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Topics - Thisisnotasmile

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Other Games / Nations

« on: October 24, 2013, 03:01:53 am »

This is one for the TTA lot. Today, being the first day of Essen, sees the release of Nations. I've not seen anyone talking about it here yet but I've been getting pretty excited for it. I'm not at Essen but a friend is going and will be buying me a copy of the game. Has anyone else got this on their radar?

I thought the designer diaries posted on BGG were really interesting, a bit like the Dominion secret histories and pre-release previews all in one (well... 40). Definitely worth a read if you want to see what the game is about.

Other Games / UK 7 Wonders tournament

« on: August 12, 2013, 02:57:24 am »

My regular boardgames club, Beyond Monopoly, is hosting a 7 Wonders tournament in York on Saturday September 21st. It can take up to 49 players (although I doubt it will get more than maybe 25), and there are prizes of £60, £40, and £20 for first, second and third place respectively in the form of gift cards for Travelling Man; a FLGS based in York, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle. They also have an online store. There will also be other prizes for e.g. Highest single score from science, Most points scored through war, etc. although details of these prizes are to be confirmed.

It seems unlikely* I can make the tournament now it's been moved from the 7th to the 21st, as I'll be at York Beer Festival for my brother's birthday, so I figured I'd see if any of you guys wanted to turn up and take the prize that would have been mine!

Click here for further details

*I might go to the tournament and turn up late for the beer fest, I haven't decided yet.

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Ultimate Noughts and Crosses 2

« on: June 22, 2013, 10:42:29 am »

The first game is coming to an end so I wondered if anybody else wanted a game? I'll do a quick rules write up so I don't have to link to the Inception TTT thread every game. If anybody else wants to start a game feel free to copy and paste the rules/board for your game:

The game is played on a 9x9 board made up of 9 3x3 Noughts and Crosses (Or Tic Tac Toe if you are American (Non-British?)) boards. One player is Noughts and one player is Crosses and play alternates as you'd expect.
To win, a player must form a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line of 5 of their symbol anywhere on the board.
The first player may make their move anywhere they wish, from then on the next player must play on the 3x3 board in the space in the big board represented by the space in the 3x3 board the current player played in (this is the confusing bit but if I, for example, play in the top left space in whichever board I am playing on, you must play in the top left board).
If you are forced to play in a board which is already full, you may play anywhere.
Please underscore your current move so it is easier for your opponent to tell wht has changed and where they should be playing next.

. . . . . . . . .
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. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
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As I played first in my previous game I will let my opponent play first in this. Once I have an opponent I will move the thread to Non-Mafia Game Threads.

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Ultimate Noughts and Crosses

« on: June 19, 2013, 04:04:43 am »

See my post here (and the OP in that thread) for the rules. It's pretty simple. I'll go first and whoever want to play can make a move. Only 2 players though, sorry. I'll move the thread to non-mafia games once I have an opponent.

Please underline the most recent move so it is easier to see where the next player has to play.

. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . O . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .

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I've separated the individual grids for slightly easier viewing, but that does throw digonal lines off a bit so just be careful with them.

Forum Games / MOVED: Three word story

« on: May 22, 2013, 06:18:27 am »

This topic has been moved to Non-Mafia Game Threads.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=8175.0

Dominion Isotropic / Sadface

« on: May 21, 2013, 04:17:19 pm »

I just accidentally clicked on my Isotropic button on my shortcuts bar

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Three word story

« on: May 18, 2013, 04:52:40 am »

Every forum needs one of these, right? I'll post it in Forum Games for now so that people notice it, but after a while I'll move it to Non-Mafia Game Threads.

ITT we will collaboratively write a story.

Rules:

Anyone can play. No sign ups required!
To play, make a post. Please allow a minimum of three other players to post between any two of your contributions to ensure you don't have too much influence over the story.
All contributions to the story must contain exactly three words. You may add punctuation if you wish, but it can be ignored by future contributors if they want to continue in a different way from your intention (e.g. you end your post with a full stop, intending for the next poster to start a new sentence. The next poster instead starts with "because" and continues your sentence.)
You may post things other than your three word contribution (e.g. commentary on the story), but make sure it is clear what is and isn't part of the story.
Introducing forum members to the story is strongly encouraged although...
...Please respect other forum members' wishes. If they wish to be written out of the story, do so ASAP and don't re-introduce them.
Have fun!

And so our story begins:

Once upon a time there lived a man who sold armaments to theory and rrenaud who accepted them to fight the Resistance! But one day, they found a very young horse who was ridden by none other than the one and only Rube Goldberg! He is someone that they could trust not at all. Meanwhile, the man with the golden hair and a spike through his forehead stood to sell more armaments than those sitting at computers.

Theory was wondering when his aspirin would Kick in.

Rrenaud found the giant Rube Goldberg riding through the vast forest filled with armaments. He took his race car instead of his armaments to Galzria's house. He rang the doorbell. Galzria's angry dog, Eevee was startled and dug up hidden bones in the kitchen. No one saw him dig up the dead cats who were to scrawny to be cats. Then when they realized they weren't cats, liopoil posted a highly confidential package stuffed with bits of skin and cat flesh on some pieces of armaments. It was amazing. He gave some thought to what color his armaments and TV in the package should be so he could find the red one.

Gossamer threads descended from the heavens to tie up the phone lines. Meanwhile, sudgy the man sang Honeybee. As he sang, he was struck dumb and couldn't stop singing it. With an inaudible fart, Sudgy brought death to Rube: The Musical tickets Of doom. Theory and Rrenaud were fainting from the fart's odor. Sudgy quickly backed away into some armaments.

Later that week liopoil's package arrived and contained boxes Filled with letters in alphabet soup. Theory grabbed the aspirin and exclaimed "My aspirin hasn't worked in years!" He was shocked.

Meanwhile Rrenaud was trying on armaments. The armaments weren't really armaments so he turned them into arm mentos. He realized that made no sense but his delicious alphabet soup distracted gman and he felt bad. What had he done? He distracted gman yet again by eating soup, but that distracted mail-mi too, causing him to fall off purple monkey dishwashers, landing into armaments and bruising his left cheek.

Rrenaud took aspirin away from theory to fix it so that he could...

General Discussion / The KALQ keyboard

« on: April 25, 2013, 05:04:15 am »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22283117

So some scientists have created a new keyboard layout designed to optimise typing using two thumbs (i.e. on handheld devices). The QWERTY layout was designed in the 19th century for typewriters, but limits users typing with only two thumbs to about 20 words per minute. According to the article, the new KALQ layout will allow typing speeds of up to 37wpm.

The app will be available for free on Android based devices.

Do you think it'll catch on? How long do you think it'll take to get used to? I'm tempted to get it to get a headstart on learning, but at the moment I use Swiftkey which already does a pretty good job of improving typing efficiency using a QWERTY layout. Will anyone make a similar app using the KALQ layout?

General Discussion / Snooker

« on: April 24, 2013, 08:14:53 am »

So I touched on this a while back in my introduction topic and there seemed to be a few other fans around here too. I figured, what better time to start a full thread about the sport than right now?

So... World Championships.

Dechawat Poomjaeng. What a ~~name~~ character! Watched the evening session last night mainly just to see the end of the Maguire - Poomjaeng match and it was definitely worth it. Those 2 frames alone have got me so pumped for the rest of the tournament.

I didn't watch O'Sullivan's first round match, but I'm not really feeling his chances this year. Everyone's bigging him up and making the tournament all about him, but I think it's just going to put too much pressure on him to perform which will cause him to implode at some point. I just don't see how a guy who's played 1 competitive match all season can be favourite to win this.

A lot of big names have dropped in round 1 already. I wouldn't be surprised if there're upsets all the way and some relatively unknown player comes through and wins it. My money (£5 in fact) is on Mark Selby this year, though. His form this season is just... wow.

Who else is watching? Who do you want to see win?

Other Games / Tournay

« on: March 21, 2013, 06:53:19 am »

Anyone played this game before? It's designed by the same people who made Troyes (as if you couldn't tell) but it got a bit of a bad rep when it came out because people were expecting "Troyes: The Card Game" and Tournay isn't that. I picked it up last year with a FLGS gift voucher in a sale (payed £8 of my own money) and have only recently started pulling it out, but my gaming group are really enjoying the game.

It's basically a tableau builder with an interesting card drafting mechanic. It's hard to get in to, because it has 81 unique cards (plus 15 event cards and an 18 card expansion is also included), and every single card effect is given by symbols. The symbols aren't particularly hard to understand... after 3 games, but getting to that point can be a challenge. Once you're there, the game takes about 15-20 mins per player, but the first few games will take substantially longer.

Each player starts with a number of workers in 3 different colours (2 of each in the base game. Advanced rules are included where you start with 1 of each), and on your turn you can optionally build a card from your hand into your tableau, and then you must take one of several mandatory actions with your workers. These actions include activating a building in your tableau with a worker of the same colour, drawing a new card into your hand, "using" workers to simply take money, or returning all of your "used" workers to your plaza, so they can be used again. The drawing action is interesting as you can either draw the face up card from your chosen deck, or you can put the top card on the bottom, draw 2, choose 1, and put the other back on top face up. The deck you draw from is determined by which colour worker(s) you use, and how many you use. Any time you perform an action requiring workers, you can use opponents' available workers by paying them 2 Deniers (money) per worker. They cannot refuse this, creating a lot of new interesting options.

Each deck also contains 1 Town Crier card. When the Town Crier is drawn, you activate the three available event cards by putting 1 Denier coin on each (if there is space) and then carrying out the event shown once per Denier on the card. The events are usually bad and there are ways to combat or block their effects.

The game has the hadest-to-explain game end condition(s) in the world but once it's over, you count up Prestige Points (PP) and whoever has the most wins.

This is a very interesting game once you've got past the initial difficulty of understanding the icons (and rules misprints). I've played maybe 6 or 7 times in the past couple of months and now I've got a group of people from my club who understand the game, our games are getting much quicker, but they're always different depending on events avaialable and how quickly Town Criers get drawn. If they start coming out early you get bogged down with bad things happenening constantly. If they are towards the bottom of decks, you can freely build up an economy before you get hit. We've not played with either the advanced rules, nor the expansion cards yet, but I am looking forward to giving them a go as soon as possible.

Has anyone else played this game? What do you think?

If you go into it expecting it to be "Troyes: The Card Game" you will be disappointed. If you go into it expecting a completely different, original tableau building game with interesting card drafting mechanics and opponent screwage, you'll love it (I hope).

Edit: Added more pictures because I am really really really bored.

Innovation General Discussion / Can we have a decline of civility on Innovation Isotropic thread?

« on: March 07, 2013, 11:21:33 am »

It seems the guy who was ragequitting with "Way to get lucky you pathetic little bitch" has made his way over to Innovation under the name "Leo".

http://innovation.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/07/game-20130307-081056-7102a160.html

He resigned on turn 10 claiming that there was nothing he could do and I got lucky (...pathetic little bitch...). Now, I'm not REALLY posting this here for a decline of civility discussion. That's been done before. I'm posting it because I'm shocked he would feel he had no chance at that point. The scores were 5-4 to him, acheivements at 0-0. He had had the chance to acheive ages 1 and 2, but declined the opportunities. I had been teching up by Maths and was in age 8, but he had been piggybacking pretty much the whole was and was in age 7 himself. The way I see it, the game was far from over.

Am I right or did I have a killer move lined up next turn and I've just completely missed it?

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Guess your roll! - Winner: Galzria

« on: March 06, 2013, 04:10:18 pm »

Anyone can play. Allow at least one other person to play before you play again for fairness.

All you have to do is use the new dice roll feature of the forum to roll 1D1000, and in the same post guess the result. First correct guess is the winner!

This dice roll may have been tampered with!
Rolled 1d1000 : 860, total 860

487 go!

Non-Mafia Game Threads / Love Letter (Winner: Tables)

« on: January 31, 2013, 09:11:02 am »

For reference, here are the cards:

Image shamelessly stolen without permission from BGG gallery.

(Randomly selected) Play order and current scores:
Tables - 4
Qvist - 3
Lekkit - 0
Davio - 1

Current table, active player highlighted, eliminated players struckthrough:

Tables
Discards:

Qvist
Discards:

Lekkit
Discards:

Davio
Discards:

At the beginning of a round I will PM you all with your initial draw. On your turn I will PM you with your new draw and a reminder of the card you already hold. You must post in this topic with the card you wish to play, and if required, the target (and guess) for its action. I will then announce the results of your action (publicly and/or privately as required) and PM the the next player their draw. If anybody breaks the rules by (for example) playing Prince with Countess in their hand or trying to target somebody protected by a Handmaid, I will announce that the play is illegal and ask you to play again. I will not restart the round or try to cover your mistakes in any other way. It is your responsibility to ensure you don't give away information about your hand by making illegal plays.

Forum Games / Love Letter (sign ups closed)

« on: January 31, 2013, 07:42:51 am »

Game is here: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=6735.0

Love Letter is a quick, tactical card game released in 2012. I've played it quite a few times at my games club and I love it. I think it would work really well as a forum game, and so I'd like to run a game here if anyone's interested. Maximum of four players, so first come first served. I won't bore you with the rules, there's a link to the BGG page up there if you want to check it out.

Edit: Okay, simple rules explanation. Deck of 16 cards. 5 Guard. 2 Priest, Baron, Handmaid, Prince. 1 King, Countess, Princess. Deck is shuffled and one card removed. Each player is dealt one card. On your turn you draw one and play ("discard") one. Last player left in the round wins, if more than 1 person survives the round highest value card remaining in hand at the end of the round wins. First to 4 (I think) rounds won wins the game.

Here are the cards:

Image shamelessly stolen without permission from BGG gallery.

Sign ups:
- Davio
- Lekkit
- Tables
- Qvist

Dominion General Discussion / Official Storage Solution

« on: October 19, 2012, 07:58:46 am »

No idea if this has been mentioned before or not since I don't come round here much anymore, but I was just watching the BGG livestream from Essen and Jay was on to show a few games he's doing this year. They had a bit of spare time afterwards so they took questions from the live audience watching on ustream and someone asked about Dominion expansions. He talked a little bit about Guilds and that it's on time for Spring 2013 and then also mentioned he's been looking at potential storage solutions to take on as an official product. He said he hasn't found one yet, but it is something he's looking at.

Other Games / Android games to try out

« on: July 23, 2012, 02:32:44 am »

Yes, that other topic inspired me to post this. Basically, I've ordered my first ever smartphone over the weekend. It's an Android one and will be delivered tomorrow (24/07/2012). What gaming-related Apps should I be getting ASAP?

Game Reports / Not a gg?

« on: May 27, 2012, 10:06:43 am »

So I'm not usually one to bother with game reports, but what happened after this match confused me slightly, the following (short) exchange occurred, and I really don't know why:

14:54 cherdano: not a gg

14:54 Thisisnotasmile: ...
14:55 cherdano: was just trying desperation measures after you had 3 gold ahead of me
14:55 cherdano has returned to the lobby.

Here is the game log: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/27/game-20120527-065440-56e21319.html

Now, was this really "not a gg" because my (level 38) opponent didn't have a chance after I got three Golds? From where I was sitting he only had himself to blame for dropping behind on the Golds. The reason he couldn't get any $6 hands was because he spent $5 on Lighthouses on turns 6, 8, 9 AND 13.

Was my opponent just being a bad loser, or was there something I've missed and actually, my win was undeserved?

Answers on a postcard... or just on a post in this thread.

Introductions / Thisisanintroduction

« on: May 05, 2012, 06:25:53 am »

My name is Thisisnotasmile and the answer to the question you are all thinking is, it is a background lyric from Sound Effects and Overdramatics, my favourite song by my favourite band.

I am a 22 year old male from York, UK. I have lived in Suffolk for most of my life but I came to University here in York where I met my current girlfriend of 2-and-a-half-years, and after graduating in 2010 we decided to stay here together. My degree was in mathematics and contrary to a lot of the mathematicians around here, I hate stats.

After graduating and most of our friends moving elsewhere, I decided I needed to meet some more people in York, and I stumbled upon an advert for Beyond Monopoly! York's friendliest boardgame club where I discovered the boardgaming world... well... beyond monopoly! It was here that I first encountered Dominion which led to my discovery of Isotropic (some time between Prosperity and Cornucopia) and the rest is history.

I will leave you with a few (un)interessting facts about me and then we can follow up with any questions you may have... or something:

- Despite my huge love of music, I have precisely zero musical talent.
- I am not a sports fan... apart from Snooker. Yep, I'm weird.
- I am typing this wearing only my boxer shorts, however upon clicking "Post" I will head into the shower, get dressed, and then off to Beyond Monopoly as we meet today!
- My real name is... Paul . Exciting.

Council Room Feedback / Player pages suggestion

« on: December 17, 2011, 05:59:41 am »

It's not really a huge problem but I've always found this a little bit weird:

On the CR player page at the bottom it lists all of your opponents sorted by the number of times you've played them and then by their name. Great. But let's now consider just the sub-list of all people I've played X games against. CR seems to think the alphabet runs through twice, first in upper case and then in lower case. This is strange and can make it a little bit awkward if you're looking for someone and you can't remember if they capitalise the first letter of their name or not (yes I know you can ctrl+f, but still, it's strange). Can you make it order by alphabet, ignoring case?

I mean, in an ideal world, everybody would choose a name starting with an upper case letter anyway, such is the convention used in our language, but some people just like to be different *looks at our admins*

Dominion Articles / Ill-Gotten Gains

« on: December 01, 2011, 06:47:04 am »

"$5 for a Silver that I have to flood my deck with Coppers to get full use out of? No Thanks!" That's what we all said as Donald X. announced Ill-Gotten Gains (IGG) in the lead up to Essen 2011. As usual, all of our first reactions were wrong. Very wrong.

We had all mostly ignored the cursing effect of the card. It's only a one-time thing, so does it really matter that much? Yes. Yes it does. It is true that after the cursing, each IGG buy is effectively a Copper with the ability to gain more Coppers in your deck, however the cursing happens immediately, making it the first (and currently only) card which can put a Curse into your opponent's deck before they shuffle it for the first time. The longer the Curse is in a deck, the more disruption it will cause, and the more damage it will do. Similarly, the curse is "unblockable" by conventional means. Everybody knows that cursing is the strongest type of attack in Dominion, but IGG is not an Attack card and the distribution of Curses is not triggered by playing the card. Because of this, Moat and Lighthouse can do nothing to block the Curse, and you can't even reveal a Horse Traders or Secret Chamber to "make up" a little bit for taking a Curse. Trader and Watchtower, however, can still be used to mitigate the effects of the IGG as they react to (would) gaining the Curse, rather than an Attack being played.

After you've handed out the strongest Curse in the game, you are left with a crippled Silver in your deck (but hey, it's better than the Curse the other guy has!). Luckily, it's not as bad as it sounds. By the time you've emptied the IGG pile, there are not one but TWO empty piles: IGGs and Curses. The game will now end not when Provinces are depleted, but when ANY single pile is depleted. Now, hopefully at this point you have a deck full of (weak) Treasures while your opponent has a deck of Curses (in reality you will have some curses too but let's assume you've won the IGG split 6/4 or better). All you have to do is run out any pile of your choosing while keeping ahead in points. Fortunately, Duchy can help you score points and costs $5, which with your density of Copper-like cards and potential to flood your deck with more whenever you please is a pretty comfortable price point to be aiming for. Every now and then you'll draw a hand something like Copper/Copper/IGG/IGG/IGG, in which case feel free to grab the Province.

If you like to do something 'fun' and not-necessarily optimal every now and then, there are a LOT of interesting things you can do with IGG other than rushing three piles with Duchy. Just check out the Game Reports subforum on Dominion Strategy and you will see plenty of examples of people using trash-for-benefit with IGG (who cares about losing a sub-Silver when you get $5 worth of benefit for it!), or even using IGG to facilitate a Coppersmith and/or Counting House strategy which are usually too weak to play at a competetive level.

IGG isn't always the Dominant strategy though. There are cards which can cause enough disruption to the IGG Duchy rush that make it a losing proposition. Essentially, any card which can cause the IGG and Curse piles to deplete at different rates will upset the rush. If the Curses run out first, you've got to spend $5 turns buying cards worth less than Silver and not even hurting your opponent in the process before you can start on the Duchies. If the IGGs run out first, well, you're in trouble. Other strong cursers are the first of these card that come to mind (they empty Curses quicker than IGGs). In this case it may be a better idea to play a more standard Curse game and buy one or two IGGs to back up your main curser and maybe swing a 6-4 or even 7-3 Curse split in your favour. IGG can be just as powerful a support card as it can be a centerpiece to a strategy. However, a slightly more subtle yet quite a lot more harming counter to the strategy are the two cards which can cause Curses to still be in the supply when IGGs have run out: Ambassador and Trader.

Works with:

Trash-for-benefit.
5/2 split to give your opponent a curse before they shuffle the first time.
Coppersmith/Counting House and other Copper-based strategies.
Duchy.
Can provide support for other Cursers.

Conflicts with:

Other fast cursers conflict with an IGG rush.
Ambassador/Trader.
Opponent's heavy trashing MIGHT be able to overcome an IGG rush, but then you should trash away your Copper too and carry on as of the IGG rush didn't happen.
Embargo.
City. They'll be powered up for both players, but if you're focussing your $5 buys on IGG your opponent will have more Cities.

Puzzles and Challenges / Exception to the rule?

« on: November 30, 2011, 10:21:05 am »

(I am sorry if this is too easy and/or uninteresting)

Everybody knows that "if you'd bought a Silver instead of that Potion, every Possession would be a Province". However, this is NOT always the case. The puzzle here:

Find a situation in which you could buy a Possession, however, exchange the Potion for a Silver and you CANNOT buy a Province.

I have 2 solutions in mind (1 that sparked the puzzle idea, 1 that I just thought of while writing this). Let's see what others can come up with, are there more than my two? All guesses in spoiler tags please!

Game Reports / Fun with IGG

« on: November 29, 2011, 10:01:03 am »

Just had this game. Both my opponent and I oppened 5/2, and he opened Wharf/Pearl Diver to my IGG/Pearl Diver. After a few turns I realised he had completely underestimated the power of IGG and decided that I had a bit of time to play about with the board and not worry too much about playing optimally. The game itself probably isn't that interesting, but I saw a number of pretty fun synergies on the board and tried to pull as many of them off as I could during the match. Some of my favourites include:

The "OH MY GOD WHERE DID HALF OF MY DECK JUST GO???"

Thisisnotasmile plays a Counting House.
... putting 6 Coppers from the discard pile into the hand.
Thisisnotasmile plays an Ill-Gotten Gains.
... getting +$1.
... gaining a Copper in the hand.
Thisisnotasmile plays an Ill-Gotten Gains.
... getting +$1.
... gaining a Copper in the hand.
Thisisnotasmile plays 9 Coppers.
Thisisnotasmile buys a Mint.
... trashing 9 Coppers and 2 Ill-Gotten Gains from the play area.

The "Oh look, that Mint's going to come in handy afterall!"

Thisisnotasmile plays a Mint.
... revealing an Ill-Gotten Gains and gaining another one.
... ... MidnightOtter gains a Curse.
Thisisnotasmile plays a Silver.
Thisisnotasmile plays an Ill-Gotten Gains.
... getting +$1.
... gaining a Copper in the hand.
Thisisnotasmile plays an Ill-Gotten Gains.
... getting +$1.
Thisisnotasmile plays a Copper.
Thisisnotasmile buys an Ill-Gotten Gains.
... MidnightOtter gains a Curse.

and The "What do you mean strictly-worse-than-Silver?"

Thisisnotasmile plays a Mine.
... trashing an Ill-Gotten Gains.
... gaining a Gold in hand.

I'm not saying that any of these interactions are particularly spectacular by themselves, but I found it pretty satisfying pulling off all of these things during a single game. I feel that the first two of these synergies are particularly complementary as the Mint buy not only removes a LOT of crap from my deck, but also facilitates the double-IGG-gain turn later on.

Anyhow, just wanted to share that, as I had a lot of fun pulling these off during the game when I spotted these interactions.

Council Room Feedback / Very Minor Tunnel Bug

« on: November 13, 2011, 10:36:22 am »

Most unimportant bug report yet:

The word "Tunnel" doesn't have a background colour in game logs =[

Game Reports / Hinterlands cards coming together to put on an awesome show!

« on: October 17, 2011, 06:40:55 am »

So I just had this game containing a number of Hinterlands cards, quite a few of which were key to my strategy:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/17/game-20111017-032034-a6afe227.html
(Councilroom link added tomorrow if I remember)

Just a snippet to show a rough idea of the strategy. The whole game was me pretty much doing this over and over again as many times as possible:

— Thisisnotasmile's turn 13 —
Thisisnotasmile plays a Hamlet.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action.
... discarding 1 card and getting +1 action.
Thisisnotasmile plays a Develop.
... trashing an Ill-Gotten Gains.
... gaining a Border Village and put it on the deck.
... ... gaining an Ill-Gotten Gains.
... ... ... luke gains a Curse.
... gaining a Trader and put it on the deck.
Thisisnotasmile plays a Develop.
... trashing an Ill-Gotten Gains.
... gaining a Border Village and put it on the deck.
... ... gaining an Ill-Gotten Gains.
... ... ... luke gains a Curse.
... gaining a Trader and put it on the deck.

I had an advantage here as I opened 4/3 to my opponent's 2/5 (and he didn't take IGG with his 5). He congratulated me for spotting this epic combo at around turn 3 or 4 when he picked up on what was going on, but by then it was already too late for him to successfully counter. He tried, and at one point he even managed to Trader away one of the incoming curses (which was slightly annoying because it slowed down the 3-pile ending (oh and did I mention how fast this combo drains piles and causes a 3-pile ending (it's fast))).

He managed to get a Duchy buy in at the end and I gambled that he had enough curses (I hadn't really been keeping track because of the discussion we were having about the combo) and ended it. Final score 1 - -1 (that is one to minus one) to me. I had great fun spotting and pulling this combo off, and it seems as though Hinterlands is going to be full of crazy interactions like this. Can't wait for more.

Game Reports / Rabble counters Minion

« on: September 17, 2011, 04:55:39 am »

Here's a game in which many notable things occured. To start, we will note the kingdom cards in play, as is how most game reports begin:

cards in supply: Farming Village, Fishing Village, Hamlet, Island, Minion, Pearl Diver, Quarry, Rabble, Treasury, and Workshop

Now, I looked at this and thought "Fishing Village, Treasury, Minion. That's my strategy sorted". I decided that if I was going for a Minion engine, I'd need some light trashing so I decided to hammer the Islands early to get as many starting cards as I could out of my deck before putting my engine together. I opened Fishing Village/Farming Village (double-village opening, what?) in order to have the actions to play my Islands. On reflection I probably should have opened Fishing Village/Fishing Village or Fishing Village/Island as the Farming Village doesn't contribute to the Minion engine at all and probably slows down my Islanding by skipping over the cards which are highest on my priority list for setting aside. I didn't open Silver because I wanted as little dead-weight as possible in my eventual Minion deck and I could get $ from Fishing Village anyway.

I quickly realised that with Fishing Village, Minion AND Treasure contributing to my final plans, I was going to have a lot of money, so on turn 5 I picked up a Hamlet over Fishing Village with $3 as it was the only +buy on the table. I proceeded to blast through the Island stack, setting aside as many starting cards as possible and picking up Fishing Villages whenever I fell short of $4. On my turn 12 I hit my first $6 hand, which was also my first $5 hand. "Brilliant", I thought, "now I can start picking up Minions and this will be over in no time at all". I looked at the Minion stack and was horrified to see only 3 remaining. I needed to change my plan fast, and considering my opponent had 7 Minions, I didn't feel too confident that I could change it fast enough to do anything meaningful. I picked up a Gold as Fishing Villages alone were not producing huge amounts of money. Afterall, it was turn 12 and I'd only just hit $5 for the first time!

I soon got a grasp on my new plan as I noticed just how many spare actions my Fishing/Farming Villages were creating for me. I looked at the kingdom cards available thinking "maybe there's a terminal that can pull me out of this", and sure enough the only meaningful terminal available was a +3 card terminal: Rabble. I had to go for it. I wasn't too upset about the lack of choice because I love playing action chains and with all the spare actions I had, that was inevitable with Rabble. I ignored VPs for the next few turns and by the end of turn 15 I'd picked up 4 Rabbles (thanks to my early foresight in needing a Hamlet for +buy) and my opponent was just picking up his third Province.

I was behind but it wasn't all over yet. I could still remember the 6 Islands I rushed earlier and realised that this meant, despite the fact I was 3-0 down on Provinces, I wasn't actually too far behind. I kicked my deck into gear. with a load of cards Islanded away, and Fishing Villages only being in my deck every other turn, I had a very slim deck which allowed me to get all four Rabbles out reliably. The game finished on turn 20 with me picking up 4 of the remaining 5 provinces and 3 Duchys to boot (thanks to my Hamlet!) to take a commanding lead and steal victory from the jaws of defeat 48 - 37.

Now, why did my opponent's 7-Minion engine shut down for the last 5 turns of the game? Rabble. Each time he came to the table he'd do what you always do with a Minion engine: Play all but 1 Minions for money, discard and draw 4... Then he was in trouble. After 4 Rabble hits, the top 2-3 cards of his deck were all green. That only left him with 1-2 card with which to find a Minion to carry on his chain. I feel that the usually weak attack portion of Rabble is what bought me the time I needed to pull back from a 3-0 Province defecit, and I was pretty proud of this game.

So yeah. The point of this game report: You can open double-village, let your opponent get a 7-0 Minion lead, go 3-0 down in Provinces and still win.

Usual disclaimers: Neither of us played optimally. My opponent was level 5 so I was always favourite to win (and when I say "always" I mean "before I went 7-0 down on Minions"). etc. etc.