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Messages - RisingJaguar

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1
Game Reports / Re: WTF my opponent's start
« on: January 11, 2013, 02:26:35 pm »
Is golden deck even a good idea when there's only single-card trashing available? Won't it lose to something simple like Monument-BM if you don't have a fast trasher to start it up?
Very much so.  Or else every bishop game with a bishop would be a golden deck. 

2
Game Reports / Re: SWAG #4
« on: January 07, 2013, 03:00:39 pm »
SB seems to take some really bad shuffle luck here.  I'm referring to missing out on T3/T4 remake, then only hitting one remake on the next reshuffle despite buying another.  I think that's why he makes some 'odd' decisions after that point. 

The last turn is very good forward thinking shown by WW.  It can be very very tempting to just build your engine to a monstrosity, but looking for certain wins whenever you can is a very useful (and necessary) tool.

3
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Warehosue/Sea Hag vs. Silver/Sea Hag
« on: January 05, 2013, 12:27:44 pm »
I think on the flip side, hitting $5 with opening silver/sea hag on T3/T4 feels luckier than hitting warehouse T3 (and also finding the sea hag to hit).  I'm just saying that both sides has its luck dragons. 

My intuition says 2 warehouses before going into silvers, but I do tend to focus on curse splits more. 
Some of it is definitely going to depend on what else is on the board (is hitting 5 important? 4? Are there other good terminals at certain points? Non-terminals? Peddler? etc. etc.). I think in the broadest case you want only one, though maybe 2 can work as well - but if two warehouses, probably only one hag?
Of course all of the kingdom should be considered as well.   My (First) comment was more to explain that I don't think warehouse provides a huge amount of variance compared to sea hag/silver.  ddubois poses the question if the variance provided by warehouse outweighs the consistency of silver.  I just wanted to provide a counter example (although I could be wrong on the overall that warehouse doesn't provide any more variance). 

4
Game Reports / Re: SWAG #5
« on: January 05, 2013, 11:40:31 am »
I think it's reasonably close here. And when it's close, I always go engine. After doing a lot of single player I'd say you need around 14 turns to pick up all Grand Markets, if you don't need to deny Silk Roads before that and don't get attacked by the Cutpurse. After that your deck is super super powerful and you don't need much more then 3 turns to end it on provinces.
This is much faster than I was expecting, warehouse/laboratory really help here.  Impressive as always :)

I also wonder how WW feels that everyone seems to always assume he goes Alt-VP in these games

5
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Warehosue/Sea Hag vs. Silver/Sea Hag
« on: January 05, 2013, 11:28:31 am »
I think on the flip side, hitting $5 with opening silver/sea hag on T3/T4 feels luckier than hitting warehouse T3 (and also finding the sea hag to hit).  I'm just saying that both sides has its luck dragons. 

My intuition says 2 warehouses before going into silvers, but I do tend to focus on curse splits more. 

6
In short, No.

Your opponent could have improved his play in many different ways like:
 - Open trade route
 - Invested more in actions EARLY (ie. not turn 8 duchy, i mean trade route's power isn't the dollars it provides).  Helps provide more use to scrying pool and vineyards.  Greens way too early, should have started once he could reliably draw out his deck.
 - Not buy 5 apothecaries and only buy 2?
 - Not buying provinces in general.

You can really tell on Turn 15/17 that he greens too early. 

There's just too much to embargo with 3 useful potion cards available that one embargo shouldn't really deter someone.  There also isn't an easy way to buy out 8 provinces (your opponent shouldn't have bought any really).  There isn't a really graet BM terminal to use here. 

With your play, I think opening embargo/silver isn't horrible if you want to slow them down a little.  I think you probably want 1 mine before heading into venture madness also.  Golds over venture is correct. 

7
The general strategy in the end should consists of hamlet/warehouse to sift, provide + actions, provide + buys and watchtower to compensate the reduction in handsize.  The point of this would be to play highways and smugglers.  This also fends off against any embargoes nicely with the use of smugglers/watchtower to get around such problems.  If you want to go for such a deck, silver/golds should be avoided because as you are trying to discard cards constantly, the golds/silvers will provide with significantly less benefit. 

I think the cards you want to add at the start are hamlets, watchtowers and warehouses.  Despite hamlet being the cheapest, this should take priority as without hamlets, the strategy will run out of gas quite quickly, especially without any trashing. 

The problem with such a deck would be the lack of money.  The downside with opening like this is that you won't be able to buy many pieces.  Highway helps with that, but again, going with hamlets/warehouse/watchtowers doesn't really provide you with the best type of economy.  Thus this deck is a little reliant on getting to $5 early and even may require you to buy a silver even though it may be detrimental later on. 

Or you can go Oracle/BM. 

8
Even if you don't get the best shuffle luck to begin with, you don't really make things better.  I count 6-7 terminals by T10 with one worker's village.  I know the salvager was intended to trash the estates, but your deck can't do a million things at once with only one village.  Get more villages, its a limited resource.  Now say there was also vanilla village in the game, then maybe you can delay it, but the difference between 6-4 or even 7-3 village is great in a deck where all you want to do is play multiple actions. 

I also think your deck would have cycled better if you focused getting wishing wells instead of silvers.  Instead of buying a lot of one-a-time trashers to trim your deck, often buying cards that cycle (wishing well) speeds up the process better.  The deck's goal isn't to buy really expensive things like provinces/colonies, its purpose is to pester with constant goons and also play multiple goons.  Silver does not help you here and actually makes things worse.  Wishing well doesn't help you that much in increasing hand size/cycling, but it doesn't HURT.  Of course if you do do this, then you would need to manage your dollars better and ensure you still get to $6 relatively early but to follow Dondon's point, a T9-10 Goon isn't horrible if you've set your deck to play these cards more often. 

9
Game Reports / Re: SWAG #3
« on: December 26, 2012, 12:10:41 pm »
First off, the solo games here show off the speed of an un-mirrored engine here.  The game was a mirror match, so the speed of those solo games are not indicative of the game played here. 

My thoughts:
- I think stef's T3-T6 is rather unlucky at the start.  His first develop hand has no estate, isn't able to reach an early $4 (which in my first tester game I got two early ones).  Those two combined has him focusing on over-purchased apothecaries for awhile (which was the correct adjustment).  However, this slows him down as he was not able to purchase Apothecaries/wishing wells in the early turns, like both players planned. 
- Overall, I prefer the develop start, although that's with hindsight.  The estates in the deck are a problem.  The only problem is it takes a very forward thinking mind to utilize develop in future turns (say anything past T9/10).  Stef does this very well, but most are not like him.  Other then that, develop is the main difference in their decks.  The other minute differences are because of either stef's develop (ie. only one horse trader because of terminal spots) or because of stef's poor opening. 
- WW mentions scout, and for stef's deck (with the develop) it isn't such a great idea.  However, if scout could work in a deck, it would probably be WW's deck.  You kept your estates, go for gardens (more green than provinces), planned for duchies possibly.  With that said, it probably is a luxury you can't afford as that would mean providing more end-game control to Stef. 
- Very tempting to buy the 10th Wishing well, but not buying it is pretty strong tactically I think.  The game stalled out longer than i expected (ie. the 10th wishing well might've been good), but allows your opponent to have more immediate control.  Similar idea of control with purchasing the scout.

10
Game Reports / Re: WWAG #2
« on: December 19, 2012, 08:04:18 am »
Wait, Stef still won?

11
2012 / Re: Upsets
« on: December 14, 2012, 10:18:18 am »
RisingJaguar is out.  Seems like Round 2 is where all the upsets are.

I guess this time around he couldn't...

[sunglasses]

...rise to the occasion.
This killed all the sadness from losing.  :)

12
2012 / Re: Gardens Division: Bracket and Results
« on: December 13, 2012, 10:08:27 pm »
gman314 4 - 3 RisingJaguar

Game 1: RisingJaguar
We both forgot to get the log, but this game had a straightforward set except for Black Market, which I didn't get and he did. He got some rather useful things from there, like Goons.

Game 2: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/13/game-20121213-173731-a6aed9c0.html  gman314 33 - 32 RisingJaguar
I passed on Conspirators because of the lack of extra buys. I don't think my strategy was by any means optimal, but it squeaked out the win on the 3-pile.

Game 3: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/13/game-20121213-174802-3136fcd0.html RisingJaguar 91 - 13 gman314
Scrying Pool and Vineyard dominated this set. I really don't know why I lost so badly here, but I did.

Game 4: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/13/game-20121213-175739-a1d92f78.html gman314 37 - 29 RisingJaguar
I went for a fairly straightforward Apprentice - Hoard approach with an early Ghost Ship to slow him down. He went for more of an engine which took a bit of time to get going.

Game 5: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/13/game-20121213-180750-adcda070.html gman314 59 - 43 RisingJaguar
This set was dominated by Mountebank and Goons with Trading Post and Caravan as counters for each. I think what did it for me here was being the first to Goons as well as an early lucky block of Mountebank.

Game 6: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/13/game-20121213-181523-a21a2d18.html RisingJaguar 36 - 18 gman314
On this set, I ignored Young Witch, thinking that I could use Baron to get an early Forge and then have some powerful Menageries in every hand. It did not work at all and in retrospect was probably a pretty terrible idea.

Game 7: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/13/game-20121213-182616-4f391621.html gman314 87 - 60 RisingJaguar
Another board where he went engine and I went with a bit less complicated approach. We both opened with Steward, but while I went into a big money deck with a bit of support from Swindler, Haggler and Warehouse, he went into an engine which again took a while to set up.

All in all, some good games, against I'm pretty sure the highest ranked opponent I've played. Our different approaches were very evident, with me almost always taking more of a BM approach.
It's been awhile since i've played serious games!

I just felt really compelled to build engines and a lot of them just didn't work, and I paid for it :( I don't really have much explanation for any of the games except for number 2, which I was pretty surprised he managed to get province + 2 ironworks in a turn.  Good luck in the rest of the games :)

13
Game Reports / Re: WWAG #2
« on: December 11, 2012, 03:17:42 pm »
Those of you who are saying it depends on how your opponent plays: how? Obviously you can't cover everything, but give general gameplans of what you will do against other general reasonable strategies.
The idea between Jester/Torturer will depend on how BM or engine-y their deck is.  If their deck can be drawn out, the more torturer is not as useful, as curses can be instantly trashed, and the more jester becomes useful grabbing like-pieces.  The opposite for a more BM-style deck where torturer's decisions hurt a lot more.

Balancing cities grabbing.  I think the way I want to play encourages purchases of cities regardless, but I would think there has to be a lot of reactions here.  I think its because of this natural need to buy cities likely by both players that getting scrying pool is probably overkill for drawing purposes. 

Vineyard jocking.  The usual?

The usual 3 piles in an engine game with cities grabbing, jestering, grand markets, etc. 

14
Game Reports / Re: WWAG #2
« on: December 11, 2012, 01:28:55 pm »
I also suggest the title be Super WanderingWander Annotated Games, because one they will be super. 

But also just to be called SWAG. 

15
Game Reports / Re: WWAG #2
« on: December 11, 2012, 01:26:49 pm »
My random thoughts:
Jester's interaction is (or at least I want it to be) a pretty big component of the game.  The problem is that the trashing terminals are needed at the start, and villages are at $5 meaning it will be awhile before this comes into play.  Grabbing it too late, when a pile has likely depleted, ruins its value as well. 

However way you decide to build the engine, whoever gets there first should easily win.  Too many of these cards scream snow-ball effect (Jester, GM, vineyard, maybe cities?). 

At first I thought scrying pool was the way to go, but I think it can be skippable.  There's a logical progression with opening Masq/JoaT for trashing while still maintaining a palatable economy.  The next step would be to grab cities when possible and more masqs.  With no +buy in sight, no reason to grab a potion really.  By the time your deck can grab its first GM, the deck can likely survive without it, as it should have thinner deck with the ability to get some sort of draw going (masq/cities).   

16
2012 / Re: Nomad Camp ("Help! I can't find my opponent!")
« on: December 08, 2012, 08:59:14 am »
Still nothing from mico77.

17
2012 / Re: Nomad Camp ("Help! I can't find my opponent!")
« on: December 06, 2012, 01:15:52 pm »
mico77 has not replied to both of my messages.

18
2012 / Re: Gardens Division: Bracket and Results
« on: December 05, 2012, 11:19:18 am »
Do I win? My opponent:

Date Registered: November 26, 2012, 04:33:18 am
Local Time: December 05, 2012, 11:18:19 am
Last Active:  November 26, 2012, 04:33:18 am

19
2012 / Re: Gardens Division: Bracket and Results
« on: December 04, 2012, 04:30:15 pm »
Mico77 has not replied yet, I PMed him sunday night and still no reply.

He hasn't been on the site since he registered and has not played a game on Iso. 

20
2012 / Re: The Rising Jaguar
« on: December 03, 2012, 12:25:50 pm »
I like Allfail/timchen's chances here.  He placed very well last year, only losing to WW in a very close set.  Was among the elites at one point then his level took a hit after he stopped playing as much.  Ironically in the same bracket as Dondon though. 

Also already won his first match!

21
2012 / Re: Toughest Division
« on: December 03, 2012, 11:51:14 am »
another factor to take into account: a number of the top players haven't played recently. this might make some of them a little rusty, but it also leads to their variance increasing which brings the level down. i wonder how the groups would look if we looked at just their mean skill ratings? all of that data should be in the entrants spreadsheet.
Yeah this is something that needs to be considered.  I'm certainly not the player I was a few months ago where I was among the elite players in the world iso. 

22
Help! / Re: Festival/Torturer awfulness
« on: November 29, 2012, 09:37:59 am »
It might help explain knowing that you only had 4 festivals. 

You do have some mehish shuffle luck.  With that said, I think it is also important to know that smithies is the better opening.  See at the start, you're going to probably get festival than torturers.  It just makes intuitive sense (unless you opened silver/silver which i don't agree).  Now you have all these festivals/torturers to connect, conspirator doesn't help that at all, it only helps with the END result which is to gather money. 

Smithy doesn't help with generating money as much, but it helps with connecting +actions with +cards.  So the order of getting $4 cards is a little backwards.  Smithy first, when you feel comfortable to get conspirators, then get one remodel (to change estates and battle curses) and move on over to conspirators. You also don't need that money early on.  Really the extra dollars aren't helpful unless you have $10 (to buy two engine pieces). 

23
Game Reports / Re: Losing To Marin - Game Analysis
« on: November 29, 2012, 09:16:05 am »
Disclaimer, I would not have thought of this in-game.  This is hindsight analysis. First try, and like DonDon, playing a second seems tiring. 

Also great piece, I usually jump to the game log to figure out player's intentions, but the report was very nice. :)

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/29/game-20121129-060022-1d0f284c.html

21 Turns - 88 points.  Just straight duchy/dukes.  One crossroads away from piling out.  The intention is to show the... my version of 'max speed', similar to how BM would try to get all 8 colonies as fast as possible.  Differences in gameplay:
 - One wishing well then crossroads for <$5.  I'm thinking two wouldn't be horrible, but crossroads should be the drawer...
 - No embassies, the +2 net cards isn't the greatest.  It does help with crossroads drawing, but I think that's where wishing well comes in to provide more green in hand. 
 - 5 bazaars only - Ideally I'd be drawing out my hand and still have enough dollars, this didn't always work so 6-7 could be better for consistency.  Though I think any more is excessive and should be duchies (they help with drawing your deck too). 
 - 2 Moneylenders - I think this helps with drawing out your deck a lot more (lining up green with crossroads).  These can be expanded later. This could have probably been purchased on T4.

I think most of these changes helped in getting duchy/dukes, maybe aside from 5 bazaars, probably could have grabbed a 6th.  What this deck doesn't provide is flexibility that Marin's and Dondon's provides, because my sole intention is to go duchy/duke. That probably sway things a little on my favour. 

Things to fix with my strategy:
 - Copper/cache management.  I did not use cache's as well as the other two.  Marin's was incredibly streamlined and Dondon ran the pile so i assume it was used well. 
 - Timing of expand purchases.  I think this goes hand-in-hand with bazaars.  I had a couple turns where I would not be able to expand all my treasures to pieces because I only had $4.  I think this is a problem so either needed to gain more bazaars or limit myself to two expands. 

Other notes: BM players should be buying duchies freely if they see the player acting like me (restricted to duchy/dukes).  Each one would ideally be worth 3VP to you, and -8VP to the opponent.  That's pretty similar to province which is 6VP to you, and -6VP to your opponent.  That's only a difference of 1 VP (is this logical to think of VP?).  This wouldn't hurt embassy's strategy too much right (after getting the required amount of embassies of course). 

24
Help! / Re: Critique of a Duke game
« on: November 28, 2012, 12:35:05 pm »
I'm interested how a double Tactician/Cutpurse  would work against the Venture deck, if multiple Cutpurses can be played before all the Coppers are trashed, that completely destroys the effectiveness of Mine/Spice Merchant.  It could be enough for Double Tactician win, but I don't know.  The Venture player might need to pick up a Tactician at some point to get draw and clear out the rest of the sub-par treasure.
I also have tried this in Solo, and double tact doesn't really set up until T7-T10 when the 2/3 attacks a turn hit.  Any solo game isn't really going to be representative though as jester/cutpurse interactions aren't really shown. 

I doubt the attacks would come out fast enough to have any serious effect on you.  Worst possible outcome would be if I hit early estate for a curse and it snowballs. 

25
Help! / Re: Critique of a Duke game
« on: November 28, 2012, 09:53:06 am »
Totally not the point of your post, but that is pretty easily designed to go double tactician.  There are villages and terminals to play for money.  Only real way to draw cards is tactician (spice merchant/stables don't work together).  I think a combination of 2/3 Jester/cutpurses a turn would make it much more difficult to pull off duchy/duke. 

Trade route doesn't make so much sense early.  Even your play on T11 doesn't make much sense.  You chose to play trade route to kill a cutpurse and buy duchy/copper vs. cutpurse (same dollar) and buy a duchy.  You trade cutpurse+attack for a copper?  So the idea of trade route being useful any time before that is pretty hard to imagine.

I'm far from convinced Double tac is the right play here. There are no cantrips! You need so many Cutpurses and Jesters to make any cash. In the meanwhile, Spice Merchant into Mine into Venture, as Sharky recommended, is going to be pretty fast here I think.
I'm pretty convinced that 2/3 of those attacks hurt Duke/Duchy because of the coppers being taken away and the eventual mass cursing jester is gonna lend to a Alt-VP deck. 

If that strategy were to face a streamlined venture deck, I do think it loses though.  I don't think the jesters constant attack makes up for it. 

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