Hi all, this is my first attempt at an article. I am I level 30 player, I love dominion and I think my strategic grasp of the game is decent. I've really appreciated these forums as a place to think about interesting strategies.
I would love any feedback about Trader, I think it is an interesting card that is rarely discussed. When is Trader good enough to convince you not to buy a curser, for instance? Interestingly, Trader's silver giving ability dilutes the density of the Traders themselves, making sneaking curses in easier than one might expect.
Trader:Trader is a strange card. Typically trashers are most useful in engine decks, where getting rid of estates and coppers will lead to drawing your combo pieces together. However, Trader is somewhere between mediocre and awful in these cases, as it only trashes one card, and the silvers you gain can be nearly as unwanted. Trader should NOT be thought of as a trasher, but as a way to flood your deck with silver. Who wants tons of silver? Money decks and only money decks.
The obvious place to use trader is in cursing games, as it is a clear case of a reaction that can actively punish your opponent for their cruel ways. It is important to realize that if you are attempting to beat cursers with trader, that flooding your deck with silver can be as important as the reaction ability. This leads to the second use of trader, which is in slow alternate victory card games, particularly Duke or Gardens. Duke/Trader plays as well as Duke/Horse-Trader. You buy two or three Traders on early turns, trash your estates, silvers, traders, and maybe a gold or even a province to flood your deck with silvers, so that all that victory chaff doesn't matter. Its important to note that terminal collision is not a big problem, as you can trash Trader to Trader. Since all you need is two silvers and a copper to buy duke/duchy, you should be golden.
The final place case where Trader can shine is with cards that give on-buy benifit, such as Border Village, Ill-Gotten Gains, etc. Its important to note that unlike more flexible "trash for benifit" options like remodel, you have to actually WANT lots of silver for this to be worthwhile.
It is difficult to provide stats on trader, as the simulators do not model it well AT ALL, as it is difficult to play correctly. Sometimes you want to trash silver or gold early to build up more silver, but when to skip this in order to buy something expensive is case dependent.
For this reason it is difficult to rank how different strategies rate against Trader. Trader-only stragies beat Sea Hag and Familiar consistently, as both of those cards are slow and provide little other benefit than cursing. With the strongest cursers -- Witch and Montebank, the games are a close slog, and I suspect Trader-Silver leading into eventually 2 cursers may be optimal. Interestingly, Trader's silver giving ability dilutes the density of the Traders themselves, making sneaking curses in easier than one might expect. Try to track your opponents Traders - if its turn five and they haven't played it, you may want to skip playing your Montebank if you can afford it. This is even more true with IGG-Trader boards, where you will typically want to buy something other than IGG if your opponent may have a Trader. IGG/Trader is very good for similar reasons as Duke/Trader. Here is a good example of a game featuring all three, and me trying to dance around my opponents Trader
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120302-160726-afbde46f.html. In general, Trader loves Duchies, and you can start buying them earlier than usual because of all that silver. Conversely, Trader hates Colonies, as it dilutes the density of those golds and plats that you need to by your Colonies.
The final use of Trader is in BM without any curses or interesting green cards. In this case is works like a much weaker Jack, trashing your estates and giving you silver, but not providing you the full 5 cards that Jack gives you to work with. For this reason, it is rarely the strongest BM option. Trader-Silver into a draw card like smithy is passable but swingy, as you really need to draw estates with your trader for it to be a worthwhile purchase.
This brings us to my biggest discovery during writing this article. Opening Trader+Courtyard is awesome. Much better than courtyard alone. Courtyard allows you to match up your Trader with your estates much more consistently, and its nice to be able to buy an extra courtyard if you have 2 left after Trader-ing. Playing solitaire, it can consistently get 4 provinces in 12-13 turns, with a lot of staying power due to all the silver in the deck. Courtyard-Jack works in a similar way and produces similar results, but you already knew Jack was good.
Other little combos with Trader include things that give you more copper, or more buys. Margrave+Trader is passible, as you can use your extra buy to get a silver in the case of terminal collusion. It gets 4 provinces in about 15 turns, with a lot of variance, mostly due to Trader hooking up with estates or not. Cache can be good if you are lucky enough to get Trader+$5. Finally, Wishing well can help you get Trader+Estate, and can be very likely to pick up extra silver later. Most of these last tricks are probably not enough to make you want to go trader by themself, but you should keep your eye out for them if other conditions are good for Trader.
As a final note, rare occasions do occur where you have an engine and are drawing your deck consistently, but you need more money. You risk killing your your combo in the long term, but you can use Trader provide yourself with a lot of money quickly, either with multiple buys or trashing.
Works with:Courtyard
Cursing Games (especially slow ones like Familiar)
Ill-Gotten Gains
Alternate Victory Cards (Duke and Garden Especially)
Trashable cards (boarder village)
Cache, Wishing Well, Margrave, and extra-buys in general
Conflicts with:Engine Games
Games where you need a "key" card like Tournament
Stronger Big Money Options
Colony games
