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Innovation Rules Questions / breaking a stalemate

« on: March 09, 2015, 04:11:38 pm »

Is there some sort of rule covering stalemates?

I just had a game where the only rational action was to repeat the same moves each turn:

I had Statistics (I demand you transfer the highest card from your scorepile to your hand)
My opponent had Refrigeration (You may score a card from your hand)

I had more leafs, but no cards in hand, so I could not share his refrigeration.

My opponent was missing one achievement for victory, and just got enough points to get the last one. Unless I executed Statistics twice, he would win on the next turn. On his turn, he could put the two cards back into his scorepile with Refrigeration.

So that alone would be enough to get an endless cycle of Statistics & Statistics; Refrigeration & Refrigeration going. To make things more interesting, I had almost as many points as he had, and was two Industrialisations away from ending the game on piles. So unless he refilled his scorepile each turn, forcing me to waste both of my actions on Statistics, I could have won by score in two turns by executing Statistics & Industrialisation.

So the first one to deviate from the endless pattern would definitely loose the game.

Common sense would indicate that this results in a draw. I don't think this rule is implemented on isotropic. Is there an official ruling for this?

Innovation Rules Questions / Are the contents of a stack public knowledge?

« on: June 15, 2013, 08:14:16 pm »

On Isotropic, you can inspect every card in every stack in play, yours or your opponent's.
This can be very handy if you want to activate a dogma that will take away one of their top cards, or if you are thinking about sharing a splay dogma.

When I play Innovation in real life, we usually do not allow someone to inspect stacks of their opponents (Though taking their top cards into your hand to read the text is often done, and that automatically reveals the card below)

Of course the contents of each stack is in theory public knowledge, but in practice it is almost impossible to remember.

Is there an official rule about inspecting opponent's non-top cards?

Game Reports / Ill-Gotten Gains/Pawn against Stewart/Stewart in a Gardens game

« on: January 19, 2013, 06:47:54 pm »

I just played an interesting game (against WanderingWinder), and I am trying to figure out what happened there.

cards in supply: Bazaar, Coppersmith, Duchess, Gardens, Ill-Gotten Gains, Outpost, Pawn, Stables, Steward, and Venture
(cards in green where bought exclusively by me, cards in red by my oponent)

I thought this was a slam-dunk Ill-Gotten Gains / Garden rush. I had a pretty lucky start with 5/2, and got every Garden
But WW beat me with a Bazaar/Stewart engine, buying every Province.

#1 WanderingWinder: 51 points (8 Provinces and a Duchy); 20 turns
opening: Steward / Steward
[29 cards] 8 Bazaars, 5 Pawns, 3 Stewards, 1 Duchess, 3 Silvers, 1 Duchy, 8 Provinces

#2 Zem: 38 points (8 Gardens [48 cards], a Duchy, and 3 Estates); 19 turns
opening: Ill-Gotten Gains / Pawn
[48 cards] 8 Gardens, 7 Ill-Gotten Gains, 4 Pawns, 1 Duchess, 24 Coppers, 3 Estates, 1 Duchy

I had the impression that Ill-Gotten Gains was a strong attack in addition to being a great gardens enabler; and Stewart a far too weak trasher to just shrug it off. Is that wrong or did I play it incorrectly?

2012 / What to do when you do not have the game log?

« on: December 08, 2012, 06:16:26 pm »

So, suppose you play a tournament game, and both participants forget to save the game log link. With councilroom down, is there any way to recover it? If not, what is the recommended way to proceed?

This happened to me in the first round, we discussed it and agreed to just ignore that one game and play another, and that new game had the same outcome, so everything was fine. But I was wondering what the official stance on this is.

Dominion General Discussion / ambassador vs masquerade

« on: November 14, 2011, 08:11:10 am »

I recently had a 4 player match with ambassador and masquerade.

I opened ambassador, went double ambassador and ended up distributing all curses and a lot of coppers, but the speedup of masquerade+silver still prevailed.

The board had native village and caravan, which I thought would support ambassador well.
Caravan because you can open caravan/ambassador, and native village because you are almost guaranted to be able to buy one while playing your ambassador, and both because they can increase handsize when it matters.

The full board was native village, ambassador, masquerade, coppersmith, mining village, conspirator, caravan, merchant ship, tactican, harem.
(apparently one of the sets selected for GenCon by Donald X)

What would be your choice for this board?
ambassador or masquerade?

I opened ambassador, caravan, bought a second ambassador, a native village and a mining village and proceeded to distribute all curses, two each round for 5 rounds, but that prooved to be far too slow
(and very unpopular

).
With a conspirator and some money i then bought a couple greens but still ended last.
Noone else used ambassador, and not everyone used masquerade

Perhaps I should have gone for 2 tacticans and a few conspirators in addition? But that would be even slower to start, and I was already very vulnerable to a lucky masquerade.
Or perhaps i should not have started with the curses, and instead concentrated on buying after my deck was small? But since the first provinces were gone very early, I estimated that it was already too late at that point to win without slowing and cursing the others.

My guess is that without masquerade, ambassador would be a must-buy on that board, but with masquerade the balance shifts.

How would this change in a colony game?
With colonies, would the slow buildup be fast enough, and would distributing coppers be good enough not to bother with buying a curse?