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| {{Infobox Card | | {{Infobox Card |
| |name = Ghost Ship | | |name = Ghost Ship |
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| == Strategy Article == | | == Strategy Article == |
− | ''[http://dominionstrategy.com/2012/03/12/seaside-ghost-ship/ Article] by HiveMindEmulator, edited by theory, originally posted on the [http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1800.0 forum]''
| + | Ghost Ship is a [[terminal draw]] card with a powerful [[handsize attack]]. Because it forces your opponents to [[topdeck]] rather than discard cards from their hand, the attack can differ significantly in impact from other attacks, e.g. {{Card|Militia}}, that also reduce them to a starting hand size of three. |
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− | The strongest aspect of the Ghost Ship attack may be its psychological component. It’s difficult to appreciate just how nasty a Ghost Ship game can be until you’ve experienced what it’s like to live under a never-ending barrage of Ghost Ships. Like {{Card|Torturer}}, Ghost Ship is well-suited to ragequits; but while Torturer eventually runs out of {{Card|Curse|Curses}} to threaten you with, Ghost Ship is a merciless and unrelenting foe. There are plenty of stronger attacks, but not even [[curser|cursers]] slow a game down like a fleet of Ghost Ships.
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− | === Understanding the Attack ===
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− | When you first look at the Ghost Ship attack, you probably think it looks a lot like the attack of {{Card|Militia}}. But then when you think about it or play with it a little more, you see some difference:
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− | * It seems weaker because your opponent can use the attack to organize their cards to give them one really good turn.
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− | * It seems stronger because you can’t just discard weak cards and forget about it, since getting rid of them means you have to see them next turn. It also slows progress through the deck so it takes longer to shuffle in your new better cards.
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− | So which is it? Is it weaker or stronger?
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− | Well, if you have only one Ghost Ship, it’s probably a bit of a wash. Situationally, one of these effects may appear more prominent. But the real strength of Ghost Ship comes from getting consecutive plays of the attack.
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− | As a thought experiment, consider what happens when you get attacked. With Miltia, your average 5-card turn is reduced into a “good” 3-card turn (a turn consisting of the 3 best of 5 cards). With Ghost Ship, you have to think about next turn as well, so you either reduce 2 average 5-card turns into a good 3 and a bad 5 or a bad 3 and a good 5. Well, usually you’ll want the latter, as a bad 3 and a good 5 can actually at times be even better than 2 average 5s due to general convexity of card values (a {{Card|Gold}} is better than two {{Card|Silver|Silvers}}).
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− | But now imagine you opted to take a bad 3 and a good 5, and now, right before your good 5, you get attacked again. Now you’re looking at turning a good 5/average 5 into an average 3/good 5 or good 3/bad 5, both of which are now a major downgrade, even without considering the decreased cycle speed. This is where the real power of the attack shows.
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− | This is the key to Ghost Ship, and the reason why its impact is much greater than it seems. A single Ghost Ship is not a huge deal; the point of the attack only becomes apparent if you are able to play many in a row. You choke your opponent’s deck, making it impossible for them to progress through it and reach their newly-bought cards.
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− | Of course, in reality, you’re not just playing against [[Big money|BM]], and so there are some counters to the attack (which we’ll get to later), but the point is the same: Ghost Ship is an attack that has a hidden self-synergy, because its one weakness (allowing the construction of one above-average turn) does not surface until you stop attacking with it.
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− | === How to use Ghost Ship ===
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− | Now that you understand that the strength of the attack comes from consecutive plays, the strategy question becomes how to set up a deck that can play multiple consecutive Ghost Ships — preferably one every turn. There are a few ways this can be accomplished:
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− | #Get a lot of Ghost Ships
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− | #Build an action-chain that allows you to play one of your 1-2 Ghost Ships every turn.
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− | #(In multiplayer) Build off the Ghost Ships of other players.
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− | The simplest answer is (1). If you just buy as many Ghost Ships as possible and as few other actions as possible, you have a pretty good Ghost Ship Big Money deck. The general plan with Ghost Ship BM is to try to get a bunch of Ghost Ships ASAP. You want to take an early Gold to help buy them, but a second Ghost Ship should probably take priority over a second Gold since the second Ghost Ship is where the real magic starts to happen. You may also want to get a third Ghost Ship before second or third Gold, but it’s hard to say. (The simulator can’t really answer this because it does not play against Ghost Ship properly.) Once you have your Ghost Ships up, just buy {{Card|Province|Provinces}}, Gold, Ghost Ships, Silver, and eventually {{Card|Duchy|Duchies}}. You don’t really need to worry about over-buying Ghost Ships, because usually it’s better to have too many rather than too few. This is because a collision is just a waste of one card, but having a turn where you can’t play Ghost Ship gives your opponent an extra “good” turn, or at least 2 extra cards.
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− | For openings, you can go with early-game {{Card|Estate}}-[[trasher|trashers]] that you only want to play 1-2 times like {{Card|Chapel}}, {{Card|Remake}}, {{Card|Steward}}, or {{Card|Island}}, but not cards that get their value from being played in the mid-game like {{Card|Monument}} or Militia, as ideally you want to quickly get to the point where you just play Ghost Ship every turn. {{Card|Fishing Village}} can be a help, since it alleviates collisions while still providing money, but {{Card|Walled Village}} or any of the other villages are probably not worth the loss in economy vs Silver since you’re not really trying to chain actions. Ghost Ship’s +2 Cards isn’t enough to fuel a real +Cards/+Actions chain.
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− | That leads us to (2). If you want to play Ghost Ship in an action chain, you need a better source of draw, like {{Card|Smithy}}, {{Card|Council Room}}, or a [[Non-terminal draw|Lab-type]]. Council Room has a nice interaction because the extra card given to your opponent by Council Room gets put back by Ghost Ship. If you’re going to compete with Ghost Ship BM, you probably also need some source of +Buy, since you’re bound to start buying Provinces later than the BM player. Generally, you want to play the action chain as you otherwise would, using the Ghost Ships, which are preferably acquired early, as extra terminals. While the draw isn’t enough to fuel the chain, it can be enough to offset the fact that you have to buy more [[Village (card category)|villages]] instead of draw cards.
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− | Another consideration is {{Card|Scheme}}. If you have a Scheme, you don’t have to draw a huge portion of your deck to keep your Ghost Ships coming every turn. Similar tricks can also be pulled with other cards that can save away an extra Ghost Ship like {{Card|Haven}}, {{Card|Courtyard}}, or {{Card|Mandarin}}.
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− | Option (3) is not really something you can control. The only thing to really take from it is that Ghost Ship gets strong more quickly as the number of players increases. If multiple other players are already committed to Ghost Ships, keeping everyone at 3 cards, then there is no need to also go Ghost Ship. You can instead focus on …
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− | === Playing against Ghost Ship ===
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− | The easy case: if your opponent is not playing Ghost Ship next turn, and you have no ability to draw back the top of your deck, then you should probably save your good cards for next turn unless you have some good purchase possible this turn.
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− | If you’re under perpetual Ghost Ships, the decision is a bit tougher and depends on what you’re going to be able to buy. Ideally, however, by this point in the game, you will typically have some way of drawing back the cards you put back. If you are actually forced to play primarily 3-card hands with no drawing, you basically have no hope. So even if you have no real hard counter to Ghost Ship, you at least need some source of +Cards (Ghost Ships of your own if nothing else). If you’re under perpetual Ghost Ships, you will also find that you play smaller hands than usual, and move through the deck slower, so you can afford to have a slightly higher density of terminal actions than you might have had otherwise. But don’t overdo it, because you do want to be able to reach the point where you regularly draw back the cards you returned from the attack.
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− | There are some “hard” counters to the attack, including [[Reaction|Reactions]] which defend hand-size attacks ({{Card|Moat}}, {{Card|Horse Traders}}), cards that “draw up to X” ({{Card|Jack of all Trades}}, {{Card|Watchtower}}, {{Card|Library}}, {{Card|Minion}}, {{Card|Scholar}}), and the generic defense of {{Card|Lighthouse}}. But there are also other “soft” counters that don’t directly ignore the effect of the attack, but take advantage of the fact that you return cards to the top of your deck. With Menagerie or Shanty Town, it’s easy to set up your hand so that you can draw the two cards back. They’re not “hard” counters because you just draw the cards back and miss out on further benefit from the cards. If you would have drawn 3 from Menagerie or 2 from Shanty Town anyway, the attack still hurts.
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− | Cards that deal with the top of your deck ({{Card|Secret Chamber}}, {{Card|Spy}}, {{Card|Scrying Pool}}, Jack, {{Card|Oracle}}, {{Card|Apothecary}}, {{Card|Cartographer}}, {{Card|Wishing Well}}, {{Card|Venture}}, {{Card|Loan}}, {{Card|Farming Village}}, {{Card|Golem}}, {{Card|Native Village}}, etc.) can also take advantage of being able to know/arrange the cards on top of your deck. (Note that Jack is both on this list and the list of “draw up to X” cards. It counters Ghost Ship pretty hard.) Minion is another case: you can put your good stuff onto the deck, and then save a Minion to discard your hand and draw the good stuff.
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− | Another option is to go for “combo” cards like {{Card|Tournament}} and {{Card|Treasure Map}}. Tournament missed the Province? Just put it back and save it for later. And even any card that just draws a lot of cards like {{Card|Wharf}} or {{Card|Tactician}} can help simply because the effect of returning 2 cards is less meaningful when you draw an extra 4-5.
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− | Cards that benefit from long games are also better than usual in Ghost Ship games. The best example is Monument. In a multiplayer game, where the other players are busy keeping everyone under Ghost Ship, you will do much better going for Monuments and just slowly racking up {{VP}} chips over the course of the game. You can even afford more Monuments than usual, because if they collide you’ll probably put one back on your deck anyway.
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− | Wharf Big Money should beat Ghost Ship Big Money, since the extra draw completely offsets the Ghost Ship attack, allowing both players to essentially play off of 6 cards every turn. However, Wharf has the added benefit of the +Buy and higher variance in hand-size (3-8 instead of 5-6). Oracle Big Money may also counter Ghost Ship Big Money. Even though the Oracle player will be playing with 4-card hands vs 6-card hands of the Ghost Ship player, the 4-card hands will be filtered into strong 4 card hands, while the 6-card hands will be filtered into weak ones.
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− | As mentioned before, Jack of all Trades is the sickest counter, and Ghost Ship BM with a Jack opening loses to plain old Jack+Money. Venture is a nice card to add in to your Ghost Ship play once you have 3-4 Ghost Ships, since it semi-counters the attack and is a treasure. You should open Loan pretty often on Ghost Ship boards, since it helps counter the attack by skipping Estates while at the same time trimming away Coppers. This leads well into engines, and is still useful in the Ghost Ship BM scenario. Many of the other counters can be quite nice, but need to appropriately be incorporated into an engine. It’s generally not worth adding in something like a Moat purely for the Reaction.
| + | Early in the game, or when a deck-drawing [[engine]] isn’t possible, the main impact of the Ghost Ship attack is to greatly slow down [[cycling]], impeding your opponents in finding their good cards and getting through each [[reshuffle|shuffle]] to play their new cards. Infrequently, the topdecking may offer a slight benefit in this situation, allowing an opponent to topdeck excess [[Treasure]]s or mitigate terminal [[collision]]. However, in many cases the attack is significantly more oppressive than a discarding attack, especially if you can play Ghost Ship on multiple consecutive turns. This is because your opponents face a choice between keeping the best hand of three cards and keeping a [[dud]] hand to get bad cards out of the way with the hope of a full turn subsequently with the topdecked cards. With Ghost Ship in the [[Kingdom]], it is usually very important to achieve [[deck control]], usually via strong draw, as soon as possible, both to reduce the impact of your opponents’ attacks and to put more pressure on them by consistently playing your own Ghost Ships. Before this point however, and because Ghost Ship greatly impedes your opponents in getting deck control, it is often a priority to get a Ghost Ship as soon as you can afford it. You can even use effects such as {{Card|Scheme}} or {{Project|Star Chart}} to play your Ghost Ships more consistently before you’re able to get full control. |
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− | === Synergies/Combos ===
| + | In addition to more general defensive effects, such as {{Card|Lighthouse}}, a number of strategies can help to counter the Ghost Ship attack: |
− | * [[Treasure|Money]] | + | * Cards that can trash or discard bad cards from the top of your deck, such as {{Card|Farming Village}} or {{Card|Lookout}}. |
− | * Single-use Estate-trashers | + | * Effects that allow you to benefit from a smaller starting hand size (e.g. {{Card|Menagerie}} or {{Card|Diplomat}}) or restore it with a [[draw-to-X]] effect such as {{Card|Guide}} or {{Card|Watchtower}} may actually result in a net benefit from being attacked. |
− | * {{Card|Governor}}
| + | * Effects that allow you to make some use of the opportunity to set up the two cards on top of your deck, e.g. by drawing with {{Card|Wishing Well}} or {{Card|Magpie}}, or playing one with {{Card|Herald}} or {{Project|Piazza}}. |
− | * {{Card|Fishing Village}}
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− | * {{Card|Council Room}} | + | |
− | * {{Card|Scheme}}
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− | *{{card|Bandit}}
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− | === Antisynergies === | + | ===External strategy articles=== |
− | * {{Card|Jack of all Trades}}
| + | ''Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's current views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information or give historical perspective. Caveat emptor.'' |
− | * {{Card|Oracle}} | + | * [http://dominionstrategy.com/2012/03/12/seaside-ghost-ship/ HiveMindEmulator's 2012 article] |
− | * {{Card|Navigator}}
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− | * {{Card|Menagerie}} / {{Card|Shanty Town}}
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− | * {{Card|Horse Traders}}
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− | * {{Card|Library}}, {{Card|Watchtower}}, other draw-up-to-X effects
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− | * {{Card|Guide}}
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− | * [[Deck inspector|Deck inspectors]]
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− | * Opponent's {{Card|Herald}}, {{Card|Wishing Well}}, {{Card|Magpie}} or {{project|Piazza}}, since they can guarantee a hit
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− | * Opponent can choose the card which {{Card|Native Village}} will store on the mat.
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− | *{{card|Apothecary}}
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| == Versions == | | == Versions == |
In addition to more general defensive effects, such as , a number of strategies can help to counter the Ghost Ship attack: