Quote from: ehunt on November 30, 2015, 01:13:06 pm The thing about Familiar is that it's slow



Please explain. Unless I'm unlucky, I'll typically buy a Familiar on T3 or T4, and play it by T6. This is no slower than, say, Witch. The main disadvantages Familiar has over something like Witch is that it's a useless cantrip after the Curses are gone, and that the Potion in your deck is junk (before the Curses are gone). But neither of these things make the card slow, so what do you mean?



Witch is also slow, although not as slow. To wit:I'm not convinced that the odds of playing Familiar by Turn 6 are above 50%. You have roughly a 40% chance of failing to get one on the second shuffle, and then if you manage to get one on the second shuffle you have roughly a 30% chance of it not showing up in turns 5 or 6 (you draw two non-familiar cards on turn 5, and then of the remaining 12 cards in your deck you want familiar to be one of the top 8 cards), so my back-of-the-envelope estimate is that Familiar by Turn 6 is under 50. This is particularly bad for 2nd player where ideally you play it by Turn 5 (else your opponent gets 4 curse-free shuffles.)Of course the above calculation ignores other kingdom cards, but most of the cards that change the variables in the above calculation are cards that let you play cards faster (trashing, cycling) which are either too expensive to buy when you have a potion in your deck or increase your odds of missing 3P. (Chancellor being an exception is one reason that Chancellor/Potion is a surprisingly not-awful opening on familiar boards).For Witch, you are extremely likely to buy it in the second shuffle with a normal otherwise-deck-helping opening, not to mention the 16% chance you get it in the first shuffle. (This is why Sea Hag is unequivocably better than Familiar in a head-to-head. Witch is less clear, although opening anything other than Witch on a 5-2 would be insanity of course.)