Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Davio]

Every Dominion card has been created with one thought in mind: "There will be situations in which this card will be very good, but also situations in which it will be very bad may not be as good."

Looking at Councilroom's card list, we can see that not all cards receive the same amount of love from the players on Isotropic.

Therefore I present this challenge: For each card on my list, create a setup in which that card can really shine.
Of course, it's hard for $2 cards to shine in any setup (except for Chapel duh!), but that's part of the challenge.

Every setup is intended for 2p and you may assume an opponent to play a certain strategy (e.g. BMU, Workshop/Gardens etc.) which you must mention. You can always try Geronimoo's simulator to verify some of your findings.

You may wonder: "What's the use? Do I need to know this for that 1 in a gazillion chance this exact setup will appear on Isotropic?"
There are no "perfect" solutions for this topic, the intention is to generate some discussion to maybe look at some of the undervalued cards in another way.

The loveless list:

• Chancellor: It's at the lonely bottom (just above Diadem) with only 14% (games in which it was bought/games it was available in). Surely there must be a set in which constantly discarding your deck (and reshuffling!) is useful?
• Counting House: It only has 14.6%, but I reckon there may be some amazing setups for this one, Coppersmith could synergize with it beautifully perhaps...
• Navigator: It's not enough to have a misshapen head, you are also at the bottom of the buy list, is there any hope for this card?
• Stash: I think people mainly avoid this, because they don't want the extra hassle of placing it somewhere
• Adventurer: It's just too expensive! Or is it...?
• Harvest: Too random?
• Explorer: Reveal a Colony and gain a Platinum in hand? Oh wait, that's not on the card. Well maybe if it was, someone would actually buy it. Now it sits at 24% which surprise me, because it's higher than 20.
• Bureaucrat: There has been some discussion about this, so it may be possible to find a good fit for it.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Chancellor, Counting House and Stash all solve each others' problems... Kind of. Navigator would maybe be (more) useful in a deck full of crap (curses flying, gardens etc.) to skip the actual worst hands - also giving $2 toward this turn (That's half way to a Gardens). Adventurer's pretty good if you've got the +actions for it and have got rid of most or all of your Coppers (and you don't even NEED the +actions if you just buy fewer action cards, but in that case your treasures are going to be in your hand anyway). Harvest shines in a Pirate Ship game, especially with +actions around (alternatively just play Pirate Ships) and encouragement to buy a range of cards (Menagerie, Fairgrounds etc.). Explorer and Bureaucrat are both excellent in Gardens decks, and if you want Gold from your Explorer - tough. It's not happening in any game ever if you plan on winning (inb4 someone posts a log of them getting a Gold from an Explorer and going on to win the game).

[rinkworks]

Adventurer is a paradox, because it works best in no-trashing setups, where treasures are hard to find amidst junk, but they're only preferable to Gold when you *are* able to trash away those Coppers, so as to raise the expected value of Adventurer's plunder.  That is, if you pull up two Coppers with Adventurer, it doesn't matter how many Curses you bypassed to get to them (see theory's cycling article), you'd still have been better off with a Gold.

There is a card that fits the bill, however:  Moneylender, which can trash Coppers but nothing else.  It's also a good slingshot card for getting those Adventurers in the first place.  I haven't played it, or even simulated it, but here is a setup where Adventurer is likely to shine:

Shanty Town
Moneylender
Sea Hag
Worker's Village
Contraband
Royal Seal
Stash
Witch
Adventurer
Hoard

Some of these cards are just generic filler, but notes on a few:

* Hoard encourages the accumulation of Estates and Duchies while producing high-value treasure cards.  It's a great environment for Adventurer, which sifts past the Estates and Duchies and finds the Golds.

* Worker's Village is there for the +Buys you need to spend those high-value treasures.  Contraband is there for the +Buy *and* as a high-value treasure for Adventurer to find, although players will have to decide for themselves if it's too much of a liability.  At least, unlike with Venture, you don't *have* to play it just because Adventurer found it.

* Royal Seal and Stash might be good things for Adventurer to find as well.  Stash is there because I wonder if any strategic things can be done with their placement:  trying to place them so that Adventurer *does* skip junk cards to get to them.  I don't know how viable that truly is, but it's an interesting thought.

* Cursing attacks, which generate junk you want Adventurer to skip.

* Also noteworthy is what ISN'T there:  action cards that provide money (other than Moneylender).  Lacking these, more of a burden is put on Adventurer to do the job.

* No Copper-only strategies that might prove viable.  No Coppersmith or Counting House.  No Goons, which encourages Copper purchases.  No Mountebank, which gives them out, diluting the value of your Adventurers.

[guided]

Chancellor/Stash can be much stronger than other strategies on boards that don't support action chains.

I've won convincingly with Counting House/Goons (buying no other action cards of note), again on boards that don't support action chains. Colony helps here (since Counting House may be the only plausible way to reliably get $11).

Navigator is just a good card. But I remember one game in particular where I routinely played it and used its rearrangement ability to awesome effect. ...I just can't remember what else was in the kingdom It was some slightly fragile draw engine that was greatly helped by being able to pick the order of the upcoming cards. Wishing Well comes to mind as a useful adjunct, but I don't recall it being in that particular kingdom.

Harvest and Bureaucrat are other good general-use cards. They're maligned because people find shinier things to do with their money that may or may not actually be stronger.

[WanderingWinder]

Navigator is just a good card. But I remember one game in particular where I routinely played it and used its rearrangement ability to awesome effect. ...I just can't remember what else was in the kingdom It was some slightly fragile draw engine that was greatly helped by being able to pick the order of the upcoming cards. Wishing Well comes to mind as a useful adjunct, but I don't recall it being in that particular kingdom.

Harvest and Bureaucrat are other good general-use cards. They're maligned because people find shinier things to do with their money that may or may not actually be stronger.

I wouldn't actually call these "good" cards, as I've found them to be below average. But I agree that they're not really "bad" either.
Other stuff that I'd stick on the "bad" list includes outpost, transmute, Contraband, Moat, and Walled Village.

Also, my opinion of explorer has recently gone way up... though it's still bad.

[chwhite]

Here's a board where opening Chancellor is not just dominant, but obviously dominant:

Chancellor
Stash
Familiar
Village
Walled Village
Worker's Village
Scout
Thief
King's Court
Counting House

Everyone knows about the Chancellor/Stash combo, but the presence of Familiar is another great reason to go Chancellor.  Sure, it's a bit high variance, but the possibility of getting your Familiars to hit starting on Turn 4 is just too strong to pass up.  And Counting House is just icing on the cake.

Note: Scout and Thief are mainly on there as placeholders for "cards you can just ignore". 

[DStu]

guided

Yep, Chancellor/Stash is nice, also Stash/Bishop (played by you and opponent) can be quite nice. Remember a game where I had something like a 11-card-deck, including 4 Stashes and 1 Bishop. Turn 1 of round buy Province with 4 Stashes, Turn 2 trash something with Bishop, buy what you can get, reshuffle. Is quite fast. Think that would work with Steward, too.

Harvest I once bought in to the end of a heavy-KC-game, but realized that it should have worked well before also as the optimal source of money for this setup if you have spare KC to feed. There was not much virtual money anyway, but even if it was you seldomly have than $2, which the harvest usually tops. Just have to take care that you play them before you draw you complete deck to your hand.

Chancellor/Navigator I'm not sure if the correct thing is to find the setups where they shine. I think one should aknowledge the more common setups where they are not sooo bad, when there's not much important for $3/$4 to buy and they enable a fast buy and use of an important $5/$6's, and you can afford the additional terminal. Of course there is Chancellor/Counting House(/Coppersmith), but I'm still not convinced that this will really work in practice. You have to draw them together, which requires a village. Which makes them a 3 card combo which has to be drawn to a hand. Which (execept the "village" is a Golem. And if it's a Golem you don't need the Chancellor) requires a draw-engine. In which case you have most of the Copper on your hand anyway by the end of the turn. You could add a Vault, but that usually makes the game to fast to do such fancy things.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Chancellor, Counting House and Stash all solve each others' problems... Kind of.

Chancellor
Stash
Familiar
Village
Walled Village
Worker's Village
Scout
Thief
King's Court
Counting House

I rest my case.

[Davio]

It would be fun to see some high ranked players (I'm only lvl. 28) "have at it" with these setups.

[Superdad]

Golem works very well with Chancellor/Counting house. Do not buy any other actions besides those three.

Playing Golem will immediately find chancellor/counting house, and put your entire deck in the discard pile. You then pick up every copper and buy a province (get 8 coppers).

As already stated, chancellor/stash is a good combo.

Bureaucrat works well in any game where you don't need to hit $8 as much as you need to hit $5 or $4 (and the opponent will green quickly). i.e. Duke or Gardens games.

[chwhite]

As for the other "bad" cards listed:

* Everyone loves to talk about Counting House as hypothetical combos with Chancellor or Golem or Coppersmith... nah.  Those combos usually take too long to pull off.  Counting House is a very different beast: it is purpose built for beating Mountebanks and Ambassadors (and maybe Jesters)- basically, if everyone's deck is getting polluted with Coppers, buy a Counting House or three and laugh all the way to the Colonies. 
* Navigator rarely shines, but in action-heavy setups, hey, it's better than Silver, and arranging your cards is useful if you're in the middle of a chain.  Scrying Pool is probably its best friend.
* Stash I rarely buy.  It's Pirate-proof, which is nice, and sometimes you're playing a set without any +Actions and the $5s all suck and it's better than wasting that buy on a Silver.
* Adventurer is one of my least-bought cards, even lower than Stash.  Maybe throw one in a Chapel-Big Money deck?  I think it's more common for my Golds to get Swindled to Adventurers than for me to buy one myself.  It's just overpriced.
* I love to King's Court Harvests, no other two-card combination can get you a Colony all by itself.  The problem with Harvest actually is not that it's chancy, its that a) the discard can hurt you and b) spending a terminal action just for +Coin is usually inefficient even if it's a lot of Coin.  Similar to Navigator, it's best in setups which are either full of +Action and/or +Curse (because hey, that's variety).
* Explorer is sorta like Bureaucrat, only worse.  It blows, and honestly I'd probably only buy it to pump my Fairgrounds.  I lost to an Explorer-Duke strategy once, but that was mainly because I stupidly let them get the first six Duchies.  Second worst card in the game.
* I love Bureaucrat in the presence of Dukes, like it with Gardens, and hate it most other times.  It plays very poorly with other actions (since you're slooowly filling your deck with Silver), and the attack is usually minor, often a complete whiff.  And it gives you no benefit this turn.  But the Silvers are sufficient for grabbing Duchies and Dukes, and the attack legitimately slows your opponent if they try to do the same.  Bureaucrat is way better than Explorer because a) it's cheaper, and b) the attack.  I guess Explorer's silver-in-hand is a point in its favor, but the cost difference is actually really huge. 

FWIW I don't think these are all the worst cards in the game: Thief tops my list, and several others (Secret Chamber, Scout, Saboteur, Moat) are worse than all but Explorer.

[chwhite]

Chancellor, Counting House and Stash all solve each others' problems... Kind of.

Chancellor
Stash
Familiar
Village
Walled Village
Worker's Village
Scout
Thief
King's Court
Counting House

I rest my case.

Take away Stash and CH and that's still a great Chancellor setup.  I actually think Familiar (with no other curse-givers) is a stronger incentive to go Chancellor than those cards.

[DG]

I played this set once and it still looks like an explorer set. In any situation where you've trashed down your deck (good strategy) and want to refill your deck quickly with treasure so that it doesn't choke (good strategy), and keep purchasing green cards while doing so (good strategy), the explorer can be an excellent card.

Chancellor, Chapel, City, Explorer, Lookout, Mining Village, Pirate Ship, Royal Seal, Saboteur, and Scout

[WanderingWinder]

* Explorer is sorta like Bureaucrat, only worse.  It blows, and honestly I'd probably only buy it to pump my Fairgrounds.  I lost to an Explorer-Duke strategy once, but that was mainly because I stupidly let them get the first six Duchies.  Second worst card in the game.
FWIW I don't think these are all the worst cards in the game: Thief tops my list, and several others (Secret Chamber, Scout, Saboteur, Moat) are worse than all but Explorer.

Thief is bad but tremendously underrated. It's quite useful when the opponent has some copper trashing but is still reliant on cash to win. I think it's better than the rest of the cards on YOUR list, as well as outpost, and transmute.
Furthermore, I think we're slightly (not much, but slightly) underrating Explorer. Sims show it's somewhat significantly better for big money than Bureaucrat. Having said that, I still think bureaucrat is better, at least for its cost, and that explorer is absolutely terrible.

[play2draw]

King's Court(Harvest) can be obscene if you have the +buys to make use of it. It's often a terminal 3, which is pretty good. I imagine it shines most in cursing games with sub-par trashing, where you'll be more likely to get the adequate card variety early and it is a struggle to draw a gold.

Bureaucrat and Explorer are cards that would work when you're already drawing your entire deck and you just need extra buying power to add more to the +buys. I suspect Bureaucrat could be okay when there many important 3s, 4s, and 5s for a draw engine, but you don't want to spend a few turns buying silvers?

Adventurer is useful in if you want to do something with your treasure other than pay for it, such as remodeling or salvaging it. it's also useful if you have a bishop engine with scrying pool, and you need to draw your entire hand; drawing adventurers doesn't stop your scrying pool short, and are preferred for trashing. I wonder what adventurer would be like if it had +1 action...

[chwhite]

* Explorer is sorta like Bureaucrat, only worse.  It blows, and honestly I'd probably only buy it to pump my Fairgrounds.  I lost to an Explorer-Duke strategy once, but that was mainly because I stupidly let them get the first six Duchies.  Second worst card in the game.
FWIW I don't think these are all the worst cards in the game: Thief tops my list, and several others (Secret Chamber, Scout, Saboteur, Moat) are worse than all but Explorer.

Thief is bad but tremendously underrated. It's quite useful when the opponent has some copper trashing but is still reliant on cash to win. I think it's better than the rest of the cards on YOUR list, as well as outpost, and transmute.
Furthermore, I think we're slightly (not much, but slightly) underrating Explorer. Sims show it's somewhat significantly better for big money than Bureaucrat. Having said that, I still think bureaucrat is better, at least for its cost, and that explorer is absolutely terrible.

We definitely disagree on Thief; but I'm with you on the general suckitude of Outpost and Transmute.  It's possible I'm underrating Explorer a bit; I tend to shy away from Treasure-heavy strategies (exception: Hoard) and that's definitely coloring my thinking on many of these cards.  Certainly is one reason why I hate Thief so much.

Actually come to think of it, Secret Chamber is probably a little better than I was giving it credit for: I tend to think it's really bad because the reaction ability is garbage 99% of the time, because I always used to think of it as the Worst Card Evar until Vault came out, and its discard-for-cash ability is weak without support.  But it is so good in heavy action-chaining double-Tactician decks!  Okay, I guess that just puts it on par with Outpost.

ED: Apparently this post has pushed me into the "Thief" status.  Oh the irony.

[guided]

Man, I shake my head when people call Outpost a bad card. It's often not useful... heck, even usually not useful. But there are plenty of circumstances where it's good, and when it's good it's really good.

I'd say compared to Counting House, Outpost is useful an order of magnitude more often, and when it's useful it tends to be much more useful than Counting House.

[Tahtweasel]

Thief is bad but tremendously underrated. It's quite useful when the opponent has some copper trashing but is still reliant on cash to win. I think it's better than the rest of the cards on YOUR list, as well as outpost, and transmute.

Thief is among the best two or three action cards in Gardens games. It's one of the few ways to change your advantage in deck size by 2 with a single action. (Possessed Ambassador is another. There might be a couple more that I haven't thought of yet.)

We think of workshop and ironworks as being great gardens cards because it costs an action to gain a card. Thief usually gains a card *and* takes one away from the opponent.

[WanderingWinder]

Yeah, but that doesn't make it anywhere close to being on of the best cards for gardens. Explorer, Bureaucrat, Ironworks, Workshop, Woodcutter, Great Hall, Pawn, Bridge - generally all better (not in that order)

[guided]

When Thief is available in a multiplayer Gardens game, it's all too easy for other players to buy Thieves and wipe out your deck-size advantage. At least that's my experience attempting this strategy against other good players.

[DG]

When Thief is available in a multiplayer Gardens game, it's all too easy for other players to buy Thieves and wipe out your deck-size advantage.

True, but when the best counter to an opponent's card is to buy the card yourself it suggests that the card is performing strongly.

[chesskidnate]

As to explorer, it combos well with apprentice or duke. It also is quite strong with extra buys in drawing engines. I'd suggest a good setup for it would include apprentice, explorer, market, bazaar, and university

[Fangz]

For harvest, I'd say:

Tactician
Harvest
(bunch of cheap junk, including one village)
Fairgrounds?
Menangarie?

Harvest and tactician can set up a pretty powerful chain, since harvest gives you the most bang per buck of the money giving actions. Fairgrounds and menangarie help because they both favour varied decks.

[WanderingWinder]

Harvest is really not that bad at all. Yes, it's below average, but there are many games where I'd like to have one.

[Davio]

I just can't get Adventurer to work.

I've tried some simulations with Adventurer/Venture and Adventurer/Moneylender and even Adventurer/Venture/Moneylender.
While this strategy beats the poor old BMU, it fails against more sofisticated engines and the BMU+'es.

I wonder if it would cost $5 or $4 if it would get a nice bump or even if the action could be changed to: "Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal 3 Treasure cards. Put 2 of those Treasure cards in your hand and discard the other revealed cards.