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« on: August 31, 2011, 01:01:46 pm »
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!
