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26

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Pearl Diver

« on: July 08, 2011, 02:57:50 pm »

It's also a cheap buy for peddler purchases.  I would always rather have a pawn though, in any of those chains.

Pawn and Hamlet are a Peddlerophile's wet dream.  Pearl Diver simply better than nothing (some of the time).

27

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Expert Advice for Novices: What did I do wrong??

« on: July 08, 2011, 02:54:01 pm »

Village is not necessarily bad in a vacuum however in a standard Province game you may not see a ton of benefit playing +Action/+Card chains over just buying lots of money.  You'd be better off just buying money and one or two of those good actions.

If you have a super thin deck that's dense with good cards then Village and all it's permutations allow you to play your awesome actions repeatedly thus maximizing their benefits.  If you have a deck with seven Copper and three Estates and a handful of Silver and Gold and then a few Villages and a few Smithies you're going to run into a lot of turns where you play Village and then you end up with a hand full of money and green cards or play Smithy and draw dead Villages.  Unfortunately in a lot of cases players simply curse their unluckiness without thinking how they built a deck that's at the mercy of such variance.

Keep in mind when you spend a turn buying a card that isn't Province (or Colony where appropriate) you have to make that turn up later on down the line (this applies from turn 1, with every buy you should be asking yourself "How does this help me win?").  Silver and Gold do this by letting you buy those important green cards.  Village does not in and of itself contribute to winning the game in any way; it is strictly an enabler.  In most games you don't have the luxury of time to buy your enablers and terminals and then put them together enough to matter.

28

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Transmute

« on: July 08, 2011, 02:42:01 pm »

I buy Transmute only when it happens to be on a board with another Potion card I'm going for, like Familiar, and I end up with a CCPEE/CPEEE hand on turn 3/4.  I'll buy the Transmute expecting to make golds out of my estates and maybe trash a curse or two in the mid game or gain a Dutchy or two in the late late game.  Even then it's marginal at best.

That's about it.  Any time I see Transmute as the only Potion card I pretty much see two blank spaces in the Kingdom cards and move on.

I can understand trying to use it as the only trasher in a Scrying Pool deck however if better; trashing is not available then Scrying Pool is probably not a very good strategy in the first place.

As far as Contraband, I'm OK with it on a board with Remake/Upgrade where it can get me some early engine cards and later in the game become the Gold it so longs to be.

The biggest point I see against both of these cards is that I have to define a very specific set of circumstances for the card to become OK.  If you don't want to regularly buy a card of it's own merit that's probably a sign that it's pretty bad.  I've never had to convince myself to shoehorn Mountebank into my strategy in any given game...

29

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Combo: Horse Traders/Library

« on: July 08, 2011, 02:25:18 pm »

Surgeon General's Warning: Do not open Sea Hag when your opponent opens Masquerade.  That is an anti-combo that is manufactured with losing.

Also, passing your opponent junk and receiving junk back is absolutely fine as you get to immediately garbage bin his junk and he is stuck with yours.  You have an extra card from your deck (5-1 for Masq+2) to find your worst cards (even more if it comes at the end of a +action/+cards chain), he has only his starting five.

30

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Pearl Diver

« on: July 08, 2011, 02:16:41 pm »

-It's good to have in decks with Throne Room/King's Court when it's an extra buy that can't get you anything better because it helps to reduce the chance of drawing TR/KC with no action (TR>Pearl diver essentially cycles both cards and gives you actions and a minimal effect as a bonus, this can become a mini village on boards with no +action)
-It's ability has a non zero chance of helping you (may not be much but it exists)
-It is rubbish in decks that have terminal draw but not much +action
-It's awesome in decks with Remake/Remodel/Expand because it either cycles as if it were never there to get you closer to your important cards or it can be trashed for something better (better than skipping that 2/3$ buy when you didn't want another silver or would otherwise buy nothing)


The biggest factor I have that makes me slightly dislike Pearl Diver is the Village Idiot/Analysis Paralysis it causes when there are a lot of PDs in people's decks and turns take ages for little to no effect.  Other than that it's an OK card.  Hard to hate a card that replaces itself when you don't want it.

31

Game Reports / Re: Tournament/Chapel - buy the second tournament?

« on: July 07, 2011, 02:57:10 pm »

This game left me a bit puzzled. I think a large part of what's going on here is that Tournament/Chapel is a big first player advantage in a mirror match - that first Province buy shows up in hand quite often, blocks me from getting the Province I'm otherwise guaranteed on my turn, and then from there the match is all over. I didn't recognize that angle at the time, and now I'm curious about how to adjust the buys. Should the second Tournament purchase be a Silver instead? (The third Tournament purchase is unquestionably bad and probably should have been Remodel instead.)

In this game, especially second, I kind of like opening chapel/remake and ignoring tournaments until I can remake silver into them after I have a province in deck already (or earlier in some cases as the math permits).  I ran a few tests on Iso and they seem to have similar goldfish for buying a prov however you don't have the tournaments in your deck at the time.  You can convert the spare market(s) to gold and trash your tournaments for markets in the mid/late game when they're a liability.

32

Game Reports / Re: Tournament/Chapel - buy the second tournament?

« on: July 07, 2011, 02:42:19 pm »

Tournament is one of those cards where fortune can swing the game.  For example, in this game, I buy Turn 4 Gold, Turn 5 Tournament, Turn 6 Gold, Turn 7 Hunting Party, Turn 8 1st Province by me (and opponent gets 1st Province), Turn 9 2nd Province... but my 2 Provinces to my opponent's 1 Province doesn't get me into a Tournament/Province match, and I get utterly destroyed.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110705-112913-9eaec8f1.html

Some cards are more heavily luck driven than others.  Tournament and black market are the ones that stand far and above the rest of the crowd.  They are the only effects in the game that translate random chance into an unmatchabe advantage.  Not that pirate ship won't barge past your coppers and hit every silver or gold you buy in a game some times but you can simply buy your own pirate ships and fight back.  If tournament gives your opponent followers then you can never, no matter how hard you try, buy followers yourself.

The trick to 'reducing' the variance is to figure out what strategy gives you the highest chance of activating tourn/prov yourself rather than just buying it because it's a market.

On this board I think I buy a single silver, gold, tournament, and steward, then every turn that's not buy province afterwards is buy hunting party.  If I have a spare four I'll pick up another tournament however I don't really feel the need to pair up on any given treasure.  One of each treasure and steward is good enough for a province.  Hunting party will take care of that for you.  The less individual card names you have the better hunting parties are.

HP's are just ridic at both getting prov money and putting 'one of' cards together in a hand.

33

Council Room Feedback / Moving the legend on card comparison

« on: July 07, 2011, 07:05:17 am »

THIS is an extreme example of what I'm referring to.  Usually you won't have nearly that many cards compared but here you can't see the first five turns AT ALL due to the legend.  I tried using a few browsers and it's the same on all.  Even for something as simple as THIS the legend blocks a bunch of data.

Is there a way to move the legend elsewhere on the graph or off to the side completely?  On a scale of 'Absolutely Critical' to 'What Were We Talking About?' I would probably rate this as a 'Irrelevantly Annoying'...

34

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Jester

« on: July 07, 2011, 06:55:45 am »

It's a five cost terminal silver (silver clogs decks, this has already been pointed out) that isn't as good at clogging the opponent's deck as Ambassador, Sea Hag, Witch, Mountebank, or anything else and isn't as good at helping your deck as a Laboratory, Vault, or Trading Post.  Jester is probably in the lower half of five cost cards in my experience.  Ambassador ALWAYS trashes from your deck and clogs theirs, Torturer ALWAYS at least draws you three and threatens discard or curse for most of the game, Mountebank gives twice as hard as anything else and trades missing sometimes for that honor.  Jester might help you or hinder them or it might do just about nothing.  Against decks with high density of good cards it's better than usual, however if your opponent already has a lot of good cards it's probably too late for you to steal anything that matters and draw/play it enough to count for anything.  Against a big money player with a warehouse or two it's mediocre at best.

As far as how to counter it?  Most of the time you won't counter any attack, you'll simply play around them and win or mirror their strategy and simply make fewer mistakes.  This is no different.  I would certainly rather get Jestered than hit by any other non Rabble five cost attack.

Watch Jester ride the middle/bottom of the pack.

Also, feel free to jump over to the popular buys on CR and see Jester with a .99 Win Rate With and 1.02 Win Rate Without.

35

Game Reports / Re: Crazy Remake Strategy Works

« on: July 07, 2011, 04:31:32 am »

Remake is one of the only cards with which you can go through an entire 15+ turn game and only buy something on half your turns.  As you demonstrated you can skip over a lot of the early money buys and simply thin your deck to play more remakes.  You beat BM/Colony by a good five turns.

36

Game Reports / Re: Sabotuer is a terrible card

« on: July 06, 2011, 04:20:45 pm »

I was reading some logs from high ranking players and stumbled across THIS gem.

I legitimately LOLed.

37

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Supporting Alchemists

« on: July 06, 2011, 04:02:05 pm »

For anyone feeling adventurous (I would but I have no time atm), I'd be curious to see what the simulator says for a province game of:

Chapel
Alchemist
Vault
Council Room, Then as options for greater analysis of what the lichpin is, cards such as:
Steward
Bridge
Warehouse
Worker's Villiage

I fired it up and got This on the first go through on Iso.  I didn't even bother counting bridges or anything;  I was just clicking buttons...

Pretty sure that's not idea but I seriously doubt alchemists add to the strategy.

38

Game Reports / Re: Another interesting combo

« on: July 06, 2011, 03:45:45 pm »

Interesting match.  I like it.  Requires actual paying attention to game state and deck order.  My favorite was turn 13 for the foreshadowing..

39

Game Reports / Re: It's not pretty, but it's a win

« on: July 05, 2011, 10:31:46 am »

Heh, I just played a game where I missed the fact that my opponent's first two swindlers hit BOTH my silvers and I bought a mint to bring me down to one remaining copper.  I then spent the next three turns wondering how I could fail to draw my silver three turns in a row in a seven card deck.

Whoops 

40

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How do you play this?

« on: July 05, 2011, 10:01:00 am »

Actual game log:
Linky

I think my first 7 turns were absolutely horrible.  Silver potion silver silver university nothing nothing.  Other than a turn five choice of gold vs university I don't really have six to spend until turn eleven (Tactician turn).

I think three tacticians was too many however I figured that any turn I could play multiple torturers, maybe Uni to gain a relevant card, and then another tactician was probably OK.  They turned out to be dead draws too often however I think.  I also did not draw universities often enough (ended up with only five +action cards to three Tactician/eight torturers).

I notice now that I missed at least two free peddlers on Tactician turns and I think that if I had bought a few nobles to activate the torturer trees in the end instead of trying to pull from behind off tactician turns then I could have transitioned into a goons/torturer lockdown mode and maybe actually come back.

55:28 is a pretty convincing loss and with the mistakes I made I deserved it.  Maybe I'll play better next time!

41

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How do you play this?

« on: July 05, 2011, 04:40:27 am »

For added info, I'm second with 3:4 and he had 4:3.

Opponent opens:
Silver
Woodcutter
Silver
Goons
Torturer

I open:
Silver
Potion
And then get 4:3 again on turns three and four followed by 7+P on turn five.


In game I only managed to get five Uni's before I had to start trying to catch up on VP.  I think I made a mistake in not buying Nobles to help the engine and then another mistake buying green cards thus accelerating the end of the game with me two-three provinces down.  I should have moved on to goons sooner to force situations where I goons and then torture my opponent's hand away.  Then again my start was so dismally slow that he had four provinces before I even started to put pressure on him.

I don't know if combo can keep up on this sort of a board.  There were plenty of turns where I torture him twice and then he plays torturer of his own and then buys province anyway.

42

Dominion General Discussion / How do you play this?

« on: July 05, 2011, 02:47:18 am »

Peddler
Goons
Hoard
Nobles
Tactician
Torturer
Venture
Chancellor
Woodcutter
University

Pretty sure I picked the absolute worst strategy with University//Torturer with some tactician support.  What's your strategy and what adjustments do you make if your opponent tries various options?

43

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Opening of the Day #2

« on: July 01, 2011, 04:17:57 pm »

I was just asking the Ambassador vs Sea Hag question in another thread.  I'm pretty sure Amb/Amb is going to out perform any of the other options here.  You will trash just as fast as a chapel player (chapel + sea hag = four possible trashes in two actions, same as two ambassadors) and you can hand back any curses you may receive as well as bloating your opponent's deck with more crap (chapel + sea hag = they get one card, two ambassadors = they get two cards).

It's also harder to get the 2x silver+2x copper off witch than you'd think early on, especially when facing multiple ambassadors.  Young witch is slightly worse than sea hag early on even if the bane card is crap; giving your opponent four card hands early on is pretty good before he has golds in his deck.  When the curses are gone you will probably be trashing hag so the fact that it does nothing in the end game is less relevant. 

Also, I think I would probably go straight big money/ambassador and not bother with farming villages and such.  If there were a market or easy +buy out there I might try to go for some turbo vineyard/great hall/farming village disaster but that kind of feels terrible.

44

Dominion General Discussion / Ambassador vs Sea Hag

« on: July 01, 2011, 07:08:12 am »

Scenarios:
*1*
Take a theoretical game, both players get a 4:3 start.  The Kindom cards are Sea Hag, Ambassador, and eight Uno cards (IE generic crap, no good + action or trashers).

What are your first two buys?

Does going second and seeing what your opponent buys affect your decision?  Does the fact that Colony is or is not on the board affect your decision?

Ambassador/Ambassador has a higher win rate than Ambassador/Sea Hag according to councilroom.com' best starting hand list.  That seems right as you should be able to pass back curses faster than you're gaining them as well as being able to get rid of coppers/estates faster.  the appeal of Hag would be that it immediately forces your opponent to play four card hands.  This seems to not be as much of an issue when one of the four might be Ambassador but it also means they won't draw Ambassador as often and that their Ambassador will effectively become a worse two card Sea Hag in those positions.


*2*
Same game, 4:3 with Ambassador/Sea Hag but now the other eight are random.  What needs to be on the board to NOT open with A/A or A/SH?

Again, if you are second and see his buys how does that affect your buys?

45

Game Reports / Re: Trading Post/- or Vault/-

« on: June 26, 2011, 03:24:04 am »

Trading Post AINEC.

You might have an argument for Vault in a Province game.

Interesting that you think so - I thought Vault would be better in a Colony game since:
- a Trading Post is (besides the Trashing) good for getting Silvers, which will slow you down in the end of the Colony game, and
- a Vault is an automatic Gold every turn, and doesn't need that much (a gold + something) to get a platinum.

The thing about Vault in a Prov game is that it pretty much combos with itself.  Any time you draw a vault you at least get a gold and then every time you draw a vault and a gold or two silvers you get a province.  The engine can start as soon as turn three and Prov>>Dutch(if prov <4)>>Gold>>Vault>>Silver has about a <14 turn goldfish off of a first turn vault.

I spent some time working the simulations to try to make a first turn TP bot that could beat the first turn Vault bot but was unsuccessful.  Best I could come up with was a 38%.

As far as a colony game testing is showing that vault nudges out TP by the tiniest of fractions when both are ~optimized.  Upgrade is worse than either by far.  The TP bot essentially bought TP first turn then turned into a vault bot.  I also tried making it into a TP>Big money deck however this was much much worse.  I then tried throwing in a steward or two at various points in the game however they only lowered the win% a few points.

Of course, as is obvious, if the buy orders are off (or if the robots are bad at playing cards) then the results could be far different.  I also didn't include any other kingdom cards as none seem to synergize with the first turn fives.

46

Game Reports / Smallest win ever in a colony game (Subtitle, best comeback ever)

« on: June 15, 2011, 07:01:42 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201106/15/game-20110615-155807-3961e0b2.html

His engine outpaces mine the entire game.  The final turns are epic.