Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Game Reports => Help! => Topic started by: benedettosoxfan on January 17, 2018, 10:48:44 pm

Title: 2 Bold Strategies to Choose From, Which One Would You Go For?
Post by: benedettosoxfan on January 17, 2018, 10:48:44 pm
I had this random kingdom come up against lord rattington and I'm curious about what people think the best strategy might be. I'm not sure how to embed kingdom images so forgive my old school text kingdom here:
Groundskeeper
Butcher
Graverobber
Contraband
Port
Island
Feodum
Bureaucrat
Fool (With Lucky Coin)
Castles
Landmark: Tower
Event: Pathfinding

There's 2 dramatically different strategies I see that are both a little slow but can net you a ginormous amount of points. We have the silver flood vs. the groundskeeper. You can use lucky coin, bureaucrats, and LITW boons to race to pile out silvers and go for feodums, and get a huge boost from tower if you're able to fully empty silvers. This is risky but should get you well over 100 points if done properly.
You can also try to snag as many groundskeepers as possible and possibly go for castles? With contraband being the only source of buy, and pathfinding being hard to hit at $8, you could probably build an engine, but that too would be difficult. If you could get a ton of groundskeepers going and a contraband or 2, there are enough alt vp sources to pick from to get you probably over 20 points/turn.

I'm just interested to see what people would go for here. Playing against the bot doesn't give you a realistic sense of how viable each strategy is, but I'm assuming that you're going to have to choose between 2 high risk / high reward plays. Of course there's also the question of whether or not either strategy is fast enough to outrace a traditional province pileout. It also seems like a super fun kingdom if you're looking for a fun brain teaser! Thoughts?
Title: Re: 2 Bold Strategies to Choose From, Which One Would You Go For?
Post by: Gazbag on January 17, 2018, 11:25:28 pm
The Groundskeeper deck should crush a Silver rush easily. Open 2 Silvers+Port. Port with +1 Card for draw, you can Butcher Estates to Islands and set aside some Coppers with Islands. Butcher alongside Lucky Coin and Bureaucrat to gain Groundskeepers. Uncontested you can get over 100 Groundskeeper points without much trouble (Sprawling Castle alone is 40vp with 10 Groundskeepers in play) and have all the pile control.

If both people go for the thing with Ports and Butchers it probably comes down to who can win the Tower splits so I'd go harder for Ports, Butchering Estates to Ports.
Title: Re: 2 Bold Strategies to Choose From, Which One Would You Go For?
Post by: dz on January 17, 2018, 11:35:55 pm
The Feodum strat seems too slow. It'll be pretty hard to empty Silvers w/o Masterpiece. Yes, there's Lucky Coin, Bureaucrat, and Mountain's Gift to get them (and trashing Feodum), but I think the Groundskeeper strat will be way quicker.
Title: Re: 2 Bold Strategies to Choose From, Which One Would You Go For?
Post by: Chris is me on January 18, 2018, 09:53:30 am
You can’t break 100 points with just Feodum. At most 8 Feodum is 80 points - with every Silver. Tower helps, obviously, and then you get to 120, but I just don’t see emptying the Silver pile to be a quick thing. Every Silver you gain quickly is a stop card stopping you from quickly getting more Silver...

Meanwhile, giving the GK player full run of the pile gets them 10 points per Victory card, and with Butcher, Island, AND Castles, there’s tons they can do. They win the long game for sure.

If you try and add GK to a Feodum strategy, you end up not consistently drawing them, due to the 40 dead cards in your deck.
Title: Re: 2 Bold Strategies to Choose From, Which One Would You Go For?
Post by: ipofanes on January 18, 2018, 10:23:04 am
How about getting more Ports than needed, then Butcher them from Village idiot level down to the number you need (gaining Groundskeepers in the process)?
Title: Re: 2 Bold Strategies to Choose From, Which One Would You Go For?
Post by: shark_bait on January 18, 2018, 02:03:34 pm
The real question is not which strategy to play but how to approach a mirror match.  The Groundskeeper deck will completely outmatch a Feodom strategy due to the Feodom upper limit of points and the ability to the Groundskeeper deck to control when the game ends.

Port and Groundskeeper are the two key cards with Butcher for support. Port is obviously the ideal Butcher target for gaining Groundskeeper.  Whoever wins the Groundskeeper split should be in prime position to win so that is the first objective.  Secondary is building an engine that reliably draws the deck.   Use Pathfinding on Groundskeeper as it packs all of your point scoring and card drawing on a single card.  This allows Ports to be Butchered into Islands midgame for points and slight thinning.  Thirdly is the Sprawling Castle.  With a 5/5 Groundskeeper split that single card is worth 27 points.  Whomever gains this likely wins the game.  As such, having the Small Castle and potentially 2 Butchers is the ideal composition. 
Title: Re: 2 Bold Strategies to Choose From, Which One Would You Go For?
Post by: Gazbag on January 18, 2018, 05:18:10 pm
The real question is not which strategy to play but how to approach a mirror match.  The Groundskeeper deck will completely outmatch a Feodom strategy due to the Feodom upper limit of points and the ability to the Groundskeeper deck to control when the game ends.

Port and Groundskeeper are the two key cards with Butcher for support. Port is obviously the ideal Butcher target for gaining Groundskeeper.  Whoever wins the Groundskeeper split should be in prime position to win so that is the first objective.  Secondary is building an engine that reliably draws the deck.   Use Pathfinding on Groundskeeper as it packs all of your point scoring and card drawing on a single card.  This allows Ports to be Butchered into Islands midgame for points and slight thinning.  Thirdly is the Sprawling Castle.  With a 5/5 Groundskeeper split that single card is worth 27 points.  Whomever gains this likely wins the game.  As such, having the Small Castle and potentially 2 Butchers is the ideal composition.

I think you'd rather Pathfinding Ports, you'll have a lot of Silvers sitting around to Butcher into Groundskeepers from Lucky Coin.
Title: Re: 2 Bold Strategies to Choose From, Which One Would You Go For?
Post by: Cave-o-sapien on January 18, 2018, 07:42:21 pm
(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?title=Special%3AFilePath&file=Groundskeeper.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?title=Special%3AFilePath&file=butcher.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?title=Special%3AFilePath&file=graverobber.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?title=Special%3AFilePath&file=contraband.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?title=Special%3AFilePath&file=port.jpg)
(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?title=Special%3AFilePath&file=island.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?title=Special%3AFilePath&file=feodum.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?title=Special%3AFilePath&file=bureaucrat.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?title=Special%3AFilePath&file=fool.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?title=Special%3AFilePath&file=castles.jpg)
(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?title=Special%3AFilePath&file=tower.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?title=Special%3AFilePath&file=pathfinding.jpg)
Title: Re: 2 Bold Strategies to Choose From, Which One Would You Go For?
Post by: Dingan on January 19, 2018, 01:03:21 pm
Yeah the engine here destroys a strict Feodum / B-crat / Lucky Coin thing. Pathfinding on Port, Butcher for thinning, lots of alt VP (effectively infinite -- re-gaining green with Graverobber). I do think it gets interesting in a mirror -- alt VP from GK is nice, but Butcher can end the game quickly.

This would be one of those rare boards where B-crat could be good for the engine player if opponent was Silver/Feoda-flooding -- it would hurt the opponent a lot, and could Butcher the Silvers into Ports/Islands/GKs.

LITW nice for the rare Flame's Gift on Coppers.

EDIT: Scratch the B-crat thing and just use a poor-man's Ghost Ship thing in Graverobber / Haunted Castle.
Title: Re: 2 Bold Strategies to Choose From, Which One Would You Go For?
Post by: terminalCopper on January 19, 2018, 01:04:10 pm


I’m with Gazbag here: Ports merit Pathfinding.

Whoever wins the Groundskeeper split should be in prime position to win so that is the first objective.  Sprawling Castle ... is worth 27 points.  Whomever gains this likely wins the game.

I think this is too slow:

I would go hard for the ports split, not for the groundskeeper split. The main reason is that it is much faster for two reasons:

- you merely need 4 buys,
- there will likely be some situations where we hit exactly 4$ (there is already a 5/6 chance in T1/2). If so, I believe that ports are the correct buy either way - even if you don’t plan to pathfind it.

@shark-bait: Assume that we both hit 4$ twice (buying ports), we both go hard for pathfinding (e. g., buy butcher, save coins for Pathfinding) and achieve it at the same time, the only difference being that

I spent four buys on eight pathfinding ports,
you spent these buys for four ports and two pathfinding Groundskeeper.

First, I am not sure if this will win you the groundskeeper split, because I am much closer to draw my deck. If you don’t win your split, you’re kinda lost.

Second, even if you win it, the VP/turn rate is not determined by the number of groundskeeper alone, but rather by the product ((number of Groundskeeper+VP/card) * number of gains). I believe that concerning the number of gains, I will have the upper hand because I draw my deck much earlier to support multiple butchers per turn.

However, it’s going to end on three piles, whether the third pile will be islands or estates depends on the situational tactics. In other words, I am almost sure we will never see sprawling castle.
Title: Re: 2 Bold Strategies to Choose From, Which One Would You Go For?
Post by: shark_bait on January 19, 2018, 02:54:08 pm
With a Port/Silver opening you're going into T3/4 with essentially having opened double Silver due to Lucky Coin.  Getting both a $4 and a $5 plus seems likely.  Obviously getting a Port with $4 is necessary.  I'm starting to agree with you about the Port as losing that 8/4 is ugly.  So in this scenario you'll likely just under buy for Port once.  The caveat though is the 1st player could gamble and get Butcher with their $5 and then follow up with Port and still even the split.