Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: AJD on April 07, 2017, 02:31:18 am

Title: How do you handle Keep
Post by: AJD on April 07, 2017, 02:31:18 am
Man, I have no idea how to play around Keep. I just lost a game because my opponent played Explorer on their last turn and suddenly I was down 5 points. What's a good way to prioritize the Treasure race relative to engine building? Should you trash Coppers?
Title: Re: How do you handle Keep
Post by: Skumpy on April 07, 2017, 03:32:41 am
I'll let others give the important advice with Keep, as I haven't played with it too many times yet, but trashing coppers (on most boards anyways), should still be a priority; it doesn't matter if you're giving up 5 VP early on, opening with 5 Great Halls wasn't the greatest of strategies. In the endgame, if you have extra cheap buys, that's when you can start regaining coppers. But timing's probably pretty crucial: too early, and you won't be able to Province anymore, too late, and you'll lose the Copper Keep. If you have fewer extra buys, then you can start Yellowing earlier, as you won't be junking your deck as much.   

Like you, I also don't really know how to play around the Silver/Gold/Kingdom Treasure piles, so I'm not going to try to explain when/how much you focus on gaining those. What I do think is true is don't get content being tied, or even +1, on a treasure pile - try and make sure you've secured those 5 VP and your opponent can't also get them. After all, that's pretty dang close to Province level, not counting the actual impact of having treasures in your deck.

Ultimately, Keep encourages Big Money, or at least an engine with treasure as payload, but you still have to evaluate how strong/quick the engine is. As you've seen, 5 points per pile is a lot, and I expect it to be up high when the Landmark rankings come out (Qvist!! But seriously, no rush).

Title: Re: How do you handle Keep
Post by: Awaclus on April 07, 2017, 03:47:49 am
Just treat them like they were Victory cards. If your opponent is way ahead in some Treasure, don't bother trying to contest it at all, because that wouldn't be getting very many VP per buy.
Title: Re: How do you handle Keep
Post by: faust on April 07, 2017, 04:40:27 am
The 5 VP is usually not enough to make you want to keep (har, har) Coppers that you would otherwise want to trash.

I also think that in general, you don't want to be ahead by a whole lot of Treasures unless your strategy requires them anyway. Any Treasure beyond +1 does not actually provide further VP.

The funny situation with Keep is when both of you have around the same number. Then each Treasure usually means a 5 VP point swing, and since it also does something in your deck and is cheaper, that will often be better than Province. You'll end up in a very long game of continually buying Treasures.
Title: Re: How do you handle Keep
Post by: tailred on April 07, 2017, 06:00:31 am
Keep in an engine mirror generally favors the person with more gaining power, more deck control, and especially the person who ends the game (since as you saw in our game I made up about a 20+ point deficeit in 2 turns by matching, then overtaking the gold/silver bounties). For our game specifically, I think the fact that I was drawing deck more consistently (having trashed more) was a big decider. Keeping tabs on the split of each treasure is important, of course, and if you can't quite remember, look for the vp ticks.
Title: Re: How do you handle Keep
Post by: dedicateddan on April 07, 2017, 01:16:55 pm
Keep provides a unstable pile of VP. It rewards big, spikes turns that end the game.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, it often makes engine better and money worse.

Trash those copper'