Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Game Reports => Help! => Topic started by: jaybeez on March 30, 2016, 01:47:34 pm
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https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160330/log.0.1459359942020.txt
In the early part of this game I felt like my opponent made some big mistakes. Opening Spice Merchant/Silver instead of Urchin/Urchin was totally baffling to me, and I also thought his second Witch didn't make sense, considering I already had a Mercernary at that point. The only thing I see that he obviously did better than me on is he won the Nobles split. How he did that is a bit of a mystery to me though.
So what happened? Were those actually smart plays by my opponent, or did I play badly or get unlucky or what? I can't even tell.
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http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160330/log.0.1459359942020.txt
I probably would have opened Urchin / Urchin, but it's not like Spice Merchant / Silver is a terrible opening. He has a perfect first reshuffle though. His second Witch looks totally fine to me, he can likely (and does) add a Plaza before he shuffles that Witch in. The Curses are still great against Mercenary, especially early on. This is basically just a race to clean up and buy some Nobles, Curses slow down the cleanup.
I don't love your turn 7 Silver, and think another Urchin here is better.
I notice that on turns 8 and 12 you discard Coppers for coin tokens right before triggering reshuffles, you should really just hold the Coppers so they aren't in the shuffle, it's not worth a token.
To me it looks like mostly good play for both players, somebody is going to get the advantage in early trashing and then take enough of the engine components (Nobles) to guarantee Provinces every turn because of the coin tokens. If you want to decide who is luckier you can look at which player saw drawing cards (especially the ones that trash) earlier in their shuffles.
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I know you don't want to hear this, but both you and your opponent played quite poorly. You both missed the Scout/Nobles deck that could've easily been built. Skip the Mercenary, you don't need to trash Estates so just pick up a Spice Merchant.
Unbelievable.
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Hey there,
I think that his opening is perfectly fine, it is not like he falls behind compared to your mercenary with his spice merchant at the early game, considering he starts trashing coppers earlier. This also allows him to better trash estates and curses with his mercenary. His second witch seems a must buy, because at that point he has not trashed his urchin and he wants to make sure he does so. However the interesting part is the comparison of the decks after turn 8.
You have 14 cards with one more village and he has 13, so let's call the number of cards even for simplification. The number of cards that both of you have that can either remove cards from your deck or add to the opponent is the same. You have 2 mercs and a witch for a total of 5 cards and he has 1 merc 2 witches and a spice merchant. The main difference between both decks is that he has 1 more card that shifts/draws. He has 4 and you have 3. He manages to play 3 of his 4 such cards on turn 9 buying a village and a nobles at turn 9 and 10 which really bring the deck together. This gives him also great turns at turn 11 and 12. By the end of turn 12 the difference in your decks is big.
Your draws seem worse during those turns, but I think he did have a more solid base to start from at turn 9.