Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Let's Discuss ... => Topic started by: faust on September 19, 2016, 03:45:54 pm

Title: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: faust on September 19, 2016, 03:45:54 pm: (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/c/ca/Wolf_Den.jpg/800px-Wolf_Den.jpg)
The Roman Empire theme is exquisitely subtle on this one.

Welcome to the last installment of Let's Discuss Landmarks! And what a ride it has been. The participation has been up and down, mostly down, and my own pace was a bit slowed at times, but now the series stands entered into the forums, for future generations to ponder upon the folly of some and to marvel at the prescience of others; like a beautiful monument that shall endure the ages, like a landmark.

Anyway uh. Let's discuss Wolf Den. This one can really make your life hard. What to do about those cards that you really only want one of? Trashers like Chapel are one of the first things that come to mind - it will always give you -3 VP, unless you can trash it with yet another card. Potion has similar issues. But often, these -3 VP are not what makes you go for another strategy. It should be noted that Ruins can get extremely swingy with this; if you split 5-5, it may be that you end up with 0 VP and your opponent with -15.

The endgame becomes more interesting (as with many Landmarks); if you manage an early 3-pile, then you can be pretty sure that your opponent will still have some uniques in their deck. It also challenges common wisdom about Duchy dancing, because that first Duchy will not yet give you any points.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: Dingan on September 19, 2016, 03:56:50 pm: As if dishing out Curses and Potions with Ambassador wasn't bad enough.

Shouldn't it be purple, not green?

I don't care for the artwork.

It's sorta like a reverse-Fairgrounds.

Landmarks in general seem to make deck-tracking more important than ever. Will there be VP counters in the new implementation and if so, will they take Landmarks into account? (Would be funny to buy a Duchy but not see your VP count change though.) I would vote that they should, although I can see how some people wouldn't want them to.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: Chris is me on September 19, 2016, 04:45:32 pm: Think of it this way. If you buy a Chapel, a second one before the end of the game is just as valuable as a Duchy (even moreso if you didn't have a Duchy yet!). It's not that hard to buy a second copy of something you don't need at the end of the game, we do that all the time with Victory cards.

You just have to keep track of things.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: schadd on September 19, 2016, 05:05:50 pm: :( castles
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: faust on September 19, 2016, 05:55:28 pm: Quote from: Chris is me on September 19, 2016, 04:45:32 pm
Think of it this way. If you buy a Chapel, a second one before the end of the game is just as valuable as a Duchy (even moreso if you didn't have a Duchy yet!). It's not that hard to buy a second copy of something you don't need at the end of the game, we do that all the time with Victory cards.

You just have to keep track of things.
But that kind of reasoning doesn't really make sense: if you never bought a Chapel, then you would have the same amount of points as with 2 Chapels.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: Limetime on September 19, 2016, 05:57:59 pm: Quote from: faust on September 19, 2016, 05:55:28 pm
But that kind of reasoning doesn't really make sense: if you never bought a Chapel, then you would have the same amount of points as with 2 Chapels.
Quote from: Chris is me on September 19, 2016, 04:45:32 pm
If you buy a Chapel
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: kieranmillar on September 19, 2016, 06:14:37 pm: It's games without +Buy where Wolf Den becomes significantly more tricky. Tracking your deck is really important!

You also need to watch out for remodelers, if you have two golds and remodel one into the last province, you aren't getting as many points as you might have thought!

In my first ever game with Wolf Den, I made sure to trash all of my Estates, then on the last turn stupidly picked up an Estate with my Province, causing me to lose. Oops!
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: McGarnacle on September 19, 2016, 06:21:42 pm: It should be purple, like Dingan said.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: gamesou on September 20, 2016, 10:32:07 am: Turn your Disciple into a second Teacher in the last turn for +6VP :-)
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: Chris is me on September 20, 2016, 02:34:37 pm: Quote from: faust on September 19, 2016, 05:55:28 pm
Quote from: Chris is me on September 19, 2016, 04:45:32 pm
Think of it this way. If you buy a Chapel, a second one before the end of the game is just as valuable as a Duchy (even moreso if you didn't have a Duchy yet!). It's not that hard to buy a second copy of something you don't need at the end of the game, we do that all the time with Victory cards.

You just have to keep track of things.
But that kind of reasoning doesn't really make sense: if you never bought a Chapel, then you would have the same amount of points as with 2 Chapels.

If you never bought a Chapel, you'd have 10 stop cards instead of 2. So just buy two Chapel eventually. It is so easy to find $2 and a buy eventually.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: JThorne on September 21, 2016, 11:13:17 am: Quote
If you never bought a Chapel...

Wiping coffee spray off my monitor now.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: ackmondual on February 02, 2017, 03:01:34 am: Shelters gets a bit annoying with this. You'd really better make sure you get rid of that Hovel, as that's also +3pts for you now! If there are no trashers, then at least everyone else is also taking -6 for the Necropolis and Overgrown Estate.

I'd like to think that having only 1 Plat. and Colony is bad, but the engine and sheer VP respectively should be able to make for for the -6 VP hit.

Quote from: kieranmillar on September 19, 2016, 06:14:37 pm
It's games without +Buy where Wolf Den becomes significantly more tricky. Tracking your deck is really important!

You also need to watch out for remodelers, if you have two golds and remodel one into the last province, you aren't getting as many points as you might have thought!

In my first ever game with Wolf Den, I made sure to trash all of my Estates, then on the last turn stupidly picked up an Estate with my Province, causing me to lose. Oops!

Worse for me was with $7 and 2 buys, I got a Duchy and Estate. 4pts + -6pts = -2pts ???
I would've been better off just buying 2 Estates!
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: pst on February 02, 2017, 09:26:51 am: In one of my first games with Wolf Den I didn't think about it when getting lots of Prizes from Tournament. If I knew that poor Princess would become a victim of the wolves maybe I wouldn't have accepted her, for example.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: xyz123 on February 02, 2017, 07:25:01 pm: I think it is easy to make stupid mistakes in Wolf Den games. I have lost a game with it by thinking I could pick up the odd estate on my game ending turn to win by a point.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Landmarks: Wolf Den
Post by: Dingan on February 22, 2017, 02:09:39 am: I recently played a game where my opponent effectively ignored Marauder and let me dish out all 10 Ruins to them (with very weak thinning, a la a convoluted Procession). But there was also Wolf Den. So if opponent already had the top Ruin, I was slightly inclined to not play the Marauder. But then I would not be able to give them more. So like if they had 1 of each of the 5, then I would probably not play the Marauder any more. But if they had like 2 of the 5, and the next Ruin was one they had, then I'd go ahead and give them that, hoping to at least give them the 3 other of the 5.

Just something to think about.