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 -
Cellar, Masterpiece, Woodcutter, Plaza, Scavenger, Spy, Tournament, Young Witch, Governor, King's Court, Peddler
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.
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?
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.
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.
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? dunnoI 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 ;).
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 ;)
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.
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.
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.
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?
i know [...] is supposed to be [...]
as trashing coppers with it seems silly
i know the early trashing is supposed to be bad, but they sure scared me with it!
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.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.
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.
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 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.
QuoteGame 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 $6, i'm still not sure about jack...
a huge general weakness of mine is getting +buys too late. i always get caught up in drawing the deck and scared of adding payload until the rest is finished. especially here with it being fairly easy to get 2 components at once (city + poor house), i'm sure i needed the woodcutter earlier...just not sure how early, since i also need good mercenary trashing. guess i can trash the silver once i have the woodcutter though!I don't think you were that late on buys, when watching your game I even thought that Woodcutter might be a bit early but it was probably just fine when you got it. So you actually had those 2 buys in the endgame. I remember turn after turn where you hit 14$ and went for more Urchins. You could have easily picked up another Poor House or Woodcutter to be at 16$ or beyond it.
QuoteGame 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...
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'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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
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 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!
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!
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.
i remember reading a post here that ran some math and found double silver to be better than silver/HT for reaching $5
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?
Quotei 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.
how the hell do i have such a hard time dealing with a bottom 5 card? i autopilot stuff a lot
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
apothecary is definitely one of my biggest demons atm, never quite sure what kind of deck it wants.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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 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
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.
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
probably really need to take a breakI'm sure you'd also burn out and lose focus if you played 3+ hours of Power Grid every night. Keep that in mind.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
so here's a general questionIt'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.
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
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?
Hamlet, Vagrant, Watchtower, Bridge, Talisman, Walled Village, Explorer, Library, Vault, Witch
Pawn, Squire, Warehouse, Watchtower, Conspirator, Counting House, Horn of Plenty, Jester, Witch, Adventurer
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.
Since your payload is mostly treasure it doesn't seem worth it to go draw to x.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)
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 prob take a break for a couple days though!
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)
Excuse me I didn't read that part of his post.it's a lot of me calling the opponent a moronI 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
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.
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.
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.
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'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 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"
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 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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
thanks again everyone, i like to see people engage with the real core-level stuff here as opposed to just dominion cards!
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?
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.
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 think a lot of the high level stuff that people discuss is pretty useless.Can't agree more!
It can be fun to BS
I think a lot of the high level stuff that people discuss is pretty useless.Can't agree more!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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'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
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.
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
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! =)
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! =)