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126

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What are the worst cards you can draw out of the Black Market?

« on: December 17, 2011, 10:49:09 am »

Minion has to be an honorable mention. It's not a bad draw obviously, but compared to how dominant Minions are when they come in numbers, it's quite a letdown...

127

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What's the difference between a level 30 and a level 40 player?

« on: December 11, 2011, 05:40:22 pm »

I think a level 40 player is a little bit better at everything than a level 30 player.

But if I had to mention one thing: I am right in between (level 35) and I realized that I both improved and still have to improve in my sense of the speed of the board. This is really important - on a fast board, there might be no point in buying a strong but slow card at turn 5 anymore (unless you have a thin deck where you will still get to play it quite often...).

128

Dominion Isotropic / Re: What do you think of Isotropic's leaderboard change?

« on: December 07, 2011, 02:13:37 pm »

What I don't understand: Why are we discussing this without any data? For anyone with access to the data, it should be trivial (if a bit of work) to see which leaderboard was better at predicting winners, or winning percentages. In fact, I would suggest that the normal way of doing things would be to run such tests before making a drastic change to the rating.
Btw, the one tweak I would try is playing with the initial ranking of new players. One could try replacing this with a setting based on empirical data (e.g., if new players on average have a ranking of 20 after their first 40 games, then probably an initial ranking of 20 is a better guess than an initial ranking of 25).
Anyway, I also understand DougZ's frustration with tweaks - changes to a rating system often will end up behaving differently than you could have anticipated.

129

2011 / Re: Nomad Camp: a place for people to find their opponents

« on: December 04, 2011, 10:58:29 am »

I agreed with pulpix to play the 2nd round at 16h European time (10 am Eastern) but he hasn't shown up 

130

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Leaderboard change

« on: November 30, 2011, 12:56:30 pm »

I really like the new rankings, since I am now 10 levels better than theory.
Seriously,  there is something wrong.

131

2011 / Thanks!

« on: November 30, 2011, 10:57:08 am »

I just wanted to thank theory and rrenaud for running this, I know from experiences on a much smaller scale how much work it is to set something like this up. I also happen to think they got all decisions right (format, rules, entry limit); given the small number of complaints (256 participants and so few complaints??) I am maybe not alone 

132

2011 / Re: Schedule and Results: 2011 DominionStrategy.com Championships

« on: November 29, 2011, 11:30:42 pm »

In the Chapel division:
cherdano (seed 20) 4 - Lord Turner (seed 45) 3

This was a very close match that I was certainly very lucky to win!

cherdano 44 - Lord Turner 32
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/29/game-20111129-184023-3ca319ea.html

I won with an Ill-Gotten Gains rush on a board where I am certainly not sure it's the right strategy:
Colony game with Vault, Venture, Farm Villages, Oases - if there is ever a board without curse givers where IGG rush it's wrong maybe it's this one?

cherdano 31 - Lord Turner 39
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/29/game-20111129-190154-85685f27.html

I lost a Torturer race. Better to buy a gold or a torturer with a very early $6? It got surprisingly close in the end, actually.

cherdano 41 - Lord Turner 43
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/29/game-20111129-191843-afdd5d92.html

Not sure we played this right - Colony game with Goons and Farm Villages / Vaults/ Ghost ships as the only draw support. We both went for Goons only, whereas it's maybe better to mostly play big money with a few goons thrown in?

cherdano 79 - Lord Turner 66
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/29/game-20111129-193858-e27aacd2.html

On a board with ambassador and 5/2 opening with both started with a (soft) ambassador counter instead of ambassador: Trader/nothing or Horse Trader/nothing.

cherdano 21 - Lord Turner 31
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/29/game-20111129-194806-7fa0f12d.html

Masquerade/Silver lost to Sea Hag/Silver.

cherdano 40 - Lord Turner 33
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/29/game-20111129-195920-60bcaf33.html

Here I was definitely very lucky to win - two $7 draws for Lord Turner with one Province left. We probably both should have picked up a monument early on.

cherdano 47 - Lord Turner 28
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/29/game-20111129-201337-78fdb8f4.html

Sea Hag/nothing opening beat Envoy/nothing.

133

2011 / Re: 2011 DominionStrategy.com Championships Registration

« on: November 23, 2011, 12:51:54 am »

cherdano
Eastern Time Zone (GMT -5)

134

Dominion Articles / Re: Crossroads

« on: October 24, 2011, 11:54:29 pm »

Crossroads can also shine when you already have a draw engine (say, from labs) and throw in a crossroads to play and draw even more cards after you have already increased your handsize. You are more likely to hit it with 3-4 green cards at a time. It can make your engine extremely resilient against slowing down while buying VP cards.

135

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Combo: +buy + Trader

« on: October 21, 2011, 02:45:05 am »

I think the real +buy-combo in Hinterlands is +buy + Highways.

136

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Tax

« on: September 04, 2011, 07:23:53 pm »

Tax (Action - Duration):
+1 Action, +1$
While this is in play, every card costs +1$ during every other player's buy phase. Trash this card during your next turn's clean-up phase.

137

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Navigator

« on: September 03, 2011, 10:31:02 am »

I think it combines quite well with Trading Post: Open Navigator/Silver, buy trading post at turn 3/4, and use the Navigator to play the Trading Post as often as possible.

138

Simulation / Re: PPR = overrated!?

« on: September 01, 2011, 09:25:11 pm »

Thanks for your post, I had been wondering about that. Of course, PPR is really only useful when you have the stronger hand, i.e. you expect to win the duchies-race to put you into the lead and be able to follow this up by buying a province later. I am not sure there is a simple setup where this will happen frequently - would need a strong engine that is resilient to adding green stuff.

Quick games where you should definetely use the PPR
BM Envoy (ignoring PPR) 40% - BM Envoy 52%
BM Envoy (uses the PPR) 48% - BM Envoy 44%

There seems to be a typo here.

139

Other Games / Re: Bridge

« on: August 08, 2011, 05:43:32 am »

What I call complexity is similar to what you call skill intensity. My definition of complexity of a game is something along the lines of "a game is more complex to the extent that variations in skill have bearings upon the outcome for wider variations in skill" i.e. a complex game could have Player A who beats player B 70% of the time, while player B beats player C 70% of the time (and player A beats C more often than that)... on down through the most different levels. More of these levels, and higher percentages, are the hallmarks of more complexity.

I used to think of that as a good measure (maybe just because it makes it very easy to argue that go is more complex than chess  ). But once you realize that best-of-three chess by this definition has a substantially higher complexity than a single game of chess, it becomes a bit questionable. Does dominion with identical starting hands have a higher complexity than dominion with random starting hands?

140

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Tournement / Competition?

« on: August 02, 2011, 04:28:08 pm »

Tournament? I thought the main discussion would be about the prizes! I would suggest:

Concubine: +1 Card, +1 Action. Trash a card, and gain a card costing exactly one 1$ more than the trashed card, and put it in your hand.

141

Dominion Articles / Re: Making it to Level 42: Level 5- Money Makes Your Deck Go 'Round

« on: July 29, 2011, 07:20:09 am »

5. Conversely, avoid terminating actions if you do not have “Villages”.

The previous concept works in reverse as well. If you do not have any “Villages,” then your deck should be limited to 1 terminating action card per 5 or 6 cards. Since a typical deck well end with between 25 and 30 cards, this means you should stick to between 4 and 5 terminating actions. Further, you should pick and choose those 4 to 5 terminating actions cards extremely carefully, as when you buy  such a card, you will likely be stuck with it for the duration of the game, and it will take up a valuable spot as one of your few action cards.

It's maybe worth pointing out that in many decks, this number is still rather higher. If you have 5 terminating actions in a deck of 25 cards, you need perfect shuffle luck to avoid them to clash. (If you don't realize how bad that is, just imagine you had a free silver any time you have a collision of terminal actions.) If you have actions that draw cards, then you would actually be 100% sure to get a collision.
Of course, if the actions are really good, it may be worth risking the collision, but on other boards you should just buy 2-3 terminating action cards.

142

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How to play these cards?

« on: July 11, 2011, 08:24:03 am »

@Shanty Town:
I think it's one of the worst Villages. If you plan to get an Actionchain ( http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/03/07/actionscards/) and there is no other village but good carddraw (e.g Torturer), you take the Shanty Town. Other than this, I don't really see the value of the potential +2Cards. Either you don't have many actions, then you don't want a Village, or you have them, then you won't get the +2Cards. But I don't see any strategy that reliably can make use of the +2Cards of the Shanty Town.

It's maybe worth pointing out that it works very well with Library.

143

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Duplicate Dominion, An Idea For Competitive Dominion

« on: July 10, 2011, 10:25:41 pm »

Player A opens Ambassador/Silver, and player B opens Silver/Ambassador...

144

Game Reports / Re: Surprising (to me) strategy

« on: July 06, 2011, 02:23:03 pm »

I still maintain that straight-up hamlet CH is pretty strong. Hamlet's getting no love here.

So you would open Chancellor/Chancellor, buy CH as soon as possible and otherwise buy Hamlets or maybe a few more Chancellors unless you can buy a province?

145

Game Reports / Re: Surprising (to me) strategy

« on: July 06, 2011, 01:18:25 pm »

Interesting, I had not seen and didn't notice the Golem/Chancellor/Counting House combination.

Here is what I tried: Open Navigator+Silver, buy a Trading Post as soon as possible, and then use the fast cycling from the Navigator (discard the next 5 unless they contain TP) to play the Trading Post as often as possible early on.
My thinking was that Trading Post is an extremely strong opener, and getting it one round later together with the faster cycling would be just as good. It may have been the first time I ever bought Navigator.

(In the actual game it worked brilliantly: 5th Province with a Duchy on the side at turn 14. But I also got extremely lucky in the beginning: Navigator with 5$ draw in turn 3, drawing Trading Post in turn 4, for which the bad luck at turn 6 -- Navigator and TP clashing -- was only a small offset.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110705-194505-4862b3ea.html)

146

Game Reports / Surprising (to me) strategy

« on: July 05, 2011, 10:58:07 pm »

The following board looked pretty boring to me, but thinking about it I came to a solution that surprised me:

$6	Adventurer
$5	Counting House, Trading Post
$4	Farming Village, Mining Village, Navigator, Salvager
$4P	Golem
$3	Chancellor
$2	Hamlet

Now I am curious whether people here come to the same conclusion, or find it obvious, or whether I am wrong...

Edit: Assume a 4/3 opening, 1st position.

147

Dominion Isotropic / Re: All previous turns occasionally visible in Isotropic games

« on: July 05, 2011, 10:04:39 am »

We have always let people make online versions in these official-version-less times, under the stipulations that they be free and not use the art, because what, we're not here to stop people from having fun. It's exactly the opposite, we are working hard on making fun things.

Thanks for that. As a matter of fact, I got addicted to dominion via isotropic, and will now be getting the physical game as well.

148

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

« on: June 30, 2011, 06:31:45 pm »

Thanks all for your thoughts, this was instructive for me.

149

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

« on: June 25, 2011, 08:12:01 pm »

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.

150

Game Reports / Trading Post/- or Vault/-

« on: June 25, 2011, 09:44:31 am »

I had this decision in a Colony money game (I assume in Province games it's usually obvious to go for Trading Post). There were no attack cards, and no good engine cards. What would you go for?

Here are the details: I was in second position, my opponent opening 4/3 (buying a monument at turn 1). The board was:

Contraband
Horn of Plenty
Upgrade
Trading Post
Vault
-------------
Baron
Monument
-------------
Steward
Watchtower
Trade Route

(If you wonder about the result: I went for Vault, and got incredibly lucky by drawing it at BOTH turn 3 and 4. Needless to say, the game was over, and I got my 3rd Colony at turn 13.)