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[brokoli]

I can't wait to play with DA... here are some thought :

- Hunting ground will be better than most people expect. +4 cards is so much better than +3 cards. And the "if trashed" effect is massive at the end of the game. This card is probably good for BM but better for engines : Something with remodel, especially.

- Poorhouse will be incredibly strong if you can trash all your coppers. I think it will be an excellent card for engines.

[yog-sothothry]

I'll give bold prediction a go:

Graverobber's remodel ability will be used far more often than its trash-retrieval ability.

Usually, by the time you start trashing expensive cards for provinces, you will want to use graverobber to trash more cards for provinces, or for duchys at worst, rather than bother retrieving the card from the trash (or so I suspect).

[werothegreat]

Beggar will own Gardens games.

Vagrant will fall into the "ignorable but harmless if that's all you have to spend" category of cantrip $2s, along with Pearl Diver.

[kn1tt3r]

Beggar will own Gardens games.

I just tried this in a solitary game. I got the Gardens to 7 VP in like 26 turns. The only issue is that it takes some time to three pile (I piled out Beggars, Gardens and Duchies), and if you get only half the beggars it won't be as easy as it was in my game.

But yes, it's strong.

[brokoli]

Vagrant will fall into the "ignorable but harmless if that's all you have to spend" category of cantrip $2s, along with Pearl Diver.

With pawn too (ok, sometimes you want a pawn for 3$ because you really want the +buy, but it's still rare).

I think beggar is underrated, and you will want one more often than a moat or a secret chamber.

Count is probably overrated, and it's not "strictly better" than mandarin because it's completely different. The main power of mandarin is the on-gain ability.

I think Junk Dealer will be faster than upgrade.

[kn1tt3r]

I think Junk Dealer will be faster than upgrade.

Of course it's faster, because you trash down you deck more (no upgrading of estates). Which also means it becomes a dead card sooner, especially because you cannot turn it into Gold once you've trashed down enough (of course you can always trash Junk Dealer though).

[clb]

I have a couple of semi-bold predictions.
Count will be a card that is great if you can get it on a 5/2, or otherwise quickly; after that, it will largely shine in the late game and especially as the come-back-kid. You can use the return a card option like a courtyard to put back money or an action that might be more useful next turn, and then grab a Duchy still. I don't suspect that it will be a good card for Duchy rushes solely because it costs $5.
Storeroom, on the other hand, will be great for Duchy/Duke rushes. You can open Storeroom/Storeroom (or maybe a silver?), and as long as you have at least one silver in the top 9 cards (5 in hand and up to 4 from the first discard), then you are guaranteed $5 with a +buy to pick up a copper if you like. In that vein, Storeroom will rock Gardens games as it will let you get a Gardens and X every time you play it, and after the Gardens are gone, getting a Duchy or two Estates should be a simple matter.

[werothegreat]

I can now safely say that Band of Misfits and Fortress are ridiculous and are in the top 5 of their respective price groups.

[microman]

I've got a bold prediction for ya.  Death Cart will be a dominant play on most boards and an important piece in any engine! Howz that for bold!

[jonts26]

I can now safely say that Band of Misfits and Fortress are ridiculous and are in the top 5 of their respective price groups.

Woah, that is bold but lets not get carried away. I think they are both like to be very strong, but top 5? That's crazy talk. Think about the current top 5's and tell me which one these displace.

EDIT: To add to this, I think they both have the potential to be powerhouses on the right board. But the board dependence is going to make them weaker than the top 5s which are almost always going to play strong.

[microman]

Beggar will own Gardens games.

Vagrant will fall into the "ignorable but harmless if that's all you have to spend" category of cantrip $2s, along with Pearl Diver.

However, I think Vagrant would pair quite nicely with mystic and/or Wandering Minstrel.  When comboing  vagrant with mystic, if you weren't able to pick up the revealed card you could snag it with mystic already knowing what it is.  Wandering Minstrel could help you stack that ruined action so you could pick it up with vagrant via the revealed card.  Not to mention in heavy looting games where you will have lots of ruined actions in your deck, vagrant will be very helpful in putting those in hand so you can trash them.  

[eHalcyon]

I can now safely say that Band of Misfits and Fortress are ridiculous and are in the top 5 of their respective price groups.

Woah, that is bold but lets not get carried away. I think they are both like to be very strong, but top 5? That's crazy talk. Think about the current top 5's and tell me which one these displace.

EDIT: To add to this, I think they both have the potential to be powerhouses on the right board. But the board dependence is going to make them weaker than the top 5s which are almost always going to play strong.

Fortress probably looks ridiculous if you're playing heavy DA games, where there is plenty of tfb (Procession) and trash-as-cost (Death Cart).  But there are many boards without trashing where Fortress is just a plain Village.  It also doesn't do anything for boards that just have no frills trashing, e.g. Chapel.

[werothegreat]

Played a couple games.  Looting... really slows the game down.  Like, really.  It's usually a lot faster than Curses, it seems.

[clb]

In the Alchemy preset kingdom with DA where there is Scrying Pool and Cultist - the Vineyards just love having tons of Ruins.

[brokoli]

Yes, fortress is not that good. Probably as good as the other 4$ villages. Sometimes, it's incredibly powerful but when the only trasher is a thing like trading post (which is not a bad card), then fortress is simply a weak village.

[jonts26]

Yes, fortress is not that good. Probably as good as the other 4$ villages. Sometimes, it's incredibly powerful but when the only trasher is a thing like trading post (which is not a bad card), then fortress is simply a weak village.

I think Fortress is going to be really good. It's no better than vanilla village more often than not (the price difference makes little difference), but when it is good, it can be game warpingly powerful. And you know, vanilla village is still a pretty good card. Honestly, right now I'd place Fortress as the #2 $4 village behind Worker's. And I might even place it ahead of that in a heavy dark ages game.

[HiveMindEmulator]

So most of the $4 villages are often just equivalent to a vanilla Village, but they have situations in which the stand out. Farming Village is good against deck attacks. This rarely occurs, but when it does, it's pretty important. Fortress is good with TfB. This probably occurs at least as often, and is not only pretty important, but like stupid good. It's kind of the only $4 village that can be more than just a support card.

[jonts26]

You know, I completely forgot about Wandering Minstrel when I made my $4 village statement. I think that's likely to be super good in a lot of engines as long as you dont rely on big treasures for your income. So not as game changing as Fortress when it's good but still very strong in a lot of situations that it could very well be better than that or Worker's on average. But man, that +buy from worker's is often just so key it's hard to bump it down in my mind. 

[ehunt]

wandering minstrel is just so good. count is not bad - gaining a duchy is really strong in the end-game, as we know from tournament games. it's a weird card in that it's best at the beginning and end of the game and worst in the middle.

[werothegreat]

Squire is not as good as we thought it would be.  The lack of +Cards just really really hurts it.  In a Ruins/Curses game, most often we used Squire for the Silver (which we never ended up seeing).

[jonts26]

Squire is not as good as we thought it would be.  The lack of +Cards just really really hurts it.  In a Ruins/Curses game, most often we used Squire for the Silver (which we never ended up seeing).

It's rare without decent trashing to use any village in a heavy curse slog. You just won't line things up often enough. So yeah, a non drawing village is going to be pretty bad there. But hey, +$1 gain a silver is still pretty decent for big money, and really good for alt VP. But if you have even a slightly streamlined deck with card draw elsewhere, the lack of +1 card won't hurt much. And because it's so cheap you can over-invest a little to make it more likely that things fire. Also it comes with +buy which engines usually need. And it gives +2 buys so it's unlikely that you'll need to use the buy option more than once.  And all of this ignores the on trash clause, which is more niche, but potentially very strong.

Anyway, I'm still going with one of the best $2 cards.

[Beyond Awesome]

You know, I completely forgot about Wandering Minstrel when I made my $4 village statement. I think that's likely to be super good in a lot of engines as long as you dont rely on big treasures for your income. So not as game changing as Fortress when it's good but still very strong in a lot of situations that it could very well be better than that or Worker's on average. But man, that +buy from worker's is often just so key it's hard to bump it down in my mind.

I rank Wandering Minstrel ahead of Fortress for now. From the games I've played with it, it really helps get to your engine components quicker.Actually, though, DA offers a few cards that help you get to your key cards quicker like Scavenger and Sage. Minstrel also makes it possible to build an engine in a cursing game, which was still possible, but it makes it easier to accomplish. Though, I have a feeling Minstrel is quite weak in a Ruins game.

[werothegreat]

Sage is awesome in the early game, and becomes less so once you start greening - it essentially turns into a cantrip with nothing.

[Beyond Awesome]

Sage is awesome in the early game, and becomes less so once you start greening - it essentially turns into a cantrip with nothing.

This is true, but that early game matters a lot.

[Schneau]

Rebuild - I think this will be one of the most powerful cards in the set. Think about for a second, that it takes basically 6 plays of this card to get your starting estates into provinces (and it's non-terminal!). And then probably you can buy duchies relatively easily and turn them into provinces fairly quick. I mean, 2-3 of these, then buy only green will be a pretty good BM strategy, on the speed order of JoaT. Yep, I'm going to make that claim. Now, you can run the risk of drawing these with too much green (you need it to be in the discard pile). But this also works really well with decently good non-drawing terminals at the sub-$5 level (monument, militia, maybe swindler). And it's going to be very nice with sifters like warehouse. And it's really resilient to just about every kind of attack. Finally, it's a nice anti-engine card, because you burn through VP as you go, lowering the 50% of VP game-win threshhold fairly nicely.

Since we are making Guilds Bold Predictions, I decided to look through the DA bold predictions to see how they've turned out. This one stood out to me as spot-on, given the recent articles and discussions of Rebuild.