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« on: July 18, 2011, 02:12:23 am »
Village + Smithy is one of the first combos many beginning Dominion players see, especially since it's present on the recommended first set of 10. It also happens to be pretty terrible of a combo.
I had this thought experiment back when I was playing on BSW, and it made me realize why my old foolish days of playing village/smithy were horribly misguided. Here it is:
Say that the only cards available are the basics, village, and smithy.
- I am buying my first actions card. Will I take a Village or Smithy? Well, the village doesn't do anything (it replaces itself), so I should get a Smithy, because it actually helps my deck.
- I am thinking about a second action card. If I get a second smithy they might collide and make me a sad panda. What about a village? Wait, taking this village makes my deck worse! I might draw the village in my hand, in which case it replaces itself, but I don't have two other actions so it won't do any good. If I draw the village with the smithy, it's dead! That could have been a silver or something. That would have been way better.
- I guess I should get a second smithy then.
- A village now? If I get my dream hand of village, smithy, smithy, I can draw a lot of cards! Wouldn't that feel nice. On the other hand, I might draw my village with my smithy, same problem as above. Yech. What are the chances I get all of my action cards together like that anyway? A silver is probably more helpful to me...
- A third smithy? That's just asking for mega terminal collision at this point.
- Maybe I should just get a lot of villages, to make sure I draw one with dual smithies. Man, I feel like a village idiot doing this. Meanwhile, my opponents are starting to take provinces, while my deck isn't really improving in a meaningful way -- the two smithies aren't really glued together or anything, I'll spend turns playing village-village-village-smithy, not knowing where my second smithy is.
- You know what? Villages aren't helpful in this setup. I'll just get silvers instead.
- My smithies draw silvers, and I am happy buying provinces while my opponent complains that he drew his villages and smithies in the wrong order.
+cards/+actions can make some pretty scary engines, but they had better have more going for them than village/smithy or you'll be too slow to grab the green cards before they're gone.