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[DG]

I was going to post on a recent thread something about the mandarin being one of the most difficult cards in Dominion. What an opportunity to create a new thread about difficult cards instead! When talking about difficult cards I suppose we're looking at cards that

- Can easily be worse than treasure in the wrong deck
- Are hard to judge whether they provides value or not
- Need the right partner cards in the deck or kingdom
- Have unusual uses that need new insight in play
- Need careful card play when in hand
- Are easy to buy at the wrong time or in the wrong quantities
- Have confusing rules issues (hopefully not many of those)

I started from the Mandarin so that will be my nomination. What do you think is a difficult card?

[ecq]

Develop

[Lekkit]

Trade Route and Young witch confuses a lot of new players since they refer to tokens or cards that are explained later on the card.

I would like to nominate all the famous trap cards, like City, Alchemist and to some degree Nobles.

[Morgrim7]

Posession, Golem, Outpost, King's Court, Black Market

[RisingJaguar]

Develop

Yeah nobody understand this card well.  It's a horrible early trasher, but who has a $3 turn in mid game often to buy this? Most difficult card.

[brokoli]

Horn of plenty and trade route were the most difficult cards to understand for me.
I agree about Mandarin and Develop, too.

[Young Nick]

Chancellor? It sucks, but it sucks less than most people think. Having said that, if you don't think it sucks, you probably buy it too often.

[def]

Apothecary.

[O]

Trade Route
Develop
Mandarin
Golem

[WheresMyElephant]

I would like to nominate all the famous trap cards, like City, Alchemist and to some degree Nobles.

I'd add Shanty Town. I'm willing to bet everyone here went through the phase where you try to construct a Village/Smithy style engine that somehow functions despite having so few Actions that your Shanties regularly go off.

Hell, from all outward appearances this is the intended purpose of the card. Both the Village-style name and the big bold "+2 Actions" at the top followed by a "special ability" just scream out "Use me as a Village, it'll feel great! Suckers!"

Then after that comes the phase where you just think it's a crappy card (or at least I did). Finally you read about or stumble upon the idea of using it as a cheap Lab. That's when you realize it isn't named for a type of Village: it's named for the place where scientists can best set up a Laboratory for their insane and unethical experiments.

[Jorbles]

I don't necessarily agree with the qualifiers, some cards that are clearly better than treasure are still misplayed constantly, and difficult to use properly. (Governor for instance)

Edit: That said I still think Develop is probably the most difficult and vote for that.

[Robz888]

Has to be Governor. I constantly see people using it for cards, which is a really bad way to use it unless you're going to end the game or play Militia. The consequence is that you give your opponent an awesome hand.

But even when used optimally--gaining Golds and then remodeling them into Provinces--it's still difficult to figure out exactly when to what. Three Provinces left... can I end it? I have two Governors... should I use one for cards, hoping to draw another Governor and another Gold? Wait, I'll Governor a Silver into a Duchy! Oh no, my opponent had an Expand in hand.

[Davio]

Embargo?

Especially when you open 5/2 and the 5 is something you may want multiple copies of.
Even if it's something like Lab. Do you Embargo it and deny your opponent this good card or do you trust your early hit will help give you an advantegeous split. What will be better in the end?

Embargo the Provinces when you're ahead and stalling or when you're behind and need your opponent to stall?

[Mean Mr Mustard]

Chancellor and Shanty Town aren't difficult, just relegate them to non-terminal engines.  Develop and Transmute need serious Kingdom support and are much trickier.  Personally, I feel that Alchemy in general is the toughest expac to master;  I see people misplaying the power cards all the time and also ignoring Philosopher's Stone and Transmute on boards that support them.

There are a lot of engine cards in this game that take some experience to learn to play well, but once you do it isn't too hard.  Minion, Hunting Party, Governor and Scrying Pool, etc.  While having a pretty steep learning curve, once mastered they all behave relatively consistently and the choices they offer become pretty automatic.

Apothecary, yay.  Even now, when many many people have gotten very good at Dominion, I feel really confident that I can outplay most with this card.  So I guess it gets my vote.  Or Horn of Plenty.

[gman314]

This was already touched on with the comment about Shanty Towns being like labs and the comment about using them in a non-terminal engine, but Shanty Town seems to me like you could build your deck around it and only it and draw a whole bunch of cards. Maybe. If you're lucky. And then, it would benefit, logistics of getting it aside, from Diadem. Unless you  have some sort of terminal in your deck. I think you'd want it to be non-drawing. Hey, maybe Mandarin could go here! But really, I haven't tried this at all.

Regarding Develop, it really just needs the board. My brother won a game (IRL) by using develop to increase his deck size and win with Gardens since it was the only card in the game increasing your number of cards. (No plus buys, no gain cards, a whole whack of trashers). In the same game, we noticed an interesting combo with Develop and Expand: Develop a Gold into a Duchy and an Expand, both of which are on top of your deck. Next turn, Expand the Duchy into a Province. (In this game, some of the golds were supplied by Upgrading, Remaking or Developing Upgrades. I told you there were a lot of trashers.) That being said, I don't think develop works much of the time.

[dor]

Apothecary, yay.  Even now, when many many people have gotten very good at Dominion, I feel really confident that I can outplay most with this card.  So I guess it gets my vote.

How do you use Apothecary well? Unless you have a specific need for coppers/potions (Alchemist, Coppersmith) or just need any kind of treasures in hand (Stables, Bank), are there other good reasons to use it?

[mnavratil]

My current new favorite way to use apothecary is the apothecary/bishop golden deck variant. Pretty much need 3 apothecaries and a bishop to be able to trash a province/gain one every turn.

Then there are also variants of the apothecary/Native village combo that Mean Mr. Mustard pioneered. The general idea is to use apothecary to look ahead and use a single native village to trap only the provinces on the mat for a super reliable deck. I am sure searching the forums for apothecary will get you all sorts of info.

And these are just scratching the surface of combos that make apothecary a good buy. Actually playing it has some interesting interactions with the reshuffle and your next hand that I certainly have yet to master.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

<a href=http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1374.msg22191#msg22191>An article</a> I wrote about Apothecary some time back.

[GreyICE]

Governor is reasonably easy.

Gain Golds early game
Remodel Estates if there's a good 4
Remodel Silvers into Governors
Buy as many damn Governors as possible

If you can get 6-7 you can set up the "one big turn" where you get 3-4 provinces.  And quick.

[Robz888]

Governor is reasonably easy.

Gain Golds early game
Remodel Estates if there's a good 4
Remodel Silvers into Governors
Buy as many damn Governors as possible

If you can get 6-7 you can set up the "one big turn" where you get 3-4 provinces.  And quick.

How is that reasonably easy? All those things conflict with each other (and it's never easy to get 7 of a type of card that most skilled players will fight you for). Personally, Remodeling Estates seems like a complete waste of time--you can't gain Golds if you are Governoring your Estates... and your opponent gets to trash his Coppers outright, or turn Estates into Silvers. Same thing, sort of, with Remodeling Silvers. You need the Golds before you bother with the Remodeling. By the time you are Remodeling, do you want more Governors more than Gold into Province?

In addition to all this, what I find complicated about Governor is figuring out whether it makes sense to use Governor to draw for cards late in the game in order to use more Governors on more Golds at once. This calculation also means the penultimate Province could be, like, the 4th Province.

On top of that, the card completely changes with heavy trashing assistance to speed it up dramatically (Mint, Chapel), or with the presence of a discard Attack (Militia, Margrave).

Maybe it's not open heart surgery, but it has to be one of the 5 or so most difficult cards to use correctly.

[sitnaltax]

Trade Route is my #1. Sometimes I buy it and never make really adequate use of it; sometimes I neglect it and my opponent somehow uses that single-trash to make some unbelievable engine.

Apothecary is the other one; usually I just avoid it, but I rarely see my opponents buy it either. A lot of folks on this forum seem to like it, but I'm always very nervous about buying a Potion unless I'm convinced that I have to.

[PerdHapley]

In addition to all this, what I find complicated about Governor is figuring out whether it makes sense to use Governor to draw for cards late in the game in order to use more Governors on more Golds at once. This calculation also means the penultimate Province could be, like, the 4th Province.

This is why Governor was my instant reaction to this. So much of it comes down to the decisions you make in the last few turns (starting at ~4 Provinces left sounds right), and by the time you get there you have to be extremely aware of what is left in your deck to draw into AND your opponents' deck, and if you don't make the correct decisions, you can screw up everything in one turn. In a lot of Governor games, that important turn can be like, turn 11. That is SO fast, way too fast to be making any mistakes.

[dor]

My current new favorite way to use apothecary is the apothecary/bishop golden deck variant. Pretty much need 3 apothecaries and a bishop to be able to trash a province/gain one every turn.

Then there are also variants of the apothecary/Native village combo that Mean Mr. Mustard pioneered. The general idea is to use apothecary to look ahead and use a single native village to trap only the provinces on the mat for a super reliable deck. I am sure searching the forums for apothecary will get you all sorts of info.

And these are just scratching the surface of combos that make apothecary a good buy. Actually playing it has some interesting interactions with the reshuffle and your next hand that I certainly have yet to master.

Thanks, that was very enlightening

[timchen]

Coppersmith. Maybe the OP can teach me a thing or two.

[Piemaster]

Horn of Plenty gets my vote.  It seems the different between playing it well and playing it slightly suboptimally seems to get magnified immensely, more than with any other card.  You need to be able to look at the board and judge how many different cards you will be able to reliably play per turn, because the difference between using it to by a $4 and a $5 (or a $5 and a $6) could be enormous.  And then there's the whole period towards the end of the game where you are wondering if you should be sacking them for Provinces where you can or buying more engine pieces to give yourself the megaturn later on.

By the way, we had a similar discussion a while back here - http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1387.0