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[catsclaw]

Was I just unlucky to skip over my Young Witch twice with Loan?  I got crushed by my opponent's Sea Hags.  I thought I'd be able to thin my deck out with the Loans, enabling me to play Young Witch more often, but I struggled to get to 5 coins.  Should I have avoided Young Witch?  Loan?

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/19/game-20120519-121609-7aec6d75.html

[def]

Wouldn't want Loan here. No buying power early, getting rid of your Coppers, leaving you with Estates and Curses hurting even more. How should you get to 5$ this way?
If you want to play Young Witch more often, open Silver/YW instead and get a second Young Witch on turn 3 (for example, this was possible here if your Loan was a Silver).

[jotheonah]

Loan only works if you're also buying silver (or some economy). Otherwise each lost copper DECREASES your buying power. If curses are being added to your deck, that doubles the effect. Bad news.

This is the case with Moneylender and Spice Merchant too - all deck thinning is not equal, and Copper-trashing without Estate-trashing is a tricky proposition.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I agree Loan is the culprit. Copper trashing is overrated. You only want Loan (or Moneylender) if:
1. you're using some other single-card trasher to remove estates (leaving Coppers as actually the worst card in your deck) OR
2. you're going for something like Venture, where you want Copper trashing even if you can't trash your Estates.
And you almost never want more than 1 Loan.

In Curse games, Copper is often actually a pretty good card, and you don't want to trash it at all.

[WanderingWinder]

Copper trashing is basically something you want with an engine. It can be ok for big money, too, - like given the choice between copper trashing and not trashing copper, you'd take it. But the benefit is pretty miniscule - almost never worth the trouble of a missed silver - unless you are building an engine. This is why you see BM/Moneylender infinitesimally better than straight BM. Here, there's no engine in sight.
On the other hand, if my opponent goes young witch, I'd think about picking one up, because copper-trashing isn't that good here, but a non-action moat is ok, and if you can package the two together... I'm still not sure it's worth it, because you want a lot of silvers fast, in any case.

[DG]

Loan only works if you're also buying silver (or some economy).

Some alternative economy is usually best and if you're buying silver then you need to ask whether the loan is really necessary. In this kingdom there was actually a lot of alternative economy but getting an early tactician was simply better and you couldn't afford to delay by going through horse traders.

[Jfrisch]

Basically agree with Wandering Winder. But want to make a more general point. Light trashers (Loan/spice merchant/lookout/trade route) (moneylender is good enough that it's an exception). Are often quite useful in engine decks where the extra coppers will stop your engine from going off which hurts a lot, and weak in big money decks where they increase your buying power slightly by making it more likely  you will draw silvers than coppers or estates. In general, in engines these types of cards tend to be worth it, while in big money decks they don't. (though, with cursers, lookout/trade route can be tolerable cards)

[dondon151]

I would definitely consider an early Lookout or a midgame Trade Route in a slow cursing game, but almost never a Loan or a Spice Merchant.