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1

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why +actions are not necessary to make an "interesting" kingdom

« on: October 05, 2012, 12:00:09 am »

It turns out there's a significant improvement to be made to the Silk Road bot, but it isn't to ignore Provinces (when I did that, its win rate plummets). It's to prefer Silk Road to Duchy and to more liberally buy Estates, and only buy Provinces once you have a bunch of golds (5-7). When I do this, the Hoard bot smokes the Monument bot, 65-32.

Revised Hoard bot:

Code: [Select]

<player name="Hoard/Nomad Camp/Silk Road"
 author="mischiefmaker"
 description="">
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
 <type name="Optimized"/>
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Gold"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="7.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silk_Road">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Hoard"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Hoard"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Hoard"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Hoard">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Hoard"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countTurns"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="12.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Nomad_Camp">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Nomad_Camp"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="countCardTypeInDeck" attribute="Treasure"/>
         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="8.0" />
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silk_Road">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Hoard"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Hoard"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Hoard"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>

Ah, but the SP/LH/Steward/Bridge bot still beats it 55-43. So we have an RPS situation, which is pretty interesting all by itself. But also:

Monument-BM, playing from second position, beats Scrying Pool engine 50-47
Scrying Pool engine, playing from second position, beats Silk Road 49-48
Silk Road, playing from second position, beats Monument-BM 59-38

Granted two of those results are so slim they are basically a coin flip, but given that each of these strategies has a unique opening (Monument-Silver, Nomad Camp-Silver, Potion-Steward), you might even make the argument that 2P actually has a very slight advantage here, since he gets to see what his opponent opens.

2

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why +actions are not necessary to make an "interesting" kingdom

« on: October 04, 2012, 10:57:06 am »

Not saying it beats hoard/camp/silk road or even monument+bm, but it's definitely a contender.

I'm sure someone could run a simulation to tell us. I know I would be curious.

I'm sure someone can run a better simulation than I can, but FWIW:

Monument-BM beats Scrying Pool/Lighthouse/Bridge/Gold 56-41
Monument-BM beats Hoard/Nomad Camp/Silk Road 64-33
SP/LH/B/G beats Hoard/NC/SR 65-32

Keep in mind that I am not nearly as good at tuning bots as most. Also keep in mind that I'm kind of a crappy engine builder (at least, if my games against marin have taught me anything). But here are my bots:

SP/LH/B/G:

Code: [Select]

<player name="Pool/Lighthouse/Steward/Bridge"
 author="mischiefmaker"
 description="">
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="Optimized"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Gold"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silk_Road">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Potion">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Potion"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="5.0" />
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Steward">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Steward"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Bridge">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Copper"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Bridge"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Scrying_Pool"/>
   <buy name="Lighthouse"/>
</player>


Hoard/NC/SR:

Code: [Select]

<player name="Hoard/Nomad Camp/Silk Road"
 author="mischiefmaker"
 description="">
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
 <type name="Optimized"/>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Gold"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Hoard"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silk_Road">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Hoard"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Hoard"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Hoard">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Hoard"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countTurns"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="12.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Nomad_Camp">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Nomad_Camp"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="countCardTypeInDeck" attribute="Treasure"/>
         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="8.0" />
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Hoard"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silk_Road">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Hoard"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="getTotalMoney"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="countAllCardsInDeck"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
</player>


3

Dominion Articles / Re: Dark Ages: Scavenger

« on: October 03, 2012, 01:22:33 pm »

Scav/Nv - Buy a province, next turn play village -> Scav -> Nv to top deck the province and keep your deck hitting hard.

This is kind of interesting in an engine deck where you can actually make use of the actions (similar to Apothecary/Native Village, but without the economy of Apothecary). Without draw, though, I'm having a hard time seeing how your deck hits hard in the first place, since your five card hand is Scavenger-NV-3 random cards, meaning you need to average $2/card to get to Province. Plus you have to have enough Villages and NV to get the combo set up, further reducing the likelihood that you can generate the necessary coin.

4

Dominion Articles / Re: Dark Ages: Ironmonger

« on: October 03, 2012, 01:11:07 pm »

Ironmonger is definitely a strong card, no disagreement there. A few things I think are worth mentioning:

Ironmonger-BM
Ironmonger is surprisingly strong all by itself -- solo play suggests that straight Ironmonger-BM is similar to Smithy-BM (14-17 turns to get 4 Provinces and a couple of Duchies). So while Ironmonger generally fits into an engine, that engine has to be fast enough to beat Ironmonger on its own, which is non-trivial.

Ironmonger in an engine

Ironmonger seems to me to be at its *worst* when it finds other actions. Let's consider the separate effects:

Treasure: +1 card, +1 action, +$1, potentially discards copper. That's a bit stronger than a typical $4; Donald has said that +1 card/action/$ would be a boring but balanced $4, and this adds a copper filter or information about your top card.

Victory: +2 card, +1 action, discards victory. That's a lab+, which is better than a strong $5.

Action: +1 card, +2 actions, usually will not discard your action. That's a village.

Therefore, in a vacuum, Ironmonger loses relative value as your action density increases -- because you've paid $4 for a card that is increasingly likely to be a $3 card. Now, obviously, if there are no other villages and you need one to make your engine work, maybe that's not a concern (the same way you'll buy multiple Worker's Villages even if you don't need the +buy).

Conversely, Ironmonger tends to be ok with early greening, since the more green you have, the more powerful Ironmonger is. However, I say "ok" instead of "really likes" because you have to be careful not to fall into the same trap as Crossroads -- the more green you have, the more likely Ironmonger's blind draw is another non-helpful green card!

Ironmonger and dual type cards

Following the same analysis as above:

Victory/Action: +2 cards, +2 actions
Victory/Treasure: +2 cards, +1 action, +$1

Both of those are strictly better than lab, so the more of those you can put in your deck, the better Ironmonger becomes.

Works with/Conflicts with
In addition to the above, Ironmonger works well with cards that care about the top card of your deck. Mystic is the obvious choice but there may be others (Lookout, perhaps).

Ironmonger does not work well with cursers, since hitting a curse reduces Ironmonger to a straight cantrip (which is worse than Vagrant, a $2). It's a mixed bag with Looters; hitting Ruins is a Village plus Ruins filter, which isn't bad for a $4 but it isn't great. More important is that in most cases you're likely better off just going for the Looter (Marauder/Cultist) or ignoring it (Death Cart, unless of course there's a Death Cart enabler on board) than comboing it with Ironmonger. That being said, Ironmonger is a strong choice if you are building an engine that ignores the available Looter attacks.
 
Ironmonger and opportunity cost

I'm going to pick on this statement:

if you're building an engine, pretty much any engine, Ironmonger is going to help all the way, and it isn't going to hurt even a little.  Because it's always a cantrip it never hurts to play it.

You could say the same thing about Caravan; in fact, you *should* say the same thing about Caravan. But it's important to take opportunity cost into account as well. It never hurts to play an Ironmonger, but sometimes it hurts to *buy* an Ironmonger, if your engine could get off the ground faster if you bought a different $4.

That being said, Ironmonger tends to be a bit better than most other spammable cantrips, because early in your engine build, Ironmonger is likely to hit copper and estates, cycling your deck a bit and giving you the more powerful effects; later, as you trim your deck, set up filtering, and/or increase action density, Ironmonger gives you the +actions you need.

The basic takeaway, though, is that Ironmonger in an engine works much better with a gainer, so that you're not giving up the opportunity cost of buying a different $4.

5

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things

« on: October 01, 2012, 07:24:14 pm »

As noted above, Rats/Death Cart by itself is too slow and too unreliable, but it works nicely with a little filtering (Warehouse, Cellar, Lookout, Cartographer, etc.).

6

Dominion Articles / Re: Hinterlands: Fool's Gold

« on: September 28, 2012, 01:34:36 am »

Horse Traders is not really competitive with Spice Merchant, and not even close to Remodel. It's probably at a slight disadvantage to Woodcutter. In most cases there is no difference, but HT can't ever buy more than a Province, since even if you draw it with 3 FGs, you have to discard one.

I revisited my results; you're right, HT is not very competitive with Remodel (56-40 underdog). But against Spice Merchant I have HT as a slight favorite, 49-45. Perhaps my bots are configured poorly?

Spice Merchant bot:

Code: [Select]

<player name="Fool's Gold/Spice Merchant"
 author="mischiefmaker"
 description="Surprisingly fast.">
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="Competitive"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="Combo"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="getTotalMoney"/>
         <operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="18.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="5.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Spice_Merchant" strategy="FoolsGoldEnabler">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Spice_Merchant"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Fool$s_Gold"/>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>

Horse Traders bot:

Code: [Select]

<player name="Fool's Gold/Horse Traders"
 author="mischiefmaker"
 description="">
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="Generated"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="getTotalMoney"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="18.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Horse_Traders">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Horse_Traders"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Fool$s_Gold"/>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>


7

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Rigoletto

« on: September 27, 2012, 11:24:10 am »

Chapel, Courtyard, Pawn, Squire, Steward, Conspirator, Jester, Duke, Nobles, King's Court?

Rigoletto sounds like a short but fun opera.

8

Dominion Articles / Re: Hinterlands: Fool's Gold

« on: September 27, 2012, 11:17:41 am »

I mentioned this on the frontpage comments as well, but I was surprised not to see Horse Traders on the list. It won't hold a candle to  Council Room or Wharf, but it's competitive with Remodel and Spice Merchant.

9

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Urchin/Mercenary Strategy

« on: September 24, 2012, 07:56:58 pm »

I've played a few games with Mercenary and found that:

 - The Urchin attack is incredibly weak (but duh, you already knew that).
 - It's not that hard to connect Urchins on their own, but it's a lot better if there's some other non-sucky attack on the table.
 - If there are not other attacks on the table, you'll likely need 3 Urchins or a filtering enabler.

The biggest thing, though, is that having to trash two cards is quite a lot. In most of the games I played with it, it was used 2-3 times and then had trouble finding hands with two things to trash. I had mild success playing Mercenary with Market Square (took me 3 Urchins to get the Merc, and then only collided it w/MS twice). You can also use Mercenary to trash down to almost nothing and then build your engine, the way you might in a double-ambassador game, but you need a pretty strong engine since you'll be way behind and Mercenary's attack isn't nearly as strong as Ambassador's. This worked reasonably well for an opponent who opened Urchin/Sir Martin and proceeded to pick up some Bandit Camps.

My guess is that Mercenary is likely to be better in games with junk-giving attacks, although of course junk-giving attacks make it harder to line up Urchin and the other attacks.

10

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Not Another Storage Solution Thread!

« on: September 16, 2012, 03:10:15 pm »

I like the box, and the reason for keeping Base in its own, but yeah, I explained my reasoning for something not that big. Would love to see your version of those dividers, though. Especially if you can mark where you made changes.

The PDF with all the cards is 1.5M, so can't be posted here (256k limit). Can you use this link at Dropbox?

I think all of the changes/additions I've made are either direct copies from the general rules (Potion, Ruins, Shelters, Colony/Platinum) or they're tagged with "Reference:" to indicate where on the web I saw Donald X making a ruling.

11

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dark Ages benchmarks

« on: September 14, 2012, 12:45:49 pm »

I played this set 2p a few days ago:

Forager, Procession, Talisman, Royal Seal, Witch, Mystic, Bandit Camp, Minion, Cultist, Pillage; Shelters and Colony.

We three-piled on Curse/Forager/Procession (and only 2 Ruins left), final score 0 to -4, with me trashing my only Province on my last turn to get a buy to empty both Forager and Procession at once . My opponent had been hitting Forager and Procession hard, but I opened Witch and then picked up two Cultists and just completely swamped him in junk.

I think it's a virtual certainty that a well-played Witch/Cultist game will 3-pile -- Ruins and Curses will be out, and your decks will be so junktastic that even if there's no other low pile, you can likely win on piling out Duchies before your opponent can rebuild and get Provinces.

12

Simulation / Re: Ranking BM+X terminals

« on: September 13, 2012, 09:08:25 pm »

Counterfeit is worth taking a look at too.

13

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Pillage pinning

« on: September 13, 2012, 04:24:45 pm »

Well shoot. Totally did not see the "5 or more" clause. That's embarrassing. I blame not having Isotropic to play solitaire games.

Uh...so yeah, ignore everything except the pretty (possibly faked) picture. Well, and the note about getting Pillaged once every turn, that's still pretty rough.

14

Dominion General Discussion / Pillage pinning

« on: September 13, 2012, 02:54:37 pm »

TL; DR: I'm an idiot. This isn't a real thing. Look, a picture!

It's usually pretty hard to repeatedly Pillage your opponent -- Pillage trashes itself, and it also clogs up your deck with Spoils, making it harder to get to the Pillages that are in your deck.

We can solve that problem with Graverobber, which not only fetches Pillage from the trash, but also puts it back on top of your deck, for easy access the following turn. But we've only replaced our problem, since now we have to get repeated access to the Graverobber.

Finishing off the pin is King's Court-Scheme, which gives us four things we need: 1, a source of extra actions so that we can play both Pillage and Graverobber; 2, a way to put the Graverobbers on top of the deck so that we can repeatedly get the Pillages, 3, a way to ensure that all the Spoils we're getting from repeatedly Pillaging don't stop us from playing the pin, 4, a way to draw those Spoils so that we can actually do something once our opponent is pinned.

The actual pin:
 - Draw KC-KC-Scheme-Scheme-Scheme.
 - Play KC on KC
  - on Scheme, drawing KC-Graverobber-Scheme
  - on Scheme, drawing Scheme-Pillage-Pillage
  - on KC
    - on Pillage, discarding your opponent's best 3 cards
    - on Pillage, discarding your opponent's remaining cards
    - on Graverobber, returning 2 Pillages and some other action to the top of your deck
 - play Scheme 3x, drawing three cards

Do whatever you want since your opponent has no cards. Often those three cards will be enough to get you another KC or Scheme, in which case eventually you'll be able to extend your turn to KC a Scheme and draw more non-pin cards; or those three cards will all be Spoils, so you can buy Province, or your opponent will just do this:



Otherwise, you've KC'd scheme twice and played it three times. Your deck already has 2 Pillages on top from the Graverobbers; now clean up and put Scheme, Scheme, Graverobber, KC, 3 Schemes, and 2 KC on top, in that order. Rinse and repeat; hooray! Now your friend hates Dominion!
 
You might say that this combo is too slow, and on some boards you might be right. Playing it solo, I was able to Pillage my imaginary opponent twice during turns 7-10, and then was able to Pillage every turn starting on 11-12, with the pin coming on turn 16-17. Turn 16-17 is obviously pretty late in the game, but here's the thing: it's pretty damn hard to buy a Province if you're getting Pillaged every turn. I tried it with Smithy-BM and even when I timed it so that I got Pillaged on the best possible turns 7-10, I never got more than 4 Provinces by turn 16 (and keep in mind that the pinner can buy Duchies once the pin is in place). I encourage you to try your favorite combo solo and see how effective it is when you lose your best card every turn from turn 12 on, knowing you will have no cards starting turn 17.

Now obviously a 4-card combo is going to come up roughly never. But it's worth knowing about. And playing through it really helped illustrate the point that getting Pillaged every turn is freaking rough -- there's probably quite a few boards that will have Pillage and Graverobber or Rogue and will allow you to do some weaker variant of the pin, not to mention multiplayer games where you might get Pillaged by multiple opponents.

15

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dark Ages benchmarks

« on: September 13, 2012, 02:17:44 pm »

2) How quickly Rats/X gets to 4 Provinces, where X is another trasher (in the case of Bishop, how quickly to 24 VP tokens)

Rats/Salvager and Rats/Death Cart/some kind of filtering both clock in around 14-15 turns (modulo some Duchies) in the solo games I've played.

16

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A super random question

« on: September 13, 2012, 12:26:44 pm »

Then again, if they sell out to get $8, they might have something reasonably close to a decent BM starter.

But if they're playing a BM deck, how much difference is the lvl 45 going to make?

When I first read the question, I thought the cost was in terms of VP. That is, if you pick the level 10 and I pick the level 45, I have to beat you by 4 VP, but I don't give up any turns or what not. So obviously this is highly board dependent, but under that scenario, I'm curious what folks think would be appropriate point spreads for the given levels (10, 20, 45).

17

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Dark Ages combo ideas

« on: September 13, 2012, 11:12:47 am »

Yes, I think most cantrips will be better than Silver. Not sure about second Masquerade; the results I got are pretty darned fast, so I think I'd need a simulator to suss out the difference between the variations (1Masq/2MS, 2Masq/2MS, 2Masq/1MS, etc.)

18

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Dark Ages combo ideas

« on: September 13, 2012, 12:58:37 am »

Masquerade/market square:

This combo can get you a flood of gold very very quickly. You open masquerade and market square, then add a second masquerade and a second market square on the next reshuffle. Pick up a few more market squares as you go, then switch to buying provinces and using the +buys of the market squares to pick up duchy's or estates. What makes this combo so powerful is that the masquerade both allows you to trash cards and draw your market squares. Plus, the trashing means that even as your deck fills with gold you can still connect your market squares with you masquerades pretty reliably. I played this combo and it seems like it is very fast, as fast as most tunnel strategies with the added benefits of trashing and +buys.

I tried this combo solo -- it is an absolute BEAST. Open Masquerade/Market Square, add one Market Square on the second reshuffle, and you're off to the races. 4 solitaire games, I hit 4 provinces in 12, 13, 14, and 14 turns, with a first province coming as early as turn 6.

I'm guessing it'd hold up pretty well to junking attacks, though perhaps not quite so well to discard attacks.

19

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dark Ages benchmarks

« on: September 13, 2012, 12:53:42 am »

a little too much "i think/i believe" in here for my tastes. i'd be interested in seeing some hard numbers from the sims or at least some average game lengths for the rushes.

Geronimoo does not have DA, so what can we do?

I did it the old-fashioned way -- pulled out physical cards, dealt a bunch of solo games, tracked average turns to 4 provinces. I only played a handful of games with each card though so obviously sample size is an issue, and at that level of precision it's hard to make a determination other than "is probably competitive" and "sucks". Here's what I found:

Ironmonger: 6 games, averaged 15.7 turns to get 4 provinces and an average of 2.3 duchies when played with shelters. 4 games, 15.75 turns to get 4 provinces and an average of 2.25 duchies with estates, so not a whole lot of difference (which was slightly surprising, given how much better Ironmonger-BM is when it hits victory cards).

Count: 4 games, 14.25 turns to 4 provinces and 0.5 duchies. Power card for sure and it really helps if you can draw it with two shelters on your second reshuffle. Almost always used this to put a card back and get $3.

Catacombs: 3 games, 14.66 turns to 4 provinces and 1 duchy. Strong w/BM, as expected.

20

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Opening a 2/5...what if there's no $2 card other than Estate?

« on: September 12, 2012, 09:42:01 pm »

Potion/Copper can be a fairly strong opening on Apothecary boards, depending of course on what $5s are available.

21

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Not Another Storage Solution Thread!

« on: September 12, 2012, 09:22:50 pm »

I downloaded sumpfork's code for producing tabs and made some modifications of my own; specifically:

 - made some changes and additions to the FAQ text based on rulings Donald X has made on boardgamegeek and dominionstrategy; added other rules from rulebooks (e.g. for Potion, Ruins setup, Shelters setup, etc.)
 - removed the description text and split several cards' FAQ text (Possession, Knights, etc.) -- I figure I don't need the tab to know what the card does since the card already has that text, and I'd rather have the FAQ text in its entirety and more readable instead.
 - add support for drawing Potion symbols in the card text.
 - add support for vertical back offset (which my printer requires to get things to line up)

I'm intending to submit my changes to sumpfork for inclusion, but I'm a little busy right now (although apparently not too busy to be browsing f.ds). If you want a copy of the pdf with these changes, or if you need a tweak or two to get things to line up right, drop me a PM and I'll send you the file.

Also, I strongly recommend printing them double-sided, so that you can make sure your tabs can always alternate left-right. This makes it significantly easier to find the right divider when you want to put cards in/take cards out.

Also also, I didn't post earlier since it sounded like you were set on baseball card boxes, but my storage solution uses one of these boxes: http://www.sciplus.com/singleItem.cfm/terms/10684. I put Base set in its own box (because if I'm going to a gamer's house, they'll have Base, and if I'm not going to a gamer's house, I don't want to scare people off with my giant case of cards), and I think that case will fit everything else including Guilds, with dividers.

22

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Nombo of the day: Rats / most things

« on: September 12, 2012, 06:57:19 pm »

Mister Alex hits the nail on the head: so far I haven't found any use for Rats (except as a comical, thematically flavorful, hey-look-my-whole-deck-got-eaten-by-Rats! thing) that does not involve trash-for-benefit.

I disagree that Rats shines in a Curse/Ruins-heavy game. It's wrong to think of Rats as a trasher -- better to think of them as replacing your junk (Curse/Ruins/Copper/Shelter) with Rats. If you don't have a good reason to want Rats instead of those cards, and I think in most decks Copper and Ruins will be preferable to Rats, you're better off just trying to deal with the junk without spending the opportunity cost of buying your first Rats.

I experimented a bit with a couple of combos: Rats/Salvager (open Rats/Silver, BM with 2 Salvagers from there) clocked in around 14-15 turns to 4 provinces. It's not the fastest deck in the world but it'll be reasonably competitive, especially when you consider that Salvager gives you some endgame flexibility. I only played 4-5 games though so take the sample size with a grain of salt.

Rats/Death Cart is quite a bit slower, and has a very high variance. I got to 4 provinces in one game in 16 turns, and the next game took 20+ before I gave up. However, if you add in some filtering, you've got yourself a legitimate deck. Both Rats/Death Cart/Cartographer and Rats/Death Cart/Lookout were on par with Smithy-BM, averaging 14-15 turns to 4 provinces. I didn't test them but I have good confidence that Cellar and Warehouse will be good pairings here as well.

23

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Hmmm my thoughts

« on: September 06, 2012, 11:33:38 am »

Depends on whether your goal is to use the Madman as a bootstrapper to accelerate engine creation, or if you intend to chain Madmen for a megaturn (or if you're using Hermit for something else entirely, like maybe some kind of Feodum-Squire-Graverobber-Hermit craziness). In the latter case, I think you might want to hold on to your Hermit, since swapping it for a Madman you won't use until you have 2-3 means you'll have a totally dead card for a couple of shuffles.

24

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Madman works

« on: September 02, 2012, 02:19:36 am »

Keep in mind that Madman is crippled by discard attacks -- 3 Madmen on the same turn following a Militia-style attack only gets you 10 cards, which isn't bad, but it's one-shot and usually not enough to end the game. The key is being able to hit with the discard attack every turn, so that the Madman deck never has an opportunity to go off.

25

Game Reports / Re: Anti-Ambassador Counter Lemonade Stand

« on: August 31, 2012, 12:45:26 pm »

i could go for some good ping pong discussion.

http://weschao.blogspot.com/2011/06/never-turn-it-off.html