Last time I went over the cards relating to the Producer and Trader jobs. Here I'll go over those relating to the Builder, Councillor, and Prospector jobs.
Builder
Card: Smithy
Cost: 1
Value: 1
Quantity: 3
Ability: Reduces the cost of production buildings by 1.
Ability Power: Low to High. Assuming you build this reasonably early in the game you're likely to gain at least 2 cards from it, paying itself off and leaving you with a building slot occupied and a point. That's decent. However, some games you'll build a lot of production buildings (to score big points with the Guild Hall) and then this card really shines. It'll get you 8 cards for the cost of 2. One thing we've sort of glazed over so far is how in order to get the card advantage out of calling Builder you need to actually have a building to build. As a building that costs 1 you can always toss it out for no cost when you call Builder. This is particularly powerful when your opponent is low and cards and can't build as you get the Builder card advantage, an extra building slot, and a reasonably powerful building.
Scoring Power: Low. It might combo well with the Guild Hall but in itself it's not very point effective.
Card: Quarry
Cost: 4
Value: 2
Quantity: 3
Ability: Reduces the cost of purple buildings by 1.
Ability Power: High. It may seem a little weird that Quarry costs 3 more than Smithy, has about the same effect, and is more powerful but it's true. The reason is in most games you'll build more purple buildings (all the big point buildings are purple) as there are just more purple buildings in the deck. Also, Quarry combos very well with other powerful buildings while Smithy doesn't really combo with anything except Guild Hall. Some games the Smithy will definitely be better but in the average game I think the Quarry will be better.
Scoring Power: Medium. It's worth 2 points on its own and helps power out every high point building in the game.
Card: Carpenter
Cost: 3
Value: 2
Quantity: 3
Ability: After building a purple building, draw a card.
Ability Power: High. This is very similar to the Quarry. It costs one less to build than the Quarry but has the disadvantage that it works after building instead of before. This means you need an extra card in your hand to get the effect which sometimes doesn't matter at all and sometimes means you have to skip a Builder phase. On the plus side it does let you cycle a card and dig deeper into the deck for a little extra selection so any time you have extra cards in hand it's better than the Quarry. Even better? Get both of them into play. I don't know if it's been mentioned yet but while you can build any number of copies of the production buildings you can only build one of each purple buildings. Getting 2 Quarrys into play would be awesome but it's not legal. Quarry+Carpenter is the next best thing.
Scoring Power: Medium. It costs one less than Quarry and basically has the same scoring impact on every turn but the very last.
Card: Poor House
Cost: 2
Value: 1
Quantity: 3
Ability: After building any building if you have 0 or 1 card left in hand, draw a card.
Ability Power: High. Compare this to the Carpenter above. Poor House is cheaper to build and gives you the extra card after building any building instead of just purple buildings. On the downside it won't always proc. I've played with this card an awful lot and I've found that in general you can control your hand size well enough to get a card almost every time. It has the downside that setting it up means you can't keep many good cards in your hand and you often end up living off the top of the deck instead of having a smooth plan. One thing to point out is if you have both the Poor House and the Carpenter then you have to use the Carpenter first. As such you can only draw 2 cards after building a purple building by emptying your hand. A final point to consider is how good this is in a Guild Hall setup. You don't tend to care what production buildings you're building and the deck is full of them so you'll probably pull one to keep going.
Scoring Power: Very Low. 2 cost buildings are not efficient for earning points.
Card: Black Market
Cost: 2
Value: 1
Quantity: 3
Ability: When building you can discard up to 2 goods from your production buildings.For each good discarded, pay 1 less to build a building.
Ability Power: Low to Medium. I've never been a big fan of this card but it can fundamentally change games. This card allows you to drop Trader from a Producer/Trader cycle. Especially if you have 2 Indigo, you could sell them for 2 cards or you could just discard them for a 2 card discount and skip picking the Trader job at all. Then, assuming your opponent hasn't Tradered himself you can Produce again for no benefit to your opponent but still 2 cards for you. It's pretty easy to counter (build a high value good and actually call Trader after your opponent Produces) and tends to require building subpar cards to pull off. It combos well with cards like Aqueduct and Well and can work out ok in a Smithy/Guild Hall deck as well. It's one of the better pieces of the bad combo pieces for sure, but it's not great.
Scoring Power: Very Low. It, again, is a 1 point for 3 card building.
Card: Crane
Cost: 2
Value: 1
Quantity: 3
Ability: When building a building you can build on top of a previously built building. If you do so then you pay X fewer cards where X is the cost of the old building. You lose any abilities from the overwritten building except the Chapel.
Ability Power: Medium. I don't think I've ever made good use of this building but I have seen it done. The important thing to recognize here is that there are 4 different buildings that cost 6 and are worth big points. Actually getting enough cards to build them all can be hard, but using a Coffee Roaster for most of the game and then turning it into a big point building for 2 more cards is very powerful. This also works well with the Quarry, since you can pay 1 less when you build the first building and then another 1 less when you overwrite it. Also, you can overwrite the Crane itself so if you have the Quarry+Carpenter combo going you can spend 2 Builder phases to essentially pay 4 less for a big building. If you have the tempo to do it, that's pretty sweet.
Scoring Power: Very High. Using this card for anything other than points is pretty silly, but it can let you pump out a lot of points in a very short period of time.
Councillor
Card: Archive
Cost: 1
Value: 1
Quantity: 3
Ability: Put every card drawn from the Councillor into your hand and then discard the proper number of cards from your hand.
Ability Power: Very Low. This card can never, ever give you any cards at all. Card advantage is the name of the game and no matter what your combo is, this card cannot provide it. At best if you have a card full of terrible cards you can use this to snag a couple good cards to build, but that's not all that likely. I did have it work once, where I got 3 of the 6 cost buildings off a single Councillor, but I only built it because I had both the Quarry and the Carpenter in play and therefore it was better than free to build.
Scoring Power: Low. It's only worth the 1 point and can't really help you get any more.
Card: Prefecture
Cost: 3
Value: 2
Quantity: 3
Ability: Keep an extra card during the Councillor phase.
Ability Power: Very High. This is one of the 3 most powerful cards in the game by far. In a 4 player game I think it's actually the best card in the deck. Why? Well, if you have one and your opponent doesn't then suddenly Councillor is +1 card advantage and +3 card selection which is a pretty sweet deal. Perhaps more importantly your opponent can never call Councillor again unless he wants to lose. Taking an action to get -1 card is really terrible and yet people keep doing it. I like building the Prefecture and then refusing to Councillor myself. Prospector is almost as good and it opens the door for my opponent to throw the game and sometimes they do. Also, after you block Councillor with a Prefecture what is your opponent going to do if you build a Silver? He can't get an advantage by calling anything but Prospector or Builder and as long as you focus on calling those he's screwed. And if you do ever need selection you get an extra card when you go for it. You should build this every game if you can.
Scoring Power: Medium. In addition to being powerful it's in a sweet spot for points as well. It can never be worth the big points but it should get you to the things that are.
Prospector
Card: Gold Mine
Cost: 1
Value: 1
Quantity: 3
Ability: When anyone calls Prospector reveal the top 4 cards of the deck. If they all cost a different amount put one of them of your choice into your hand. Discard all other revealed cards.
Ability Power: Extremely Variable. This is the most frustrating part of the game for me. Some games it will do nothing at all. In other games it will gain you a card every single turn for the cost of 1. More likely it'll get you a few cards and be a good buy. Also, chances are pretty reasonable that if you're getting a card off of this that it'll be awesome. (Every 5 or 6 cost building is either very powerful or worth big points, and it's hard to get 4 different numbers from 1-6 without having a 5 or a 6.) I did a terrible job of trying to work out the odds and will likely make a detailed post later doing it properly but assuming replacement then 24% of the time you'll get a card. 11% of the time you'll get a 6 cost building. 20% of the time you'll get a 5 or a 6, which means 85% of the time which you get a card you get an awesome card. My big issue with this card is many games it won't do anything soon after you build it (fair for a 1 cost building I guess) but some games it'll net you something awesome right away which is overpowered.
Scoring Power: High. It's only worth the 1 point itself, but it's got a pretty good chance of flipping you a big point building over the course of the game and those can be hard to come by.
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