Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: ehunt on October 05, 2011, 12:57:43 pm
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I just enjoyed a really quirky game on isotropic with these three cards.
Algorithm: open native village and remodel; turn coppers and estates into more native villages and remodels. As in the NV/bridge strategy, never pick up cards from the native village mat until you are ready to end the game with a megaturn. Once you can afford them, begin buying peddlers (which are 0 or 2). Then in the megaturn, remodel peddlers to provinces (before the megaturn, once you have enough remodels, remodel remodels into golds, which can also be remodelled on the megaturn.)
In this game, I bought a Tribute on turn 3 that was worse for me than a turn 3 duchy (I hadn't thought of the combo yet at that point), and still managed to obtain five provinces on turn 13 (and one on turn 12) - in a game without extra buys or kings courts or throne rooms*!
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/05/game-20111005-094333-276f1628.html
*actually, i suspect the lack of extra buys is a necessary condition for this combo to work, since otherwise my opponent could snag all the peddlers.
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I think think is this really a combo. Rather, remodel + peddler is a strong combo, and really, native village is a comparatively poor enabler for that combo to work. (Of course, you have a better chance of doing it all in one turn with native village, but with other enablers like hamlet, warehouse, etc, you'll probably be able to snag all the peddlers more quickly.)
EDIT: In my experiments, it seems like it's pretty hard to build up the chain of native villages you need to get your first peddler, so I'd say you get fairly lucky in that respect.
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I think think is this really a combo. Rather, remodel + peddler is a strong combo, and really, native village is a comparatively poor enabler for that combo to work. (Of course, you have a better chance of doing it all in one turn with native village, but with other enablers like hamlet, warehouse, etc, you'll probably be able to snag all the peddlers more quickly.)
I haven't played with it at all, but accepting ehunt's experience as being within a ballpark of typical, this sounds to me like a combo. Sure, Hamlet/Peddler/Remodel is strong, but I don't think it's "six Provinces by turn 13" strong. The mega-turn and pseudo-trashing up until that turn sounds like the key component of the deck to me, that hamlet and warehouse wouldn't provide you.
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Well, the problem is the peddler gain. I can't replicate ehunt's success (the first peddler requires 3+ native villages in the same hand, and that just doesn't happen very often), and I think hamlet etc will easily lock out ehunt's strategy by depleting the supply of peddlers super fast. It's notable that in ehunt's game, the opponent didn't compete for the peddlers at all.
EDIT: VVV Well, I've tried this solitare some more, and I'm really not convinced. A lot of the time, your NVs go straight on to the NV mat, you never get a peddler until turn 10, and then that gets swallowed by the NV as well, and so you can't gain nearly enough peddlers until turn 15+. I think the turn 7 and 8 peddler buys are just super lucky.
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and I think hamlet etc will easily lock out ehunt's strategy by depleting the supply of peddlers super fast.
This is already answered in the original post:
*actually, i suspect the lack of extra buys is a necessary condition for this combo to work, since otherwise my opponent could snag all the peddlers.
I wonder more about the luck of nv draws in these types of decks (comparable to nv/bridge). When you draw all the nv/remodels to the map and remain with coppers - what can you do?
The game was nice btw.
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It's annoying that the game log doesn't show what goes onto the NV mat, isn't it? That would make it a lot easier to evaluate how lucky ehunt got in his listed game.
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This, for example, feels like a more typical case of this:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/05/game-20111005-115524-8939a4db.html
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5 and a duchy on turn 15 still seems like a combo to me.
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*Shrugs* I don't feel like calling something a combo if it can't consistently beat smithy-BM without attacks. (Smithy-BM being also an available strategy on that board.)
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I don't think that Smith + BM consistently has 5 Provinces + 1 Duchy on turn 15.
I played it a little, and I think that the consensus that is developing is that ehunt's 5 Provinces by turn 13 was anomalous. I didn't get that good, but I did have 5 Provinces by turn 15. I'd be willing to believe that there's a skill-component to this as well -- I don't think that entirely mechanical "put cards on the NV mat until you can guarantee yourself 4+ Provinces in one turn" is optimal. In my game, I put a couple of Coppers on the map early on. Well, Coppers aren't useful on your mega-turn, so I yanked them back off the mat in order to get an earlier Peddler than I otherwise would, which seems like it was useful to me (sure, my deck was less thin, but I got my Peddler). What if you can do 3 Provinces in one turn, is that enough or should you wait? I'm not sure, but I suspect that play need not be entirely mechanical here in the way that, say, "Bishop + Chapel -> 5 card deck trashing a Province every turn" is mechanical, or "Workshop/Gardens" is mechanical.
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I don't think that Smith + BM consistently has 5 Provinces + 1 Duchy on turn 15.
I played it a little, and I think that the consensus that is developing is that ehunt's 5 Provinces by turn 13 was anomalous. I didn't get that good, but I did have 5 Provinces by turn 15. I'd be willing to believe that there's a skill-component to this as well -- I don't think that entirely mechanical "put cards on the NV mat until you can guarantee yourself 4+ Provinces in one turn" is optimal. In my game, I put a couple of Coppers on the map early on. Well, Coppers aren't useful on your mega-turn, so I yanked them back off the mat in order to get an earlier Peddler than I otherwise would, which seems like it was useful to me (sure, my deck was less thin, but I got my Peddler). What if you can do 3 Provinces in one turn, is that enough or should you wait? I'm not sure, but I suspect that play need not be entirely mechanical here in the way that, say, "Bishop + Chapel -> 5 card deck trashing a Province every turn" is mechanical, or "Workshop/Gardens" is mechanical.
But the thing is, BM+Smith consistently gets 4 (and has its estates) by turn 14, and you have... how many before then? Because it doesn't matter if you can get 5 if there aren't 5 left. If you're grabbing 6 provinces on turn 16 (not the case here, but I'm trying to illustrate a point), it doesn't matter if your opponent has grabbed 5 by then, 'cause you're only getting three.
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But the thing is, BM+Smith consistently gets 4 (and has its estates) by turn 14, and you have... how many before then? Because it doesn't matter if you can get 5 if there aren't 5 left. If you're grabbing 6 provinces on turn 16 (not the case here, but I'm trying to illustrate a point), it doesn't matter if your opponent has grabbed 5 by then, 'cause you're only getting three.
That's valid, but it's essentially a complaint about any mega-turn approach, right?
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But the thing is, BM+Smith consistently gets 4 (and has its estates) by turn 14, and you have... how many before then? Because it doesn't matter if you can get 5 if there aren't 5 left. If you're grabbing 6 provinces on turn 16 (not the case here, but I'm trying to illustrate a point), it doesn't matter if your opponent has grabbed 5 by then, 'cause you're only getting three.
That's valid, but it's essentially a complaint about any mega-turn approach, right?
Only if it's slow enough to go off that the opponent can get 50% of the VP before it does go off.
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But the thing is, BM+Smith consistently gets 4 (and has its estates) by turn 14, and you have... how many before then? Because it doesn't matter if you can get 5 if there aren't 5 left. If you're grabbing 6 provinces on turn 16 (not the case here, but I'm trying to illustrate a point), it doesn't matter if your opponent has grabbed 5 by then, 'cause you're only getting three.
That's valid, but it's essentially a complaint about any mega-turn approach, right?
Only if it's slow enough to go off that the opponent can get 50% of the VP before it does go off.
I agree with WanderingWinder on this one. It's a cool combo, but unlike a bridge-type mega turn, it doesn't easily catch up by grabbing extra vp through duchies (or harems/nobles/fair grounds if they happen to be available).
I wonder if it is more robust to attacks though, in particular ambassador, which was available in this case. Furthermore, I wonder if you could incorporate the ambassador ourself to remove the excess copper and pollute the other guy. It wouldn't make you faster though, and starts making it a 4 card construction.
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Only if it's slow enough to go off that the opponent can get 50% of the VP before it does go off.
Hmmm. I'm not sure that I buy that there are any mega-turn approaches which can reliably get their mega-turn before turn 15. Obviously, this particular mega-turn approach doesn't work with Colonies, and is more sharply limited in the number of cards it can gain than would be a King's Court/Bridge one.
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Only if it's slow enough to go off that the opponent can get 50% of the VP before it does go off.
Hmmm. I'm not sure that I buy that there are any mega-turn approaches which can reliably get their mega-turn before turn 15. Obviously, this particular mega-turn approach doesn't work with Colonies, and is more sharply limited in the number of cards it can gain than would be a King's Court/Bridge one.
Note that I didn't say that this is my definition of what a combo is or that I don't think you need to necessarily be that fast to have it be a viable strategy. Also note I said 50% of the VP, not half of the stack of biggest green cards.
But there are several strategies that can successfully mega-turn before this. Native Village/Bridge is a 2-card one that springs off the top of my head, but there are several bigger ones as well.
Also if you have attacks, you're probably slowing the opponent from getting 50% of the VP, so you don't need to be before turn 15.
The issue that this combo has is that when it's going for its mega turns, it's not particularly adept at getting smaller VP cards.
And actually, this might be more viable against an opponent blindly going for colonies, as you can actually snag ALL of the provinces before they get their fifth colony maybe. But they can, of course, block by getting provinces.
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Also, these three cards don't always have to beat BM+smithy, they don't include a smithy after all.
There are some slower boards, even without attacks. Also, I played around a dozen games solo of this, and while turn 15 is the average "i get 5 provinces" it's pretty simple to get 3-4 on one of the turns from 11 on - you don't necessarily have to get a full combo turn to leverage it into a victory, you can often just take a 1-2 province lead and then remodel a province to empty the supply. It might not be the greatest trio of cards, but on some (possibly very small) fraction of boards, it's worth a win.
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3 card combos are crazy rare to show up in a real game. Especially 3 card combos that also depend on the absence of several other cards (warehouse, +buys, discard attacks, etc). Putting this together, this combo really needs to do something amazing to make it something I'll immediately pick up on and dive into no matter what else is on the board, and barely-matching-BMSmithy is just not amazing enough. It's a half decent strategy, sure, but not something worth looking out for.
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The real combo is salvager/remodel/apprentice + peddler. The NV is arbitrary, imo. I'd rather have a hamlet, honestly. Personally, I have had mixed results going heavy NVs for a megaturn, even with bridge. It works, sometimes.
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The real combo is salvager/remodel/apprentice + peddler. The NV is arbitrary, imo. I'd rather have a hamlet, honestly. Personally, I have had mixed results going heavy NVs for a megaturn, even with bridge. It works, sometimes.
Yeah, I agree. The reason NV+bridge is a combo is that bridges are exponentially better in groups. Here there is no real reason you need to remodel all the peddlers on the same turn.
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Perhaps if there were watchtowers in the kingdom we would really see a combo!