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[andy]

What cards do you think change the most drastically when moving between 2-player and 3-player games? Any subtle ones that aren't obvious from the text of the card itself, or any combos whose strengths vary strongly with the number of players involved? How would you rank cards based on "most different 2p vs. 3p"?

Perhaps this has already been discussed, but it picked up some new relevance for me when I participated in the 2013 card ranking poll. Most of my games have been 3p, because it's what I first learned with my friends and I like it a little better; I like the having to think about what two other people are going to do rather than just one. I ranked cards based on 2p because I thought that's what people were doing, though I'm sure the accuracy of my rankings suffered as a result.

Two that come to mind are:

City: In 2p if your opponent is chasing Cities you can refuse to help drive piles, forcing him to make bad buys if he wants the bonus. In 3p it's easier to drive a pile; if both of your opponents go after Cities and you don't, you need to have built up a solid point advantage before they start drawing their whole decks. I do think that sometimes one player goes after Cities and a second player incorrectly gets worried and jumps in as well, not considering that he'd be better off with a non-City strategy, letting the first player pony up for $5 Villages, than being second best on a City split.

Pirate Ship: Clearly with more people to hit you're less likely to miss a token with an attack. Also, if both of your opponents buy them, you may be attacked twice before your next turn. If both of your opponents go with Pirate Ships (especially if they have extra actions and can play them more than once) then it can really cripple any attempts at accumulating Treasure. I haven't played enough 2p Pirate Ship to know for sure, but I think you can ride your luck with Silver/Gold much better when facing just one Pirate Ship attack. So you'll need alternate money sources - and sometimes the best one is Pirate Ship itself.

There are some more "obvious" cards like Thief but in fact I think there's less of a difference with Thief than with the above two. I think Thief is abysmally poor in a 2p or a 3p game.

I think what's interesting about City and Pirate Ship is that their improved 3p strength is due to non-linearly increased difficulty in fighting off two opponents who are both using them rather than just one. If only one opponent goes after the strategy you'd be OK, but if they both do then you might not be able to afford not going after it too. So then you have to think about getting involved right away so that you can be the first person in, but maybe if your opponents both refuse to go after it you're in trouble, so you'll have to think of contingencies, etc. Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

[dondon151]

Jester, Thief, NB are much stronger in 3+ player games.

Attacks tend to sit on the game more when more players are involved because they'll just be played more. Attacks that can be stacked in particular are "stronger" when there are more players, but the benefit to each individual player is weaker.

[ftl]

Possession! You possess the opponent to your *left*, and in 2P that's your only opponent, but in 3p there's also the guy to your right...

You can no longer assume that building a deck that plays the opponent's deck multiple times for each of your turns will be a good idea, even if you can do it fast; if you're P1 and your multiply-possessing P2, but P2's deck is just built to multiply-Possess P3, well, you're not getting anything at all out of that deal.

[ftl]

Minion. A 'minion' engine works in 2P  because you can plausibly get 6 minions if you win the split and that's good enough for a single-card engine. But in 3p, you're much more likely to end up with 4 minions, and that's really not enough for a 'minion engine'.

Ambassador. In 2p, even with both players ambassadoring at each other, the decks are thinning over time; you return 2 cards, but give out 1. Even if nobody's "winning" the amb war, you're both trashing down and will eventually have slim engines. In 3P, if everybody's playing Ambassadors, nobody's thinning their deck, on average. Each amb play removes 2 cards from your deck and gives out 1 to both opponents, and if both opponents play the same amount of ambs, nobody's deck is getting thinner.

[Donald X.]

Ambassador. In 2p, even with both players ambassadoring at each other, the decks are thinning over time; you return 2 cards, but give out 1. Even if nobody's "winning" the amb war, you're both trashing down and will eventually have slim engines. In 3P, if everybody's playing Ambassadors, nobody's thinning their deck, on average. Each amb play removes 2 cards from your deck and gives out 1 to both opponents, and if both opponents play the same amount of ambs, nobody's deck is getting thinner.

Okay you are looking at, how much does Ambassador do for me when I have it and both opponents do in a 3-player game. It's the red queen's race, the junk just won't go away.

Instead you may want to look at, how big of a difference does buying Ambassador make in these games. How does it play out if say both opponents buy Ambassador and you don't, vs. how it does if you also buy Ambassador.

[Tables]

Minion. A 'minion' engine works in 2P  because you can plausibly get 6 minions if you win the split and that's good enough for a single-card engine. But in 3p, you're much more likely to end up with 4 minions, and that's really not enough for a 'minion engine'.

Ambassador. In 2p, even with both players ambassadoring at each other, the decks are thinning over time; you return 2 cards, but give out 1. Even if nobody's "winning" the amb war, you're both trashing down and will eventually have slim engines. In 3P, if everybody's playing Ambassadors, nobody's thinning their deck, on average. Each amb play removes 2 cards from your deck and gives out 1 to both opponents, and if both opponents play the same amount of ambs, nobody's deck is getting thinner.

Building on Minion, many single card engines become a lot weaker in 3p. Hunting Party springs to mind as another example.

Ambassador, people's decks are actually growing, on average, if everyone grabs it, because there'll be enough cases where you don't return two cards. But if one person doesn't grab it, well then it still works like you'd expect in 2p, only, now you have this guy with a crazy bloated deck of Estates and Coppers. And he wins by like 10 points when you accidentally 3 pile and forget that his 21 Estates are worth 21 points.

[jomini]

Alt-VP. Ignoring Gardens/Silk Roads/etc. can be safe enough in 2er if you can buy out the provinces before they can bloat their alt-VP up to more value than the provinces. In 3er, two players going for 3 pile can just hammer you while you have to down 12 provinces all by yourself (more than 50% harder than 2er). On the flip side, if you go gardens, the other guys only have to split the provinces 6:6 in order to end the game (giving you maybe 2/3rds of the time you'd have to bloat gardens in a normal game).

Bishop. You give your opponent a free trash. In 2er he can go do something else better than you and fly. In 3er, the other 2 players have to race each other AND you. Likewise, once you start bishoping VP, the other guys have to SPLIT any VP you don't gain so they can't push as long towards megaturns.

Council room, governor, embassy, etc. The relative advantage you get is lessoned because you are giving out advantages to two opponents. For instance, even though the extra card isn't likely to make the difference between province/not province in 2er. It is almost double in 3er (e.g. if there is a 20% chance of giving the opponent a province they otherwise can't get, in 3er that rises to 36% and up to 49.8% in 4er). Likewise, unlike in 2er you can keep compounding this advantages making it play really different (e.g. Moat becomes phenomenal if something like Council room/Border Village/Ghost Ship is out).

Another biggee is Masq. Discard/Masq becomes a LOT less useful as you only gimp one player by passing a copper & forcing them to pass something good (like silver). Masq/Possession gets a good bit safer. You also have a LOT more estates to burn through as they will eventually all get passed to a solo masq player. Masqing curses back becomes a collective action problem - you don't want to be the guy giving curses (at some opportunity cost), but you may have better options (like buying a stronger 3 like Swindler) so only one masq will take care of curses for the third player who wins the exchange. You can also start playing around with helping one opponent to win (match) some key split (e.g. duchies in a Duke game)

Swindler also plays weird in 3er where you have a lot easier time using it to burn provinces/colonies (thanks to Kc or something to play a bunch on the final turn). Likewise, the curses go much quicker (each swindler has 2x the chance of junking a curse) so you get fewer plays of swindler before you start swindling curses to coppers. Odds of your key cards getting Swindled (e.g. 5's to duchies, duchies to 5's, 4's to potions, 3's to silvers/swindlers, golds to garbage 6's, and 2's to estates) are a lot higher. You can also count on unique price points (4's, 7's, potion costs) running out of replacements a lot more often if Swindler is flying around so it can now read "trash something vital if you hit it".

[Markov Chain]

Swindler also plays weird in 3er where you have a lot easier time using it to burn provinces/colonies (thanks to Kc or something to play a bunch on the final turn). Likewise, the curses go much quicker (each swindler has 2x the chance of junking a curse) so you get fewer plays of swindler before you start swindling curses to coppers.

There are twice as many curses in 3p, so you don't have fewer total Swindler plays before the curses run out.  However, every individual card is more likely to get hit, including the Swindlers themselves.  In addition, there are more curses per player, so the Swindlers (or any other cursers) slow down the game more; this isn't good or bad, but different.

[Grujah]

FG is also weaker in 3P, as you cannot as easily create a critical density of it (much like Minion).

I assume Governor too.

[WanderingWinder]

The cards that are most different in strength are definitely things like pirate ship, thief, jester, noble brigand, and tournament (it only takes one opponent to block it!).

Alt VP rushes tend to be stronger, but slogs tend to be worse, since you don't have as much time to power up your dukes or silk roads or whatnot.

Lots of stuff plays very differently, but there are counterbalancing effects that don't make it SO much different in power. Ambassador, well you can't make an engine out of it so well (engines in general are weaker), but it can do things. Fool's gold, you can't get such a big stack, probably, but on the other hand, a) well, somebody has to block you for this to be true, so maybe it hurts you, but it hurts also; b) you have more chances to use the reaction, which, given that you have fewer FG, you want to do a lot more.

[popsofctown]

Are you guys saying Ambassador is weaker or stronger?  I would think Ambassador is significantly weaker in 3p.  Since decks don't get thinner, you can get away with just 1 Ambassador instead of 2 and then go for nifty junky deck strategies like Vault, or Embassy, or what have you.  If you do that in a two player game, you start getting cursed by your opponent's thin deck.  But if your opponent's deck never really thins out, then buying curses doesn't make sense when you still have estates to take care of and whatnot, so the worst thing that happens is that a double ambassador player causes you to have more estates than any other player, but Vault doesn't care, Vault is like hey, that copper is giving me VP, nifty.

[Davio]

Engine building in general gets a bit different since you can't get big chunks of crucial cards. Let's say 3 players go for Grand Markets, they will get 3.3 each instead of 5.

And piles dwindle faster so you can't pull off that mega-turn quite as easily, you need to grab some green every now and then. Let's say 2 out of 3 players are going for a mega-turn and the other is playing big money. This will make sure that one of the two mega-turn players gets last with no points.

Concerning specific cards, the good old Reaction cards get better. Moat is pretty good if you're looking at two attackers instead of one.

[DG]

With three players I think you need to be careful about shared strategies and how they alter play. Pirate ships is a good starting example since if one player uses pirates against two who don't then the pirate is a bit stronger but the other two players can probably pursue another strategy safely. If two players use pirates then that changes things for both pirates and the third player, resulting in a different game. In the same way, minions can be played exactly like they are in a 2-player game or be played within a complex 3-player shared strategy.

With that in mind, almost all alternate vp cards change in 3 player game since one player pursuing the strategy can take 12 cards and two players pursuing the strategy share 6 each. Does this make dukes stronger or weaker in 3 player games? It probably just makes them different.

Cards with cumulative attacks tend to be stronger in 3 players. This could be cutpurse, torturer, or even bureaucrat. Cursing attacks are still not weak but again (with shared strategies) each cursing attack card might have less influence on a 3-player game.

Tournament is one of the few cards that becomes weakers with more players almost irrespective of strategy since with more opponents you are likely to see more provinces revealed. Each player is also less likely to dominate the prizes.

Council room, governor, embassy, etc. The relative advantage you get is lessoned because you are giving out advantages to two opponents.

I'm not sure that I agree with this. Neither opponent is likely to score more than they would in a 2-player game just because both opponent's got the same advantage. I actually find that council room players tend to help each other, cycling the decks and drawing big hands that can use the extra buy for maximum advantage.

[Davio]

With regards to Council Room: It's fun to start with a "Tactician" hand without playing one!

Regular attacks are somewhat less hurtful on a per card basis though the overall attacking in general is a bigger factor.
I mean, if you play the second Militia in a 3p game, you're only hurting the player to your right. The player to your left has already discarded. But overall you're looking at more 3-card hands throughout the game.

What I like about 3p is that it gets more reactionary with regard to strategies. 2p is often a two player solitaire where a dominant strategy is played by both players and whoever gets the luckiest wins and first player advantage plays a big role in this.

With 3p it can be useful to take the road less traveled. With the Duke example, if no one goes for it and you can get 12 Duchies and 12 Dukes, whooza! On the other hand if two players are going for Duke/Duchy, Provinces may look more appealing. If both players get 4 Duchies and 6 Dukes, you can tie by grabbing 4 Provinces and 4 Duchies yourself, not that hard with regular big money and then you can win by getting a 5th Province.

So you have to keep a closer eye on your opponents and what they're going for and this makes the game more fun!

[SirPeebles]

I wouldn't say that Ambassador is weaker with more players.  If your opponents each grab an Ambassador and you don't, you will be bogged down with far more junk than usual.  Ambassador does play differently though.  In two player there's the Ambassador phase which thins decks and allows a transition into a nice engine.  Ambassador doesn't do that with more players, but it's still important even if the game progresses through different stages.

[Kuildeous]

All cursers.

It's been shown before on these forums that the more players you have, the less affected you will be by losing the Curse war.

In 2-player games, if you're the only one to not buy a curser, you'll have 10 Curses to your opponent's 0. Ouch!
In 3-player games, if you're the only one to not buy a curser, you'll have 10 Cursers to your opponents' 5. The difference is less than the value of a Province.
And then there's 4 players (10-7-7-6), 5 players (10-8-8-7-7), and 6 players (10-8-8-8-8-8).

Ignoring cursers without a means of mitigating Curses in a 2-player game is devastating. It's not pretty in a 3-player game either, but it's a little more manageable.

Of course, that's assuming that the other players do buy cursers. If only one person buys cursers in a 3-player game, then you have company in your misery, but you're still 10 down from the curser.

[andy]

I'm making the jump to play 2p (primarily because a lot of the really good players seem to play 2p - I think I'll get better faster if I play against them). It's odd - I'd describe the feeling as walking into your room after someone else has cleaned it. It's definitely your room, you recognize all your stuff, but everything feels slightly different and when you look for something in a certain place it's not where you thought it'd be.

Based on my experience so far, I think the biggest adjustment I have to make is that I have to think harder about the engines and can't rely on money as much as I do on 3p. In particular, I have to recalibrate my judgments about whether a certain engine will catch either a pure Big Money or an money-reliant engine. I think a few times I've been beaten by an engine that in 3p would not have reached critical strength before an opponent forced game closure with a points leads.

[Davio]

Also remember that in 2p both players can exert more control over the game. You want to take control and you'll get a better feel for it with experience.

[GendoIkari]

Possession! You possess the opponent to your *left*, and in 2P that's your only opponent, but in 3p there's also the guy to your right...

You can no longer assume that building a deck that plays the opponent's deck multiple times for each of your turns will be a good idea, even if you can do it fast; if you're P1 and your multiply-possessing P2, but P2's deck is just built to multiply-Possess P3, well, you're not getting anything at all out of that deal.

Wait, isn't this exactly the same in 2P? If you're P1 and your multiply-possessing P2, but P2's deck is just built to multiply-Possess you, well, you're not getting anything at all out of that deal either.

[ftl]

But then you're at least breaking even - it's a stalemate, both players are doing nothing but possessing each other. If your deck is better at Possessing than the opponent's deck is, you're still coming out ahead.

In 3P - let's say P3 builds a standard deck, he can buy stuff.
P2 builds a possession deck - he can use P3's deck to buy lots of stuff!
P1 builds a possession deck - ...and can buy nothing because all he can do is make P2 have more turns with P3's deck. Sucks.

[sandstorm]

Another fun possession trick that works in 2p but not as well in 3p is when you give your opponent a massive hand with governor or council room and then possess them to use it for yourself. The player to your right is still going to be able to take full advantage of all those extra cards.

[Tdog]

Rouge does better with more players as there is more cards to rescue from the trash. Same goes somewhat for graverobber, as there are more people to trash cards.

[jomini]

Swindler also plays weird in 3er where you have a lot easier time using it to burn provinces/colonies (thanks to Kc or something to play a bunch on the final turn). Likewise, the curses go much quicker (each swindler has 2x the chance of junking a curse) so you get fewer plays of swindler before you start swindling curses to coppers.

There are twice as many curses in 3p, so you don't have fewer total Swindler plays before the curses run out.  However, every individual card is more likely to get hit, including the Swindlers themselves.  In addition, there are more curses per player, so the Swindlers (or any other cursers) slow down the game more; this isn't good or bad, but different.

There will be fewer total plays of swindler, but this is a three way game. If you all go swindler, you double the total swindle plays and divide that by three. I've seen a lot of players say "well there are only half (a third) of the curses here, so swindler won't last as long" (going from 3/4 to 2) and that is completely misleading. You will get more useful plays of swindler in 2er before: the curses run out, your swindler gets swindled into something crappy, you risk burning provinces -> provinces - unless the other guys ignore swindler (and I submit it is a rare board where best play is for asymmetric swindling).