Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: kevinb9n on August 31, 2011, 01:01:46 pm
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6 Goons
5 City
5 Outpost
5 Royal Seal
4 Bishop
4 Gardens
4 Ironworks
4 Moneylender
4 Smithy
2 Secret Chamber
(no Colony/Platinum)
My theory is that this should be a strong Gardens setup in a 2p or 5p game, but too risky in 4p. Here are my thoughts, and I'd love to know where you think I might be going wrong.
First, there's not a lot of trashability, and the Goons threat means there's less incentive to trash anyway. At the same time, the presence of Goons should prevent there being a quick Province ending. So I think that the game should go on for many turns and decks grow quite large. So Gardens should be worth a lot, and I believe there will be both a Gardens race and a Cities race. The hope is that I could either win the Gardens race or tie it but win the Cities race. But to make Cities really powerful I need a few Smithies and I'd certainly want one or two Ironworks before the Gardens race gets rolling.
But there I just mentioned *four* 4-5 cost cards I'd need to hog somehow, so that's seeming difficult.
Then there's Goons. It's my only effective way to get +buys until the end and it's hard to resist the appeal of its coins, tokens AND attack. So I think everyone will get some. But then this makes Secret Chambers pretty effective (instead of discard worst two of 5, it's discard worst two of 7 then push SC and one other card to the deck, to be drawn by my City... not too harsh?) and if they all get bought up with those extra Goons buys then I'm dead with 29 cards in my deck.
(That's the problem with 4p that is not as bad in either 2p or 5p.)
I wouldn't bother with Moneylender or Royal Seal at all, and Outpost only if I run out of other cards I need (it is a way to net one extra card after all).
And as for money, I'd be taking free Copper and buying and Ironworksing a number of Silvers, and probably don't need any Gold.
On further reflection, I think this won't work. Someone who focuses on Goons instead and gets their share of Cities will profit from my depleting the Gardens deck by racking up mega-Goons-turns and raking in points WAY faster than I can, but I won't be able to shut them down on Provinces. But if everyone realizes this, then they won't run out the Gardens deck, and so how would I get super-duper-Cities? Secret Chambers, I guess.
Well, just looking for some constructive feedback on my thought processes here. It's stuff like this that really cements Dominion as my favorite game of all time!
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Hmm. Maybe if I run Gardens and can barely get my deck to 30 I'd actually want the three-pile ending, since the Goons fans wouldn't have time to really start chaining them up. They probably would not be expecting that.
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Ironworks + Gardens, I assume, is golden here.
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Ironworks + Gardens, I assume, is golden here.
agreed. by yourself, you should be able to drain IW/gardens/estates by yourself in about 15 turns. this *should* be early enough that the goons engine won't be running full speed. the goons attack might be pesky mid game, but should not matter at all in your last 4-5 turns.
if you both go for ironworks/gardens, , ensure you get a minimum of 3 gardens and then take a step back and look at the game. once gardens are gone, so many players will just rush to end piles and will scramble to grab estates. pay attention to your reshuffle and IW a few silver (or in this game maybe even a smithy) and try to grab a duchy or two.
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Yeah, if you are going Gardens, you would just ignore all those higher cost cards as they will just slow you down. You should be able to end the game before any mega-Goons action can happen. You would probably want to drain piles fairly evenly though, because you don't want to activate Cities for an extended period of time.
If you are the only one who goes for Gardens in 3 or 4 player, it might take too long, but if the other two race for the Cities, you only need to drain Gardens and Estates with a few Ironworks to end the game really quickly.
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Juts to add some confusion, these may also be a bishop strategy to counter gardens. You get a share of the gardens, trash them out for bishop points, then add some green card vp at the finish. I wouldn't like to say how successful it would be since I've never played that combination!
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Juts to add some confusion, these may also be a bishop strategy to counter gardens. You get a share of the gardens, trash them out for bishop points, then add some green card vp at the finish. I wouldn't like to say how successful it would be since I've never played that combination!
Yep, bishop trashing gardens nets 3VP, probably the same #of points that a gardens player is going to get if the game ends early, and even just 1 double Goons turn with activated cities will probably sink a pure gardens rush. (Brotip: don't let the other person get all 8 gardens) And, the biggest weakness of bishop (that the opponent gets to trash cards too) doesn't even matter!
I would probably open ironworks / silver, and closely monitor the situation before committing to HARD ironworks / gardens, or countering with bishops.
Of course, this is 2p... with 3 or 4 I'd try to play Le Havre instead.
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Yep, bishop trashing gardens nets 3VP, probably the same #of points that a gardens player is going to get if the game ends early, and even just 1 double Goons turn with activated cities will probably sink a pure gardens rush. (Brotip: don't let the other person get all 8 gardens) And, the biggest weakness of bishop (that the opponent gets to trash cards too) doesn't even matter!
it should be noted that a clever gardens player can play the same trick though. naturally, you need to react well to what your opponent does. if your opponent is running a bishop strategy and they let you get most of the IW, just grab a bishop or two before the reshuffle. using bishop on an IW is better than using the IW to grab an estate. similarly, you can bishop estates to meet the 2/4/5 money you are aiming for.
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This forum is awesome... thanks everyone, I'm just going to turn all this information over in my mind.
Just when I think I can't love Dominion any more than I already do...
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I think Bishop is going to counter the Gardens/Ironworks enough that this is just going to be a pretty conventional Goons/City megaturn game.
But like pretty much everyone else here, I don't play enough 3+ to know if you'll have the time to get it off before the game ends. OTOH, I suspect Cities are even nastier in 3p than 2p, and City/Goons is already insanely good in 2p.
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I haven't found that bishop really counters IW/G that hard, as long as the IW/G player knows how to finesse it properly. In fact, I'm quite sure that in 2P, this is the dominant strategy. Adding the extra player(s) might change something, but I'd guess a straight city/goons is too slow unless maybe somebody else is bishopping.
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I haven't found that bishop really counters IW/G that hard, as long as the IW/G player knows how to finesse it properly. In fact, I'm quite sure that in 2P, this is the dominant strategy. Adding the extra player(s) might change something, but I'd guess a straight city/goons is too slow unless maybe somebody else is bishopping.
i agree on bishop vs. IW/G. i think a key factor of the advantage is that the IW/G player controls the pace of the game.
having a bishop player in 3+ would help out the city player a lot, especially with the presence of a moneylender. no idea how it would play out though.
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I haven't found that bishop really counters IW/G that hard, as long as the IW/G player knows how to finesse it properly. In fact, I'm quite sure that in 2P, this is the dominant strategy. Adding the extra player(s) might change something, but I'd guess a straight city/goons is too slow unless maybe somebody else is bishopping.
So, I'm curious - what do you mean by finessing it properly? I'm just having a hard time seeing what adjustments IW/G would make in response to bishoping. I don't really know much about gardens finesse or what it means...
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How about some empiricism? Can we get some multiplayer games with this set online? Does 11 PM EST today work for people?
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Well, I'll be around at that time, and would be happy to help you guys test this thing if you don't get the number of people you need. I'm not that good though, hopefully I wouldn't mess things up by misplaying strategies.
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if i am around i would love to play a game or two.
as a side note, this got me thinking of an idea for another lobby in isotropic. basically, say once a week a new kingdom/board (preferably with a few divergent strategies) would be chosen and it would be the only board allowed in that lobby. players could try their hand at their preferred strategy and then we could all come back here and discuss. similar to those annotated games featured on the blog.
maybe a whole new lobby is too much. perhaps just a recurring thread in the forums?
thoughts?
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There is already a bunch of unused lobbies. I'd love to see the councilroom lobby actually used.
A nice "board of the week" thread could be interesting.
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I'd be happy to get in on the playtesting this evening. I hope to see folks online around 11EST!
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There is already a bunch of unused lobbies. I'd love to see the councilroom lobby actually used.
A nice "board of the week" thread could be interesting.
I used it a few times when it first came out, but eventually there were zero people there instead of 4-5, and I had to switch back to GH.
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I used it a few times when it first came out, but eventually there were zero people there instead of 4-5, and I had to switch back to GH.
Same experience.
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There is already a bunch of unused lobbies. I'd love to see the councilroom lobby actually used.
A nice "board of the week" thread could be interesting.
The council room lobby was removed in the 6:00 server restart afaik, probably because it was never used.
Secret chamber still exists and fulfills the same purpose though.
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This just in: I'm having extreme computer problems and will not be able to join the fun tonight after all. Sorry!
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game 1: only 2p. basically happened as I expected.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201108/31/game-20110831-201222-ba77a8af.html
game 2: I played the iron works side. Same outcome.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201108/31/game-20110831-202359-36ec0ed2.html
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To summarize - it only takes one powered-up mega-city goons turn to get more points than the entire gardens deck, and iw/gardens can't seem to empty three piles fast enough to prevent that, especially since by trying to empty piles, you set up the level 2 and 3 cities. (Even when rrenaud played the iw side and I played the city side, and I'm pretty sure that I played the cities sort of amateurishly.)
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I wish I could have been there - was teaching a friend the game IRL. I think IW misplayed pretty drastically both games. I'm up to play this whenever anyone else is available. Also wanna note that I don't expect to win 100%, just enough to be 'the dominant strategy' - probably at least 55%+
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What time is good for you? What mistakes did we make with the ironworks?
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The first game was much more glaring, in that he went for gardens way too soon. Yours, you went for gardens a touch too late, trashed to the opp bishop at the beginning, and got too many bishops. Much slighter, much closer. In general, nights are good for me. I'm also on now.
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Hm. I just tried a few sample games and you're right, I've been getting gardens way too early. Thanks for the advice.
It seems like it's possible to get >40 cards (and >40 points) and end the game in 15 turns.
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It seems to me like outpost could help the goons player significantly. Also, is there any merit to going for moneylender instead of bishop? You'll have less points in the begginning but have an easier time getting an early goons. By the way, nice set with diverging options
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I played this board a few times with WW.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110901-150156-f33dc68c.html
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110901-145527-5e2808ea.html - nice
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110901-145138-f8ce0196.html
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110901-144525-0c486323.html - nice
I switch back to thinking ironworks + gardens is probably a winning strategy over bishop/city/goons, but you need to be really tactical and not run out any piles too soon, nor push any piles too close to empty before they all disappear. If the cities start exploding, the game is over.
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Wow. I'm just delighted to find that my inkling that this was a pretty interesting set seems to have been well-founded. Y'all are intense. :-)
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chesskidnate, I'm the amateur here, but I suspect the "early" goons doesn't matter as much as really getting a rip-roaring goons engine cranking for several mega-turns before the game ends.
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It's probably better to get an early gold instead of an early goons. Goons is pretty weak as an attack.