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[shark_bait]

Inspired by this game.

With both cards at the $2P price point, they directly compete for purchase.  They also are both integral to deck construction as Scrying Pool's pick up action cards and Universities gain action cards.  The dilemma that comes is you want Universities to gain a bunch of action cards, but you want Scrying Pools to play a Bunch of action cards.  So how do you go about deciding what order to acquire these cards.

In the game above I opt for a single University before switching to the Pools.  My reasoning is that I want the first one to be able to get my first Witch, but rather than get more Universities for more Witches/Markets, I would rather focus on Pools in order to play what I have more frequently.  I know that there may be others who have different opinions about how to make this decision.  So I'm asking your guys what your thoughts are about this decision (both in my game and just in general).  And before you say "It depends on the kingdom," describe a kingdom which may cause you to lean one way or another on making the decision between Pools and Universities.

[dondon151]

Well, obviously, when you can already draw your deck with SP, you'd rather have another University or two to gain you more Action cards.

With a trasher that hurts your economy (like Trade Route), I prefer the University at first over SP. $5 Actions favor University; an abundance of +buy and cheaper Actions favors SP (though I'd still probably want a University at some point).

[zahlman]

Well, obviously, when you can already draw your deck with SP, you'd rather have another University or two to gain you more Action cards.

Edge case: decks with Secret Chamber or Vault that can benefit from over-drawing. (Also, this tends to be the situation later on in the game, where getting a University instead will matter less even if it's "obviously better" - since there will be fewer opportunities to play it. For that matter, another SP is better insurance against bad shuffle luck than an extra University later on.)

With a trasher that hurts your economy (like Trade Route), I prefer the University at first over SP. $5 Actions favor University; an abundance of +buy and cheaper Actions favors SP (though I'd still probably want a University at some point).

I would say that there's at least one cheaper Action that favours University as well - i.e. Watchtower, because of the whole disappearing-village/draw-to-n thing (not to mention gain/topdeck/draw immediately). Maybe someone can think of others?

It's funny, I actually just played a game with all these ingredients... should have posted it here instead of starting a new thread

[philosophyguy]

Minor consideration: SP aids your cycling. Since you only buy one SP or Uni per shuffle per Potion, SP's cycling can aid your tempo in acquiring the potion cards early.

[mgallop]

I think it really depends on how useful the actions are, since every turn earlier you pick up Uni is an extra action and time to use every other action, if you're just grabbing villages/cantrips with uni, then well, don't pick it up, but if you're getting good cards I'm pretty sure you want to open Uni and then switch to pool since extra plays outweigh slightly faster early cycling. Anyway, when your deck is 11 blanks and 1 SP, the Pool is pretty useless, so I might even advide opening IW/Something over Potion/Something in an SP game,but I'm not sure if I'm right.