While that calculation is true in a vacuum, you have to bear in mind that your deck building choices have been influenced by the decision to play Peddler. You’re more likely to draw three duds with a Diesel in a Shaper deck than with a Peddler, because including Peddler causes you to consider the proportion of your deck that is installable and/or unique. Shapers will be drawing their second Astrolable, Lucky Finds and late game SMCs they don’t need with their Diesel, whereas a Peddler deck probably won’t contain these (or at least not in the same proportions).
We’re saying similar things; you have to build around Peddler to maximize value. A deck with lots of duplicate uniques–all else equal–isn’t as good for peddler as a deck with a variety of targets.
could be false, depending on what ‘value’ is being referred to. Building around Peddler maximizes Peddler’s use in your deck, but your deck could be better if you don’t build around it.
It isn’t as good for Peddler, yes, but Peddler may still be good for it.
Street Peddler having synergy with a card not in your deck or a type of deck that is not yours may be a reason to switch your deck, but it is not a reason to take Street Peddler out of your deck.
Okay, imagine Grimoire was never released. Then, a month after worlds of 2013, it was released as a promotional card. This may make people decide to play Noise; however, it should not make people replace their datasuckers/Yogs in Andy with Peacock. If it was working before, a new synergy can’t make it work worse. If you don’t include the just-released card, then outside of metagame effects you should make no changes based on the release.
There’s another bonus to Street Peddler in this case, though, and that’s milling away cards you don’t want to draw anymore. I know it’s not as good as selection between more cards you do want to see, but it’s still nice to see, say, a breaker I need along with a Desperado I don’t.
It feels nicer, but with Mr Li, for example, you’d rather have to choose between two really good cards than between one really good card and one useless one. The choice is harder, but you have more good options in the first case and thus a better opportunity to pick the right card for the situation.
Regardless of which situation is better, I think the marginal return over clicking to draw is higher when Peddler speeds you past cards you don’t want - several clicks of efficiency gained.
So a deck with dead draws (not necessarily already-installed uniques, but, like, Plascrete) is gaining more by including Peddler than a deck that wants to just play all its cards, which would prefer straight-up card draw to card selection (which, by the way, is why Criminals don’t play Mr. Li - they want to play pretty much all of their cards, so card selection isn’t as strong an effect for them).
If your criminal deck runs desperado, kati Jones, security testing and multiple copies of some breakers, there are definitely cards you don’t want to draw. Not wanting to get into the Mr Li vs Earthrise fight here, but criminal decks definitely have dead draws.
Thanks you @vinegarymink and everyone else who made the article possible, including SneakySly and all the Stimhack staff. I appreciate your time and effort.
I was pretty sure Street Peddler was good, but your article really convinced me of it’s usefulness and power. I’ve only tried it a few times so far, so I’ll reserve further judgment for now, but I’ve been happy with how it’s performed in those two games.
Speaking of, I was using those decklists (particularly the Noise and Valencia ones) you provided, and I wanted to thank you for those, too. As a weaker player, having a strong baseline deck is a good way to get practice in just playing, and worry about modifying the deck later on.
I’m still a little unsure as to your point. What is the effect of this ‘strict antisynergy’? Is it an argument against including a particular card in your deck? You seem to be claiming that you should consider not including a card if it isn’t achieving it’s absolute fullest potential, which is a very strange way to approach deckbuilding. Sure Gamble isn’t living up to it’s full potential if you put it in a deck without Prepaid Voicepad, but is that something you’re considering during deckbuilding?
I’m glad that you found the lists useful. I wasn’t sure about including them at first but @mediohxcore said that people like them and I guess he was right. Since people like decklists I was thinking that a useful, quick to write article might be just a compilation of the decks that are part of the current meta, with a little commentary on each. Is this something that people would be interested in?
I was actually thinking about making a new thread where people would discuss the ins and outs of the dominant archetypes, like, what deck requires you to be aggressive, what decks suit what players, you should play this if you like that, etc. An article like that would be helpful too!
Yes, I agree with @Humanoids; if an article about popular archetypes is something you feel like you can pull off, it really has the potential to help a lot of players. We already have a thread titled “Novice queries about PPV Kate”, so it’s not like there’s aren’t people with questions about playing with and against different archetypes.
It seems like there are lots of players, even skilled players, that just don’t see enough of a given archetype or have players in their area who are skilled with a given deck - anyone can pick up a Noiseshop deck and try it out, but it’s not the same as when you face someone who has been using the deck for several months.
Another thing one might consider is putting together some information about the differences in playstyles from different parts of the world. Including things like meat damage being big in the UK, traps being more popular in Europe, etc.
Erm, I’m not so sure about thaaat… but Brutchershop is quite popular here, as are different kill decks with many paths to victory
I’m not sure a single person could do that, since you need a vast amount of knowledge (gained both by playing in these parts of world and communicating with a lot of people). That, however, could be good for a thread, since it allows people to share their own experience and build up a big ‘datapool’.
Oh, I thought I had read something like that at some point here on Stimhack. I might be mistaken.
Yeah, that makes sense, actually. Even if one did want to write an article, it would probably be better to have people very familiar with each “region” contribute their own thoughts and experiences about it, rather than one person do it. Although one person could perform a compilation of such a…thing.
Not at all, I agree with including the card, it’s still a great card in a bunch of decks. I was just correcting a factual point in the article.
If we’ve decided in deckbuilding that we want multiples of a Unique card or more situational cards, we’re committing to the possibility of drawing them anyway, and Street Peddler hitting 3 cards that you’ll never install is the same as playing a Diesel and hitting three duds. Street Peddler isn’t anti synergy with a deck full of those cards because we’d have to see them at some point regardless
Strictly speaking, Street Peddler does have anti-synergy with a deck full of multiples of unique cards. I’m not saying this means you shouldn’t play it, although you might want to consider tailoring your deck around this fact a little.
Since Cambridge PE was popular in Western Europe for a while, that might be what has cause this belief.