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Dominion: Guilds Previews / Needed card titles

« on: May 07, 2013, 10:02:19 pm »

Since we already have Pawn, Knight, Bishop, and King('s Court), we need a Queen and a Castle.

The nobility has King, Princess, Duke/Duchess, Count, Margrave (equivalent to Marquis), Baron, Knights, and generic Nobles, so all we need is a Lord (to govern a Feodum) and possibly an Emperor.

Craftsmen don't have an order, but we have a Woodcutter, Coppersmith, Ironworks, Forge, Armory, and Ironmonger. We still need a Mason and either a Goldsmith or a Jeweler, and we're a bit heavy on ironmongery.

Thanks primarily to Prosperity, the monetary trades are already covered. We have a Counting House, a Mint, a Bank with a Moneylender to issue a Loan, a Venture for your investments, and a Trading Post with a Trader to change your money. I don't see anything missing.

Dominion General Discussion / What is your worst torture chamber?

« on: April 25, 2013, 11:10:23 pm »

I define a torture chamber as the number of Torturers you have to take between turns, while Curses are still available.

This was a 4-player game with the kingdom: Native Village, Pearl Diver, Pawn, Secret Chamber, Shanty Town, Caravan, Torturer, Apothecary, University, Familiar.

The obvious strategy is to use University to gain Torturers, and that is what the other three players did. I opened Potion/Silver, and with $3P, chose Familiar rather than University, hoping to clog the Torturer engines by getting Curses out more quickly. I wound up never getting a University, nor the $5 for a Torturer, but lots of Caravans for $4; as a result, the other players took all the Torturers, and played lots of them, torturing me and each other.

This led to one serious torture chamber. In one round, all three of my opponents played University or Shanty Town with two Torturers. Most of them took the curses to avoid destroying their own turns; I decided to take the discards (rather than keeping Caravan with three coppers, which might have been a Duchy), and after the third of six, I had no more cards to lose.

The three-pile ending was inevitable: with Torturers out quickly, and Familiars and Torturers exhausting the Curses, we had only one Caravan left at that point, and a University player took it to end the game.

The most successful player built a huge pile on his mat with Native Village, then took it all off the mat and played a megaturn for $9 and the sole Province in the game. We were all sure he had won, but he wound up only tying me. In order to build his deck, he had to take three Curses from Torturers as well as six from Familiars, and wound up with 0 VP. I had only four Curses, and my fourth Estate gave me 0 VP as well.

Dominion Articles / Haggler

« on: April 13, 2013, 09:05:23 pm »

Haggler is the better +Buy. With +Buy, you can pick up an extra card, but must split your money; good cards with +Buy require a lot of money to get a benefit from the +Buy. Haggler can get you a $4 and $3 with just $2 additional in cash, or a Province and a Gold with $6 additional in cash. This works well with many different types of decks.

General Uses
Haggler reduces the stalling when you start greening. You can gain a Gold or Grand Market with your Province, keeping your money density up, or gain a card such as a Laboratory which lets you play extra cards to compensate for the dead card.

Haggler works well with expensive cards, and the ability to buy them. In Platinum/Colony games, if you have $11, you can get a Colony and a Platinum rather than needing to choose one. If you have $7 and can buy a Bank or an Expand, adding a Gold makes for a much better deal. If your hand is full of Curses and you need the Haggler to reach $3, the extra $2 card or Copper won't help much.

Haggler can also be useful for three-piling without losing VPs. If you are trying to end the game on piles and the third pile costs $4 or less, Haggler allows you to buy the Duchy you want and still exhaust the third pile.

Deck types
In an engine, Haggler lets you pick up an extra component every turn, as long as you have components with different costs. You can get a Village with your Smithy, a Worker's Village with another Haggler, an extra Haggler with your Gold, a Conspirator with your Bazaar, or a Hamlet with almost any purchase. Multiple Hagglers, or Hagglers with +Buy, allow you to build the engine even faster. When your engine buys a Province, you can pick up another engine card, keeping the engine tuned up; thus engines with Hagglers can start buying Provinces a bit earlier.

In a big money deck, keeping your money density up is important at the end of the game; gaining Gold with your Provinces and Silver with your Duchies helps keep your ability to buy more greens. To get a mid-game benefit from the terminal Haggler, you need non-terminal $4 or $5 cards, as you don't want too many terminals in a big money deck. If you don't want any $4 or $5 cards, then Haggler gaining Gold will only add another Silver, and turns with $4 will force you to buy a terminal unless you want Silver and Copper. (With $5, you would probably choose not to play
the Haggler, or buy a Duchy and Silver.)

In alternate-VP rushes, keeping your money density up is even more important, as you will have more VP cards, and Silvers are enough for you to keep buying VP cards. Haggler is best with Gardens and Feodum; not only can you gain a Silver with these cards to keep from stalling, but the Silver also increases the value of the VP cards. You can also use it with Fairgrounds to get the $4 and $5 cards you are missing; the fact that you cannot take Gold as your extra card is likely to be irrelevant, as Fairgrounds decks do not need much Gold. And even though it doesn't directly help Silk Road or Duke, those decks need a lot of VP cards, and Silver keeps them going.

Weaknesses
You cannot take a Victory card (except indirectly if Haggler gains Border Village), so Haggler is no substitute for a +Buy when you want three Provinces on one megaturn, and it doesn't help when the second card you want is a double-type Victory card such as Island.

You cannot gain two cards of equal value; this can be a problem if your engine components all have the same cost (such as Worker's Village/Caravan/Smithy or Bazaar/Laboratory/Rabble). One-card engines (Hunting Party) may still work; you gain Hunting Party as your second card with Gold or Province, and gain some lesser card with Hunting Party.

Haggler doesn't work as well with Potion-cost cards, as the only less expensive cards are either other Potion-costs (and you cannot take Vineyard) or low-cost cards. Some combinations of Potion-cost cards will still work well, such as Alchemist/Apothecary, but Apothecary, Scrying Pool, and University will force you to take a Transmute or a Copper unless there are $2 kingdom cards. (Vineyard is still worse, as Copper and Curse are the only cards costing less than it, but you have no need to play Haggler when buying a Vineyard unless you have a +Buy and are haggling the other card.)

And the card gain is mandatory; buying a $3 card with Haggler may force you to take a Copper if there are no useful $2 actions, and some engines with no card under $4 may be stalled if you must take a Silver with your $4.

Watch out for three-piling with Hagglers around, as the cheap piles will get taken. If there are Hagglers but attacks are leading to weak turns, then $3 and $4 turns with Hagglers will exhaust the $2 and $3 actions. And if there are high-demand $2 or $3 cards (Fool's Gold, Fishing Village, Lighthouse with attacks around), they will go quickly as second cards with Hagglers.

You do not gain additional extra cards if you Throne Room or King's Court a Haggler, but mutliplying the $2 bonus is still valuable, as the bonus can add to the value of your extra card, so this is not a major weakness. KC/Haggler gets you at least a Gold and another Haggler, and with just an extra $2, it gets you a Province and another King's Court.

Openings
Haggler is a reasonable opening with a 5/2 start, although it isn't as good as the powerful attackers. If the only $2 cards would conflict with Haggler (such as Moat or Secret Chamber), it's probably best to pass on the $2; if you need the $2 for defense, you should have bought the attack rather than the Haggler. (Haggler/Lighthouse is still good, as they do not conflict, and you gain the defensive benefit from the Lighthouse.)

Councilroom says that the strongest opening, other than the obvious Chapel, is Haggler/Haven. If you have both in hand, you can choose to use the Haggler this turn or next, whichever is better.

Synergies/Combos
Alternate VP, particularly Feodum and Gardens
Most engines
Non-terminals at $4 and $5
Royal Seal/Watchtower (to top-deck both parts of a combo)

Antisynergies
Megaturns without +Buy
Engines with all components at the same price
Potion-cost cards, particularly $2P
Powerful attackers (cursers, Ambassador) leading to weak turns

Dominion General Discussion / Good second cards for Jack BM

« on: February 20, 2013, 11:48:44 pm »

If you open Jack/Silver for Big Money, you'll usually want to get a second Jack. What other terminal might you buy instead of the second Jack, if you don't need Jack for defense? Courtyard is obvious, and Mandarin also looks good for the same reason; you can avoid collisions and put back excess coins. (And then there are Wharf and Margrave, which are great cards but usually indicate that engines will do better.)

I had a great Jack game in which my second action was Oracle. I bought Gold with $6 on turn 3, and Oracle with $3 as Jack trashed one Estate on turn 4. Oracle served me well in managing the exact money distribution (in the same way Courtyard does), and the attack from Oracle was effective against two engine-building opponents. Also, Oracle was the only attack, so Jack wasn't needed for its defensive value; neither opponent bought one.

Dominion Articles / Combo: Native Village/Pirate Ship

« on: December 21, 2012, 11:47:11 pm »

A good way to use Pirate Ship is to attack enough to get it up to $4, then use a village to play two Pirate Ships and get a province, buying additional villages or Pirate Ships when you play only one. As with most Pirate Ship strategies, this requires a game with more than two players, or else you will have a lot of misses.

The Native Village works particularly well for this strategy, because you can control when you get two Pirate Ships and play both of them, using your mat to save a Pirate Ship for a double. If you have no Pirate Ship on your mat, use Native Village to put a card on your mat every time. If you have one Pirate Ship on your mat, take your mat when you have exactly one Pirate Ship in hand, and put a card on your mat when you have zero or two. If you have two Pirate Ships on your mat, take your mat unless you already have two in hand (in which case you can wait for the next village).

An additional benefit is that Native Village is cheap. You will have turns with only two copper in hand, and either no Pirate Ships or the ships needed for attacking; you can use these to buy more Native Villages.

Puzzles and Challenges / What do these cards have in common?

« on: November 03, 2012, 10:50:57 pm »

Rather than making a What's Missing puzzle, I have listed all the cards; I think this makes for a better puzzle. I have restricted the list to actions.

Woodcutter
Smithy
Ruined Library
Ruined Market
Ruined Village
Necropolis

Honorable mention: Monument, Abandoned Mine

Dominion General Discussion / Interesting combo: Wishing Well/Trader

« on: June 18, 2012, 09:31:37 pm »

While this isn't a super-strong combo, it's a pair of cards which have interesting effects. If you have a Trader in your deck, then you will have a lot of silver (ideally six from your initial estates, four more if two Traders collide, and even more if your opponents are cursing you). This increases the number of wishes which will be granted, and the benefit when they are granted; a silver is usually a good wish, and you can still wish for a copper if you have 8 in hand, or 7 with as much copper as silver.

Puzzles and Challenges / What's missing? (and I almost missed it myself)

« on: June 07, 2012, 10:23:21 pm »

I missed the missing card myself when I was drafting this puzzle, and was going to pose it as "what's the theme?" because there were so few cards. However, there is a sixth card that qualifies.

Counting House
Library
Secret Chamber
Tactician
Watchtower

Dominion Articles / When to go for Golden Deck?

« on: May 29, 2012, 10:14:53 pm »

The Golden Deck (Bishop, Gold, Gold, Copper, Province, trash a province and buy a province each turn) always seemed like an interesting idea that would not be practical to build. When would you actually go for it?

I played a game with several enablers, getting Bishop, Gold, Gold, Silver, Mint on the eighth turn.

Multi-player (we had five). This means lots of Bishops around, so you can clean out your estates and coppers on other players' Bishops and shrink your deck quickly.

Bishop was the only reasonable $4 (the only $4 in our game; one player started Silver/Silver and everyone else started Bishop/Silver). This also added to the number of Bishops.

Mint, to clear away a bunch of coppers and then trash the Mint itself for 3 VP once it is no longer needed to build more gold.

Dominion Articles / Combo: Golem/Tunnel

« on: May 19, 2012, 05:52:53 pm »

If you have only one non-Golem action in your deck, then every Golem you play will go through your entire deck, and any Tunnel not in your hand will turn into gold.

To start this, open Potion/Silver, and buy more Silver until you get your Golem. Then start buying Tunnels, as they will give you more money than Silver once you have the Golem. I wouldn't recommend a second Potion because it will get in the way when you don't want any more Golems, and the Gold will run out eventually, particularly if there are more than two players.

The ideal single action for this strategy is Scheme, because you only need a single Golem; you can take back the Golem when it draws the Scheme. You will play the Golem every turn except when the Scheme is in your initial hand after the shuffle, and when the Golem finds the Scheme, you have another card draw and thus have five cards to get your 8 coins.

Other good single actions are cards that will make use of the money, such as Council Room and Wharf. Golem/Council Room can get you another Golem and a Province if you happen to draw your potion. Golem/Wharf allows you to buy a second Wharf without losing too much Tunnel benefit, as you will often have one Wharf in play from the last turn for the Golem not to find. And if the Golem does pick up both Wharves before finding all your Tunnels, you won't be too unhappy with four extra cards and three buys for the next two turns to use all the gold you already have.

Dominion Articles / Counter: Harvest vs. Fortune Teller/Bureaucrat/Rabble/Ghost Ship

« on: May 09, 2012, 10:46:39 pm »

I believe Harvest is the only card which draws from your deck but does not care about card quality, only quantity; you want to draw as many different cards as possible. Having a victory card on top of your deck doesn't hurt the Harvest much, as you have only three Estates and fewer than that many Duchies or Provinces for most of the game.

Fortune Teller puts a victory or curse card on your deck, and Bureaucrat requires you to put a victory card back on your deck. Normally, this will put a dead card in your hand this turn or next, but Harvest makes it a neutral move (as long as you don't play any +Card actions before the Harvest). It's slightly less effective against multiple Rabbles, as you may have several victory cards and have a duplicate, but at least you can plow through them; discarding two Estates, one Province, and a Silver to get 3 from a Harvest is probably as good as you could expect. And with Ghost Ship, you can put two victory cards on top of your deck if you have them (preferably different ones), and not lose anything to the Ghost Ship.

Harvest also reduces the effect of Spy/Scrying Pool putting a bad card on top of your deck, although it doesn't do quite as well because that card is often a Copper, and Copper is the card most likely to be a duplicate in most decks. And it lets you get rid of the curse from Sea Hag, but if Sea Hag is in play, the curse is also likely to be a duplicate.

Dominion General Discussion / Start with Ambassador or Chapel?

« on: May 09, 2012, 09:03:03 pm »

If Ambassador and Chapel are both available, and you start 4/3, which should you prefer? My guess is that Ambassador is likely to be better unless there are several other players Ambassadoring. Chapel can clean four cards, and Ambassador only two or three (you lose one or two, but you give them to your opponents). However, Ambassador is more useful later, as you can feed your opponents coppers in addition to trashing however many coppers you want to trash.

With multiple players using Ambassador, the value of Ambassador will be decreased because Estates will run out; you don't get as much of a benefit for Ambassadoring one Estate when only the player on your left gets it.

Councilroom says that 4/Ambassador openings are better than 4/Chapel if the 4 is non-terminal (making it more likely that you will play the Ambassador later). The best and third-best openings with a 4-pointer are Tournament/Ambassador and Caravan/Ambassador, with Tournament/Chapel second. Similarly, Ambassador also does much better than Chapel with any kind of village. Chapel's best openings at beating Ambassador are Monument/Chapel and Young Witch/Chapel. However, this doesn't really answer the choice question; if Ambassador, Chapel, and Young WItch are all in play, YW/Ambassador may be better because the curses will get sent back.

I encountered the issue in a game with those three, and the additional fact that Chapel was the bane card. I was fifth to play, bought Caravan first, and once I saw that my opponents had all gone Chapel, I took Ambassador. With the Chapels around, nobody wanted Young Witch until late, and I was able to keep a very thin deck with Ambassador the sole terminal and keep feeding copper to the other players. I wound up tying one of the Chapel players for first.

Dominion General Discussion / Sixteen cards, and what don't you get?

« on: April 30, 2012, 10:31:58 pm »

I played a three-player Cornucopia/Hinterlands with the following set:

Hamlet
Duchess
Menagerie
Farming Village
Remake
Spice Merchant
Stables
Cache
Border Village
Fairgrounds

This is a great set for Fairgrounds; a deck with all ten kingdom cards is viable. But if you manage to get a province (better than a Fairgrounds if you have 8 with only one buy, since it increases the chance Menagerie will work), you can afford to miss one of the 16 non-curse cards; which one (if any) would you go without?

Every single card here looks like a good part of a Fairgrounds strategy; for example, Cache provides fuel for Spice Merchant and Stables once your coppers run short, and since it is different from gold, it helps Menagerie create big turns (and Hamlet can help Menagerie eliminate duplicates and provide +Buy for those big turns).

I wound up with all ten kingdom cards, and my 16th different buy was an estate; this could have allowed me to use Remake to get rid of a unique card in order to upgrade something to a duchy. (I wound up never doing this, as every time I had a chance for a late Remake, I would either have to lose two uniques or replace a silver that I was going to spend.)

My main rival Remade both his Caches into Fairgrounds and didn't realize at the end that he had only 14 cards (I don't remember what else he was missing). On his game-ending turn, he could have bought a curse (for +7 net) with a spare buy, and if he had done that, I would still have beaten him by the 1 VP that the curse was worth.

Dominion General Discussion / Sea Hag or Young Witch with weak Bane?

« on: March 08, 2012, 10:37:34 pm »

5-player game.

Kingdom: Pearl Diver (bane), Native Village, Fortune Teller, Smugglers, Cutpurse, Sea Hag, Young Witch, Caravan, Farming Village, Horn of Plenty, Harvest.

How do you start 4/3?

Young Witch/Silver looks like a natural opening, with the expectation that you will have curses and estates to discard, so the Young Witch discard won't hurt much, while nobody will be buying Pearl Divers. In our group, nobody tried a Sea Hag, but the other 4/3 players opened with Cutpurse or Caravan rather than either curser.

And, for that matter, how do you start 5/2? Horn of Plenty to get Native Villages (or Pearl Divers if a lot of Young Witches are around) early, followed by better cards later, looks like a good choice. On the other hand, Harvest will cycle your deck, and will make use of the curses.

Dominion General Discussion / Hinterlands/Prosperity set; what would you do here?

« on: February 16, 2012, 11:39:15 pm »

I played two 3-player Hinterlands/Prosperity games with this kingdom:

Tunnel, Quarry, Silk Road, Worker's Village, Jack of All Trades, Inn, Cartographer, Goons, Grand Market, Expand, Platinum/Colony.

There appear to be two competing strategies here. Worker's Village/Inn/Goons could be used for multi-Goons, and you could buy an Inn near the end of your deck to set up another multi-Goons for each shuffle. On the other hand, Cartographer/Tunnel can produce a lot of gold, with more coming every time your Tunnel is hit by Goons, and that gold could be turned into Grand Market, Platinum, and Expand to get Colonies and Provinces. Quarry could enable either strategy. (And the one card that nobody tried was Jack of All Trades; this would seem to be a good card with Inn or in response to Goons, although the silver could be annoying later in the game.)

Both times we played, it was the Tunnel strategy that won a close game. In the first game, a 5/2 start with 3 on the next turn forced me into the Tunnel strategy, as Cartographer/nothing was the only reasonable 5/2, and 3 was naturally a Tunnel with a Cartographer already in play. In the second game, everyone started 4/3 with Quarry/Silver (no need for a Tunnel until the discarders are out), but the strategies diverged later.

Dominion Articles / Combo: Scheme/Herbalist

« on: January 13, 2012, 10:38:50 pm »

The Scheme lets you take back an action (and allows you to play another action this turn, so you can use the other half of the combo), and the Herbalist lets you take back a treasure. These work well together because you can choose the pair.

The most obvious use is to take back the Herbalist with a good treasure, which increases its value. With Scheme/Herbalist/Gold, you will be rich for three turns. With Scheme/Herbalist/Potion, you can use the Potion three times, and at least the first two will come with a +Buy so that you can get a Vineyard/Transmute and something else.

A less common use is to get the right treasure/action pair with a trash-for-benefit action. One of the recommended Hinterlands/Alchemy sets includes Apprentice and IGG; if you draw the IGG after Apprenticing something else and have Scheme/Herbalist, you can Apprentice the IGG next turn to draw five cards. If you are taking back a Spice Merchant, you can take back the Copper that it wants to trash. At the end of the game, you can use a Gold this turn and then take back Remodel/Gold for next turn.

Dominion General Discussion / Two viable strategies, one Goons, in 3P: majority wins

« on: November 17, 2011, 09:41:28 pm »

If there are two viable strategies in a multi-player game, one involving Goons, then I believe whichever strategy has more players has the advantage. The reason is that Goons players don't work towards ending the game, as they buy a variety of actions and won't empty any pile other than Goons. A lone VP-card player has to buy so many VP cards that he slows down his deck, while the Goons keep going; two VP-card players can end the game much faster, either taking the Provinces or running out VP kingdom piles.

I played a 3-player game with the following kingdom:

Remake, Island, Mining Village, Caravan, Mint, Tactician, Jester, Contraband, Goons, Fairgrounds

This is a very good Goons deck, because there are Tactician and Mining Village to allow you to play multiple Goons, and Remake, Island, and Mint to get rid of unwanted copper.

But with all the cards good, it's also a reasonable Jester/Fairgrounds deck, particularly with three players so that you have two chances to gain cards (both good cards, and cards that will count towards the magic 15) with the Jester. Remake also helps because it makes it possible to get rid of most of your copper and all but one Estate, and possibly to get a missing card later.

I went for Jester/Fairgrounds against two Tactician/Goons players. I got all of the kingdom cards except Mint either in the normal course of events or as Jester prizes; I didn't have a deck that benefited as much from Tactician, but I Jestered one, and also Jestered a Goons (and bought one later). My 15th card was a Duchy.

The problem is that I was the only player buying lots of greens, and thus I couldn't bring the game toward an end as I greened my deck. I was ahead in VP, but I could only end the game by buying Fairgrounds (and getting all 12 would take forever), or by giving up lots of VPs to buy out another pile. If there had been two Fairgrounds players, we would have had six each and then run out the Duchies or Islands if necessary.

The Tactician/Goons players were taking Tactician turns and playing several Goons with the help of Mining Village; a typical turn for the winner was Tactician, MVx2, Goonsx3, buy Caravan, Mint to trash a bunch of money, and three coppers for 15 VP. This was an ideal setup for mega-Goons turns.

Meanwhile, a typical turn for me late in the game was to discard two cards to a Goons and then use the remaining three to buy a Fairgrounds for 6 VP, or to play my own Goons and buy Duchy/Copper for 5 VP.

I was actually ahead in VP on my last turn, 71-66, with two Provinces and six Fairgrounds for 48 of my points, but the next player ended the game with a 17-point turn, buying the last three Caravans and two Estates. The other Tactician player had only 48.

Dominion Articles / Why is Potion a bad card?

« on: September 13, 2011, 10:35:33 pm »

The Councilroom list of popular buys shows Potion as one of the worst cards in win rate; it's bought half the time and has a win rate of 0.94 with the card and 1.06 without it.

I believe this is an artifact of the way the game is played on isotropic, which takes a random selection of kingdom cards; there would be much less of a split if you played with a minimum of three Alchemy cards (and thus usually have 2-4 Potion-cost cards rather than just one). This also explains why Potion is bought only half the time.

Potion is good in some sets, bad in others, depending on which Potion-cost cards are available. If there are several Potion-cost cards, then Potion is likely to be a good card, and everyone will buy it. If there is just one Potion-cost card, the weaker player is more likely to overvalue the card and buy a Potion. Note that even Possession is break-even on win rate; if Apothecary and Alchemist are there to make Potions useful, then the player who uses them on the way to Possession will do very well, but if Possession is the only good Potion-cost card, then buying a Potion will slow down your deck and you will be too far behind when you get your Possession.

The only very good Potion-cost card is Familiar, and even it scores much worse than Witch and Mountebank. This is probably because of the delay in getting Familiar into the game; if only one player has Witch, he may have bought it on a 5/2 opening, and that made it hard for his opponent to get to 5 until a lot of Curses were already out. In contrast, Familiar cannot be gained until the second time through the deck.

The other two Potion-cost cards which are better than average are Vineyard and Apprentice. Apprentice is interesting; it's better than the similar Salvager, probably because Alchemy decks can make good use of the actions from Apprentice in a big hand. Vineyard has cause and effect reversed; if you are buying Vineyards, that is because you have a deck which benefits from the VP from Vineyard, and usually that means a strong deck.

Rules Questions / Does unplayed Alchemist/Treasury come back?

« on: August 17, 2011, 11:48:20 pm »

If you have an unplayed Alchemist in hand at the end of a turn on which you play a Potion, or an unplayed Treasury in hand when you did not buy a Victory card, can you put the Alchemist or Treasury back on top of your deck? My guess is no, as the card says, "When you discard this from play".

I have played so many games that I am surprised it came up for the first time today. A player played a Council Room as his sole action, and drew both an Alchemist and a Potion.