Board 8 > Para Ranks the Dominion Cards, Part 2

(+) Yeah! (+)

List so far:

107. Mine
108. Cutpurse
109. Herbalist
110. Transmute
111. Spy
112. Smugglers
113. Outpost
114. Workshop
115. Secret Chamber
116. Moat
117. Counting House
118. Pirate Ship
119. Talisman
120. Navigator
121. Coppersmith
122. Bureaucrat
123. Harvest
124. Fortune Teller
125. Stash
126. Thief
127. Woodcutter
128. Pearl Diver
129. Explorer
130. Chancellor

If there's any changes I would make up to this point, I might move Navigator up a bit since I have tried it with Loan and it is indeed a fantastic combo. Maybe move up Outpost a little bit, but I'm still on the fence there. Otherwise, a week or two later, I'm still feeling pretty much the same way about these cards as always.

So yeah, I didn't save the writeups for any of these cards, which is frustrating because I wrote quite a bit and I think there was some really nice analysis. If you didn't read any of these and you really want to know what I think about a certain card, I'll try to recap my thoughts, but for the most part there isn't anything really too exciting here. I'm just now starting to get to the part of the list where cards are coming up that I actually buy semi-frequently, and not just as a consolation prize like many of the above wind up being.

I'll be doing a few more cards right away.

106. Scout
Set: Intrigue


+1 Action
Reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. Put the revealed Victory cards into your hand. Put the other cards on top of your deck in any order.
Cost: 4

At first glance the premise of this card seems really good - clear out the top few cards of your deck of green cards, cycling your deck and making way for a better hand next turn. It's a nice idea, but Scout just doesn't do enough for me. Assuming you are playing this without any sort of synergy, you need to be expecting to draw at least two green cards with it. If you don't, then it turns out roughly to be a crappy cantrip that can only draw the worst cards, or possibly no cards at all. Scout cannot, with a few exceptions, improve your current hand, and it doesn't even draw a card on its own except for the green cards you put into your hand. It's not terminal, fortunately, but it's still a deck clogger because it's roughly a valueless card in your current hand that could've been a Silver or something instead. It's hard to have it serve a purpose at any point in the game. Early game, it doesn't increase your buying power, and trashing your early Estates if possible is way better. Mid game is the worst, since you should have almost no green cards in your deck at all most of the time. Late game it gets a bit better, but by that time, it's too late for Scout to make a big difference.

It does have some synergy options, though, and they're ones I really enjoy using. Scout is a great combo with Great Hall, Nobles, and to a lesser extent Harem, for the obvious reason - you can actually bring cards into your hand that will do something. Scout is a nice card in Gardens decks, since you'll be greening early and often and clogging your deck pretty bad. It is also a light counter to Ghost Ship - put green cards on the top of your deck, draw them right back with Scout. There's a few uses like this that are pretty okay. I think Scout/Great Hall is a really fun combo with two underwhelming cards.

There's one other thing about Scout that bugs me and that's that it's ineffective against Curses. It seems against the spirit of the card - it should be getting rid of all your junk cards, and there's really no reason for it to not work against Curses - I mean, Curses are already overpowered as it is. I think if Scout grabbed Curses as well as victory cards, then it would buff the card just enough to the point where I'd say it's really valuable. Another suggested buff might just be giving it +1 card, but I'm a little iffy about that - it might become a little too good at that point.

Also, Scout/Loan.

--
It's iubaris, not Lubaris.

Hey speaking of Navigator by the way, here's a good game for Navigator:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/26/game-20110926-125656-2c985cfe.html

I fell into kind of an early hole here, not getting gold until quite late, but instead I used Lookout as a Young Witch bane and combined it with Navigator, using Navigator to put all the cards I wanted to trash on top. This setup worked great with Fishing Village, which is absolutely the best card possible to facilitate this combo, making sure you almost never don't have enough actions. I screwed up a couple of times, there was one time where I knew I had three good cards on top from a Navigator but I played a Lookout anyway, which was dumb, but for the most part it worked well because it made Lookout a card cycling machine and prevented my deck from getting loaded down with Curses. I managed to win without both Masquerade and King's Court, a very rare feat indeed.

My opinion of Navigator has definitely gone way up.

105. Embargo
Set: Seaside


+2$
Trash this card. Put an Embargo token on top of a Supply pile.
When a player buys a card, he gains a Curse card per Embargo token on that pile.
Cost 2:

Putting two and two together with this card is a real headache. I think maybe there are strategies where this works but I don't really know what they are. It's kind of fun to figure out though.

I guess what you're supposed to do with this is, in the rare scenarios where you are actually pursuing a different strategy than your opponent, to use Embargo and pull the rug out from underneath them. I suppose you could also Embargo a card that you have bought and they have not, or you have bought more of. Something like Tactician would be especially good with this, a card that you really only need one of - I don't know if it'd be as good with, say, Laboratory. Embargo is also an interesting play against Golds or Silvers if they are trying to go big money and you're pursuing a moneyless strategy.

Since the Curse pile is limited though, Embargo doesn't really last forever. If there are Cursing attacks in the game, Embargo will eventually stop mattering - but on the other hand, opening up Witch/Embargo and then Embargoing Witch is a pretty great opener, as long as you don't draw the two cards dead (which is fairly likely actually).

Some people underestimate the value of ignoring the Embargo and buying a card anyway. I mean, if you really need the card, then get the card. It won't work well if it's a spammy card, but if you need that Witch that just got Embargoed, take the Curse. It is just one Curse, after all. Some people get absolutely terrified to go anywhere near an Embargoed supply pile.

The only other interesting thing about this card is that it's a (one-time) terminal Silver, but it's the only one that is cheaper than Silver itself. I don't really think that matters but it's interesting.

Usually I just don't really take the time to use it though, if it's not a turn where I wound up with 2 I'm probably not buying it and messing around with it. Once in a while it is an interesting play though, and I find it to be an entertaining card.

104. Saboteur
Set: Intrigue


Each other player reveals cards from the top of his deck until revealing one costing 3$ or more. He trashes that card and may gain a card costing at most 2$ less than it. He discards the other revealed cards.

This card is most definitely unpleasant to deal with, and I understand completely why people really don't like playing with it. It's absolutely maddening to get hit by this and lose your important cards, especially your Provinces. But what's really funny about it is that this card isn't even all that good.

Sabotaging someone's deck can clamp down it pretty well - it removes their good 5, 6 cost cards and replaces them with crappy 3, 4 cost ones. But the problem is that if you're playing Saboteur, you're hurting your own deck worse. Saboteur is a dead card - unlike most attacks, it doesn't even give a token +2$ or +2 cards benefit. It exists solely to kill the other person's deck, and it's questionable whether it even hurts their deck more than a single Curse would.

Probably the biggest reason everyone hates Saboteur, and the reason I find it annoying as well, is its wild variance. If it does hit those Provinces, then it's pretty nasty. If it just its inconsequential Silvers or whatnot you're completely wasting your time. Although even getting a Province hit isn't that bad - just take a Gold early or a Duchy late and accept the 3 VP swing, the player using Saboteur has probably set themselves too far back anyway.

Saboteur is probably best in a good engine where you aren't worried about deck clutter. Not only will Saboteur's presence hurt your deck less, but Saboteur is also a card that needs to be played frequently. If you're only playing Saboteur once every four turns, you're not doing well enough. If you're playing Saboteur every turn, now you're doing some significant damage. If you can manage to play Saboteur more than once every turn, now you're really putting the opponent's deck in a vicegrip. Engines like Scrying Pool or Hunting Party, anything that can increase handsize and draw most of your deck, are the most friendly environments to play Saboteur in, since you'll play it more often and draw it at an inconvenient time less often. King's Court is especially crazy with Saboteur though - getting to play it three times, even if it gives you no direct benefit, can absolutely trash the opponent's deck, and that may very well be worth it.

Most of the time people just don't really know what they're doing with Saboteur and buy it because it seems good, not realizing that every card in Dominion that doesn't give you an immediate effect is hurting you in some way if you're not careful. Saboteur is probably the biggest example of this in the game. It's best left alone in most games, if not for its ineffectiveness, then for the fact that everyone will hate you. But if you do get hit hard by it, don't worry - you'll probably still win.

103. Baron
Set: Intrigue


+1 Buy
You may discard an Estate card. If you do, +4$. Otherwise, gain an Estate card.
Cost: 4

A pretty solid slingshot and that's about it. If you need to get to 6 money or more right now, well, Baron's pretty good. Might get you a Grand Market. Maybe a Goons or something more likely.

I sort of have a problem with this card though. Yeah, it makes use of those Estates cluttering your deck, I guess, but it's not that great. You have to hope that you draw this with an Estate, which is not a guarantee at all - and if you don't, it's useless. Don't suggest that you could play it to gain an Estate - that's silly. I have won a game once by doing this, but only once. It might never happen again.

But more of a problem is the fact that it's just inferior to trashing the Estates, if you can do so. Even if you can't, I'm just not a big fan of having to play a terminal action and discarding another card just to get +4$. There aren't really that many cards that I'm that desperate to get that I need the +4$ for. It does come with a buy, which is nice since you could well end up with excess money.

Relying on Estates just isn't really the way to go, especially mid to late game. Like most strategies that rely on junk, they get crushed by strategies that get rid of the junk instead. Maybe this card is okay in a Gardens deck but I don't know. Baron isn't really a terrible card, getting +4$ for a 4-cost card is pretty far above the usual terminal Silver junk, but it's not to my tastes.

Why was mine so low?

--
From his looks Magus is Macho Man Randy Savage as an anime zombie. The black wind howls, and one of you will snap into a Slim Jim ooh yeeeah! -sonicblastpunch

Mine is low because it's a terminal Copper that's usually too slow to improve your deck fast enough to compete with a typical big money strategy. Mining a copper into a silver is only just barely better than simply trashing a copper, and most other trashing comes with some benefits, like being cheaper and trashing multiple cards at once, which is a far faster strategy.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/27/game-20110927-202933-80bbe480.html

Here is a game in which there is a stretch of 8 turns where I only buy 3 cards, and I win the game.

ADVANCED DOMINION TACTICS

yay

--
it's an underwater adventure ride

Also here's a game where I beat a level 39 opponent 25-2 with a Navigator/Venture strategy:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/27/game-20110927-211918-470f895e.html

I have no idea what this guy was even trying to do. He played horribly and I three-piled him into submission with ease.

Sorry, I don't mean to turn this topic into a "Para reports all of his Dominion games" but I need somewhere to let this all out. I'll return to writing up some stuff in a bit.

102. Contraband
Set: Prosperity


+3$
+1 Buy
When you play this, the player to your left names a card. You can't buy that card this turn.
Cost: 5

Usually a bad card, but don't sleep on it.

It's probably best to look at Contraband as a Gold that turns into a dead card in the Province/Colony race, but is better at buying cheap cards. Unless your opponent is clueless, or it's early in the game and the player misjudges whether you want Golds or Provinces, you can't use Contraband to buy Provinces.

However, early in the game, if you're careful, this card can be used as a cheap Gold to get engine pieces. That is probably the best use for this card - either building an engine, or building a junk deck. It's easy enough to deny provinces/colonies when you play this, but it's much harder, if not completely impossible, to deny the player kingdom cards.

Usually you'll want to buy Gold, but there are a couple of reasons you want Contraband. First, it's cheaper. 4 and 5 is the biggest difference in Dominion, but 5 and 6 is a pretty big difference too - if an early Gold can help you get some nice cheap cards faster, do it. The second reason you might want this is its +buy. If I'm not mistaken, this is the only source of +buy in the game that does not require an action to play, and that synergizes nicely with Contraband's primary use of buying cheap engine cards, allowing you to buy more stuff.

Because Contraband can't help you buy Provinces, and you need to buy Provinces (maybe with the exception of a Goons deck, in Contraband's case), this doesn't help a lot late game. I prefer Contraband greatly in setups where I can do something with it later, like trash it for benefit, or even use Mine to turn it into a proper Gold. If I can't I'm hesitant because having a Gold that turns into a Curse when trying to buy Provinces is kind of bad.

It also creates mindgames where you have to try to decide what to stop the other player from buying, which makes the game more fun I think. It's not a card I would buy very often, usually there are better 5's, but I've had some luck with this and it's a fun card to play.

101. Ironworks
Set: Intrigue


Gain a card costing up to 4$.

If it is an...
Action card, +1 Action
Treasure card, +1$
Victory card, +1 Card

Cost: 4

It's funny how such a small difference can make a big difference. This card is EXACTLY the same as Workshop, except it gives a very minor token benefit - but that is just enough to make me consider playing Ironworks when I would not consider Workshop.

The same cautions that apply to Workshop apply to this - it's only good if there is actually a spammable 3-4 cost card that you really want a lot of, or if you are trying to build a Gardens deck. Otherwise, you're best off avoiding it. Simple.

But what makes this better than Workshop is that it's not terminal when you are trying to get more actions. Ironworks can Ironworks itself much faster than Workshop can Workshop itself. You can Ironworks Caravans and still play actions that turn. Even if you're not Ironworksing actions, just getting one card or one money makes this just slightly better than Workshop, even if the token benefit is so small. That one money or one card can mean the difference between 4 and 5 sometimes, and that difference can be the difference between me playing Ironworks but not playing Workshop.

It's also a nice combo with Great Hall since you get +card/+action from it. It's not really that great since Great Halls don't do much for you anyway and it still makes Ironworks only a cantrip, but it costs you barely anything in opportunity cost to do it, so it's an okay combo.

Do you get all the effects if you choose a hybrid card?

--
It's F-Zero. F-ZEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERO!
http://img.imgcake.com/RedShifter/trisisofasscendsjpguv.jpg

100. Wishing Well
Set: Intrigue


+1 Card
+1 Action
Name a card. Reveal the top card of your deck. If it's the named card, put it into your hand.
Cost: 3

Congratulations, Wishing Well! You have just barely made it into my top 100 Dominion cards! As an often-maligned card, this must be a very big day for you, getting even the slightest bit of recognition whatsoever!

Wishing Well is a card that you won't usually buy with any purpose, but sometimes you will buy it when you don't have any other purpose. It's not a card that can easily help your deck, but it's a card that almost never hurts it, either. Usually what I use it for is to just play it and wish for a Copper, and use it like a ghetto Lab. Sometimes it works, especially in the early game. Later on it's not so good unless you have a very high density of one card.

If you do have a high density of one card, though, then it's actually pretty interesting. This is decent in combination with things that you just get a ton of and spam like the dickens, such as Minion, or Caravan, or even Grand Market surprisingly enough. You could probably also make a decent combo out of it with Navigator or Scout or Apothecary, for obvious reasons. You could also probably make it into a good counter against enemy Spies, Scrying Pools, and Ghost Ships, again for obvious reasons.

(Note that it does not synergize with your own Spies or Scrying Pools because it draws the top card of your deck - you're trying to guess what the second card of your deck is. Keep that in mind when comboing this with Navigator/Scout/Apothecary.)

It can also power Peddler/Conspirator/Scrying Pool engines or anything else that a cantrip can do, but I didn't give Pearl Diver this benefit of the doubt so I won't make much mention of it here. Really this is not a card that you're going to buy because you really want it, you buy it because there's nothing else. But you'd be surprised at how often this is a better buy than Silver.

Red Shifter | Posted 9/27/2011 10:08:54 PM | message detail | quote
Do you get all the effects if you choose a hybrid card?

Yes, although I believe the only valid targets of this (without Bridge help) are Great Hall and Island, and spamming Islands is sort of questionable (although it might work), so Great Hall is really the only major card that this actually works out with.

99. Great Hall
Set: Intrigue


+1 Card
+1 Action
1 VP
Cost: 3

Yeah, I guess I'll just put this here. "Inconsequential" is the best way to sum up this card, which makes its spot right next to Wishing Well appropriate. Again, it is a card that cannot really hurt or help your deck in any particular way.

It's really funny seeing people buy these early in the game - they're only 1 VP, the opportunity cost of buying out all the Great Halls is not worth it when I'm going to be getting Gold earlier and winning the Province race. Even if you buy all 8 Great Halls, you will lose the game if you split the Provinces 3-5. Remember that, and then reflect on how inconsequential Great Hall really is. Great Hall isn't so great. Ho ho ho!

That said, Great Halls can wind up being a tiebreaker when the Province split is 4-4, and that's where things get a little bit stickier. Great Hall makes a decent consolation prize where Estate doesn't. Estate is a card you probably don't want to buy until you think the game will be over before your next reshuffle. Great Hall is a card you can buy any time and not be worse off for it. It makes good fodder for things like Goons, where you need to just buy something, or in heavy buy engines, where you might end up with 3 extra money and go hey, why not buy a Great Hall. It's also a cantrip which means, as usual, Peddler/Conspirator/Scrying Pool loves it, and a couple of other minor combos have already been discussed with Great Hall, like Ironworks and Scout.

All Great Hall really is though, at the end of the day, is a tiebreaker. Usually fighting your opponent over the Great Halls is kind of stupid, but sometimes it's important and it's hard to tell the difference. I'm not really fond of figuring it out, myself. Either way, it doesn't really change the character of most games it shows up in, so it's kind of a boring card.

98. Throne Room
Set: Base


Choose an Action card in your hand. Play it twice.
Cost: 4

This card is a bit overrated in my opinion. I don't think people really go crazy for this card, but I see a lot of people buying it when they shouldn't.

See, you need actions with this card. This card flat out doesn't work if your deck isn't dense with actions, and they have to be GOOD actions. Playing a crappy action twice doesn't help, because Throne Room is taking up a slot in your hand. It's not a good idea to think of this like King's Court Jr, because KC is still awesome even with weak cards like cantrips, because playing it three times means it increases your handsize and ultimately plays more actions than you could have. Throne Rooming a cantrip is exactly the same as playing two cantrips, which means it's exactly the same as being a Great Hall idiot. Good job.

That said, it can work if you do have a good engine, it'll speed up an engine made up of good cards. I still hate this card though - I ALWAYS draw it dead when I buy it, which absolutely wrecks your chances of winning really quick. You need to make as sure as you can that you will not draw this dead when you play it. Probably the best kinds of decks to play this in are decks where you can trash and get a really huge density of actions - Scrying Pool decks in particular come to mind as a setup where Throne Room can thrive. Even then, however, Throne Room is sort of a last resort - Scrying Pool decks can usually draw the whole deck without Throne Room's help, unless the kingdom is just really crappy, like no +actions or +cards anywhere at all.

I just don't know what Throne Room is good for. It's taking up an extra slot in your hand, which could have just been another copy of that action anyway. Sure, it allows you to play a terminal twice when having two of those terminals doesn't, but an environment with lots of terminals is not a good place to be playing Throne Room anyway, you're too likely to draw it dead and have collisions, because you either need to buy too many terminals and wind up with awkward hands, or buy not enough terminals and draw Throne Room dead with all your treasures.

Some people can make this card work, sort of, and it pisses me off because I absolutely can't no matter how hard I try. I veto this one frequently.

yeah my experience with throne room so far is basically expecting that it will be better and more useful than it is

--
it's an underwater adventure ride

97. Horn of Plenty
Set: Cornucopia


0$
When you play this, gain a card costing up to 1$ per differently named card you have in play, counting this. If it's a Victory card, trash this.
Cost: 5

This is sort of like a Workshop that doesn't require an action and can get better cards, I guess. It's still a dead card in your hand though - it's worth nothing except the card you gain later. The only neat thing about it is, if you have lots of differently named cards in your deck, you can get some actually decent cards.

Here is a problem with some of the cards in Cornucopia - it promotes having a variety of cards in your deck, but usually you don't want a variety of cards in your deck. Sometimes the kingdom really is good enough that you want to buy every action in it but that's pretty rare - fortunately, when you do want every action in it, that means you're building an engine, and that means you want Horns of Plenty to get cards for it faster.

However usually Horn of Plenty sacrifices getting a really good card and goes for two mediocre cards instead, like Workshop and its ilk, and that's not a good idea. Horn of Plenty is a little bit better but it doesn't usually work out for me because I don't have enough different cards to get up to 5 reliably. Duration cards help, so do things like cantrips or alternate treasures and such.

So if you can get some nice engine pieces, it's worth it. The one most redeeming factor of this card is that late game, you can self-trash it for a victory card. Usually a Duchy, but sometimes a Province. When you consider that it actually makes itself useful late game, unlike Workshop, its outlook seems a little bit better. Unfortunately, it can slow down your game if you're not careful about it, because it's a dead card. It's a card best played with some reservations, and I don't really know how to play it effectively.

96. Trade Route
Set: Prosperity


+1 Buy
+1$ per token on the Trade Route mat.
Trash a card from your hand.
Setup: Put a token on each Victory card Supply pile. When a card is gained from that pile, move the token to the Trade Route mat.
Cost: 3

This card is a trasher, which is a point in its favor, but it's probably the worst trasher in the game. That said, it's still a trasher.

The problem with this card is that trashing is something that's best early in the game, and is always better as early as possible, but this card's effect only comes into play late. Even trashing one card is good, but it's really slow, and this card basically does nothing for you early in the game, so it's a dead card that removes one dead card. In other words, it's a pretty crappy early game trasher. The crappiest, in fact.

As a midgame trasher, this is a little more interesting. This setup absolutely needs some alternate victory cards to power this card, otherwise it's never going to generate enough money, but I have seen people work this thing up to 5$ with minimal effort and that's actually pretty good. It gets +buys, too, so it can't generate too much money. But you need to get up to at least 3 before you care, otherwise it's a Woodcutter or worse that trashes. Also noteworthy to point out that if you're trashing too many cards, you wind up having to trash good cards to power this thing, which potentially means getting rid of Silver, which decreases your buying power.

This is one of the few trashers I usually ignore, but still, even an extremely slow trasher is still worth it some of the time, and sometimes this card gets up to pretty high values, so it's sometimes worth it.

95. Tribute
Set: Intrigue


The player to your left reveals then discards the top 2 cards of his deck. For each differently named card revealed, if it is an...
Action Card, +2 Actions
Treasure Card, +2$
Victory Card, +2 Cards
Cost: 5

Flashy but random as hell. Dominion is leaving up enough things to chance as it is, this is the card equivalent of flipping a coin and hoping for the best. I'm not the type of person who would really describe himself as a "control freak" when it comes to Dominion - I'm as happy in trashing scenarios as I am in non-trashing scenarios - but this card is completely unreliable in the worst way.

If you get +2 actions/+2 cards out of it, good, good for you. Yeah, this card is awesome if you get that every time. +2 actions/+2$ is tolerable as well. +2 Cards/+2$ is fine... if you have some other actions. This card either desperately needs actions to support it, or you need to just not give a damn if this card winds up being a terminal. You can NEVER substitute this card as a Village, unless your opinion is running an extremely dense action deck like Minion or Scrying Pool (in which case expect to play this for +2 Actions or +4 Actions a lot). If you have only 1 action to play and you play this expecting to play another action afterwards, good f***ing luck, you'll need it.

This card can give some pretty nice benefits when it hits properly, but it has a real penchance for never giving you the ones you need at that very moment. In Dominion, it's a very bad idea to make a habit of buying and playing cards that don't give you exactly the benefits you need. Your deck needs to have clarity of purpose, and Tribute's purpose changes every time you play the damn card. Worse, is that its benefits aren't always awesome - draw two of the same card and you just played a Moat, a Native Village without a mat, or a literal terminal Silver.

If you have enough actions to play it without worrying about it leaving your hand dead at inopportune times, go for it I guess, although it's still unreliable. Pay attention to your opponent's setup. If you have more than enough actions, but your opponent is running an action-heavy deck, avoid this card like the plague. If they're running a big money deck on the other hand, then would be a good time to use this. Keep in mind that the value of this card goes way up if any of the victory hybrids are in your opponent's deck (Great Hall, Harem, Nobles, and to a lesser extent Island), because like Ironworks, you get both benefits. If your opponent is picking up the Great Halls with particular zeal, then absolutely buy this and play it, because revealing Great Hall is as good as a level 2 City. By the same token, keep in mind that Curses do nothing for this, so never play this in a game where you expect to be Cursing your opponent (read: every game in which a curse-giver is available).

Most of the time, though, I ignore this. Sometimes the environment is right for it, but usually it's just leaving things up to chance and leaving you in awkward situations with dead hands. Play cards in Dominion that always give you the benefits you need, not sometimes give you the benefits you need.

Someone just smoked me with Horn of Plenty, they trashed two Horns of Plenty for two Provinces and then bought a Province to win the game. Totally blindsided me.

On the other side of things I just played against someone who opened Coppersmith/Black Market in a kingdom with no villages, and then the first thing they bought out of BM was Pearl Diver. The fact that I only won 39-31 means I did not play well enough.

Edit: "Horn of Plenties." Bad Para. BAD.

94. Black Market
Set: Promo


+2$
Reveal the top 3 cards of the Black Market deck. You may buy one of them immediately. Put the unbought cards on the bottom of the Black Market deck in any order.
(Before the game, make a Black Market deck out of one copy of each Kingdom card not in the supply.)
Cost: 3

Black Market is fun as hell, but buyer beware. It's amazing how many people buy this card thinking, oh man, I'll get all these awesome cards with it! And then one of those things happen. Either you don't get the awesome cards, or you get some pretty decent cards but you spend too much time buying them and wind up with an unfocused and cluttered deck.

That said, of all the not-that-great cards in the game, it is certainly one of my favorites. It's involved in two of my favorite combos: Fairgrounds and Tactician.

Fairgrounds + Black Market sort of speaks for itself - nothing improves deck diversity like Black Market does (except perhaps Tournament if you're fast), so you can grab plenty of good or at least not-deck-clogging cards from Black Market and then buy out Fairgrounds to win. It's a crazy deck-diversifying strategy that can actually work, as long as you're careful and still know when to start going green.

Tactician + Black Market is nuts. The ruling with Black Market is, when you play the card, you may play treasure in your hand to buy the cards you draw - but you are not in the buy phase. That means, in other words, that you can play all your treasure, and then play Tactician afterwards, and then buy. Black Market's the only way to pull it off, and the fact that you get to draw cards from the Black Market deck ends up being just a bonus, rather than the key feature. Very odd combo, but it's an extremely competitive one - just don't forget that Tactician requires you to discard at least one card, I've made this mistake before.

Other than that, Black Market's only real use is to try to get stuff you can't get in the kingdom - especially a curser or a trasher when neither are available. Sometimes stuff like a good village with none available is a nice boon as well. There's some other good cards that are nice to be the only one to wind up with, such as Tournament or King's Court. For the most part, though, Black Market will not help you. There's a reason the win rate on this card is so terrible, nobody knows how to use it.

Also, Harvest is a card that's starting to go up a little bit in my opinion. It's still not great, but it gets to the point of drawing +3$ somewhat consistently surprisingly early, and it cycles your deck like a monster, allowing you to get back again to Harvest rather quickly. It tends to discard other good actions you have, so you have to be careful, but buying some actions also helps Harvest trigger more often. Getting +4$ off of it winds up happening more often than I expected AND is more useful than I expected, and I won a game on it. It might not be such a bad card after all. The jury's out on that one, as well as continuing to be out on Navigator. Sometimes you just have to play these cards to see.

Whoops, should have been looking for this topic. Now my comments are quite late! Ah well.

At first I thought Scout was cool. Then I realized it rarely helped next turn enough to make up for having no immediate value, so I thought it sucked. Now I think it's cool again. It's still a weak card on its own, but it combos with so many things; Kingdom Victory cards, cards that reveal from your deck, cantrips... And even in a game where all the Kingdom cards are boring things like Mine that don't really interact with Scout, it isn't useless, just weak. That's pretty good card design. I do agree that it should grab Curses, though.

I would say that if the setup has Ironworks and Island, you should grab as many Islands as you can. Yeah, they're terminals, but they remove themselves from the deck. And if two Islands collide, you can just play one on the other.

I think you are seriously underrating Throne Room. It is certainly not identical to merely having two copies of the Throned action; normally, if you have two copies of a terminal, you only get to play one of them. Note also that playing a Throne Room on a Great Hall, Laboratory, or so on nets you one more Action than playing two seperate copies of the card would. And two Throne Rooms let you play two different terminals, twice each, even if there are no Villages in the board. (Of course, if you regularly see hands with four terminal actions and the board has no villages, you'd danged well -better- be centering your plans around Throne Room 'cause your deck won't be good for much else.)

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I don't like this duchy. Now, it's an adventurer.

Black Market + Horn of Plenty

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It's F-Zero. F-ZEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERO!
http://img.imgcake.com/RedShifter/trisisofasscendsjpguv.jpg

Throne Rooming a cantrip is exactly the same as playing two cantrips,

+Action, yo.

It's still a dead card in your hand though - it's worth nothing except the card you gain later.

....? By that logic, what cards AREN'T dead? I hate Horn of Plenty as much as the next guy, but you can use that argument on any treasure really. Pretty much every card in the game serves no other function than 1) Improve your deck, 2) Screw with your opponent, or 3) Score. If "get a card you want for later" is a dead card, then uhhh....?

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

Tom Bombadil | Posted 9/29/2011 9:03:18 AM | message detail | quote
....? By that logic, what cards AREN'T dead? I hate Horn of Plenty as much as the next guy, but you can use that argument on any treasure really. Pretty much every card in the game serves no other function than 1) Improve your deck, 2) Screw with your opponent, or 3) Score. If "get a card you want for later" is a dead card, then uhhh....?

When I refer to a card as "dead", that means that it has no effect that improves the quality of your current hand, and does not replace itself. Copper is not a dead card because it improves the amount of money in your hand by 1. Horn of Plenty is dead because it does not improve your current hand in any way, only later hands, but it takes up a slot in your hand, degrading the quality of your current hand. Of course, that doesn't mean that all dead cards are bad, they usually do useful things, but it is always something to consider and it is a detractor for many cards, even ungodly powerful ones like Chapel and Sea Hag. Remember, every card in your hand that does not improve your current hand's quality is weakening it by virtue of not being at least a copper or better. Any card that grants money or +cards that can draw money allows you to improve your hand's quality. Attacking and trashing are important too but all of these things have to be in balance.

Gainers are a little weird because they gain something on their own instead of helping you with your normal buy, but then the rule of "one good card is better than two mediocre cards" comes into play. Compare the two hands Gold/Silver/Copper/Copper/Copper and Gold/Silver/Copper/Copper/Horn of Plenty. The first gives you 8 money and gets you a Province. The other gets you a card worth up to 4, and then 7 money. Which is better? Sometimes in the early game the second thing winds up being better, but as a rule of thumb it's not. Of course, Horn of Plenty can get up to 8 itself if you play enough cards but it can be hard to do.

By the way thanks for getting some responses in guys, I was worried that nobody knew this topic was here.

It may not improve the quality of the hand, but it improves the results of it, and at the end of the day that equates to roughly the same thing in my book, as it's essentially a card that gives +Buy/+$ under very limited conditions. Whether it's a WORHTWHILE card or not is debatable at best, but Chapel, Tactician, Lookout (with no +Card), Scout (with no particular application) are more "dead" than HoP.

but I guess I'm just wrangling semantics at this point

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

But they are more potent in improving the quality of later hands, which is why they are better than Horn of Plenty. Like all gainers, Horn of Plenty can actually degrade the quality of later hands at the same time as degrading the current one, if you're not careful. Trashing is better than gaining probably about 90% of the time or so. Tactician combines two turns into a megaturn - cards like Horn of Plenty do the exact opposite, unless you get Horn of Plenty up to a significant value (which is why HoP is not the best example of what I'm talking about - Workshop or Outpost would be better).

Another note on that - I would say that, if Saboteur had a +2$ effect attached onto it, we would be discussing it as one of the most powerful cards in the game by far. It's no accident that that would be because it's no longer a dead card in your current hand, but also improving your current hand as well. It's certainly not the only reason Witch and Mountebank are so, so much better than Saboteur, but it's probably the second-biggest reason.

I'm not arguing that Horn of Plenty is a good card, I'm arguing that calling it dead is a bit of a stretch. I'd run Chapel or Tactician or pretty much anything else over it in a heartbeat in 98% of games, sure. But regardless of your strategy or circumstances, you have to buy/gain/materialize cards at some point to do much of anything in this game, and HoP lets you do that. Is it good at it? No. Does it do it? Yes. It's no more a "dead card" than Copper.

I also am not as hard on gainers as you are. They tend to get you mid to low range stuff, sure, but sometimes there are vital engine pieces to be found in the $2-4 range and you don't wanna waste tons of buys on that...or heck, sometimes it's just nice to have a bunch of decent cantrips. I like cantrips.

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

goddamn it witches with no trash cards

you are poop

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it's an underwater adventure ride

What about Expand? It actually badly damages your current hand (takes up a spot and trashes a second card), but massively improves future hands/VP count?

Also, I played a rather amusing match recently against someone who built a draw engine so powerful his entire deck was in his hand every turn, but had only 6$ (2 copper, 2 festival) in the entire deck.

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MMBN style fighting game made by me in the link below!
http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/184947-b8bn

Expand is... well let me put it this way, it's actually the card I'm having the most difficulty ranking right now. Some days I am pretty high on it, other days I am not. I have no idea yet where it will wind up, because while I do have the list written, I move things around as I learn more about the cards. This isn't an exact science.

Expand seems like such an amazing card... but I have a lot of difficulty using it effectively.

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http://www.last.fm/user/TehMop
Congrats to BlackTurtle!

Expand is one of those cards I always expect to be awesome and then it never actually winds up working out. 60% of my Expand plays are just glorified Mines.

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~Tommeri Uranius Bombaldi the Fourth, esq.
(aka not Krakenprophet)

yay i won today

not sure if i'm better at 1v1 or if i am just better against this specific person

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it's an underwater adventure ride

took 2/3 from carton

just like how i was better in mafia too LOL

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it's an underwater adventure ride

Uh, just being super safe about this not purging, I'm doing more writeups later tonight once I figure out what card I want to write next.

i played some seaside for the first time saturday

holy crap is wharf good

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it's an underwater adventure ride

Naye745 posted...
i played some seaside for the first time saturday

holy crap is wharf good

Hell yes it is. Especially with King's Court.

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http://www.last.fm/user/TehMop
Congrats to BlackTurtle!

dunno what kings court is but wharf basically gave me a dominating victory

i got creamed in the next game with witch though; as good as that card is, i feel like i'm always doing it wrong

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it's an underwater adventure ride

Kings court lets you play an action three times in a row. So with wharf, you'd get 3 buys and 6 cards, now and at the start of your next turn. Fun times, right?

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MMBN style fighting game made by me in the link below!
http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/184947-b8bn

yeah that's pretty respectable

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it's an underwater adventure ride

gotta get some intrigue this week

hoping my plans don't fall apart like yesterday! argh

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it's an underwater adventure ride

You can play with all of them at http://dominion.isotropic.org/

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http://www.last.fm/user/TehMop
Congrats to BlackTurtle!