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3501
If you're skipping the cast iron reasons, I think there's a judgement of momentum. Do you lose momentum by taking curses into your deck? Do your opponent gain momentum through repeated unchallenged turns and improving the draw chain for future hands? It can be difficult to judge which momentum swing is going to be the most important.

3502
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why is Remake worded that way?
« on: June 24, 2011, 04:58:45 pm »
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The card text could have said, "Trash 2 cards. For each card trashed this way, gain a card costing exactly 1 more."
Presumably you can play the remake, trash an estate to gain a silver, reveal a watchtower and put it on top of the deck, then trash the watchtower and gain a remake.

3503
Game Reports / Re: Game Altering Hands
« on: June 24, 2011, 12:41:29 pm »
I suppose turn 15 in this game fits the original request. http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110617-064810-515ea6e3.html. Turn 17 is flashy too.


3504
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Wishing Well/Scout Combo
« on: June 23, 2011, 05:40:21 pm »
There are decks where a wishing well is good, or a scout is good, and then you add the other card for increased effect. I wouldn't put the two together just for the benefit of each other.

3505

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When do you opt to forgo buying a silver to add another action to your deck?  Specifically, what action is better than a silver assuming you will buy an action with your four
It all depends doesn't it. There can be any number of spurious reasons to get two terminal actions that might clash. Perhaps you want an embargo to immediately negate an opponent's potion. Perhaps you've got a horse traders or young witch that can discard a clashing card. Perhaps you've got a feast or island that will hopefully be trashed soon. Perhaps you've got a remake that will work on your other action if they clash. Perhaps the opponent has a militia so some of the risk of cards clashing has gone. A watchtower or secret chamber can still add value even if it isn't played as an action. Perhaps taking two attack cards is worth the risk of them clashing. Perhaps you're going to buy native villages in later turns so taking two terminals at the start isn't a long term risk. Anything is possible.

3506
Perhaps you have played a golem and found an ambassador and explorer. If all the cards in hand are victory cards, you may prefer to gain a silver from the explorer and pass that to your opponents.
Perhaps you might want to trash the gained treasure using an apprentice and not want to force a reshuffle by drawing too many cards.
Perhaps you want a silver in hand to force a hunting party to find another card in the draw deck.
Perhaps you are going to play a masquerade and are hoping your opponent will pass you a tournament, assuming that you don't have a province in hand.
Perhaps taking a silver will exhaust the silver supply, or enable you to exhaust another supply pile (see previous posts on upgrade etc), which would improve your cities

3507
Game Reports / Re: Apprentice beats Ambassador
« on: June 23, 2011, 11:35:44 am »
There was an element of risk here. Your opponent could have sent you his second ambassador (repeatedly) and made better use of it in your hand than in his hand.

3508
Simulation / Re: Dominion Simulator available for download!
« on: June 22, 2011, 09:42:16 pm »
I'd be very careful about decisions. I've run the bot just once to look at a simple game with 1 upgrade, 1 moneylender, and money. When the bot came to a hand with upgrade, gold, silver, copper, province, it played the upgrade and drew the moneylender. It trashed the copper with the upgrade, played the moneylender with no copper, and bought a duchy. Perhaps though it should have trashed the moneylender for a duchy and bought a duchy or gold. Perhaps it should have trashed a silver for another 4 card, trashed the copper with the moneylender and bought a duchy or gold. Perhaps it should have trashed the province (for nothing) just to buy a province and empty the pile. The decisions are not trivial.

There are also too many card combinations to code individually. For example you might always play a pearl diver before an upgrade, or always play a lookout before an upgrade, but deciding the order to play a lookout and a pearl diver is not simple.

3509
Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Hamlet / Watchtower or Library
« on: June 22, 2011, 09:12:45 pm »
Just for completeness you can have university/library, which even allows your universities to gain your libraries.

3510
Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Going infinite
« on: June 22, 2011, 09:02:38 pm »
Just to tighten up the wording of the puzzle -

I can think of a combination of kingdom cards which can prevent your opponent emptying any stacks, once a state of play has been reached. However since these cards are available in the kingdom to your opponent, I don't see any reason why a competitive opponent wouldn't shut you down via the same strategy and allow themselves any method of ending the game, if they are playing to thwart the puzzle. I'd suggest instead that "Your opponent will try to play a pure money strategy and will try to end the game (even if this means he loses!)".

I'd also take it read that you're not just buying just one ironworks and gaining almost all the other cards you need through some tedious method using bridges.

3511
Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Fortune Teller/Jester
« on: June 22, 2011, 01:42:25 pm »
I'm surprised there's so much interest in this. Jester and Fortune teller is only going to be an occasional combination, as with anything that puts two terminals together. If you had something to pull it together though, perhaps scrying pools or golems, then it would start to cause problems. The two +2 coin effects should lead to your own province buying turns. The deterioration from both the jester and fortune teller increases as more curses enter the opponent's deck.

3512
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas
« on: June 21, 2011, 09:52:02 pm »
Politician.

Play politician with any number of other action cards from hand. Promise to play these cards but just discard them instead.

3513
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Lol this is exactly what I was going to say.  I never accept a set with familiar unless there's ambassador (my favorite card in the game) to teach it a lesson

Start rewriting those text books. I've found that if you start silver/potion, then buy familiar and ambassador second time through, you are very competitive. http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201106/12/game-20110612-064914-7854a06c.html

3514
Game Reports / Re: Poor end game skillz
« on: June 21, 2011, 12:15:41 pm »
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should I have bought Province/Dutchy instead?

No. You should have bought Province/Fairground or Garden/Garden/Garden/Garden/Copper.

3515
There is a similar pin using king's court, king's court, goons, and masquerade as your entire deck. The goons reduces the opponent to three cards in hand. When you play the king's court with masquerade you pass nothing to your opponent since you have no hand nor deck but your opponent still passes cards to you (that you trash). This eventually empties their entire deck and in the meantime they have no cards to play each turn.

I'd assume that your pinning combination is effectively a game winner but presumably an opponent could wriggle out of it since neither the bureaucrat nor ghost ship can reduce an opponent below 2 useful cards in hand. King's court and ghost ship in the opponent's hand would release your grip for a turn.

3516
Dominion General Discussion / Re: >2 Treasure Maps?
« on: June 21, 2011, 11:51:02 am »
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I believe DG is thinking of TR + IW-> Buy TM +1 action, place on deck (WT)-> Buy TM +1 action, place on deck (WT) -> Market, drawing TM -> Golem hitting the top TM and cashing for 4 gold with the TM in hand.
Throne the ironworks for +1 action, gain a treasure map, put it on top of the deck using the watchtower (twice)
Play market for +1 card, +1 action, +1 buy, +1 coin, drawing the treasure map
Play golem to find a treasure map and an unknown action card from the draw deck
Golem plays the unknown card first (or second if it gives +cards)
Golem plays the treasure map, trashing the copy in hand, gaining four golds on top of deck
Play the watchtower to draw up to six cards drawing the gold into hand, giving at least 13 to spend with an extra buy.

3517
Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: University/City
« on: June 20, 2011, 10:09:50 pm »
When you look through game logs you always see surprising plays, even in games you'd played yourself and forgotten. If only perfect games were posted I'm afraid we'd never have any to look at.

As to the bishop and early province: it's vital in university games to get ahead on points. Universities can run three piles out very quickly and the torturers can run out another pile too. With no extra buys in the kingdom (at the start) any extra bishop points could be decisive. A big city turn for one of the players is likely but not guaranteed. There's also the opportunity to play a bishop after the opponent has discarded some/all of their cards, usually keeping no poor cards in hand to trash.

3518
Dominion General Discussion / Re: >2 Treasure Maps?
« on: June 20, 2011, 07:35:13 pm »
If you're having little success with treasure maps then buying an extra treasure map can sometimes be less harmful than buying an extra silver. You'll probably lose handsomely if the treasure maps are never cashed anyway. Alternatively, if you can cash in the treasure maps to a plan, perhaps with tactician turns, then why not get 4 treasure maps and do it in style?

I'd skip the golem and treasure map combination until you get throne-ironworks-watchtower-golem-market in hand.

3519
I'll stand up for the theme. Gamers tend to accept a lot of fantasy twaddle without blinking an eye. "Orc Firewarden hits an extra adjacent target with burn damage once per game, only use when enraged", "Antilarrian battlecruiser warps 15 megaparsecs through wormholes without expending dirigium fuel". It's all meaningless. It could be anything that the game designer invents but because it is fantasy it isn't really questioned. On the other hand I can relate very well to a province, a baron, or a bank. I know what they do in reality and if the card mechanics even partially meet the card name I'm satisfied.

Let's face it, anything has to be better than archers who specialize in hitting creatures deep within cave systems in the darkness.

3520
Game Reports / Re: The Apothecary/Warehouse combo
« on: June 19, 2011, 07:54:23 pm »
The apothecary can be a very strong card. It is underestimated sometimes even by the top players on isotropic. The main problem is that it delivers big hands early and then peters out, giving 4 extra coppers to buy an alchemist on turn 6, and then giving 1 copper and a potion on turn 14 when you want to buy a province.

3521
If you don't trash many poor treasures the mint becomes a very slow card. It's a 5-cost terminal action that improves your discard pile rather than adding to your hand, needing good draws with the right treasure cards to be productive.

I'd suggest that mint isn't a great partner to the fishing village unless your other action cards can draw big hands. When you draw a hand of 5 cards and one is a fishing village, one a mint, one a victory card, you're asking a lot of those other two cards to get a good result (at any stage of the game). On the other hand, if you have some good hand expanding cards in your deck you can probably use them to draw more than 3 coppers and get a better mint turn.

If there are other trashing cards in your deck then the situation changes. An apprentice is very slow at trashing coppers, however a mint is fast at trashing coppers and an apprentice is fast at trashing mints.

3522
I find torturers to be an unpleasant card. I don't really like games where both players buy the same villages and torturers but the game slides one way fast. It's not fun, to be honest, unless there are some other cards in the kingdom that give some way to deal with the curses.

Another personal dislike of mine is islands. Typically if both players open silver/island there's one player who sets an estate on the mat and another player with the island stuck in the deck. The unlucky player now has a decelerated deck, low spending, and problems buying terminals that might clash with the island. The lucky player has some acceleration, higher spending, and the deck will probably never draw badly since it has no clashing terminals and one less estate. There's also little chance for the unlucky player to use the island skilfully later; the best play was lost in the draw and can never be repeated. This leads to islands annoying me even more than swindlers and badly drawn chapels since at least you can use those again and again and might be able to turn things round later.

3523
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Using Steward's +2 coin early
« on: June 18, 2011, 09:15:08 am »
I'd agree that taking an early 5 or 6 with the steward can be productive. Taking out too much copper at the start can leave you low on spending, depending upon your other purchases. On the other hand if you're using an ironworks, say, you typically want to be rid of the starting cards and fill up with new cards as fast as you can.

It's also worth remembering that steward for +2 cards on turn 4 can be the best play. The best example is when you've got a potion left on the top of your deck but there are other situations too.

3524
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Existence of $2+P is little consolation, as if you get a familiar and I get a scrying pool, I lose anyway.

I've played games where the person who got the 2+potion found out later in the game that buying the university, transmute, or apothecary first was actually the stroke of luck that won the game.

3525
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PS: Is it just me or does anyone else has problems with the editor in this forum? I don't have any linebreaks at the right margin of the editing field, so the line continues to the right where I can't see what I write

I had this problem too. I think I've fixed it by ticking "Show WYSIWYG editor on post page by default." in the profile, look and layout, settings. I'm not sure why this isn't a default.

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