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3526

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is Golem worth it ?

« on: June 17, 2011, 07:44:51 am »

A throne is a reasonably good comparison for a golem, but a king's court is on the mark too. An expensive card that can deliver something fantastic but it will be useless in the wrong deck.

I'd suggest that if you don't know exactly why you want a golem in your deck then you shouldn't get one (although if you never experiment you never learn). If you know you want a golem in your deck then be very careful in buying action cards to suit the golem.

3527

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Math/probability for silver/potion opening - getting Familiar/Alchemist turn 3/4

« on: June 17, 2011, 07:36:00 am »

I find it is problem in a kingdom that you typically have to buy the potion and risk the draw for the familiar. You don't want to see your opponents buying familiars and putting curses into your deck, which then create new chances of bad draws.

3528

Game Reports / Re: Bureaucrat Success!

« on: June 17, 2011, 07:27:18 am »

I'm happy with bureaucrats and explorers. I don't use them very often at all, but when I do they're typically strong and do well. I also think people underestimate the bag of gold prize and trading posts.

3529

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Native Village & Bridge

« on: June 17, 2011, 07:20:14 am »

This deck can work but can misfire if your put native villages put each other onto the native village mat.

3530

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Does Horse Traders too effectively counter Minion?

« on: June 16, 2011, 08:09:50 pm »

The minion has a number of effects.
- It can provide a simple +2 coin.
- It can discard your hand and give you 4 more cards.
- It can discard your opponent's hand and they draw 4 more cards.
- If have a lot of minions in your deck you can get a lot of +2 coins, a lot of drawing 4 new cards, and only one discard of your opponent's hand.

The horse traders only defends against the attack portion, and has to be in hand, so the minion can still work for the other benefits. If you have a lot of minions those benefits are strong.

Your example kingdom is pretty complicated with the variety of attack cards. It's hard to predict what an opponent would buy and you'd therefore need to counter their deck as you go along. If you let an opponent buy up most/all the minions you'd probably still lose on most kingdoms with horse traders, but here the swindler and jester make a difference.

3531

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interpreting Popular Buys: or, Why Does Money Hate Me?

« on: June 16, 2011, 09:31:29 am »

Lies, damn lies, and statistics. You've got to be careful what you read into these things. My effect without platinum is 2.94 and without colonies 2.04. Theory's effect without provinces is 3.2 and duchies is 2.73. So how do we win any games? It's probably ending the game on emptying three piles.

3532

Feedback / Re: Dominion Card Beneath User Name????

« on: June 15, 2011, 06:25:21 pm »

Who gets to be princess?

3533

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Optimal Deck Size

« on: June 15, 2011, 06:22:52 pm »

There isn't an optimal deck size. What you want is a deck that gives you good turns providing vp. You generally get this through having quality rather than quantity, otherwise all the poor cards get in the way of the good cards. However, if you can draw eight copper every turn and use them to buy a province then there isn't such a problem having that quantity of copper in your deck.

3534

Game Reports / Re: A Cautionary Tale: Skipping the Witch

« on: June 15, 2011, 06:11:50 pm »

I opened seahag and managed to get a 6 / 4 advantage in the curse department while DG went for the familiar.

The sea hag hit my familiar one time and that gives the 6/4. It happens. I also didn't take native villages early enough so none of the curses went onto the native village mat.

3535

Game Reports / Re: Golem-Mountebank: did I play this right?

« on: June 15, 2011, 09:27:54 am »

The way I'd play it would be take a loan and silver, get a mountebank or two for an initial hit, then buy into golems, a hoard, nobles, maybe a market. The loan is useful since you have to expect your opponent to buy a mountebank, even though in this case they didn't. The choice of actions or drawing from the nobles seems even stronger when played by a golem and you might want a hoard before you start buying nobles. Loan/Embargo would be an interesting start too.

As a golem strategy, I'd suggest adding one +action card to your two mountebanks. This reduces the chance of bad draws as a golem+mountebank hand will now be able to play the golem and the mountebank, also a two golem hand has a chance of playing both and putting the deck into the discard pile.

Trying to expand your opponent's deck continually using mountebanks sometimes doesn't work. You reach saturation levels where a curse gets discarded every turn, although in this case you were getting double mountebank turns. Most of the damage is done through one two very early hits so taking the golem before the mountebank skipped that early damage.

Hoards can play through this sort of game where a draw of {gold, copper, copper, copper, curse} can buy a noble or duchy. 

3536

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Tournament + Black Market

« on: June 15, 2011, 09:01:08 am »

I got badly beaten up by Possession in the black market deck the other day. I don't think the black market ever promises fair games, it just promises more interesting games. Having said that, the possession game was probably interesting for my opponent and frustrating for me.

3537

Game Reports / Re: A Cautionary Tale: Skipping the Witch

« on: June 15, 2011, 08:58:11 am »

There are exactly two cards whose presence makes skipping the curse attacks plausible, and possibly even a good idea: Ambassador and Masquerade.

Oh there are plenty more than that. All the trashing cards can let you skip cursing attacks in the right kingdoms. I wouldn't even rule out remodel even though it is usually the worst possible solution to curses.

3538

Game Reports / Re: Bishop's tiebreaker points

« on: June 14, 2011, 10:02:38 pm »

I'd hate to disagree with Theory of course, but if you play with the knowledge of your opponent's bishop you can still let the trashing work in your favour. So in this kingdom, assuming you buy a chapel turn 3, I'd suggest that chapel/coppersmith + tactician would beat chapel/bishop on reasonable draws. The bishop might only remove an extra estate or the chapel, but that will reduce the risks of a poor coppersmith draw. You should be able to take the provinces 5/3 which will win the game.

Alternatively, if you take Theory's draws and just pursue a rabble (instead of tactician) and treasure from turn 4, without trashing any more copper, it should still be possible to buy 5 provinces by turn 15. Merchant ship and treasure probably isn't good enough.

3539

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Advanced Strategy: Managing Game Flow

« on: June 14, 2011, 02:53:02 pm »

When I read Mr Mustard's post I immediately thought of islands. They can really annoy me. I'll typically buy them when I want a thinner deck and there aren't any other useful 3 or 4 cost cards that I want to keep long term. When the bad draw inevitably comes along I'll get a series of hands giving me another 4 coins to spend. I already know I don't want any of the 4 cost kingdom cards. I already know I don't really want a silver as it'll thicken my deck. I probably don't want another island either as they could draw doubly badly, but I tend to get one anyway and the game is lost before they are out of my deck.

Anyway in answer to the general question you just have to make judgement calls at the time. I think it's a difficult part of Dominion. Don't let your opponents amass key cards. Focus on the attack cards and defences. Make sure you don't buy something that is actually detrimental to your deck. Have a think about the hand you're likely to draw next turn or the turn after and whether those draws will support a rethink or the original plan. Ideally you'd have thought about the unusual draws before starting play but sometimes, as with the island example, you don't actually get much choice.

3540

Dominion Articles / Re: Hunting Party

« on: June 14, 2011, 02:13:55 pm »

Here's a game where got badly beaten up by one hunting party and a transmute. My opponent got near perfect draws (assisted by my council room ) but it shows again how a hunting party can match up key cards. In this case it matched a transmute to the three estates, turning them to gold, then finding the potion and turning it into another transmute. I was left ducking the last province on turn 11 as I'd have lost on points. http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201106/13/game-20110613-164751-a5a8b17e.html.

There are certainly some bad cards to use with hunting parties but in general I'd skip those bad partners and keep using the hunting parties. I actually have quite a bad record with hunting parties and rather than telling myself I'm playing them wrong, I'm telling myself that my opponents are using hunting labs to short cut deck building, allowing them to perform better than they might do otherwise. Some day I might even stop calling them hunting labs.

3541

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion

« on: June 14, 2011, 01:58:46 pm »

Tournament/ambassador will be exceptionally strong. You'll get plenty of uses of the tournament as +1 card/+1 coin as ambassador games are usually very slow to develop. The deck will cycle quickly allowing you to play the ambassador more often. You can still get value from an ambassador hand after with playing an ambassador and two cards with it, negating a common problem for hands with ambassadors. There are no complications with actions clashing. Very few strategies are  excluded by this opening.

A successful ambassador deck is likely to be small so that when you buy a province it will hit the tournaments almost immediately. The prizes will allow you to expand your deck quickly with quality, killing off an opponent who might still be competitive if you expand your deck badly.

3542

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Duke Analysis?

« on: June 14, 2011, 12:55:54 pm »

I find that dukes and duchies work ok. If I need to, I'll beat people with just duchies even without dukes in the supply.

With dukes in the kingdom I'd usually consider them as an option rather than a necessity. I'd perhaps look at whether there is a reasonable strategy for the kingdom that has a lot of wealth in a largish deck, something that could take dukes if needed, and play that in preference to a cut down deck. If my opponents can win on just provinces alone then I wouldn't want to play duchy/duke anyway, so the alternative is that they're forced to compete in the duchies and then dukes. Their decks should clog with green cards that are of less value to them and often hinder them more.

Three pile depletions are also important to look out for and can work for or against the dukes. Getting duchies from feasts, upgrades, and so on will also be helpful.

I would certainly look to take many more duchies than dukes. Taking 6 duchies and 2 dukes to an opponent's 2 duchies and 4 dukes should be enough to win.

3543

Game Reports / Re: Ambassador vs Chapel?

« on: June 14, 2011, 12:27:37 pm »

It all depends on the kingdom. I've generally gone for the ambassador but the chapel can be just as good. I wouldn't even want to start providing any general rules as to when either might be better since there are so many variations. You can throw masquerades, lookouts, stewards, and remakes into the mix as well as they all have their day.