Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Game Reports => Topic started by: danw132 on August 24, 2011, 01:01:50 pm
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I can't believe this happened to me online. I heard of this happening once before in real life- but to have this happen to me in online was just shocking. I didn't realize what kind of lock i would be found in until it was too late.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201108/24/game-20110824-094458-8f06ba68.html
The combo is demonstrated twice here:
Paralyzed plays a King's Court.
... and plays a King's Court.
... ... and plays a Goons.
... ... ... getting +1 buy and +$2.
... ... ... danw132 discards 1 card.
... ... and plays the Goons again.
... ... ... getting +1 buy and +$2.
... ... ... danw132 only has 3 cards.
... ... and plays the Goons a third time.
... ... ... getting +1 buy and +$2.
... ... ... danw132 only has 3 cards.
... and plays the King's Court again.
... ... and plays a Masquerade.
... ... ... drawing nothing.
... ... ... trashing a Silver.
... ... and plays the Masquerade again.
... ... ... drawing nothing.
... ... ... trashing a Tactician.
... ... and plays the Masquerade a third time.
... ... ... drawing nothing.
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— Paralyzed's turn 13 —
Paralyzed plays a King's Court.
... and plays a Laboratory.
... ... drawing 2 cards and getting +1 action.
... and plays the Laboratory again.
... ... drawing 2 cards and getting +1 action.
... and plays the Laboratory a third time.
... ... drawing 2 cards and getting +1 action.
Paralyzed plays an Island.
... setting aside the Island with a Province.
Paralyzed plays a King's Court.
... and plays a Peddler.
... ... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action and +$1.
... and plays the Peddler again.
... ... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action and +$1.
... and plays the Peddler a third time.
... ... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action and +$1.
Paralyzed plays a Laboratory.
... drawing 2 cards and getting +1 action.
Paralyzed plays a Peddler.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action and +$1.
Paralyzed plays a Peddler.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action and +$1.
Paralyzed plays a Laboratory.
... drawing nothing and getting +1 action.
Paralyzed plays a Peddler.
... drawing nothing and getting +1 action and +$1.
Paralyzed plays a Bishop.
... getting +$1 and +1 ▼.
... Paralyzed trashes a Peddler and gets +4 ▼.
... danw132 trashes a Bishop.
Paralyzed plays a King's Court.
... and plays a King's Court.
... ... and plays a King's Court.
... ... ... and plays a Goons.
... ... ... ... getting +1 buy and +$2.
... ... ... ... danw132 only has 2 cards.
... ... ... and plays the Goons again.
... ... ... ... getting +1 buy and +$2.
... ... ... ... danw132 only has 2 cards.
... ... ... and plays the Goons a third time.
... ... ... ... getting +1 buy and +$2.
... ... ... ... danw132 only has 2 cards.
... ... and plays the King's Court again.
... ... ... and plays a Masquerade.
... ... ... ... drawing nothing.
... ... ... and plays the Masquerade again.
... ... ... ... drawing nothing.
... ... ... and plays the Masquerade a third time.
... ... ... ... drawing nothing.
... ... ... ... trashing a Silver.
... ... and plays the King's Court a third time.
... ... ... but plays no action with it.
... and plays the King's Court again.
... ... but plays no action with it.
... and plays the King's Court a third time.
... ... but plays no action with it.
Utterly embarrassing on my part. Anyone else ever lose to a pin/hand deletion like that before?
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Yeah, this one is probably the best known. http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/03/18/combo-of-the-day-24-kings-courtgoonsmasquerade/ (http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/03/18/combo-of-the-day-24-kings-courtgoonsmasquerade/)
Has anyone ever BEATEN this before? I came very close a couple weeks ago, and probably would have if I were smart enough to have depleted the estates when I had the chance.
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Has anyone ever BEATEN this before?
Yup. I remember reading Donald's original post in response to this combo, and he had a link to such a game:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110317-174854-4740b9ba.html
Here's Donald's article in his special subforum:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=76.0
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http://councilroom.com/player?player=Paralyzed
lol, obv
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PMJ is my new hero.
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michaeljb, I mean the full version with the full lock - militia or especially Goons included.
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Not particularly proud of this game, but...was behind 4-1 on colonies so i took an alternate route...
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110728-154316-87a6fcea.html
It's actually kind of funny to look at the score / turn graph, which clearly has issues with masquerade. It says my final score was -53 (because i trashed his 5 colonies and 3 estates)
My original goal was not to pin him, but when i reached the point where the game was clearly lost, I realized that i had the engine already in place and just needed to trash a few superfluous cards. He got very confused when i passed him my colony.
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The above post is a valid post. The others posted above aren't true pin games.
When you don't have either goons or militia, the strategy can be countered by saving your own masquerade and passing him junk (and more importantly, disrupting his 5-card deck.
However, with miltia in the mix, it's a race to see who gets the 5-card deck first, afterwhich the other person is pinned.
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I lost to that pin earlier today. Most demoralizing experience ever.
The only way I can see someone beating it is if the person performing the pin has bad shuffle luck (e.g., a hand of KC/KC/KC/KC/Goons) and the other player has built enough of a deck to be able to recover. In other words: odds aren't good.
On a productive note: would adding a clause to Masquerade to the effect of "if you have no cards in your hand, no players pass cards" introduce problems? I can't think of a reason that the card shouldn't include that caveat, and it would solve this problem entirely. (Obviously I'm not referring to reasons like "the card is already printed"—I'm looking for gameplay reasons why this would be a bad variant.)
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In order to do the pin properly, you shouldn't have 4 KCs, 'cause then maybe you can't do it. you need KC+ KC or TR or a village + Goons or Militia + an indefinite number of cantrips + up to one other action, and nothing else.
Also, it IS possible to beat the pin even when in place by having a big enough lead, big enough deck, and the ability to run piles (curses!), as you can always buy a 0 cost.
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On a productive note: would adding a clause to Masquerade to the effect of "if you have no cards in your hand, no players pass cards" introduce problems? I can't think of a reason that the card shouldn't include that caveat, and it would solve this problem entirely. (Obviously I'm not referring to reasons like "the card is already printed"—I'm looking for gameplay reasons why this would be a bad variant.)
Donald says he probably would have nerfed it if he saw it during playtesting.
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michaeljb, I mean the full version with the full lock - militia or especially Goons included.
whoops, overlooked that part. The only thing I can think of that could fight back would be an engine involving some Caravans and/or Wharves that was running before the lock went down, so you could still do things on your turn.
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The moral of this story is to pay attention and think carefully before playing a preset Kingdom. It has become second nature to me to check to see it the Kingdom is random as there are other people out there, not just this [jerk], who indeed find a board with a winning strategy and repeatedly use it on unwary players.
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michaeljb, I mean the full version with the full lock - militia or especially Goons included.
whoops, overlooked that part. The only thing I can think of that could fight back would be an engine involving some Caravans and/or Wharves that was running before the lock went down, so you could still do things on your turn.
You still wouldn't be able to do much. Caravan would draw 1 card? A few would draw 2 or so. You really aren't buying anything with that, and the pin deck is still trashing 3 cards of yours a turn. The only way you could escape is if you already have points (bishop/monument), and you were somehow able to quickly empty 3 piles (probably curses, estates and something else).
Outside of those extremely small examples, if this strategy is on the board, it will likely be a race to get to your 5-card deck the fastest. First one there, wins.
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The moral of this story is to pay attention and think carefully before playing a preset Kingdom. It has become second nature to me to check to see it the Kingdom is random as there are other people out there, not just this [jerk], who indeed find a board with a winning strategy and repeatedly use it on unwary players.
Especially given that the ability to view constraints came about mainly because of the discovery of this pin.
But yeah, I always look at the constraints, and generally won't play vs constraints other than one or two !s. (I won't play Possession games online any longer, so I can understand people who wouldn't want Goons or Black Market...)
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Out of the thousands of online game I have played I have never seen the natural combo of Masq/KC/(goons/militia). That is probably statistically unlikely, but I think that the majority of people hit by this combo have been set up.
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I looked it up. 4 games out of 4248. Statistically infinitesimal.
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I've been hit by it popping up naturally, and I've been hit by my opponent pulling all three parts out of the black market before. Talk about unlikely.
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I played a game where it came up naturally, I tried to go for it but forgot how, but succeeded in reminding my opponent of its existence, then got stomped by it. It was embarrassing.
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To beat the lock you probably need reactions, lighthouse would help assuming you have reactions so you might actually play it. A deck that spams horse traders and lighthouses and also gets KCs would probably be best.
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The funniest counter to this would be possession.
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Lol@ possessing the pinner... very good stuff lol
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I got challenged by "Paralyzed" just now. Fortunately having seen this thread already, I knew what was coming and hit the combo first. Now I've got that out of my system.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110825-221855-bf6eab92.html
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I too got to do the 'Paralyzed Challenge.' Suffice it to say I did it better.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201108/25/game-20110825-224230-1713f73a.html
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Good job to both of you! I hope I'll get such a challenge in the near future and honor this thread too!
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At the very least, I'm glad this thread spawned "Paralyzed" awareness.
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Yeah. I need to take better notice of each game before I start. I use automatch and usually accept any game without a second thought. So I didn't notice that in the game I started with Paralyzed, all 10 cards were required. I didn't even realise the combo was there until the first time I was hit with it. I decided to see the game out, but I eventually ended it by buying the last few curses.
Now I notice this idiot has won 16/16 games in the past day and gone up 5 levels to level 40. And in almost all of his games, his opponent has resigned, which is what first made me think something was fishy. In fact, he's played 61 games, determined the whole board for all of them, and only lost 5. If he keeps at it, it won't be long until he hits the top of the leaderboard.
Is there anything we can do about this, which is arguably cheating, and definitely against the spirit of the game? One idea is to make it more obvious that the other player has required cards, maybe even mention this combo specifically: "Your opponent has required King's Court, Goons and Masquerade. This is a dangerous combo which can cause you to be locked out of the game. Are you sure you want to play this game?"
I, for one, would support him being booted from Isotropic, and I suspect if he does continue and become the top-ranked player, I wouldn't be alone.
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This guy is obviously a one-trick pony. I don't think there is really a recourse against him. He is following the letter of the law as far as the Leaderboard is concerned and because there are too many players that are not aware of what he is doing I do not see him suddenly falling out of the top ranks.
Maybe he will get bored.
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Maybe he will get bored.
Well yes, I imagine he will eventually, but if he gets to level 60 first, we still have to live with having him on top.
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I'm cool with him leveling up so quickly. When I finally get my turn to be "Paralyzed", I'll get a nice boost to my ranking ;]
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Very simple solution to all this: only games that use the default card selection will have an influence on your ranking.
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At the moment in the top 4 of the council rankings we've got one person who seems to auto-match mostly low ranked opponents, two people who mainly seem to play just one or two opponents (friends maybe?), and one alter-ego (nothing wrong with that either). This does mean however that the top rankings aren't backed up by evidence of good play against other high ranked players in competitive games. In that respect I don't think it's a great worry that someone else is rising up the rankings with some method of choosing matches. I know that my ranking is probably a reasonable rating of my own play and that's all I'm worried about.
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Very simple solution to all this: only games that use the default card selection will have an influence on your ranking.
I think this is a great idea. It still allows you to decline the occasional game that randomly features, e.g., Possession, but doesn't allow you to stack the deck with your one-trick pony.
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At the moment in the top 4 of the council rankings we've got one person who seems to auto-match mostly low ranked opponents, two people who mainly seem to play just one or two opponents (friends maybe?), and one alter-ego (nothing wrong with that either). This does mean however that the top rankings aren't backed up by evidence of good play against other high ranked players in competitive games. In that respect I don't think it's a great worry that someone else is rising up the rankings with some method of choosing matches. I know that my ranking is probably a reasonable rating of my own play and that's all I'm worried about.
Well, its probably time to come clean, as its taken alot longer than I thought it would, and I don't think i'm going to have the time to finish the job (and Paralyzed may beat me to it).
Conjecture is not actually theories alt (although I did choose the name to throw suspicion at him). After seeing tat ranked so high above everyone else, I wanted to test the hypothesis that such a high ranking (and ridiculous win %) could be attained by a good, but non-elite player. I found it hard to believe that tat was really 10 levels better than me (Captain_Frisk is currently lvl 36 I think?), so I wanted to see if I could beat him. I'm currently 1.5 levels behind, and I'm pretty sure that I will do it eventually.
I fully support changes to the leaderboard system to encourage real competition at the top of the leaderboard, vs. playing an alternate form of dominion to climb those last 10 spots.
tat - I would love to play you as Captain_Frisk a few times just to see how bad you destroy me.
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So... are you gaming the rankings by cherry-picking boards? or have you found some legitimate flaw in how TrueSkill is calculated?
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Tat actually challenged me once, and won largely due to some clever Scout play which I just completely missed since I tend to auto-ignore Scout most of the time. (Nobles and Tactician were on the board along with some other stuff which I forget right now; I tried to race to a quick five provinces basically just using Tactician, but his/her slower Scout/Nobles engine caught up in the end.) I don't know if he/she deserves to be #1, but tat did strike me as legitimately a high-level player.
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Tat actually challenged me once, and won largely due to some clever Scout play which I just completely missed since I tend to auto-ignore Scout most of the time. (Nobles and Tactician were on the board along with some other stuff which I forget right now; I tried to race to a quick five provinces basically just using Tactician, but his/her slower Scout/Nobles engine caught up in the end.) I don't know if he/she deserves to be #1, but tat did strike me as legitimately a high-level player.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110822-204710-cfc32c5f.html probably
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So... are you gaming the rankings by cherry-picking boards? or have you found some legitimate flaw in how TrueSkill is calculated?
You can see my restrictions from the councilroom game logs... not nearly as offensive as what Paralyzed is doing, which really just seems unfair. My goal was to in general make the game more skill based by removing high variance cards. The 2nd thing that I did was try to exploit the relatively large skill jump that occurs between "ooh shiny action cards" and "maybe I should buy more silver". The dumb strategy of Single <card> + Big Money will win an alarming % of time against even expert level players. It might only be 30%, but thats enough to hold you back from climbing over rank 40.
Look at the record for this player: http://councilroom.com/player?player=moneybot
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Tat actually challenged me once, and won largely due to some clever Scout play which I just completely missed since I tend to auto-ignore Scout most of the time. (Nobles and Tactician were on the board along with some other stuff which I forget right now; I tried to race to a quick five provinces basically just using Tactician, but his/her slower Scout/Nobles engine caught up in the end.) I don't know if he/she deserves to be #1, but tat did strike me as legitimately a high-level player.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110822-204710-cfc32c5f.html probably
Yeah, that's it. Forgot it was a Colony game.
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Tat actually challenged me once, and won largely due to some clever Scout play which I just completely missed since I tend to auto-ignore Scout most of the time. (Nobles and Tactician were on the board along with some other stuff which I forget right now; I tried to race to a quick five provinces basically just using Tactician, but his/her slower Scout/Nobles engine caught up in the end.) I don't know if he/she deserves to be #1, but tat did strike me as legitimately a high-level player.
I don't doubt that he/she is a legit high level player. The question is... is is thegap between tat (lvl 48) and me (lvl 36) the same as between me and a lvl 24? Man would I like to learn those tricks. I'm pretty confident that I'm not the 3rd best active player, but that's what the leaderboard says.
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Ah, yes. In the past at least (before restrictions were advertised when you proposed a game), most of the names at the top end of the board clearly were requiring Colony for their games, if you looked at their Popular Buys stats. Which is fine if they love playing with Colonies, but it means their ranking is essentially meaningless. I believe theory used to play with no Alchemy (because it was more fun for him), which again is fine but it also influences the rankings.
Even if you don't think Colony games tend to be lower-variance with respect to skill differences, requiring Colony means you're going to get really good at a class of games that normal players only see a small fraction of the time, and then play only those types of games, almost always against opponents who aren't especially practiced at them. The difference between requiring Colony and what Paralyzed is doing is only one of degree: It's just that he is very practiced at KC/Masquerade pin games (a very small subset of boards) instead of Colony games (a larger subset).
Forbidding requirements for ranked games helps, but it doesn't stop people from rejecting boards they think they will be more likely to lose. If one views the maintenance of unbiased rankings as a paramount concern, then there should be a separate class of game where no requirements are allowed and the board is not revealed until after all players have accepted the game, and only this class of game should count for the leaderboard. My own approach is to just not worry too much about the leaderboard and trust that my own TrueSkill rating is pretty accurate: I simply do not play rated games with requirements, nor reject a rated game (ever) based on the board, nor play with people who have demonstrated that they will reject games based on the board.
I find it's most fun for me when I have to adapt to any and every card and combination the randomizer might throw at me. If other people have more fun playing with (non-abusive) requirements I'm not going to begrudge them their leaderboard position.
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Forbidding requirements for ranked games helps, but it doesn't stop people from rejecting boards they think they will be more likely to lose. If one views the maintenance of unbiased rankings as a paramount concern, then there should be a separate class of game where no requirements are allowed and the board is not revealed until after all players have accepted the game, and only this class of game should count for the leaderboard. My own approach is to just not worry too much about the leaderboard and trust that my own TrueSkill rating is pretty accurate: I simply do not play rated games with requirements, nor reject a rated game (ever) based on the board, nor play with people who have demonstrated that they will reject games based on the board.
Captain Frisk followed the same general guidelines... although I've found that by requiring colony, i'm really enjoying the game alot more. The extra 2 turns to really get an engine going is so much more fun than the "build a deck that buys 3-4 provinces and then stutters doing duchy dances until the game ends".
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I think it's kinda funny that you forbid Tournament for this experiment. I mean, I understand a lot of people think it's some silly circus card, but man, it's my single highest "Win Rate given avail" so I've never agreed with the contingent that finds it to be high-variance.
(moving this edit to a new post since it got ninja'd by the guy it was written for ;))
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I don't doubt that he/she is a legit high level player. The question is... is is thegap between tat (lvl 48) and me (lvl 36) the same as between me and a lvl 24? Man would I like to learn those tricks.
Having looked back at a few of Tat's games a while back I think were well played, consistently well played. As in that match against chwhite, they usually had strong engines that took a long time to build and against better players that style of play would be weaker. Better players wouldn't let you buy 8 hunting parties for example. Having looked back at a few Conjecture games too, I'd guess that Tat was playing at a more consistent level (or quite often when I would have varied from Tat's play I wouldn't have achieved better results) and generally only lost when an opponent used strong attacks. There isn't that much to learn though when some of the opponent's purchases just make you want to groan. Where are these opponents and why don't they play me more often!
It's patently obvious than people can beat the ranking system if they want to, isn't it? What's the surprise?
I find it's most fun for me when I have to adapt to any and every card and combination the randomizer might throw at me. If other people have more fun playing with (non-abusive) requirements I'm not going to begrudge them their leaderboard position.
Agreed.
Edit - I didn't mean better than chwhite, I meant better than low level automatch opponents :)
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So... are you gaming the rankings by cherry-picking boards? or have you found some legitimate flaw in how TrueSkill is calculated?
You can see my restrictions from the councilroom game logs... not nearly as offensive as what Paralyzed is doing, which really just seems unfair. My goal was to in general make the game more skill based by removing high variance cards. The 2nd thing that I did was try to exploit the relatively large skill jump that occurs between "ooh shiny action cards" and "maybe I should buy more silver". The dumb strategy of Single <card> + Big Money will win an alarming % of time against even expert level players. It might only be 30%, but thats enough to hold you back from climbing over rank 40.
Nice experiment. "The board most likely to induce mistakes by your opponent" is an interesting exercise.
Look at the record for this player: http://councilroom.com/player?player=moneybot
Ha, that experiment is my friend! He even made a twitter account for it: http://twitter.com/#!/d_moneybot
I begged him to change the name to something less obvious than "moneybot," so that an opponent who believes him can't take advantage of his strategy from turn 1, but it hasn't really slowed moneybot down. :-)
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Nice experiment. "The board most likely to induce mistakes by your opponent" is an interesting exercise.
I think Paralyze has this one cornered!
Ha, that experiment is my friend! He even made a twitter account for it: http://twitter.com/#!/d_moneybot
I begged him to change the name to something less obvious than "moneybot," so that an opponent who believes him can't take advantage of his strategy from turn 1, but it hasn't really slowed moneybot down. :-)
I'm so sad that this is a human following bot rules, instead of someone who actually unleashed a bot on isotropic.
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I think it's kinda funny that you forbid Tournament for this experiment. I mean, I understand a lot of people think it's some silly circus card, but man, it's my single highest "Win Rate given avail" so I've never agreed with the contingent that finds it to be high-variance.
(moving this edit to a new post since it got ninja'd by the guy it was written for ;))
This was probably an over-reaction. I lost at least one game in which i had more tournaments AND more provinces, but my opponent hit the combo first, and then proceeded to go prize crazy for the rest of the game. I actually intend to require tournament for a while (not sure if as _Frisk or conjecture) to learn how to play with it properly after avoiding it for so long.
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Conjecture is not actually theories alt (although I did choose the name to throw suspicion at him).
I knew it was you! Theory doesn't chat that much
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I just tried my very very hardest to throw away a KC-KC-Goons-Masquerade pin (http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/22/game-20111022-235749-479f3708.html).
I was quite excited when Isotropic randomly presented me with this opportunity
The main thing that stuffed me up here was Caravan, in two ways: I would trash his hand, but he would get more cards from his Caravans, and I would stupidly let too many KCs get tied up with my Caravans.
Another thing was me trying to hold on to more cards than I needed. Once I had all the ingredients, I should have aggressively trashed down to the bare essentials. At one point, if I had only trashed a Copper instead of keeping it in case he played Masquerade, I would have begun the rest-of-game pin much earlier.
Anyway, my opponent got 4 Colonies and we had about even VP chips. But because I took so long and wasn't buying anything, he built up a 10ish VP chip lead in addition to his Colonies. He then started to empty the piles and got the Caravans and Masquerades gone, and the Secret Chambers down to 1. But then his deck was gone, so he couldn't buy the last one. He had started buying Coppers, realising I couldn't win if I kept up what I was doing. Soon enough he realised that buying Curses was much better, so he started doing that.
Anyway, I bought a second Goons. He bought a Copper. He only needed one more to buy the last SC. But I played both my Goons, and bought a Colony, then the last 6 Curses for a net result of +1 VP each, and won 33-28.
I was quite annoyed at how poorly I did this, but pleased that I managed to pull out a win at the end. Although, there was at least once when he could have ended the game with a win by buying the last SC.
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I got to pull it off today for the first time. The setup was random. I fell behind after four dead KCs in a row, my opponent buying one or two Colonies every turn with now only 4 Colonies left. I grabbed some Labs to help the deck cycling, but my only chance was this devilish combo. After accelerated trashing with more than one Masquerade, the torture started.
It is really unpleasant, even for me. I can't really do anything but feel bad, since I can't buy useful cards for obvious reasons.
@Jimmmmm: Your report is way more stylish with the threat of a three-pile-ending, the VP-token race, the curse buys and the nice finish.