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Author Topic: Compare the Single-Card Engines  (Read 18892 times)

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Epoch

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Compare the Single-Card Engines
« on: September 08, 2011, 03:34:48 pm »
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Companion to "Compare the Villages" and "Compare the Smithies," this thread looks at the cards which are by themselves spammable, and give you massive drawing power (I guess that the formal definition would be: +1 action and better than +1 card).  The canonical and most vanilla of these is Laboratory.

The cards:

Laboratory
Hunting Party
Alchemist
Minion
Scrying Pool
Nobles
Activated Cities

Cards that could potentially fill this function, but which I think actually can't really, but hey if you want to make the case go for it:

Menagerie
Wishing Well



My comments:

Top Tier:

Scrying Pool stands out for me as #1.  The fact that it has a (mild, sure) attack built into it and the ability to cycle through your worse cards is huge, and the relatively low cost really helps it, in my mind.  If we're looking for a one-card-spammable draw-your-whole deck, I've never had as much success with the others as with Scrying Pool.  Though obviously to really shine, it wants to be paired with some kind of useful Action that also gives +1 Action (or villages + terminal actions, but at that point we aren't talking a hybrid engine).

I don't think I'll hear a ton of argument in putting Hunting Party into the top-tier.  The gem of the Cornucopia set, Hunting Party shares the ability of Scrying Pool to cut through your worse cards, and is of course unmatched in drawing that one critical card in your deck.

Minion has the unique property of being more self sufficient than any other one-card engine, providing its own money as well as a mild attack.  It's poor in Colony games and perhaps just slightly underperforms to its reputation, but that's just because its reputation is so strong.  Clearly top tier, particularly in the absence of trashing.

Mid Tier:

Laboratory and Alchemist, perhaps the closest cousins of any two cards in the game, are both solid, nice cards that just lack the something special of the top tier cards.  They need support since they don't provide their own money, they don't filter through bad cards, they don't attack.  Laboratory is expensive enough that in the early game it's hard to get your engine going.  Alchemist is a Potion card, and a more expensive one than Scrying Pool.

Low Tier:

Nobles has been described persuasively as a Smithy with some extra bonuses.  It's a good Smithy.  It's a very poor engine all by itself.

Activated Cities are amazing when they work, but the initial period of high-cost Villagery is rough to get through.  Very situational, and probably the only card on this list that you are fairly likely to want to entirely ignore in a Kingdom.



Honorable Mention:

I do not believe that you can get an "engine" of Menagerie going.  It's a worthwhile support card in some decks, but spamming it is counter-productive.

Maybe some kind of nutty deck with a specific trashing strategy would make Wishing Well into an engine (buy one Coppersmith, one or two Markets and spam Wishing Wells and Coppers)?  But not usually, not even if you have robot-like deck counting skills.  Not a bad card, but not an engine.
« Last Edit: September 08, 2011, 03:39:48 pm by Epoch »
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philosophyguy

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #1 on: September 08, 2011, 03:59:45 pm »
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As much as I've learned to love Scrying Pool, I think it needs to be a Tier 2, rather than Tier 1, for 2 reasons. First, it doesn't have it's own payload. Unlike Minion, which generates its own coin, Scrying Pool depends on the other cards in your deck to get money.

Second, Scrying Pool is more board-dependent than Minion. You usually need at least two of the following: trashing (to get rid of the cards that shut down the Scrying Pool chain), cantrips (to spam for drawing power), villages (to play your terminal actions that you are consistently drawing), and gaining cards/+buy (to acquire both Scrying Pools and other actions so that you can draw your deck consistently).
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philosophyguy

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #2 on: September 08, 2011, 04:02:01 pm »
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You actually can get a Menagerie engine going with Hamlets (or other Village+discard/trash for benefit). It's tricky enough that it wouldn't make Menagerie better than a Tier 3 engine, but it's possible.
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ackack

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #3 on: September 08, 2011, 04:12:53 pm »
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Scrying Pool is a great card, but I have a hard time seeing it as a standalone engine. What makes it good is its ability to pull other engines together. If you're trying to play just Pool and money, you'd need to buy a bunch before it's even as good as Lab, and that Potion really eats into your buying power from the beginning.
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Epoch

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #4 on: September 08, 2011, 04:32:37 pm »
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I've done very well with Scrying Pools on non-ideal boards.  Of course, I'm a level 26 player, not a level 40 player.

Now, it's true, literally just Scrying Pool and money is probably pretty bad.  And Scrying Pool + any Village hybrid engine is absurdly good with almost any other 8 Kingdom cards, so you might consider it its own class of thing.  But if you have a non-terminal money-gaining Action, and nothing else, I think you can usually make a go of it with Scrying Pool + whatever that Action is.  Market, Conspirator of course, Festival (even if you have literally nothing to spend Festival's actions on), maybe even Pawn though admittedly I haven't ever played that deck...
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Fangz

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #5 on: September 08, 2011, 04:52:27 pm »
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I can't really see scrying pool as top tier. It's highly situational, it doesn't draw treasures well, it's very vulnerable to attacks, it pretty much requires you to dispose of all your starting cards to use it and its potion + coin cost makes it very difficult to acquire - much harder than even nobles. In some sets and with some strategies it can be monstrous, but usually it isn't. That's the definition of a tier 2 or a tier 3 card to me.

Menagerie is top tier for me. I often buy a contraband in a no +buy deck just to pick them up two at a time, and they are beautiful with ironworks. As long as you have a way to trash coppers - even a small number of them, or discard cards, or have non-terminals that don't draw, or the opponent is using attacks, they can fire very often. And these are situations that come up pretty often actually.
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Epoch

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #6 on: September 08, 2011, 04:58:49 pm »
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I can't really see scrying pool as top tier. It's highly situational, it doesn't draw treasures well, it's very vulnerable to attacks, it pretty much requires you to dispose of all your starting cards to use it and its potion + coin cost makes it very difficult to acquire - much harder than even nobles.

I don't know why people think you need strong trashing with Scrying Pool.  Do they also think that you need strong trashing with Laboratory?  I mean, obviously trashing Coppers and Estates helps almost every deck, but Scrying Pool lets you move through two cards per play, just like Lab -- you put your Estates and Coppers into the discard pile.  Usually, that's just as good as Labs that draw Estates (unless you have discard-for-benefit) and only a little worse with Coppers.  And in return for the -$1 that you might've picked up with Lab, you get a chance to discard your opponent's strong cards.
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AJD

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #7 on: September 08, 2011, 05:04:06 pm »
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So the only real Lab-type card that seems to be missing from this list is Caravan. I think it's probably low-tier in terms of the hierarchy in this article—since playing it once locks it up for two turns, it takes a lot more Caravans in order to be able to reliably spam it, so it's a lot tougher to build an engine out of. Its lower cost compared to Laboratory compensates for that somewhat, though.

Apothecary is also sort of a Lab-type card in the same way Scrying Pool and Wishing Well are—+1 card, +1 action, and then potentially more cards depending on what's on top of your deck—but of course it's really a different type of beast because the cards you can draw with it are so restricted.

As an aside, I have often found myself over-buying Hunting Parties relative to the total amount of diversity in my deck: I end up buying six or seven Hunting Parties, and after I play three of them I have in hand one copy of every card I have, and the rest of the Hunting Parties just Chancellor my deck without finding anything to draw; obviously this wouldn't happen with Labs. So the moral here is that Hunting Party is a great engine card, but it's more important to spend some of those $5 (or $6!) buys on some other more or less useful card just so your HPs have something to draw once you've already got one Gold in your hand.
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philosophyguy

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #8 on: September 08, 2011, 05:21:31 pm »
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I don't know why people think you need strong trashing with Scrying Pool.  Do they also think that you need strong trashing with Laboratory?

Well, you yourself only rank Lab as a second-tier standalone engine, so saying that Scrying Pool is in the same boat doesn't really defend the first-tier ranking.

You're right that Scrying Pools can be strong even without trashing, but take a look at my list again. If you don't have +buy/gain, cantrips to spam, or Villages, how effective is that Scrying Pool going to be? You need to buy Scrying Pools, obviously, but you also need action cards for SP to draw. If you don't have +buy, then you're limited in how quickly you can get your deck over the threshold for the SP to draw the whole shebang. If you don't have Villages, a lot of your non-SP actions will be drawn dead. Etc. It's not nearly as automatic as a first tier engine suggests.
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Fangz

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #9 on: September 08, 2011, 05:23:29 pm »
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I can't really see scrying pool as top tier. It's highly situational, it doesn't draw treasures well, it's very vulnerable to attacks, it pretty much requires you to dispose of all your starting cards to use it and its potion + coin cost makes it very difficult to acquire - much harder than even nobles.

I don't know why people think you need strong trashing with Scrying Pool.  Do they also think that you need strong trashing with Laboratory?  I mean, obviously trashing Coppers and Estates helps almost every deck, but Scrying Pool lets you move through two cards per play, just like Lab -- you put your Estates and Coppers into the discard pile.  Usually, that's just as good as Labs that draw Estates (unless you have discard-for-benefit) and only a little worse with Coppers.  And in return for the -$1 that you might've picked up with Lab, you get a chance to discard your opponent's strong cards.

Moving through them is nothing like drawing them! Otherwise chancellor would be the best engine and that's just silly. Getting a $1 with a lab is also super important, because, well, generally the game is decided by those single $ differences. Getting a $4 hand is a league apart from a $5 hand. If you only draw one card with scrying pool, then you've barely done better than if you never had that card in your hand at all. And to get that card, you've inflicted your deck with a potion that's almost as bad as a curse when it comes to the end game.

Also, discarding the opponents' cards from their deck can often help them. It cycles through their deck faster, and so ensures that new cards they buy enters their hand more quickly - again an ability that is more likely to be useful without trashing.

EDIT: There's a reason why council room's card winningness is 1.01-0.95 for laboratory, and 1.01-0.99 for scrying pool.
« Last Edit: September 08, 2011, 05:32:44 pm by Fangz »
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Epoch

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #10 on: September 08, 2011, 05:26:34 pm »
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I don't know why people think you need strong trashing with Scrying Pool.  Do they also think that you need strong trashing with Laboratory?

Well, you yourself only rank Lab as a second-tier standalone engine, so saying that Scrying Pool is in the same boat doesn't really defend the first-tier ranking.

It attacks, and of course it has the ability to draw more than 2 cards -- it cycles 2 cards as a minimum, but even with just more Scrying Pools in the deck, it'll often draw 3+.
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Epoch

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #11 on: September 08, 2011, 05:31:49 pm »
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Moving through them is nothing like drawing them!

Well, it actually is, though.  With Lab, sure, sometimes you're saying, "Oh, man, what I need is another Copper here," and good for you if you are, but MOST of the time, you're looking for your more powerful card.  That's why Hunting Party is so superior to Lab -- if it were the case that usually you were really concerned with drawing one more Copper, Hunting Party would be inferior to Lab.

And the nice thing about Scrying Pool is that it doesn't need a ton of Coppers to get itself going -- it's looking for its Potion, and it moves towards the Potion just as quickly as Alchemist does -- but it only needs 2 Coppers to buy another Scrying Pool.

Also, discarding the opponents' cards from their deck can often help them. It cycles through their deck faster, and so ensures that new cards they buy enters their hand more quickly - again an ability that is more likely to be useful without trashing.

You're doing it wrong if you're helping them.  It's only good to cycle if your good cards get cycled IN.  If you skip your Gold this shuffle, but get to your next shuffle a little faster, that is NOT a net benefit for you.
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Fangz

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #12 on: September 08, 2011, 05:41:14 pm »
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Moving through them is nothing like drawing them!

Well, it actually is, though.  With Lab, sure, sometimes you're saying, "Oh, man, what I need is another Copper here," and good for you if you are, but MOST of the time, you're looking for your more powerful card.  That's why Hunting Party is so superior to Lab -- if it were the case that usually you were really concerned with drawing one more Copper, Hunting Party would be inferior to Lab.

No, with lab you are saying, I want to have a hand that does at least $5 so I can buy another laboratory, or $6 to get a gold, so that quickly my hand is going to be an awesome chain of laboratories and treasures and super cards that my opponent is never going to beat. With hunting party, you draw 2 cards, and one of them is skewed to pick out one of your rarer (and better) cards in your deck, instead if 'whatever happens to be the second next card in your deck'.

As for the discard from deck ability. Without heavily trashing, most of your hits will be on coppers and estates. So you will make no difference. If you hit one of their silvers, then what?
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Epoch

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #13 on: September 08, 2011, 06:04:11 pm »
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No, with lab you are saying, I want to have a hand that does at least $5 so I can buy another laboratory, or $6 to get a gold, so that quickly my hand is going to be an awesome chain of laboratories and treasures and super cards that my opponent is never going to beat. With hunting party, you draw 2 cards, and one of them is skewed to pick out one of your rarer (and better) cards in your deck, instead if 'whatever happens to be the second next card in your deck'.

Yeah, I understand how Hunting Party works.  Seriously, try it with Scrying Pool and ANY enabling card, no trashing.  You'll be surprised.  As I said already, SP isn't good with pure money, but most Kingdoms do feature some kind of enabling card.  It's not just Chapel + Village into Goons.

As for the discard from deck ability. Without heavily trashing, most of your hits will be on coppers and estates. So you will make no difference. If you hit one of their silvers, then what?

You need to exercise some judgment and knowledge of both your deck and your opponent's when you use the SP attack.  Deciding when you're going to have enough SPs to push through their merely "okay" cards and find an really worthless green card, versus when you'll want to say, "Okay, I'll stop at a Copper, or maybe even a Silver" requires a certain amount of keeping track of both your own deck and theirs.  But it's far from impossible or even very difficult, and when you're really getting going with your SPs, you'll find that you can cause them to skip a couple of their best cards in every shuffle of their deck.
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guided

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #14 on: September 08, 2011, 06:12:03 pm »
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Scrying Pool is annoyingly viable as a single-card engine (needing little more than one or two other action cards as payloads). I say "annoyingly" in part because I hate playing them and I hate playing against them. Number of clicks/amount of time per card drawn is just so absurdly high. I avoid playing Scrying Pool decks most of the time just because the clicking or physical card manipulation is so tedious.
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AJD

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #15 on: September 08, 2011, 06:41:55 pm »
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...Also, I wouldn't really think of Minion as being in the same class as Lab and Hunting Party and whatnot, even though it does produce a single-card engine. Minion is really in the same broad category as Tactician (Minion is to Tactician as Council Room is to Wharf?), or maybe Cellar (Minion is to Cellar as Horse Traders is to Secret Chamber???).
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jonts26

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #16 on: September 08, 2011, 07:08:48 pm »
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Minion has the unique property of being more self sufficient than any other one-card engine, providing its own money as well as a mild attack.

I would classify the minion attack as more than mild. It's no curser, true, but it's at least on par with militia/goons in attack power. Additionally, the way minion engines work, This attack will happen just about every turn. Making your opponent play the game with 4 card hands is a severe handicap.
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Epoch

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #17 on: September 08, 2011, 07:15:21 pm »
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...Also, I wouldn't really think of Minion as being in the same class as Lab and Hunting Party and whatnot, even though it does produce a single-card engine. Minion is really in the same broad category as Tactician (Minion is to Tactician as Council Room is to Wharf?), or maybe Cellar (Minion is to Cellar as Horse Traders is to Secret Chamber???).

I don't see what Minion really has to do with Tactician (okay, that's not true, I do see what you're saying: they're both discard and redraw.  But they don't play anything alike).

I know it was a little weird to put Minion in here, since it's "less like" Lab than are Hunting Party and Alchemist are.  But Nobles and, to a lesser extent, Scrying Pool are also not all that Lab-like, and I think the way that they all function as cards where you can spam them and draw your whole deck ends up making them play surprisingly similarly.
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Epoch

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #18 on: September 08, 2011, 07:16:22 pm »
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I would classify the minion attack as more than mild. It's no curser, true, but it's at least on par with militia/goons in attack power. Additionally, the way minion engines work, This attack will happen just about every turn. Making your opponent play the game with 4 card hands is a severe handicap.

I was thinking of it as milder, since obviously you have 4 cards, not 3, but then you get to choose your Militia/Goons/Torturer discards, so fair enough.  "More than mild" it is.
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philosophyguy

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #19 on: September 08, 2011, 07:27:51 pm »
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Should Conspirator get an honorable mention? It obviously requires an enabler, but can be the rest of the engine on its own.
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Epoch

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #20 on: September 08, 2011, 07:44:35 pm »
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Should Conspirator get an honorable mention? It obviously requires an enabler, but can be the rest of the engine on its own.

I think of "spammable cantrips" as different from "engines."  Like, however good Conspirator is, Grand Market is obviously better, and doesn't really require an enabler...  but (in my mind) it's not an engine.  It's a good cantrip.

Not all decks need to be engines, otherwise we'd have to start talking about Big Money Engines.

There may be room for a "Compare the Spammable Cards" thread.  Like, which cantrips are ones that you actually want to buy a lot of or even base your deck around?  Grand Market?  Yes.  Conspirator with an enabler?  Maybe.  Market?  Probably not.  Pearl Diver?  I'd consider it unlikely.
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Anon79

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #21 on: September 08, 2011, 11:34:10 pm »
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I was pretty confused by this thread, until I realised that "single-card engine" to the OP means "play a lot of this card to draw (or go through and selectively draw) your whole deck". I thought "single-card engine" meant "I will buy a lot (3+) of this card, some money, and VP cards, and nothing else".
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Thisisnotasmile

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #22 on: September 09, 2011, 08:31:01 am »
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You seem to be using the term "Single-Card Engine" to refer to any card which, when any number of copies of that card and no other card are used, can enable you to play the cards in your deck which actually give you your buying power. All of these cards (bar Minion and level 3 Cities) require support from (or rather provide support for) other cards in your deck without which your buying power would be $0. With this in mind, I feel that Apothecary and Golem can both be classed as "Single-Card Engines". If they are not, then neither is anything on this list bar Minion and level 3 Cities.

And on a different note, I don't really see the point of this topic. Comparing the Villages was a discussion of the merits and drawbacks of the huge range of different cards which provide +2 Actions. Villages can provide support to all (read: most) decks and are available in almost every single game of Dominion due to the huge range available. Comparing the Smithies seemed to be a bit of a spin-off of the former topic, and it didn't really have much use. There's not so much of a wide range of cards which provide +3 Cards as there are cards providing +2 Actions, and the variations between the cards aren't really that big due to the fact that +3 Cards is already a pretty substantial effect. Therefore, if you want a +3 Cards effect in your deck, you (usually) buy whichever one is available and/or you can afford. This topic seems to me to be "compare a few cards which kind of share a similar arbitrary property but in all honesty aren't related at all". None of these cards are better or worse than any of the others. You just use whichever one best supports the type of deck you are going for (and is available).

Anyhow, that's just my opinion of how these topics have got more and more irrelevant. Other people may completely disagree, and that's fine. Carry on.
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AJD

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #23 on: September 12, 2011, 11:35:26 am »
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Does that mean you don't think a Compare-the-Peddlers thread would be a good idea?  ;)

(Peddler, Market, Bazaar, Treasury, Conspirator, Tournament, Grand Market)
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Fangz

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #24 on: September 12, 2011, 11:42:31 am »
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Compare the trashers would be useful, I guess...
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AJD

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #25 on: September 12, 2011, 01:24:04 pm »
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Hmm, it might, at that. What are "the trashers", though?—

Chapel, Moneylender, Masquerade, Steward, Lookout, Salvager, Apprentice, Loan, Trade Route, Bishop, of course...
Mint??
Trading Post and Forge....
Upgrade and Remake?
Remodel, Mine, Transmute, Expand?
Ambassador and Island??

Not all of these belong in the same list, obviously. Expand trashes a card, but I wouldn't really want to think of it as "a trasher".
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sherwinpr

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #26 on: September 15, 2011, 02:42:58 am »
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It would be nice to discuss the fast trashers, which are those cards which can trash (or otherwise get rid of) at least two cards at a time.

They are:
Chapel
Steward
Trading Post
Ambassador
Forge
Remake

Island shouldn't count as it gets rid of itself, so can't be used repeatedly; neither should Mint. If both you and your opponent are playing Bishops, trashing will be quite fast as well.  Upgrade, Lookout, and Loan might be considered fast too as they don't take up an action, and they also don't take up a card; they leave you with 4 other cards rather than 3. (Upgrade draws a card, while Lookout and Loan trash cards in your deck rather than your hand).
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Mean Mr Mustard

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #27 on: September 15, 2011, 08:05:41 am »
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Hunting Party

This one, if played properly, and on the a lot of boards, is devastating.  The trick is to severely limit the number of unique cards in the deck. Estate, Copper, Silver, Gold, (Militia) with about five or six HPs is a recipe for victory.

Alchemist

If allowed time to mature Alchemist is great, but it can be overcome with a fast enough board.  Once it is rolling, if the game was competitive, it is no longer.  Buy an extra Potion or a strong trasher.

Minion

I personally would put Minion at the top of the list.  It is still that good.

Scrying Pool

It seems the general public has caught on to how great this card is, making it not that great any longer.  It is impossible to rush the Pool stack so mirror matches are much more even, so it really comes down to luck and superior deck building.

Menagerie

This on absolutely belongs on this list, near the top.  Obviously some things have to take place in order for it to dominate, but that is true of the other engine cards as well.  A big plus is that it deals really well with hand disruption attacks.  A big minus is that it can take some time to develop, sometimes too much time.  Menagerie does very well if you can gain them easily, like with Upgrade or Remake. 
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guided

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #28 on: September 15, 2011, 09:45:05 am »
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I mean... show me a log where Menagerie is the primary drawing card in an engine, without requiring some delicate combination of discard-for-benefit effects (or whatever) that is not usually going to be available. I'm not dissing it as a good card but I really don't see it as a single-card engine.
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Jimmmmm

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #29 on: September 15, 2011, 10:51:00 am »
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In my opinion, Menagerie is best when you have plenty of non-terminals and/or enough Villages to be able to play any terminals that double up. Along with trashing, of course. In this situation, it can be a brilliant engine.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #30 on: September 15, 2011, 10:53:25 am »
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In my opinion, Menagerie is best when you have plenty of non-terminals and/or enough Villages to be able to play any terminals that double up. Along with trashing, of course. In this situation, it can be a brilliant engine.
But single-card it is definitely not in this case.

Thisisnotasmile

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #31 on: September 15, 2011, 11:20:38 am »
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In my opinion, Menagerie is best when you have plenty of non-terminals and/or enough Villages to be able to play any terminals that double up. Along with trashing, of course. In this situation, it can be a brilliant engine.
But single-card it is definitely not in this case.

Why not? Hardly any of the cards listed in this thread are actually single cards that when (multiples of it are) used let you buy VPs. Surely that's what a single-card engine is? But according to this thread and the cards that we are actually considering as "single-card engines", we are actually looking at the cards which will enable you to access the cards which will let you earn VPs. A deck full of nothing but Scrying Pools sure is going to draw its whole self every turn, but it's not going to buy Provinces. You still need extra cards that actually provide the buying power, and according to the definition used in this thread, that is fine. Who's to say you have to play these non-engine cards right at the end of your turn? You're free to play City, City, Terminal, City, City, City, Treasures. That terminal in the middle doesn't suddenly make City not a single-card engine. Why can't the same be true for Menagerie?
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Fangz

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #32 on: September 15, 2011, 11:35:09 am »
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I mean... show me a log where Menagerie is the primary drawing card in an engine, without requiring some delicate combination of discard-for-benefit effects (or whatever) that is not usually going to be available. I'm not dissing it as a good card but I really don't see it as a single-card engine.

Well, what is an engine here? Do you have to draw your entire deck for it to be an engine? On its own, a deck with lots of menageries will bring you of lots of hands of 7 or more cards to play, and often more which is equivalent to chaining together two laboratories, which really isn't all that bad at all. Defining engine as cards that increase your handsize while still leaving you with actions to play those cards, menagerie is by definition a single card engine, and there's plenty of decks fueled by it. Adding discard cards to the mix boosts menagerie's reliability, but that's pretty much equivalent to scrying pool's need for lots of actions to reliably draw more than one card.

Anyway here's a game:

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110824-122605-8c85fe7a.html

Also here

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110623-082417-b08e94b2.html

etc
« Last Edit: September 15, 2011, 11:47:31 am by Fangz »
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #33 on: September 15, 2011, 11:38:27 am »
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In my opinion, Menagerie is best when you have plenty of non-terminals and/or enough Villages to be able to play any terminals that double up. Along with trashing, of course. In this situation, it can be a brilliant engine.
But single-card it is definitely not in this case.

Why not? Hardly any of the cards listed in this thread are actually single cards that when (multiples of it are) used let you buy VPs. Surely that's what a single-card engine is? But according to this thread and the cards that we are actually considering as "single-card engines", we are actually looking at the cards which will enable you to access the cards which will let you earn VPs. A deck full of nothing but Scrying Pools sure is going to draw its whole self every turn, but it's not going to buy Provinces. You still need extra cards that actually provide the buying power, and according to the definition used in this thread, that is fine. Who's to say you have to play these non-engine cards right at the end of your turn? You're free to play City, City, Terminal, City, City, City, Treasures. That terminal in the middle doesn't suddenly make City not a single-card engine. Why can't the same be true for Menagerie?
Well, first off, you specifically say that you need a village. That's a pretty specific kind of thing to need. "I need an action that produces at least $1" is going to show up on most every board. And I give you any card that's in every set-up. But to a certain extent, yeah, I don't consider scrying pool or many of these cards to be single-card engines. Minion IS, Lab and nobles and hunting party largely are, and... yeah, don't think there are many.

Fangz

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #34 on: September 15, 2011, 11:45:21 am »
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Menagerie doesn't 'need' villages. No more than hunting party or laboratory does. But villages certainly help with large hands.
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guided

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #35 on: September 15, 2011, 12:04:31 pm »
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Well, what is an engine here?
A deck that usefully and reliably cycles a lot of cards each turn. Could be by increasing hand-size to draw treasures for buying power (e.g. with Laboratory) or by cycling cards while generating +$ effects (e.g. a Minion engine). A "single-card engine" as discussed in this thread is one where only one Kingdom pile is used to provide the card draw. Menagerie is not going to fulfill that purpose, because it's self-limiting due to hand size as well as collision (if you were to really buy a lot of them). Perhaps with clever trashing, a broad selection of different treasures, and Fairgrounds...? but that is not your typical Kingdom. Or with a broad selection of +$ terminals... but then you need a Village too. There's simply no equivalence to Scrying Pool, which can provide excellent card draw with no other support whatsoever (not even trashing!), allowing for any number of "payload" effects to provide buying power, as simple as adding a Gold or two to the deck.

Your use of Menagerie in the first linked game isn't a "single-card engine" any more than single-Smithy is a single-card engine. It's just not an engine deck. In the 2nd game Menagerie drew a lot of cards mainly thanks to some excellent luck, and even then, Apprentice, Bazaar, and Ghost Ship were key players in the engine.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2011, 12:13:26 pm by guided »
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Fangz

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #36 on: September 15, 2011, 12:24:53 pm »
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Well, if I had played a smithy instead in the first game, I wouldn't have been able to play outpost, grand market, or whatever after it. In the second case, I considered the ghost ship to be more the 'payload' of the deck - the menagerie helped me to consistently play it, but the single ghost ship wasn't going to be much good for deck cycling. The apprentice helped with trashing, sure, but realistically it can be replaced with any trasher, and in other games I've played, has been replaced with any trasher. Was there luck? Of course, but down my other games, the luck seems to be more common than you'd think.

Quote
There's simply no equivalence to Scrying Pool, which can provide excellent card draw with no other support whatsoever (not even trashing!), allowing for any number of "payload" effects to provide buying power, as simple as adding a Gold or two to the deck.

But isn't it interesting that in your *own* council room stats, menagerie provides you with a large "win rate with" vs "win rate without" difference, while scrying pool doesn't make any difference at all....?  ;)
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guided

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #37 on: September 15, 2011, 12:41:53 pm »
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  • I'm not sure where you got the idea that I had suggested buying Smithy in lieu of Menagerie on this particular board. I just said this wasn't an engine deck. And it's not. Many strong decks are not engine decks, with single-Smithy being one example.
  • Apprentice was used as one of the engine cards (i.e. to draw cards), not just for trashing. Ghost Ship (enhanced by Bazaar) also contributed nontrivially to the engine's card draw.
  • Your comment about council room stats smacks of deliberate bad faith. I'll respond to it when you explain how it has any relevance to the discussion at hand.
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Fangz

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #38 on: September 15, 2011, 01:00:34 pm »
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  • I'm not sure where you got the idea that I had suggested buying Smithy in lieu of Menagerie on this particular board. I just said this wasn't an engine deck. And it's not. Many strong decks are not engine decks, with single-Smithy being one example.
  • Apprentice was used as one of the engine cards (i.e. to draw cards), not just for trashing. Ghost Ship (enhanced by Bazaar) also contributed nontrivially to the engine's card draw.
  • Your comment about council room stats smacks of deliberate bad faith. I'll respond to it when you explain how it has any relevance to the discussion at hand.

1. Is cycling equivalent to playing two laboratories a lot? I'd say so. It was certainly sufficient in these cases to draw the cards I needed, and allow me to play actions. If laboratory and scrying pool count as engines, when often they draw far fewer than the three cards menagerie gave me, then why isn't menagerie an engine card?

2. What exactly wouldn't convince you that menagerie is suitable for this thread? Apprentice and ghost ship helped with my deck, I'm not going to deny that, but neither of them are the clever discard combo or fairgrounds or really any particular unusual card. They are just strong cards that worked with the strategy. Can we find a great deal of strong scrying pool plays that don't involve any other drawers? I think it difficult.

3. I'm just seeing little evidence provided that scrying pool is altogether in a different league to menagerie. You might maintain that scrying pool alone is a great card while menagerie requires unusual card selections to be effective, but in your own experience as shown in the council room stats, scrying pool doesn't distinguish itself at all, while menagerie performs very well on average.

Which says to me that in the hands of a skilled player like yourself, the situations where menagerie can be used effectively comes up actually quite often indeed, even if you don't necessarily remember them, while scrying pool at least appears more situational than the 'works great on its own unsupported' claim suggests.

We conclude that menageries is at least a good card, and very frequently better than scrying pool, and often, even, better than laboratory. And if it's a good card that gives you draws and actions to play them, if you don't want to call it an engine card, then what do you want to call it?

EDIT: Also mentioning your stats is a not so sneaky way of trying to convince you to play it more often since it's one of my favourite cards and more unusually has a pretty substantial with/without win rate difference for me even if I buy it probably a little a too much.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2011, 01:08:34 pm by Fangz »
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ackack

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #39 on: September 15, 2011, 01:06:40 pm »
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1. Is cycling equivalent to playing two laboratories a lot? I'd say so. It was certainly sufficient in these cases to draw the cards I needed, and allow me to play actions. If laboratory and scrying pool count as engines, when often they draw far fewer than the three cards menagerie gave me, then why isn't menagerie an engine card?

You can play a bunch of Labs in a turn and they keep doing good things. Menagerie with no help quickly breaks down. That's the main distinction.

Regarding what's suitable for this thread, chwhite wrote a really nice article on Villages that started a trend where people decided to try to categorize a bunch of other cards in a similar fashion. I think "single-card engines" is a pretty forced characterization, which is probably a good chunk of why there are arguments of this sort.
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Fangz

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #40 on: September 15, 2011, 01:12:28 pm »
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1. Is cycling equivalent to playing two laboratories a lot? I'd say so. It was certainly sufficient in these cases to draw the cards I needed, and allow me to play actions. If laboratory and scrying pool count as engines, when often they draw far fewer than the three cards menagerie gave me, then why isn't menagerie an engine card?

You can play a bunch of Labs in a turn and they keep doing good things. Menagerie with no help quickly breaks down. That's the main distinction.

So does hunting party, though... Have less than (# hunting party) unique card types in your deck, and additional hunting parties almost might as well not exist. Nobles too will rapidly break down, because continuing to draw pairs of nobles is pretty darn hard. I think instead of asking for infinitely sustainable draw power (which is rare), we should think more about drawing what you need, and despite the fast breakdown, menagerie *can* get you the cards you need.

EDIT: VVV

But then again menagerie requires fewer plays to get you what you need. That offsets its problems. I'm not disputing that these cards do and behave differently, but it seems to me the differences are a matter of degree than being completely different, and in most cases menagerie can fulfil the role of laboratory and so on in the deck, and often in my experience actually does it better.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2011, 01:19:01 pm by Fangz »
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ackack

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #41 on: September 15, 2011, 01:14:13 pm »
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Sure, there's a limit to Hunting Party, and there's a limit to Labs too. Compared to Menagerie, those cards reach their limit substantially less often (yes, I'm aware that Hunting Party in the early game can be a glorified Chancellor.)
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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #42 on: September 15, 2011, 01:16:25 pm »
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1. Is cycling equivalent to playing two laboratories a lot? I'd say so. It was certainly sufficient in these cases to draw the cards I needed, and allow me to play actions. If laboratory and scrying pool count as engines, when often they draw far fewer than the three cards menagerie gave me, then why isn't menagerie an engine card?

You can play a bunch of Labs in a turn and they keep doing good things. Menagerie with no help quickly breaks down. That's the main distinction.

So does hunting party, though... Have less than (# hunting party) unique card types in your deck, and additional hunting parties almost might as well not exist. Nobles too will rapidly break down, because continuing to draw pairs of nobles is pretty darn hard. I think instead of asking for infinitely sustainable draw power (which is rare), we should think more about drawing what you need, and despite the fast breakdown, menagerie *can* get you the cards you need.

You'd think that, but Hunting party+money is actually a pretty darn strong BM-based engine. The thing is that you draw the first card free and then draw into probably another hunting party.

guided

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #43 on: September 15, 2011, 01:30:35 pm »
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1. Is cycling equivalent to playing two laboratories a lot? I'd say so. It was certainly sufficient in these cases to draw the cards I needed, and allow me to play actions. If laboratory and scrying pool count as engines, when often they draw far fewer than the three cards menagerie gave me, then why isn't menagerie an engine card?

You play it once, and maybe it gives you two Laboratories worth of value (or maybe it doesn't). You buy a lot of them and no other engine cards, and they stop working quickly because the chance of getting 3 cards declines precipitously as you add more cards to your hand.

I never once said Menagerie wasn't an engine card. I said it wasn't a single-card engine.

2. What exactly wouldn't convince you that menagerie is suitable for this thread? Apprentice and ghost ship helped with my deck, I'm not going to deny that, but neither of them are the clever discard combo or fairgrounds or really any particular unusual card. They are just strong cards that worked with the strategy. Can we find a great deal of strong scrying pool plays that don't involve any other drawers? I think it difficult.

"Apprentice and ghost ship helped with my deck" - the end. They provided card draw as part of the engine. Ergo: Menagerie was not a single-card engine, it was an engine card used alongside other engine cards.

I never once said Menagerie wasn't an engine card. I said it wasn't a single-card engine.

3. I'm just seeing little evidence provided that scrying pool is altogether in a different league to menagerie. You might maintain that scrying pool alone is a great card while menagerie requires unusual card selections to be effective, but in your own experience as shown in the council room stats, scrying pool doesn't distinguish itself at all, while menagerie performs very well on average.

I never once said Menagerie wasn't a good card, and I never once said that Scrying Pool is a better card on balance or on average than Menagerie. I only said Scrying Pool can easily form a single-card engine while Menagerie generally cannot.
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Fangz

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #44 on: September 15, 2011, 01:33:54 pm »
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Do you have an example game of scrying pool winning by forming an engine on its own with absolutely no other +card cards in the deck?
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chwhite

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #45 on: September 15, 2011, 01:50:38 pm »
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Do you have an example game of scrying pool winning by forming an engine on its own with absolutely no other +card cards in the deck?

Scrying Pool can do just fine without any other +Card!  In fact it's often best when there aren't other, easier-to-get, sources of +Card.  What it can't do without, OTOH, is trashing and/or coin-giving Actions.  Scrying Pool in a deck that still has seven Coppers and three Estates is usually a waste of time.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2011, 01:55:38 pm by chwhite »
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guided

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #46 on: September 15, 2011, 01:56:10 pm »
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Do you have an example game of scrying pool winning by forming an engine on its own with absolutely no other +card cards in the deck?
That will not be a typical use of Scrying Pool, and I've mentioned that I personally tend to avoid Scrying Pool decks because I find them annoying. I merely assert that it is readily possible on a broad range of boards to build an effective engine (whether it is fast enough to beat X other strategy on any given board is another matter) using no net-draw cards other than Scrying Pool, while this is not true of Menagerie. That possibility puts it on the list, and then when it comes to discussing where we should rank it on the list we can talk about how good such decks can be in practice against other strategies.

...But OK, here's all the Colonies gained in 18 turns with literally no +Card effects other than Scrying Pool (not even +1 Card cantrips! even though I was never excluding those to begin with) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/15/game-20110915-105049-e0a30a94.html
« Last Edit: September 15, 2011, 01:59:41 pm by guided »
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DG

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #47 on: September 15, 2011, 02:20:46 pm »
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With scrying pools, just as much as any other card, king's court makes anything possible. You can force your strategy through without seemingly having a suitable deck.
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Fangz

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #48 on: September 15, 2011, 02:27:36 pm »
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Okay, that card selection, replacing scrying pool with menagerie, buying only the cards you bought, plus chapel. One turn slower than you, but I probably bought colonies too early. (I'm one turn ahead of you to 4 colonies, though) I suspect lookout helps scrying pool pretty substantially since it almost guarantees drawing at least two cards.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/15/game-20110915-112502-8b958dbc.html
« Last Edit: September 15, 2011, 02:32:05 pm by Fangz »
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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #49 on: September 15, 2011, 02:55:30 pm »
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<a href=http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110724-182005-38d86cfa.html>Menagerie Sample Game one</a>

<a href=http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110711-024312-d7aac25d.html>Sample Game two</a>

<a href=http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110814-182830-006f89fc.html>Sample Game three</a>

<a href=http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110712-040030-023d4093.html>Sample Game four</a>
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guided

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #50 on: September 15, 2011, 03:07:29 pm »
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Okay, that card selection, replacing scrying pool with menagerie, buying only the cards you bought, plus chapel. One turn slower than you, but I probably bought colonies too early. (I'm one turn ahead of you to 4 colonies, though) I suspect lookout helps scrying pool pretty substantially since it almost guarantees drawing at least two cards.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/15/game-20110915-112502-8b958dbc.html
OK, now make that work without the specific combo of Festival and Horse Traders. Also, the words "plus Chapel" are doing an awful lot of work for you there. I will say I'm rather impressed that you did find a specific 3-card combo (plus trashers) where Menagerie is the sole drawing card in an effective engine, but that falls squarely under the "delicate combination that is not usually going to be available" umbrella.

Now, I used Horse Traders because it happened to be randomly generated on that board, and could easily have done without it entirely. Festival would have been equally useful if it only came with +1 Action, and as far as the actual drawing engine functionality of the deck goes, precisely equal card-draw could have been achieved if you replaced every Festival in the deck with literally any other action card, and removing all Festivals from the deck outright gives us precisely the same card-draw of non-Festival cards. Your engine, on the other hand, is highly reliant on both Horse Traders and the extra actions from Festival - they are part of the engine, since the engine cannot achieve good card-draw without them.

Lest you accuse Scrying Pool/Festival plus a trasher of being a delicate combo (though 2 cards are much more likely to find together than 3), note that Pawn will produce similar results even if forbidden from drawing cards. If we add back in +1 Card cantrips (which I never meant to exclude, and which are a part of many successful Scrying Pool decks), Market will serve nicely. Or basically any cantrip whatsoever (even Great Hall or Pearl Diver!) combined with any source of +Buy will make for a cromulent engine.
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guided

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #51 on: September 15, 2011, 03:36:40 pm »
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<a href=http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110724-182005-38d86cfa.html>Menagerie Sample Game one</a>

<a href=http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110711-024312-d7aac25d.html>Sample Game two</a>

<a href=http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110814-182830-006f89fc.html>Sample Game three</a>

<a href=http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110712-040030-023d4093.html>Sample Game four</a>
Game 1: Hamlet and Masquerade are important cogs in the engine.

Game 2: I'll give you this one! There's no super-specific combo that was needed to pull this off either. Outpost should be considered an engine card here, but it's merely icing on the cake of an already good engine. This is the sort of log I was looking for when I asked for logs, so hat's off to you. I will say I do not think this sort of result is achievable on anywhere near the broad selection of boards that can breed effective Scrying Pool engines.

Game 3: Not impressed by the performance of this engine, but sure, you draw a lot of cards with Menagerie (even if they are a bunch of clashing terminals and limited treasure-based buying power). Your opponent's performance is much less impressive, of course. I would expect a deck with little more than a Witch and a Goons + treasure (and an occasional opportunistic Peddler or Menagerie buy) to soundly beat both strategies on offer here.

Game 4: Good usage of Menagerie with other important engine cards. Minion is the most obvious one, but Apprentice and Salvager/Village are used to clean out duplicates to enable Menagerie draws. I will grant that Menagerie is the primary card-draw in this engine (which is what I asked for after all), though it's still not a single-card engine.


edit: It's clear you both love Menagerie, and that's cool. It's a good card and certainly a fun card. I like it too. I mean, easily the most fun deck I've played lately was a Hamlet/Torturer/Menagerie engine. But I'm not sure where you got the idea that just because it's a good card, and it can frequently be a part of a good engine, that you must defend it to the bitter death as a single-card engine in its own right. Like dudes, in the world, a thing can be great without being great in every conceivable way that it is possible to be great. Chocolate doesn't have to go well with garlic to be awesome. If I give you a stack of 10 Scrying Pools, boom, you have an engine. Signed, sealed, delivered. If I give you a stack of 10 Menageries, you have a lot more work to do to incorporate it into an engine.

Based on Game 2 above I'll happily grant that it is possible to build a mono-Menagerie engine. So: put it on the list, sure. I would put it squarely at the bottom though, because I think it's an awfully tall order to build that engine, requiring a rather specific sort of board (if not any specific (N>2)-card combo).
« Last Edit: September 15, 2011, 03:56:27 pm by guided »
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Mean Mr Mustard

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #52 on: September 15, 2011, 03:53:36 pm »
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I didn't look too  hard or long, guided.  I play Menagerie pretty heavily, and it isn't my best win with card, though it is fifth in lowest number of turns, .75 turns faster than Scrying Pool.  The main reason I would rank Menagerie higher is that, unlike Scrying Pool, the general public can't mirror match it as well, because they usually do not lay the proper groundwork for Menagerie to work as an engine card.
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Fangz

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #53 on: September 15, 2011, 03:54:10 pm »
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I would be quite interested how you'd do without festival. Festival contributed $20 of your colony buys. Having to make do without it would require far more treasures than you used and so damage your draw. I can't really see you getting to all colonies anywhere near as fast.

With me, the horse trader was really only important for removing duplicate colonies. Realistically I'd be going for four colonies plus a forge, and so could have done without.

I could have done without the festival horse traders combo. It's not like it's the only cards which will work! Off the top of my head:

Any village + vault, secret chamber or black market
University + remodel type card
Warehouse
Pawn would do in a pinch
Haven
Hamlet
Upgrade

Menagerie isn't fool proof, but you are greatly underestimating how often it's very powerful.
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guided

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #54 on: September 15, 2011, 04:07:10 pm »
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Is there any way to get either of you to recognize the distinction between "engine that uses card X (perhaps heavily)" and "engine that relies on nothing except card X to achieve card draw"? I keep trying, but I'm out of ideas at this point.

"Menagerie is good at drawing when combined with discard/trash for benefit cards." - Yes, it is! You know what? Torturer is good at drawing when combined with Villages.

"the horse trader was really only important"... b-b-bt! Stop there! It was an important part of the engine. Indeed it was extremely important for the continued functioning of the deck from turn 13 onward. That's 6 turns! (well, 5 good turns and that one clunker at turn 18)  - Again, pull all those Festivals out of the Scrying Pool deck and it still draws itself every turn.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2011, 04:09:19 pm by guided »
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Mean Mr Mustard

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #55 on: September 15, 2011, 04:14:29 pm »
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/shrug.  I have no use for arguing semantics with you.  I consider Menagerie to be one of five or so elite engine cards, and whether or not it is a <i>one card engine</i>, fine.  You win.  Happy?
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guided

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #56 on: September 15, 2011, 04:33:21 pm »
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Oh, I get it now, you accidentally stumbled in here from the "Compare every engine card ever" thread. Sorry, this is the "Compare the Single-Card Engines" thread!
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Dave970

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #57 on: September 15, 2011, 04:38:36 pm »
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Scrying Pool without the Festivals (sub any +coin card, as well), from that example, wasn't doing squat.  Plus, it was a solo game... a real opponent would have to be clueless to not gain some portion of those cards.  Scrying Pool and Treasures (to enable gaining the VPs), would limit the amount of cards drawn by any given Scrying Pool.

I totally get your argument that Menagerie needs another engine component, but so does Scrying Pool, and the example given showed that, as well.

The argument is needs to re-center on the definition of "engine".  If card-drawers are the sole component, let's go back to the "Compare the Smithies" thread.  If card-drawers are the sole component, what wins in the simulator between BMU+Smithy and BMU+Scrying Pool?

As was said earlier in this thread, about the only "self-sufficient" "engine" (note all the quotes) is Minion.  It, by itself, provides both the cycling and the cash to win.  To a lesser extent, a Market variant will accomplish this, as well.  Scrying Pool, plus money, plus green, without outside assistance, will grind to a halt.
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guided

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #58 on: September 15, 2011, 05:02:24 pm »
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An engine is something that cycles cards. That's it and that's all. Of course you also need some reason that cycling cards is useful, whether it's provided directly by the engine cards (Minion), or by some "payload" outside the engine (5 Banks and 7 Coppers at the end of a Worker's Village/Envoy chain). It's obvious what is meant by "Single-Card Engine" in the context of this thread - a card that can with no other help provide all the net card draw required to run the engine - and I'm done fighting all the feigned confusion about it. If you want to turn this into a more general discussion about enginey nonterminals, I hereby abdicate all responsibility for hewing the thread to the original topic :P
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chwhite

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #59 on: September 15, 2011, 06:52:23 pm »
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Well… I made lists for the Villages and the Smithies, and I still like making lists.  So here's one for this category.  Sort of.  The category "single-card engine" is nebulous and misleading, as the preceding argument proves all too well.  The fact is, virtually no card in Dominion perhaps save Minion is good enough to be an engine entirely by itself (not even Scrying Pool)- even HP and Lab need Treasure to work, and besides "single-card engine" encompasses a wider variety of mechanisms than are really coherent.  In particular, Minion and Nobles work really differently than most of these cards.

So I'm going to try and redirect this conversation to where it should have been at the beginning: Compare the Labs.  By Labs I mean what the OP was roughly going for: any card that provides +1 Action and *at least* +1 Card with a chance for more, Laboratory being the most basic iteration of this idea.  In other words, non-terminals which have as their function increasing your handsize.  That's a much more coherent category.  It also means some additions and subtractions to the OP's list: welcome, Apothecary and Caravan.  Goodbye, Minion and Nobles.  (You're great cards but you don't really fit here).  Sorry Scout and Shanty Town, you can fizzle; sorry Warehouse and Cellar, cycling is nice but you decrease handsize instead.  I'll let Activated Cities stay in, though the +2 Actions isn't shared by any other cards here.

I'm not going to bother putting them in tiers.  But there are a couple natural gaps: the best Lab is noticeably better than the rest, and the worst is similarly worse than the rest.  Most of these cards are quite good.

1. Hunting Party  I'm not going to rehash in detail all the reasons why Hunting Party is REAL ULTIMATE POWER but suffice to say, it is.  Ninety percent of the time, it's a strictly better Lab: probably a little worse as a 5/2 open and if you buy too many the last one'll just Chancellor you, but it's a better enabler for Big Money and it's better for sifting through junk and it's a better enabler to play your one linchpin attack over and over and it's a better enabler for Conspirators and many other chains and… you get the idea.  Imagine if Village was a top-tier card already, and then Farming Village came along and it also cost $3.  It has a better "win rate with" than any card that isn't a Prize, a curse attack, or Platinum; and its win rate without is nearly as impressive.  We're talking about the best $5 non-attack (better than Wharf and Tactician IMO), and probably the third-best $5 overall.  Hunting Party is cool, and by cool I mean totally sweet.

2. Menagerie  Bet you didn't expect Menagerie to be this high!  Well, it is.  Unlike HP, Menagerie requires support to work well, but that support consists of "any trashing, at all, or maybe just the presence of hand-reduction attacks, or heck, cycling, or disappearing Actions like Festival/FV…" In other words, it's very rare to find a board that doesn't support Menagerie at least a little bit.  And, well, when you can get Menagerie to work, it's *twice as good as a Lab* for *barely half the price* and is even better than that against Goons/Militia/Ghost Ship. Even if it only works a third of the time, that's not just a bargain, it's a bargain that makes Fishing Village look overpriced.  Oh, yeah, Fishing Village, which goes great with Menagerie and is its primary competition for third-best $3 card.   Obviously, it's kind of hard to get it to hit more than twice in a turn, unless maybe you're using it to supplement Minions or something, but it has so many other things going for it, and it's not like extra Menageries hurt.  I buy it 95 percent of the time, and I don't think that's too much at all.

3. Laboratory  The standard.  Unlike Village and Smithy, the basic iteration is one of the best, and I say that as someone who is less a Lab fan than most people here. Most variations on Village and Smithy add bells and whistles, Lab is strong enough that most variations have to make it worse instead.  Other cards on this list can sometimes give you more, or do it for less, but they don't have the versatility or dependability of good old Lab.

4. Scrying Pool In the right environment, Scrying Pool can be absolutely abusive above and beyond common sense, drawing dozens of cards at a time.  And it attacks too!  (Well, Spy is kind of a piddling attack, but still.)  Problem is, the right environment is rarer than you think.  If you can't trash your Coppers and Estates, or you can't get money (and preferably +Buy too) out of your Actions, then Scrying Pool is merely a Spy you had to buy a Potion to get.  And that's no good!

Don't get me wrong, Scrying Pool is an incredibly powerful engine card, the situations where it is at least useful are pretty common, and I do like playing Scrying Pool unlike many here.  But it is situational enough (and inconvenient enough to pick up) that it can't be any higher than fourth.

5. Caravan Pretty simple: a Lab next turn for $1 less.  I think that the Duration effect is more damaging to Caravan than it is to, say, Fishing Village, because the +Card also has the effect of making it more likely to miss a reshuffle, and unlike FV it doesn't give any benefit this turn.  It's a reasonably strong and reasonably cheap card, and it has the kinda-awesome property of making Workshop and Talisman actually worth it, but it's also probably not as strong as its reputation.

6. Activated Cities Talked about these a bit in the Villages thread, basically what I said there holds here too.  One thing worth mentioning is that I think they really don't work without support, because without support a player just going for money and Provinces is probably going to be faster.  Their potential is sort of like Scrying Pool in that way, but the triggers are much different: for example, Curse games are great for Cities, because they drain the pile, whereas they kill Pools dead.  Cities also play much better with Treasure-based decks.

7. Apothecary Apothecary is only this low because all the other cards on this list are so good: I think it's actually quite useful and underrated.  The most salient bit about Apothecary is that it improves both this hand and the next: you get Coppers to spend, and they're cleared out of your next hand.  In the absence of good trashing, I'd even go so far to say it's better than Scrying Pool  (Though of course its ceiling is much lower).  Works great with Coppersmith and Wishing Well, and works even better than that with Ambassador: I've had great success recently opening Amb/Potion with the Potion just for grabbing Apothecaries.  You cycle like a demon, pass back Estates, and have lots of Coppers to buy stuff with quickly.  Requires a slightly different play-style, and is rendered useless by Chapel/Moneylender, but good Apothecary boards are way more frequent than you think.

8. Alchemist  It's a Lab-plus!  Except that it's really hard to get, and you have to really go out of your way to get the extra benefit, doing weird things like buying multiple Potions or Herbalist.  It's great for building up mega-turns, if you've got Colonies and/or +Buy, but it's so slow and also fragile: hurt badly by Masq, Minion, and curse-givers.  If it's just a Province game, chances are it's just not worth going Alchemist.

9. Wishing Well No surprise here.  Its upside is merely a Lab, its downside is… far far more likely.  Menagerie outclasses this card, in virtually ever way, so hard.  I think it's a little better than people normally give it credit for, but it's still last here by a wide margin.  If you can mass buy/gain them, Wishing for Wishing Wells is fun and sometimes profitable, and they work great with Apothecary (the WW/Scout combo is much worse and almost never worth it).  And there's no harm and adding a few to your Goons deck.   I think they're about as mediocre as Shanty Town, which I guess is fitting.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2011, 02:31:07 am by chwhite »
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tlloyd

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #60 on: September 15, 2011, 07:15:03 pm »
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An engine is something that cycles cards. That's it and that's all.

This is, to me, the most interesting part of your otherwise very circular debate (speaking to you collectively). I also think you guys aren't going to get anywhere until you come to an understanding about what you mean by an engine. I for one wonder if it is as simple as "cycles cards". A handful of Warehouses would cycle through a lot of cards, but I doubt we'd think of that as an engine. I can't put my finger on it, but the concept that comes to mind for an engine is "control". An engine strategy doesn't rely on simply increasing the average value of a random five-card hand--it tries to remove the randomness through some combination of drawing, cycling, and trashing. A single-card engine would thus be one that allows you to reliably reach and play your purchase-power cards on nearly every turn. It would work with a LOT of scrying pools, but not so much with any number of menageries alone. So I'm gonna have to go with Guided on this one.
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guided

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #61 on: September 15, 2011, 07:26:41 pm »
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I also think you guys aren't going to get anywhere until you come to an understanding about what you mean by an engine.
I probably should have worded that quoted comment differently, just to say "in the context of this thread". There are different meanings for "engine", and one perfectly good meaning would include any non-cycling "payload" cards that your cycling machinery is meant to play. But what defines it as an engine per se (as opposed to just a strong deck that consistently generates VPs) is the cycling machinery. And it's absolutely clear from the OP that the intended topic of this thread was always the cycling machinery itself without regard to the payload (except that it should be readily possible to generate some useful payload using that machinery).

A mono-Warehouse engine is still an engine. But it's probably a bad engine (though I have run them with occasional success on Treasure Map boards - you just need to find 3 Golds within 2 plays of Warehouse, or 2 Golds within 3 plays is hardly a disaster either). The key difference between something just being an engine and it actually being a good engine, is that a good engine can use consistent cycling to generate solid VP gains over time.


chwhite: I agree that "Labs" is probably a more interesting category to talk about. I don't know that I'd change any of your rankings at all, except perhaps to bump up Apothecary.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2011, 07:01:19 am by guided »
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Epoch

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #62 on: September 15, 2011, 07:33:13 pm »
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4. Scrying Pool In the right environment, Scrying Pool can be absolutely abusive above and beyond common sense, drawing dozens of cards at a time.  And it attacks too!  (Well, Spy is kind of a piddling attack, but still.)  Problem is, the right environment is rarer than you think.  If you can't trash your Coppers and Estates, or you can't get money (and preferably +Buy too) out of your Actions, then Scrying Pool is merely a Spy you had to buy a Potion to get.  And that's no good!

Scrying Pool is always better than Spy, because you choose whether or not to cycle your top card BEFORE you get your +1 Card.  That's... a big deal.  Spy would be a much better card if its spying happened before its +card, not after.
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rinkworks

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #63 on: September 15, 2011, 09:57:19 pm »
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An engine is something that cycles cards. That's it and that's all.

This is, to me, the most interesting part of your otherwise very circular debate (speaking to you collectively). I also think you guys aren't going to get anywhere until you come to an understanding about what you mean by an engine.

Agreed here -- I think we use the term rather fluidly.  But I basically agree with guided's definition.  Ultimately all you care about are coins (and sometimes buys) to accumulate victory points with.  So anything that isn't coins (or buys) is a waste, unless it's a piece of a machine you're building to get coins faster (or sabotage the other guy's machine, but never mind).

An analogy that works for me is having a robot that goes out and scours parking lots for pennies people dropped on the ground.  How good a machine is it for finding and bringing back pennies?  Ultimately, all that matters, in terms of how good a robot it is, is how many pennies it's capable of bringing back.  Note that it is not the robot's fault if there aren't any pennies to be found!

What makes Minion cool is that it's a machine that makes its own pennies.  Conspirator, Market, Grand Market, and Festival can be this kind of machine too, although more often you find those cards used as optional accessories in other types of machines.  The others just know how to find pennies, which means you need to make sure there are pennies on hand for them to gather.

So is Menagerie a "single-card engine card"?  I say of course it is.  It fits the criterion of being capable of gathering pennies without outside help.  I don't see a reason to boot it out of the category just because it's not very good at it without help.  Otherwise, I agree with guided's comments here:  most of the time it's used, it's a piece of an engine with other parts to it.  If you supplement a Menagerie engine with Apprentice, it's no longer a single-card engine.  Apprentice is, after all, an engine card of its own (one that requires more fuel than most, to stick with the analogy) and pulls its own weight in the penny-gathering department (though it also, I admit, helps Menagerie do its own job better).  Now, supplement Menagerie with a Woodcutter instead, and I'd probably still be inclined to call it a pure Menagerie engine:  Woodcutter is, ultimately, just a particular kind of penny.

But I hasten to add that my own understanding of what constitutes an "engine" or an "engine card" or "single-card engine" or whatever is by no means clearly the only correct one, and I don't care if other people have some differently nuanced view.

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chwhite

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #64 on: September 16, 2011, 02:38:18 am »
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4. Scrying Pool In the right environment, Scrying Pool can be absolutely abusive above and beyond common sense, drawing dozens of cards at a time.  And it attacks too!  (Well, Spy is kind of a piddling attack, but still.)  Problem is, the right environment is rarer than you think.  If you can't trash your Coppers and Estates, or you can't get money (and preferably +Buy too) out of your Actions, then Scrying Pool is merely a Spy you had to buy a Potion to get.  And that's no good!

Scrying Pool is always better than Spy, because you choose whether or not to cycle your top card BEFORE you get your +1 Card.  That's... a big deal.  Spy would be a much better card if its spying happened before its +card, not after.

Oh, true, it's always better than Spy even when it only draws one card (though also more expensive of course).  The attack function is the same as Spy, though.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2011, 02:14:25 pm by chwhite »
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Epoch

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #65 on: September 16, 2011, 01:39:10 pm »
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You'd think that, but Hunting party+money is actually a pretty darn strong BM-based engine. The thing is that you draw the first card free and then draw into probably another hunting party.

I was just thinking about this and realizing how GOOD this is.

Like, with Lab, what you're basically hoping for is to draw 1 "payload" card (probably a high-value treasure) and 1 Lab each time you play a Lab, right?  That way, your engine continues and you get some of your payload.

In converse to my first intuition (and, I see, the first intuition of many other people, based on their comments on this thread), that suggests that HP is best when you have all your unique cards in your hand already, but there are still HPs in your deck!  That guarantees that you get 1 card (whatever's on top of your deck), and then 1 more HP -- which is the ideal situation!  Only the very final HP results in failure, here: but if I've got, say, 3+ HPs still in my deck once I reach hand saturation with unique cards, I'm happy to trade -1 card (vs Lab) from the last HP for the engine being guaranteed to continue until the last HP.

So, thanks, WW, for that insight.
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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #66 on: September 16, 2011, 02:37:14 pm »
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It's pretty rare to have enough Hunting Parties that you'll get all of the cards in your deck in hand without also having substantial overkill in terms of how much you're drawing. The most likely scenario for that is a KC/Throne game where your effective number is higher, but then there's not much figuring involved in KCing a Hunting Party.

added: Hunting Party is indeed an all around great card, but it's hunting ability is great partially because you don't necessarily need that many to get consistently good results. I also find more benefit in being able to track down missing cards in engines, on average. If I want to play a bunch of Goons or Grand Markets in a turn, getting one in hand, playing it, and then playing the next Hunting Party strikes me as usually better than trying to pull more Hunting Parties and drawing random things.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2011, 02:41:31 pm by ackack »
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guided

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #67 on: September 16, 2011, 04:27:12 pm »
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At the cost of exposing my poorly-disguised alt, here's another mono-Menagerie engine. (Well, almost: It gets a slight leg up from Wishing Well.) Bonus: 4 of my 5 Provinces come directly from 2 plays of Remake. (Yes, a straight treasure/Goons deck supplemented with Menageries that exist only to recover from Goons attacks would probably have been more dominant. But this was more fun.)

And in the interest of balance, here's a successful mono-Scrying Pool engine based on Pawn and Great Hall. On this particular board I believe the SP engine to be the best strategy available, even if it is the single fiddliest deck I have ever built: SP + Pawn = infinite clicks. (Passed away an SP for chuckles on the 2nd to last turn because I had miscounted my buys and thought I was ending the game immediately. I survived the mistake.)
« Last Edit: September 16, 2011, 05:41:39 pm by guided »
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Epoch

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Re: Compare the Single-Card Engines
« Reply #68 on: September 16, 2011, 05:35:41 pm »
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It's pretty rare to have enough Hunting Parties that you'll get all of the cards in your deck in hand without also having substantial overkill in terms of how much you're drawing. The most likely scenario for that is a KC/Throne game where your effective number is higher, but then there's not much figuring involved in KCing a Hunting Party.

Well, it's not terribly difficult if you intentionally keep your number of unique cards low.  Let's say mild trashing, so by mid-late game you can get rid of your Estates, and you might conceivably look for a deck consisting of Copper, Silver, Gold, Hunting Party, Province.  EDIT:  Er, plus your trasher, unless you island it or something.

Presuming that you draw at least one of your unique cards in your initial 5 card hand (ie, you don't have 5xHP), then your third and later HP's are just getting HP + top card on deck.  Better in the presumably-not-rare case where your opening hand has 2 of your unique cards in it.
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