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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Best strategy on this board?
« on: September 19, 2012, 12:33:31 pm »I recently taught someone how to play Dominion at my school's gaming club, using Intrigue only, and after getting the base cards out, told them to pick any 10 piles. The board ended up being:
Courtyard
Great Hall
Shanty Town
Bridge
Wishing Well
Steward
Coppersmith
Scout
Swindler
Conspirator
Since my opponent was new to the game, I purposely avoided playing Big Money, and instead played a Shanty Town/Courtyard/Bridge engine, and won 26-19 after 3-piling those cards, though I'm sure Big Money would have been stronger. I'm curious, though, is there any strategy that could beat Big Money?
Definitely. One of the obvious ones is a Conspirator engine; you've got Great Hall, Wishing Well and Shanty Town, any of which can set up Conspirator nicely.
(Also, Big Money will get killed on this board by just about any strategy involving Swindler. You can't effectively run Big Money when your Coppers get turned into Curses and your Silvers get turned into Shanty Towns/Great Halls/Wishing Wells.)
I did buy a few Conspirators, but I guess I didn't quite realize their full potential.
I purposely avoided playing Big Money, and instead played a Shanty Town/Courtyard/Bridge engine, and won 26-19 after 3-piling those cards, though I'm sure Big Money would have been stronger.
This sounds like a weird situation to three-pile on. Why didn't you exhaust the Provinces?
That aside, I figured at least one player would use Swindler to give out some curses early game. Another strategy (not totally separate) might be to use Steward to trash coppers/curses/estates down, maybe picking up a shanty town for +actions and bridge for +buy, and then focus on conspirators, maybe supported by wishing-wells and/or shanty towns. Finally, that might lead to more bridges.
Then again, I'm a level 28...anybody better want to weigh in? I'd be interested to see what you think.
EDIT: Ninja'd by Jack Rudd.
I 3-piled the game because my opponent was also buying some of those cards, and knew that I was in the lead. My opponent tried the typical new-player "buy everything" mentality, but neglected to buy Swindler, and I didn't because I forgot how it interacted with Coppers. In hindsight, though, it probably would be very strong here.