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[Qvist]

I don't think you should take lists submitted last year into account here. That seems like it's counterproductive, isn't a big point of this to see how people currently value cards and/or how card evaluations have changed?

I know what you mean and I also thought about that. But I thought a problem would be that some of you would just re-submit the last list as they don't want to compile a new one. I just looked up and already received many submissions, so maybe it's just better to not take the last lists into account, but if anybody wants to re-submit, he can just tell me.

I don't think you should allow a month for this. Honestly, June 30 is on the late side if you ask me, even. Who here is going to look at this and be like "yeah I'm not doing it this week, but in 25 days I'll feel super up for it"?

As I wrote, my intention was to shorten the time frame. But then I realised that many of you guys only have time at the weekend, so I wanted to give at least the chance to submit in the following two weekends. You know, time passes quickly for hard working employees. I thought it would better for all. But as many of you complained I will change it back to the originally intended time frame. Sorry for any inconvenience.

I hope the results are published much much quicker this time around. I just feel like the list itself and subsequent discussion is what's interesting about this, not the little 3 sentence explanation "Chapel is good because it helps a lot of strategies; Saboteur is bad becuase it doesn't help a lot of strategies" type things. Isn't that what we have Articles for, after all? The mean/variance type stuff is kinda cool, but I'm guessing that's 5% of the work at most once you've compiled the lists?

The publication will get quicker this time and I'm still sorry for the delay of the Potion cards. And I feel sorry that you don't like my summing-ups. I know I'm no native speaker, so my English isn't that good, but I think there a few reasons to keep these.
1.) These are intended for newer players to get a quick view about the power and the intended use of a specific card without having to read a big article.
2.) There isn't an article for every card yet.
3.) While articles give strategic advices and try to explain how you can really play with that card better, my "short articles" try to explain why I think a card is on the specific rank and compare its power to its contenders and also give a little statistical insight for those who can't understand the statistical data.

I don't think I wrote such meaningless 3-sentence explanations and many - especially newer players - were very thankful for this. So I will keep that, but this time it won't take that long, as I will only update the summing-ups and don't have to write new one from the scratch. No worries here.

Also interested in whatever rrenaud comes up with and would think it was cool if you gave him the names of those ranking too. If we're comfortable sharing it with you I bet we're comfortable sharing it with him.

AFAIK data privacy protection is a little more restrictive in Germany than in the US for example, maybe that's the reason I'm a little hesistant to give out the rankings with names. Not that I'm afraid to get sued, but I already experienced many times anger because of something like that. I will definitely not making the results public for everyone. But I think it's safe to share the lists with rrenaud, if anybody has a problem with that, please tell me.

tl;dr:
I will not take last year's submissions into account. If you want to re-submit, please tell me.
Change of deadline: 30th of June 11:59pm UTC.
If anybody has a problem sharing the lists with rrenaud, please tell me.

[cherdano]

Thanks for (re)doing these Qvist. FWIW I did enjoy your writeups last time around.

[Qvist]

Thanks for doing these surveys. I've only started posting recently, but I've been lurking for a while, and I always enjoy reading the discussions. Have you considered doing a survey categorizing cards by type, rather than cost? In particular I'd like to see a best alternate vp card list, considering how difficult it is to compare them to actions and treasures.

I considered making a list categorizing cards by type, although I then figured out it works out not that well.
I agree that a victory card list would be a nice idea, but it's difficult to categorize and still compare other cards:
For example treasure cards: It would be very difficult to compare Bank, Loan, Horn of Plenty and Philosopher' Stone because of their cost and use.
or duration cards: What is better Caravan or Haven? I think it's difficult to compare.
Then it would be better to categorize by "use" instead of type. Then we could compare all Trashers.
But first it will be discussion what cards would fit that category (or any other category) and then it's still difficult to compare Chapel and Forge IMO, because of the price range. The only lists that come into my mind that would make sense are Victory Cards and Attack Cards.
What do other people think of that idea?

[Qvist]

Update:
Wow, we already have 38 entries, already more than last time. Thanks for all the submissions.
Maybe we can get some more, I'm still awaiting the submissions from many players who submitted the last time.

I didn't force you to enter your user name from this forum or isotropic, because there may be some that want to be anonymous.
But as I weight your ranking with your isotropic user level, maybe those 3 of you who didn't submit a user name may PM me and tell me!?
And one of the 3 didn't enter the full $5 list and commented it was too hard. Yeah, I agree, it is hard. But maybe you just want to try again?

So, 10 days to go...

[pingpongsam]

That was harder than I thought it would be. Lots of reordering and gut feelings. I primarily weighted by my affinity for buying the card and or my impression of its results.

[werothegreat]

I'd say the most statistically relevant would be the cards at the top and bottom - in the middle, with so many cards, at some point you're just shoving them in approximately where you think they should go.

[Ozle]

Yeah, i decided on the top and the bottom first and then arranged the middle with slightly less than thinking.

I tried very hard to only rank them as what I thought were the best, which was based on how often I feel like I would buy them if they were available, and the power if I did buy them. Especially considering I play more RL 3/4 player games than I do Iso games, so my ratings are probably wildly different to the norm.

It was very hard to keep to what I consider the best cards and not let me be swayed by the Community thinking on cards.

[Thisisnotasmile]

I used my old rankings as a starting point, and then made a few adjustments from there. There were a few cards which I had horribly wrong last time (see: Governor, Haggler, Cartographer), but mostly cards only moved by a few spots. The top half of the $4 cards had a pretty big shake up this time though, most notably I no longer have Horse Traders at the top (It's a good card but... what was I thinking?). I am still shocked at how bad the $4s are in general and how good the $3s are.

[werothegreat]

There are a few cards I ranked pretty highly that I'm sure a lot of you will disagree with - Nomad Camp, Pirate Ship, Saboteur (not high, but not at the bottom), Mine, Possession.

[popsofctown]

I would very much like to see a ranking of the "0-2 Province" strategies.  Ways of winning the game without primarily using Provinces.  There's sort of a line you cross when your strategy is enough about alt VP that you avoid depleting the Province stack.  With 3 or 4 Provinces, that doesn't really seem to be the point, alt VP is just "some Duchies" if you have at least that many Provinces. 

So the cantidates I'm envisioning here are, these other cantidates for ways of winning the game, are

Duke
Gardens
Silk Road
6 pt Fairgrounds (4 pt fairgrounds always serve the Duchy function)
Bishop (Golden deck doesn't use the points printed on the Province cards)
Monument catchup engines that will actually win with 0-2 Provinces (a rarity)
Goons
IGG
Saboteur (In extremely rare cases you can play the card so much that your opponents deck is nothing but coppers and estates.  If you avoid depleting the Province stack in order to accomplish this, it would qualify imo)

Anything I forgot?  Any simple 3 pile rushes I'm unaware of, like Ironworks + Tunnel or Island or somesuch?

Whoa.  Posting the word "Island" just reminded me I had a dream last night where I was explaining to someone how Island synergizes with Silk Road because you can buy a bunch of green cards and set them aside.

Whoooooa.

(my subconscious clearly has an ego/obsession with the game I beat Ambassador with no Ambassadors using Island/Silk Road.)
(Not that I'm sure that should usually work I think maybe toggling the number of ambassadors used would ruin it)

[Thisisnotasmile]

Vineyard.

[werothegreat]

Whoa.  Posting the word "Island" just reminded me I had a dream last night where I was explaining to someone how Island synergizes with Silk Road because you can buy a bunch of green cards and set them aside.

Whoooooa.

(my subconscious clearly has an ego/obsession with the game I beat Ambassador with no Ambassadors using Island/Silk Road.)
(Not that I'm sure that should usually work I think maybe toggling the number of ambassadors used would ruin it)

I was sick the other day, and my feverish mind imagined I was a Dominion card.  And then later I had to remind myself that I was not, in fact, a Dominion card.

[Archetype]

This was incredibly difficult, especially  with the $5s. I broke down each cost into sections (best, mediocre, worst) and then ordered them in their sections. I do think some cards are underrated (Harvest, Cutpurse, Island, Harem, etc) and rated them higher than what the majority of people would 

[Tables]

I'm in the middle of my ratings, but I've realised what could be interesting is having a few 'sublist' comparisons. Obviously, the orders won't change, but it could be interesting to see for example how many people said what in similar card comparisons, for example Worker's Village vs. Farming Village vs. Walled Village vs. Mining Village, or Moneylender vs. Spice Merchant, and other such notable similar-card-comparisons.

[cayvie]

I would very much like to see a ranking of the "0-2 Province" strategies.  Ways of winning the game without primarily using Provinces.  There's sort of a line you cross when your strategy is enough about alt VP that you avoid depleting the Province stack.  With 3 or 4 Provinces, that doesn't really seem to be the point, alt VP is just "some Duchies" if you have at least that many Provinces. 

So the cantidates I'm envisioning here are, these other cantidates for ways of winning the game, are

Duke
Gardens
Silk Road
6 pt Fairgrounds (4 pt fairgrounds always serve the Duchy function)
Bishop (Golden deck doesn't use the points printed on the Province cards)
Monument catchup engines that will actually win with 0-2 Provinces (a rarity)
Goons
IGG
Saboteur (In extremely rare cases you can play the card so much that your opponents deck is nothing but coppers and estates.  If you avoid depleting the Province stack in order to accomplish this, it would qualify imo)

Anything I forgot?  Any simple 3 pile rushes I'm unaware of, like Ironworks + Tunnel or Island or somesuch?

Whoa.  Posting the word "Island" just reminded me I had a dream last night where I was explaining to someone how Island synergizes with Silk Road because you can buy a bunch of green cards and set them aside.

Whoooooa.

(my subconscious clearly has an ego/obsession with the game I beat Ambassador with no Ambassadors using Island/Silk Road.)
(Not that I'm sure that should usually work I think maybe toggling the number of ambassadors used would ruin it)

Vineyards
Slow-building Bridge megaturns that end up buying all the Duchies and Estates and like 2 Provinces.

[iangoth]

I would very much like to see a ranking of the "0-2 Province" strategies.  Ways of winning the game without primarily using Provinces.  There's sort of a line you cross when your strategy is enough about alt VP that you avoid depleting the Province stack.  With 3 or 4 Provinces, that doesn't really seem to be the point, alt VP is just "some Duchies" if you have at least that many Provinces. 

So the cantidates I'm envisioning here are, these other cantidates for ways of winning the game, are

Duke
Gardens
Silk Road
6 pt Fairgrounds (4 pt fairgrounds always serve the Duchy function)
Bishop (Golden deck doesn't use the points printed on the Province cards)
Monument catchup engines that will actually win with 0-2 Provinces (a rarity)
Goons
IGG
Saboteur (In extremely rare cases you can play the card so much that your opponents deck is nothing but coppers and estates.  If you avoid depleting the Province stack in order to accomplish this, it would qualify imo)

Anything I forgot?  Any simple 3 pile rushes I'm unaware of, like Ironworks + Tunnel or Island or somesuch?

Whoa.  Posting the word "Island" just reminded me I had a dream last night where I was explaining to someone how Island synergizes with Silk Road because you can buy a bunch of green cards and set them aside.

Whoooooa.

(my subconscious clearly has an ego/obsession with the game I beat Ambassador with no Ambassadors using Island/Silk Road.)
(Not that I'm sure that should usually work I think maybe toggling the number of ambassadors used would ruin it)

Colonies

[Qvist]

Update and Reminder: 4 days to go

51 entries in the "Best Cards" List and >20 entries in the "Favourite Cards" List so far.
Thanks for all the submissions. I think we'll get a pretty good ranking.

[popsofctown]

I would very much like to see a ranking of the "0-2 Province" strategies.  Ways of winning the game without primarily using Provinces.  There's sort of a line you cross when your strategy is enough about alt VP that you avoid depleting the Province stack.  With 3 or 4 Provinces, that doesn't really seem to be the point, alt VP is just "some Duchies" if you have at least that many Provinces. 

So the cantidates I'm envisioning here are, these other cantidates for ways of winning the game, are

Duke
Gardens
Silk Road
6 pt Fairgrounds (4 pt fairgrounds always serve the Duchy function)
Bishop (Golden deck doesn't use the points printed on the Province cards)
Monument catchup engines that will actually win with 0-2 Provinces (a rarity)
Goons
IGG
Saboteur (In extremely rare cases you can play the card so much that your opponents deck is nothing but coppers and estates.  If you avoid depleting the Province stack in order to accomplish this, it would qualify imo)

Anything I forgot?  Any simple 3 pile rushes I'm unaware of, like Ironworks + Tunnel or Island or somesuch?

Whoa.  Posting the word "Island" just reminded me I had a dream last night where I was explaining to someone how Island synergizes with Silk Road because you can buy a bunch of green cards and set them aside.

Whoooooa.

(my subconscious clearly has an ego/obsession with the game I beat Ambassador with no Ambassadors using Island/Silk Road.)
(Not that I'm sure that should usually work I think maybe toggling the number of ambassadors used would ruin it)

Colonies

Colonies are always good enough to justify 0-2 Provinces and would top the list.

Straight Duchies may be worth it's own spot on such a list because of Bridge/Highway, but I think I'd rank it low because emptying the Duchy stack instead of the Province stack is usually a sign that the Bridge engine is weak and poorly supported (for a Bridge engine.  May be the best thing on the board).

[Jedit]

I didn't force you to enter your user name from this forum or isotropic, because there may be some that want to be anonymous.
But as I weight your ranking with your isotropic user level, maybe those 3 of you who didn't submit a user name may PM me and tell me!?

I did put a user name on my votes, not knowing it was optional, but I've never played on Isotropic so it's my user name here.  I use this user name most places I go and have done for many years, but being what it is there are some sites where I've had it "poached" from me.  So if there's an Isotropic user called Jedit, please don't use his ranking for weight on my votes.

[popsofctown]

that's why you use an absurd crappy username no one wants for all your forum accounts.

I used my hacking powers to confirm there are no Jedits on isotropic.
Why don't you play isotropic?  Come play me Jedit.

[Graystripe77]

Survey complete. I think Explorer and Mandarin will be WAY underrated.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Survey complete. I think Explorer and Mandarin will be WAY underrated.

Mandarin will be. Explorer will be precisely where it should be.

[Morgrim7]

Survey complete. I think Explorer and Mandarin will be WAY underrated.

Explorer will be precisely where it should be.

Meaning where? I agree with Graystripe. Explorer will be largely underrated.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Survey complete. I think Explorer and Mandarin will be WAY underrated.

Explorer will be precisely where it should be.

Meaning where? I agree with Graystripe. Explorer will be largely underrated.

Well I put it fourth from bottom, so I guess I mean somewhere around the top of the bottm five.

[Jedit]

Why don't you play isotropic? 

Because they ask for Google ID instead of having their own accounts.  I'm probably just being paranoid, but in accordance with the internet version of Pascal's Wager, I don't take the risk that I'm not.

Explorer will be largely underrated?  You mean there are people who will rate it below Counting House?