Dominion > Dominion Articles
Shepherd
markusin:
--- Quote from: faust on February 20, 2018, 08:32:19 am ---
--- Quote from: markusin on February 20, 2018, 08:18:28 am ---I disagree with the tactical remark that you don't want to add Shepherd to a deck that isn't Shepherd based to start with after greening begins. If you are ever at the point where your stop cards are minimal and the only stop cards you are adding are green cards, then Shepherd is convenient on a spare $4.
--- End quote ---
I guess my point is, in this case you really should have gone for the Shepherd deck to begin with.
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Possibly this is true in a lot of cases. Sometimes though, there is a compelling reason to prioritize villages or something rather than going all out on Shepherds. You mention this in the article though.
I agree that Shepherd in itself is not a great engine enabler, but it can be a great late game include to add failsafe redundancy or overdraw to your engine. In fact, your second and third paragraph in the tactics section are kind of at odds with each other. The second paragraph talks about how you can profit from overdraw, but then the third paragraph discounts Shepherd in an engine because you "probably didn't need the extra draw". Does the engine "need" the extra draw? Maybe not. Can it profit from the extra draw? Absolutely when we are talking about a single $4 buy.
Screwyioux:
I have a few points of contention here, though I did enjoy the article.
When you say a "Shepherd deck," to me that implies that you're focusing on Shepherd as your means of winning the game.
The only payload to be gained from shepherd is drawing a card off your greens. I say card and not cards because you're also discarding one. Yes, the green was probably useless for your turn, but you've only increased your hand size by one, so the effect of Shepherd is really draw one sift one for each green.
I would almost never consider adding extra green cards to my deck simply to draw off Shepherd. That's worse than adding coppers to your deck just because you can draw them with Apothecary. In other words, Shepherd doesn't reward you for being dense with green cards, it mitigates the punishment of it.
So how would a "shepherd deck" go about winning the game? That would rely on the (somewhat weak) draw it enables. So what are you drawing into? As you mentioned, most of the strong action cards that constitute mid to endgame payload don't fit all that well into the deck you're describing for reliability reasons, so most of the time that deck relies on treasures for payload. A few shepherds here and there probably fit decently into a big money deck, but the support is mediocre, and the deck probably produces a similar score with or without Shepherd.
If Shepherd is akin to anything, it's Crossroads. It mitigates the punishment of being dense with green cards and provides you a marginal benefit to save your turn. In fact, Crossroads is likely to enable a much stronger deck than shepherd does.
The similarities continue in that the things that actually make Shepherd good are the same things that make Crossroads good-- mostly hand seeding and to-hand gaining (think Gear, Cobbler, Save).
In conclusion, I don't think the Shepherd split will be significant on very many games (in fact, I rarely expect to see the pile run out without some gimmick encouraging it), as Shepherd doesn't enable any road to victory in and of itself, it's a decent support card that you'll sometimes pick up over silver.
trivialknot:
While the article is not poorly written, I flatly disagree with many of the specific factual claims in it. For example...
-A pure Shepherd deck needs more green than Shepherds, so I don't agree that getting shepherds is "the more important thing to focus on".
-Shepherd is a good engine enabler.
-It's not clear to me that you need to add a green card for every stop card you gain in a shepherd deck. And even if true, I don't see how this is worse than having to add a village/smithy pair for every two stop cards you put in a village/smithy deck.
-I fail to see how village + terminal draw is better for playing terminal payload than village + Shepherd.
-While handsize attacks hurt Shepherd decks, it's not clear to me that it hurts more than when playing a BM or village/smithy engine.
-Adding a Shepherd to a deck when it starts greening is good in many situations when you're drawing most of your deck. It is not comparable to Scout.
Now it's possible that I'm wrong on each and every point. I really don't know. But the problem is your article didn't persuade me of anything, because it doesn't offer evidence of any kind.
trivialknot:
I scanned through some Dominion streams for games with Shepherd, and here are a bunch:
Mic Qsenoch vs LuciferousPeridot
Seprix vs Jimmmy
Seprix vs vsiewnar
Seprix vs Tracer
aku chi vs Gazbag
aku chi vs Gazbag
Mic Qsenoch vs Burning Skull
vsiewnar vs ehunt
I'm not saying the article needs to have a bunch of case studies, but maybe this will help in figuring out what the article should say in the first place.
I haven't watched most of the videos but it seems like players buy Shepherd in almost every game, and often pile them out. I only found one game where players ignored Shepherd.
Chappy7:
--- Quote from: trivialknot on February 20, 2018, 11:32:04 am ---
-While handsize attacks hurt Shepherd decks, it's not clear to me that it hurts more than when playing a BM or village/smithy engine.
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I feel like it probably hurts a bit worse because in a village smithy engine, you can discard and junk you have and keep village smithy. With Shepherd, you have to discard good stuff and keep your green just so you can discard that green to draw other stuff. Say you have Village Smithy 2 estates and a copper. Discard estates, play village then smithy, end up with 5 cards and an action left. With Shephard 2x extate 2x copper, you'd discard coppers when attacked, then on your turn play shepherd, discard estates, end up with only 4 cards in hand.
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