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Topics - zahlman

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1
Variants and Fan Cards / Chameleon
« on: April 03, 2013, 09:27:30 pm »
Chameleon - Action/Reaction - $4?

Choose one: +1 Card, +1 Action; or play this as if it were any Action other than Chameleon that you already have in play.
-
When any player (including you) gains a card costing up to $6, you may reveal and discard this from your hand. If you do, gain a copy of the gained card, putting it in your hand.

2
Help! / Expand-Tactician, wtf?
« on: March 13, 2013, 02:29:39 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/13/game-20130313-112829-e0c100a2.html

How does this beat me? What else can I sensibly do on such a weak board?

3
Help! / Islands, or something.
« on: March 12, 2013, 03:00:59 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/12/game-20130312-115905-9cb5a1da.html

Every time I buy Islands mindlessly like that, it doesn't work, and every time my opponent does, it seems to. What gives?

How come I'm not able to set up the engine effectively later, even though my economy should be much stronger?

Why isn't my trashing faster than his with the Steward? And why does it take forever to line up TMs despite that trashing?

4
Help! / I apparently don't understand Governors at all.
« on: March 12, 2013, 02:23:39 am »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/11/game-20130311-232003-7a809536.html

* Don't you want to try to win the split?

* Where did all his Labs come from?

* Why does it take me forever to get going?

* How come the 3 golds he gains are enough for him, but not enough for me?

* Isn't it supposed to be bad on his part to use the Governors for draw most of the time? Why didn't I seem to benefit from this?

5
Game Reports / Chess
« on: March 11, 2013, 01:49:54 pm »
In which I open Bishop-Pawn and win:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/11/game-20130311-104610-ff63654e.html

I actually hadn't really planned out the strategy; but I got a 5-2, really didn't want to open Outpost, and Bishop seemed like the best 4 and Pawn like the best 2. As it turned out, Pawn became an enabler that let me get Peddler, while I also grabbed Caravan over Silver, and the next thing I know I have a pretty sweet engine running. It helps that opponent also went with Bishop and missed the +Buy of Pawn.

I guess Caravan/Pawn might be better though? The usual "prisoner's dilemma" of Bishop seems to apply, but Peddler tilts things towards wanting the Bishop at least eventually, so you can rack up points from those.

6
Variants and Fan Cards / Gold rush!
« on: March 08, 2013, 04:56:09 pm »
Some off-the-cuff ideas (haven't attempted to price the first three) related to Gold.

Prospector - Action

Reveal the top card of your deck. If it is

- a Gold, put it into your hand.
- a Prospector, discard it and gain a Gold in hand.

Otherwise, either discard the revealed card or put it back.

(They "pan for gold", so yeah.)


Gold Rush - Action
+1 Card
+1 Action

If you have three or more Gold Rushes in play, gain a Gold.

(An alternate take on the 'treasure map' idea; they're easier to line up and can be lined up repeatedly, but you need to line up more of them for a smaller reward.)


Con Artist - Action
+1 Action

Set aside a card from your hand face down. The opponent to your left chooses whether or not to reveal it.
If you reveal it: put it back into your hand. If it was a Gold, gain a Province.
Otherwise: +$3. At the beginning of your cleanup phase, discard the set-aside card.

("Play an arbitrary card as if it were a Gold", combined with a bluffing game. The reward for honesty needs to be pretty big, because it's basically a blank card whenever you're honest and don't get called. There needs to not be a real penalty for getting caught bluffing because it's often difficult or impossible to be honest.)


Archimedes - Action - $2
+1 Card
+1 Action

In games using this, add Electrum to the Supply.

Electrum - Treasure - $5
Worth $3 if you have an Archimedes in play, otherwise $2.

(Just playing with the story of weighing the King's crown. Notwithstanding the effects of having a cantrip Action in your deck, opening Archimedes/Electrum is strictly worse than if you could open Gold/nothing, but on weak boards it might be your best option on a 5/2 split, so I think these prices are okay.)

7
Help! / SP actually good here?
« on: March 07, 2013, 01:17:31 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/07/game-20130307-101512-3c546633.html

I don't understand... I didn't mess around with potions and just went for Wharf/BM on a huge board for it (Bank, Hoard) and got beaten out. How can the SP approach expect to catch up to this, especially when he can't really trash his starting cards - how is he drawing so reliably?

9
Game Reports / In which I arguably should have gotten multiple Forges?
« on: March 06, 2013, 02:53:28 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/06/game-20130306-115101-568d2277.html

There was no +Buy, but I was able to repeatedly gain Library and Watchtower pairs with University, draw my deck with Scrying Pool (and sometimes Library/Watchtower support), Forge a pair into Province, and buy a second Province with $8 of economy. A rather amusing engine, all told.

10
Game Reports / How the heck did I catch up?
« on: March 05, 2013, 12:37:21 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/05/game-20130305-093414-73164de3.html

I overlooked Warehouse/TM on this board because of the potential to build an Alchemist stack and because IGG looked interesting. I ended up staying the course, but instead of playing the classic IGG rush, I just gave him a bunch of those curses and then started trying to pick up Provinces as well as Bishop points.

Everything about this seems wrong - he ought to be able to trash the Curses I give him on my Bishops; the IGGs are only $1 in my hand; I only have time to get a fairly small Alchemist stack going and then I rely on a couple of Warehouses to find my Potion. Meanwhile, he seems to choke really hard despite the four early Golds.

Am I crazy for trying this? Can I switch to any other meaningful strategy once I've missed the combo and chosen this opening?

11
Game Reports / SP/Vault... with some mixins.
« on: March 04, 2013, 10:34:13 am »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/04/game-20130304-072442-a0004cab.html

Bazaar, Cache, Colony, Fairgrounds, Navigator, Platinum, Potion, Royal Seal, Scrying Pool, Trade Route, University, Vault, and Watchtower

Watchtower is apparently quite compatible with this sort of engine (since you can control your handsize most of the time), Bazaar is a great Village for it because of the +coin, and Trade Route enabled progressive light trashing of starting cards while also providing a necessary +Buy. I also grabbed one University early on because it didn't seem like too much of an opportunity cost, and pulling in a steady (if slow) stream of Bazaars seemed like a good idea.

I suspect I ought to gain a second Watchtower later on, but the opponent getting 4 of them seems excessive. My opponent got a lot more nice engine pieces, but really just builds the engine too slowly (trying for more than one +Buy to get a triple-Colony turn or whatever just seems unrealistic here) and loses the crucial SP split while grabbing more of everything else. Actually I suspect he was going for something focused on Vault-University-Watchtower, and only competed on SP at all because more Universities would have been wasted... ? University-Watchtower is a pretty good combination in general, but I don't think there's any way for a deck focused on that to beat out the SP engine.

I actually grabbed the early Navigator more because I initially figured Fairgrounds might be viable; but then I realized there was really no point - it would not become hard to make a lot of coin, while +Buy would be scarce.

12
Game Reports / Simple Monument engine went better than expected
« on: March 02, 2013, 03:22:28 pm »
and beat out an Alchemist stack:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/02/game-20130302-025502-a3b87a38.html

I felt like Chapel really couldn't be ignored, and that trying to build the Alchemist stack would then become redundant - Potion/Chapel can miss $3p easily (or you could draw Potion-Copper x 3-Chapel which is also annoying), and the Alchemists are only as useful as the cards they can repeatedly draw for you. That said, part way in I started to get really nervous: it seemed like he'd be able to attack me with Margrave consistently, and I felt like I didn't really have strong enough draw to line up a significant number of Monuments each turn. But then I realized that, while generally the Margrave attack is no good played more than once a turn (since you basically give the opponent free filtering), versus an Alchemist stack it's actually quite good, since the second attack is likely to draw yet another Alchemist and make him discard it. And if he plays "defensively" against this by not topdecking more than three Alchemists, it's still not bad. Meanwhile, discards were not that painful for me a lot of the time, since I had the Chapel and/or green in hand a fair amount of the time.

Looking back on it, I probably should have gotten more than the two Margraves... I will say though, it was really satisfying making it work with plain old vanilla Village and no fun enablers like TR/KC, card gainers, etc.

Would it be better to build the engine a bit more, maybe try for $16 in total economy? The $11 I had allowed me to pick up surplus Villages as insurance against drawing things dead, but I wonder how much of a difference it made. Would my opponent be better off with Silver/Potion instead?

13
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/02/game-20130302-050435-08dba0f7.html

It seems like he just kept getting tons more cycling early, even as he built a much bigger deck, while my Ironworks might as well have never existed. 46 points in 12 turns is also just ridiculous in and of itself...

(I'm also starting to really hate Envoy.)

14
Help! / Same game plan loses Curses 8-2? Just... what.
« on: March 01, 2013, 11:00:19 am »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/01/game-20130301-075538-1fe6d424.html

We both open ST-Potion in the hope of using the ST for cycling and as a pseudo-Lab early to help hit $3p for Familiars, as well as to have them later to activate Conspirators. Neither of us ends up taking any money, instead looking to Conspirators for virtual coin, with Tactician to make some big hands and make stuff happen. He didn't buy Lighthouse until turn 10 when it was all he could afford. Yet somehow I kept missing $5 for quite some time, lost the curse split 8-2 on what were otherwise similar decks, and then he seemingly was able to put together a doubletac engine for a little bit in the middle.

I just... don't even know.

15
Game Reports / In which Embargo is primarily a source of coin
« on: March 01, 2013, 06:05:26 am »
... in a University/Watchtower engine (one of my favourites btw).

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/01/game-20130301-025616-8d381596.html

Usually I suppose I'd try to set up some kind of cursing engine with multiple Ambassadors but I guess I'm not up to my usual sadistic form. If there had been +Buy then I would definitely have made a more serious attempt at Vineyards... but the approach I settled on seemed a lot more fun somehow, gaining and top-decking Embargoes in order to draw them and trash them just for the coin and reliably hit 8 (actually, reliably hit more like 11 or so, but I digress).

16
Game Reports / Is Doubletac/Vault really this good?
« on: March 01, 2013, 04:34:34 am »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/01/game-20130301-005910-27666e7a.html

Obviously my opponent didn't really put up any resistance, but I'm wondering just how lucky I had to get for a result like this, or if the engine is really supposed to work this well. Normally I seem to have trouble getting doubletac engines up and running quickly, so I'd only consider them on a board where I could open with an attack like Militia and then build something more complicated. But maybe it's exactly because I'm trying to build more complicated things that I can't do it quickly? This engine seems to not mind extra Treasures - I used to figure you needed some light trashing in order to connect the Tacs consistently, but apparently this way of thinking is all wrong. Instead you want a bit of extra treasure so that you have insurance when you don't connect (and thus can fall back on the vault->gold->province approach).

I'm guessing there really isn't anything better without villages? Is Singletac/Bank competitive? How about Ghost Ship/BM?

17
Variants and Fan Cards / War Chest
« on: February 28, 2013, 05:10:19 am »
Another take on the "investing" idea, influenced by Pirate Ship.

War Chest - Treasure - $5?

When you play this, choose one: put a Treasure from your hand onto your War Chest mat; or +1 Buy.
Then, this is worth $1 for each Treasure on your War Chest mat.

18
Help! / How did he keep drawing his one Gold?
« on: February 27, 2013, 10:10:54 am »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201302/27/game-20130227-070825-fc7ff980.html

And how come he keeps sab'ing me with all the early Lighthouse buys? And how did those hits actually seem to matter? And how is it that he seems to have way more drawing power when I'm the one who actually picked up a Rabble?

19
Help! / Aargh.
« on: February 03, 2013, 10:38:02 am »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201302/03/game-20130203-073328-f2f5062b.html

I got him into a City trap (he must have expected me to compete, but only Curses could run out, and he didn't get terminals besides one GS, so the 3 Cities he did buy were basically just delayed-activation Labs) and set up a Torturer chain quickly, but it hardly seemed to matter since he had no trouble lining up his Bishops (and mine?) to get rid of Curses almost as quickly as he accepted them. But more irritating was how effective his one GS seemed to be later on. I built up much better economy, but I never got to double-Province, and Bishop->Gold couldn't really catch up for me. It felt as if my Curses had simply fueled his Bishop engine.

20
Game Reports / Lose curses 9-1, lose Cities 2-8, win the game.
« on: January 30, 2013, 08:45:16 am »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/30/game-20130130-054000-83a1df54.html

That was fun. KC really does make everything better. I took Gold early so that I could get some KCs early and basically did as much trashing of useless stuff as I could; then the combination of early +Buy from Salvager, being able to KC-City to mitigate the effect, and an initially stronger treasure economy let me cruise to victory, piledriving Estates immediately after he finished off the Cities. "Oh, but he only has 2 of them..." ;)

I'm thinking that once the early game goes the way it does, I probably shouldn't try to compete on Familiar at all...

21
Help! / Is Venture seriously that good?
« on: January 22, 2013, 12:43:01 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/22/game-20130122-093827-3d5ace5d.html

Isn't he supposed to struggle early to get his aggressive Island buys back out of his deck?

Aren't I supposed to get to play Militia more often when I buy Warehouse and he doesn't? Isn't Venture supposed to have as much chance of skipping over his Militia as it does of cycling to it?

At the end, how can he be chaining Ventures so effectively when he still has 4 Coppers in deck?

22
Help! / So... I don't actually want to trash here?
« on: January 16, 2013, 08:30:38 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/16/game-20130116-172505-1fd1273c.html

I figured the Mint would let me cycle to fun stuff (goons, wharf, MV) faster, but it seemed to leave me incapable of obtaining those things. Meanwhile my opponent was able to draw a much larger deck and play Goons consistently. :( (He also dragged the game on a couple extra turns, which I found really annoying.)

23
Game Reports / HP + ... Remodel?
« on: January 16, 2013, 04:57:57 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/16/game-20130116-134106-908f0b2c.html

This board seemed really weak... the pieces for any kind of elaborate engine just weren't there, the only thing that really stands out is HP. Sure, there's Gardens and CH and Remodel and Haggler, but those kinds of antics don't seem likely to cut the mustard with Colonies out - and there's a dire lack of +Action, not to mention no real +Buy to supplement the options for card gains.

And it really didn't seem like there was a good X for the HP+X plan - of course, a plain HP stack is going to crush pure BM, especially on a Colony board. I guess you don't *really* need an X with Colonies, since Plat+Gold+Silver+Copper buys you a Colony. But hey, Remodel is "$2 of deck-improvement power", and it surely beats flooding yourself with Silver on $4 turns (or skipping them), so I figured I'd try it out.

To my mild surprise, it actually seems to work quite well. The execution was pretty mindless (and I'm thinking I really should skip the Loan and just take Silver, but maybe it's better to get an initial boost to cycling?) - buy HP on 5 (and sometimes 6) and Remodel on 4, and prioritize using Remodel on itself to get extra Gold. It wasn't hard to score the one vital Platinum this way. It seems in practice that the HP filtering means that you don't need to worry too much about getting swamped with useless Remodels, but you can still line up a pair of them pretty often. Then later, towards the end, you get Colony + Province turns, by Remodelling a spare Gold and then buying the Colony.

Basically, the mindless Remodel strategy is pretty slow on its own, but it seems to mix in quite well with an HP stack. They maybe don't exactly *synergize*, but they're pretty good at staying out of each other's way, and you get the benefits of both.

24
Help! / Is Bureaucrat really that strong of an attack?
« on: January 15, 2013, 08:21:32 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/15/game-20130115-171347-4909bc47.html

I ended up quite slow with a plan to use University to gain Treasury for money, and Trade Route to thin out my deck and a Navigator for sifting. Later on I started gaining TRs because TR-Treasury would give a tiny extra bit of draw, and I figured I had a lot of targets hanging around for TR.

I'd have thought it'd be easy to hit $8 that way, but it seems like I hardly got to use the TRs at all. I got forced into buying Duchies to try to keep up, and my Treasuries were basically Peddlers (which I expected and planned on; and I didn't think it was that expensive to get University to gain those). My opponent went straight Bureaucrat-BM, and ended up not getting a 4th Province until turn 18 even with the help of Venture. So it's really, really frustrating not to be able to beat that.

25
Game Reports / Governor + Possession = ridiculous instability.
« on: January 15, 2013, 06:00:14 pm »
You can play Governor for cards, draw your Possession, then Possess the artificially-inflated opponent hand, play *his* Governor for treasure (gaining both the Gold and the Silver) or the remodel (trashing one of your bad cards and getting two good ones)... all kinds of fun stuff :D

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/15/game-20130115-145735-07c66696.html

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