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[AJD]

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".

[sherwinpr]

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).

[Mean Mr Mustard]

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. 

[guided]

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.

[Jimmmmm]

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.

[WanderingWinder]

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]

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?

[Fangz]

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

[WanderingWinder]

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]

Menagerie doesn't 'need' villages. No more than hunting party or laboratory does. But villages certainly help with large hands.

[guided]

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.

[Fangz]

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.

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....? 

[guided]

• 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.

[Fangz]

• 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.

[ackack]

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.

[Fangz]

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.

[ackack]

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.)

[WanderingWinder]

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]

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.

[Fangz]

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?

[chwhite]

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.

[guided]

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

[DG]

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.

[Fangz]

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

[Mean Mr Mustard]

<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>