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[Yitzi]

The general consensus (e.g. the Glicko) seems to be that Remake is a good card, far better than Remodel, and the win rate seems to bear this out...but looking at what it does, I am having trouble seeing why.

Yes, it trashes an extra card each time you play it, and can "safely" trash Coppers even with no decent 2s in the kingdom, but that comes at a significant cost to building your engine:
-It turns Estates into 3s, whereas Remodel turns them into 4s.  Often, your engine needs 4s, or needs 5s and 4s provide a good way to achieve this (e.g. a Militia to slow down your opponent in the process, or a Poacher to help bring you up to 5 without adding load to your engine like a Silver would, or a Moneylender to trash Coppers while helping you get those 4-cost engine pieces).
-If you do want 3s, Remake leaves you with a 2-card hand that probably can't get them early on.  Remodel leaves you with a 3-card hand that probably can.
-And, of course, you do need payload both to help you build your engine and then to win the game with it, so more Copper trashing means you'll have to buy more Silvers or other payload cards, which both (usually) cuts into the deck control gains from Copper-trashing and slows down your engine construction.  Not by enough to make removing Coppers from your deck a bad thing, by any means, but enough to reduce its benefit.

For example, let's say you draw your Remake or Remodel once with an Estate and 3 Coppers, and once with 4 Coppers.
The Remake will, over those 3 turns, trash 3 Coppers and turn that Estate into, say, a Silver (because if you're trashing 3 Coppers, you can no longer afford anything above 4 unless you get some more coin in your deck).  It won't be able to buy anything on either of those turns.
The Remodel will turn the Estate into, say, a Smithy, buy a Village on that same turn, and then on the 4-Copper turn buy another engine piece (maybe another Smithy, maybe a Worker's Village, etc.).  It doesn't need to buy Silvers, since without Copper trashing (or with slow and coin-giving Copper trashing such as via Moneylender), drawing the deck will ensure enough coin to keep getting stuff.
So the Remake has reduced the deck size by 2 more (not counting the engine pieces), but the Remodel has 3 extra engine pieces and $1 more of payload.  Most engines should be able to get at least 2 cards of deck control with 3 engine pieces...

And in the midgame, Remake fares even worse.  A classic midgame Remodel move might be trashing a $3 to get a $5, whereas a Remake might trash a $3 for a $4 and a $4 for a $5...basically the same, except that it means that now you also sent a $4 from your hand to your discard, which is obviously a downside.

Late-game, Remake provides good pile control...but Remodel can mill the Provinces, and can turn Gold into them, so it seems that Remodel should have the advantage then too.

So how, in a typical kingdom, is Remake better than Remodel?  (There will be cases where Remodel is better, such as if you're trying to build a draw-to-X engine and absolutely need to get rid of those Coppers, but I'd think those shouldn't be common enough to have a major impact on overall strength.)

[Tiago]

I think most of it is that Remake is not really a Remodel variant, but a trasher. Remodel absolutely sucks at trashing; that's not what you buy it for unless you have no other option. Remodel is a payload card and Remake is a deck control card.

Trashing an extra card is a huge benefit. A "trash 2 cards" is already a very powerful $3-$4 cost; "trash a card" though, is terrible and rarely worth buying. The ability to trash Coppers safely is also huge. When you Remodel a Copper, you're spending a a card, action, and coin, to remove one Copper, and then either gain an Estate, in which case you shouldn't be Remodeling Coppers, or a spammable $2 cost, which usually does close to nothing.

Okay, it doesn't get $4s early, but the difference between $3 and $4 is really small and again, it's a trasher, not a gainer. Yes, after trashing 2 cards you will rarely buy something, but I will take even 2 Coppers out of my deck over most $3s. I don't think trashing with Remake at all reduces your payload; in the base case you go 3E 7C -> 3 Silver. That's $1 less of economy and 7 less stop cards. Trashing 2 Estates with Remake is equivalent to gaining FOUR Peddlers!

I honestly think $4 "Trash 2 cards" is better than Remodel. When I can do that while keeping my economy up, the card is really good.

[Yitzi]

I think most of it is that Remake is not really a Remodel variant, but a trasher. Remodel absolutely sucks at trashing; that's not what you buy it for unless you have no other option. Remodel is a payload card and Remake is a deck control card.

Trashing an extra card is a huge benefit. A "trash 2 cards" is already a very powerful $3-$4 cost; "trash a card" though, is terrible and rarely worth buying. The ability to trash Coppers safely is also huge. When you Remodel a Copper, you're spending a a card, action, and coin, to remove one Copper, and then either gain an Estate, in which case you shouldn't be Remodeling Coppers, or a spammable $2 cost, which usually does close to nothing.

Okay, it doesn't get $4s early, but the difference between $3 and $4 is really small and again, it's a trasher, not a gainer. Yes, after trashing 2 cards you will rarely buy something, but I will take even 2 Coppers out of my deck over most $3s. I don't think trashing with Remake at all reduces your payload; in the base case you go 3E 7C -> 3 Silver. That's $1 less of economy and 7 less stop cards. Trashing 2 Estates with Remake is equivalent to gaining FOUR Peddlers!

I honestly think $4 "Trash 2 cards" is better than Remodel. When I can do that while keeping my economy up, the card is really good.

"Trash 2 cards" does not seem like a very powerful $3-$4 cost.  It's strictly weaker (by a *lot*) than Chapel (which gives twice the trashing speed at barely any decrease to your ability to do anything else that turn, since a 2 card hand is already pretty useless early on) and than Steward (which gives benefit even once you run out of stuff to trash), and while those are both strong cards at $2 and $3 respectively, I don't think the weaker version would cut it at $3, and definitely not at $4.

The difference between $3 and $4 is also not really small.  Consider Village vs. Worker's Village (same difference as between Poacher when piles won't run out and Market, i.e. $4 and $5), or Poacher vs. Shop or Merchant.  Even Militia vs. Silver.

I would also take 2 Coppers out of my deck over most $3s, but if you're taking 2 Coppers out, then that means you had 4, so you would've been able to buy a $4.  I'd still often take 2 Coppers out over a $4...but it'd be a close thing, not nearly enough to justify the weaker Estate conversion.

You mention 3E 7C->3 Silver...but over the 5 turns and 3 Estate conversions it'd take I would rather turn 3E 7C->7C 4 Smithy 3 Village 1 Worker's Village.  That's $0 less and 11 (!) more deck control, plus a Buy that will come in handy later on.  It does mean a terminal-draw engine, but 11 deck control as compared to 7 is a lot even so.

Basically, I just don't see much value in trashing (in most kingdoms) other than as one way to get deck control...and it seems like the extra deck-building capability with Remodel (mostly from being able to buy something in addition to Remodelling) will (if used on engine pieces) give more deck control than the extra trashing from Remake...

(I also don't see Remodel as purely a payload card; I see it mainly as a slow and limited trasher that also helps you build your deck, doing for Estates what Moneylender does for Copper.)

[Tiago]

Card costs are not linear. There is a huge gap between and and a significant gap between and , while the difference between and is much smaller.

Anyway, you have my opinion. If you want to play some games with both I'd be happy to test these things.

[Imrahil3]

As an aside, Chapel is not $2 because it’s only worth $2; it’s $2 because is makes the game awful if it costs anything else, because opening hands are unpredictable.

Let’s say I get a 4/3 split, and you get a 5/2 split.

Chapel costs $2: You get a $5 and a Chapel. That’s a pretty good advantage to have, and if there’s a crucial $5 to have, that could occasionally win you the game. If there’s no crucial $5, you and me have pretty much identical starting hands.

Chapel costs $3 or $4. I have a great first two turns and you hate life. I buy a Chapel and my first engine piece; you buy a Chapel and nothing. Unless there’s an amazing $5 trasher like Sentry for you to buy, I have won the game.

Chapel costs $5: You win the game. You have already won the game by the time I can buy a Chapel myself.

So not only are card costs not linear, sometimes they chuck conventional power curves out the window because it’s better for gameplay in an unintuitive way.

[Awaclus]

"Trash 2 cards" does not seem like a very powerful $3-$4 cost.  It's strictly weaker (by a *lot*) than Chapel (which gives twice the trashing speed at barely any decrease to your ability to do anything else that turn, since a 2 card hand is already pretty useless early on) and than Steward (which gives benefit even once you run out of stuff to trash), and while those are both strong cards at $2 and $3 respectively, I don't think the weaker version would cut it at $3, and definitely not at $4.

Temple is usually worse than a card that just trashes two cards from your hand, people buy it all the time.

The difference between $3 and $4 is also not really small.  Consider Village vs. Worker's Village (same difference as between Poacher when piles won't run out and Market, i.e. $4 and $5), or Poacher vs. Shop or Merchant.  Even Militia vs. Silver.

That's how it generally is when you compare similar cards, because there has to be a reason why you'd buy the more expensive card when they're both in the kingdom. The difference between $4 and $5 is more obvious when you e.g. look at all the junking attacks in the game and notice how almost all of them cost $5 and the few that cost less have pretty substantial limitations to how often they can hand out junk, or only hand out Ruins.

You mention 3E 7C->3 Silver...but over the 5 turns and 3 Estate conversions it'd take I would rather turn 3E 7C->7C 4 Smithy 3 Village 1 Worker's Village.  That's $0 less and 11 (!) more deck control, plus a Buy that will come in handy later on.  It does mean a terminal-draw engine, but 11 deck control as compared to 7 is a lot even so.

The problem with having a big deck with lots of stop cards and lots of draw is that while it ~works, you're sometimes going to draw hands like 3C 2 Smithy, which is a waste of time. The smaller deck with less draw is much more consistent. This is especially obvious in the early game, where it takes some good luck to connect Villages and Smithies whereas failing to do so is pretty lame, but the thinner deck is just thinner all the time and will give you faster reshuffles and hence faster economic growth regardless of what order you draw it in.

It's also important for tempo that you're doing the effect, which itself boosts your future economy, twice as often. Perhaps the Silvers you're gaining with Remake in the worst case scenario aren't as good as the $4s you're gaining with Remodel, but the fact that you could be going into your second reshuffle with two of those Silvers and only one Estate as opposed to one $4 and two Estates is not something you can easily make up for by having a strong $4. Typically you're not that lucky, but it does happen, and if it doesn't, you're thinning your deck instead which makes it more likely to happen on the next shuffle.

[segura]

The answer to your question is simple: Copper trashing. You misevaluate massively how hood Copper trashimg is. And while e.g. Steward also does the job and later is not dead but a weak engineering piece, you do not mind the 3 Silvers Remake provides as conpensation for the loss of payload.

[Yitzi]

Card costs are not linear. There is a huge gap between and and a significant gap between and , while the difference between and is much smaller.

Is it really?  There are definitely some very strong contenders in the category (e.g. Cursers in 2p), but if you look at the *typical* $5 card, I'm not so sure it's above the typical $4 by more than the typical $4 is above the typical $3.  In Vanilla cards especially, it does seem to be a smooth curve.

And I'd actually like to test this in the simulator (say, take a simple Village/Smithy+1 Market and run a Remake-that-only-targets-starting-cards against a Remodel-that-only-targets-Estates) and see how it plays, but I'm not familiar enough with the simulator to know how to do that; maybe someone can help?  (Or maybe I'll ask on the simulator board.)

[Yitzi]

The answer to your question is simple: Copper trashing. You misevaluate massively how hood Copper trashimg is. And while e.g. Steward also does the job and later is not dead but a weak engineering piece, you do not mind the 3 Silvers Remake provides as conpensation for the loss of payload.

So maybe that's my question: Why is trashing a Copper from hand so incredibly good, when trashing a Copper from hand and using the remaining $3 to buy a Silver has the same impact on your deck (in terms of deck control and total money in the deck) as not trashing and using $4 to buy a Poacher?

[Awaclus]

So maybe that's my question: Why is trashing a Copper from hand so incredibly good, when trashing a Copper from hand and using the remaining $3 to buy a Silver has the same impact on your deck (in terms of deck control and total money in the deck) as not trashing and using $4 to buy a Poacher?

Partially because Poacher is a decent card while Silver is not, and partially because a deck with 5 Coppers and a Poacher sometimes fails to hit $6 but a deck with 4 Coppers and a Silver always hits it.

[segura]

The answer to your question is simple: Copper trashing. You misevaluate massively how hood Copper trashimg is. And while e.g. Steward also does the job and later is not dead but a weak engineering piece, you do not mind the 3 Silvers Remake provides as conpensation for the loss of payload.

So maybe that's my question: Why is trashing a Copper from hand so incredibly good, when trashing a Copper from hand and using the remaining $3 to buy a Silver has the same impact on your deck (in terms of deck control and total money in the deck) as not trashing and using $4 to buy a Poacher?

This is a partial view. Remodel has only half the thinning power as Remake and in games without $2s, the Copper-Estate-4 Remodel path is so slow that it is rarely viable. One card enables you to get rid of all the junk quickly whereas the other does not.

You also have to consider dynamics: quick thinning, faster cycling and so on.

[Yitzi]

The other question is: If Copper-trashing is so good, why is Moneylender a mid-tier card (not particularly strong, not particularly weak)?  It's basically "trash a Copper from your hand" attached to something that would itself be worth a 4-cost terminal stop card (I'm pretty sure that it's generally accepted that a terminal gold, if it were ever made, would be well-priced at $4).  Yes, it becomes dead if there's no Copper in hand, but by the time that is likely to happen it's already gotten your engine jumpstarted, so that should not compensate for a basically "free" Copper-trashing-from-hand unless Copper-trashing-from-hand is really not that strong after all.

[Yitzi]

Hmm...this is interesting:

I assumed that the win rate bore out the high ranking of Remake, given that the Glicko at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CaVOd1pgAgmjJHXPM1tVMVnlJOLDZaq8BxjW4I1NI1E/edit?gid=0#gid=0 says it has a win rate of 73%...but the survey at https://photos.onedrive.com/share/4375584A8C199C03!3826?cid=4375584A8C199C03&resId=4375584A8C199C03!3826&authkey=!AIJetp0WiAAmcy4&ithint=album says that the skill-corrected win rate is 41% for being the only player gaining it and 46% for being the only one opening it.  The only 73% to be found there is the percentage of games in which both players gained it...which says more about its perceived strength than its actual strength.

Did someone accidentally copy the wrong statistic into the Glicko "win rate" column?

[faust]

These are different data sets.

Glicko is a rating system where lots of people supply their opinion on cards (by "duels", i.e. they are given two cards and then say which is better). The "win rate" of the card is the proportion of duels in which Remake emerges victorious.

The images files linked are pulled from game data that is analyzed by various metrics. You might gather from it that Remake is slightly overvalued (or at least, it was pre-Renaissance). However it is quite clear even from here that it is much better than Remodel, especially in the opening (it sits at 53% for both players opening with it to Remodel's 10%).

[faust]

The other question is: If Copper-trashing is so good, why is Moneylender a mid-tier card (not particularly strong, not particularly weak)?  It's basically "trash a Copper from your hand" attached to something that would itself be worth a 4-cost terminal stop card (I'm pretty sure that it's generally accepted that a terminal gold, if it were ever made, would be well-priced at $4).  Yes, it becomes dead if there's no Copper in hand, but by the time that is likely to happen it's already gotten your engine jumpstarted, so that should not compensate for a basically "free" Copper-trashing-from-hand unless Copper-trashing-from-hand is really not that strong after all.

Because Moneylender is outclassed by other trashers. It is slow (1 card at a time), it is terminal, and worst of all it only trashes Copper.

Pretty sure it is still a better card than a plain terminal Gold would be.

[Yitzi]

These are different data sets.

Glicko is a rating system where lots of people supply their opinion on cards (by "duels", i.e. they are given two cards and then say which is better). The "win rate" of the card is the proportion of duels in which Remake emerges victorious.

The images files linked are pulled from game data that is analyzed by various metrics. You might gather from it that Remake is slightly overvalued (or at least, it was pre-Renaissance). However it is quite clear even from here that it is much better than Remodel, especially in the opening (it sits at 53% for both players opening with it to Remodel's 10%).

Ah, so that's the win rate within the Glicko system, not in games.

Though, again, if comparing Remodel vs. Remake in the images, "probability that both players open with it" says how high it's valued, not how good it actually is.  The better statistic is skill-corrected win rate, and that is 47% for a Rebuild opening and 46% for Remake, with Rebuild pulling significantly ahead for non-opening gains...

[Tiago]

https://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Fan_Card_Creation_Guide#Myth:_The_Cost_Scale_Is_Linear <- different context but should still work

I would disagree (from above) that the difference between and is insignificant. Most s I want in my deck and most s I don't.

[Imrahil3]

I think you might get the information you’re looking for by just using the card? Statistics don’t mean a lot in this game until you see how it actually works in a game. Just play a few games using Remake and either (A) make a point of using it or (B) resolve not to buy it yourself but make a point to play someone who will. That should convince you of its merits pretty quickly?

[GendoIkari]

A "trash 2 cards" is already a very powerful $3-$4 cost

Of course Dominion has changed a crazy amount since the beginning, but didn't Donald X originally try Chapel as "trash 3 cards", and it turned out to be way too weak?

[Tiago]

A "trash 2 cards" is already a very powerful $3-$4 cost

Of course Dominion has changed a crazy amount since the beginning, but didn't Donald X originally try Chapel as "trash 3 cards", and it turned out to be way too weak?

I think it was way weaker than the current version, not weak in general. Since the current version is ridiculously strong, I'd guess that one is still an auto buy in most kingdoms.

[Yitzi]

https://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Fan_Card_Creation_Guide#Myth:_The_Cost_Scale_Is_Linear <- different context but should still work

Do you have an example of a jump from $4 to $3 and a jump from $3 to $4 that shows this nonlinearity without it being due to comparing a card that is particularly strong or weak for its cost (e.g. Witch in 2p)?

[Yitzi]

I think you might get the information you’re looking for by just using the card? Statistics don’t mean a lot in this game until you see how it actually works in a game. Just play a few games using Remake and either (A) make a point of using it or (B) resolve not to buy it yourself but make a point to play someone who will. That should convince you of its merits pretty quickly?

I don't own the set at the moment, and I think you need a paid account to play beyond the base set online?

[Awaclus]

The other question is: If Copper-trashing is so good, why is Moneylender a mid-tier card (not particularly strong, not particularly weak)?  It's basically "trash a Copper from your hand" attached to something that would itself be worth a 4-cost terminal stop card (I'm pretty sure that it's generally accepted that a terminal gold, if it were ever made, would be well-priced at $4).  Yes, it becomes dead if there's no Copper in hand, but by the time that is likely to happen it's already gotten your engine jumpstarted, so that should not compensate for a basically "free" Copper-trashing-from-hand unless Copper-trashing-from-hand is really not that strong after all.

Moneylender is actually a pretty strong card. If it's the only trashing, you buy it for sure, and you often buy it if there's another trasher that's good at trashing Estates (and Moneylenders) but not Coppers, like Salvager. It's just often made redundant by a better trasher in the kingdom, as pointed out by faust.

Though, again, if comparing Remodel vs. Remake in the images, "probability that both players open with it" says how high it's valued, not how good it actually is.  The better statistic is skill-corrected win rate, and that is 47% for a Rebuild opening and 46% for Remake, with Rebuild pulling significantly ahead for non-opening gains...

The dataset for the stats only includes games with high rated players, so the stat does show how high it's valued by the people who win games the most consistently. You're correct that it's not the same as how good it actually is, but it can work as a rough proxy for it.

The skill-corrected win rate as the only player opening/gaining is not at all straightforward to interpret. It completely ignores all the games where both players agree the card is not worth getting, as well as all the games where both players agree the card is worth getting and they are both able to get it, both of which are pretty important indicators of a card's strength, and one of which usually happens. So we are only looking at the games where there's disagreement over the card's usefulness, the games where the usefulness is situational and only one player has that situation, and the games where both players want the card but only one player is able to get it, which is not a representative sample of a typical game. At best, the stats tell us "in the situations where it's not clear whether Remake is good or not, even highly rated players tend to overrate it somewhat", but there are other plausible explanations for the low stats, such as "not buying a Remake indicates that you have a 5/2 opening and that the kingdom has a better $5 opening buy than Remake, which gives you an advantage over the player who opened Remake with their 4/3".

I don't own the set at the moment, and I think you need a paid account to play beyond the base set online?

A free account lets play with your opponent's expansions and there's a setting to rig the queue so that you only get matched against opponents who do have them.

[Yitzi]

Hmm...I may want to experiment some then at some point.

Though it's also possible that, e.g. it's valued high by people who win games the most consistently because a high value on fast trashing usually results in winning games due to fast-trashers being strong cards overall (e.g. Chapel, Steward), and Remake is the exception here...I suppose playing it out is the way to check.

[segura]

The other question is: If Copper-trashing is so good, why is Moneylender a mid-tier card (not particularly strong, not particularly weak)?

Because, like Remodel, it cannot trash all junk.