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Author Topic: Compare the Single-Card Engines  (Read 18885 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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