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[Schneau]

I'm wondering if Poor House will be difficult to keep track of in real life. It will require you to keep track of your money along with your actions as you play cards. For example:

Play:
Bazaar - $1
Poor House (reveal 2 Coppers and a Laboratory) - $3
Laboratory (draw Copper and Poor House) - $3
Poor House (reveal 3 Coppers) - $4
3 Coppers - $7

If you just played your cards quickly, it would be easy to forget how much each Poor House netted. And this isn't just theoretical - it could definitely be worth playing a Poor House before a cantrip if you have extra actions, just in case you draw another Treasure.

[Voltgloss]

If the board has Remake, Poor House, and a $3-cost Village (Village, Shanty Town, Fishing Village), why not open Remake?  For the Poor House strat, you want to (1) get Poor Houses, (2) get Villages, and (3) trash Coppers/Estates.  Remake does all of those things.

Howver, a caveat:  playing multiple Poor Houses hits you with the treasures penalty multiple times.  If your hand is Village-Poor House-Poor House-Copper-Copper, and your Village draws another Copper, then each PH is only worth $1 and you only have $5 to spend.  Ironically, Shanty Town is better in that situation because it won't draw anything.

PH might be helpful in Curse-heavy games.  A hand with even just one PH is always going to get you at least $4 (barring Potions/HoPs).  A hand with even just one Copper can get you a PH.  A hand with one PH and one Silver is always going to get you at least $5 (again, barring Potions/HoPs).

Tracking the +$ you get from playing each PH is no more difficult than tracking the +$ you get from things like Tribute or Harvest.

[jotheonah]

You guys think Donald's lurking in this thread? I would be.

[Grujah]

Posted initial thoughts in that other thread.

When is next batch to be released? 

[werothegreat]

Posted initial thoughts in that other thread.

When is next batch to be released? 

I'm assuming tomorrow morning at 9 am EST again.

[yuma]

I am sure house rules can be made for poor house just like I do with harvest-put the dewan cards underneath harvest-and tribute-have the opponent place his revealed cards horizontal on his discard.... If nothing else piece of paper or vp tokens can be used...

[Grujah]

I think it could have used mechanic from Nightfall, where you rotate the card depending on how many hitpoints it has.

See those red stripes on edges? It represents number of health:

[werothegreat]

I am sure house rules can be made for poor house just like I do with harvest-put the dewan cards underneath harvest-and tribute-have the opponent place his revealed cards horizontal on his discard.... If nothing else piece of paper or vp tokens can be used...

That seems legit for Tribute, but I would never do that for Harvest.  Those cards are supposed to be discarded, and there are many cases where they'll need to stay in your discard pile.

[werothegreat]

I think it could have used mechanic from Nightfall, where you rotate the card depending on how many hitpoints it has.

See those red stripes on edges? It represents number of health:
(tacky nightfall card)

That card art is so tacky.  *shudder*

[LastFootnote]

When a card generates a variable number of coins, I generally rotate it to indicate that. 3 coins = 3 o'clock = rotate the card 90 degrees to the right.

[DrFlux]

I think people aren't giving Graverobber enough credit. I'm sure it will get better with some combos from Dark Ages, but even still it's far from a bad card. I agree with others that mass graverobbers-->Province is probably not going to be fast enough, but I bet there is a lot of support for this card, with other TfB and in an engine where it can draw the card it just put on top.

The more I mull this card over the more I can see use for it.  Apprentice/Graverobber will be very powerful, and very fast.  Trashing golds with apprentice will give you a huge hand and you will likely pull some of your graverobbers into that hand.  Even without some +actions, you can retrieve your gold and buy an expensive card likely a province. (never underestimate holding 10 cards)

I suspect that Apprentice/Graverobber combo will pull provinces very quickly.

Meh. Apprentice/Graverobber is not nearly as good as say tunnel/Apprentice. Say you have Apprentice and a gold, you gain six cards. You play a graverobber to gain back the gold. That's a net gain of +3 cards and -1 action b/c graverobber is a terminal. You could have done the same thing with a laboratory and a smithy, and you wouldn't need a grave-digger in your deck. The math gets even worse if you trash 5 cost things with apprentice. I'm not sure I would NEVER use grave-digger in this way, but it strikes me as mediocre.

[jonts26]

Meh. Apprentice/Graverobber is not nearly as good as say tunnel/Apprentice.

Hoard/Apprentice?

[joel88s]

It's actually already covered in the Alchemy rules.

References to a cost range in coins does not include cards with $P in the cost.
Example: a card that refers to cards costing "from $3 to $6" would mean cards costing
exactly $3, $4, $5, or $6. No cards published so far use this phrasing, but if one does in
a later expansion, the range will not include cards with $P in the cost.

Awesome. I'm sure a lot of us first read that and guessed even then that "but if one does in a later expansion..." was code for "when this card here I already made up but am not telling you about eventually shows up..." - but of course had long since forgotten about it.

[Davio]

Here's my crosspost.

Graverobber - I suspect this will be an underachiever or at least very specific, but it may combo well with other cards from Dark Ages, that's hard to gauge at this time. Messing with the trash has always been tricky as we see in many fan cards. Mind you that this card costs $5 and this is a highly contested price point, Witch and Mountebank are also here. Still, a cheaper Expand that only works on Actions can be fine for an early Oasis -> Grand Market, but soon you'll be running out of Action cards and you may want that Woodcutter back. The other thing it has against it is that it's a terminal. Terminals are always carefully measured against each other. We could care less about non-terminals, but you only want so much terminals and I don't think graverobber will be one of them often. It would be interesting if you have to worry about Salvaging/Remodeling Provinces, but you need Bridge or Highway for that.

Poor House - Okay, so we finally have a $1 card and it's an action focused one, that seems easy enough. Minion decks might like it and Scrying Pools, otherwise it will often be a terminal Silver or even Copper. Cantrip chains will end up drawing the same cards you would have drawn anyway. But hey, it costs $1 so we shouldn't expect much from it. I wonder if it's really going to hurt Upgrades and Remakes.

Sage - To me this seems like a slightly worse Farming Village, so $3 might be right. It feels a bit like Scheme in a sense that it doesn't really do anything on its own, but it can be a help if you ever have a spare buy or gain. On its own it's not enough for me to open Ironworks, but it may be a nice target if other Ironworks targets are out there. A card like Sage never hurts and cards like that are always in high demand. Goons will love it.

Another thing: I love the art on these cards, especially Sage with its small easter egg capital "D" on one of the books. Poor House has that "Young Witch" Cornucopia style that I'm not particularly fan of, but it's still better than Harem!

[LastFootnote]

I think people aren't giving Graverobber enough credit. I'm sure it will get better with some combos from Dark Ages, but even still it's far from a bad card. I agree with others that mass graverobbers-->Province is probably not going to be fast enough, but I bet there is a lot of support for this card, with other TfB and in an engine where it can draw the card it just put on top.

The more I mull this card over the more I can see use for it.  Apprentice/Graverobber will be very powerful, and very fast.  Trashing golds with apprentice will give you a huge hand and you will likely pull some of your graverobbers into that hand.  Even without some +actions, you can retrieve your gold and buy an expensive card likely a province. (never underestimate holding 10 cards)

I suspect that Apprentice/Graverobber combo will pull provinces very quickly.

Meh. Apprentice/Graverobber is not nearly as good as say tunnel/Apprentice. Say you have Apprentice and a gold, you gain six cards. You play a graverobber to gain back the gold. That's a net gain of +3 cards and -1 action b/c graverobber is a terminal. You could have done the same thing with a laboratory and a smithy, and you wouldn't need a grave-digger in your deck. The math gets even worse if you trash 5 cost things with apprentice. I'm not sure I would NEVER use grave-digger in this way, but it strikes me as mediocre.

When you graverob a Gold, it goes on top of your deck.

[Wingnut]

I'm just waiting for the fun time when someone (ok me more likely) tries a Poor House/Chapel open, just for fun.

[rinkworks]

Rules question:

Your hand:  Laboratory, Bazaar, Poor House, Copper, Copper.

Play Laboratory, draw two Coppers.  Play Bazaar, draw another Copper.  Your hand now looks like:  Poor House, Copper, Copper, Copper, Copper, Copper, and you've already produced $1 to spend from the Bazaar.

Now play Poor House and all of the Coppers.  How much do you have to spend now?

Option 1:  $6.  You got $1 from the Bazaar, $0 from the Poor House, and $5 from five Coppers.
Option 2:  $5.  You got $1 from the Bazaar, $-1 from the Poor House, and $5 from five Coppers.

What I'm getting at is that I'm not sure if Poor House's $0 minimum means that Poor House can't produce less than $0, or if your total coins to spend so far can't be less than $0.

Poor House can net you negative coins. Option 2 is correct. Donald has confirmed it at BGG.

On BGG, Jeff Wolfe (one of the Dominion playtesters) gave this example:
"(assume Council Room or something)
Play Market, you have 1 coin to spend
Play Market, you have 2 coins to spend
Play Poor House and reveal 5 Silver cards, you have 1 coin to spend
Play 5 Silvers, you have 11 coins to spend"
(End of Quote)

So it appears that Poor House only reduces the value of money you have gained from the previous action cards you played before Poor House.  Once you start playing your treasures, it does not affect their value.  And Donald X. gave a thumbs up to Jeff's example.

I'm sure if you play Village, Black Market, some treasure, and then Poor House, the Poor House could eat into coins generated by the Treasures already played.  This is clearly a challenging card to use correctly, which I like.  I mean, it's probably easy to tell what kind of deck it thrives in (Treasureless, preferably with +Actions, of course), but possibly tricky to play out in any one turn optimally.

[ftl]

I'm just waiting for the fun time when someone (ok me more likely) tries a Poor House/Chapel open, just for fun.

I bet that it'll be better to open Chapel/something else, and then pick up a poor house on the second shuffle.

Also, how is nobody but me crying just thinking about a Sage/Sea Hag opening? Cycle your deck super-fast, get lots of plays of Sea Hag in, have both of you be unable to get over $2 or $3 for half the game.

[WheresMyElephant]

I'm just waiting for the fun time when someone (ok me more likely) tries a Poor House/Chapel open, just for fun.

I bet that it'll be better to open Chapel/something else, and then pick up a poor house on the second shuffle.

Also, how is nobody but me crying just thinking about a Sage/Sea Hag opening? Cycle your deck super-fast, get lots of plays of Sea Hag in, have both of you be unable to get over $2 or $3 for half the game.

Sage at least skips Hag curses, so there's that. (Actually I imagine a Farming Village that doesn't brake for Copper will be surprisingly effective against Curses in general.)

About Chapel/PH you might be right, as weird as it is to me. What do you even want in an early Chapel deck when your early money problems are practically nonexistent? Maybe you just open Chapel/Village or something so that you can Chapel at maximum efficiency and add in your Poor Houses later when you actually have to care about money?

[jotheonah]

KC-Sage seems like a pretty powerful drawing engine.

[eHalcyon]

I just read through the thread and I don't think anyone mentioned the TR-PH combo.  This was the biggest one that occurred to me.

You need heavy trashing to get rid of the Copper (Chapel and Remake are probably best; Steward might be OK).  You don't mind the Estates much.  PH is good at getting you to $4, so TR is easy enough to buy.  When you get rid of your starting Copper, you should be able to green quickly and with great resilience -- all you need is TR-PH in hand.  I think this beats out combos with most Villages, since you only need two cards in hand to make it work instead of three (Village and two PH).

The exception would be Hamlet, which discards and provides +Buy.  If we want to get into ridiculous X-card combo territory, I think TR-PH-Hamlet-Steward would be AMAZING.  Hamlet provides +Buy and +Action and discards residual Coppers.  PH is your moneymaker.  Steward does early Copper trashing and later provides moderate card draw.

[Davio]

Sage is going to be a favorite of mine, just because it facilitates engines beautifully.

Sage + Minion looks decent, because you don't really want to spend your $3's on too much Silvers.

And then there's Sage + HP.
Yay, Sage draws a HP!
Boo, HP drew a Sage. :p

[Ulthwithian]

Personally, the first card I thought of when seeing Graverobber was Feast.

[Voltgloss]

[eHalcyon]

Cross-posting.

Written before reading any other discussion, of course.


Graverobber

It is a cheap Expand, but only works on Action cards.  It is conveniently priced at $5, so it can expand itself and dig itself back out of the trash (ZOMBIES).  It is hard to judge this card (probably most of the cards, actually) without knowing what is in the rest of the set.  Thinking of the existing trashers, I don't think the known cards are enough to make Graverobber something to build a deck around.  But DA may have some other interesting trashers and self-trshers that make GR more worthwhile.  As is, however, I think it is pretty decent.  Not a game changer, but average strength.

Poor House

This card looks like a weak version of Horse Traders to me.  HT is very good at getting you to $5, but not much more.  PH guarantees $4, but not much more.  It looks like a phenomenal card for treasureless engines (Scrying Pool, maybe?) and would work well with sifters like Warehouse.  With sufficient trashing to get rid of starting Coppers, I think a particularly strong combo would be TR-PH.  All you need are those two cards in a hand without treasure, and you've got an instant Province.  I think this will be one of those cards that is weak on most boards but absolutely dominating with the right setup.  Looking forward to seeing what other DA cards come up -- particularly strong combo pieces that cost $4 or less.

Sage

Looks like it might be a good way to get combo pieces in line, but you need a relatively treasureless deck (in that Silver would get in the way of Sage).  Otherwise, I can't see this card being particularly powerful.  Maybe some other DA cards will change that.

After reading the thread, I think Graverobber+University would be a really neat combo (for getting lots of $5 actions to trash) and TR/KC-Sage would be kinda nice.