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1

Dominion Articles / Hinterlands: Fool's Gold

« on: April 05, 2012, 02:19:25 am »

Hey, y'all.  This is my first attempt at an article, so I'm mostly looking for feedback here.  I'm sure I've missed a few things, said some dumb stuff, and just generally shown why I can't seem to hit level 40 on Isotropic in this article.  So let me know how I can improve it and I'll make it better.  Thanks!

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Hinterlands:  Fool's Gold



“Chapel is the most powerful Dominion card relative to its cost, and I'm unlikely to make another card that powerful (relative to its cost).” -Donald X. Vaccarino

“Oops, I did it again.” -Britney Spears

-----

Fool's Gold is pretty good.  And, like Minions, Hunting Parties, and sex, the more of it you have, the better it gets.  Play one FG in a turn, and it's a Copper.  Play two, and each one is a Silver-and-a-half.  Play three, and each one is a Gold.  Play four or more, and they're better than Gold.  Pretty snazzy for a $2 card.

It should follow from the above that you want to buy as many copies of Fool's Gold as possible.  And, indeed, you can do worse than buying nothing else:  Big Money Ultimate on Geronimoo's simulator loses to an equivalent strategy that just buys Fool's Gold instead of Gold and Silver 25%-67%.  The Fool's Gold strategy averages 4 Provinces in 15.5 turns.  But sometimes (a lot of the time), you can do even better.

-----

What does Fool's Gold like?

There are three things that Fool's Gold loves almost as much as other Fool's Gold, and sometimes it's worth dipping out of Fool's Gold to pick up one or more of them.  Those three things are:

• Trashing:  The less cards you have in your deck that aren't Fool's Gold, the higher your chance of drawing lots of Fool's Gold at once.  Thus, Fool's Gold loves trashers (but only some...more on this later).
• Card Drawing:  The more cards you have in your hand, the more of them are likely to be Fool's Gold.  Thus, Fool's Gold loves drawing cards.
• +Buy (or gain):  The only thing better than buying a Fool's Gold every turn is buying more than one Fool's Gold every turn.  This accelerates your game if you're going for it and your opponent is ignoring it, and gives you the chance at a favorable split if you end up racing for the Fool's Golds.  Plus, this will give you a chance at double Province or Province/Duchy turns in the late game, which can easily spell the difference between a win and a loss.  Thus, Fool's Gold loves +buy.

Even better than getting just one of those, though, is getting multiple.  So, with that in mind, let's consider some specific cards that go well with Fool's Gold.

Mint:  A special case for a 5/2 split, Mint/Fool's Gold is currently the 6th best opening, according to the councilroom.com rankings.  Mint's on-buy effect provides excellent trashing, and its on-play effect then goes on to effectively provide +buy, getting you lots of Fool's Gold fast.  It's probably not worth picking up later unless you get a lucky 5-Copper hand (don't trash any Fool's Gold for it).

Council Room:  Huge draw and +buy to go with it.  Council Room/Fool's Gold is an excellent opening if you're lucky enough to get a 5/2 split, but even if you're not, picking one up with your first $5 hand is worth it.  Buying a single Council Room as soon as possible increases Fool's Gold's margin over BMU to a whopping 90%-7%, and beats Fool's Gold head-on 71%-23%.  It also beats the optimized Council Room bot 76%-19%.

Margrave:  Card drawing, +buy, and an attack to boot.  Smells like victory.  Like Council Room, Margrave is worth picking up with your first $5 hand even if you don't get a 5/2 split.  One of these babies will let Fool's Gold beat BMU 92%-5%, and beats straight Fool's Gold 69%-25%.

Salvager:  A trasher tailor-made for Fool's Gold.  Get rid of your Estates and Coppers, accelerate your Fool's Gold purchasing with +$ and +buy, then have the option to rush the end game by trashing Provinces if you get ahead (doubly beneficial to a Fool's Gold deck, since Fool's Gold hates greening).  Buying a single Salvager on turn 1/2 increases Fool's Gold's margin over BMU to 81%-16%, and beats straight Fool's Gold head-on 60%-37%.

Spice Merchant:  In mirror match-ups, ends up being a slightly less good version of Salvager in Fool's Gold games, but still worth picking up if it's the best option on the board.  If your opponent ignores Fool's Gold, it's even better.  You can use the +$/+buy option early to pick up extra Fool's Golds, or the +cards option if you get an unlucky hand like 2xFG, 1xC, Spice Merchant, Province, hoping to draw an extra Fool's Gold.  Picking up a Spice Merchant as an opening increases Fool's Gold's margin over BMU to 86%-10%, and beats Fool's Gold head-on 54%-37%.

Masquerade:  Gives a little card drawing, along with light trashing.  Masquerade is a good card, and its strengths line right up with what Fool's Gold likes, so no surprise that they go well together.  Masquerade/Fool's Gold beats BMU 81%-15%, and beats straight Fool's Gold 57%-38%.  It also beats the optimized Masquerade bot 55%-39%.

Bridge:  Gives +buy for cheap.  The cost reduction also minimizes the chance of unlucky turns where you get your +buy but don't have enough money in hand to buy two Fool's Gold (a problem with some of the weaker +buy cards), and gives you a decent shot at double Province or Province/Duchy turns late game (FG/FG/FG/C/Bridge is P/D, FG/FG/FG/FG/Bridge is P/P).  Buying an opening Bridge bumps up the margin against BMU to 88%-9%, and beats straight Fool's Gold 67%-27%. Also beats the optimized Bridge bot 83%-13%.

Envoy:  It's good for BMU, and it's good for Fool's Gold.  It beats BMU 76%-18%, straight Fool's Gold 50%-4-%, and the optimized Envoy bot 51%-41%.

Smithy:  No surprises here.  Beats BMU 78%-18%, Fool's Gold 55%-36%, and the optimized Smithy bot 53%-38%.

Thief:  An interesting case, and one of the few types of games in which the card is actually useful.  In a mirror match-up, Thief acts as +buy, letting you pick up extra copies of Fool's Gold, while killing your opponent's copies (of course, you still run the risk of getting unlucky and just trashing his Copper for him).  With a single Thief as an opener, it beats straight Fool's Gold 63%-30%, but it's worse against BMU than straight Fool's Gold is (though it still wins 64%-29%).

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What doesn't Fool's Gold like?

As good a card as Fool's Gold is, there's a number of things that don't go along with it very well.  Some of them are expected, but some are surprising (at least to me).  Here are a few of them:

Cursing attacks:  Just like having less crap in your deck makes you more likely to draw your Fool's Golds together, having more crap makes you less likely to do so.  Thus, if you're going to be eating a lot of Curses, you should probably stick to Gold and Silver which at least retain their value in crappy hands, rather than turning into so much Copper.  Mountebank is the worst of the lot, of course, since it gives you two cards that aren't Fool's Gold every time you get hit.  When Cursers are on the board, I'd probably just avoid Fool's Gold altogether.

Fast megaturns:  Fool's Gold strategies can be pretty fast...but not necessarily the fastest thing on the board.  If you think your opponent can probably pull off some kind of KC/Bridge monstrosity on turn 12, you should probably try and contest him on those grounds, rather than plodding along with your Fool's Gold strategy.

Chapel:  Despite my assertion above that Fool's Gold loves trashing, it turns out not to get along with the king of trashers, Chapel.  Straight Fool's Gold beats Chapel/Fool's Gold 59%-38%.  Without any +buy to make up the turn you lose buying Chapel, you're probably only going to end up with 4 Fool's Gold in your deck when they run out, and with no copper to back them up, that's not going to stand up to any greening whatsoever.  It may be viable to work Chapel into a Fool's Gold strategy that also gets some +cards from somewhere, but I suspect that's going to be too slow and lose the Fool's Gold race.

Moneylender, Steward:  Good as these cards are, they both fall prey to the same problem as Chapel.  If you waste a turn buying them, you lose the Fool's Gold race, and the deck thinning and +$ they provide isn't enough to make up the difference.

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Other stuff

Should I buy Gold and Silver after the Fool's Gold runs out?

In a word, yes.  It's not going to matter against a player who's not going Fool's Gold (by the time they run out, you're going to be buying Provinces and Duchies anyway), but in a mirror match-up, a player who buys Gold and Silver after the Fool's Gold runs out beats one who doesn't 85%-10%.  Just do it.

When should I trash my Fool's Gold to top-deck a Gold?

I have no idea.  Geronimoo's simulator doesn't have a way of controlling the bot's behavior for this, and I don't know my way around rspeer's well enough to answer this question with it.  However, there are a couple things I think are probably important when deciding whether or not to trash:

• Can you already buy a Province?  If so, don't trash.
• How did the Fool's Gold split go?  The better it went for you (the more Fool's Golds you got), the less you should be inclined to trash.
• Do you have more than one Fool's Gold in hand right now?  If so, probably don't trash.
• Given what you know about what's left in your deck, are top-decked Golds likely to let you buy a Province next turn?  If yes, might be a good idea to trash.
• Is the game far enough from over that a VP card next turn is as good as one this turn, or are you really down to the wire?  If the former, you might consider trashing; if the latter, probably best to just buy buy buy.

Should I try and incorporate Fool's Gold into engines?

This is a tricky question, and in my experience, the answer is generally "no."  It's easy to see why you would want to:  Fool's Gold rewards big hands with lots of buys, and the best way to get that is a big, fancy engine.  The problem is, fancy engines take time to set up, and Fool's Gold is always a limited resource.  So, if you try to get your engine set up first, your opponent has time to buy up all the Fool's Gold, making your ability to draw your whole deck useless.  On the other hand, if you buy up the Fool's Gold first, you've probably spent enough turns on that race that it's too late to start building an engine; your opponent already has enough Fool's Golds to be buying Provinces.

There may well be some exceptions to this, but in my experience, Fool's Gold and engines don't mix especially well.

-----

Works with:

• +Buy
• Trashing (if it gives +buy)
• +Cards
• Thief

Doesn't work with:

• Cursing attacks
• Trashing (if it doesn't give +buy)
• Fancy engines

2

Game Reports / Outpost comeback

« on: February 20, 2012, 08:17:35 pm »

An interesting one from today:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201202/20/game-20120220-165521-30e94fae.html

My opponent opens Lab/Haven on a 5/2 split.  I open Woodcutter/Potion for the Scrying Pool engine, intending to buy up some Labs and money to go with it and maybe pull off double Province buys late in the game.  Unfortunately, I draw my potion on T5 with C/E/E/E, delaying the Pools by a lot.  I try and catch up by buying a second Potion (along with a Haven) the first time I hit $6, which in retrospect was probably a mistake; it ends up meaning I don't get much money into my deck until very late in the game (I buy my first and only Gold on T12, the same turn my opponent buys his second Province).

By this point I know I'm way too far behind to try for the double Province buys, but I do have an engine that's reliably generating $10, and Outpost is on the board, so on T14, after an unlucky hand for my opponent loses him a turn of Province buying, I opt for Duchy/Outpost instead of keeping up on Provinces.

After that, I'm taking 2 turns to my opponent's 1, but I have to spend an action to use Outpost each time, which means I can't get any +buy on the Outpost turns.  On top of that, with only 8 of the Scrying Pools in my deck, I'm just barely able to draw enough each turn to keep me going, often playing the last Pool in my hand in the hopes of finding another one on top of my deck, and my opponent snags a nice Province+Duchy turn on T15.  In the end, though, the cards line up just well enough for me to pick up Province, Duchy/Duchy on T15 and Duchy, Province/Estate on T16, winning the game by a single point.

I don't think I really should have won this game; I think my deck should have stalled before the end of the game (that is, I should have had a turn where I ran out of Pools before I had enough of my deck in my hand to get the buys I needed), and that it only worked as well as it did because I got lucky.  In hindsight, I think it would have been better for me to buy money earlier instead of going for the extra Potion.  I also should have been setting aside green cards instead of my Spice Merchant with my Havens when I was drawing my entire deck; that would have made it slightly easier for my Pools to get through my deck.

But yeah, just thought I'd share, cause I thought it was a cool game.  Thoughts?

3

Variants and Fan Cards / Fan Card - Profiteer

« on: February 01, 2012, 06:20:54 pm »

Profiteer
$5 - Action - Reaction

+1 action

Name a card.  All copies of that card cost $1 less or $1 more (your choice), but not less than $0.
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When a card is trashed, you may set this aside from your hand.  If you do, all copies of the trashed card cost $1 less or $1 more (your choice), but not less than $0, for the rest of the turn.  At the start of your next turn, return this to your hand.

********************

What's going on with this card?  It's about price fixing.  There are an awful lot of mechanics in Dominion that care about the price of cards.  Currently, there's a little bit of potential to mess around with those mechanics (stuff like playing 6 Highways, allowing you to Remodel anything into a Province).  But I think there's a lot more potential for manipulation of card price than is in the game currently, and this card is a stab at that.

So, what can you do with it?  Well, the Action portion lets you do a few things:
-With no support, it's basically a copper.  You play it, make Provinces cost $7, and then play $7 and buy a Province.  Like Highway and Bridge, it scales with the number of buys you want to make, but unlike those, it only works that way if you want to buy multiple copies of the same card.  So, by itself, fairly weak.
-With card gainers like Ironworks, you can use it to bring cards in the supply below $4 so you can gain them.  So, play this, make Hunting Parties cost $4, gain them with Ironworks.  Same way you can use Highway right now.
-With Remodel and its cousins, you can manipulate the cost of either cards in your hand or cards in the supply to change what you're able to gain.  Make Duchies cost $6 or make Provinces cost $7, for instance, and you can Remodel a Duchy into a Province.  The card specificity makes it better for this purpose than Highway.
-There are various other interactions that might also come in handy.  Got $7 and can't decide between Border Village and Gold?  Make Border Village cost $7, buy it, and use its on-gain ability to pick up a Gold at the same time.

The Reaction portion has its own effects, some similar and some a little different:
-As with the Action portion, you can Remodel a Duchy, reveal the card to make Duchies cost $6 when the Duchy is trashed, and then gain a Province.
-Also works for the benefit you get from Salvager, Apprentice, and Trader.
-You can also mess with your opponent's attempts to do similar things.  They just played Remodel and trashed a Gold?  Reveal Profiteer and make Gold cost $5, and they can't gain a Province.  They just Apprenticed an Estate?  Make Estates cost $1, and they only get to draw 1 card for it.

I do want some feedback on it.  First off, some specifics:
-I'm not sure about cost.  Should this be a $4 card instead?
-Should the +1 action stay?  I figured it was mostly good in combination with other actions, so it maybe shouldn't be a terminal, but I'm not sure about the balance of it, especially with the Reaction (which obviously doesn't cost an action).
-I was gonna call this card Price Fixing or maybe Insider Trading, but those didn't seem like good Dominion names.  Anybody have an idea for a better name for the card?
-Is there a better mechanic than the "set aside" wording to keep people from revealing the card more than once to use its Reaction ability?

Also, of course, I'd like just general feedback on this.  Think it's a good idea?  Any thoughts on how to improve it?

Thanks!

*edit* And of course rinkworks already has a card called Profiteer.  So now I really need a better name.

4

Dominion General Discussion / So what's it like to live in your Dominion?

« on: January 31, 2012, 01:20:59 pm »

So, the board on a given game of Dominion is a Kingdom, right?  And at some level it's supposed to be a (rather impressionistic) representation of an actual kingdom, where each player's deck is their own dominion within that kingdom, and their VPs are something like their degree of political influence within the kingdom.  Admittedly, sometimes it doesn't work super well, but sometimes it does...

I played this game a while back, and it made me think:  Oh, god!  The ruler of my dominion is constantly Scheming to bring people to his Throne Room and have them repeatedly Tortured.  Then he presumably uses the information he gets from his Torturer to learn the locations of valuable Platinum mines to be conquered, which he then Colonizes once the settlements around them have been sufficiently Expanded.  It's like the ultimate evil empire!

How about you?  Played any games where your strategy suggested a kingdom that would be an interesting place to live?  Or a good story about how you came to have such influence?

5

Dominion Isotropic / Depth of Silver replacement with Trader

« on: January 25, 2012, 03:18:21 am »

You buy a Silver.
... You reveal a Trader to gain a Silver instead of a Silver.
... You gain a Silver.
... ... You reveal a Trader to gain a Silver instead of a Silver.
... ... You gain a Silver.
... ... ... You reveal a Trader to gain a Silver instead of a Silver.
... ... ... You gain a Silver.

You can reveal a Trader to gain a Silver instead of any arbitrary card (including an initially purchased Silver).  You can then reveal the Trader again, even if that means replacing a Silver with a Silver, and do the same thing a third time...but then you can't reveal it anymore.

I understand why you can't do this an infinite number of times (trolling), but why can you "gain a Silver instead of a Silver" even once?  And is there something special about allowing it to be revealed exactly 3 times?  I tried to think of some boundary case where this could matter, but I couldn't come up with one...anybody know why it's implemented this way?

6

Game Reports / *sigh* Friggin' Possession

« on: January 13, 2012, 03:58:52 pm »

From today:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/13/game-20120113-125335-aaf14822.html

I go Counting House/Bank on a Colony board and rush Colonies.  My opponent trashes his deck down to nothing so he can play Possession every turn (often more than once).  With a lot of good luck and one obvious mistake by my opponent (playing a Bank before Coppers while Possessing me), I get up 6-0 in Colonies, but then get nailed by a turn where my opponent plays all 3 of his Possessions, then plays an Outpost to play them all again, and uses my deck to clear out the last two Colonies and most of the Provinces, beating me by 3 points.

Awesome game that would only have been more awesome if I'd narrowly won instead of narrowly losing .

7

Simulation / Simulation Challenge: I Like Big Decks And I Cannot Lie

« on: January 10, 2012, 05:53:19 pm »

So, I was just reading another thread from this section, and I noticed that some people would like more simulation challenges, and I thought, "you know, I might not be good enough at the simulators to win those things, but I'm good enough at posting topics to make one."

And I remembered that there's been some interest in Gardens on the forums lately, and some interest in Silk Road, and even some interest in how they compare, and what to do when both of them are on the board.  And then I thought about all the cool mass-card-gaining options that have been added with Hinterlands, and how I've been wondering which of them work with Gardens, and all that stuff...so I says to myself, I says, "this sounds like a problem for the simulators!"

-----

Kingdom (Provinces):
$6 - Border Village
$5 - Ill-Gotten Gains, Cache, Haggler
$4 - Gardens, Silk Road, Ironworks, Trader
$3 - Workshop
$2 - Hamlet

And here's my best effort so far:

Code: [Select]

<player name="Yo Deck So Fat"
 author="A_S00"
 description="I like squirrels.">
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="Combo"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="Competitive"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
   <buy name="Border_Village"/>
   <buy name="Ill_Gotten_Gains">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Ill_Gotten_Gains"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Ironworks">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="8.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Ironworks"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Workshop">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="8.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Ironworks"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gardens">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Ironworks"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silk_Road">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Ironworks"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Ironworks"/>
   <buy name="Workshop"/>
   <buy name="Estate"/>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
   <buy name="Copper"/>
</player>

Now, I'm no expert with the simulator, nor am I any better than decent at Dominion, so I'm probably setting the initial bar to beat pretty low...but I do love my Silk Roads and my Gardens, and I enjoy reading these simulation threads...so who wants to do it better?

Go ahead!

*edit* Un-broken'd the bot.

8

Game Reports / Adventurer/Tunnel vs. IGG/Remake

« on: January 06, 2012, 04:31:31 pm »

Just played a game I felt like sharing:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/06/game-20120106-131806-6bbbf0de.html

I bought up Tunnels along with some light trashing and an Adventurer to trigger the Tunnel reaction.  My opponent rushed Ill-Gotten Gains with Remakes to turn them into Golds.  Due to IGG emptying two piles, rushing tunnels turned out to work in my favor, as I was able to end the game on piles early and win despite being down 1-2 in Provinces.

-----

What I think I should have done differently:
-I think I should have recognized that ending the game early was in my favor earlier, and bought an IGG (or maybe a Tunnel, or a second Adventurer) instead of that Highway on turn 9.
-The turn 16 Duchy buy was a mistake.  If I'd bought a Tunnel instead, I could have denied my opponent his second Province buy.

What I think my opponent should have done differently:
-Rushed Duchies earlier.
-Maybe contested me on Tunnels?

-----

Anyway, what with all the IGG hate of late, and as rare as it is to see Adventurer pull its own weight, I thought I'd post it.  Anybody have additional thoughts on what either of us could have done differently?  Or is there another dominant strategy that both of us just missed?

Thanks!

9

Dominion General Discussion / Hamlet/Gardens?

« on: December 23, 2011, 02:52:58 am »

Hey, guys.

I've been noticing recently (among a flurry of realizations of the variety "whoa, Hinterlands has some great cards for high-econ Gardens decks") that Hamlet pairs pretty well with Gardens (not particularly good example game).  Basically, in a garden game, you always have a ton of green to discard, you benefit a lot from +buy, and since Hamlet costs $2, it's a very easy third pile to empty.  This made me wonder how it would stack up against classics like Workshop, Woodcutter, and Ironworks in a gardening deck.

I tried to simulate the problem, but the play rules for Hamlet in Geronimoo's simulator don't work well with a Gardens strategy (if you have multiple Hamlets in your hand it will erroneously discard for +actions, it doesn't like to discard coppers for +buy even when doing so makes sense).  So, I'll try human expertise instead:  Has anybody tried this out?  How does it work in the long run?

To engage in some baseless theorycrafting, I'm guessing that Hamlets are better for buying up lots of estates and coppers later in a gardens game, and maybe better at ending a game early on piles (so good against someone who's not going gardens) because of being cheap, but not good at gobbling up the gardens early (since they don't really help you hit $4 on more turns, and don't let you gain cards without buying).  So, on a board with both Workshops and Hamlets, I imagine it's probably best to open with Workshops, and then maybe transition into Hamlets later in the game to pick up a ton of coppers...but I'm not sure when to start buying Estates instead.

Anyway, thought I'd share.

10

Game Reports / Combo (with game report): Baron/Duke

« on: August 09, 2011, 05:27:46 pm »

Game log:  http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201108/09/game-20110809-133112-64a64f51.html

Much like the combo that's currently on the front page, looks like Baron/Duke works pretty well.  In the above game, I went for it, while my opponent went for a draw chain involving Menagerie, Envoy, and Rabble with money, and won by a large margin despite my opponent picking up three early provinces before switching horses mid-race to contest my Duke/Duchy dominance.

Like Horse Traders, Baron is a pretty good way of getting extra buys while also guaranteeing that you'll get $5 on a whole lot of turns.  Its advantage seems to be that it allows you to spam Estates for a few extra VP without worrying about greening up your deck (and the Estate-gaining ability helps your weaker turns be less useless), while the disadvantage is that you require three different cards (Baron, Estate, Copper) to hit $5 instead of (Horse Traders, Copper, Copper), which might be easier to hit.

In the game above, I was further helped by the presence of Gardens (which is always nice in a +buy deck which is already spamming coppers and greens as part of its strategy), but they didn't end up being worth as much as my Dukes/Duchies, and the points I got from them weren't the difference between winning and losing here, so I think they didn't have much effect on the game.

A couple insights from the simulator:
-A simple version of this strategy (open Baron/Silver or Baron/Estate, then prioritize Duke/Duchy>Baron>Silver>Estate>Copper) beats Big Money Ultimate handily, and _Single Envoy narrowly.
-If you happen to hit an $8 turn, buying Provinces actually hurts this strategy, since it makes it easier to end the game on Provinces instead of piles.  It's a big enough difference that whether or not you have a Province buy at the top of the list is the difference between narrowly beating Envoy Big Money and narrowly losing to it.
-Loses narrowly to the equivalent HT/Duke strategy that was posted (using the same buy order I outlined above, but with HT instead of Baron).
-Gets stomped by Money+Attack decks (_Single Witch, BM Mountebank, and MB Militia all win around 75%).

And finally, stuff I wanted to ask you guys:
-What do you think my opponent should have done differently, if anything?  Was switching strategies to fight me in the Duchy race a bad idea?
-If you're trying to pull this off, when (if ever) do you think it's a good idea to favor Estates over Silvers?  Or should you just assume that, with all those Barons, you're going to empty Estates anyway and always favor Silver?