Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Game Reports => Topic started by: michaeljb on June 13, 2011, 05:50:38 pm
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When I first began playing Dominion, I thought the goal of playing Gardens was to bloat your deck as much as possible for the massive points. I came to learn that the true strength of Gardens was emptying 3 piles before Province engines revved up. I've found the best Gardens kingdoms involve Ironworks and a village-type card. In the following game, I opened Ironworks/Hamlet (I didn't use the +Buy right away, so Village or Silver probably would have been better) and sped to a 12 turn win.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110610-215629-420cfac8.html
In theory's article on <a href="http://dominionstrategy.com/2010/12/16/dominion-gardens/">Gardens</a>, he said that Ironworks in practice are too difficult for the Gardens player to gain and empty, but I've found that focusing on Ironworks before switching to Gardens works pretty well.
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Yeah, Ironworks/Gardens is what I think is the "root Combo". By this I mean the thing that is so good, absolutely nothing else beats it. And since I made that postulation, at least in my own games, it's been true: in any game with both ironworks and Gardens on the board, I've only lost in games where my opponent also went for a variation of this strategy. Now, this isn't to say you shouldn't go for other cards WITH this combo - i.e. if workshop is on the board, you should prolly go workshop/ironworks/gardens - but I have yet to think of a board where a gardens/ironworks-centred deck doesn't win at least 50% of the time. It's incredibly resilient at any rate, and can absorb most problems other decks can throw at it, especially curse-givers, which a lot of other strategies can't boast of, and it is fast enough to beat a lot of other strats.
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There is a fair amount of evidence that suggests simple bishop decks smack gardens decks.
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/620889/bishop-vs-gardens
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I don't see much there. You posted two games. Furthermore, that was focused on Workshop/Gardens, and there are a good number of things which beat that deck (though it's still fairly strong). And the Ironworks/Workshop/Gardens actually won. Bishop is the anti-gardens, but I don't think it's good enough to beat Ironworks/Gardens. Ironworks is SO much better than Workshop for Gardens.
I'll have a standing challenge to anyone to beat me Ironworks/Gardens without going Ironworks/Gardens themselves (okay, mirror match is fine too, but that's a different story altogether, and I haven't gotten it often enough to be confident I have it 100% tuned for the mirror). I'm not saying I'll win every time, but I should win over 50%, especially if you control for player order advantage.