Talk:Bandit Camp

Notable synergies

Guild Hall doesn't seem very notable, especially when compared to Triumph. One gives 1VP, the other gives a Coffers. That doesn't seem comparable in terms of magnitude of effect. Practically speaking, $5 to increase the cost generation of your Bandit Camps by $1 when they already generate $3 with sufficient overdraw doesn't seem that great: why not just buy another Bandit Camp? Or if you already have a bunch of them, why not just get more draw? I think the intention of "notable synergies" was "this is something you must consider in Kingdoms in which it appears" and I'm not sure this qualifies.

• When you have more than two Bandit Camps in your deck (which you very likely do if it's the only village), buying Guildhall is better for your money density than Grand Market! And sure, buying a fourth Bandit Camp is better if you have sufficient overdraw, but that's not always the case! I mean, if you want to argue that Triumph is better than Guildhall in general, that's very likely true. But it's hard to think of a better synergy for Guildhall than Bandit Camp: Guildhall wants a deck where you're gaining a lot of Treasures all the time, and Bandit Camp is a cantrip Treasure-gainer that doesn't permanently stall your engine: what could be better? Ajd (talk) 23:44, 8 July 2021 (EDT)

• In addition to Ajd's remarks, Triumph is reliant on a strong Engine, and strong draw cards tend to cost , which competes with Bandit Camp, so it would be slow to set up. Meanwhile, a Money strategy involving Bandit Camp and Guildhall would work independent of the rest of the Kingdom, but would definitely be helped by the presence of a cheap trasher that can remove the starting stop cards to keep the deck cycling about once every 2 turns. The Villages also provide a little more freedom with terminals than you would normally have in a Money strategy. Also, +1 Coffers is far more valuable than +. As with any Money strategy, it will start to choke on green if it needs to gain more than 4 Provinces, so if there is an alternate form of VP in the game (such as Triumph), an opponent could ignore Provinces and go for that instead. I agree that Triumph is better under the correct circumstances, but Guildhall is definitely worth a Synergy mention. User:SignError (talk) 23:25, 8 July 2021 (MDT)

• Sure, we can agree to not compare to Triumph, though I do not at all agree that setting up an engine is slow just because Bandit Camp and some draw cards both cost $5 - there are often other draw options, and the payoff frequently outscores provinces. I'm still not convinced Guildhall is worth mentioning as a 'notable synergy', which up until this point has meant "2 card combinations that are game-losing to miss".

For starters, Guildhall has far stronger synergies in Beggar (a monolithic strat) and Treasure Trove (less strong monolithic strat). In terms of statistical evidence, Bandit Camp does not appear in Guildhall's impacted cards (i.e., in the presence of Guildhall, what cards are gained more?) and vice-versa. That's pretty damning. Instead you see Guildhall with Jack, Fool (Lucky Coin), Trove, Masterpiece, Beggar, etc. (so heavy treasure gainers, and money enablers) while Bandit Camp has Artisan, Silk Merchant, Ranger, Wharf, Altar, etc. (so strong terminals and engine pieces). In modern random Dominion engines are far more commonly viable than money strategies, and so I think with that context we see from the stats that Bandit Camp fits well into a lot of engines, and in many engines you're most concerned with the steps of deck control and ramping payload, rather than money density. Adding +1 Coffers to Bandit Camp is somewhat equivalent to adding a Baker per copy of Bandit Camp. Adding Bakers is usually not a great way to ramp payload, as you've only added $1 to your economic output, and typically you only do so when draw is tight (i.e., good thinning but no net +handsize), and mass Coffers aren't as amazing for engines as they are for money strats. I'd expect to take Bandit Camp over e.g. vanillage specifically when there's draw available, otherwise I'm just self-junking my engine. And if there's draw available, I'm just adding more draw (piles/gamestate/terminal space permitting) in order to draw those Spoils. So Guildhall just seems worse in the majority of engine cases to me.

For the money case, I'm not convinced this is a monolithic thing. In my testing with Silvers, BC, GH into Provinces I average a little under 14 turns for 4 Provinces, which I think is on the level of Smithy money. Smithy money is not a notable synergy in modern random Dominion as that benchmark isn't very impressive or realistically useful, so I don't see this being very different. You've listed a bunch of nice things BC/GH has going for it, but I'm not convinced it's enough to overcome its main drawback - namely, that almost all of BC's benefit is seen on the next shuffle, and money decks typically have big, untrimmed shuffles. In my testing this means this is just super slow to get off the ground - you get ~2 BCs and a Guildhall by the end of turn 6, and don't start provincing till you make it through that next shuffle, around t10. Money strats win by provincing early and reliably faster than an engine can get off the ground, and this doesn't seem like such a case. Incidentally it did seem that this takes 6+ provinces far better than a lot of other money variants, i.e. it doesn't choke on green (typically 8 prov by t19) though that's not enough to overcome the slow start. --Terracubist (talk) 13:58, 9 July 2021 (EDT)