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[werothegreat]

It may as well just be taken as fact that Counting House is the "worst" card at $5.  This doesn't make it a bad card, but it leaves it ignored in the kingdom most of the time.  But because of what it does, it sits at an awkward spot in the cost continuum.  Having a card yank Coppers out of your discard is a pretty cool effect, and can often be pretty useful.  But because you start off with seven Coppers, Counting House has the potential to be worth more than double a Gold.  So it has to be on the expensive side - you can't be able to pick it up en masse, and probably not on your first two turns.  But since Counting House can also do absolutely nothing, such as immediately after a reshuffle, it can't be too expensive.  Really, by rights, Counting House should cost somewhere between $4.5 and $5.  But of course we can't have fractional costs.

So what could have been done to make it better?  +Buy?  Due to the best case scenario, that would have to shove it up to $6 in all likelihood, making it actually worse.  What about an optional deck discard?  Well, now you're just making the best case scenario happen EVERY TIME YOU PLAY IT.  If I opened 5/2 with THAT Counting House, I would open Copper/It, and just start buying Provinces.  Add King's Court and Scheme and you've automatically won.

Both Counting House and Chancellor have made me realize that a lot of the cards exist simply because there should be a card for their effect.  They aren't there to be good or bad - they're there because they allow you to perform a certain Action.  Not all cards can be Jack of all Trades or Count.  So some cards exist simply for a narrow function that you may want to Marin into a strategy.  And Counting House and Chancellor can both be useful (though I'd value the former more than the latter), most notably with each other.

That's all I got.

[Drab Emordnilap]

Add King's Court and Scheme and you've automatically won.

This is true for every action ever, I think.

And Counting House and Chancellor can both be useful (though I'd value the former more than the latter),

Man, I think Chancellor is underrated. Really, any board where you're likely to have the action to play it, Chancellor is worth a slot over Silver, and the risk of occasionally not being able to play it is outweighed by the potential reward. Who doesn't like getting to play their best cards more often? Sure, there are plenty of boards where Silver is way better than Chancellor, too, but to me that just says that Chancellor is costed correctly at $3.

[Davio]

I just feel bad for Donald's wife, who suggested it.

[werothegreat]

I just feel bad for Donald's wife, who suggested it.

It's not a bad card - it's just that the swinginess makes it hard to price.  Maybe if it were upgraded into or something?

[ipofanes]

So what could have been done to make it better?

Nomad's Camp's topdeck-when-buy would make it quite a situational endgame pet trick, competing with Duchy at the price tag.

[unlinked]

Worker's Village - Scavenger - any cantrip - Counting House.

It's a fringe example but guaranteed to get you $9 and a extra buy.

[ipofanes]

Worker's Village - Scavenger - any cantrip - Counting House.

It's a fringe example but guaranteed to get you $9 and a extra buy.

This works even now, doesn't it.

[Qvist]

Counting House $5
Choose your draw or your discard pile. Look through this pile, reveal any number of Copper cards from it, and put them into your hand.
If you have chosen your draw pile, shuffle it.

[ipofanes]

Counting House $5
Choose your draw or your discard pile. Look through this pile, reveal any number of Copper cards from it, and put them into your hand.
If you have chosen your draw pile, shuffle it.

That would be a guaranteed terminal Gold, which I'd say is a bit steep. Plus possible filtering/cycling.

[Qvist]

Counting House $5
Choose your draw or your discard pile. Look through this pile, reveal any number of Copper cards from it, and put them into your hand.
If you have chosen your draw pile, shuffle it.

That would be a guaranteed terminal Gold, which I'd say is a bit steep. Plus possible filtering/cycling.

Merchant Ship is basically a terminal $4. And this means that you can't trash any coppers. Now try to get a CH in your hand reliably.

[Davio]

I wouldn't say the card is bad, just that it's uninteresting more often than other cards at competitive price points.

If there were a lot more cards that fiddled with the discard in some way, it would be better.
Kind of like how Watchtower (already a pretty decent card, granted) got a boost after Dark Ages came out.

Counting House just doesn't have a lot partners in crime.

I think you can compare it to a terminal Gold more often than not.
And my response to the very basic terminal Gold was: It's not whether it should cost $6, $5 or even $4 or $7, it was just that I didn't find the card that interesting. Same goes for Harvest, those cards never seem to be high on my priority shopping list.

[Tables]

Counting House $5
Choose your draw or your discard pile. Look through this pile, reveal any number of Copper cards from it, and put them into your hand.
If you have chosen your draw pile, shuffle it.

That would be a guaranteed terminal Gold, which I'd say is a bit steep. Plus possible filtering/cycling.

Not quite, if you have >=3 coppers in hand it's a terminal Silver. But personally I'd take the deck option pretty often, because man, removing all the coppers from your deck? That sounds good.

Actually, an effect like that sounds really interesting. BRB going to variants.

[dondon151]

One of the better suggestions I've heard brought up is an option to shuffle CH into your deck during clean-up if you play it and didn't pull at least X amount of Coppers.

[LastFootnote]

I like Counting House fine as is, but if I had to 'fix' it, I'd allow you to either pull all the Copper from your discard pile or gain 2 Coppers in hand.

[Drab Emordnilap]

Same goes for Harvest, those cards never seem to be high on my priority shopping list.

I played a fun game yesterday where Harvest was very important. Also, I opened Village.

It was a Colony Game with Minion, and Moneylender and Trading Post were the only trashing. Minion/Village/Moneylender/Harvest/Horse Traders carried the day.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Why do people complain about Counting House? They can't all be the best card ever. There are enough boards where Counting House is good that there is really no need to "fix" it.

[Drab Emordnilap]

How would you guys feel about Counting House giving +1 Action?

[Tables]

How would you guys feel about Counting House giving +1 Action?

But... it would chain with itself too much!
I think that's probably actually fine. I'd need to see what happens, though.

[WanderingWinder]

I actually think it isn't a slam dunk as the worst $5 card.

[Squidd]

Really, by rights, Counting House should cost somewhere between $4.5 and $5.  But of course we can't have fractional costs.

What if it cost less, but had a restriction like Grand Market or an on-buy effect like Mint? I mean "like" those cards in the general sense, but their specific stipulations might work since they conflict with the normal Counting House effect.

Now I'm intrigued: Would a $3 Mint-trashing Counting House be a strong opening, or a stupid one?

[Beyond Awesome]

At least it's not Scout

[SirPeebles]

I feel that Apothecary is pretty a "fixed" Counting House.  It's still a bit swingy, but its power is tied more to your deck's Copper density and less to where you happen to be in your shuffle when you draw it.  This means you have to play it a bit blind, but that's part of why it has the +1 action.  It doesn't have as high a potential, but it has the advantage of getting Copper out of your future hand, and even if you don't get any Copper, at least you get to do a bit of rearrangement of cards which can be extremely useful sometimes.

Oh, and then there's all that Potion baggage attached.  This prevents you from opening Apothecary without imposing a steep $5 price.  Plus Apothecary helps to prevent the Potion from being a dead card by drawing as it does Copper.

[werothegreat]

I feel that Apothecary is pretty a "fixed" Counting House.  It's still a bit swingy, but its power is tied more to your deck's Copper density and less to where you happen to be in your shuffle when you draw it.  This means you have to play it a bit blind, but that's part of why it has the +1 action.  It doesn't have as high a potential, but it has the advantage of getting Copper out of your future hand, and even if you don't get any Copper, at least you get to do a bit of rearrangement of cards which can be extremely useful sometimes.

Oh, and then there's all that Potion baggage attached.  This prevents you from opening Apothecary without imposing a steep $5 price.  Plus Apothecary helps to prevent the Potion from being a dead card by drawing as it does Copper.

At $2P, Apothecary costs $4.5 anyway.

[chwhite]

I played a game recently with... Warehouse?  Cellar? one of those, Counting House, Colony/Platinum, no big attacks, and the closest thing to a power engine card was Stables, which is great at discarding Coppers.  It was a freakishly good board for the card.

CH probably is, sadly, the worst $5*, but I'm not sure there's a good buff for it.  I used to think a +Buy would be good, but then you might run the risk of making it too easy to build a weird Herbalist/PStone-style strategy around: just buy nothing but Counting Houses, Coppers, and Provinces.  Maybe that risk is overblown, I don't know.  And letting you top-deck it or reshuffle seems okay until you realize that basically ensures a best-case scenario for CH every reshuffle.

* I still really don't know Dark Ages, so caveat.  Not because I'm "boycotting" Goko, just because I need to set hard limits on the amount of time and money I spend on this game, and forbidding myself from Goko is the best way to do that.

[DWetzel]

I think the thing to recognize is that okay, Counting House sucks like 80% of the time.  All cards (yes, really, all of them -- try me!) suck sometimes, it just happens that Counting House has a larger set of boards for which it sucks.  That doesn't inherently make it a terrible card; it just means you have to recognize the situations where having it DOES make sense, and go from there.  I wouldn't change it for the world.

But if you made me change it, I'd probably give it some limited Cellar-like ability; if you actually have Copper in hand it's effectively + Card.