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[ednever]

Advisor

The subject of bad advice memes the world over. Advisor is to Lab how Envoy is Hunting Grounds. But where Envoy gives you the best 4 of 5 cards (20% of your best cards), Advisor gives you only the best 2 of 3 (33% of your best cards gone). That difference is as important to how Advisor is played as the extra action is. Read on young grasshopper!


So is Advisor a good card?

Like most cards in Dominion (exceptions: Wharf, Cursers, Goons, etc.) "It depends."

In Advisor's case it depends more than most.

Because you are losing a third of your best cards, one of three things need to be true in order for Advisor to be viable:

(1) The difference between your best cards and your average/bad cards is low (i.e., you have trashed all your bad cards, so anything you draw is pretty good)
(2) Your ratio of good:bad cards is high (i.e., you don't have very many bad cards, or you have a LOT of average/good cards so you rarely get stuck with two bad cards in an Advisor draw)
(3) You have cards that don't care about quality - they just want quantity (i.e., Cellar, Warehouse, Vault, etc.)

Three specific notes worth mentioning:
(1) Cantrips are fantastic.
If your three cards drawn are Spy, Pearl Diver and Menagerie - then there isn't much your opponent can do to stop you from getting two average cards (rather than 2/3 of your worst cards). This also means that Advisors are synergistic: If you draw an Advisor with an Advisor, it makes for a tough call on which card for your opponent to discard (if your deck is well set-up for Advisors then they should likely discard the Advisor...)

(2) "Key" Cards are a bane
If you have a key power card, you can bet your bottom dollar it will be discarded when you play Advisor. The only way you will get it is if you draw it in your initial hand, or you get it with one of your other draw cards. So Advisor works better with cards you want to SPAM (Minion, cantrips as per above, Lab, Wharf, etc.) than cards you want one or two of (Cursers, Tactician (but see special case below), Militia, etc.)

(3) Drawing your deck
One special case to the needing a consistent deck is if you have enough horsepower to draw your whole deck. In this case you play the Advisors first to get as much as you can in your hand, and then finish it off with your other draw cards (you definitely need at least cantrips to make this work). Tactician can help a lot here. If Double Tactician is Kingdom friendly then starting with a ten card hand helps you draw everything a lot easier. Even if your other Tactician is being discarded - it doesn't matter if your other cards can pick it up later.

When to buy Advisor
Usually in the mid game after you've got a deck set up that supports it. At the start of the game you have a bad deck (Coppers and Estates) with a few good cards you have just bought. An early Advisor is a good way to have those key early cards discarded. Wait until you have a high density of valuable cards, or after you've trashed your deck down so the initial coppers and estates are pretty much gone.


The End Game
The other thing Advisor needs is a way to green fast. As soon as you start adding green to your deck Advisor turns into a way to get lots of green in your hand. You need a solution before you start heading down the Advisor path:

(1) A way to handle the green (Crossroads, Cellar, Warehouse, etc.)
(2) A way to avoid greening for a long time (Basically being able to end in one or two mega turns)


Concluding Thoughts
In the right situations Advisor is a Lab for $4 - which is pretty spectacular. You can pick it up with Workshop or Ironworks. Caravan is already a power $4 card and it is nowhere near as good as Lab in most cases. So when Advisor is, it can be bonkers.

In the wrong situation (slogs for example) Advisor is worse than useless. It actually can cause you to miss your best cards and get stuck with hands full of Estates and Curses.


Advisor works with:

Good Trashing
Cheap Cantrips
Spamable cards
Mega turns (including Tokens - see there was a reason Advisor was in the Guilds Expansion)
The ability to draw your entire deck


Advisor works poorly with:

Slogs
"Key Cards" that are significantly better than your average (including many attacks)
Cards you only want 1-2 of in your deck (Sea Hag for example)


Sample Games:
Just one for now: http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130816/log.516d0e09e4b082c74d7aacc1.1376692666755.txt

-=-=-=-
Comments welcome and will be included in edits.

Ed

[blueblimp]

Advisor is to Lab how Envoy is the Smithy. But where Envoy gives you the best 4 of 5 cards (20% of your best cards), Advisor gives you only the best 2 of 3 (33% of your best cards gone). That difference is enough that Envoy is priced the same as Smithy, but Advisor would be a terrible card if it were priced at $5.

This analysis is missing that Envoy draws 4 cards net after the discard, more than Smithy's 3, while Advisor's 2 net-after-discard is the same as Lab's 2. It's not about percentages.

In the case of Envoy, its discard penalty is necessary because drawing 4 is quite strong. It's Hunting Grounds's vanilla bonus and that costs $6. Council Room draws 4 but has a severe penalty. Wharf draws 4 over the course of two turns, and is one of the strongest cards in the game.

If anything, I'd say Advisor is to Lab as Envoy is to Hunting Grounds, but that's not a perfect comparison either, because of the percentages, as you point out. Also being non-terminal helps Advisor a lot, so at least you're not drawing actions dead ever.

[ednever]

Good point. It is more Hunting Grounds than Smithy. Updated now!

[StrongRhino]

Also, Envoy gives you the worst 4 of 5 cards, not the best.
Nice article though, advisor is an interesting card.

[DG]

Parental Advisory - Explicitly bad content.

I see the advisor as a really bad card that can sometimes be fixed by good play. If you want it to draw treasure then even a moat is better, so the advisor must fit with action cards. However whatever you want to do to your deck the advisor ensures that the cards you want to do it with are in the discard pile. Even if you buy cards to fix the advisor's problems the advisor might put those solutions into the discard pile for you. So a goons or bishop might stop your deck choking on green cards but only if you get to play them. 

If you draw an Advisor with an Advisor, it makes for a tough call on which card for your opponent to discard (if your deck is well set-up for Advisors then they should likely discard the Advisor...)

I think this is the acid test for an advisor. If you can't get into this situation then you probably shouldn't be buying advisors. I think the positive feedback on drawing advisors can be quantified as well. If your opponent has the choice of discarding a good card or an advisor then they are weighing up drawing two poor cards vs one good card. However if one of those poor cards is still an advisor then it becomes three poor cards vs one good card, and if there still an advisor left it becomes four poor cards vs one good card, and so on.

[eHalcyon]

On your "three things", 1 and 2 are pretty similar in meaning.  Basically you want a homogeneous or high quality deck.  You have to be careful with the third thing -- even if you just care about quantity, note that those specific cards can themselves be discarded.  Having a big hand is not as great for you if I discard the Vault from your Advisor draw.

The article could mention how to play Advisor.  Generally speaking, you probably want to play Advisor as early as you can.  For example, if you have Advisor and Village in hand, playing the Advisor first gives the opponent less information.  If Advisor draws 2 terminals, maybe they should leave you with both if one of them ends up a dead card.

[sudgy]

Where did the Advisor meme go...

[Awaclus]

What about Advisor/Chapel opening? If you connect them, it's great, and if you don't, you don't have to play the Advisor. I think it's better than Silver/Chapel for Advisor decks, because trashing Estates is so much more better than trashing Coppers than it usually is, but worse than gainer/Chapel. However, I'm not at all confident about this, so any input from more experienced players would be highly appreciated.

[blueblimp]

What about Advisor/Chapel opening? If you connect them, it's great, and if you don't, you don't have to play the Advisor. I think it's better than Silver/Chapel for Advisor decks, because trashing Estates is so much more better than trashing Coppers than it usually is, but worse than gainer/Chapel. However, I'm not at all confident about this, so any input from more experienced players would be highly appreciated.

Opening Chapel, your major problem is getting enough buying power after trashing your coppers. I can't see how Advisor would help with this much.

[PSGarak]

Fun combo: Advisor/Crossroads. It's strategically similar to (3) Cards that don't care about quality, in that you don't mind getting Advisored into a handful of estates. But the real fun is the headgames your opponent gets caught up in, trying to figure if you have an Crossroads in hand and whether making you discard your estate is actually a good play.

[michaeljb]

Open Advisor/Chapel, play Advisor turn 3, opponent forces you to discard Chapel, curse your "bad luck"

[Awaclus]

Open Advisor/Chapel, play Advisor turn 3, opponent forces you to discard Chapel, curse your "bad luck"

You don't have to play the Advisor.

[RD]

Open Advisor/Chapel, play Advisor turn 3, opponent forces you to discard Chapel, curse your "bad luck"

You don't have to play the Advisor.

So if you draw it with no Chapel on T3 you don't play it? (And if you draw it on T4 with Chapel yet to come you certainly don't?) Sounds like it has significantly higher odds of going to waste than Silver. And as blueblimp said, even at its best it doesn't really address the core Chapel problem, so it seems rather high-risk low-reward.

[Awaclus]

Open Advisor/Chapel, play Advisor turn 3, opponent forces you to discard Chapel, curse your "bad luck"

You don't have to play the Advisor.

So if you draw it with no Chapel on T3 you don't play it? (And if you draw it on T4 with Chapel yet to come you certainly don't?) Sounds like it has significantly higher odds of going to waste than Silver. And as blueblimp said, even at its best it doesn't really address the core Chapel problem, so it seems rather high-risk low-reward.

Yeah, unless you're sure that getting the extra dollars is worth having your Chapel miss your first reshuffle. And it does address the "core Chapel problem" when successful; at first, you're trashing Estates instead of Coppers, which lets you purchase more buying power pretty fast. The odds of failing are relatively high, but they're lower than 50%, and while the reward is low, the disadvantage after failing is low as well.

[eHalcyon]

Open Advisor/Chapel, play Advisor turn 3, opponent forces you to discard Chapel, curse your "bad luck"

You don't have to play the Advisor.

So if you draw it with no Chapel on T3 you don't play it? (And if you draw it on T4 with Chapel yet to come you certainly don't?) Sounds like it has significantly higher odds of going to waste than Silver. And as blueblimp said, even at its best it doesn't really address the core Chapel problem, so it seems rather high-risk low-reward.

Yeah, unless you're sure that getting the extra dollars is worth having your Chapel miss your first reshuffle. And it does address the "core Chapel problem" when successful; at first, you're trashing Estates instead of Coppers, which lets you purchase more buying power pretty fast. The odds of failing are relatively high, but they're lower than 50%, and while the reward is low, the disadvantage after failing is low as well.

If the benefit of opening Advisor/Chapel is that you get to trash Estates, then Scout serves that purpose even better.  But since you'll want to be trashing Coppers eventually anyway, it doesn't actually help you that much to trash Estates first.  Moreover, if that's the benefit of Advisor, then the reward is even smaller because you could draw Chapel with your Estates even without Advisor, and you might miss all your Estates even with Advisor.  The only use case where Advisor is beneficial is when you draw it with Chapel and then Advisor draws you Estates.

I think the benefit of opening with Advisor would be to let you trash a little more quickly by cycling your deck, as well as the fact that Advisor itself will be good in a trimmed deck.

But the risk is too high.  If you draw Advisor before Chapel, it is just a dead card.  If you draw Advisor with your Estates, that's a dead hand!  The disadvantage after failing is NOT low.  Chapel games tend to be fast so having a dead hand like that could be game over right there.

[ednever]

It's even worse than that.

If you draw Advisor and Chaptl together on Turn 4, you may not want to play Advisor. It causes a reshuffle and will cause both the Advisor and Chaple to miss Turn 5 (and maybe 6).

It may be the right chocd to play the Advisor, but the fact it's not obviously better means that its one more case where the purchase sure isn't helping you.

Ed

[flies]

Any thoughts on opening advisor?  I often do it on engine boards with some trashing just for the cycling, but I don't know if this is wise.

[eHalcyon]

Any thoughts on opening advisor?  I often do it on engine boards with some trashing just for the cycling, but I don't know if this is wise.

Did you read the discussion about Advisor/Chapel?  I feel that the benefit of increased cycling does not make up for the potential disaster of drawing your trasher with Advisor and getting it discarded.  If you draw Advisor first and opt not to play it, then it's just a dead card and possibly a dead hand, which is also very bad.

[Wrclass]

Great article! I'll be sure to use it next time I see Advisor on the board.

[lespeutere]

Any thoughts on opening advisor?  I often do it on engine boards with some trashing just for the cycling, but I don't know if this is wise.

It just doesn't make much sense, does it? You have few useful cards, your opponent will surely discard them. Advisor is like anti-Wandering Minstrel (undless you search for golds in a ruinsed deck.

[SCSN]

Because you are losing a third of your best cards, one of three things need to be true in order for Advisor to be viable:

[Awaclus]

Militia is a soft counter to Advisor decks. Against Militia, you want variety; when you're playing Advisor, you want to avoid variety. Thus, Militia forces the Advisor player to either build his deck sub-optimally for his own Advisors or against your Militia. It's not strong enough to completely ignore Advisor on a board where you normally would go for Advisors, but it's something you might want to consider and definitely get when you're playing against an Advisor player.

EDIT: Goons too, and other such attacks.

[SCSN]

Against Militia, you want variety

Unless you also have Menagerie, I don't see why?

[Powerman]

Against Militia, you want variety

Unless you also have Menagerie, I don't see why?

He means variance.  As in 3 good 2 bad >>> 5 average.

[Davio]

Against Militia, you want variety

Unless you also have Menagerie, I don't see why?

Maybe he means grouping of good cards, like how you'd rather have a few Golds than a bunch of Silvers in that you need GGS to be able to Province after a Militia anyway.

[Awaclus]

Against Militia, you want variety

Unless you also have Menagerie, I don't see why?

He means variance.  As in 3 good 2 bad >>> 5 average.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Militia is a soft counter to Advisor decks. Against Militia, you want variety; when you're playing Advisor, you want to avoid variety. Thus, Militia forces the Advisor player to either build his deck sub-optimally for his own Advisors or against your Militia. It's not strong enough to completely ignore Advisor on a board where you normally would go for Advisors, but it's something you might want to consider and definitely get when you're playing against an Advisor player.

EDIT: Goons too, and other such attacks.

I think just the opposite, I believe the discard attacks make Advisor stronger. It's possible that I just played boards that were good for Advisor and had discard attacks, but my experience was that getting your hand size back up to a decent size was very useful to combat the attacks, and sometimes the only way to move beyond a BM deck. In the absence of any other draw it doesn't lead to you playing your discard attack less often because you either have the attack in your hand or you don't. It's $4 price point is also easy to hit while under attack. 

[Awaclus]

Militia is a soft counter to Advisor decks. Against Militia, you want variety; when you're playing Advisor, you want to avoid variety. Thus, Militia forces the Advisor player to either build his deck sub-optimally for his own Advisors or against your Militia. It's not strong enough to completely ignore Advisor on a board where you normally would go for Advisors, but it's something you might want to consider and definitely get when you're playing against an Advisor player.

EDIT: Goons too, and other such attacks.

I think just the opposite, I believe the discard attacks make Advisor stronger. It's possible that I just played boards that were good for Advisor and had discard attacks, but my experience was that getting your hand size back up to a decent size was very useful to combat the attacks, and sometimes the only way to move beyond a BM deck. In the absence of any other draw it doesn't lead to you playing your discard attack less often because you either have the attack in your hand or you don't. It's $4 price point is also easy to hit while under attack.

You are partially correct, since discard attacks weaken some other strategies more than Advisor (mainly big money). This means that in the presence of a discard attack, Advisor becomes stronger in comparison to big money, but on the other hand, alt-VP strategies and Advisorless engines become much more attractive in comparison to both Advisor and big money.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Militia is a soft counter to Advisor decks. Against Militia, you want variety; when you're playing Advisor, you want to avoid variety. Thus, Militia forces the Advisor player to either build his deck sub-optimally for his own Advisors or against your Militia. It's not strong enough to completely ignore Advisor on a board where you normally would go for Advisors, but it's something you might want to consider and definitely get when you're playing against an Advisor player.

EDIT: Goons too, and other such attacks.

I think just the opposite, I believe the discard attacks make Advisor stronger. It's possible that I just played boards that were good for Advisor and had discard attacks, but my experience was that getting your hand size back up to a decent size was very useful to combat the attacks, and sometimes the only way to move beyond a BM deck. In the absence of any other draw it doesn't lead to you playing your discard attack less often because you either have the attack in your hand or you don't. It's $4 price point is also easy to hit while under attack.

You are partially correct, since discard attacks weaken some other strategies more than Advisor (mainly big money). This means that in the presence of a discard attack, Advisor becomes stronger in comparison to big money, but on the other hand, alt-VP strategies and Advisorless engines become much more attractive in comparison to both Advisor and big money.

Maybe Alt-VP, but I don't see why discard attacks in particular make Advisorless engines stronger than one that also incorporates Advisor. Why would that be the case? If you are building an engine, you don't rely on the "variance" spikes that you orginally said make Advisor bad against discard attacks. I don't see why Advisor is hurt by discard attacks more than any other particular card, but I can definitely see how Advisor helps mitigate the hand size reduction, so in any sense Advisor is made stronger by discard attacks. Why would discarders "counter" Advisor?

This is just a specific case of the general idea that discard attacks encourage engines, and Advisor is an engine card.

[Awaclus]

Militia is a soft counter to Advisor decks. Against Militia, you want variety; when you're playing Advisor, you want to avoid variety. Thus, Militia forces the Advisor player to either build his deck sub-optimally for his own Advisors or against your Militia. It's not strong enough to completely ignore Advisor on a board where you normally would go for Advisors, but it's something you might want to consider and definitely get when you're playing against an Advisor player.

EDIT: Goons too, and other such attacks.

I think just the opposite, I believe the discard attacks make Advisor stronger. It's possible that I just played boards that were good for Advisor and had discard attacks, but my experience was that getting your hand size back up to a decent size was very useful to combat the attacks, and sometimes the only way to move beyond a BM deck. In the absence of any other draw it doesn't lead to you playing your discard attack less often because you either have the attack in your hand or you don't. It's $4 price point is also easy to hit while under attack.

You are partially correct, since discard attacks weaken some other strategies more than Advisor (mainly big money). This means that in the presence of a discard attack, Advisor becomes stronger in comparison to big money, but on the other hand, alt-VP strategies and Advisorless engines become much more attractive in comparison to both Advisor and big money.

Maybe Alt-VP, but I don't see why discard attacks in particular make Advisorless engines stronger than one that also incorporates Advisor. Why would that be the case? If you are building an engine, you don't rely on the "variance" spikes that you orginally said make Advisor bad against discard attacks. I don't see why Advisor is hurt by discard attacks more than any other particular card, but I can definitely see how Advisor helps mitigate the hand size reduction, so in any sense Advisor is made stronger by discard attacks. Why would discarders "counter" Advisor?

Because you'd rather have a hand of two Villages and a Torturer than a hand of three Advisors.

[Davio]

Maybe it's good to differentiate between several types of engines.

In homogeneous engines, those that rely on multiples of the same card, Advisor is good, even against discard attacks, as there is less of a chance to see a critical card get discarded. These include Minion-engines or Grand Market stacks, etc. Let's say you reveal 2 GMs and an Estate, well, at least you get one GM and the Estate in hand, so you won't stop drawing once you hit that Estate with your GM. The odds of keeping the chain going are ok now that you've got that Estate in hand instead of on your deck.

With heterogeneous engines, those that rely on a couple of key cards to get the chain going, Advisor is more of a liability in general and more so against discard attacks. As mentioned, you'd rather have Village-Village-Torturer after a discard than Advisor-Advisor-Village. Most likely, you'll end up with a Village idiot style turn after your Torturers are discarded.

[SCSN]

...

Because you'd rather have a hand of two Villages and a Torturer than a hand of three Advisors.

But in a Village-Torturer engine (and in all the other examples where you don't want Advisor against a discard attack), Advisor is pretty terrible in the first place, regardless of whether there's a discard attack or not, so I'm not seeing at all how discard attacks are specifically a counter to Advisor.

[blueblimp]

...

Because you'd rather have a hand of two Villages and a Torturer than a hand of three Advisors.

But in a Village-Torturer engine (and in all the other examples where you don't want Advisor against a discard attack), Advisor is pretty terrible in the first place, regardless of whether there's a discard attack or not, so I'm not seeing at all how discard attacks are specifically a counter to Advisor.

The point is that decks that are good for advisor are bad against discard attacks. For example, over 9000 Pearl Divers? Great for Advisor. Bad against Militia. The presence of the discard attack makes you less inclined to pick up freebie cantrips, which makes your deck less suitable for Advisor, reducing the strength of the card.

I don't think this effect is ever going to be significant, but it does exist.

[Mic Qsenoch]

The point is that decks that are good for advisor are bad against discard attacks. For example, over 9000 Pearl Divers? Great for Advisor. Bad against Militia. The presence of the discard attack makes you less inclined to pick up freebie cantrips, which makes your deck less suitable for Advisor, reducing the strength of the card.

I don't think this effect is ever going to be significant, but it does exist.

I still don't buy it. Cantrips are mostly bad against Militia in BM type situations because the lack of info about your next card really hurts (thus Pearl Diver sucking). I think that effect will be unnoticeable against an engine. And decks with Advisor don't really require a large number of cantrips, what they need badly is trashing ( and trashing is very good against discarding). But let's say the effect you're describing is real, do you think it outweighs the boost in strength that Advisor gets for mitigating the hand size reduction (and for engines being stronger in general with discarders)?

[florrat]

( and trashing is very good against discarding)

Wait, what? Can you elaborate, because I think trashing is less important when your opponent plays discard attacks (of course, trashing is useful to play your own discard attacks more often). But suppose your opponent plays Militia every turn, then having 2 crappy cards in my 5-card hard hurt less because I have to discard two cards anyway... So I think trashing becomes (a little) less important with discard attacks.

[Mic Qsenoch]

( and trashing is very good against discarding)

Wait, what? Can you elaborate, because I think trashing is less important when your opponent plays discard attacks (of course, trashing is useful to play your own discard attacks more often). But suppose your opponent plays Militia every turn, then having 2 crappy cards in my 5-card hard hurt less because I have to discard two cards anyway... So I think trashing becomes (a little) less important with discard attacks.

Probably I should have phrased it better. Mostly I mean that trashing/discard attacks have a synergy that they both encourage engines or more controlled decks. "Against" is probably not the best word choice.

But trashing does help against the attack as well. The important thing about responding to discards isn't "avoid discarding good cards", it's "make sure the three cards you have left in hand are awesome". Trashing helps with this just by increasing the average usefulness of your cards. And if you want to respond to discard attacks with a draw engine of some sort, it's much easier to draw your deck and or connect your village/smithy variants if you've trashed down some, especially if you're starting from only three cards in hand.

[WanderingWinder]

( and trashing is very good against discarding)

Wait, what? Can you elaborate, because I think trashing is less important when your opponent plays discard attacks (of course, trashing is useful to play your own discard attacks more often). But suppose your opponent plays Militia every turn, then having 2 crappy cards in my 5-card hard hurt less because I have to discard two cards anyway... So I think trashing becomes (a little) less important with discard attacks.

Probably I should have phrased it better. Mostly I mean that trashing/discard attacks have a synergy that they both encourage engines or more controlled decks. "Against" is probably not the best word choice.

But trashing does help against the attack as well. The important thing about responding to discards isn't "avoid discarding good cards", it's "make sure the three cards you have left in hand are awesome".

This is really important (and good), though I might phrase it more like "are going to get the job done" i.e. in a slog, if you can have the $4 for what you want from just treasures, this works, or if you're going to get an engine going off of [village]-[smithy]-[some engine card], that works really well too. Where you DON'T want to be is big money - I need to get 8 off of my 3-card hand without drawing? I better have a deck that's like 50% gold.

[blueblimp]

The point is that decks that are good for advisor are bad against discard attacks. For example, over 9000 Pearl Divers? Great for Advisor. Bad against Militia. The presence of the discard attack makes you less inclined to pick up freebie cantrips, which makes your deck less suitable for Advisor, reducing the strength of the card.

I don't think this effect is ever going to be significant, but it does exist.

I still don't buy it. Cantrips are mostly bad against Militia in BM type situations because the lack of info about your next card really hurts (thus Pearl Diver sucking). I think that effect will be unnoticeable against an engine. And decks with Advisor don't really require a large number of cantrips, what they need badly is trashing ( and trashing is very good against discarding). But let's say the effect you're describing is real, do you think it outweighs the boost in strength that Advisor gets for mitigating the hand size reduction (and for engines being stronger in general with discarders)?

I'm not arguing about the strength of the effect at all, so I don't even want to go there. (I even said in my previous post that I think it's insignificant.) So let me lay out more explicitly the argument that some effect exists, since you seem to be disagreeing with that.

As you mention, cantrips obscure information about your hand. This means cantrips are bad against Militia in all situations, including engines. For example, in a Village-Smithy engine, you want to have both a Village and Smithy in hand to get things started. If your draw is 5 Pearl Divers, you have no ability to ensure that when hit by Militia.

On the flip side, when one of the cards Advisor flips up is a cantrip, your opponent is denied information. That cantrip is effectively a random card from your deck. The best case is having Advisor flip up three identical cantrips, in which case it's a lab. That's even better than having Advisor flip up three great-but-different cards, because in that case your opponent can still discard the one that would help you most. Therefore cantrips are good with Advisor. (Whether Advisor requires cantrips is irrelevant, and anyway I agree that Advisor doesn't require them.)

So we have two facts:

• Adding cantrips to a deck makes that deck worse against Militia.
• Adding cantrips to a deck makes that deck stronger with Advisor.

These are just two sides of the same coin: denying yourself information is bad, and denying your opponent information is good.

Here's why that indirectly makes buying Militia weaken your opponent's Advisors.

• If you don't buy Militia, your opponent is free to add cheap cantrips to your deck without penalty, which makes Advisor stronger because they are good with it.
• If you do buy Militia, your opponent might not want to add cheap cantrips to your deck, so without them, Advisor may be weaker in their deck than it otherwise would be.

Edit: Another example indirect anti-synergy would be Stables and Poor House. They don't directly interact much (and actually Stables's play effect may help Poor House by discarding treasure), but they like to live in different decks: Stables wants a deck that has decent treasure density, while Poor House wants all the treasure trashed.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Ok, the cantrip effect you describe is real. But the strength of the effect is super important to discuss! This is about strategy, so we need to know how much these considerations will influence the decision. Some people will take your post as vindication of the position "Militia is a soft counter to Advisor", despite the fact that you say the effect is negligible. I am trying to argue specifically against the statement "Militia is a soft counter to Advisor". So I am interested in the overall effect of hand-size reduction on Advisor's strength.

People should not look at boards with Militia and Advisor and say "Advisor is weaker here", this is incorrect. I want to suggest the exact opposite, that Militia's presence on a board is in general a reason to consider buying Advisors.

[TheMirrorMan]

One to note here is a bunch of advisors + vault. This quickly gets your deck rolling against Militia. Of course a few faults/golds are necessary to counter the fact that he is going to discard them.

[Awaclus]

People should not look at boards with Militia and Advisor and say "Advisor is weaker here", this is incorrect.

But it isn't. People shouldn't look at boards with Militia and Advisor and say "I'm going to skip Advisor because of Militia", but people should look at boards with Militia and Advisor and say "I'm going to buy Militia because of Advisor".

[Mic Qsenoch]

People should not look at boards with Militia and Advisor and say "Advisor is weaker here", this is incorrect.

But it isn't. People shouldn't look at boards with Militia and Advisor and say "I'm going to skip Advisor because of Militia", but people should look at boards with Militia and Advisor and say "I'm going to buy Militia because of Advisor".

It's clear to me that our concepts of ideas like "card strength" and "counter" aren't compatible, so I'm done with this one.

[flies]

One to note here is a bunch of advisors + vault. This quickly gets your deck rolling against Militia. Of course a few faults/golds are necessary to counter the fact that he is going to discard them.

Warehouse would be a better example.

Advisor works well in general with cards that like big hands but don't care what cards they are (e.g. Vault), but you need a high density of those cards so that your opponent can't just skip them.  Those cards are (obviously) hurt by discard attacks.  At $5, it's hard to get a high density of vaults.  So I don't think advisor rescues a vault deck from militia attacks particularly well.  Vault works really well when it can just find that one gold - high card variance is no problem to a vault - while advisor works well in a completely different kind of deck. 

[flies]

Forge has a strong synergy with Advisor that might be worth mentioning in the "works well with" section.  Forge likes big hands full of junk, and then, if you manage to forge down, the result is an advisor-friendly deck.  (Forge also works well with workshops since it can turn two $4s into a province, and gainers are a reason to go for advisors.)

I can see a counter-argument in that if you need the forge to do your trashing, well, that's very late trashing, so maybe it's not an advisor board after all.  Forge is pretty weak in general, but it seems like this might be one of the cases where it can shine.

[lespeutere]

Forge has a strong synergy with Advisor that might be worth mentioning in the "works well with" section.  Forge likes big hands full of junk, and then, if you manage to forge down, the result is an advisor-friendly deck.  (Forge also works well with workshops since it can turn two $4s into a province, and gainers are a reason to go for advisors.)

I can see a counter-argument in that if you need the forge to do your trashing, well, that's very late trashing, so maybe it's not an advisor board after all.  Forge is pretty weak in general, but it seems like this might be one of the cases where it can shine.

If your deck is in a position to consist of "big hands" full of junk, you have to get pretty lucky to hold (at least one) advisor and forge in one hand. Otherwise, Forge is most likely to be discarded (edge cases as usual: aside) and you'll probably only have one.