Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[brokoli]

The more I play with WM, the more I'm convinced this card is massively overrated. The fact it discard treasures is a big drawback. Of course this card can really shine in engines with lot of actions and no treasures, but otherwise if your only economy is from money, Wandering minstrel is simply bad.
Here is a colony game where I played a kind of Journeyman - Big money : http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130625/log.505ed92251c333114368f729.1372152784257.txt. My opponent's wandering minstrel only discarded gold and platiniums.

You could argue that I had the 1st player advantage and my opponent didn't play his journeyman so well, but anyway I'm sure here wandering minstrel was simply a trap.

[Warfreak2]

Sure, there are reasons you wouldn't want Wandering Minstrel; needing a Gold/Platinum economy is one of them, as are Ruins. But otherwise it is one of the best Villages, it solves the problem of lining up your +Actions with your +Cards. On this board there's no engine, so yeah, Vault/Big Money or Journeyman/Big Money; any Village would be bad here.

[WanderingWinder]

I am getting closer and closer to thinking that WM is the best village out there. Mmm, probably not, but it is top few, I really think. The thing is, it lets you get all the actions up, giving your engine great consistency, then the draw cards scoop up whatever is left. But sure, of course it has weak situations.

[Mic Qsenoch]

I'd say that 90% (a rhetorically large percentage) of the time you want any villages at all, WM's ability is going to be really great for you. Skipping good treasures is bad, but if you wanted those treasures anyway and you are building an engine you probably have +cards of some sort, so you can draw them back up at the end.

This game is really close anyway, so it's hard to say that the Wandering Minstrels were a trap here. An engine at least looks possible to me.

The real trap is opening Bishop since the trashing is more valuable to your opponent and the points more negligible on the Colony board.

[DG]

Journeyman looks like a candidate for the worst card to play bishops against. You do have to be careful with wandering minstrels and treasures. If you set up a deck with havens, drawing cards, and some platinum, you've left yourself open to the unlucky draws where the minstrels always find your havens and dump the platinum.

[brokoli]

Another drawback of WM in engines : in many engines you have trashed all your bad cards, so the filtering of Wandering minstrel is not helpful for you. Then the reordering might be useful, but often not because you are likely to draw all the revealed card anyway. Then, wandering minstrel is still a village but not as good as Mining, Worker or even Farming village.

The situations where Wandering minstrel is the best, is in engines with no trashing... then it acts a little bit like stables. But in these kind of engine, if WM is the only filtering card you need many of them to make the engine work.
And the problem is that if you have only one wandering minstrel in hand, you don't really now what you will draw, so it's not so good in engines with no trashing.

Really, it's IMO a decent village, just like fortress or farming village, but not the best.

[brokoli]

About this game, remember that it's one of my first games with journeyman, so be indulgent ^^

[SCSN]

It's a minor tactical point but it just caught my eye: on T18 there's one Colony left and you have Silver, Colony, Copper, Bishop, Province. You Bishop the Province and buy a Silk Road, which is only worth 1VP.

Since the game is almost over, the benefit of removing the Province from your deck is close to zero, and is not worth the 4VP it costs you relative to Bishopping the Silver and buying an Estate. In fact, had you only been able to buy a Province on T19, your opponent could have tied the game on his turn, whereas he'd still be behind had you Bishopped the Silver.

[Warfreak2]

Then the reordering might be useful, but often not because you are likely to draw all the revealed card anyway.

Sure it is, reordering might be required in order to draw all the revealed cards. If you reveal a bunch of cantrips, you put those on top before the Mountebank, so you can play through all the cantrips. There's also the option of deliberately not drawing all of them, to leave yourself a Wandering Minstrel/Smithy for next turn.

[Kirian]

One thing that boosted my opinion of WM was a game where my opponent bought a couple of them early despite having only one terminal attack.  But WM generated this amazing cycling--almost as good as Warehouse--allowing my opponent to attack me twice as often.

The reordering, filtering, and cycling of WM make it pretty powerful.  Oh, and it's also a Village if you happen to need that.

[Powerman]

I think a WM - Journeyman - Vault Engine should work well, especially if your opponent goes into Bishop.  If he doesn't, maybe a loan? 

[Warfreak2]

There's no +buy. I guess you could do something with Develop to gain cards to feed to a Bishop, but otherwise the payload is going to just be a Colony per turn, starting a lot later than BM/Journeyman.

[ragingduckd]

The fact it discard treasures is a big drawback.

This is a common misconception. Minstrel can discard Gold and Platinum, but it can also discard your Estates and Coppers too. On average you break even, just like you break even when Golem discards your non-actions. (Ignore the reshuffling effect. That's not where the misconception is coming from.)

Minstrel's discard effect just makes you draw more actions and fewer non-actions. Almost every deck prefers its actions to its non-actions, at least when it has the villages to play them, including BM decks. The only exceptions are actions that you use for a specific short-term purpose and then wish it would go away (e.g. Chapel).

[dondon151]

Unless, of course, you don't have Estates and Coppers. I think it goes without saying that WM is most effective when you draw back the cards that you discard. Otherwise, yeah, you might skip a lot of your deck's economy, and you might not have the drawing ability to trigger a reshuffle and not leave your draw pile full of bad cards.

[DG]

This is a common misconception. Minstrel can discard Gold and Platinum, but it can also discard your Estates and Coppers too. On average you break even, just like you break even when Golem discards your non-actions.

You only break even with the wandering minstrel if your actions are at least as good as your treasures since you will play the actions more often than you play your treasures. If you've got platinum in your deck then you need good actions cards to go with that minstrel.

[ragingduckd]

Unless, of course, you don't have Estates and Coppers. I think it goes without saying that WM is most effective when you draw back the cards that you discard. Otherwise, yeah, you might skip a lot of your deck's economy, and you might not have the drawing ability to trigger a reshuffle and not leave your draw pile full of bad cards.

No. That's exactly the fallacy. Why do you assume that you'll skip your economy and leave your draw pile full of bad cards? It will happen the other way around just as often.

Discarding your top cards unseen has no effect whatesoever on the distribution of your next draw. Cards 6-10 are just as likely to be your Platinums as cards 1-5 are. You might as well be discarding from the bottom or the middle of your deck.

Oy. It's on the wiki page too.

Sure, it discards Golds and Platinums and other fancy Treasures, but that's probably okay - if it helps you find more villages and smithies, you'll draw them anyway. It's best when you're aiming to draw your whole deck and really don't mind discarding even your top-notch Treasures.

[Davio]

It's best when you need a Village and any will do.

I mean, a lot of kingdoms just have one Village and if it happens to be WM or another Village, you'll take it.
WM enables a bit more enginey stuff though as engines revolve around playing lots of action cards.

I don't find it skips too much of my economy, often you'll pick up drawers with it anyway.

[dondon151]

Dude, read my post more closely, please. It's actually more substantive than your quote from the wiki article!

[Watno]

Journeyman looks like a candidate for the worst card to play bishops against. You do have to be careful with wandering minstrels and treasures. If you set up a deck with havens, drawing cards, and some platinum, you've left yourself open to the unlucky draws where the minstrels always find your havens and dump the platinum.

This.
BM-Journeyman with no estates is quite strong.

[SirPeebles]

WM can be worrisome when your engine fails to fully draw your deck, since it has a tendency to trigger an awful reshuffle.  Of course, Warehouse, Hunting Party, and other sifters can do this as well.

[Vermillion]

Like all of the village variants, there are scenarios when it works well and scenarios when it doesn't.

Even the worst card can shine in the right kingdom.

/broken clocks, etc.

[Robz888]

I am getting closer and closer to thinking that WM is the best village out there. Mmm, probably not, but it is top few, I really think. The thing is, it lets you get all the actions up, giving your engine great consistency, then the draw cards scoop up whatever is left. But sure, of course it has weak situations.

WM and Plaza, man. The two newest sets just added the two best villages.