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[brokoli]

It could be an interesting combo : Forge 2 rats into a province...

[Davio]

I think they make perfect Apprentice fodder as well...

[HiveMindEmulator]

Yeah, the trick is getting the Forge. You probably want to open something like Baron or Smithy and try to spike an early Forge then transition into mass Rats. If you go Rats before Forge, you'll probably never be able to afford one with the Rats eating your deck. But then if you don't start massing the Rats soon enough, then it just seems like you'll end up so slow that you might as well have just been buying Provinces...

[Grujah]

I think these kind of tactics should be called "Rat Farms".

You breed Rats so you can use them as fodder for TfBs.

[Kahryl]

Rat farms are great, but don't they all require +buys? You need a flow of copper or something to feed to the rats. Otherwise you'll end up with hands like Rat/Rat/Gold/Province/Province, okay now what.

[Grujah]

Play Rat, eat a Gold (if you don't need it anymore), if you get forge, forge prov into prov.

If you get a Rats, or need that Gold, end turn (buy a copper?).

Yeah, it might suck.

[Kahryl]

I have a feeling rats are not going to be as good as people think. Okay, Forge two rats into a Province. That requires the collision of THREE cards. And if they don't collide, they're very awkward (Forge often doesn't know what to do with itself, Rats actively destroy your deck). It's like a three way treasure map!

[Grujah]

Self-replicating treasure map.

You can just eat everything except Forges and Rats and Provinces. Than they have to collide.

[Voltaire]

I have a feeling rats are not going to be as good as people think. Okay, Forge two rats into a Province. That requires the collision of THREE cards. And if they don't collide, they're very awkward (Forge often doesn't know what to do with itself, Rats actively destroy your deck). It's like a three way treasure map!

As far as I can tell, what everyone is trying to figure out is that Rats looks like pretty much the worst card ever, so everyone is trying to see how it could actually work well, and spot those situations.

[Tdog]

Especially after Donald said it was his favorite card.

[PSGarak]

The only rational explanation is that Donald enjoys watching us suffer. In fact, all of Dominion was just a practical joke, with a years-long set-up, for the sole purpose that he could laugh at us trying and failing to make anything good of the ultimate punchline, Rats. Andy Kaufman doesn't hold a candle to Donald X.

Actually, Andy Kaufman didn't die at all. He's been in hiding all this time, designing games, Donald X is just a photorealistic sock puppet.

[Grujah]

When Rats go online on Goko, I suggest f.ds action called:
"Rats week" where we play rats game whole week until we get something useful out of them.

[brokoli]

Personally, I don't think Rat is a very powerful card but I don't think it's weak either.
With any trasher rat seems to become good, if you don't take the rats to early, as HiveMindEmulator said.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I have a feeling rats are not going to be as good as people think. Okay, Forge two rats into a Province. That requires the collision of THREE cards. And if they don't collide, they're very awkward (Forge often doesn't know what to do with itself, Rats actively destroy your deck). It's like a three way treasure map!

Not really. The problem with Treasure Map is you only have a couple TM, and mostly Coppers. If you just needed to collide 1 TM with 2 Coppers, that would be pretty easy, no? That's kind of how this is.

[gman314]

Rats is sort of like a strange version of Transmute. It's sort of like a trash for benefit which lets you trash any card to gain a Rats. So, it will obviously be strong with any cost-based tfb as it allows a two-step from [cheap card] to Rats to [whatever your tfb gives you]

[zahlman]

My take: Beginner : Village :: Expert : Rats

It's DXV's favourite exactly because it will give all the experienced players several more years of fun trying to figure out its true value.

[werothegreat]

If only Possession allowed you to choose who gained cards.  If that were the case, you could Possess someone and turn their entire deck into Rats.

[eHalcyon]

If only Possession allowed you to choose who gained cards.  If that were the case, you could Possess someone and turn their entire deck into Rats.

You could also use all their +Buy on all the Curses.

[SuperHans]

I don't see a forge/rats strategy working fast enough. Honestly, I think rats will go untouched in 95% of games. It's all or nothing with rats. There has to be a card that works well with rats to warrant its purchase. And frankly, not many cards seem to work well with rats.

So far, my favorite strategy is upgrade + rats. Buy an upgrade and a rats. Eat through your entire deck with the rats, and use the upgrade to upgrade the rats into more upgrades. Deplete the upgrade supply, deplete the rat supply, and then upgrade the rats into duchys. Or, alternatively, you can upgrade all of your upgrades into golds and then purchase out the duchy or provinces.

And even if it doesn't work, the absolute chaos of it all makes it worth it. Plus, imagine all that shame you'll impose upon your opponent when you beat them with rats...

[gman314]

I think that the best idea is really to keep two rats and one tfb in your deck at a time until you run out of cards that you want to trash. Basically:
1: Buy Rats
2: Buy TFB
3: Use Rats to trash copper/estate (priority copper; TFBs handle estates pretty well (when you don't get them with rats, that is)) and gain a rats
4: Use TFB to trash Rats for benefit.
5: Repeat steps 3-4 as needed and as long as it's safe.
6: Trash remaining Rats
7: Be awesome.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I don't see a forge/rats strategy working fast enough. Honestly, I think rats will go untouched in 95% of games. It's all or nothing with rats. There has to be a card that works well with rats to warrant its purchase. And frankly, not many cards seem to work well with rats.

So far, my favorite strategy is upgrade + rats. Buy an upgrade and a rats. Eat through your entire deck with the rats, and use the upgrade to upgrade the rats into more upgrades. Deplete the upgrade supply, deplete the rat supply, and then upgrade the rats into duchys. Or, alternatively, you can upgrade all of your upgrades into golds and then purchase out the duchy or provinces.

And even if it doesn't work, the absolute chaos of it all makes it worth it. Plus, imagine all that shame you'll impose upon your opponent when you beat them with rats...

You think this is faster than Forge/Rats?

[pst]

Honestly, I think rats will go untouched in 95% of games.

You could get one to Ambassador to your Golem-using opponents!

[SuperHans]

You think this is faster than Forge/Rats?

Potentially, but it's hard to say. Running rats simulations in my head hurts my brain. I think an upgrade/rats engine will move quickly once it gets going. For forge, you have to first get $7 for forge, then you have to get the one forge in the same hand as two rats presumably four times. After that, you can either forge more rats or a province.

[zahlman]

[upgrade + rats]

You think this is faster than Forge/Rats?

I think it will be. The problem with Forge/Rats is getting to $7. (Getting Rats to line up with the Forge shouldn't be a problem when there are Rats everywhere ) Meanwhile, with the Upgrade, whenever you Upgrade a Rats, Upgrade turns Rats into Upgrade while Rats simultaneously temporarily turns Upgrade into Lab.

[HiveMindEmulator]

[upgrade + rats]

You think this is faster than Forge/Rats?

I think it will be. The problem with Forge/Rats is getting to $7. (Getting Rats to line up with the Forge shouldn't be a problem when there are Rats everywhere ) Meanwhile, with the Upgrade, whenever you Upgrade a Rats, Upgrade turns Rats into Upgrade while Rats simultaneously temporarily turns Upgrade into Lab.

Yeah but you never get Provinces...

[zahlman]

[upgrade + rats]

You think this is faster than Forge/Rats?

I think it will be. The problem with Forge/Rats is getting to $7. (Getting Rats to line up with the Forge shouldn't be a problem when there are Rats everywhere ) Meanwhile, with the Upgrade, whenever you Upgrade a Rats, Upgrade turns Rats into Upgrade while Rats simultaneously temporarily turns Upgrade into Lab.

Yeah but you never get Provinces...

Well, you'll have to buy them, of course. The idea is to Upgrade Upgrade->Gold. It's slow to set up, but I can imagine gaining several Golds at once somewhere in midgame, and then starting to buy a bunch of Provinces. I guess Bank would be helpful here, since it would let you continue with Upgrading and have a path all the way to Province, while still having a Treasure at the $7 level.

[SuperHans]

[upgrade + rats]

You think this is faster than Forge/Rats?

I think it will be. The problem with Forge/Rats is getting to $7. (Getting Rats to line up with the Forge shouldn't be a problem when there are Rats everywhere ) Meanwhile, with the Upgrade, whenever you Upgrade a Rats, Upgrade turns Rats into Upgrade while Rats simultaneously temporarily turns Upgrade into Lab.

Yeah but you never get Provinces...

Depending on how your opponent is playing, 3-piling [rats, upgrade, duchy] could be very quick. The upgrade supply will surely run out. If the rats supply doesn't look like it will empty, then upgrade the upgrades into golds and purchase provinces.

[gman314]

I want to try Rats/Develop. The principle is the same as the general 2 Rats + tfb (although, you might want a second Develop). You can develop Rats into a $5 and a $3. How desirable this is will obviously depend on the board, but in general, the $5s are key cards that you want for an engine and the $3s are engine supporters that you also want.

[HiveMindEmulator]

[upgrade + rats]

You think this is faster than Forge/Rats?

I think it will be. The problem with Forge/Rats is getting to $7. (Getting Rats to line up with the Forge shouldn't be a problem when there are Rats everywhere ) Meanwhile, with the Upgrade, whenever you Upgrade a Rats, Upgrade turns Rats into Upgrade while Rats simultaneously temporarily turns Upgrade into Lab.

Yeah but you never get Provinces...

Well, you'll have to buy them, of course. The idea is to Upgrade Upgrade->Gold. It's slow to set up, but I can imagine gaining several Golds at once somewhere in midgame, and then starting to buy a bunch of Provinces. I guess Bank would be helpful here, since it would let you continue with Upgrading and have a path all the way to Province, while still having a Treasure at the $7 level.

Well then you still have the problem of having to line up 3 cards to buy a Province -- 3 Golds. While it's true that Upgrading Rats doesn't decrease your hand size, I'm not convinced that this is super fast. Maybe it is, but I'm doubtful it's much faster than any other Rats combo, Forge/Rats included. The thing is, if you want to make it accelerate faster to getting Golds, you might have to play more Rats, which means having extra Rats left over when the Upgrades are gone, which get in the way of lining up your Golds. I think there is a combo here, but I doubt it's a fast one in the absence of other support. Now say there is another good $5 pile, then you're probably in business.

[zahlman]

Now say there is another good $5 pile, then you're probably in business.

Well the argument was made that Duchy qualifies But yeah I think a strategy like this probably needs some other enabler. Forge/Rats OTOH... idk, maybe try to get lucky with Baron?

[HiveMindEmulator]

Now say there is another good $5 pile, then you're probably in business.

Well the argument was made that Duchy qualifies But yeah I think a strategy like this probably needs some other enabler. Forge/Rats OTOH... idk, maybe try to get lucky with Baron?

Yeah, I think something like Baron or Smithy that might get lucky and hit $7 early might be a good idea, and then if you don't hit $7 soon enough, just have a backup strategy (big money, at the worst).

[Scissors61]

Honestly, I think rats will go untouched in 95% of games.

You could get one to Ambassador to your Golem-using opponents!

You, sir, have a sick, twisted mind.






I like it...