so many do absolutely nothing when you're in the buy phase.

Den of Sin- On first sight of this card, I was immediately reminded of Wharf and felt underwhelmed, well, in a way I was right, this is much weaker than Wharf I think. But most things also are... This is an pretty awesome card, the gain to hand makes this have a lot of tactical use, and all like all duration draw it's amazing for reliability, being non terminal makes it a lot easier for your deck to handle quite a few of these, and you want to do so frequently.

Idol- If you can use the cursing somewhat reliably then this will be a good card, otherwise the Boon in the buy phase is just not very strong, it's frequently useless or even harmful. It's still an non terminal curser though... Always remember to play this before your other treasures (except in some very weird edge case that I'm sure somebody can find...). This matters for a lot of the Boons you can receive.

Pooka- There are many cases in Dominion where a card is much more than the sums of it's parts, Lab is Moat + Ruined Village, but it's far better than any of these two will ever be. Pooka is a very rare (and weird) case where it kinda seems that a card is less than the sum of it's parts. +4 cards?, that's Hunting Grounds at $5, crazy right? trash a treasure? trashing always rocks! But Pooka, I guess Pooka is an ok card, far from strong. Thing is, in an engine depending on connecting Pooka + treasure  for your draw is just incredibly wonky, since you won't have much treasure at all after a little while. The fact that it comes with a Cursed Gold that it can't trash doesn't help it at all also. Still not a bad card though. As for Cursed Gold, knowing when to play and when (not) to trash it will be a big factor in pretty much any game with it.

Sacred Grove- Turns out $3 and +buy is pretty good, far from awesome though, but it's very nice payload. It's good to keep in mind that a lot of the boons (maybe even most of them) are better to receive from a 5-card starting hand then from a terminal in the middle of your turn.

Tormentor- A weakish card, gaining Imps is good, but you're not happy if that means a dud. Which mostly means you want this early.  Hexing is just not strong enough to justify buying this card unless the other options are quite weak.

Tragic Hero- This is the draw card you won't be very happy to see, but you will buy it anyway. Thing is, draw is really good, and if there's no draw probably there won't be much of an engine and Gold becomes a good card. So this is kinda of a draw card that latter becomes money, if it's the only draw, your engine will soon crumble into something moneyish, but you'll do so anyway, if there's other draw gaining one of these early is a great way to build the early stages of your engine and when you have to trash it, there's a chance that the money payload is actually quite good. A weird card, but I have really enjoyed playing with it.

Vampire- The true jack of all trades, it's a gainer, it trashes and it attacks, but doesn't excel at any of those. I would say that the gaining is the main attractive of the card, gaining 5s is just really really strong. The trashing is really good also, but does feels like it ends up arriving to late to be really strong. With other thrashers present I have felt that more often than not the trashing in bats is a cost to get back to Vampire. Hexing is (almost) always nice, but will pretty much never be the reason you get this.

Werewolf- I don't think this is one of the stronger +3 cards option.  Thing is +3 cards is already really good. The Hexing is a nice option if you draw this dead, but you won't want to not draw just to hex your opponent. Best thing I feel is that you can get a few more Werewolves than other draw cards since they still do something even after you draw your deck.

Raider- Still don't have a good feeling for this,  it's not very strong, but Ii realize how sometimes the attack can be pretty brutal, tough I still don't really know when to look for those situations very well. it has a really high cost and can be quite underwhelming most of the times

Hexes/Boons- I like Boons, they're nice little extras that can influence the game, but will not really swing the game to one side too much. Hexes also aren't that strong, one big thing about attacks in general is that you generally want to to somewhat spam them. with junkers you aim to make their deck so full of junk as to be nearly unplayable, knights try to reduce your opponents deck to just those cards that do not from 3-6 and with hand size attacks you should aim to play them every turn. Since Hexes are all over the place they end failing in reaching any of those goals, and while they can hurt, they end up being much easier to deal with than their non hexing counterparts. One thing to note is that while Boons generally do not decide games, Hexes can, specially Deluded/Envious, that while cool new attacks, if they end up properly timed, can singlehandedly turn a losing game into a winning one.

Probably no one will read this, but since I took the time to write I might as well post... If you got this far congratulations (and I hope I did not waste your time)! :p

And I also do hope I kept spelling and gramatical errors to a minimun, I wrote this a bit on a whim and I was sure that if I ended up proofreading it to much that I would never really end up posting it...
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Jeebus

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Re: Nocturne Initial Impressions
« Reply #179 on: December 11, 2017, 11:21:37 am »
+1

Pooka- There are many cases in Dominion where a card is much more than the sums of it's parts, Lab is Moat + Ruined Village, but it's far better than any of these two will ever be.

Just a note that this is wrong.

Moat + Ruined Village takes up two card slots in your hand and takes two Actions to play, while Lab takes up one slot and takes one Action. You have to look at the net effect: Lab is +1 Card, Moat is -1 Action and +1 Card, and Ruined Village is -1 Card. The net effect of Moat + Ruined Village is -1 Action. (If you play both, you will have the same number of cards as you started with, but one Action less.)

So an activated Menagerie = 2 Labs = Village + Smithy = (+2 Cards)

In Dominion a card is the sum of its parts, except for the different circumstances under which you get those parts. In the above equation, the Labs are more reliable.

gloures

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Re: Nocturne Initial Impressions
« Reply #180 on: December 11, 2017, 02:23:23 pm »
0

Pooka- There are many cases in Dominion where a card is much more than the sums of it's parts, Lab is Moat + Ruined Village, but it's far better than any of these two will ever be.

Just a note that this is wrong.

Moat + Ruined Village takes up two card slots in your hand and takes two Actions to play, while Lab takes up one slot and takes one Action. You have to look at the net effect: Lab is +1 Card, Moat is -1 Action and +1 Card, and Ruined Village is -1 Card. The net effect of Moat + Ruined Village is -1 Action. (If you play both, you will have the same number of cards as you started with, but one Action less.)

So an activated Menagerie = 2 Labs = Village + Smithy = (+2 Cards)

In Dominion a card is the sum of its parts, except for the different circumstances under which you get those parts. In the above equation, the Labs are more reliable.

Yeah, you're right of course, I worded what I meant really poorly. I wanted to say that sometimes an effect goes better together with an specific different effect than another. For example, even though Ruined Village is widely considered the worst ruined, if you add the +2 card effect to any other ruin the resulting card would be much weaker than Lab, just like adding an Action, to, for example, Pearl Diver, would result in an Village+ which i would also consider weaker than Lab. For different effects, it's also clear you could add the discard for coins effect from Vault to any other 2-cost other than Moat (or Faithful Hound) and you would have a weaker card than Vault. That's what i wanted to mean by being better than the sum of its parts.

Now in the Pooka case, you have an reasonably strong $6 card (Hunting Grounds) which gets added an generally desirable effect which is trash a treasure (I would say that I would take Moneylender over a terminal Gold in most boards) and the resulting effect is actually weaker than the original card, thus that's why I said it was weaker than the sum of it's parts...
« Last Edit: December 11, 2017, 02:25:03 pm by gloures »
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ipofanes

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Re: Nocturne Initial Impressions
« Reply #181 on: December 13, 2017, 04:34:12 am »
0

Thing is that with heavy draws you need reliable villages. I would welcome Pooka with Coin of the Realm, Villa, or maybe even Walled Village in the Kingdom. Otherwise, you need a slot for a village along with a slot for a trashable treasure in your current hand. In the case of vanilla Village in the Kingdom, I'd take Stables over Pooka mainly for the +Action.
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enfynet

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Re: Nocturne Initial Impressions
« Reply #182 on: December 13, 2017, 04:18:45 pm »
0

I'm really enjoying the Spirit cards.
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Aleimon Thimble

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Re: Nocturne Initial Impressions
« Reply #183 on: December 15, 2017, 05:27:43 am »
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Whew. So I'm back from almost a full year of hiatus, and the first thing I notice is that there's a new expansion again. My initial impression: 'Isn't that a bit too much too soon?' But I guess it makes sense if you never had that hiatus and Empires is beginning to feel pretty standard.

So I checked the cards in Nocturne, and the second thing I notice is that there are a TON of new concepts. I guess that also makes sense, since all the basic things have been done before, but that too seems a bit over the top. Dominion is getting exponentially more complicated with every expansion, even though there are still a lot of things to learn about the older expansions, at least for me.

So honestly, I'm actually sort of glad that the Dutch translation probably won't be here for another year.
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greybirdofprey

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Re: Nocturne Initial Impressions
« Reply #184 on: December 15, 2017, 08:10:42 am »
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So honestly, I'm actually sort of glad that the Dutch translation probably won't be here for another year.

The 999 games customer service told me they would print errata cards in spring, so maybe Nocturne will also happen then.

And then we'll have to wait another half year for Nocturne errata.
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