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Dominion => Game Reports => Help! => Topic started by: funkdoc on July 02, 2015, 07:31:43 pm

Title: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 02, 2015, 07:31:43 pm
hi all, figured this would be a good move since i signed up for the dominion league!

so i've been playing online for a bit under a month and am hanging around 4600-4700 and iso level 23-24 atm.  seems like a good start but i'm still missing a lot of general concepts...

LINKS TO GAME REPORTS/VIDEOS OUTSIDE THE OP:

Dominion League S09 vs. gkrieg (video) (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=13520.msg509487#msg509487)

i can't always grab logs when i post questions, and this is such a case.  i remember the important stuff on the board though, so here's the deal with a game from this morning:


so the relevant cards on this board (province/estates game) were plaza, tournament, young witch (w/ cellar as the bane), governor, and king's court.  my thought process here was as follows -

- ENGINE ENGINE ENGINE

- without much early draw (figure you'd want to do other things with governor) and only governor for trashing, i figured cellar would be important even if it weren't the bane.  with that, i didn't think young witch would be worth it since it seemed like you'd have a deck loaded with cantrips to get drawn dead.

- i didn't want any silver or gold at all.  this seemed like a game where you wanted to sift through your coppers to trigger the big stuff.  the opponent's governors would probably give me some silver anyway.

- tournament is its usual self, since you want cantrips & virtual money anyway.  princess is the only +buy and trusty steed/followers are the only handsize increasers without king's court, soooooooo

- plazas should still be good even without early terminals since you can stockpile tokens for king's courts etc., and governor + king's court = mmmmmmmm. governor can also turn estates into engine pieces, which i figure is more important than gaining gold early.

- peddler is also on the board, but with no +buy besides princess...eh


so, long story short, i make a huge mistake opening plaza (forgot tournament was on the board for a second).  cellar is my other opening buy (opponent bought young witch on turn 1).  i stick to the basic idea outlined above, getting a governor at $5 and the first king's court via tokens.  however, my opponent gets a bunch of silver and gold and grabs 2 provinces pretty quickly.  my economy & cycling suffer greatly from getting my tournaments blocked, i have a few curses in my deck from young witch & followers, and they get all of the good prizes before i'm anywhere near a province.  i ended up resigning for like the 2nd time ever (still feels weird to me coming from games where quitting early is a huge no-no).

i'm guessing i had to get young witch even with the bane being a valuable card...the draw would've helped more than it hurt, it seems.  and i guess tournament meant i had to get early gold?  feels wrong to me in the long run but i guess racing for the prizes is more important than smoothing things out for your king's court turns...

thank in advance for any suggestions! =)
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: JW on July 02, 2015, 08:22:11 pm
so the relevant cards on this board (province/estates game) were plaza, tournament, young witch (w/ cellar as the bane), governor, and king's court.  my thought process here was as follows -

(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/c/cb/Spy.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Spy) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/c/c4/Tournament.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Tournament) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/9/9e/Young_Witch.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Young Witch) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/a/a2/Governor.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Governor) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/8/8d/King's_Court.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/King's Court) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/6/6f/Peddler.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Peddler)
(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/1/1c/Cellar.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Cellar) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/0/09/Masterpiece.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Masterpiece) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/d/d6/Woodcutter.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Woodcutter) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/f/fc/Plaza.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Plaza) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/d/d9/Scavenger.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Scavenger)
Code: [Select]
Cellar, Masterpiece, Woodcutter, Plaza, Scavenger, Spy, Tournament, Young Witch, Governor, King's Court, Peddler
You can look up logs on http://gokosalvager.com/. Cellar is not a sufficiently good bane to skip opening Young Witch here, as it's not good to have multiple Cellars early on.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Awaclus on July 02, 2015, 08:39:17 pm
Can a Governor engine beat KC/Scavenger here? I think it can, but it's got to be pretty close.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 02, 2015, 10:02:13 pm
the issue is that i'm not always posting from home or on a PC, so i'm not necessarily in a position to do anything beyond just type stuff.  i will definitely get logs when i can though!

anyway, thank you for doing the work for me.  how the heck did i not remember/notice scavenger...that would be a pretty big deal here as i think about it more.  and i guess there was another +buy, but not one i see mattering with how bloated the decks will be.  i think i just blinded myself to any and all stop cards besides king's court if that counts.

also, what exactly do you mean by "governor engine"?  just focusing on getting lots of them and building to the remodel megaturn?  i've generally just done that treating governor as its own separate thing - not clear on how to work that into a wider engine.

JW: yep, one of my most common weaknesses at this point is thinking i can ignore junking attacks when i really can't.  young witch is the worst for me because i'm often not sure what to make of banes that are decently useful in themselves.  another big situation for me is when something like junk dealer or upgrade is in the game and i think i can outpace the junk...i guess you still want to junk to slow them down, huh?
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: TrojH on July 02, 2015, 10:35:00 pm
funkdoc, I hope you have better luck getting to 5000 than I've had. That number is like a brick wall for me.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Awaclus on July 02, 2015, 11:04:28 pm
also, what exactly do you mean by "governor engine"?  just focusing on getting lots of them and building to the remodel megaturn?  i've generally just done that treating governor as its own separate thing - not clear on how to work that into a wider engine.
Buy lots of Governors and King's Courts and remodel stuff into Provinces.

Quote
JW: yep, one of my most common weaknesses at this point is thinking i can ignore junking attacks when i really can't.  young witch is the worst for me because i'm often not sure what to make of banes that are decently useful in themselves.  another big situation for me is when something like junk dealer or upgrade is in the game and i think i can outpace the junk...i guess you still want to junk to slow them down, huh?

The bane isn't usually a huge deal. If it's a card that you wouldn't normally want, you still probably don't want it even though it's the bane.

You can sometimes outpace the junk, but only if you can remove cards from your deck faster than your opponent can add more. For that, you need to be playing your trashers more often than he plays his junkers, and for that, you need a thinner deck to begin with. If you don't manage to trash down faster than your opponent, you can't really outpace the junk unless your trasher trashes more than one card per play or it's good enough that you want a lot of copies of it. It's worth taking into account that with trashers that trash from your hand, you need to draw the junk before you can trash it, so if you trash a card every shuffle and get a junk card every shuffle, the junk still hurts you while handing it out doesn't hurt your opponent.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 12, 2015, 02:40:24 pm
this thread's been due for an update (i'll edit the OP with links to specific reports/videos) and my first league match is a pretty good occasion for that!

i got crushed here 5-1.  4-1 in actual games played, but gkrieg had to leave and i just forfeited the last game because w/e, they earned it.  i was even 3-2 in getting first player, lol

video link is here: http://www.twitch.tv/srkfunkdoc/v/7447238 (note that i still feel weird about resigning so there's a lot of dragging things out long after i'm dead.)

logs are as follows...

Game 1: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150712/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1436721937127.txt
Game 2: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150712/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1436722662347.txt
Game 3: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150712/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1436723056372.txt
Game 4: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150712/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1436723837905.txt
Game 5: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150712/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1436724611562.txt


my own thoughts: main thing that stands out to me here is not getting followers in the second tournament game.  the estate flooding always scares me if i can get it early, but that's probably wrong with no way to trash curses.  i also forget that you can tell if your opponent blocked your tournament before you get the prize, so i majorly screwed up one turn thinking i could draw princess with a bunch of money when i couldn't.

the one big money-ish game w/ familiar i lost, it felt like terrible luck getting a bunch of $7 hands in a row.  but maybe that was because i didn't focus enough on familiar...?  i think i couldn't get a second one until it was already time to green, but memory could be off.  also in general w/ BM games, i probably often buy gold when i should be buying duchies.  and i'm not sure about opening trading post vs. potion on 5/2...i absolutely love the trading post open if it's going to be a money game, and figured a thinner deck would help me deal with familiar better.  the latter part didn't work at all here, as i forget if i was ever able to trash *any* curses.

the two games where i drowned in curses early *felt* like shuffle luck to me, especially the last one with that early king's court->hag.  but i wasn't positive on the opening in the last game.  felt like hag was just too important with zero trashing, and hunting party doesn't do a whole lot on the second shuffle? dunno


thanks in advance for any advice!
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: gkrieg13 on July 12, 2015, 06:58:47 pm
I think the kings court sea hag was extremely lucky for me in that last game. I was surprised when you took princess instead of trusty steed.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: assemble_me on July 12, 2015, 08:05:00 pm
Hi,

I didn't watch the whole stream but I tried to watch the games mentioned and want to add some of my thoughts on them.

my own thoughts: main thing that stands out to me here is not getting followers in the second tournament game.  the estate flooding always scares me if i can get it early, but that's probably wrong with no way to trash curses.  i also forget that you can tell if your opponent blocked your tournament before you get the prize, so i majorly screwed up one turn thinking i could draw princess with a bunch of money when i couldn't.
It's not just the curses, it's also the discard attack that slows your opponent down by a lot. So yeah, here are some nice defenses with Menagerie and also just a duration Wharf which helps a lot against the attack. Though, it looks like Trusty Steed would have helped a lot because it's the only Village in the game. And the only thing that's better than one Wharf in play is two Wharves in play. So, I think it's between Steed and Followers there and it's not entirely clear to me, but I think I would have taken Steed there.
I have to say, that it may well be that you would have been well off if you could just have played the Princess to gain another Province...
However: You shouldn't worry to much about you getting junked. Your opponent gets junked as well, has to discard, and also it's a +2 VP gain whenever you play Followers.
Another thing I've noticed: It seems like you tend to value Bag of Gold over Diadem, which you really shouldn't. I know I did the same when I've started to go deeper with Dominion, but Diadem is just better most of the time.

the one big money-ish game w/ familiar i lost, it felt like terrible luck getting a bunch of $7 hands in a row.  but maybe that was because i didn't focus enough on familiar...?  i think i couldn't get a second one until it was already time to green, but memory could be off.  also in general w/ BM games, i probably often buy gold when i should be buying duchies.  and i'm not sure about opening trading post vs. potion on 5/2...i absolutely love the trading post open if it's going to be a money game, and figured a thinner deck would help me deal with familiar better.  the latter part didn't work at all here, as i forget if i was ever able to trash *any* curses.
For your plan, I think I agree with opening Trading Post/Courtyard. Trading Post gets a lot worse the later you gain it. So it's a nice opening and okay after the first shuffle, but it rarely pays off getting it later.
What neither of you considered is Embassy-Tunnel which is really strong and it I think it should be able to outrace Familiar.
On your 9P hand you should have considered Stonemason -> 2x Familiar, again it's uncertain. I think you should have taken the Familiars, though. Your opponent took a single Familiar for on 5P next turn which seems like a clear mistake.
Later you bought a Courtyard for 5. Courtyard is nice, but Embassy is on the board and it's so so much better.

the two games where i drowned in curses early *felt* like shuffle luck to me, especially the last one with that early king's court->hag.  but i wasn't positive on the opening in the last game.  felt like hag was just too important with zero trashing, and hunting party doesn't do a whole lot on the second shuffle? dunno
I agree with your opening here. Turn 3 should just be a Hunting Party. Doesn't do a whole lot? How about winning the Curse split, or at least getting ahead ;)? In your deck at that point it would just find your Hag, so I think that's pretty nice by itself. The turn after you got yourself a Quarry, I think that's something nice to find with your Hunting Party as well? Later you talk about cycling with Ironmongers. Well, HP is the King of cycling ;).
You're also a bit unlucky that you don't hit 7 with your first Quarry play and your opponent does. And him hitting KC+Hag is really the beginning of the end.

I think the kings court sea hag was extremely lucky for me in that last game. I was surprised when you took princess instead of trusty steed.
Well, it's somewhat lucky. But having KC and Hag severly increases chances to colliding them compared to not having a KC in your deck ;)
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on July 12, 2015, 08:40:24 pm
Just so you know, I feel much more inclined to look at games if logs are included in the posts rather than just video. But obviously, include whatever you feel like.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 12, 2015, 08:51:51 pm
SIDENOTE: to anyone who watched the beginning and heard me say tournament is the best $4, i forgot about remake and that's the answer obv.  so don't blow me up over that one ok!!!

assemble_me: wow, thank you so much!  i kinda rushed this post because i had stuff to do today, so i didn't expect people to watch with the lack of timestamps.  anyway, i tend not to consider tunnel strats a lot because so often they just seem to be a trap for newer players.  i had never heard of embassy-tunnel as a thing but it makes a lot of sense as i think about it.  i'm really afraid of ignoring junking attacks with big money as i always seem to get killed whenever i try that, but i guess embassy *is* a BM monster so i could see this for sure.

also re: the courtyard instead of embassy at $5 later in the game, that's me playing scared again.  didn't want to draw my actions dead, went for the one that can topdeck those actions, forgot that's not such a huge deal with embassy.  same reason i shied away from wharf early in that tournament game...had 3 tournaments in my deck real early and didn't want to draw stuff dead with early province being so crucial.  it sounds silly to me now as i think about it, since the duration bit is the bigger reason you want wharf...

also really appreciate the hunting party advice!  it's very hard for me to understand the proper value of cards that cycle through tons of stuff early.  fortune teller gives me problems for the same reason - got crushed once by someone skipping my familiar every single shuffle with it.  as for why i didn't get a HP on second shuffle, i was too focused on king's court and the most obvious way to get there without thinking about how a HP that early would help me.


finally, a bit more of a general question that arose in these games: so early on, i tend to regard tournament as more or less a silver with better cycling.  i never buy a silver over a tournament until i have 3 or so.  what i notice is that i consistently tend to be the second one to get a province.  maybe more silver gives a better chance of that one gold turn you generally need to get that one province turn?  if there's terminal draw that also makes 3+ tournaments dicey that early, it seems.

i am also woefully inexperienced in playing wharf on boards that lack villages but aren't generic big-money stuff either.  like if you have some other nice action card(s) early, it's hard for me to picture a good balance with wharves.  that's why i didn't get a wharf ASAP in that tournament game when i probably should have - too scared of drawing my 3 tournaments dead.  seems like exchanging one of those tournaments for a silver would have solved a lot of those issues?


again, much appreciated! and gkrieg, great games and congrats once again!
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 12, 2015, 08:52:57 pm
Just so you know, I feel much more inclined to look at games if logs are included in the posts rather than just video. But obviously, include whatever you feel like.

yea, as mentioned in my newest reply that post was a bit of a rush job out of necessity.  edited in logs now~
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: assemble_me on July 13, 2015, 05:17:16 am
also re: the courtyard instead of embassy at $5 later in the game, that's me playing scared again.  didn't want to draw my actions dead, went for the one that can topdeck those actions, forgot that's not such a huge deal with embassy.  same reason i shied away from wharf early in that tournament game...had 3 tournaments in my deck real early and didn't want to draw stuff dead with early province being so crucial.  it sounds silly to me now as i think about it, since the duration bit is the bigger reason you want wharf...
I worry a lot about adding terminal draw to a Tournament-BM deck as well. But it's more the case with cards like Smithy or maybe Oracle. Wharf is so good, I guess I wouldn't worry about it unless I had like 3 Wharves in my deck already. On the one hand you'll draw Tournaments dead. On the other hand duration Wharves will help colliding. I guess 3 is a good number of Tournaments in that deck, too.

finally, a bit more of a general question that arose in these games: so early on, i tend to regard tournament as more or less a silver with better cycling.  i never buy a silver over a tournament until i have 3 or so.  what i notice is that i consistently tend to be the second one to get a province.  maybe more silver gives a better chance of that one gold turn you generally need to get that one province turn?  if there's terminal draw that also makes 3+ tournaments dicey that early, it seems.
I've never thought about a rule of a thumb for adding Tournaments to a deck. I guess I usually end up with 3 or 4 in BM kind of games.
I don't really think about Tournament as a Silver. It's a Peddler, Peddlers are better than Silver, yes (unless your deck is like only green, Curses and Ruins otherwise). I don't think Silver increases your chances of hitting 8$ more than a Tournament unless your opponent already has a Province. So unless your opponent has a Province and you don't, Tournament's just better.
This is probably more important than simply the number of Tournaments in your deck: Does your opponent already have a Province? Are there Prices you want to get left?

Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: DG on July 13, 2015, 10:20:49 am
Game 2 - You get bad draws here but I think you still would have done better with oasis/familiar/taxman/menagerie rather than buying silvers, gold, and catacombs.
Game 3 - Open trading post here and then look for familiars and the stonemason buys. I think the decision on whether to buy the courtyard is actually quite difficult, since if you do add a lot of familiars and a stonemason, maybe treasuries as well, then the courtyard is always going to get congested and push an action card back to your next turn.
Game4 - You seem to go off the plan at about turn 11.  Get the third wharf, followers the next turn, and get ready for a messy endgame with an eye on some late duchy/duke scoring.
Game 5 - On turn 4 here you need to buy a hunting party not an ironmonger. The game is lost for you quite soon after that though. At some stage you did need to add some treasure to your deck, or even a bureaucrat, so that you weren't just drawing and discarding coppers/curses/estates with all your drawing cards.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 13, 2015, 09:58:36 pm
assemble_me: thank you, that helps a lot.  3 wharves would've sounded nutty to me but i sorta figured out by the end of that game that it might not be that bad!

DG: it still amazes me that players on your level take so much time to help out us randoms, but i come from communities where the top players almost all keep to themselves.  definitely enjoying it here!

Game 2 - You get bad draws here but I think you still would have done better with oasis/familiar/taxman/menagerie rather than buying silvers, gold, and catacombs.

ok, this is the most interesting part of your reply to me.  taxman was completely off my radar because it's always seemed slow and generally terrible to me, a la mine.

are you suggesting taxman to upgrade money without adding more cards, thereby getting more out of familiars?  that was my first thought upon reading that.  then i remembered that this game had vineyards - are you saying to go for those over provinces?  i tend not to see how vineyards can reach that level without a true engine, but there *are* plenty of cantrips+ here so i can see how that would make sense.  feels like you would need an extra potion in your deck though, no?

my reading of this as a money game was also why i didn't go harder for menageries, as you could probably tell.  seems this board is more interesting than i gave it credit for!

Quote
Game 3 - Open trading post here and then look for familiars and the stonemason buys. I think the decision on whether to buy the courtyard is actually quite difficult, since if you do add a lot of familiars and a stonemason, maybe treasuries as well, then the courtyard is always going to get congested and push an action card back to your next turn.

with engine potential lacking, i didn't see a lot of good stonemason buys.  $5P is the obvious one, but other than that...2x treasury is about all that seems reasonable to me, and that doesn't seem better than a gold with the way this board plays?  could well be wrong!

but looking back through the log of this one, how the heck did i not see i had $5P with stonemason on turn 5?  i always forget about it working with potion cards since so many other things don't, and that may well have killed me here.

Quote
Game4 - You seem to go off the plan at about turn 11.  Get the third wharf, followers the next turn, and get ready for a messy endgame with an eye on some late duchy/duke scoring.

i didn't really have a plan, tbh.  hence all the discussion with assemble_me on working wharf into cantrip-heavy decks.

i think what scared me with followers was that my opponent had more money than i did.  i figured i was never getting a province again if i went that route, while they might still be able to spike one.  but maybe going slog hurts the value of gold?  i mean regardless, followers was a monster here and i was an idiot for not grabbing it when i had the chance.

Quote
Game 5 - On turn 4 here you need to buy a hunting party not an ironmonger. The game is lost for you quite soon after that though. At some stage you did need to add some treasure to your deck, or even a bureaucrat, so that you weren't just drawing and discarding coppers/curses/estates with all your drawing cards.

i just wasn't sure how many decent cards i needed in my deck for hunting party to be worth it that early.  2 is enough though, eh?

another factor here was that i always think hunting party fishes for *two* unique cards instead of just one, for some reason.  maybe it's the initial cantrip bit that confuses me, or the other similar cards that grab 2 (adventurer, golem).

and i should've just resigned once things got out of hand, because i stopped caring about things like having money in my deck.


again, thank you very much!
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: DG on July 14, 2015, 09:17:46 am
ok, this is the most interesting part of your reply to me.  taxman was completely off my radar because it's always seemed slow and generally terrible to me, a la mine.

are you suggesting taxman to upgrade money without adding more cards, thereby getting more out of familiars?  that was my first thought upon reading that.  then i remembered that this game had vineyards - are you saying to go for those over provinces?  i tend not to see how vineyards can reach that level without a true engine, but there *are* plenty of cantrips+ here so i can see how that would make sense.  feels like you would need an extra potion in your deck though, no?

That game is quite complicated. It has a first stage, with familiars, and the game can be won and lost there. After that the curses will empty, cities will look good, and there's the prospect of getting a big goons finish with extra buys from cities. If you buy action cards like menagerie and oasis, as opposed to treasure, then you'll be able to make more from a cities/goons thing in the endgame. Improving the vineyards total is a nice bonus. The major complication is that the three pile ending might arrive before decks are ready to score but lets not go into that.

In that sort of deck, a taxman will theoretically let you buy cheap action (drawing) cards each turn while improving your income from the seven treasures already in your deck. In the endgame, the deck will draw without being clogged up by extra treasure cards. The taxman itself has a lot of pros and cons so it might not work out.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 14, 2015, 05:14:08 pm
alright, something else that's been bugging me.  just a general issue since this is my late lunch break at work here...

i don't "get" bishop.  like, at all.  i played a game this morning where i crushed the scrying pool & grand market splits but was dangerously close to losing thanks to all of my opponent's bishop points (they opened with it it IIRC).  i know the early trashing is supposed to be bad, but they sure scared me with it!  i have no idea when i should be working it into an engine, as trashing coppers with it seems silly and i usually don't want to trash anything else in my deck...yet it feels like i'm missing opportunities by ignoring it.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: SCSN on July 14, 2015, 05:31:30 pm

i know [...] is supposed to be [...]

i.e. you don't know anything.

First explain in your own words why early Bishop trashing is supposed to be bad. Then (and only then) explain why this common supposition is misleading crap. Then try to see why you usually don't want an early Bishop anyway.

Quote
as trashing coppers with it seems silly

What? Trashing Coppers is almost always fantastic. And if you're building a SP-GM deck it's much more than that.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: JW on July 14, 2015, 07:14:38 pm
i know the early trashing is supposed to be bad, but they sure scared me with it! 

Early trashing with Bishop is good, but the free trash is even better for your opponent early on (you have 4 non-Bishop cards to choose from to trash, they have 5), which is why it's usually a bad opener.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: markusin on July 14, 2015, 07:33:29 pm
i know the early trashing is supposed to be bad, but they sure scared me with it! 

Early trashing with Bishop is good, but the free trash is even better for your opponent early on (you have 4 non-Bishop cards to choose from to trash, they have 5), which is why it's usually a bad opener.
It's very likely that you'll need to respond to a Bishop opening with a Bishop of your own in the early-mid game in cases where players can draw their entire deck and gain multiple cards. In games without +Buy, You'll really need to scoop up the majority of the Provinces quickly. If your opponents are able to draw their deck and play Bishop every turn while collecting Provinces and you aren't doing the same, you're bound to lose if the game isn't ending in a few turns.

You want to keep up with their Bishop trashing from the mid game onward on engine boards, and make up for their early game Bishop plays by getting the majority of the VP card points.

To say trashing Coppers with Bishop is silly is destructively imprecise. Sometimes the engine that can be built from light trashing is strong enough that it's correct to open Develop or even Trade Route. The issue with trashing Coppers with Bishop is that the other players gets to do the same without buying a $4 terminal that only gives +$1. This stops being the case later on in the game when your opponents are unlikely to want to trash stuff from their opening hand, while you get to selectively trash a card from your deck near the end of your turn. This makes Bishop very potent in the mid-game onward.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 14, 2015, 09:47:24 pm
yay back from work with some good stuff to answer!

i actually got over my fear of early trade route already, as that was a case where i was able to see the problems with the wiki logic fairly quickly.  giving benefits to your opponent sounds so much worse to me though, which is why i mentioned that about the coppers.  i figured you'd need more VP from bishop plays to make up for the advantage you give them, but i guess in the mid-game there will be turns when they have nothing to trash.

SCSN: i expected nothing less from you and will do my best to respond!

part 1 - the obvious big problem with early bishop trashing is that you and your opponent will likely thin your decks equally, except they get to do it for zero opportunity cost.  i don't think i've ever lost a game to a lower-rated player opening bishop, because i just get to build my deck and freeload my way to funtimes.  i've always had the mentality that i'd rather trash for free than spend an action and let my opponent do it just so i get 1 or 2 VP, which is also why i said that about coppers before.  in my experience with bishop thus far, i have been able to clear out enough coppers to be reliable without having to buy a bishop myself.  against high-level players it would be a much different story, clearly!

part 2 - obviously there's a point when the VP would more than make up for that, but i have no idea what that would be or how early you'd want to get on that.  and of course any thinning is better than none, so you might have to take the plunge if your opponent's going to be the freeloader?  i guess there are also times when the opportunity cost with bishop wouldn't mean anything, i.e. when there's no sub-$5 stuff you want anyway.  dunno, that's about all i've got!

part 3 - because usually other cards help you get to $5 and/or cycle more?  that can't really be it though, considering people still open stuff like trade route when it's the only trasher and bishop gives you more economy than most.  maybe you want to save bishop plays until you can draw enough of your deck to get good value from it?  but you need to thin to get there, and in our hypothetical that ain't happening if our opponent doesn't get one either.  i'm pretty stumped...this feels like a general question on how much to value weak trashing early, and i don't feel confident in an answer for that either.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 17, 2015, 05:39:14 pm
well, i just played one that completely turned my understanding of this game on its head...

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150717/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1437167914290.txt

i get mercenary on 2nd shuffle and mercenary #2 not too long afterward, while my opponent opened urchin/tournament instead.  despite my huge early lead in trashing, my opponent utterly dominated me - getting 4 prizes before i could buy a province.  seems almost like "delaying" the mercenary turned out well for them, as they hit me on a bunch of potential province turns.  meanwhile, my earlier mercenary plays hurt them far less since $5 wasn't an important number here.  is this a legit thing i need to think about?  i just figured trashing earlier = winning but this is interesting.

also, i often find myself in the spot where all i can trash for mercenary are like, a silver + the second mercenary.  i tend to do it because i figure you want to attack as often as possible, but i probably still had too much copper in my deck for that to be worth it in this game.  hate when i have to make that decision!

i also bought 1 tournament too many, at least.  the lack of a good $5 makes me confused, because i get scared of buying too much silver and hurting my chances of getting prizes later so i just load up on tournaments.

actually, speaking of the $5s, might catacombs be better here than i give it credit for?  i figured with tournaments + mercenaries and only crossroads as a village, it just wouldn't have a place.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Awaclus on July 17, 2015, 06:03:56 pm
well, i just played one that completely turned my understanding of this game on its head...

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150717/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1437167914290.txt

i get mercenary on 2nd shuffle and mercenary #2 not too long afterward, while my opponent opened urchin/tournament instead.  despite my huge early lead in trashing, my opponent utterly dominated me - getting 4 prizes before i could buy a province.  seems almost like "delaying" the mercenary turned out well for them, as they hit me on a bunch of potential province turns.  meanwhile, my earlier mercenary plays hurt them far less since $5 wasn't an important number here.  is this a legit thing i need to think about?  i just figured trashing earlier = winning but this is interesting.

also, i often find myself in the spot where all i can trash for mercenary are like, a silver + the second mercenary.  i tend to do it because i figure you want to attack as often as possible, but i probably still had too much copper in my deck for that to be worth it in this game.  hate when i have to make that decision!

i also bought 1 tournament too many, at least.  the lack of a good $5 makes me confused, because i get scared of buying too much silver and hurting my chances of getting prizes later so i just load up on tournaments.

actually, speaking of the $5s, might catacombs be better here than i give it credit for?  i figured with tournaments + mercenaries and only crossroads as a village, it just wouldn't have a place.

You didn't have a huge early lead in trashing. You trashed your first cards on turn 6, he trashed his first cards on turn 7. After your turn 9, he has 4 junk cards left in his deck while you have 6. This is partially mostly because you trashed an Urchin over a random junk card (in this case, a Copper) that you would have eventually drawn with your cantrips, and because you happened to collide your Mercenaries. Buying a Silver over a cantrip, and him trashing Coppers over Estates might have also contributed slightly towards this outcome, although those aren't necessarily bad and good plays here, respectively.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: TrojH on July 17, 2015, 07:05:34 pm
You shouldn't have bought a Crossroads at turn 5. Buy either a Silver or a Market Square; I'm not sure which is better.

Think about this: if your Crossroads was a Silver, then your purchase at turn 6 would've been a Gold, instead of a Tournament. Turn 9, same thing.



Edit: don't knock yourself for the Urchin/Urchin opening. I think that was 100% correct.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 17, 2015, 10:05:48 pm
i think i felt like i had a big lead in trashing because there was one point where i got rid of all my estates and my opponent still had 2.  but i guess that didn't last long at all!

the thinking with crossroads was that i should still be able to play tournaments after mercenary.  but i guess that's really hard to get, especially if you trash estates.  2 mercenaries and 2-3 tournaments seems so scary to me though...but yea, good call there.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 26, 2015, 09:44:30 pm
partially through league match #2, down 3-1.  already discussed some things with the kind folks in my stream chat (thank you so much!!!), figured i'd post logs here and bring up some questions.

game 1: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150726/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1437951532273.txt
game 2: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150726/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1437952255607.txt
game 3: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150726/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1437953332278.txt
game 4: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150726/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1437954709741.txt

video archive for anyone interested: http://www.twitch.tv/srkfunkdoc/v/8667205

game 1 - upgrade has to be the opening with 5/2, no?  i do wonder if duchess was better than pearl diver, and i suspect upgrade #2 was my biggest mistake here (thought i could get the free gold eventually).  i didn't realize fairgrounds were worth 4 for me until the end, but it felt like i'd already lost before those came into play.  actually, with all the alt-VP, maybe more upgrades to turn stuff into those was the best option?  this seems like a board where you can't win on provinces alone since the BM enablers are so weak, which i didn't think about at first.  alt-VP in general is still a mystery to me...

game 2 - this was the one we talked about the most.  i just treated it as generic BM, but it was suggested that you could run a bunch of stables & banks with a horse traders for double-province turns.  my trade route play was bad when thinking about it from that angle, and i probably shouldn't have bothered with it at all (esp. since there was a clearly better +buy).  i'm not sure how much silver you need to make this strat work - the key cards being so expensive makes me think you'd want 2-3?

game 3 - a lot less to say about this one, i think, unless there's a better strat than the poor houses.  SCSN said in the chat that i shouldn't even have gotten the 2nd silver...again, with cities being key, i figured 2 was the right number, but this is something i don't have a solid handle on in general.  i think SCSN also said i should've gotten a second woodcutter, but i was afraid that would be one stop card too many.  if i had 1 more city i would've done that.  and for those who didn't watch my stream, that turn near the end where i bought nothing was a misclick (had 2 poor houses for a province).

game 4 - ok, here is where i have to ask something regarding YMYOSL.  the engine here seems better than basic jack stuff if you get at least decent luck, but i didn't get decent luck.  after i get utterly screwed on the silver-HT opening, there has to be SOME way i can come back and win, right?  the chat mentioned that i shouldn't have bought any more silver if i was sticking with the engine plan, which is certainly fair (again, important $5+ cards made me assume i needed at least 2 silver, and i forgot how much the extra silver would hurt count's trashing).  the alternative i thought about toward the end was abandoning ship on the engine and going jack once i got that $4 on turn 4, and the chat seemed to be supporting that.  i really can't think of a better comeback plan.  oh yeah, it was also argued that i should've trashed copper + estate + silver with count instead of taking money for border village, and i hadn't considered trashing silver with it before.  that does make sense as i think about it now, but in general it just seems like that second shuffle made the engine a lost cause for me?  finally, i was also told why you should gain a copper instead of topdecking one with count, and can't believe i didn't think of that earlier.


thanks again~
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: DG on July 26, 2015, 10:40:46 pm
Game 1 - Your opponent has the basics right here - trash a little but use a hoard to buy victory cards and fill the deck with gold. On a 5/2 you can do much the same using upgrade/duchess at the start and getting silver instead of shanty town.
Game 2 - Lots of ways to play this. You get stuck in a dwindling endgame however where you are getting swamped by green cards, copper is getting trashed, and the banks and stables are getting worse. It makes it look as if stables/bank/trade route isn't good enough to cater for the extra vp in the game from tunnels (16vp of green cards).
Game 3 - Build up to double province turns earlier.
Game 4 - Horse traders is the wrong opening here. It's not going to give much income, you want to trash your estates rather than discard them all the time, and it hogs an action. Wrong buy and bad luck means no way back in what is effectively a 13 turn game.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 26, 2015, 11:29:10 pm
Game 1 - Your opponent has the basics right here - trash a little but use a hoard to buy victory cards and fill the deck with gold. On a 5/2 you can do much the same using upgrade/duchess at the start and getting silver instead of shanty town.

yea, the shanty town was kinda experimental on my part.  i always figure one should be good in a money deck with only non-terminal actions, but probably not.  also hoard seemed too weak to rush provinces on its own, but i forgot how well island works with it.  getting an island with no other green in your deck seems weird but i guess it should be fine if that's the best you can do early.


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Game 3 - Build up to double province turns earlier.

a huge general weakness of mine is getting +buys too late.  i always get caught up in drawing the deck and scared of adding payload until the rest is finished.  especially here with it being fairly easy to get 2 components at once (city + poor house), i'm sure i needed the woodcutter earlier...just not sure how early, since i also need good mercenary trashing.  guess i can trash the silver once i have the woodcutter though!


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Game 4 - Horse traders is the wrong opening here. It's not going to give much income, you want to trash your estates rather than discard them all the time, and it hogs an action. Wrong buy and bad luck means no way back in what is effectively a 13 turn game.

the only trasher is a silver flooder, and i didn't know what to make of that.  my thinking was that i wouldn't want to play jack anymore once i got rid of all the estates, and that trashing doesn't even help my chances of drawing my deck.  horse traders seemed to have value for the whole game because of the +buy, so i went for that.  i know merchant guild is definitely a better +buy, and i guess border village makes it painless to add that, so that part makes sense.

it's just hard for me to see how jack fits into an engine since you're trading stop cards for less-crappy stop cards, and the jack itself becomes a worse estate after the trashing is done.  i guess that silver does become a bigger deal when you have a border village or goons in the game...ok, your argument is making sense to me for this board now.  but if you only need to hit $5 and not $6, i'm still not sure about jack...


lots of good thoughts as per usual, thanks DG!
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: AdamH on July 27, 2015, 08:23:24 am
Jack-in-an-engine, it's pretty delicious, yeah? Hmm. A lot of the times if your only village is Border Village, engines just aren't all that powerful -- with no attacks and some premium big money enablers around I'm a little skeptical, but I think on this board you're lucky enough that you don't have to decide if you're going for an engine until a couple of shuffles in. My gut says that because of Merchant Guild, an uncontested engine player will win here but I'm not sure.

The way I see it, hitting $6 is the most important thing -- do it early and often. Your draw is terminal so the number of villages you have limits the overall potential of your deck. Border Village split in a mirror is going to be what determines who wins (and luck is a big factor in that, unfortunately). But if you're playing Big Money, you want to hit $6 anyways so the first few turns look a little bit like this:

Open Jack/Silver -- Jack/Lighthouse is probably OK too but I think the Silver gives you a slightly better chance to hit $6? Maybe I'm wrong here. If you don't hit $6 on your first shuffle, it's OK, the most important thing is Count and thinning (without Count the engine is not viable at all, BTW, this just won't work without Copper trashing). If things aren't going well (you hit double $4 or something) you can always pivot into Jack+BM with some enablers like Lighthouse and maybe Count and just hope, but you've probably already lost in that case anyways.

There are a couple of things you've said that I sort of want to comment on.

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Game 4 - Horse traders is the wrong opening here. It's not going to give much income, you want to trash your estates rather than discard them all the time, and it hogs an action. Wrong buy and bad luck means no way back in what is effectively a 13 turn game.

the only trasher is a silver flooder, and i didn't know what to make of that.  my thinking was that i wouldn't want to play jack anymore once i got rid of all the estates, and that trashing doesn't even help my chances of drawing my deck.  horse traders seemed to have value for the whole game because of the +buy, so i went for that.  i know merchant guild is definitely a better +buy, and i guess border village makes it painless to add that, so that part makes sense.

it's just hard for me to see how jack fits into an engine since you're trading stop cards for less-crappy stop cards, and the jack itself becomes a worse estate after the trashing is done.  i guess that silver does become a bigger deal when you have a border village or goons in the game...ok, your argument is making sense to me for this board now.  but if you only need to hit $5 and not $6, i'm still not sure about jack...

So Count trashes, if Count isn't here like I said before, you're going with DoubleJack, and in that case you want to open Jack. Given that you want an engine with Count, though, I still think you want to open Jack. Jack is amazing, Silver is a really good card, turning Estates into Silvers is really super-ultra awesome and I think you underestimate that. Yeah Silver doesn't draw cards but look at this deck you want to build -- what do the cool turns look like? To me they look like "draw a buttload of cards, play a couple of Merchant Guilds, play a bunch of treasures, buy two or three Provinces in a turn." Journeyman is great for keeping your deck viable -- he can skip Coppers, Silvers, or Provinces, depending on when in the game you are. Your payload here has to include treasures, so while Silver doesn't help you draw your deck, you still want it around. Continuing to play your Jack after your Estates are gone will probably happen, you just have to be very careful that you can either continue to draw your deck or you have to be OK with not drawing all of your deck every turn (which isn't the worst thing ever, BTW).

Many people would have you believe that Silver and Engine are like oil and water, but sometimes Silver is the whole point of your engine. Jack really pushes you toward building decks like this, because Jack is really really good at building them, even though they don't resemble other engines you might be building in your life.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: assemble_me on July 27, 2015, 08:34:41 am
a huge general weakness of mine is getting +buys too late.  i always get caught up in drawing the deck and scared of adding payload until the rest is finished.  especially here with it being fairly easy to get 2 components at once (city + poor house), i'm sure i needed the woodcutter earlier...just not sure how early, since i also need good mercenary trashing.  guess i can trash the silver once i have the woodcutter though!
I don't think you were that late on buys, when watching your game I even thought that Woodcutter might be a bit early but it was probably just fine when you got it. So you actually had those 2 buys in the endgame. I remember turn after turn where you hit 14$ and went for more Urchins. You could have easily picked up another Poor House or Woodcutter to be at 16$ or beyond it.


Quote
Game 4 - Horse traders is the wrong opening here. It's not going to give much income, you want to trash your estates rather than discard them all the time, and it hogs an action. Wrong buy and bad luck means no way back in what is effectively a 13 turn game.

the only trasher is a silver flooder, and i didn't know what to make of that.  my thinking was that i wouldn't want to play jack anymore once i got rid of all the estates, and that trashing doesn't even help my chances of drawing my deck.  horse traders seemed to have value for the whole game because of the +buy, so i went for that.  i know merchant guild is definitely a better +buy, and i guess border village makes it painless to add that, so that part makes sense.

it's just hard for me to see how jack fits into an engine since you're trading stop cards for less-crappy stop cards, and the jack itself becomes a worse estate after the trashing is done.  i guess that silver does become a bigger deal when you have a border village or goons in the game...ok, your argument is making sense to me for this board now.  but if you only need to hit $5 and not $6, i'm still not sure about jack...

IDK if DG wants to say you should have opened Jack here. I guess what he meant was Silver/Silver as you're going to be tight on actions with BV being almost free on one side but reaching 6$ is somewhat hard on the other side. I also wasn't 100% sure yesterday if you want to go HT/Silver or just Silver/Silver here because of that.
And the "only trasher floods Silvers" is not true, Count is actually pretty good trashing. As said, you got unlucky to have your opening buys both miss the shuffle so you could get your Count only after the second shuffle because of that, and then having it in one hand with all your good cards.
Despite what Adam says (hey Adam, does that mean I get a +1 now ;)) I would skip Jack here because it's hard to have spare actions and what you want to do if you have them is just to play as many Merchant Guilds as possible and draw cards.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: AdamH on July 27, 2015, 08:42:09 am
Despite what Adam says (hey Adam, does that mean I get a +1 now ;)) I would skip Jack here for sure just because it's hard to have spare actions and what you want to do if you have them is just to play as many Merchant Guilds as possible and draw cards.

I'll +1 you, but I think you're just wrong :P. Any strategy on this board is made better by Jack. Opening Jack, in particular.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: SCSN on July 27, 2015, 09:40:01 am
i'm not sure how much silver you need to make this strat work - the key cards being so expensive makes me think you'd want 2-3?

When you're playing a BM-ish game where you're not drawing the deck each turn, depend on basic (i.e. non HoP) Treasures as payload and intend to by Provinces (i.e. there are no Colonies), Silver is usually a good card and you want as many of them as you can get (though obv. not at the expense of even better cards, like 1 HT, Stables and Banks). Brb taking a shower.

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game 3 - a lot less to say about this one, i think, unless there's a better strat than the poor houses.  SCSN said in the chat that i shouldn't even have gotten the 2nd silver...again, with cities being key, i figured 2 was the right number, but this is something i don't have a solid handle on in general.
 
With Mercenary giving +$2 and drawing 2 cards, and your opponent not about to mass-Merc you anytime soon (which you know b.c. of his terrible open), 1 Silver is more than enough to hit 5 consistently. You should take a second early Silver if there's only weak trashing and there are important 5s you want to get as early and often as possible, neither of which was the case here.

You also took nothing over a free Urchin at least once which is just really strange. Even if you don't plan to get more Mercs the free cantrip is nice b.c. with weak gaining you're bound to run out of Merc fodder (so you can use the Urchin as Merc fodder later without it hurting you before that point), and on turns where you don't get in a full Merc attack it's still great to have your opponent discard down to 4.

Quote
a huge general weakness of mine is getting +buys too late.  i always get caught up in drawing the deck and scared of adding payload until the rest is finished.  especially here with it being fairly easy to get 2 components at once (city + poor house), i'm sure i needed the woodcutter earlier...

What makes Woodcutter more scary than Poor House? The one is exactly as terminal and non-cantrippy as the other, so saying that you're afraid of adding the former while spamming the latter doesnt make much sense. Just get City + Woodcutter the first time you could have gotten it over City + Poor House and you should be perfectly fine.

the only trasher is a silver flooder, and i didn't know what to make of that.  my thinking was that i wouldn't want to play jack anymore once i got rid of all the estates, and that trashing doesn't even help my chances of drawing my deck.  horse traders seemed to have value for the whole game because of the +buy, so i went for that.  i know merchant guild is definitely a better +buy, and i guess border village makes it painless to add that, so that part makes sense.

it's just hard for me to see how jack fits into an engine since you're trading stop cards for less-crappy stop cards, and the jack itself becomes a worse estate after the trashing is done.  i guess that silver does become a bigger deal when you have a border village or goons in the game...ok, your argument is making sense to me for this board now.  but if you only need to hit $5 and not $6, i'm still not sure about jack...

Jack can be good in an engine but I agree that it's pretty bad here, especially because HT/Silver is the much better open: unless they miss shuffle you're pretty much guaranteed to hit 5 for Count and if they collide you stand a terrific chance of hitting BV-Count. After that just get as many BVs as the Goko Gods are willing to grant you. If you get behind early you just have to keep playing well and hope your opponent gets equally unlucky next shuffle or messes up in some way, because otherwise you're just going to lose, which is totally okay: if your opponent plays as well as you do, you stand to win only half your games, and even a bit less because of ties!
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: assemble_me on July 27, 2015, 09:44:27 am
I've played a couple of games against bots (game 4) - still I can't tell if Jack is better or not. Also things might look different if your opponent isn't just playing Journeyman-BM :D, but probably the difference isn't that huge. The nice thing is that Journeyman can skip extra Silvers and it comboes somewhat with Pearl Divers (put junk on top, then skip it with Journeyman). On the other hand if you don't go Jack you can get thinner and add more Merchant Guilds.
To me, it looks like a lot just depends on shuffles. I also think that opening Count is huge here if you can (yes, better than Jack for sure :))
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: AdamH on July 27, 2015, 10:28:26 am
In my mind, it's not even close, Jack is the best opener here. Only on a 5/2 would I open not-Jack (and be very happy with my Count).

But this game is going to be really swingy, simply because Border Village is the only village. A worse strategy that hits $6 a lot will be likely to beat a better strategy that doesn't hit $6 very much, and this difference probably means more than Jack vs. whatever other opener you choose.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on July 27, 2015, 10:36:00 am
It's a shame all this Jack discussion is diverting our focus from the real power card: !!**ROYAL SEAL**!!.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 27, 2015, 11:01:10 am
With Mercenary giving +$2 and drawing 2 cards, and your opponent not about to mass-Merc you anytime soon (which you know b.c. of his terrible open), 1 Silver is more than enough to hit 5 consistently. You should take a second early Silver if there's only weak trashing and there are important 5s you want to get as early and often as possible, neither of which was the case here.


i thought city was that important $5 since my opponent was also going for them (so they would level up quickly) and the poor house thing doesn't work without it.  good points though, the rest definitely makes sense!

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You also took nothing over a free Urchin at least once which is just really strange. Even if you don't plan to get more Mercs the free cantrip is nice b.c. with weak gaining you're bound to run out of Merc fodder (so you can use the Urchin as Merc fodder later without it hurting you before that point), and on turns where you don't get in a full Merc attack it's still great to have your opponent discard down to 4.

i get scared of buying cantrips with terminal draw and no villages in my deck.  basically i have a major phobia of terminal collision (which the chat discussed with me a bit) and drawing actions dead, and probably make lots of mistakes thanks to that.  and yea, urchins for merc fodder was my plan with them in the endgame (as you saw on that last double province turn).  also i was thinking about leveling up cities again, but wasn't sure about that idea with that split being even.  probably favored me though!

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What makes Woodcutter more scary than Poor House? The one is exactly as terminal and non-cantrippy as the other, so saying that you're afraid of adding the former while spamming the latter doesnt make much sense. Just get City + Woodcutter the first time you could have gotten it over City + Poor House and you should be perfectly fine.

i was only getting $6 at least my first couple times with the woodcutter, and figured that was the time to add poor houses since my trashing was close to done.  my point was that my deck seemed pretty tight with 3 poor houses + 1 woodcutter...maybe having more urchins like you said could make the 2nd woodcutter safer? but then the mercenary play nets double province anyway so i don't see the upside to woodcutter #2.  unless you mean using it to get more mercenary fuel, or increase the chances of province+duchy turns...i could see that.

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Jack can be good in an engine but I agree that it's pretty bad here, especially because HT/Silver is the much better open: unless they miss shuffle you're pretty much guaranteed to hit 5 for Count and if they collide you stand a terrific chance of hitting BV-Count. After that just get as many BVs as the Goko Gods are willing to grant you. If you get behind early you just have to keep playing well and hope your opponent gets equally unlucky next shuffle or messes up in some way, because otherwise you're just going to lose, which is totally okay: if your opponent plays as well as you do, you stand to win only half your games, and even a bit less because of ties!

i remember reading a post here that ran some math and found double silver to be better than silver/HT for reaching $5, so maybe that's what DG meant.  this engine also seems like it would be tight on actions, and you need at least one merchant guild in there, no?  horse traders would really get in the way of that from what i can see.  what's your counter to that?
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: SCSN on July 27, 2015, 12:26:48 pm
i thought city was that important $5 since my opponent was also going for them (so they would level up quickly) and the poor house thing doesn't work without it.  good points though, the rest definitely makes sense!

They are important later but it's not important at all to get a lot of Cities early (= T3-T6) and later on you have Mercs and eventually Poor Houses to make a single Silver more than enough. You want two Silvers if you're playing, say, a board with only Wharf and Village, there you'd like to get a Wharf every turn from T3 onwards (later Wharf+Village) so you need the 2nd Silver to hit a lot of early 5s.

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i get scared of buying cantrips with terminal draw and no villages in my deck.  basically i have a major phobia of terminal collision (which the chat discussed with me a bit) and drawing actions dead, and probably make lots of mistakes thanks to that.  and yea, urchins for merc fodder was my plan with them in the endgame (as you saw on that last double province turn).  also i was thinking about leveling up cities again, but wasn't sure about that idea with that split being even.  probably favored me though!

That's a really harmful phobia to have! The advice "avoid drawing stuff dead" is really targeted towards newbies who would otherwise build a deck with 5 Hunting Grounds, 5 Mountebanks, a whole bunch of other nonsense and no Villages. Once you get past that point drawing stuff dead really isn't a big deal at all and you certainly shouldn't fear it. Sure, you'd prefer drawing stuff live and given that you drew stuff dead you'd sometimes have been better off had those dead cards been Coppers or Silvers, but that's no reason to stuff your deck full off treasures, it's no reason not to draw (b.c. as long as your deck is improving cycling itself is a big boon), and it's certainly no reason to not put the good cards in your deck in the first place.

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i was only getting $6 at least my first couple times with the woodcutter, and figured that was the time to add poor houses since my trashing was close to done.  my point was that my deck seemed pretty tight with 3 poor houses + 1 woodcutter...maybe having more urchins like you said could make the 2nd woodcutter safer? but then the mercenary play nets double province anyway so i don't see the upside to woodcutter #2.  unless you mean using it to get more mercenary fuel, or increase the chances of province+duchy turns...i could see that.

The point of the second Woodcutter is both potential Merc fodder and to build quicker. E.g. getting double City + Poor House turns or maybe even a triple City turn. In addition to just general end-game and pile-control (great with Cities), for which more buys are always better.

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i remember reading a post here that ran some math and found double silver to be better than silver/HT for reaching $5

It takes between 0.1 and 3 seconds to see why that math is horribly wrong, so I really recommend doing the math yourself instead of relying on some utter nonsense sprouted by a 3rd party.

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this engine also seems like it would be tight on actions, and you need at least one merchant guild in there, no?  horse traders would really get in the way of that from what i can see.  what's your counter to that?

It's not tight on actions early on and HT is just a big boost to early economy. Once you have a few MGs I think you'd usually be playing one of either Count and HT, but then you just discard the one with the other, no big deal.

Even if at some point during my journey I intend to take a plane and leave my slower car at the airport, that doesn't mean I would have been better off going to the airport by foot.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: markusin on July 27, 2015, 01:19:59 pm
Quote
i get scared of buying cantrips with terminal draw and no villages in my deck.  basically i have a major phobia of terminal collision (which the chat discussed with me a bit) and drawing actions dead, and probably make lots of mistakes thanks to that.  and yea, urchins for merc fodder was my plan with them in the endgame (as you saw on that last double province turn).  also i was thinking about leveling up cities again, but wasn't sure about that idea with that split being even.  probably favored me though!

That's a really harmful phobia to have! The advice "avoid drawing stuff dead" is really targeted towards newbies who would otherwise build a deck with 5 Hunting Grounds, 5 Mountebanks, a whole bunch of other nonsense and no Villages. Once you get past that point drawing stuff dead really isn't a big deal at all and you certainly shouldn't fear it. Sure, you'd prefer drawing stuff live and given that you drew stuff dead you'd sometimes have been better off had those dead cards been Coppers or Silvers, but that's no reason to stuff your deck full off treasures, it's no reason not to draw (b.c. as long as your deck is improving cycling itself is a big boon), and it's certainly no reason to not put the good cards in your deck in the first place.

This is a nice point. See, when players are first starting to learn Dominion with the Base set, they might build a deck with over 20 cards and a bunch of Smithies, some treasures, and other terminals but only a few Villages. In those cases dead draw can be quite bad because the terminals won't be seen again for awhile and your Smithy provides less value from drawing treasures.

When trashing anf engines are involved however, the cards you draw dead might turn up again next turn when your engine goes off anyway, and it can be worth taking the risk if the draw card is doing respectable damage to your opponent and/or providing some other value besides draw. Margrave and certainly Mercenary can fall into this category during a game.

Related to this is the topic of terminal collision in general, not necessarily of the dead draw kind. Playing a key terminal every turn is usually more important that avoiding the inevitable terminal collision. We don't live in an ideal world of shuffle luck where having the ideal maximum number of terminals for your deck can support always prevents terminal collision. Because of this you'll want to oversaturate your deck a little bit with a couple extra copies of the key terminals of the board so you can play them every turn, even if it guarantees a terminal collision at some point in your shuffle. Playing a Mountebank or discard attack (like Militia or Mercenary) is often the true ideal you want.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 27, 2015, 03:03:29 pm
at work now, gotta be short

SCSN, thank you again!  just wanted to mention that:

A. i completely hate math and in no way could do stuff with this game on my own atm. don't ask me why i got so into power grid...

B. it was wanderingwinder who posted that thread, and i figured he'd be more likely to be right than some rando

that bit of mythbusting is def appreciated though~
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: DG on July 27, 2015, 04:28:17 pm
I believe the correct figures are here http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/06/21/opening-probabilities-part-ii/. Check for yourself whether the horse traders gives you the benefits you wanted from a terminal action.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 28, 2015, 11:14:29 pm
over the last couple weeks, i've run into 3 pirate ship pin boards and fallen for it every time.  this last one in my league match was because there wasn't an engine for it and it was a colony game, so i figured i could always have more money than they could trash.  however, i proceed to buy not one but TWO junk dealers without realizing how much easier that makes it for them...not good times.  that game also had prince, and i forgot how practical that becomes when it's a colony game and you have 3 pirate ships in your deck.

how the hell do i have such a hard time dealing with a bottom 5 card?  i autopilot stuff a lot atm and i guess that strat runs counter to so many of the rules of good play, as seen in the junk dealer example.  that board also had merchant ship, but that's not so hot for getting colonies?  i still got a couple of them obviously but idk
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Drab Emordnilap on July 29, 2015, 12:20:38 am
how the hell do i have such a hard time dealing with a bottom 5 card?  i autopilot stuff a lot

Ultimately you've answered your own question here. If you're dictating to yourself based on the 95% cases, you're going to lose those 5% exception games.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: assemble_me on July 29, 2015, 06:29:14 am
over the last couple weeks, i've run into 3 pirate ship pin boards and fallen for it every time.  this last one in my league match was because there wasn't an engine for it and it was a colony game, so i figured i could always have more money than they could trash.  however, i proceed to buy not one but TWO junk dealers without realizing how much easier that makes it for them...not good times.  that game also had prince, and i forgot how practical that becomes when it's a colony game and you have 3 pirate ships in your deck.

how the hell do i have such a hard time dealing with a bottom 5 card?  i autopilot stuff a lot atm and i guess that strat runs counter to so many of the rules of good play, as seen in the junk dealer example.  that board also had merchant ship, but that's not so hot for getting colonies?  i still got a couple of them obviously but idk

Still that won't help you to sometimes misread boards, but that's actually a part why this game is still so cool after thousands of games :).

I guess this is the game you're referring to: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150728/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438135285142.txt

Hum, I don't really think this is a Pirate Ship board. I think you went to hard for trashing, especially after your opponent went for two early Ships. I don't like your second Junk dealer, maybe the first one isn't great already.
I'm not sure about the Merchant Ships. Maybe just Vault is better despite that's a Colony game. I think you should have added a couple of Hoards because of the Gold gaining for defense.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: pubby on July 29, 2015, 12:03:04 pm
Hum, I don't really think this is a Pirate Ship board.
I'm having a real hard time seeing how that couldn't be a Pirate Ship board. There's just not enough virtual money to get around it.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on July 29, 2015, 12:46:19 pm
Hum, I don't really think this is a Pirate Ship board.
I'm having a real hard time seeing how that couldn't be a Pirate Ship board. There's just not enough virtual money to get around it.

But you don't need virtual money to get around one Pirate Ship a turn, just get some Hoards and Vault/Peddler.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 29, 2015, 03:11:27 pm
yea, in general i'm not used to playing big-deck strats unless it's for a real obvious reason (gardens/possession), and this seems like a board where that was a must.  thanks all!
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on July 29, 2015, 03:40:29 pm
yea, in general i'm not used to playing big-deck strats unless it's for a real obvious reason (gardens/possession), and this seems like a board where that was a must.  thanks all!

I am not suggesting you should skip trashing. Trashing is really great on this board, but if the opponent does go for Pirate Ship, Hoard is a possible defense.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: assemble_me on July 29, 2015, 05:44:06 pm
yea, in general i'm not used to playing big-deck strats unless it's for a real obvious reason (gardens/possession), and this seems like a board where that was a must.  thanks all!

I am not suggesting you should skip trashing. Trashing is really great on this board, but if the opponent does go for Pirate Ship, Hoard is a possible defense.

Also, I do like some trashing here as well. But Moneylender + 2 Junkdealer + Opponent's Ships is a lot.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 31, 2015, 12:14:58 am
tonight was hilarious

more awful play from me yet i somehow won my first league match!  on balance i *think* i'm glad mic & SCSN were there for the last game? not so sure they were, lol

apothecary is definitely one of my biggest demons atm, never quite sure what kind of deck it wants.  i also threw away a likely win with cultist by going BM over cities & grand markets (w/ throne room) on a colony board - was worried about 3-pile and figured i needed to get points ASAP, which i realized was silly by the end of the game.  the other issue in that one was that i never got doctor (only trasher) since i was so focused on cultists, while my opponent got a $7 doctor buy quite early in the game.  i won the ruins split like 7-3 or 8-2 so i should have still been the favorite, no?  i just don't have enough faith in engines without a thin deck, which has gotten me killed many times now...

logs for laffs:

Game 1 - http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150730/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438306427492.txt
Game 2 - http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150730/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438307705142.txt
Game 3 - http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150730/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438308362489.txt
Game 4 - http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150730/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438308970331.txt
Game 5 - http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150730/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438309691392.txt
Game 6 - http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150730/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438311967794.txt


movin on up in one sense, yet still so, so far to go~


oh yeah, one last thing: looking back through my stream chat after the match, i noticed SCSN seemingly complaining about how slow i was with cartographer/apothecary/lookout.  just warning you now, that part is never going away with me.  i am probably the worst person on this forum when it comes to messing up the simplest things, when there's a lot of steps/information involved in them.  i don't handle large quantities of things at once unless i majorly slow down to process them all, period.  my normal routine is to just decide what's important and completely block the rest of the environment from my mind, but in this game that leads to things like buying remake on a BM board with poor house present sooooooooooo

the stream doesn't really help with all of this, though.  my chat being so unfamiliar with the game kinda forces me to go over rudimentary stuff over and over, and obviously that slows it down a lot too.  also, to be frank, it makes me a lot more dull than i otherwise would be - i'm a very intense person at heart who loves to bring up conversations on all sorts of topics while i play, but having to play professor all the time kills those aspects of me.  this is why i stopped streaming power grid, and i'd like to figure out a solution for this game...
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: AdamH on July 31, 2015, 09:17:56 am
apothecary is definitely one of my biggest demons atm, never quite sure what kind of deck it wants.

Apothecary is a tough card to play right. Something that really helped me was to play several games in a row and force it into every kingdom. Some games I made myself go for it no matter what and other games I made myself not go for it no matter what (much less of those).

Something to keep in mind when you do this is that Apothecary can result in very swingy openings -- the difference between the best possible outcome that you can control and the worst possible outcome is so large (consider cycling as well) that you really need to take luck into account. Some kingdoms are worth playing more than once if you don't feel like you are getting a good handle on what Apothecary is doing/not doing for you.


oh yeah, one last thing: looking back through my stream chat after the match, i noticed SCSN seemingly complaining about how slow i was with cartographer/apothecary/lookout.  just warning you now, that part is never going away with me.  i am probably the worst person on this forum when it comes to messing up the simplest things, when there's a lot of steps/information involved in them.  i don't handle large quantities of things at once unless i majorly slow down to process them all, period.

Don't let him get to you. If he thinks you're too slow, then he shouldn't watch, but he (like me) likes to complain about things. Especially in a league match, just focus on playing the best you can, and if he doesn't find your stream to his liking, well then I guess he just won't watch. Oh well.


the stream doesn't really help with all of this, though.  my chat being so unfamiliar with the game kinda forces me to go over rudimentary stuff over and over, and obviously that slows it down a lot too.  also, to be frank, it makes me a lot more dull than i otherwise would be - i'm a very intense person at heart who loves to bring up conversations on all sorts of topics while i play, but having to play professor all the time kills those aspects of me.  this is why i stopped streaming power grid, and i'd like to figure out a solution for this game...

Well I don't have the solution to this, but I do have some thoughts. In the very early days when I was experimenting with streaming Dominion, Dethwing was giving me some help. One thing we noticed is that his audience (1500 Followers at the time, if he streamed for an hour or so he'd have 30-50 viewers pretty consistently) was not really interested in anything but speedrunning video games. He could have 50 viewers, then change over to Dominion and within 5 minutes be down to 10. Those 10 would ask questions and they would have a good interaction, but 10 minutes later those people would be lost and stop watching.

Dominion is a game that's harder to watch than Hearthstone or Mario, in either of those games it's pretty easy to see what's going on and follow things with no knowledge of the game: Mario is jumping across platforms and dodging/stomping on monsters, Hearthstone has life totals on everything and monsters run into each other (and there are bubbles that make everything clear that's happening). People describe Dominion as "just a bunch of cards flying around on the screen." This is a really difficult problem to fix and it's a huge barrier between us and getting more people to watch Dominion and get into it.

For a while I tried to "play professor" and I got nothing but negative feedback from it. Anyone who appreciates that isn't very likely to say anything in chat about it, and it's much easier to cater your streams to what people are telling you and what you want, rather than speculate about what hypothetical people may be wanting. I also think that streams where you're providing insightful commentary and explaining deeper points and trying to play well are just better than streams where you're trying to teach the game. If someone wants to learn the game, a live stream is just not the right medium for it and other games (Mario and Hearthstone) can get away with it because they're either very easy to learn or their game clients make the game very easy to understand. It's ironic that there's so much backlash against flashy animations when that's probably the thing that can help the most with this, but that's another discussion. A tutorial video/highlight that you point people to for learning Dominion is probably the way to go here.

So what I did was try to create a new audience -- I've found it very difficult to transfer an audience that wants to see other video games over to Dominion (as I'm sure you have as well, along with people like Chesswhiz), so most of the people who stick around the stream are the ones who came to watch Dominion. And the way I keep them is to just make the best stream I can for those people. I never simplify my commentary for the sake of being accessible, because I believe that high-level strategic concepts and accessibility are not mutually exclusive -- I just try to think out loud as part of my thinking process (which has taken me years to get to the point I am now, to be fair) and people will follow it. These forums have been extremely helpful for creating a community of regulars who will keep the chat active, and for directing lurkers towards live streams where they enjoy what they watch.

I guess that's a lot of rambling, maybe you can find something good in there you can use, I think it's really cool how someone as popular as you is now focused on streaming Dominion -- it could be really good for Dominion streaming in general and also for your audience to get into a really fun game :)
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Deadlock39 on July 31, 2015, 09:28:55 am
the stream doesn't really help with all of this, though.  my chat being so unfamiliar with the game kinda forces me to go over rudimentary stuff over and over, and obviously that slows it down a lot too.  also, to be frank, it makes me a lot more dull than i otherwise would be - i'm a very intense person at heart who loves to bring up conversations on all sorts of topics while i play, but having to play professor all the time kills those aspects of me.  this is why i stopped streaming power grid, and i'd like to figure out a solution for this game...

(PPE: Adam has much more insightful comments here given his experience, but here's my random thought on it.)

Not sure if anyone here will be available/willing, but perhaps someone else could handle answering dominion questions in the chat so you can ignore them and do your thing.  Maybe someone would be willing to do this while playing against you. (This obviously doesn't work for a league match.) Then you also get the added bonus of having slightly distracted competition.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: AdamH on July 31, 2015, 09:33:28 am
Not sure if anyone here will be available/willing, but perhaps someone else could handle answering dominion questions in the chat so you can ignore them and do your thing.  Maybe someone would be willing to do this while playing against you. (This obviously doesn't work for a league match.) Then you also get the added bonus of having slightly distracted competition.

In my experience, if someone asks a question related to rules or basic strategy in the chat, or "what does X mean that Adam said?" there are several F.DS people in the chat who know I won't answer it and will provide the answer -- when a question is asked, it usually gets answered several times.

The barrier is just to get people asking those questions if they feel like they don't understand.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on July 31, 2015, 10:50:31 am
thanks a lot once again!

adam, you're actually good at the game so the real dominion players will want to watch you.  one of the main reasons i'd like to stream is to learn bits of knowledge from people like you and mic and SCSN, but i'm comedy hour status atm so that's not likely happening nearly as much with me.  i'm also inclined to care about SCSN's opinion since i'm one of the people who loves his way of explaining the game; he is the reason i screw up urchin less than almost any other card right now.

the thing is that there's a fair amount of people who seem to be more interested in me as a person than any particular game i play - i've been very active on twitter for years now, so a lot of folks have kept up with me there even when i wasn't streaming.  that's a rather rare thing to achieve on twitch, but it also makes me feel obligated to do the professor thing to keep my friends engaged (as almost none of them have played dominion).  as i think about it, just being myself would probably work better for that, and you more or less said that yourself.

i've thought about streaming single-player campaign games to show the cards in action, but even that would be way too long for anyone to watch as a tutorial.  200+ cards is just too much for that to work, i think.  maybe i could do the First Game engine, a goons game...just show the basic concepts and the top-tier cards. even then idk
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: SCSN on July 31, 2015, 11:09:00 am
the thing is that there's a fair amount of people who seem to be more interested in me as a person than any particular game i play

Yes, don't worry about putting me off because of being way too slow (almost all of my opponents are, and I continue to play them), as I'd watch you for those sexy glasses alone!

i've thought about streaming single-player campaign games to show the cards in action, but even that would be way too long for anyone to watch as a tutorial.  200+ cards is just too much for that to work, i think.  maybe i could do the First Game engine, a goons game...just show the basic concepts and the top-tier cards. even then idk

Don't bother. No one ever is going to be able to make much sense of Dominion without playing it themselves, and once they've played it they no longer need really long-winded really basic stuff. Maybe one brief tutorial video of the sort "Never heard of Dominion? How to start playing this awesome game" would be good, and then decide whether to do any follow-ups (and if so, what kind) based on its popularity and the feedback/questions you receive.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: AdamH on July 31, 2015, 11:09:22 am
adam, you're actually good at the game so the real dominion players will want to watch you.  one of the main reasons i'd like to stream is to learn bits of knowledge from people like you and mic and SCSN, but i'm comedy hour status atm so that's not likely happening nearly as much with me.

Top-level players were watching me long before I was any good at the game -- that's one of the really nice things about this community, really good people take the time to give advice to others instead of hoarding all of their game-winning secrets for themselves...

i'm also inclined to care about SCSN's opinion since i'm one of the people who loves his way of explaining the game; he is the reason i screw up urchin less than almost any other card right now.

SCSN has made real contributions to this community, and he's a very good player. That's certainly true. On the other hand, that doesn't mean you should just believe everything he says (and to be clear, that goes for everyone, not just SCSN, no matter how good of a player they are). I'm reminded of this thread (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11583.0) right now where MQ and SCSN disagreed with the mindset I was taking. Math helps me understand cards better, it doesn't help them as much. This doesn't mean that I shouldn't do math. In this case, SCSN is telling you that he doesn't like the way you click. I think you should click however makes you comfortable no matter what anyone tells you. We're all beautiful flowers and don't let anyone tell you that you aren't perfect.

Around the beginning of this year I told myself that I was finally at the point where I needed to question top level players in order to get better at the game. It took me three years to work up the nerve to do it and I thought I was taking a huge risk. It turns out that not only was I right to start questioning everyone, but I wish I had started much earlier. Never be afraid to question yourself or anyone else, no matter what their reputation. Thinking critically is such a valuable skill and this community is mature enough to handle it. Just think, if I hadn't started questioning top-level players then you would just have people telling you how bad Jack is on that board a couple of pages up and you wouldn't even be able to read my highly correct insights that Jack of all Trades is amazing on that board and it's the best opening!

Everybody starts somewhere. When I started making videos I wasn't nearly as good as you are now. Don't let the football players tell you that chess club isn't cool, chess is way cooler than football.


i've thought about streaming single-player campaign games to show the cards in action, but even that would be way too long for anyone to watch as a tutorial.  200+ cards is just too much for that to work, i think.  maybe i could do the First Game engine, a goons game...just show the basic concepts and the top-tier cards. even then idk

This is probably a good idea -- I just think that live streams aren't the best medium for this, but rather recorded videos are. You can create a library of these videos and point to them on your Twitch info page so that if people in the chat ask you "wth is going on?" you can just point them to the videos. In my list of resources is a link to a page that just lists all of the card texts -- I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from having this plus showing the big cards at the beginning of the game, that way viewers don't feel like they have to memorize every single card and they get a nice refresher on what the relevant cards do at the start of each game.

Of course that goes hand-in-hand with the way I talk about kingdoms, so you might adjust the way you do it on your stream.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on August 05, 2015, 12:17:20 am
probably really need to take a break

i play probably...3+ hours a night? just fall into it when i get home from work.  and lately i've been on a rough streak (culminating in another terrible league match just now, which might get me demoted???).  i get these cases of burnout here and there.  also with this game in particular, since games are so much quicker than with power grid, i really fall into an "assembly-line" mindset of just doing whatever and moving on to the next game.

this has always been my issue with learning games: i can focus well for short bursts, but can't keep that up for longer sessions or just long periods of playing the game a lot in general.  that seems like a huge problem with dominion...
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: markusin on August 05, 2015, 08:34:35 am
probably really need to take a break

i play probably...3+ hours a night? just fall into it when i get home from work.  and lately i've been on a rough streak (culminating in another terrible league match just now, which might get me demoted???).  i get these cases of burnout here and there.  also with this game in particular, since games are so much quicker than with power grid, i really fall into an "assembly-line" mindset of just doing whatever and moving on to the next game.

this has always been my issue with learning games: i can focus well for short bursts, but can't keep that up for longer sessions or just long periods of playing the game a lot in general.  that seems like a huge problem with dominion...
I'm sure you'd also burn out and lose focus if you played 3+ hours of Power Grid every night. Keep that in mind.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: nate_w on August 05, 2015, 10:44:47 am
First of all, we all have ups and downs.  I dropped down about 700 points on Goko, 5 levels on isotropish recently.  Ok, streaks happen.  Don't let it get you too down.

Second, yeah it could definitely be because you are playing without really be focused on playing.  I remember playing like 6 games in a row with WW where I lost EVERY single game and, ok, so maybe 1 or 2 were luck of the draw, but mostly I was just playing terribly.  Maybe take it back a notch and play every game at half the speed you have been.  Take some time to analyze the board at the beginning as deeply as you can.  Don't just come up with a plan; refine that plan.  Consider alternatives.  Before triggering a reshuffle midturn, consider whether it's a good one.  Before buying something, reconsider.  Try to look at how the piles are running multiple times per game.  Maybe just try slowing things down.  Maybe instead of playing, spend an hour watching MicQ's excellent stream and thinking about why he's doing what he's doing, and if you differ in what you expected him to do, why that is. 

Idk, 5000 is definitely achievable!  I believe in you.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on August 07, 2015, 04:49:37 am
thanks!!!

in the midst of this break, i've been thinking that i should probably say more about some of these recent league matches.  the issue is that when i can take my time, i actually *do* have reasons for all the wacky things i try.  clearly they're bad reasons, but i need to work out why.

i'm mainly thinking of that monstrosity with apothecary & sea hag, the game that took 50 minutes on my stream or something ridiculous like that.  that was the one that got mic & SCSN real chatty.  some of the stuff they mentioned, like triggering bad shuffles and playing cantrips before apothecary, is just an issue of habit that i need to beat out of myself (see also: bad discards in mercenary games!).  there are other things i am curious about, though...

again, log for this one: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150730/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438311967794.txt


getting 1 lookout & 2 sea hags - this was strongly criticized.  my thinking here was that winning the curse split would be extremely important with lookout as the only trasher, but i guess apothecary/cartographer make lookout trashing so much easier that this is wrong?  and the reason i only got 1 lookout is that with apothecary involved, i figured i really didn't want to trash any more copper than i already had.  this is likely a major fundamental issue with how i approach apothecary, hence why i'm bringing this up.

general quality of my deck - i currently tend to see apothecary as a "steady 1 province per turn" card.  it's just hard for me to picture any bigger engine being reliable with a card that WANTS so many junk cards in your deck.  so i got just enough money to get a province, with a bunch of apothecaries & cartographers to ensure i draw the whole deck.  i clearly should've gotten an herbalist at some point - think i was scared with curses being involved and needing $7P for a good turn with it.  but that seems more important in the midgame for building the engine, no?  really don't get how double-province turns would be a thing in this game.  what am i missing here?  is this one of those games where 2nd potion would be worth it?


also, one last thought on this game: i probably would've been better off going explorer-BM if i were just trying to win that one game.  but i figured apothecary had to be better if played well, and look at all the questions i got from trying that!


finally, a game i played recently vs. furuderika (http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150802/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438574587579.txt) got me thinking.  as you can see this is an awfully generic board, and i decided to try a madman-horn of plenty megaturn.  do the lack of draw and the crappy treasure trashing kill the chances of that working?  i actually managed to get a bunch of horns in play one turn, but with 1 unique short of provinces or so.  i'm thinking if i don't blow my wad early, that could actually be the winner even with the problems this board offers...?

madman is another card i have no idea how to manage in general, as you can tell from that log.  timing is a mystery to me, as well as deciding when to pass up buying good cards for madmen.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on August 07, 2015, 08:05:27 am
I don't think you should just stick with Explorer BM, it's better to play the engine and make some mistakes and learn something.

The issue with a 2nd Sea Hag is how long will it be before they start colliding a bunch of turns due to Apothecaries and Cartographers and Lookout trashing. It's possible the 2nd Sea Hag should be a 2nd Potion (this also has collision problems). A 2nd Lookout also lets you win the deck size battle.

All the little play order mistakes can really add up on a board like this. Take turn 8: you pass on playing Cartographer but there's no reason to do that besides "Sea Hag misses the shuffle". But you already have another Sea Hag in that shuffle, the other 3 cards in your hand are bad and the Cartographer cycles around anyway and lets you make your next turn better. In this case it would have let you play a Lookout as well.

I don't think you want to double Province here, you'll have to decide how much to build up depending on where your and your opponent's decks are. One card you didn't seem to consider was Beggar.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Davio on August 07, 2015, 08:43:19 am
I don't think I ever bought a 2nd Sea Hag, just never seems worth it before Curses run out and it's just another dead card.
6 Curses + 1 Sea Hag is just one dead card less than 4 Curses + 2 Sea Hags.

In this particular case, I might even have skipped Sea Hag altogether and opened Lookout / Potion.
Apothecary is a great early game card, increasing your buying power and cycling all those Coppers can get you going pretty fast.
And as a bonus you know what you can trash with Lookout.

I would also get an Herbalist pretty quickly to make use of the Copper-filled hands to buy Apothecary+Something, you can put Potion back on top and just get a lot of Apothecaries really quickly. I might get a Beggar just because extra Coppers don't hurt as much with a lot of Apothecaries and it can help you reach $8 (I wouldn't use it to get Silvers to "defend" against Sea Hag).
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: AdamH on August 07, 2015, 09:26:54 am
getting 1 lookout & 2 sea hags - this was strongly criticized.  my thinking here was that winning the curse split would be extremely important with lookout as the only trasher, but i guess apothecary/cartographer make lookout trashing so much easier that this is wrong?

You say this like you think Lookout isn't good trashing. Lookout is quite good, I think it's better than you're giving it credit for. I also think Sea Hag isn't actually a good card with any decent trashing around and Lookout certainly qualifies. Lookout alone is certainly enough for me to just skip Sea Hag completely. Yes, yes, I know pink hair in the moonlight but I can see really far from up here and there are some prettier ladies off in the distance so I think I'll keep my options open (+1 Action? Options open? Anyone?)


with apothecary involved, i figured i really didn't want to trash any more copper than i already had.  this is likely a major fundamental issue with how i approach apothecary, hence why i'm bringing this up.

general quality of my deck - i currently tend to see apothecary as a "steady 1 province per turn" card.  it's just hard for me to picture any bigger engine being reliable with a card that WANTS so many junk cards in your deck.

I would classify Apothecary as an early-game accelerator card. Rarely will a card dictate the type of payload your deck will have and Apothecary is certainly no exception. You sort of hit it when you refer to Coppers as junk cards -- Apothecary mitigates the downside of having the Coppers, but it doesn't mean you have to keep the Coppers, and just because you want to trash the Coppers doesn't necessarily mean you don't want Apothecaries early. Very few decks aren't made better by adding early Apothecaries.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on August 07, 2015, 10:26:56 am
yea, beggar scared me since i would have less of a chance of starting with apothecary or cartographer in my hand.  still hard for me to see how, say, 6 extra copper would help me.  3 seems good but i can't fathom more at this point.

re: skipping sea hag - this is the kind of stuff i like to hear.  like, "fundamentals" of specific cards if you will.  i've definitely seen lookout as closer to the "weak trashing" end of the spectrum, but i have to be underestimating the top-deck control.

davio, good call on topdecking potions!  i completely forgot about that part of herbalist and that seems to basically obsolete 2nd potion here?  i still don't see good +buy options below $7P though, unless i get a beggar.

mic, that's the point i was making re: not playing BM! =)  i realized early on that this is a game that really rewards you for trying the hard strats.  i'm not used to having this sort of mentality in tournaments etc. though, so i'm actually surprised i can follow through with it in league matches.  also, thanks for pointing out a case where it's good to trigger a shuffle - this is something i struggle a lot with now that i've become more aware of how bad it often is to trigger them.

speaking of which, i really need to work on madman more.  i've had hermit-market square show up once thus far and completely botched it...seems hard to practice this stuff except with specific saved kingdoms though
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on August 07, 2015, 10:49:50 am
also, thanks for pointing out a case where it's good to trigger a shuffle - this is something i struggle a lot with now that i've become more aware of how bad it often is to trigger them.

I think this is another case of "PPR syndrome". Some (useful) concept has lots of posts where it's written, a nice catchy acronym, and suddenly people don't want to buy the second to last Province just so they don't break "PPR". At this point probably more bad greening decisions have been made in the name of PPR than good ones (ok, probably not).

Triggering shuffles in the middle of your turn is usually good. Sometimes very bad, sometimes very very good. Sometimes meh. Well the point is not to be afraid of the reshuffles but just to evaluate them.

- What good cards will I cause to miss the shuffle?
- What bad cards will I cause to miss the shuffle? (people forget this one a lot while getting wrapped up in the first one)
- What do I stand to gain by causing the shuffle? Most of the time you're playing some action card that can help your turn be better, getting a better turn right now is usually worth it.
- How long is this next shuffle? (sometimes it's like 1-2 turns long and those turns are going to be good anyway).
- Will I cause my next 1-2 turns to be completely dead? (this is the nightmare situation that people should usually try to avoid like the plague).
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: AdamH on August 07, 2015, 10:56:12 am
re: skipping sea hag - this is the kind of stuff i like to hear.  like, "fundamentals" of specific cards if you will.  i've definitely seen lookout as closer to the "weak trashing" end of the spectrum, but i have to be underestimating the top-deck control.

In my mind, Lookout is good for the same reason Forager is good -- it's non-terminal and cheap. You can achieve a thin enough deck by using only Lookouts because you can buy multiples and just trash one to the other when the time comes.

Lookout does give you top-deck interaction, and it synergizes with top-deck interaction (you get a nice little bonus against Sea Hag, for example) but that's not the reason why it's so good; it's good without that.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: DG on August 07, 2015, 11:45:44 am
I think it would be quite easy in that apothecary kingdom to build a deck that is less than the sum of its parts. Open lookout/sea hag and buy the second lookout before the next shuffle. I think it is a common mistake to just use one lookout and then find it doesn't trash enough soon enough, with the result that the lookout seems poor (rather than misplayed). Two lookouts will really kill the coin income though so apothecaries will be useful to draw coppers while cycling the deck. Building up income with silvers will slow down the deck cycling and as a consequence slow down the curse trashing.

With that in mind I can see a mid game where both players are cursing with the sea hag, cleaning up with lookouts, and buying apothecaries or cartographers to improve drawing and cycling.  Adding great halls will probably hinder the deck in this stage and you should only get them when the vp is purposeful, i.e. near a three pile ending. After that mid game there will be a short transition period where both players will try to accelerate the deck income for a sustainable end game.

This is where I see a few options opening up as you can buy a couple of gold and use them to buy provinces with apothecary coins, use an explorer to gain treasures and cycle mostly with cartographers, try to sustain an apothecary/copper engine using cartographers for extra control, and/or use a herbalist for an extra buy to threaten a third pile. How you view the endgame might change how you prioritize cartographers or apothecaries. The mid-game progress could also change your endgame options. You can even get a feel of your deck performance while playing and make decisions based on that.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: DG on August 07, 2015, 04:51:46 pm
finally, a game i played recently vs. furuderika (http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150802/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438574587579.txt) got me thinking.  as you can see this is an awfully generic board, and i decided to try a madman-horn of plenty megaturn.  do the lack of draw and the crappy treasure trashing kill the chances of that working?  i actually managed to get a bunch of horns in play one turn, but with 1 unique short of provinces or so.  i'm thinking if i don't blow my wad early, that could actually be the winner even with the problems this board offers...?

madman is another card i have no idea how to manage in general, as you can tell from that log.  timing is a mystery to me, as well as deciding when to pass up buying good cards for madmen.

I think there is a horn of plenty thing going on here but it will be hard work. There is plenty of opportunity to gain cards with workshop, hermit, taxman, horn of plenty, border village, and expand so you should aim to do this, not buy treasures for income. This would also makes it easier to have turns later in the game where you are improving your deck but still able to trash hermits for your megaturn madmen. When you gain 2 silvers early you are going in the wrong direction.

Here I'd plan to use the first madman to trash an estate (or two), gain a madman, and then use the madman turn to buy a high cost card to kick start your deck development.  After that a workshop will gain better cards than the hermit so you although you could certainly finish trashing estates with another hermit, you could also skip the hermits until the end game and add them late to your deck.
 
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on August 09, 2015, 09:56:57 pm
thanks as always, good people!

so i've started playing a little bit again, but am trying not to drive myself into the ground with it.  i've realized that some of my issues in league matches stem from mostly playing people who don't try any remotely hard strats at all.  i'm not used to managing 3-pile games because i have very little experience with people mirroring me on engines.

one recent game was a perfect case in point.  we have a board with steward, bridge, bazaar, AND hunting party...and my opponent decides to run with vault-BM because hey if you get 4 provinces first you win the game i guess!!!!!!!!!

i've been using a minimum rating when hosting games, but that doesn't seem to be enough.  maybe i should use iso rating instead of goko?  like level 20 for now?
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on August 23, 2015, 09:44:38 pm
alright, so i'm still at it, been alternating between playing & watching videos

in particular, i recently discovered the twitch highlights of SCSN teaching jerni various boards and that's been an awfully fascinating series. one of the games there reminded me of a recent one i played where i'm unsure of the best strat...

the log appears to have disappeared into the ether so i'll try and break it down:

so one of the games SCSN did was a colony game that focused on a mint-platinum-remodel engine, i *think* with throne room and villages?

the game i played had that core engine in place, but with no villages.  instead, i went for a no-platinum approach - the board also had king's court + rabble + woodcutter, with cellar for some needed sifting.  my opponent tried the platinum remodeling strat and only got a couple king's courts to support it, so i was able to get...7? of the king's courts and tons of rabbles.  i figured after mint trashing, i could regularly leave her with a 2-card hand while getting monster turns by gaining & drawing woodcutters to use with KCs.  i won handily with just two such turns but it took me 22 turns to do it, and that feels especially wrong after seeing how quick the remodel engine was in SCSN's videos.  that engine in itself didn't have as strong support in this game, but maybe i should have combined the two approaches?  would have to spend a turn buying platinum since i absolutely don't want to remodel a KC, but that seems like it should work?  i think there were only 6 platinum or so left by the time i had the money and the KCs were gone, though.

i really, really wish i could find the log. GOKOOOOOOOOOOOO etc. etc.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: SCSN on August 28, 2015, 03:29:19 am
It's a bit difficult to go in depth without a log, but the two things to realize on the board you describe are:

1. The engine is extremely fragile; you need KC-KC-Rabble in your hand to start doing anything of note and Cellar is the only sifting (as far as I can tell).
2. Because of KC-Rabble, you absolutely can't green early.

You don't absolutely have to play the Mint-Platinum-Remodel thing. Especially if your opponent greened early and you KC Rabble him a few times each turn you can basically do whatever you want. That you took 22 turns to win is irrelevant and you shouldn't use it as a metric for anything; as long as your opponent's win % is 0, it doesn't matter if you take 10 or 50 turns.

Quote
that engine in itself didn't have as strong support in this game, but maybe i should have combined the two approaches?  would have to spend a turn buying platinum since i absolutely don't want to remodel a KC, but that seems like it should work?  i think there were only 6 platinum or so left by the time i had the money and the KCs were gone, though.

Again it's really hard to tell exactly what to do without a log and detailed knowledge of the gamestate, but you absolutely don't want to buy any green until the turn where you end the game, so what I'd probably have done is build up to a deck a whole lot of KCs and Rabbles, two Mints, two Remodels and a Platinum, then Mint 6 Platina on your last turn, draw them and Remodel them into the remaining Colonies. Don't add any unnecessary junk (additional Platina, Colonies) until your last turn because the only way you're losing is if you don't go off for a while, so maximizing the chance of starting with KC-KC-Rabble is vital.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on August 28, 2015, 12:07:01 pm
thanks! that makes a lot of sense, still hard for me to picture these kinds of engines at this point. the issue i see there is getting KCs early...i ended up getting a couple woodcutters just so i'd have something to use with KC and buy more of them. what's a more efficient way of building up your economy, given that you want to trash with mint ASAP?

the opponent did green early, otherwise i suspect she would have won since she had tons of platinum
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on August 28, 2015, 10:30:55 pm
ok, one game in particular from tonight's league match has me curious...

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150828/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1440812596937.txt

my opponent got a miracle possession turn to score the early province, but i had to have been doing something wrong before that.  i just focused on scrying pools and stables, but maybe i needed to add some more economy like my opponent did?

tournament is weird, it seems like i lose fairly often focusing on engine cards like this.  also i'm sure i was making my deck too good with possession in the game, but i thought my lack of money would make that OK.  this seems like a tricky board from what i can tell.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Seprix on August 29, 2015, 12:18:32 am
ok, one game in particular from tonight's league match has me curious...

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150828/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1440812596937.txt

my opponent got a miracle possession turn to score the early province, but i had to have been doing something wrong before that.  i just focused on scrying pools and stables, but maybe i needed to add some more economy like my opponent did?

tournament is weird, it seems like i lose fairly often focusing on engine cards like this.  also i'm sure i was making my deck too good with possession in the game, but i thought my lack of money would make that OK.  this seems like a tricky board from what i can tell.

There's no trashing on this board besides Transmute. Transmute trashing CAN work, because you gain a Transmute after each Copper, but I don't like Scrying Pool in your case, especially with a 5/2 opening to further lengthen the time it takes to get to Scrying Pool. You should be focusing on getting Tournament Prizes, Stables first priority since there are no villages to speak of.

I mean, maybe Scrying Pool is correct here? I just don't know, man. It seems pretty slow and ineffective to implement anyways since you won't be playing more than two terminals tops (with a Prize) and it'll just take so long to buy enough Scrying Pools, and by then, your opponent has Prizes and you're boned since he can just outbuy (no buy on the board!) and even attack you. You can always get a Potion a bit later to counter Possession with your own if he threatens it.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: pubby on August 29, 2015, 01:26:43 am
One strategy is to add no economy to your deck, so it's impossible to hit $8. Build a deck that can play 1 possession per turn, and hope to win tournaments on possession turns. I'm not sure if this is better than what you did, but it's worth mentioning.

Also, transmute seems terrible here. Would rather buy nothing.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on August 29, 2015, 09:26:56 am
see, i feel like no scrying pools would lose to an opponent who gets all 10 of them?  that seems to be the case so often with these top-tier engine cards, but i guess there is possession

buying transmute was my way of waving the white flag, should've just resigned then if i was going to do that yea
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: DG on August 29, 2015, 09:57:25 am
Transmute, Scrying Pool, Island, Smithy, Tournament, Treasure Map, Laboratory, Stables, Vault, Possession, Copper, Silver, Gold, Estate, Duchy, Province, Curse, Potion.

I feel the problem with this kingdom is the tournament, or the prizes anyway. Without the prizes there isn't much going on and a plain vault +gold deck would be ok. Possession is likely to yield up those prizes though and they could easily tip the balance. A number of different games could then play out depending upon the prizes. I don't think you did too much wrong, for instance I don't think there's much advantage from taking tournament or island on turn 4. As soon as followers comes into play you should buy labs instead of stables.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on October 13, 2015, 08:39:13 pm
hi yall

i haven't died, just finally reached my 5K rating goal (shortly before goko's death, as it turns out) and been watching top-player matches every night since then.

i never quite cracked iso level 30 there, so that's my next goal on the new client...but obviously i'm aiming a lot higher than that in the longer run.  one thing i've seen a lot of in recent videos is engines without trashing - i had it in my head that trashing was an essential component of them, and would tend to go BM without it.  that usually didn't end well, and i'm having a better understanding of why now - these seem to be some of the higher-skill ceiling boards.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on October 29, 2015, 01:58:46 pm
so here's a general question

i had a game recently that had everything you'd want for an engine except villages.  luckily black market was there...but it only had 3 villages: king's court, throne room, & hamlet

is it really worth it to go for these, considering how many villages you normally need to make it work?  i feel like that would be enough for one player who gets them uncontested so you kinda have to i guess?  but splitting them isn't enough for a fully cohesive engine, i would think.

i struggle with this kind of question in general, i.e. the value of denying someone else a great strat vs. leaving yourself in a weird halfway point
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on October 29, 2015, 02:15:28 pm
so here's a general question

i had a game recently that had everything you'd want for an engine except villages.  luckily black market was there...but it only had 3 villages: king's court, throne room, & hamlet

is it really worth it to go for these, considering how many villages you normally need to make it work?  i feel like that would be enough for one player who gets them uncontested so you kinda have to i guess?  but splitting them isn't enough for a fully cohesive engine, i would think.

i struggle with this kind of question in general, i.e. the value of denying someone else a great strat vs. leaving yourself in a weird halfway point

We need to know the kingdom to answer the specific question. With nonterminal draw, nonterminal draw + trashing, or cantrips + trashing it could easily be worth it to go for Black Market.

In general, you should just go for the great strategies. If splitting resources results in half-baked decks, that's perfectly fine, your opponent is now playing with a half-baked deck too. Learning how to win with the half-baked stuff is an important skill too. If they don't contest and it's really a great strategy then you win.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Dingan on October 29, 2015, 03:22:24 pm
so here's a general question

i had a game recently that had everything you'd want for an engine except villages.  luckily black market was there...but it only had 3 villages: king's court, throne room, & hamlet

is it really worth it to go for these, considering how many villages you normally need to make it work?  i feel like that would be enough for one player who gets them uncontested so you kinda have to i guess?  but splitting them isn't enough for a fully cohesive engine, i would think.

i struggle with this kind of question in general, i.e. the value of denying someone else a great strat vs. leaving yourself in a weird halfway point
It's always tough when there are a few key cards (Chapel, Tournament, KC, etc.) in the BM deck.  You can either get lucky and pick them up on T3, or get unlucky and never see them, or not be able to afford them, before the game is decided. To my understanding, this is why people love or hate Black Market.  So to answer your first question: I don't know, haha.  It would depend on the board (shocker) -- how fast can alternative strategies be, is there junking that will slow you down, etc.  Something like double-Jack can piledrive the Provinces well before you pick up that crucial KC on T14.  From the sound of it, I would probably not go for the Black Market / engine, but I'd have to see the board.

But you're certainly right that in general, my decisions are often tailored or dictated by what decisions my opponent makes.  Something like Embargo comes to mind -- if my opponent opens Potion on an Alchemist board, and there is no thinning, then I might open Embargo to spoil that plan.  Swindler also comes to mind -- if my opponent ignores it, then I will start lining up an engine, whereas if they get it, then I might sway toward just buying Golds and Fortresses.  I might pick up a Secret Chamber or 2 if my opponent has multiple Knights, but ignore them otherwise.  And so on.

Decisions that affect other players is what makes Dominion a multiplayer game, opposed to just a bunch of solitaire games played in parallel.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on October 29, 2015, 11:03:57 pm
thanks again yall

here's the log for the specific game in question: http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20151025/log.0.1445733817832.txt

as you can see, i bought way too many terminals. i also still have issues knowing just how much silver to get in these kinds of games, especially with remake/upgrade when there isn't another really attractive card to gain.

still feels like opponent getting both king & throne is just too much but i'm sure there's plenty else to point out
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on November 22, 2015, 10:18:24 am
alright i should post things in here again!!!

still havent reached 5k on MF, but i did finally break top 50 in iso rating last night so that's a thing i guess.  the ratings are wack as hell with it being so new still, but my peak goko iso rating was in the 400s somewhere so i still feel p. good.  gonna be harder and harder to define goals from here, haha

anyway, i wanted to post one game from yesterday that took me by surprise, with an engine that i didn't see working at all.  here's the log (oh hey logprettifier works again now yay~):

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20151122/log.0.1448158416442.txt

i thought margrave-BM would outrace somebody stockpiling fishing villages, but i didn't see sage/cutpurse/prince all working together to make an actual engine out of this crap.  it still seems rather slow to me but maybe the constant discard attacks are what make it the best idea here?  also i would think sage would be the best prince target here, certainly not cutpurse.

not opening cutpurse was just me forgetting, and i probably should've always bought gold over harem given the attacks.  there was a point when i just needed all the points i could get though, but maybe those harems should be duchies?
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Jack Rudd on November 22, 2015, 10:56:44 am
Normally the best target for Prince is the first reasonably Princeable card it comes across. On a Prince board, you want to play your Princes quickly.

Fishing Village/Margrave is a fine base for an engine; I'd expect it to beat BM most of the time.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on November 22, 2015, 03:52:22 pm
hmm, i still get scared of a plain old village-smithy engine on a board like that where it doesn't have the strongest support, but then margrave is far from just a smithy and fishing village is far from just a village.  point well taken!

funny thing is, if you replace margrave with torturer there, i build the engine without a second thought.  i just tend to see torturer on a whole different level from the other smithy variants in that kind of situation, but that's probably not quite right eh?
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on December 05, 2015, 09:41:21 am
alright, got some more games to post here!

game 1: http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20151204/log.0.1449239568883.txt

mainly curious about one thing here.  my opponent said i shouldn't have gone for 3 junk dealers because "you want to get to $8".  i felt there was a ton of great economy for cheap here, so i could trash more aggressively while still being able to build.  in particular, i wanted to play black market as often as possible since the board was lacking in draw and +buy.  whaddyall think?

BTW, i know i could've gotten both steed and princess on my last turn before they resigned, so no need to bring that up =)


game 2: http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20151204/log.0.1449241642267.txt

same opponent, with another criticism i wanted to talk about.  i felt i had a significant early lead here and blew it.  my opponent said i should've gotten altar because "after you play doctor 2-3 times you don't need it anymore".  it seemed kinda late for me to get altar given that doctor worked out decently, but i guess there's conspirators after all the minions are gone.  also i thought tunnel was the classic trap here - you want to play your one goons as much as you can, right?


also i've been doing really badly in governor games as of late, but i think i have an idea of why.  i'll post something here if it doesn't get any better soon.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: DG on December 07, 2015, 09:02:52 pm
Game 1 - Yes three junk dealers seems excessive but I don't think it's so bad. It will restrict your income a little so does it help you recover if your opponent gets followers, say? The junk dealers do trash but the discard attack restricts them a lot so they probably won't do much more than can be done with two of them.

Game 2 - Hmm. I don't really like doctor opening for 4 coins. So many games seem to be lost by trashing a copper there and being short of spending. The next thing to realize is that multiple conspirators are not going to be a big feature unless your deck builds really well, well enough to get a resignation from your opponent anyway. I don't think there is a single standout opening here since it depends how you want to play after the minions are split and there will still be a lot of work to do. For your game as played I think you should have got the altar on turn 5, it's soon enough.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on February 03, 2016, 10:07:14 pm
oh hey this thread

i just have a general issue that's been killing me lately: i have no earthly idea how to play a draw-to-X engine.  especially ones with no trashing - i've had 3 boards like that in the past week where that turned out to be the best strat.

watchtower's topdecking seems to be key to making that sort of thing work, especially when there are attacks of course.  and i still rarely buy watchtower because i can't figure out how to use the topdecking well (mainly how often i want to topdeck more watchtowers), how many watchtowers i want total, etc.  it feels like that card alone makes witch useless based on the games i've played, but i have such a hard time believing that for whatever reason.

i recently watched an old game of adam's where he was way ahead of his opponent in building a draw-to-X engine (hamlet + library) but lost because he had one dud turn at the end.  and all it took for him to have that dud was to buy a duchy and a couple merchant ships!  it felt like he needed 50 villages & draw cards to get through the whole deck without triggering bad reshuffles, and these decks seem way less tolerant of stop cards than other engines.  are these correct observations at all?

i should probably save one of these boards and play it on stream vs. bots or something, eh?  these are probably only behind procession games in the "i don't even know where to begin" category
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Limetime on February 03, 2016, 10:16:55 pm
Draw to x engines get a huge boost from trashing, discard attacks, disappearing coins, disappearing villages, non-terminal coin, discard for benefit. If you're payload is just treasure good luck building a draw to x engine.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: dedicateddan on February 04, 2016, 04:48:37 am
Watchtower's topdecking effect is nice and opens up a lot of options. At least one is nice on most boards.

Against junkers, chaining watchtowers can be used as a form of proactive trashing. Here's an example of four watchtowers being used to hold off a double sea-hag attack:
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160125/log.0.1453681293292.txt
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: AdamH on February 04, 2016, 07:19:40 am
watchtower's topdecking seems to be key to making that sort of thing work, especially when there are attacks of course.  and i still rarely buy watchtower because i can't figure out how to use the topdecking well (mainly how often i want to topdeck more watchtowers), how many watchtowers i want total, etc.  it feels like that card alone makes witch useless based on the games i've played, but i have such a hard time believing that for whatever reason.

i recently watched an old game of adam's where he was way ahead of his opponent in building a draw-to-X engine (hamlet + library) but lost because he had one dud turn at the end.  and all it took for him to have that dud was to buy a duchy and a couple merchant ships!  it felt like he needed 50 villages & draw cards to get through the whole deck without triggering bad reshuffles, and these decks seem way less tolerant of stop cards than other engines.  are these correct observations at all?

The kind of support that these decks require is an abundance of Villages (more Villages than you have terminal space for) and strong trashing. When I say strong trashing, I mean you need zero stop cards in your deck, so yeah when you buy green for the first turn you already run the chance of stalling and you need to have a plan for that. Acceptable plans include:

- Having huge enough turns that you only need one or two of them, I'm talking about at least Triple Province, maaaaybe you can get away with double Province if you can set it up fast enough.
- VP token cards as your payload
- NV/Island/Distant Lands tricks
- Ambassador/Saboteur or some other catchup mechanism (many other attacks just don't cut the mustard if you're super-behind but these guys can)

The other thing is that even if you are building your deck properly, you still usually have to find a Village and a draw card in 5 cards, which is still a lot to ask of these types of decks since you typically need so much payload (and many times you're using a Village that doesn't draw). You should expect stall turns and do everything you can to prevent them. Watchtower is especially nice because it allows you to top-deck a village and a Watchtower for tomorrow, but you need to buy/gain both of those every turn which can hurt your growth so often times it's better to just YOLO and hope you don't stall, at least until things really get moving.

Stuff that lets you discard from hand like Hamlet, Storeroom, etc. seems like it can be a way to keep going after you green, but this still requires really good draws and like more than 10 Villages in your deck to get any decent payload. This kind of deck needs Library to draw (most of the time Watchtower just isn't good enough) and/or some HUGE support like King's Court or Champion or something crazy. Draw-to-X decks are finicky enough that they need to be super-tight in order to be good at all, and I've said this like two times already but you need a LOT of villages. In a mirror, don't expect to do anything if there's just one stack of villages and you only get five of them.

Like, there's this conception that Fishing Village/Watchtower is a deck. Like, that's enough to spin your wheels, but without any support it's just a thing you can do to have actions and draw cards. FishVille is great for this kind of stuff but you need a lot more for this to even beat Big Money.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on February 04, 2016, 07:57:44 am
here are a couple boards to get more specific...

#1:

(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/6/6c/Walled_Village.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Walled Village) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/3/3a/Explorer.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Explorer) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/9/98/Library.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Library) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/6/62/Vault.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Vault) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/f/f3/Witch.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Witch)
(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/d/df/Hamlet.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Hamlet) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/3/3f/Vagrant.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Vagrant) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/c/c2/Watchtower.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Watchtower) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/3/39/Bridge.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Bridge) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/c/cf/Talisman.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Talisman)
Code: [Select]
Hamlet, Vagrant, Watchtower, Bridge, Talisman, Walled Village, Explorer, Library, Vault, Witch

#2:

(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/5/5d/Counting_House.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Counting House) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/2/20/Horn_of_Plenty.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Horn of Plenty) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/1/1b/Jester.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Jester) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/f/f3/Witch.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Witch) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/7/71/Adventurer.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Adventurer)
(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/0/0f/Pawn.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Pawn) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/7/79/Squire.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Squire) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/6/6d/Warehouse.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Warehouse) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/c/c2/Watchtower.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Watchtower) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/4/42/Conspirator.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Conspirator)
Code: [Select]
Pawn, Squire, Warehouse, Watchtower, Conspirator, Counting House, Horn of Plenty, Jester, Witch, Adventurer

with witch involved, i didn't see engines being viable on these, but my opponent went for them and blocked like every curse.  i guess being able to chain buy->topdeck watchtowers helps since you need those in your deck for other things anyway!  also these boards do have some good non-treasure payload so that's a big deal?  these were some of the worst losses i've had in a long time; i thought witch was the BM enabler that would beat the engines but these are made to stop junking attacks so no.  i do wonder if, say, wharf-BM would win on these though...
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Limetime on February 04, 2016, 08:23:53 am
The first board has Hamlet and bridge and  another pile of villages so we can tell this is a draw to x engine.Open Talisman watchtower. Get a witch if you hit 5 without Talisman in play. Start topdecking Hamlet watchtower to defend against witch. Don't forget to buy curses and trash them with watchtower.

The second one seems like witch BM.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: faust on February 04, 2016, 08:32:27 am
The first board really has everything you need for draw-to-X: Watchtower and Library, 2 Villages, Excellent discard-for-benefit, great +buy and a gainer. The second is trickier, I still think a well-built engine usually wins against BM. The problem there is that you have only one pile of Villages, so mirrors will end up in both of you having meh decks. But with Conspirator, Pawn adn Warehouse, the nonterminal support is just so good.

I think a problem in both boards is that you are playing Watchtower draw-to-X against junking and without trashing cards. This is high-skill because it involves lots of tracking: You need to know (a) how likely you are to draw another Watchtower for your next hand (b) how likely your opponent is to play a Witch. Especially on early turn, it is essential to track both decks in order to know when to topdeck a Watchtower and when you can get away with buying other cards.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: assemble_me on February 04, 2016, 08:33:33 am
The first board has Hamlet and bridge and  another pile of villages so we can tell this is a draw to x engine.Open Talisman watchtower. Get a witch if you hit 5 without Talisman in play. Start topdecking Hamlet watchtower to defend against witch. Don't forget to buy curses and trash them with watchtower.

The second one seems like witch BM.

I'd get Squires, Watchtowers and Warehouses in the second one for sure as well, just because there's Witch (getting junk with Jester can hurt a lot as well). Warehouse is also a great help for Watchtower draw. I don't expect that to be very explosive or anything, but as it's the only way to defend curses I think it's totally worth it. You could be able to enable Conspirators that way, too, and maybe 1-2 Horns as gainers (although certainly no Horn megaturn)
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Rabid on February 04, 2016, 08:37:09 am
#2

Is buying top decked witches via squire trash any good here?
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Limetime on February 04, 2016, 08:37:34 am
The first board has Hamlet and bridge and  another pile of villages so we can tell this is a draw to x engine.Open Talisman watchtower. Get a witch if you hit 5 without Talisman in play. Start topdecking Hamlet watchtower to defend against witch. Don't forget to buy curses and trash them with watchtower.

The second one seems like witch BM.

I'd get Squires, Watchtowers and Warehouses in the second one for sure as well, just because there's Witch (getting junk with Jester can hurt a lot as well). Warehouse is also a great help for Watchtower draw. I don't expect that to be very explosive or anything, but as it's the only way to defend curses I think it's totally worth it. You could be able to enable Conspirators that way, too, and maybe 1-2 Horns as gainers (although certainly no Horn megaturn)
Since your payload is mostly treasure it doesn't seem worth it to go draw to x.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: AdamH on February 04, 2016, 08:38:20 am
The second board: I'd probably open double Watchtower here, this is mostly because of the buy-and-trash-a-Squire trick that you can use to hit Witch, which is the only fiver you ever want. Good Watchtower coverage is something you want in this deck anyways, and Warehouse is an amazing card. If things go well for you I'd say you can go for the engine there, Squire as the only village is a little concerning, but if you only take one or two Curses then you were probably winning anyways, so the engine is just a way to win a little more. Note that you want like a million Warehouses this deck since there is no trashing at all and the deck will be really finicky still. Like, you want to empty the entire stack of Pawns, Squires, Warehouses, Watchtowers, and Conspirators into your deck and then it probably works well, but it might not feel like a draw-to-X deck as much as a Warehouse/Conspirator deck with some support; especially since the player who loses the Curse battle harder can easily just buy up Squires for denial without hurting themselves too much.

The first board: you have two stacks of villages and Bridge, which is an amazing payload for this type of deck. The concerning thing is that the only way to get past stop cards at all in your deck is Vault -- Hamlet works, I guess, but it's not very good. You have a lot of bad cards in your deck and keeping coverage up seems more costly -- you want to top-deck Hamlet and Watchtower each turn, which you can maybe do, but maybe you can't.

The Curse war seems most important here, too. I'd open Watchtower/Silver to ensure getting an early Witch and maybe a second one. The thing is, you don't really want 5 Watchtowers in your deck, your payload is terminal and so is Vault -- building this deck to do anything useful is going to take a long time and I worry that 10 Villages isn't really enough (you won't get nearly that many since piles will be gone before you ever get anything to happen). I'm not as sold on engine being good here, but it's probably OK.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: DG on February 04, 2016, 09:13:30 am
i recently watched an old game of adam's where he was way ahead of his opponent in building a draw-to-X engine (hamlet + library) but lost because he had one dud turn at the end.  and all it took for him to have that dud was to buy a duchy and a couple merchant ships!  it felt like he needed 50 villages & draw cards to get through the whole deck without triggering bad reshuffles, and these decks seem way less tolerant of stop cards than other engines.  are these correct observations at all?

Yes the draw to X engines can come to a halt when greening. If you can score with vp chips, get a 3 pile ending, or discard the green cards before drawing then you will be in a better position.

Yes you do need a lot of villages if you want to play income actions, play a watchtower, then continue playing actions. This does make the engine unreliable unless you have trashing or good draw deck control. If you can only manage a misfiring engine then you should probably go for something simpler where you expect to draw treasures.

Watchtower defense can go either way. Each time it trashes junk it makes the deck safer. Each card added to the deck reduces the watchtower's coverage.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: WanderingWinder on February 04, 2016, 10:20:51 am
I have actually been planning to do something about draw-to-X for a while now, but here are a few points:

Anything you can't get rid of in the action phase (mostly treasures, junks, and greens) are very bad, since once you draw one, every remaining draw card you play draws 1 less. With almost any in your deck, you WILL draw them, and it WILL hurt your ability to function a lot. First of all this is going to make you want trashing. But this means you usually can't afford to green very long. In turn, you get mega-turn implied to you, especially against someone who isn't going for Provinces with you. Any time your greening is drawn out, it's bad news.

As for the trashing, I don't think you actually need to get rid of absolutely everything - if you're stuck holding Chapel, you're fine (especially since you're going to be able to play it, hooray; this is true for many but not all trashers, but even if you're stuck holding e.g. remake, that's not too terrible, if you have 0 other junks).

You do need a lot of villages, because you tend to want to go Village Village Village Village Terminal Terminal and only then draw, which is especially bad because you have fewer cards to start with, making you need a way higher village density.

It's a myth that villages without draw are better than villages with draw here. All else equal, you prefer the draw still for sure. However, the lack of draw tends to be less bad here than elsewhere, plus the extra bonuses you get for balance (from not having draw) usually offset the lack of draw.

Of course, you still have the problem of needing to get a draw card to start, along with villages and maybe some terminals (though it's ok to draw those later), which is tricky, especially because you don't really want multiple of your draw cards at once. So sifting is quite good to get the right mix, but in general these engines are more finnicky and weaker than their "normal draw" counterparts.

Discard for benefit is nice, but be a bit careful relying too much on it. Hamlet is excellent of course, giving you discard outlet and village and pseudo-sifting.

Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on February 20, 2016, 03:13:05 am
i've been getting killed lately, and right before i start this league season too!  think i went from over 5k to mid-4600s in like...2 days? lmfao

it sucks because i get caught in a loop of chasing points/iso rating and play for hours longer than i planned to that night.  and by the end i'm doing all i can to keep from banging my head against the table as i lose to the person who opened sea hag with lighthouse on the board.  i can't get over how bad i apparently am, and that seems to seep into future games i play.  i also stop wanting to play engines if i go too long, because my brain gets tired and i just want quick points.  it just creates this assembly-line mentality to these games.

a big general issue with me is that i get massive tunnel vision for cards like scrying pool & hunting party.  like, i will never EVER buy anything but these if i have the money.  i will get nothing but draw/villages until i draw my deck, and only then do i add any payload at all.  unless grand market's in the game and there's trashing, then i only ever buy grand markets even at the expense of draw.

a recent game against dingan illustrated this well: http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160219/log.0.1455855302076.txt

i experimented with ignoring urchin here.  i (wrongly, as it turns out) saw this as a race to get rid of all your starting cards & get grand market first, and thought 2x steward could be faster for that.  i win that split but get destroyed...seems like having tons of draw was better because you can add gold and such (and buy coppers for mercenary later), which NEVER entered my mind whatsoever.  really this game is a nice encapsulation of my typical flowchart atm.

in general, i can't process a bunch of new information at once so i have to just automatically assume certain things will be irrelevant.  basically, instead of thinking outside the box, i always try to build the world's largest box.  that's part of why i'm playing this game - this approach seems impossible here, but i can't conceive of anything else.  i just don't know how to make sense of things without having a pre-existing logic for it, and i completely lose my shit when a game's results go completely against that logic.  that's part of why i don't stream these games; it's a lot of me calling the opponent a moron for buying prince in a game with witch and only develop for trashing, then dying a slow painful death after they collide prince with fucking envoy on the very first fucking turn after they bought that garbage.  maybe prince of envoy is just so good you still have to go for it but then my brain can't handle that possibility or how you would go about doing it with all the purples flying around and no extra gains and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

that above paragraph is something that's always kept me from going as far as i'd like in any game, and i wish i could figure something out.  i want to make it to the A division but man this game just goes against my entire way of thinking...and yet that's why i keep persisting.  i watch youtube matches from the usual suspects when i go to bed, but this game seems too board-specific for that to do a whole lot?

dunno, guess this post is a sign i need a break again
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Burning Skull on February 20, 2016, 03:31:30 am
i should prob take a break for a couple days though!

Yeah, chill :) You just gave the best advise to yourself.

You are a good Dominion player and will be even better if you keep trying and experimentating.
(Also, you are already magnitudes better than the guy who started this thread)
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Limetime on February 20, 2016, 09:58:36 am
I have experience with this kind of frustration.(mainly from the poster above me) Just take a break, get some sleep, watch WW videos.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Burning Skull on February 20, 2016, 10:31:35 am
it's a lot of me calling the opponent a moron

I have experience with this kind of frustration.(mainly from the poster above me)

Thank you, Limetime. I also think you are a nice person :D
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Limetime on February 20, 2016, 10:43:19 am
it's a lot of me calling the opponent a moron

I have experience with this kind of frustration.(mainly from the poster above me)

Thank you, Limetime. I also think you are a nice person :D
Excuse me I didn't read that part of his post.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Burning Skull on February 20, 2016, 10:57:26 am
That's a pity!

I was hoping that my Dominion skills finally grew up to the point when I can constantly make someone angry by winning with seemingly absurd strategies, but nope, not today.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: SCSN on February 20, 2016, 11:03:44 am
i experimented with ignoring urchin here.  i (wrongly, as it turns out) saw this as a race to get rid of all your starting cards & get grand market first, and thought 2x steward could be faster for that.  i win that split but get destroyed...seems like having tons of draw was better because you can add gold and such (and buy coppers for mercenary later), which NEVER entered my mind whatsoever.  really this game is a nice encapsulation of my typical flowchart atm.

You don't even mention Mercenary's attack part in your consideration here, which is very strong and the main reason you should pick it over Steward. Even given that you don't go for it right away, you should still be picking one up later just for this, and if not that at the very least get one Urchin. Not attacking your opponent at all is just suicide.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: markusin on February 20, 2016, 11:47:32 am
i experimented with ignoring urchin here.  i (wrongly, as it turns out) saw this as a race to get rid of all your starting cards & get grand market first, and thought 2x steward could be faster for that.  i win that split but get destroyed...seems like having tons of draw was better because you can add gold and such (and buy coppers for mercenary later), which NEVER entered my mind whatsoever.  really this game is a nice encapsulation of my typical flowchart atm.

You don't even mention Mercenary's attack part in your consideration here, which is very strong and the main reason you should pick it over Steward. Even given that you don't go for it right away, you should still be picking one up later just for this, and if not that at the very least get one Urchin. Not attacking your opponent at all is just suicide.

Yeah it's good to keep in mind how discard attacks make it more difficult to trash cards and gain good cards at the same time. Not to mention the +2 cards and +2 coins Mercenary gets upon trashing.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: smcrtorchs on February 20, 2016, 12:14:17 pm
Hey Funkdoc,

Defenitely take your break, then at a point note you own comment close at the end of your post: "but this game seems too board-specific for that to do a whole lot?" I could not agree more with this. The ration between getting better and studying a game is very much depended on the way that you study a game. While I believe that studying you tube videos can help, it should be incorporated in a much bigger learning plan. I will try to share some of my thoughts, but be aware that every person learns differently and what works for me, might not work for you.

People are really bad at studying any game for many reasons. If you try to just have a single way to understand the whole game of dominion you will eventually keep bettering and bettering that way until it becomes something different. As you start using the different way, you will slowly but surely forget what you already learned with the old way of thinking. Assuming that you can keep  bettering and bettering the way you understand a game, which is something natural, the process above might be repeated many times. This can lead to a non improving rating for a long time, especially if the new way of thinking creates new interesting decisions that you never faced before.

A much better way to study complex strategy games like dominion is to approach them like a concept with many many different areas that you have to master. One Area can be madman market square, another can be madman coppersmith, a third example can be cultist familiar etc.

What is important when you study those areas is to leave no unanswered questions behind. For example, Rebuild is also such an area and there are excellent articles written on it. I no longer remember their content, but I remember thinking: ok after 2 rebuilds I need to go for duchies, but why? As I understood later this was because we are expecting the opponent to contest the duchies. If opponent does not care for the split, we can probably get a third rebuild as it will turn it self into a duchy sooner or later. Another example of a question is whether I need to buy a Junk dealer first if I am playing Journeyman BM. I believe that no Junk dealer should be better at the moment but this question is one I should answer if I want to better my self in the Journeyman big money area and the broader big money area.

You can always ask for such details, or just go through the more time consuming path of playtesting. Asking is probably better, even if you flood the forum with questions. Just be sure that you reached the bottom of the why question. In many cases you will wrongly think that you reach the bottom, but this is good enough to progress and you cannot do better at that time. After you study an area, take written notes on it, revise them from time to time and do add new findings as you understand the game deeper and deeper. An example of what to take note might be for example on how many turns you expect on average to get 4 provinces with a specific strategy and how this can change when you play with colonies. This way you have a rough guide to use for comparing strategies when you play.

There is a specific excercise that certainly helped my game, although it is very time consuming. Take every drawing card and every village in dominion and some trashers and try to build continuously up to double province each time while you keep changing the villages, the drawing cards and the trashers that you use in your deck. Yes the list is long, but it does help. Take down notes on how the game differs with each cards.

Every learning process should start by identifying your leaks and coming up with a specific way to fill the blanks. Dividing a game to many many areas, makes sure that you can do both. It is hard to see how you can use the You tube videos of the best players directly to fill blanks and so I would defenitely not expect anything great from it. Watching those videos actually helped me more to identify my leaks, as people there were doing things I would not think at all on my own.

Finally note that maybe you do not consider fun such an approach and you prefer to follow a slower but more fun route. I defenitely believe that people should follow the funnier route which is not the same for everyone.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on February 20, 2016, 04:58:22 pm
i experimented with ignoring urchin here.  i (wrongly, as it turns out) saw this as a race to get rid of all your starting cards & get grand market first, and thought 2x steward could be faster for that.  i win that split but get destroyed...seems like having tons of draw was better because you can add gold and such (and buy coppers for mercenary later), which NEVER entered my mind whatsoever.  really this game is a nice encapsulation of my typical flowchart atm.

You don't even mention Mercenary's attack part in your consideration here, which is very strong and the main reason you should pick it over Steward. Even given that you don't go for it right away, you should still be picking one up later just for this, and if not that at the very least get one Urchin. Not attacking your opponent at all is just suicide.

yep, and i usually follow this rule.  i just didn't think the attack would be all that relevant if you can get rid of your junk before it gets rolling, because you'll just have a deck with these godlike cantrips so you'll draw everything anyway.  but i guess having to discard even one of those cantrips gives you way less leeway if you don't have bigger draw!

i posted that game mainly to show my general building pattern, but there are others.  like say you have goons, one generic village, and warehouse w/ no trashing...you stick swindler on that board and i don't touch it because i see it as a stop card taking up an action that could go to goons instead.  i assume whoever plays goons the most wins that game so i try to maximize that, but the swindlers hit their mark and i end up spending 20 minutes on a lost cause.  or something like jester if we've both thinned our decks some but aren't quite drawing the whole thing - i just never even consider it until i get more draw, and by then it's often time to green anyway so i end up at a disadvantage to the player with that extra bit of payload.

basically i just try to boil every game down to doing one thing, and end up ignoring anything that gets in the way of that one thing no matter how much else it offers.  the frustrating part is that i notice these problems as i'm playing but can't figure out anything else to do instead.  guess it's gotta come with time!


thank you very much for the advice and kind words, everyone.  i did play this morning but not nearly as long as last night, and i'll stick to the "taking a break" thing now.  i should actually stick to my word of streaming my non-league games, that'll keep my rage in check too.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on June 03, 2016, 04:23:03 pm
so i haven't posted here in a while because i took a break and then adventures came out and i've been playing every night and keep losing and playing more to get back the points i lost and lose even more and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

here's my big hurdle atm: i don't enjoy looking at the board for more than a minute or two before my opening buys, and i hate the idea of playing a single turn that takes 5+ minutes.  i'm an action junkie, probably thanks to my many years in Street Fighter etc...i just wanna click buttons and do things that make me feel cool & powerful, ya know?  i find the more i play, the more i dread going for engines - especially those built around midturn gaining.

not a good feeling to have in the middle of a league season, especially one where i truly believed i could win the group before losing a 5-1 set.  i had this goal of making it to B in my "rookie year", and time is running out on that one...

i know exactly what my problems are and have known them for years; i don't know how to plan entire cohesive strategies in advance unless i've already experienced all the factors involved, and i don't know how to create logic from anything besides past history.  i have zero idea how to learn these things, so i've spent my life finding workarounds for them.  that only goes so far, though, and this game really exposes that for me.

i just feel so lost, in a way that goes beyond "just a game"
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Seprix on June 03, 2016, 05:00:19 pm
I understand your pain. I used to feel that way all the time. You just have to accept the losses, and watch what other people do. Relax, it's just a game. I have also developed a system of analyzing boards, so I play a whole lot better as a result.

What I do is this, and in no particular order:

1. Scan the board for good combos/power cards I recognize, such as Rebuild, Mountebank, Chapel, Scrying Pool, etc.
2. Find a way to incorporate those cards into an engine, Big Money, etc.
3. Find a way to incorporate any of the rest of the cards into an Engine

Finding out whether to go for the Engine or not is an interesting one, and there are a lot of potential situations I have to consider.

1. Are there any gains? (this includes +buys)
2. Are there ways to capitalize on these gains?
3. Is there trashing?
4. Is there a horrific attack that is going to really suck if you don't have an engine? (Ghost Ship, Mountebank, Familiar, etc.)
5. Are +Actions easy to come by? Are there +Actions at all?
6. Is there draw?

An engine is not going to go so well if most of these things are lacking, but it can still beat many Big Money strategies. The trick is to know when an engine is weak enough to avoid in favor of Big Money. Engines always beat Big Money in the long run, and that's what Engines want. Long term. Big Money is short term. As Titandrake wrote in his wonderful article, Big Money is basically a bet that you can score more points in the short term than your opponent's engine can do in the long term. This scenario is of course very rare, and if there's any sort of real doubt, it is probably better to go for the engine. There are three primary reasons to go for the engine.

1. There is a legitimate Rush strategy available that squashes Big Money (Rats/Upgrade, Stonemason, etc.)
2. There is a way to get more than 1 Province a turn (this could be only Duchies or another alt-VP)
3. The weird exception; the awful attack that sucks if you just go for Big Money

Lastly, there is thinking about openings, mid game, and the end game. It is good to have all three phases in mind, much like chess.

Firstly, the opening. The goal of the opening is to get to the midgame as fast as possible.

Again, to put Titandrake's article into context, getting a gainer early (Butcher, Ironworks) is basically a bet that you will sacrifice short term economy or purchasing power to get a longer term advantage in economy. The earlier the bet, the better. If you get an Ironworks the last turn of the game, it does you no good. Trashing lets you get to your purchased cards quicker, and is again a bet for short term losses for a long term gain. With this in mind, it could be considered to get two trashers, a gainer/trasher, trasher/economy, gainer/economy, and so on. I did not mention attacks yet, but they are also crucial for the reasons that they slow the opponent's plan down. Attacks that do not give you some sort of economy/trashing/gaining are much weaker, like Sea Hag. Mountebank is strong not only because it double junks your opponent, but also because it provides such a boost in economy.

Secondly, the midgame. The goal of the midgame is to get to the end game as efficiently as possible. You can see where I'm getting at with this.

Notice that I did not say quickly. Efficiency includes speed in its definition, and it is not enough to simply be the first to get the Province if your opponent can simply triple Province a turn in 4 turns extra of preparation. When to get economy? When to stop buying engine pieces and go into the end game? This is what the midgame is about. It's much trickier than the opening, but this is where your pre-game planning comes into play.

Lastly, the endgame. Tables stated this best with his classic f.ds mantra: In Dominion, the objective is not to have the most points when the game ends. The objective to have the game end when you have the most points. This is likely the single most important rule in all of Dominion. The endgame can be a turn after the midgame. The endgame can be 90 turns away. It all depends on your plan to end the game while ahead.

There's a whole lot to consider for sure, but that's basically what runs through my head nowadays.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Dingan on June 03, 2016, 06:38:57 pm

All good stuff.  I basically do a variation of what you do pre-first-turn.  I first look if there are engine components:
- thinning
- +Actions and/or Throne Room variants
- draw
- +buys and/or gaining
- virtual economy, or some way to have Treasures inside of all those other things

I then look if there are powerful attacks:
- is there an attack I want to play once ever turn (Militia)?
- is there an attack I want to play as many of as possible (Rabble)?
- is there a junker that I can ignore, and am I Ok with getting all of that junk?

I then look for the cool combos that can basically run away with the game if there's no counter to them: Hermit / MS, Traveling Fair / Counting House, pins, etc.

Pre-Adventures, I would always play my 3 or 4 Treasures and then think about all that stuff, and then buy something.  But now, because of things like Save, Alms, etc., I've realized you need to think before you even play any Treasures.

So that's kind of the back-bone of my thought process before my first turn.  Of course, there are always variations, and a lot of uncertainty will still remain.  Are Necropolis or Trusty Steed enough +Actions?  Is Outpost enough gaining?  Is this faster than straight Rebuild?  Can Swindler throw my entire plan out the window?  Will my opponent Embargo the Apothecary pile if I open Potion?  Etc., etc.

I am almost always very unsure on the answers to these questions.  And 8 times out of 10 I kind of just go with something and hope it works out.  But at least I'm thinking about it.  Also, unless it's like a super important league match or something, I try not to take that much time doing it.  If it runs into more than like a minute, I'll just say f it and go with Silver or whatever.

And it's fun to be wrong, so that helps.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Infthitbox on June 03, 2016, 07:26:18 pm
I only have two rules:

Drink lots of water.
Don't get angry.

I'm not very good at these things. However, I find that thinking about doing these things accomplishes the primary goal, Slow the F--- Down. I don't know your music taste, but try listening to something calming, something slower and/or laid-back while you are playing, should help you slow down just enough to think about what is going on. And when you find yourself insta-rematching after a bad loss and throwing good rating points after bad, hit the Quit button. Its big, its green, its there for a reason.

I'm not going to try to give you Dominion advice, you can get that from players better than me.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: dondon151 on June 03, 2016, 08:45:30 pm
i'm an action junkie, probably thanks to my many years in Street Fighter etc...i just wanna click buttons and do things that make me feel cool & powerful, ya know?

Isn't SF (and all fighting games) about being patient and finding openings? If all you do in SF is click buttons, then you must not be very good at it.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Seprix on June 03, 2016, 09:34:19 pm
i'm an action junkie, probably thanks to my many years in Street Fighter etc...i just wanna click buttons and do things that make me feel cool & powerful, ya know?

Isn't SF (and all fighting games) about being patient and finding openings? If all you do in SF is click buttons, then you must not be very good at it.

So THAT'S why I suck at SF5!
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: jsh357 on June 03, 2016, 09:37:42 pm
You can't be expected to see every possible combo all the time. I miss obvious things frequently; all you can really do is adapt and move on. There are painstaking pre-opening processes you can put yourself through to try and improve, but at the end of the day it doesn't make as big a difference as people think. Often your best gut guess will do you quite well. Of course, I'm no Stef or Mic. I personally play a lot better when I'm calm and not stressing the game so much. If I have any particular advice: pay more attention to the endgame than the beginning. Everyone goes nuts over that initial board analysis, but at some point no matter what strategy you chose, you are playing with the deck you have built and now you have to figure out what decisions to make before everything ends. I see novice players flub the end of the game way more than the beginning! Heck, they can just copy my opening and do well often enough. I think I started being particularly cognizant of this fact somewhere around level 53 on the iso board. What can I say; I'm a slow learner.

I would relax some. You're 80th on the leaderboard; that is very impressive. You can compete with any top player in all likelihood. Thousands are stuck below you, some of them probably trying as hard as you are.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Limetime on June 04, 2016, 12:28:11 am
Don't play at night even if you don't think your sleepy.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: 2.71828..... on June 04, 2016, 11:08:58 am
Don't play drunk either
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: iguanaiguana on June 04, 2016, 03:04:07 pm
so i haven't posted here in a while because i took a break and then adventures came out and i've been playing every night and keep losing and playing more to get back the points i lost and lose even more and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

here's my big hurdle atm: i don't enjoy looking at the board for more than a minute or two before my opening buys, and i hate the idea of playing a single turn that takes 5+ minutes.  i'm an action junkie, probably thanks to my many years in Street Fighter etc...i just wanna click buttons and do things that make me feel cool & powerful, ya know?  i find the more i play, the more i dread going for engines - especially those built around midturn gaining.

not a good feeling to have in the middle of a league season, especially one where i truly believed i could win the group before losing a 5-1 set.  i had this goal of making it to B in my "rookie year", and time is running out on that one...

i know exactly what my problems are and have known them for years; i don't know how to plan entire cohesive strategies in advance unless i've already experienced all the factors involved, and i don't know how to create logic from anything besides past history.  i have zero idea how to learn these things, so i've spent my life finding workarounds for them.  that only goes so far, though, and this game really exposes that for me.

i just feel so lost, in a way that goes beyond "just a game"

About that 5-1 set.

In the one game you beat me, you won because I didn't think about how to end the game on a win once I had a better deck than you.

In at least two of the games where I beat you (the scrying pool game where I dipped into gardens and the one where I stupidly did stonemason/feodum), you didn't think about how to end the game on a win once you had a better deck than me. You had the deck that deserved to and could have won both of those games. But you were playing your fun deck instead of focusing on ending the game. So I found a way to come back in the meantime and you lost.

In the other ones I think I just had better shuffle luck.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Polk5440 on June 04, 2016, 04:26:51 pm
not a good feeling to have in the middle of a league season, especially one where i truly believed i could win the group before losing a 5-1 set.  i had this goal of making it to B in my "rookie year", and time is running out on that one...

Hey now! There's some mighty fine players in C1, if I do say so myself. You're not the only rookie looking to get to B on his first try ;).
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: teamrocketgrunt on June 04, 2016, 06:11:35 pm
I don't know your music taste, but try listening to something calming, something slower and/or laid-back while you are playing, should help you slow down just enough to think about what is going on.

I had trouble concentrating during (competitive) Dominion matches. Usually because I don't know what to do with the time between my own turns (which is probably why I like playing bots) and then I started listening to Trap Mixes on youtube. I was never a fan of Trap Music before, but damn, this stuff works. I mean, it's not the most calming of genres, but I think Infthitbox is onto something here. Listening to the right music can really help with your focus.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: dedicateddan on June 04, 2016, 07:10:08 pm
here's my big hurdle atm: i don't enjoy looking at the board for more than a minute or two before my opening buys, and i hate the idea of playing a single turn that takes 5+ minutes.  i'm an action junkie, probably thanks to my many years in Street Fighter etc...i just wanna click buttons and do things that make me feel cool & powerful, ya know?  i find the more i play, the more i dread going for engines - especially those built around midturn gaining.

i just feel so lost, in a way that goes beyond "just a game"

Losing is good. It let's you figure out what works, what doesn't, and how different combinations of cards interact.

And, in the end, winning and losing is something you can't control. Sometimes you get a really bad draw and there's nothing you can do.

Decisions are the aspect of the game that you do have control over. If you want to play really good dominion, you have to focus on making really good decisions.

So, don't be afraid to mess up. And if you do make a mistake, take a look at the game log and learn from it. And if you're ever really lost, come consult your posse in this thread :)
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on June 04, 2016, 07:57:32 pm
haven't had time to read all the responses yet, but thank you very much!  i've got another league match today, so i'll probably say more after that's done.

just wanted to touch on this one~

i'm an action junkie, probably thanks to my many years in Street Fighter etc...i just wanna click buttons and do things that make me feel cool & powerful, ya know?

Isn't SF (and all fighting games) about being patient and finding openings? If all you do in SF is click buttons, then you must not be very good at it.

of course!  people think it's just mashing buttons but there's so much more.  what i meant is, it's all still really fast-paced.  it always feels like there's something going on, in a way that it doesn't when Stef or Adam sits there inactive for minutes on end.


little extra bit for everyone: part of why i talk about this being bigger than a game is that a lot of this reflects how i am as a person in general.  i've always been a "just wing it" sort who never has a plan B, and i worry that it holds me back in a bunch of ways.  a big reason i got into this game is that it runs so counter to my personality and i was hoping it could help re-train my brain, ya know?
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: -Stef- on June 04, 2016, 08:06:49 pm
haven't had time to read all the responses yet, but thank you very much!  i've got another league match today, so i'll probably say more after that's done.

Have you considered streaming those? Most streamers get a lot of comments on their play so if you watch it back it's great for your confidence you might learn something.
Slightly more serious - if you want to improve getting comments on your actions/decisions is good, but getting comments on your reasoning is even better.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on June 04, 2016, 08:49:44 pm
i figured someone would ask why i haven't been streaming lately!  couple reasons:

1. OBS + dominion overheating my laptop.  it's been better lately but still scary enough that i wouldn't want to stream any league matches.

2. no MMF mod for the time being.  without custom screen resolutions, i can't stream a decent-looking window thanks to my poor ol' laptop screen. =(
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: dondon151 on June 04, 2016, 10:14:18 pm
of course!  people think it's just mashing buttons but there's so much more.  what i meant is, it's all still really fast-paced.  it always feels like there's something going on, in a way that it doesn't when Stef or Adam sits there inactive for minutes on end.

I mean, you just have to pretend that all of the cards are buttons, and you're clicking them together in your head as fast as you can.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Seprix on June 04, 2016, 11:31:12 pm
Stef and Adam are calculating potential moves when they are inactive. Dominion is more like Chess than Street Fighter, and Dominion isn't even all that much like Chess.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on June 05, 2016, 08:58:01 pm
alright, i'll give some more detailed responses now...

Seprix & Dingan, thank you for all your breakdowns!  thing is, i just can't believe someone like SCSN or Dan says "just screw it i'm doing this thing" in the opening.  like, there's gotta be a level where you're fully in control, no?

jsh: "You're 80th on the leaderboard; that is very impressive."  thing is, i was 25th a few weeks ago!  hard for that not to feel rough, ya know?  i figured i probably wasn't as good as that suggested but...

iguanaiguana: trust me, i knew i was very lucky to walk away with that first game.  the gardens one i just didn't see a way to stop at all - i'm not used to gardens being relevant in a scrying pool game, and once you started i couldn't find any way to keep up in points.  was i supposed to snipe some gardens from you or what?  the stonemason/feodum one also felt to me like you had the better deck, or at least i couldn't figure out a way to beat it.

Dan Brooks: "Losing is good. It let's you figure out what works, what doesn't, and how different combinations of cards interact."  thing is, i've never been great at figuring out precisely why i lost.  here's another core issue: i build this set of rules & logic for a game, and can never understand when it loses because that destroys everything i ever knew about the game.  i can look at the log, but i can't bring myself to believe that what my opponent did was really better if it's the opposite of what everyone here says.

in today's league match, there was one board with heavy trashing (chapel + amulet) & grand market.  no villages or draw, but smugglers was there for a bit of gaining.  my plan was to open chapel/amulet, go all-out with trashing, then gain silvers with amulet to grab a grand market.  my opponent had a 5/2 and opened chapel/stash.  he had rather bad early draws while i had pretty good ones, but he bought a silver early to go along with that stash.  i think he then gained one silver from the amulet, and got a grand market the turn before i did.  this led to him winning the split 6-4, and i had no answer after that.  i don't know how to learn from a game like that, because i was winning the trashing race by a mile and that's supposed to be the most important thing.

another game from that same match had a similar issue.  king's court/wharf was the big thing, and we both opened forager/ironworks (board had market square & village, along with training to power up those villages).  i got a 2nd forager during the 2nd shuffle, while my opponent stuck with one forager; they got wharves and training really early, while i didn't buy a wharf until turn 11.  i just thought whenever forager's the only trasher you want AT LEAST 2 of them, and had never seen a situation where 1 was the right number.  i guess the ironworks was what made 2nd forager bad?  i swear i've lost like 50 wharf games in this exact fashion but i never learn, because i can't imagine playing dominion in a way besides "trashtrashtrashTRASHYOUIDIOT KEEP TRASHING".  tournament, inheritance, governor...anything like that will destroy me, because people play in a way i think is SUPPOSED to lose and it works for those cards.


thanks again everyone, i like to see people engage with the real core-level stuff here as opposed to just dominion cards!
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Seprix on June 05, 2016, 09:05:20 pm
Seprix & Dingan, thank you for all your breakdowns!  thing is, i just can't believe someone like SCSN or Dan says "just screw it i'm doing this thing" in the opening.  like, there's gotta be a level where you're fully in control, no?

SCSN and Dan can pull wins out of their rears because they adapt and recognize what is and isn't working as they play. Openings are important, but most of the time SCSN and Dan go for weirder stuff, it's not much worse than whatever it is that is better.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on June 05, 2016, 11:54:04 pm
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160603/log.0.1464918655452.txt

You cannot play this Alchemist/Stables draw your deck thing and keep 7 Coppers while there's a Spice Merchant on the board. Get one over the 1st or 2nd Potion. On turn 19 you take a Duchy but there's no close 3 pile, you still aren't drawing your deck consistently and you haven't even bought a Province yet. Then you just keep greening aggressively which makes all your Lab variants awful. You can beat him with Province points, but you have to be able to buy Provinces consistently first.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160603/log.0.1464917761875.txt

Can't say I care much for the Ghost Ship, I like his Haggler a lot more. The attack hurts some, but between Vagrant/Cart/SP there's a lot here to mitigate it. Presence of Vagrant makes the Haggler pretty safe and then of course you can keep feeding in Cartographers and Markets as you buy Provinces. Not a fan of either player's Duchess buy, yours is a little better than his. Do not buy a Duchy turn 18, the game is not ending and you aren't even behind in points, get a Cartographer. Again, you start scrambling for points while there's a stack of Provinces waiting for some guy with a nice consistent deck to pick them up.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on June 06, 2016, 12:30:07 am
alright, i'll give some more detailed responses now...

Seprix & Dingan, thank you for all your breakdowns!  thing is, i just can't believe someone like SCSN or Dan says "just screw it i'm doing this thing" in the opening.  like, there's gotta be a level where you're fully in control, no?

Everybody does this sometimes, there's no magic level where this stops. I actually wish I thought even less in the opening, I'd love to get to a point where I'm opening within 10 seconds every game. Events are making this a little harder. It's not great to miss things, but it's even worse to talk yourself into crappy stuff, waste brainpower, or make yourself miserable second guessing.

Quote
Dan Brooks: "Losing is good. It let's you figure out what works, what doesn't, and how different combinations of cards interact."  thing is, i've never been great at figuring out precisely why i lost.  here's another core issue: i build this set of rules & logic for a game, and can never understand when it loses because that destroys everything i ever knew about the game.  i can look at the log, but i can't bring myself to believe that what my opponent did was really better if it's the opposite of what everyone here says.

When I watch your streams, I always feel like you're trying to read too much into the result of a single game. Like maybe you want there to be some definitive lesson or reason why the game went the way it did. But Dominion isn't really like that, it's this horrible mess of shuffles and choices and you can't figure out what the best play was, all you can do is say: "welp maybe I should have opened Remake instead of Jack, who knows". If you're really lucky you mess something up like missing a forced win, or you play your cards in an obviously wrong order, or your opponent beats your pants off, then the lesson is a little more clear. I know I screw something up every single game I play, if I can find at least one thing that I can do better next time, well that's enough for me, I don't need to unlock the secrets of the universe.

If part of the problem is anger, I think it's important to learn to laugh at your own misfortune, and always remember that your bad luck is probably brightening someone else's day! Or just be really lucky like me! If you can't enjoy drawing your Throne Room dead, why even play Dominion? That's what I think at least.

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thanks again everyone, i like to see people engage with the real core-level stuff here as opposed to just dominion cards!

FWIW, IMO, etc. I think a lot of the high level stuff that people discuss is pretty useless. It can be fun to BS (I wrote this post after all) but really if you want to play better Dominion you have to eliminate mistakes from your play. And usually that mistake is some low level thing (you bought X but should have bought Y). Somehow through your experience you've got to build up an intuition for noticing these mistakes. As I learned the game, I just looked for mistakes everywhere: other player's videos, game reports, my own logs, my opponent's play.

I wouldn't hold the common wisdoms of any Dominion strategy writing in too high regard. Ideas don't spread in a forum because they're good, they spread because they're catchy or easy to convey and repeat. If you want to learn the ideas worth valuing, you have to learn in the game itself, either by playing or watching others play.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: dedicateddan on June 06, 2016, 04:06:15 am
Seprix & Dingan, thank you for all your breakdowns!  thing is, i just can't believe someone like SCSN or Dan says "just screw it i'm doing this thing" in the opening.  like, there's gotta be a level where you're fully in control, no?

I typically say that when a couple of strategies are close in power level, it's not entirely clear how the game is going to play out, and I have to buy a card. And typically, you do want to go for aggressive thinning and cycling to control how the deck plays out.

Dan Brooks: here's another core issue: i build this set of rules & logic for a game, and can never understand when it loses because that destroys everything i ever knew about the game.  i can look at the log, but i can't bring myself to believe that what my opponent did was really better if it's the opposite of what everyone here says.

Maybe your opponent played better, maybe they just got really lucky. In any case, it can be quite useful to look at the game log, and ask questions like:

Looking at the board, what are the leading strategies?
What are the opening buys, the midgame buys?
Which buys do you agree with? Disagree?
Are the players building the predicted decks? Any surprises?
When did the players begin to green? Could they have built up more?
Were there any dud turns? Could they have been prevented?
How did the end game play out?
Looking back at the board, what do you think the best strategies are? How would you play it differently?

in today's league match, there was one board with heavy trashing (chapel + amulet) & grand market.  no villages or draw, but smugglers was there for a bit of gaining.  my plan was to open chapel/amulet, go all-out with trashing, then gain silvers with amulet to grab a grand market.  my opponent had a 5/2 and opened chapel/stash.  he had rather bad early draws while i had pretty good ones, but he bought a silver early to go along with that stash.  i think he then gained one silver from the amulet, and got a grand market the turn before i did.  this led to him winning the split 6-4, and i had no answer after that.  i don't know how to learn from a game like that, because i was winning the trashing race by a mile and that's supposed to be the most important thing.

Consider questions like:

Do you want 3 terminals or 2?
When do you make the switch from trashing to building?
When do you want smugglers? Always? Never? If you think your opponent is buying good cards?
What's the timing on greening? Do you want to add gold before greening? Is it possible to threaten an estate pileout?
How important is winning the trashing split? Getting the first grand market?

another game from that same match had a similar issue.  king's court/wharf was the big thing, and we both opened forager/ironworks (board had market square & village, along with training to power up those villages).  i got a 2nd forager during the 2nd shuffle, while my opponent stuck with one forager; they got wharves and training really early, while i didn't buy a wharf until turn 11.  i just thought whenever forager's the only trasher you want AT LEAST 2 of them, and had never seen a situation where 1 was the right number.  i guess the ironworks was what made 2nd forager bad?

Open Silver/Forager and plan to buy a Wharf on the first shuffle. Wharf is a good card.

i swear i've lost like 50 wharf games in this exact fashion but i never learn, because i can't imagine playing dominion in a way besides "trashtrashtrashTRASHYOUIDIOT KEEP TRASHING".  tournament, inheritance, governor...anything like that will destroy me, because people play in a way i think is SUPPOSED to lose and it works for those cards.

If your opponent plays a surprising strategy, play it yourself to see how it works.

thanks again everyone
:)
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Burning Skull on June 06, 2016, 04:34:57 am
I think a lot of the high level stuff that people discuss is pretty useless.
Can't agree more!

It can be fun to BS

It surely can, how do you know?
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Titandrake on June 06, 2016, 09:51:00 pm
I think a lot of the high level stuff that people discuss is pretty useless.
Can't agree more!

I kind of agree and disagree.

(Disclaimer: I've written multiple articles on high level strategy.)

(Disclaimer 2: This is going to be super BS-y)

(Disclaimer 3: I mean, REALLY bullshit. Warning you right now.)

I agree that Dominion is more about identifying mistakes, it's hard to get an intuition for this besides experience, and it's hard to articulate that intuition.

So why write high level strategy articles? A good high level strategy article should give a name to or raise awareness of a problem that people may not even recognize. They should introduce organizing principles that can help guide your thoughts about the game. Take "the Silver test". It's horribly outdated, but it forced people to ask themselves "is buying X instead of Silver a mistake?" Penultimate Province Rule was big for a while, and it introduces the question "is buying Province instead of Duchy a mistake?" A new player won't ask this question, and could misplay it several times before recognizing they're messing it up. PPR then generalizes to asking yourself about endgame VP decisions, a topic so varied that a detailed article is basically impossible. But, there's an article about endgame (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=14640.0). It's not comprehensive, but it does a good job of explaining common endgame mistakes, and gets you started in the right direction.

When done well, articles articulate enough intuition to get the reader to recognize their mistakes and understand why they are mistakes. So no, I don't high level stuff is useless, it's just that it's very easy to cling to ideas or generalize your experience too broadly, and soon you're getting into debates about whether X is payload or not. And that's terribly useless - it's abstracted from the game by enough to have little relevance. Getting an answer to that question isn't likely to change the way you play the game. It's classification for classification's sake. Admirable in pure math, less so in card games.

I think the disconnect here is that many articles (including ones I've written) sound like dogma delivered from on high, when the truth is that they simply contain what we understand so far, which is certainly incomplete and possibly wrong.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Awaclus on June 07, 2016, 05:19:01 am
When done well, articles articulate enough intuition to get the reader to recognize their mistakes and understand why they are mistakes. So no, I don't high level stuff is useless, it's just that it's very easy to cling to ideas or generalize your experience too broadly, and soon you're getting into debates about whether X is payload or not. And that's terribly useless - it's abstracted from the game by enough to have little relevance. Getting an answer to that question isn't likely to change the way you play the game. It's classification for classification's sake. Admirable in pure math, less so in card games.

I actually think that a discussion about the definition of payload is some of the more useful high level strategy discussion you can possibly have. In order to play engine games well, you need to understand the distinction between the concepts of payload and economy, and using the same word for both probably means you don't understand it well enough. That understanding is something that you can apply in most games, so it's actually useful. Although, you could argue that the difference between payload and economy isn't really a high level idea, because it's such a basic concept that you can and should learn pretty early on, but in practice, a lot of players who understand much more complex ideas still fail to differentiate between payload and economy.

Broad generalizations are the second most useful kind of high level strategy advice. Sure, they might be wrong some of the time, but at least they're actually useful the rest of the time, and if it's an important idea (like always buying two Urchins), it's better to stress it too much than too little.

High level advice that applies directly to a practical in-game situation without being a broad generalization does tend to be largely useless, because the practical situation in which it can be applied is going to occur maybe a few times every 1000 games, because the advice is so vague that you're none the wiser after reading it, or because following the advice makes so little difference that it gets completely obscured by shuffle luck.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on June 07, 2016, 09:25:46 am
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160603/log.0.1464918655452.txt

You cannot play this Alchemist/Stables draw your deck thing and keep 7 Coppers while there's a Spice Merchant on the board. Get one over the 1st or 2nd Potion. On turn 19 you take a Duchy but there's no close 3 pile, you still aren't drawing your deck consistently and you haven't even bought a Province yet. Then you just keep greening aggressively which makes all your Lab variants awful. You can beat him with Province points, but you have to be able to buy Provinces consistently first.

ok, thanks for taking a look at these!  i'm never clear on what to do with stables, because in the past i've trashed too much copper and gotten dead hands from that.  i think part of it was also that in these junking games where you can't clean up the junk so well, i lose a lot when i focus on trashing copper and building; an opponent who just buys 50 silvers and duchies tends to beat me.  if something like sea hag or mountebank is on the board, i've developed this habit of just rushing duchies and trying to end the game before my opponent gets provinces.  it wins much more often than not in my normal ranked games, so i keep doing it.

i guess here the difference is the nonterminal draw being so strong, making it easier to get rid of the curses?

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http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160603/log.0.1464917761875.txt

Can't say I care much for the Ghost Ship, I like his Haggler a lot more. The attack hurts some, but between Vagrant/Cart/SP there's a lot here to mitigate it. Presence of Vagrant makes the Haggler pretty safe and then of course you can keep feeding in Cartographers and Markets as you buy Provinces. Not a fan of either player's Duchess buy, yours is a little better than his. Do not buy a Duchy turn 18, the game is not ending and you aren't even behind in points, get a Cartographer. Again, you start scrambling for points while there's a stack of Provinces waiting for some guy with a nice consistent deck to pick them up.

yep, you've caught on to another little habit of mine.  i practically ALWAYS get ghost ship in the first 2 shuffles, because that early it seems like the best attack in the game to me...and the early game is supposed to be more important than the late-game, no?  i guess here the main issue is that the counters are so cheap, which isn't normally the case.

also, i honestly forgot that haggler lets you get $2s with scrying pools. =P

re: greening, i get really scared of someone with all 8 gardens.  like, there's no way i can get all the provinces before they end the game, right?  and i figure i would need more points than provinces to beat that.  this is something i don't have much experience with, as we tend to mirror gardens or both ignore it.

EDIT: regarding your other post...i'm really more interested in psychological things beyond the game itself.  i'll sound like Legendary Game Designer David Sirlin for a second here, but i've long viewed competitive games as tests of ideologies and a way to prepare you for bigger things in real life.  if i lose, it must be that my core ideology was weaker on some level.

that's why i try to go into these big questions from individual games.  well that, and i'm used to a scene where 2-out-of-3 is supposed to tell you who the better player is; if it doesn't, people there think it means the game is too random/scrubby and badly designed.  intellectually i know that's probably wrong, but it's hard to shake that!
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on June 07, 2016, 09:31:15 am
re: greening, i get really scared of someone with all 8 gardens.  like, there's no way i can get all the provinces before they end the game, right?  i figure i would need more points than provinces to beat that.  this is something i don't have much experience with, as we tend to mirror gardens or both ignore it.

The big thing is that if the game isn't ending right now, you will score fewer points by the end of the game by aggressively dipping for Duchies/Estates rather than building until you can get Provinces. At least that's what it looked like to me in those games, they both turned into very long games.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: smcrtorchs on June 09, 2016, 05:38:01 am



FWIW, IMO, etc. I think a lot of the high level stuff that people discuss is pretty useless. It can be fun to BS (I wrote this post after all) but really if you want to play better Dominion you have to eliminate mistakes from your play. And usually that mistake is some low level thing (you bought X but should have bought Y).


I strongly believe that the very top players can see much easier the possible game states after x shuffles of the game, whether they do it consciously or subconsciously and this is what differentiates them from the rest. Am I wrong to this? I believe it is important to also have this in mind along with the low level things, if you want to become a top player as funkdoc does.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: teamrocketgrunt on June 09, 2016, 06:20:04 am
I strongly believe that the very top players can see much easier the possible game states after x shuffles of the game, whether they do it consciously or subconsciously and this is what differentiates them from the rest. Am I wrong to this? I believe it is important to also have this in mind along with the low level things, if you want to become a top player as funkdoc does.

You are not wrong at all. I would compare the learning process to exploring a giant forest. If you want to travel through, you need a goddamn map first. Otherwise, it gets frustrating. That's why heuristics are good and that's why strategy articles are good. They are the map that you use. However, after a while you realize that relying solely on your map becomes bad. It might be out of date and the forest can change. Plus, unless you're Chuck Norris, maps don't save you from bear attacks.

Which is why you have to venture off the beaten paths. In the end, nothing is as valuable as actually getting to know your environment and familiarizing with it. I agree with smcrtorchs that top level players can say "screw it, I'm doing XY here", because they have internalized what most other players feel the need to actively think about. Problem is, what they have internalized, is not a sum of three-hundred strategy articles and the principles incorporated, but the experience from continuously doing what looks good to them (I am not arguing that this knowledge is based on some founding principles, though) and processing the results. I always tried to dissect boards (thinners, gainers, villages, draw etc.), but recently I have been trying to do it less. It's been way more fun playing what jumps out at me and then sucking at it than playing something I thought I carefully discerned and than sucking at that anyway  ;D.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: smcrtorchs on June 10, 2016, 08:31:40 am
I will get a bit out of topic and share a bit of my past while I also try to reply. I had no map when I was learning dominion, as I did not knew of this community. It took me much more time I guess, to learn what others could learn by reading. By the time I was introduced to the forum (I believe by Jeebus during a game we played on goko), most of the articles were of no real help.

Looking at what you do (trying to obtain a more "feel" approach for dominion) certainly sounds a step towards the right direction and is something I probably have not worked on.
Intuition can work along dissecting boards. It is not either the one or the other. I was introduced to the power of intuition from a friend when we both played corridor which is a really fun game to try. He was able to somehow "see" what was correct and what was not. Eventually he helped me to understand how he was doing it and I was getting much better with it.

The other game that I was able to use intuition was backgammon, but it happened in a very strange way. I have studied the game, putting many many hours in to it, but I always did it either from a calculations point of view, or trying to analyze the factors that affect a position, or learning what works and what not by heart, even memorizing positions and winning percentages and so on (serious players do so in backgammon). However it was not until i stopped playing backgammon that I developed an intuitive understanding of the game and it happened on its own. I have no idea how or why it happened. I can only say that it helps me greatly to keep my level of play close to the level I had before I stopped studying.

Something else that people on this forum might find strange is that in backgammon the best ratio of studying/playing if you want to get better is 90% studying and only 10% of playing. There is no reason to believe that this ratio is pretty different at other games including dominion and this simply means that if you choose the "I will learn by playing method" you will learn a lot slower than if you tried to study the game. The closest I can think of however to studying dominion, is studying top player's logs assuming you can indeed understand well what is happening there and why.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Seprix on June 10, 2016, 10:54:46 am
As far as I am aware, Backgammon is like chess, where there is no/little luck involved. Bad draws happen in Dominion, and even a good strategy can lose to a poor one.

How do you really study Dominion anyways? Reading logs isn't all that helpful, as the situations are going to be different every time because of shuffles. If there really is a way, sign me up! I'd love to study Dominion much more.

The best three things that can be done in a nutshell with Dominion is how to end the game while you are ahead, have a plan to go about it, and learn how to minimize your mistakes.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on June 10, 2016, 12:38:23 pm
what i thought would be the magic bullet was sorting boards into kinda broad "types", and looking at "matchups" between particular cards (that's the fighting-game player in me again!)

an example of the first one that i still don't have a good handle on would be "big draw engine with stonemason as the only gainer".  if you can't gain $6s with stonemason, when do you buy a gold just to turn into 2 duchies at the end?

an example "matchup" i struggle with is cultist vs. ambassador.  i just thought cultist-BM would steamroll, but i've lost badly to people who get ambassador there.  just assume a 2-card kingdom in this case.

this has been the most effective thing for me thus far, but i'd like to hear other thoughts!
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on June 10, 2016, 01:00:38 pm
what i thought would be the magic bullet was sorting boards into kinda broad "types", and looking at "matchups" between particular cards (that's the fighting-game player in me again!)

an example of the first one that i still don't have a good handle on would be "big draw engine with stonemason as the only gainer".  if you can't gain $6s with stonemason, when do you buy a gold just to turn into 2 duchies at the end?

an example "matchup" i struggle with is cultist vs. ambassador.  i just thought cultist-BM would steamroll, but i've lost badly to people who get ambassador there.  just assume a 2-card kingdom in this case.

this has been the most effective thing for me thus far, but i'd like to hear other thoughts!

I'm not a fan of figuring out the possible things on a board and comparing them. The trap here is that it elevates crappy strategies to the level of a good one, even thinking about them as comparable can heavily inflate a weak strategy's relevance in your mind. Everyone immediately notices Workshop/Gardens and suddenly it's an option but it's terrible and shouldn't even be considered unless it's actually jumping out because the board is weak.

Ideal case is that something on the board jumps out immediately and I can see the kind of deck I'd like to build. Then I can worry about what openings and early game cards I need to focus on. In that case I don't need to spend any more time thinking about the other possibilities except in the context of "how will I beat that awful thing up if my opponent chooses it?'

But the ideal case doesn't always happen and sometimes we have to consider our options. My view here is that if I really can't distinguish between two choices (after a little thought), I shouldn't keep wasting effort trying to figure it out, just pick one and then focus on how to play it rather than keep worrying about the other thing.

Another potential issue with comparing things is that it immediately makes you think they aren't compatible, which is often not the case.

The two examples are so context dependent I can't imagine there's anything useful to say about them. Uh, sometimes you want to buy the Gold? Sometimes you don't? Cultist vs Ambassador doesn't seem like the kind of thing you can make a general rule about, those other 8 kingdom cards will decide everything.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on June 10, 2016, 01:32:49 pm
what i've done is have these 2-card matchups as a "base" and and adjust that around the rest of the kingdom cards.

i mean, i think it's really important to know that a minion stack beats a deck full of apothecaries if neither has any strong help from the rest of the kingdom.  those two cards don't really work with each other, so that's a case where thinking of it as a matchup seems good?  that's what i'm getting at here, idk
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on June 10, 2016, 02:00:57 pm
what i've done is have these 2-card matchups as a "base" and and adjust that around the rest of the kingdom cards.

i mean, i think it's really important to know that a minion stack beats a deck full of apothecaries if neither has any strong help from the rest of the kingdom.  those two cards don't really work with each other, so that's a case where thinking of it as a matchup seems good?  that's what i'm getting at here, idk

My feeling is that these comparisons just don't make a very good base, too much context is removed (most of the kingdom!). I don't really care at all what the behavior of Minion vs Apothecary is in a vacuum, it certainly doesn't seem like critical information to me. I mean right now if you asked me if I would go Minion or Apothecary on a random board with no other information, I would just say "no clue". And I can think of some cases where I'd still get both, I played a game (http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160515/log.0.1463352888828.txt) the other day where I did, I'm not positive it was right but it didn't seem too bad.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: DG on June 10, 2016, 03:46:42 pm
what i've done is have these 2-card matchups as a "base" and and adjust that around the rest of the kingdom cards.

i mean, i think it's really important to know that a minion stack beats a deck full of apothecaries if neither has any strong help from the rest of the kingdom.  those two cards don't really work with each other, so that's a case where thinking of it as a matchup seems good?  that's what i'm getting at here, idk

What I'd look at here is how the cards interact and see how they fit into the kingdom. So here the questions could be - When to buy the potion? How will the potion change coin income? Is there an extra buy so that it isn't a straight choice between minion or apothecary? How does trashing fit into the deck? Will it be problem to use the minion attack after drawing coppers with apothecary? Will the apothecary be of use in ordering the top of the draw deck? Will there be a problem managing shuffles? Will there be competition over key cards like apothecary and minion? How will green cards eventually fit into this deck? This isn't a checklist, it's more of an awareness.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Titandrake on June 11, 2016, 01:43:52 am
Card vs card matchups don't seem very useful when 1) there are 200+ cards meaning 40000+ matchups which is basically not worth learning and 2) you can't "main" a card, meaning you can't get away with knowing only the matchups involving A + B + C, where A/B/C are your mains.

If you really want to treat cards like fighting game characters, a more useful thinking pattern is to treat each card as a unique collection of strengths and weaknesses.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: smcrtorchs on June 11, 2016, 05:04:19 am
As far as I am aware, Backgammon is like chess, where there is no/little luck involved. Bad draws happen in Dominion, and even a good strategy can lose to a poor one.

How do you really study Dominion anyways? Reading logs isn't all that helpful, as the situations are going to be different every time because of shuffles. If there really is a way, sign me up! I'd love to study Dominion much more.

The best three things that can be done in a nutshell with Dominion is how to end the game while you are ahead, have a plan to go about it, and learn how to minimize your mistakes.

Backgammon is probably more luck based than dominion, as it includes dices which roll. But this is a small detail. There are always things you can study, the question is how much you get out of them. This was why I only mentioned studying logs. If you understand what is really happening, then this is definitely much faster than seeing videos and maybe the fastest of all.

However studying should be based on each person separately and his habits and needs. For dominion it could probably also include:

1. Reading material. The help thread of this forum is really good I think.
2. podcasts and videos
2. Studying games.
3. Asking questions to others.
4. Testing scenarios by playing them out (takes time, but might be necessary, if after the above you still have doubt and care to check it). If Stef and SCSN implement the "play game from here feature", this will become much easier in the new version.
5. However at the moment you can test opening scenarios pretty quickly and there are plenty of those.
Experimenting with units (actions, cards, coins) etc. and trying to understand the impact of an extra or a less unit in different cases and scenarios.
6. Writing down your mistakes in each game and analyze them.
7. Try to guess more or less the whole game in shuffles, especially for games which are like rushes or hermit megaturns, or big money something (I chose these categories because they are easier to start with) and write what you have found out.
8. Try to find the differences a small thing makes when you develop strategies. An easy example here is using similar, but different cards for the same strategy over and over again and see how this affects the game. Write down what you find.
9. The most important one, revise everything at your own pace, but tactically.

The question is how much you get out of each and what mix you should use. This is different for every player and his level and it also depends on your goal. Is your goal to get better as fast as possible; is it to have fun while you become a bit better; As a general guideline, of you want to improve faster, I believe that as you progress you want to read and watch less videos and study more logs and do more from the 5 to 9 things.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Seprix on June 16, 2016, 04:32:30 pm
Ah, here's a mistake I still do constantly. I can't beat players like Heisenberg and HvHosenfeld (or whatever his name was) for this reason. I play way too fast. Even if I get a nice quick advantage, I can blow it by not playing as well as I should be. I'm in the same boat as you now, funkdoc. I can smoke everyone but the best, but the best can just tear into me like I just started the game. :p
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on June 17, 2016, 12:27:18 pm
i've actually worked my way back up a lot since then, hovering around 5k right now.  IIRC i have a pretty good record vs. the players you mentioned, but i've gotten smoked by vsiewnar & AI recently.

i really, really need to remind myself to stop playing when i get into that mood where i just want to play money every board, that might be my biggest hurdle atm
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Seprix on June 17, 2016, 12:43:09 pm
You want to play money every board? How are you 5k? :p
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on June 17, 2016, 02:45:08 pm
that's only when i've been playing for hours on end, typically when i'm stuck at home with nothing else to do

been working on getting a new computer so i can stream a lot more different things, and finding more cool IRL stuff to do.  sometimes i still end up in the vortex tho, and my brain shuts off after spending a while in it
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: dedicateddan on June 17, 2016, 05:34:49 pm
When you feel like playing money, play through the campaigns or something
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: E.Honda on June 18, 2016, 01:36:11 pm
Ah, here's a mistake I still do constantly. I can't beat players like Heisenberg and HvHosenfeld (or whatever his name was) for this reason. I play way too fast. Even if I get a nice quick advantage, I can blow it by not playing as well as I should be. I'm in the same boat as you now, funkdoc. I can smoke everyone but the best, but the best can just tear into me like I just started the game. :p

Heisenberg once slowrolled me because i thought really long to find an ending and there wasnt one so i just bought a Province in the end. That was actually the reason i registered here, it was the first time i got slowrolled that way and felt the urge to make a pretty senseless complaint post :D
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Burning Skull on June 25, 2016, 06:37:09 pm
hvb is my favourite opponent
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Seprix on June 25, 2016, 06:53:27 pm
I played Heisenberg a couple of days ago. I must have gotten good or he was cooking meth and playing at the same time, but I won a lot of games against him that day.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: funkdoc on August 08, 2016, 02:32:52 pm
sooo as those who saw my last league match know, i am more than ready for a *real* break from this goddamn game

i guess now i'm at the point where i would have to do game log analysis and such?  i've never been good at that sort of thing in any game i've played - i've always just tried to play more games and brute-force my way through any problems, but that doesn't work i guess!

i feel like this is the sort of game that's going to take me years, and i'll have to be on-and-off with it.  i should've guessed this when i saw that this game attracts the sort of people who love forum mafia; there are few things i detest more than forum mafia, to the point where you're instantly suspect in my eyes if you like it (j/k, sort of).  games should not feel like homework to me, and dominion does when you get the more complex boards.  i imagine it'll make enough sense to me eventually that this will disappear, but i'm nowhere near that point now.

i'll still be moderating the league, but this seems like the best course of action for the long term.  thank you for helping me throughout all this! =)
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Deadlock39 on August 08, 2016, 02:47:49 pm
Perhaps rather than playing competitive matches, you would benefit from streaming games with another player where you can evaluate and test your thoughts in a more experimental format.

You can evaluate the board and decide what you think is best, then see what happens. If it goes badly, you can get feedback from the other player/chat, and replay the board if desired.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Polk5440 on August 08, 2016, 08:50:34 pm

I feel like this is the sort of game that's going to take me years, and i'll have to be on-and-off with it.... Games should not feel like homework to me, and Dominion does when you get the more complex boards.

I'll still be moderating the league, but this seems like the best course of action for the long term.  thank you for helping me throughout all this! =)

It seems like there is an easy answer for this. Play less often, play with friends,  and play for fun!
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: smcrtorchs on August 16, 2016, 06:31:46 am
Hey,

This forum is huge, which is why I reply so late.

I do not believe that you need to do log analysis to get better. Your way of getting better might not be the quickest, but still there is no reason why it would not work.

I tried to read your previous posts as well to understand your gaming problems better, but I am not sure I still have a good understanding as such things are pretty complex. From what I understand you could still keep your way of getting better, using intuition and brute force, as long as you understand that you need different approaches for different boards. You can see the whole thing of dominion as having many different subgames. You certainly do so anyway, like rushes engines slog etc. The thing is that you should categorize the boards to many more subcases, like tournament, inheritance, or wherever you seem to play weak. You should consider it a different area were you will have to get another model of intuition and not use the previous ones.

Also, once your intuition tells you what to do on a board, stop and ask your self, how all the other cards could interact with what you want to do and if there is a trick to make it quicker. Eventually this is another subgame where you can develop your intuition.

I am not a very intuitive dominion player my self, but I do understand how it works and cannot really see it being that limited as you seem to think at the moment. Yes it does take work to build many different models, but I do not think there is any shortcut to help you there.
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Chris is me on August 16, 2016, 08:00:32 am
How To Get Better Without Doing Laborious Work And Log Analysis (though you are already better than me so this is a useless post full of condescending info you already know, but I already typed it and I'm a jackass I don't know fuck it):

1. Stream casual games with friends that you can experiment with, and read commentary beforehand. It's amazing how much little bits of info you get through this! It allows you to confirm suspicions about your play almost immediately after you have them, and that provides immediate reinforcement. Having Stef drop in on my channel once in a blue moon is probably the best thing that's happened to my competitive play.

2. Watch a few streams of better players, but at high speed and in the background while you're doing something else. Like work! I do this at work. My job is kind of a joke. Anyway, don't try too hard doing this, try to seek out specific games with cards you need improvement on. I still remember watching some Chapel / Tournament game where the player was like "yup I have definitely won the game" on like turn 4, and I was like whoa how do you know so early??? And then I finally fully understood Chapel.

3. Stop playing! People plateau when they try too hard. The break isn't a bad idea. It'll be shorter than you think. When you come back you'll have some low hanging fruit in trying to improve to shake the rust off from your break, and then you'll just keep going past that once you get into the groove again. Works every time, I think.

Also, Forum Mafia is terrible, and I think it's just because of the social aspect that people really dig it here more than anything? I dunno. Every forum has Mafia. 
Title: Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
Post by: Seprix on August 16, 2016, 12:59:25 pm
sooo as those who saw my last league match know, i am more than ready for a *real* break from this goddamn game

i guess now i'm at the point where i would have to do game log analysis and such?  i've never been good at that sort of thing in any game i've played - i've always just tried to play more games and brute-force my way through any problems, but that doesn't work i guess!

i feel like this is the sort of game that's going to take me years, and i'll have to be on-and-off with it.  i should've guessed this when i saw that this game attracts the sort of people who love forum mafia; there are few things i detest more than forum mafia, to the point where you're instantly suspect in my eyes if you like it (j/k, sort of).  games should not feel like homework to me, and dominion does when you get the more complex boards.  i imagine it'll make enough sense to me eventually that this will disappear, but i'm nowhere near that point now.

i'll still be moderating the league, but this seems like the best course of action for the long term.  thank you for helping me throughout all this! =)

If you're that frustrated, you're doing it wrong. I guarantee you are trying too hard to get better. I would relax. If taking a break helps you do that (it did for me), it is better that way. Remember that you're trying to have fun. Winning is fun, but also look at losing as fun. Losing gives you opportunities to learn. Always keep your mind open to learning. And if you don't feel like playing, don't force yourself to play just to get better. That's all you really need to know. You play fine. You're high on Iso. You're doing great. Your mental make up is what really needs fixing, and again, if a break does that for you, I'd do it.

I've never done a log analysis in my entire life. I've tried, but it's near impossible for me. I have to see it. I can't visualize it too well. It's a skill I could probably acquire, but it's not really needed I would think. I can just watch WW games or MQ games or Stef games and you get the idea.