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51

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: February 26, 2016, 03:08:16 am »

There is also the possibility that of Potion-cost cards. If you have no Potion in your deck, you can't buy them. Of course, only so many of the supply cards can be Potion-cost, and this doesn't really explain why you can't buy e.g. Estate.

I think you may be onto something here....

The kingdom consists of 9 potion cost cards and Contraband. You have played 7 Contrabands to which your opponent nominated Province, Duchy, Estate, Gold, Silver, Copper and Contraband, You do not have a potion in your hand.

8 Contrabands. The opponent also has to name Curse.

52

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: January 05, 2016, 08:26:06 am »

The opponent should always name the Action phase in your Contraband example too, because even without an Action to afford Province he wants you to name cards he can't afford.

I know. That's why I wrote this sentence:

But if this is the case, he can just always answer that it's still his action phase.

53

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: January 05, 2016, 05:08:48 am »

Next problem

Your opponent played Black Market and a Treasure.
You asked him which phase he was in.
Why did you ask?

There were no cards remaining in the Black Market deck, and the player had Actions remaining. They played Relic, and you are debating revealing a Moat or just taking the token, because you may want to hide your Moat to force your opponent to use their last action on an attack like Witch rather than a more powerful non-attack. If it is the Buy phase, you can safely reveal Moat since he can't Witch you.

Congratulations! Perfect answer!

But wouldn't the best play for him always be to say, that it's his action phase?
Because of this the question doesn't matter. Unless we allow for sub-optimal play, which I don't think is normal in puzzles.

54

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: January 05, 2016, 05:03:41 am »

Normally you can see which phase he's in by whether the 3 revealed cards are still out. To avoid this, the Black Market deck has to be empty.

Right.

The only treasure card I can find, where you knowing matters, is Contraband (you want to know if he can play more action cards). But if this is the case, he can just always answer that it's still his action phase.

Asking which phase he is in when contrabanding is meaningless because no card (except Black Market) lets him buy a card in the Action phase.

When he can buy cards isn't the point.
After playing Contraband he has $6 and one card left in hand. You know the only treasure he has left are Coppers. He does have action cards giving $2, and he has 1 action left.
If he's in his action phase, he can maybe afford Province, and then you want to name Province to avoid that.
If he's in his buy phase, you know that he can't afford Province, and you want to name something cheaper.

55

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: January 04, 2016, 06:32:21 am »

Next problem

Your opponent played Black Market and a Treasure.
You asked him which phase he was in.
Why did you ask?

Contraband? (With no actions left)

Normally you can see which phase he's in by whether the 3 revealed cards are still out. To avoid this, the Black Market deck has to be empty.

The only treasure card I can find, where you knowing matters, is Contraband (you want to know if he can play more action cards). But if this is the case, he can just always answer that it's still his action phase.

56

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Puzzles(Easy) Q6-10.

« on: January 01, 2016, 12:56:50 pm »

Q6 Durations
Q7 Venture
Q8 Fortress

Q6: How do you get the duration effects after playing Throne Room? Or am I misunderstanding what you want to do?
Q8: If you had a Fortress in hand, you wouldn't reveal your hand.

57

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Puzzles(Easy) Q6-10.

« on: January 01, 2016, 12:54:47 pm »

Q6: +1 card token on Throne Room (with Teacher). Play Throne Room, Throne Room, Throne Room. The 3rd Throne Room doesn't play an action. The 2nd play of the 2nd Throne Room draws and plays an action card that draws cards.
Q7: Venture
Q8: The other action is also a Rats
Q9: +1 card token on Throne Room (with Teacher). Play Throne Room, Throne Room, Tactician. The 2nd play of Throne Room draws a card, that you can play with the Throne Room.
Q10: I don't know. You play something afterwards to draw the discarded card?

58

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Round the mulberry bush

« on: December 08, 2015, 03:33:34 pm »

X is Procession.
The card that travels is Band of Misfits.

Resolution:

Procession has +1 card token.  Graverobber has -$2 cost token.  There are no $6 action cards in the kingdom.  BoM starts on top of your deck (0).
Procession draws BoM into your hand (1).  Choose BoM and play it (2) as Treasure Map.  It trashes itself (3).  For the second play, choose Graverobber and bring BoM back, returning it to the top of your deck (4).

You also need the +1 action token on Procession, so that you don't reduce your number of actions with this.

I'm not so sure about that because of the sentence "it is as if Action X had been an Action card that said "do nothing""

59

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: December 05, 2015, 04:37:17 pm »

Easy puzzle: Make Peddler cost exactly $7 in your buy phase.

Play Bridge, then trash it with Bonfire.

It needs to be Highway though, right?  Bridge lasts until the end of the turn.

No. It needs to be Bridge. The -1 cost needs to be in effect after you've trashed the card, otherwise Peddler would cost 8.

60

Rules Questions / Re: Discard action card after playing?

« on: December 04, 2015, 03:29:47 pm »

The reason not to preshuffle when you can, is to prevent rules errors -- putting that curse in your new discard pile after shuffling, when it should be in your new deck.

Not saying you can't remember to shuffle it in, but you can forget, also -- hardly "no reason not to".

I often preshuffle to save time, but I never put the preshuffled cards down as my new deck before they are needed as a new deck. I either shuffle untill they're needed, or if I have to do something else I put them back on the table as my discard pile.

I think those rule errors only happen if you put down the cards as your new deck before time. Doing it this way prevents that.

But of course it should only be done by experienced players, who knows what they're doing.

To get the cards in as random an order as possible, you have to shuffle as long time as possible. Getting a good random order takes time, especially if you have a large deck. By starting the shuffling early, you can shuffle for a longer time, and then get a better random order.

61

Dominion League / Re: Season 11 - Results

« on: December 04, 2015, 10:01:50 am »

D5 Simon (DK) - Qvist 2-4

62

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Strictly better than....

« on: December 01, 2015, 07:27:03 pm »

Well it's a good thing that strictness is very much a technical thing to discuss.

But I disagree.  If you would have won with a village, then clearly you did not make the right decision somewhere along the line.  Plaza doesn't have any sort of randomness attached to it that would lead you to make the right decision and come out for the worse.

You don't know the order of the cards in your deck; that could possibly lead you to prefer to not have discarded a treasure, even though probabilistically it would have been the right play.  For example, you choose to discard a Copper because you have 100 cards in your deck and only one of them is a Spice Merchant.  You then play a draw card and pick up the Spice Merchant, and now you regret having discarded the Copper.

If this is a big enough problem that you would lose the game, then discarding is the wrong choice.  Instead, you can just always choose not to discard unless you are certain that Spice Merchant will not be drawn (usually because it's already in your discard).

I can make the probability of drawing Spice Merchant arbitrarily small by making my deck as large as I want.  At some point, the expected payoff will have to be so small that taking the coin token is better on average.

And yet you can still follow that rule to only use the discard when you are entirely 100% certain.

Right, I'm not claiming that you can't do that.  I'm agreeing with Jimm that you can improve your chances of winning in some particular situation by having Plaza rather than Village, but it's possible that in that same situation, you will lose because you had Plaza rather than Village, if you choose to maximize your chances of winning.

Another way of putting it is, you can choose to either play Plaza as if it is a Village, or play it as if your goal is to win the game of Dominion.  If you choose the former, then it is identical to Village.  If you choose the latter, then there can be cases where you would have won if you had had Village rather than Plaza.  That doesn't make Plaza "worse" than Village, and arguably it's still strictly better (depending on how "strictly better" is defined).  But you seem to be denying that this is possible, which I disagree with.

Again, if you accept this kind of argument, then no card could ever be strictly better than another by any reasonable definition.  Even an imaginary card that is identical to Village except it optionally grants you +1VP token on play could be worse, because it could give you a VP lead that leads you to take a risk that loses the game for you.

I acknowledge that you could play Plaza such that you would have lost whereas you would have won with Village, but I disagree that this is a way in that Plaza is worse and I disagree that this will happen when you make the right choice.  If you would have won with a regular Village, then you should have played your Plaza as a regular Village except when you are 100% sure that the discard won't come back to bite you later -- e.g. when you don't have any other action card to play after this -- which is still a strictly better effect than regular Village.  This is just a question of YMOSL now.  Don't blame the card for giving you a choice when this happens.  Blame your choice.

Here's an example where the correct Plaza choice makes you loose the game:

You have 0$ to spend and have reduced costs by 6. If you gain the last Colony or the 3 last Duchies you win, otherwise you loose. After playing Plaza and drawing a card you have Horn of Plenty and Great Hall in your hand. In your deck you have a Horn of Plenty and 2 Poor Houses, but you don't know the order of them.

If you discard Horn of Plenty to the Plaza, there's 67 % chance that you'll draw a Poor House and win and 33 % chance you'll draw the Horn of Plenty and loose.

If you don't discard Horn of Plenty to the Plaza, there's 67 % chance that you'll draw a Poor House and loose and 33 % chance you'll draw the Horn of Plenty and win.

So to maximise your chance of winning, the correct choice is to discard your Horn of Plenty. But if the top card of your deck is Horn of Plenty, then you would have been better off with a Village, so you didn't have the choice.

Right, but the question being asked is "Which card would I rather have in hand right now?", not "Which card would I like to have had given what happened afterwards?".

I'm not saying that Plaza isn't strictly better than Village.
And after reading it again I realize what eHalcyon was saying with his last post and agree with it.

I just simply saw a sub-puzzle that I thought was fun finding an answer to

63

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Strictly better than....

« on: December 01, 2015, 07:07:44 pm »

Well it's a good thing that strictness is very much a technical thing to discuss.

But I disagree.  If you would have won with a village, then clearly you did not make the right decision somewhere along the line.  Plaza doesn't have any sort of randomness attached to it that would lead you to make the right decision and come out for the worse.

You don't know the order of the cards in your deck; that could possibly lead you to prefer to not have discarded a treasure, even though probabilistically it would have been the right play.  For example, you choose to discard a Copper because you have 100 cards in your deck and only one of them is a Spice Merchant.  You then play a draw card and pick up the Spice Merchant, and now you regret having discarded the Copper.

If this is a big enough problem that you would lose the game, then discarding is the wrong choice.  Instead, you can just always choose not to discard unless you are certain that Spice Merchant will not be drawn (usually because it's already in your discard).

I can make the probability of drawing Spice Merchant arbitrarily small by making my deck as large as I want.  At some point, the expected payoff will have to be so small that taking the coin token is better on average.

And yet you can still follow that rule to only use the discard when you are entirely 100% certain.

Right, I'm not claiming that you can't do that.  I'm agreeing with Jimm that you can improve your chances of winning in some particular situation by having Plaza rather than Village, but it's possible that in that same situation, you will lose because you had Plaza rather than Village, if you choose to maximize your chances of winning.

Another way of putting it is, you can choose to either play Plaza as if it is a Village, or play it as if your goal is to win the game of Dominion.  If you choose the former, then it is identical to Village.  If you choose the latter, then there can be cases where you would have won if you had had Village rather than Plaza.  That doesn't make Plaza "worse" than Village, and arguably it's still strictly better (depending on how "strictly better" is defined).  But you seem to be denying that this is possible, which I disagree with.

Again, if you accept this kind of argument, then no card could ever be strictly better than another by any reasonable definition.  Even an imaginary card that is identical to Village except it optionally grants you +1VP token on play could be worse, because it could give you a VP lead that leads you to take a risk that loses the game for you.

I acknowledge that you could play Plaza such that you would have lost whereas you would have won with Village, but I disagree that this is a way in that Plaza is worse and I disagree that this will happen when you make the right choice.  If you would have won with a regular Village, then you should have played your Plaza as a regular Village except when you are 100% sure that the discard won't come back to bite you later -- e.g. when you don't have any other action card to play after this -- which is still a strictly better effect than regular Village.  This is just a question of YMOSL now.  Don't blame the card for giving you a choice when this happens.  Blame your choice.

Here's an example where the correct Plaza choice makes you loose the game:

You have 0$ to spend and have reduced costs by 6. If you gain the last Colony or the 3 last Duchies you win, otherwise you loose. After playing Plaza and drawing a card you have Horn of Plenty and Great Hall in your hand. In your deck you have a Horn of Plenty and 2 Poor Houses, but you don't know the order of them.

If you discard Horn of Plenty to the Plaza, there's 67 % chance that you'll draw a Poor House and win and 33 % chance you'll draw the Horn of Plenty and loose.

If you don't discard Horn of Plenty to the Plaza, there's 67 % chance that you'll draw a Poor House and loose and 33 % chance you'll draw the Horn of Plenty and win.

So to maximise your chance of winning, the correct choice is to discard your Horn of Plenty. But if the top card of your deck is Horn of Plenty, then you would have been better off with a Village, so you didn't have the choice.

64

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Strictly better than....

« on: December 01, 2015, 06:42:16 pm »

How come cost is a universal edge case, but type isn't?
There's cards that share the same cost and cards that share types.
No 2 different costs can be strictly better than the other, but I'm pretty sure the same goes for types.

We don't say that about the cost itself.  "Universal edge case" was the term we ended up using for specific cards that can always be used to make one card better than another one which would otherwise be strictly superior.  For example, Possession is a universal edge case because I would want a weaker card in hand when you play Possession.  Likewise, the other universal edge cases also provide ways of making a card with a strictly inferior effect better to have in hand.

We name cost-caring cards like Forge, Remake, Upgrade as "universal" edge cases because they can make you prefer having (for example) Village over Mining Village.  Yes, there are cards that share the same cost, but no such pair of cards in Dominion will have one be strictly superior than the other.  That's also the reason why we are just discussing strictly superior effects rather than strictly superior cards.

By contrast, not counting type as a universal edge case doesn't invalidate every potential case of one card being strictly superior.  It's not universal.

I found this difficult to explain.  Does that make sense?

It makes perfect sense. Thanks

65

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Strictly better than....

« on: December 01, 2015, 07:51:43 am »

How come cost is a universal edge case, but type isn't?
There's cards that share the same cost and cards that share types.
No 2 different costs can be strictly better than the other, but I'm pretty sure the same goes for types.

66

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Most Cards from One Buy

« on: November 30, 2015, 05:48:58 am »

I thought I could get an inflated Doctor overpay to 157 cards, but it required 12 Kingdom Card piles. With 11 kingdom card piles (including Black Market), I can only get it to 148. 1 less than the current best.

67

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: TR on Distant Lands

« on: November 15, 2015, 01:28:28 pm »

I guess what I was going for is when would TR-DL be the optimal play for someone playing optimally.  You're not normally going to put tokens on DL.

Your opponent put it there with Possession.

68

Dominion League / Re: Season 11 - Results

« on: November 14, 2015, 08:56:36 am »

D5 Simon (DK) - Lammetje 5-1

69

Dominion League / Re: Season 11 - Results

« on: November 09, 2015, 03:25:21 pm »

D5 Simon (DK) - Micha1980 4-2

70

Dominion League / Re: Season 11 - Results

« on: November 03, 2015, 07:32:11 am »

D5 Simon (DK) - smcrtorchs1 4-2

71

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: October 21, 2015, 06:26:24 pm »

I assume the "I own only differently named kingdom cards" in the puzzle description applies at all times, so you can't during your turn get a Kingdom card you already own.

I can't find the last thing you talk about, but I've found a few cards that help and I've fixed my mistake. I can now get: 61

In the beginning you have Caravan Guard (played on your opponent's turn), Hireling and Champion in play.
Then you call Ratcactcher, Guide, Transmogrify and Teacher.
Then you play your Princed King's Court and play Golem, playing 6 action cards and calling Coin of the Realm and Duplicate. Call Royal Carriage to play King's Court again. This time you play Throne Room, Procession and Herald, playing 2 cards. 2nd Procession plays Band of Misfits as Herald, playing 2 action cards. 2nd Throne Room plays Disciple, and you play play the other 4 Disciples too (note that the puzzle only states no Kingdom card duplicates, and Disciple isn't a Kingdom card). With that you play Graverobber (gaining Herald and Band of Misfits from the trash), a drawer, Herald (playing 2 action cards), Band of Misfits as Herald (playing 2 action cards), 2 action cards, and Black Market, which plays all the Treasure cards in the game (you've earlier played a lot of non-specific action cards, which may be drawers, and you have a +1 card token, so drawing the treasure cards isn't a problem).
The last played Treasure card is Spoils, and while you resolve that it is the start of your turn and you count your different cards in play: Caravan Guard, Hireling, Champion, Ratcatcher, Guide, Transmogrify, Teacher, King's Court, Golem, Coin of the Realm, Duplicate, Royal Carriage, Throne Room, Procession, Disciple, Graverobber, a drawer, Herald, Black Market, 26 treasure cards* and 16 other action cards for a total of 61 cards.

*Copper, Silver, Gold, Harem, Potion, Philosopher's Stone, Loan, Quarry, Talisman, Contraband, Royal Seal, Venture, Hoard, Bank, Platinum, Horn of Plenty, Diadem, Fool's Gold, Cache, Ill-Gotten Gains, Spoils, Counterfeit, Masterpiece, Stash, Relic and Treasure Trove.

60, because you returned your spoils to the spoils pile and it isn't in play

The puzzle description says at the start of your turn. It doesn't say when at the start of your turn. While resolving Spoils it is in play, and it is the start of the turn. I choose this moment to count the cards in play.

72

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: October 21, 2015, 06:02:19 pm »

I assume the "I own only differently named kingdom cards" in the puzzle description applies at all times, so you can't during your turn get a Kingdom card you already own.

I can't find the last thing you talk about, but I've found a few cards that help and I've fixed my mistake. I can now get: 61

In the beginning you have Caravan Guard (played on your opponent's turn), Hireling and Champion in play.
Then you call Ratcactcher, Guide, Transmogrify and Teacher.
Then you play your Princed King's Court and play Golem, playing 6 action cards and calling Coin of the Realm and Duplicate. Call Royal Carriage to play King's Court again. This time you play Throne Room, Procession and Herald, playing 2 cards. 2nd Procession plays Band of Misfits as Herald, playing 2 action cards. 2nd Throne Room plays Disciple, and you play play the other 4 Disciples too (note that the puzzle only states no Kingdom card duplicates, and Disciple isn't a Kingdom card). With that you play Graverobber (gaining Herald and Band of Misfits from the trash), a drawer, Herald (playing 2 action cards), Band of Misfits as Herald (playing 2 action cards), 2 action cards, and Black Market, which plays all the Treasure cards in the game (you've earlier played a lot of non-specific action cards, which may be drawers, and you have a +1 card token, so drawing the treasure cards isn't a problem).
The last played Treasure card is Spoils, and while you resolve that it is the start of your turn and you count your different cards in play: Caravan Guard, Hireling, Champion, Ratcatcher, Guide, Transmogrify, Teacher, King's Court, Golem, Coin of the Realm, Duplicate, Royal Carriage, Throne Room, Procession, Disciple, Graverobber, a drawer, Herald, Black Market, 26 treasure cards* and 16 other action cards for a total of 61 cards.

*Copper, Silver, Gold, Harem, Potion, Philosopher's Stone, Loan, Quarry, Talisman, Contraband, Royal Seal, Venture, Hoard, Bank, Platinum, Horn of Plenty, Diadem, Fool's Gold, Cache, Ill-Gotten Gains, Spoils, Counterfeit, Masterpiece, Stash, Relic and Treasure Trove.

73

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: October 21, 2015, 07:08:26 am »

I can get 30

With Black Market you can get as many different Kingdom Cards as you want (limitted of course by the number of different cards in the game, but we wont get anywhere near that number).
In the beginning you have Caravan Guard (played on your opponent's turn), Hireling and Champion in play.
Then you call Ratcactcher, Guide, Transmogrify and Teacher.
Then you play your Princed King's Court and play Throne Room, Procession, Golem, playing 4 different action cards (including a gainer) and calling Coin of the Realm and Duplicate. With the 2nd Procession play you play Herald, playing 2 different cards. With the 2nd Throne Room play you play Graverobber gaining Golem and Herald back from the trash, drawing Herald due to +1 card token on Graverobber. With the 3rd Throne Room play you play Herald, drawing Golem and playing 2 action cards.
Then you call Royal Carriage to replay King's Court and play Golem, playing 6 action cards.
It's still the start of your turn, and you count the cards in play: Caravan Guard, Hireling, Champion, Ratcatcher, Guide, Transmogrify, Teacher, King's Court, Throne Room, Procession, Coin of the Realm, Duplicate, Graverobber, Herald, Royal Carriage, Golem and 14 other action cards gives a total of 30.

74

2015 / Re: Schedule & Results

« on: October 13, 2015, 05:07:16 pm »

Loosers Bracket: Simon (DK) - sillle14 4-1

75

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: October 09, 2015, 11:36:23 am »

So, using Storyteller, PS, PS, PS, Madman you can't draw your deck if it contains exactly 3  (or 4 or 9) cards

For 3 or 4 cards you just play Madman first. The only problem is with 9 cards.

I thought about the solutions with more Madmen right after I posted my solution, but I had already shut down my computer and went to bed, so I didn't want to start it up again.