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Dominion Articles / Obstacles: Beyond the Five Deck Types
« on: September 14, 2017, 06:57:31 am »
Obstacles: Beyond the Five Deck Types
In this article, I attempt to lay down a very basic framework for generalizing Dominion strategy even further than it has previously been, which I think is necessary due to the increasing number of different types of strategies. Traditionally, unusual strategies have been called "combo" decks, but I think the term has outlived its usefulness and that we need a framework that actually helps us understand why those decks work instead of describing superficial attributes about them.
Part 1 – Obstacles
It would be convenient if you could do whatever and it would always be a functional strategy. However, this is not the case. In Dominion, there are many things that limit your ability to do whatever you want. They include:
At this point, you might be thinking that all of what I just said is completely obvious, in which case you would be absolutely correct. However, you cannot dismiss the importance of these factors simply because they are obvious — on the contrary, they are obvious because of how important they are. When you are designing a strategy, you need to have a solution to each of these problems, otherwise it’s not going to work. Let’s refer to these seven points as the obstacles, because I’m going to be referring to them a lot.
For now, let’s just focus on some strategies that are already established.
Big money (also known as good stuff)
This is a fairly common strategy, because it’s available in every kingdom. It’s also extremely simple to play. Here’s how big money overcomes the obstacles:
Look at how efficient that is. Buying a lot of Treasure cards is, in and of itself, a solution to five of these completely unrelated problems. The solution to greening includes slow cycling, and the solution to slow cycling includes greening. All of this just happens to result in a convenient way to get ahead and end while you’re ahead. That is why big money is a strategy that works, and may sometimes be competitive against other types of decks.
Hermit/Market Square
Hermit/Market Square is a rare strategy, because it requires Hermit and Market Square to be in the kingdom. Here are its solutions to the obstacles:
In terms of efficiency, this rivals big money (in terms of strength, it tends to surpass big money, but that’s beside the point for now) because the quite detailed way in which the combo needs to be pulled off simultaneously solves each obstacle.
As you can imagine, many other strategies that have been traditionally considered to be combo strategies have a different set of solutions. Therefore, it does not make sense to classify them as the same strategy; instead, Hermit/Market Square should be seen as an entire deck type of its own.
Two sentences about Attacks
Attacks and other interactive cards, when present, might create additional obstacles for that particular kingdom that you will need to address in addition to these seven, or they might modify the existing ones. Some solutions to the seven main obstacles will already deal with certain Attacks very easily, while others might completely fall apart.
A “Deck type” or “strategy” is an elegant answer to all of the obstacles
All the different decks with the same answers are the same type of deck. In other words, the number of Action cards you’re playing, the number of Treasure cards you’re playing, the length of the game in turns, whether or not the strategy is only enabled by a rare combination of cards being available, and all these other superficial things that some like to use for the purposes of categorization are completely useless from a strategy perspective.
Figuring out the answers that rushes, slogs and engines have, respectively, is left as an exercise to the reader because this article is long enough as it is.
Part 2 – Beyond the five types
Wandering Winder defined four types of strategy. Then he lumped the rest of them together and called them “combo” strategies, the fifth type. However, as I already mentioned in the previous part, combo decks don’t really have all that much in common with each other, which is why they shouldn't be seen as a single type of strategy. Whereas you can hurt big money decks with hand size attacks, there is no universal way to play against all combo decks.
Still, there are some useful ways to categorize those kinds of decks as well. The one fairly well established category is golden deck. These days, there are many different ways to build a golden deck, and it is a useful category because all golden decks have the same solutions to the obstacles.
Another useful category is a term I’m coining right now: the stockpile. The stockpile is a type of deck that accumulates large quantities of Reserve cards, cards on the Native Village mat, coin tokens, and/or other such resources and then it suddenly uses all of them for a megaturn. Examples of stockpiles include Native Village/Bridge, Royal Carriage/Bridge, and Duplicate/Bridge.
As the number of possible kingdoms in Dominion is limited by how many cards there are, technically there can’t be an infinite number of different deck types. The point is that even if there was, this framework should be all-encompassing. The other point is that the number can be very large, and it’s very likely much larger than we currently imagine it to be — in other words, there are deck types waiting to be discovered.
Going for unconventional strategies
If you’re thinking of going for a strategy that isn’t big money, rush, slog, engine, or another established strategy, it is a good idea to figure out how your strategy would address the obstacles. While it is also possible to stumble upon a legitimate strategy through pure trial-and-error (which is largely how many of them have been discovered), it is much easier if you can rule out some of the more ineffective ideas simply by taking a moment to consider them through.
For instance, a popular thing to build is an engine/big money hybrid, but that's one of the more ineffective ideas. Consider obstacle #6 ("You don’t always draw cards in the order you would like") in a kingdom with Village and Smithy. Like with most card synergies, Village/Smithy synergize only when drawn in the right order. The problem with playing a hybrid between big money and engine here is this: big money's solution is to avoid too many Villages/Smithies, so cards are good in any order, while engine's solution is to get lots of Villages/Smithies so they can be paired easily, especially since pairing them draws you more cards. If you play a hybrid, you'll end up having enough Villages and Smithies that the cards are no longer good in any order, but not enough that they can be paired easily, resulting in terminal collisions, Villages drawn dead, and Villages drawn without a Smithy in your hand.
However, the stockpile is a type of strategy that does actually mix quite well with many other deck types; for instance, a big money/stockpile hybrid is just as strong as pure big money. This is due to the fact that cards like Butcher and Transmogrify are reasonably strong cards on their own, so that matches up with five of the big money solutions, and the way in which they change greening gives you the best of both worlds — you can delay the negative effect of greening by having gaining power set aside for a while, and you can also keep adding good cards while you’re greening, because these things aren’t mutually exclusive.
There are also the very rare types of strategies only enabled by a specific card interaction that we don’t talk about because we still haven’t discovered them. For obvious reasons, I can’t give you an example. I also can’t really tell you how to be able to discover more of them. But what I can tell you is that the obstacles apply universally in all games of Dominion ever, so you’re going to need the elegant solution.
The parting words
With all that being said, this idea is relatively new, so it might also be incomplete. You can sort of see its evolution if you look at my posts from the past year or so; within that time, I have moved from firmly sticking with WW’s deck types (including “combo”) to claiming that hoarding coin tokens should be classified as its own strategy even though it sucks, to claiming that Native Village/Bridge is also the same strategy as the coin token hoarding strategy and that it should no longer be classified as a combo deck, to claiming that golden decks are another legitimate deck type, and now we have this.
I might be failing to see some obstacles that are actually there. I have already considered some rules of the game that kind of hinder you a little, such as not being able to look through your discard pile or not being able to see your opponent’s hand, but you can’t really fix those with deckbuilding so I don’t see a reason to treat them as obstacles.
Ultimately, I think that as the number and the complexity of card-shaped things keeps going up, we are going to see more and more of completely new types of strategies, and simply calling them all “combo” is not going to make us prepared for them. There certainly needs to be some kind of a framework that allows us to understand what made a strategy work even when it doesn’t fit our preconceived notions of how strategies should be categorized. This has been an early attempt at it.
In this article, I attempt to lay down a very basic framework for generalizing Dominion strategy even further than it has previously been, which I think is necessary due to the increasing number of different types of strategies. Traditionally, unusual strategies have been called "combo" decks, but I think the term has outlived its usefulness and that we need a framework that actually helps us understand why those decks work instead of describing superficial attributes about them.
Part 1 – Obstacles
It would be convenient if you could do whatever and it would always be a functional strategy. However, this is not the case. In Dominion, there are many things that limit your ability to do whatever you want. They include:
- Your starting deck consists of crappy cards
- The main source of VP comes from putting crappy cards into your deck
- You only get 5 cards and 1 buy every turn
- You can only play one Action card every turn
- When you buy a card, it takes a while before you even get to use it at all
- You don’t always draw cards in the order you would like
- In order to win, you need to be able to end the game by emptying the Provinces, Colonies or any three piles while you’re ahead
At this point, you might be thinking that all of what I just said is completely obvious, in which case you would be absolutely correct. However, you cannot dismiss the importance of these factors simply because they are obvious — on the contrary, they are obvious because of how important they are. When you are designing a strategy, you need to have a solution to each of these problems, otherwise it’s not going to work. Let’s refer to these seven points as the obstacles, because I’m going to be referring to them a lot.
For now, let’s just focus on some strategies that are already established.
Big money (also known as good stuff)
This is a fairly common strategy, because it’s available in every kingdom. It’s also extremely simple to play. Here’s how big money overcomes the obstacles:
- You add many high-quality cards to your deck to bring the average card quality up from what it originally was (you might also trash some of the starting cards but that’s not necessary)
- As you’re greening, you can keep adding more high-quality cards to your deck to compensate for the green cards, so that the average quality remains high enough. Also, green cards will take a while to show up because your deck is fairly big and you’re not cycling through it very fast.
- You keep the average card quality high enough that 5 cards are enough to make the most use out of that one buy
- The high-quality cards you add to your deck are mostly Treasures or non-terminal Actions. You can add as many terminal Actions as the rest of your deck can support without having a big risk of terminal collision or cards that are drawn dead.
- On the other hand, when big money buys a green card, it also takes a while for that to show up. The effect is more pronounced during the greening stage due to having a larger deck, so big money actually benefits from this obstacle to an extent.
- All the high-quality cards you buy are good on their own, have very little or no negative synergies with other cards in your deck and/or synergize with almost all the other cards in your deck, so the order in which they’re drawn doesn’t matter much — all of your hands are good anyway.
- Your strategy is able to maintain a steady rate of gaining VP through Provinces or Colonies after a relatively short build-up, which ultimately leads to the Provinces or Colonies being depleted.
Look at how efficient that is. Buying a lot of Treasure cards is, in and of itself, a solution to five of these completely unrelated problems. The solution to greening includes slow cycling, and the solution to slow cycling includes greening. All of this just happens to result in a convenient way to get ahead and end while you’re ahead. That is why big money is a strategy that works, and may sometimes be competitive against other types of decks.
Hermit/Market Square
Hermit/Market Square is a rare strategy, because it requires Hermit and Market Square to be in the kingdom. Here are its solutions to the obstacles:
- Your crappy starting cards are good enough for buying Hermit and Market Square, and that is all they will ever need to do
- You do all or most of your greening in one turn so those green cards won’t be ruining your hands for the vast majority of the game. Furthermore, after pulling off the combo, your deck will be full of Golds so you’re still in a decent position to buy more green much like a big money strategy would.
- The combo gives you your entire deck plus a bunch of Golds to your hand and a ton of buys when you pull it off.
- One action per turn is enough to set the combo up, and the combo gives you enough actions to pull itself off.
- Slow cycling is fine, because you don’t need the newly bought cards until the moment at which you pull off the combo, which is also the moment at which you’re able to cycle through your entire deck.
- You have so many copies of all the relevant cards that you’re very likely to draw them in an order that you will like
- With all of those Golds and buys, it’s very easy to gain a VP lead and end the game on the spot. If not, there’s still the big money style Plan B.
In terms of efficiency, this rivals big money (in terms of strength, it tends to surpass big money, but that’s beside the point for now) because the quite detailed way in which the combo needs to be pulled off simultaneously solves each obstacle.
As you can imagine, many other strategies that have been traditionally considered to be combo strategies have a different set of solutions. Therefore, it does not make sense to classify them as the same strategy; instead, Hermit/Market Square should be seen as an entire deck type of its own.
Two sentences about Attacks
Attacks and other interactive cards, when present, might create additional obstacles for that particular kingdom that you will need to address in addition to these seven, or they might modify the existing ones. Some solutions to the seven main obstacles will already deal with certain Attacks very easily, while others might completely fall apart.
A “Deck type” or “strategy” is an elegant answer to all of the obstacles
All the different decks with the same answers are the same type of deck. In other words, the number of Action cards you’re playing, the number of Treasure cards you’re playing, the length of the game in turns, whether or not the strategy is only enabled by a rare combination of cards being available, and all these other superficial things that some like to use for the purposes of categorization are completely useless from a strategy perspective.
Figuring out the answers that rushes, slogs and engines have, respectively, is left as an exercise to the reader because this article is long enough as it is.
Part 2 – Beyond the five types
Wandering Winder defined four types of strategy. Then he lumped the rest of them together and called them “combo” strategies, the fifth type. However, as I already mentioned in the previous part, combo decks don’t really have all that much in common with each other, which is why they shouldn't be seen as a single type of strategy. Whereas you can hurt big money decks with hand size attacks, there is no universal way to play against all combo decks.
Still, there are some useful ways to categorize those kinds of decks as well. The one fairly well established category is golden deck. These days, there are many different ways to build a golden deck, and it is a useful category because all golden decks have the same solutions to the obstacles.
Another useful category is a term I’m coining right now: the stockpile. The stockpile is a type of deck that accumulates large quantities of Reserve cards, cards on the Native Village mat, coin tokens, and/or other such resources and then it suddenly uses all of them for a megaturn. Examples of stockpiles include Native Village/Bridge, Royal Carriage/Bridge, and Duplicate/Bridge.
As the number of possible kingdoms in Dominion is limited by how many cards there are, technically there can’t be an infinite number of different deck types. The point is that even if there was, this framework should be all-encompassing. The other point is that the number can be very large, and it’s very likely much larger than we currently imagine it to be — in other words, there are deck types waiting to be discovered.
Going for unconventional strategies
If you’re thinking of going for a strategy that isn’t big money, rush, slog, engine, or another established strategy, it is a good idea to figure out how your strategy would address the obstacles. While it is also possible to stumble upon a legitimate strategy through pure trial-and-error (which is largely how many of them have been discovered), it is much easier if you can rule out some of the more ineffective ideas simply by taking a moment to consider them through.
For instance, a popular thing to build is an engine/big money hybrid, but that's one of the more ineffective ideas. Consider obstacle #6 ("You don’t always draw cards in the order you would like") in a kingdom with Village and Smithy. Like with most card synergies, Village/Smithy synergize only when drawn in the right order. The problem with playing a hybrid between big money and engine here is this: big money's solution is to avoid too many Villages/Smithies, so cards are good in any order, while engine's solution is to get lots of Villages/Smithies so they can be paired easily, especially since pairing them draws you more cards. If you play a hybrid, you'll end up having enough Villages and Smithies that the cards are no longer good in any order, but not enough that they can be paired easily, resulting in terminal collisions, Villages drawn dead, and Villages drawn without a Smithy in your hand.
However, the stockpile is a type of strategy that does actually mix quite well with many other deck types; for instance, a big money/stockpile hybrid is just as strong as pure big money. This is due to the fact that cards like Butcher and Transmogrify are reasonably strong cards on their own, so that matches up with five of the big money solutions, and the way in which they change greening gives you the best of both worlds — you can delay the negative effect of greening by having gaining power set aside for a while, and you can also keep adding good cards while you’re greening, because these things aren’t mutually exclusive.
There are also the very rare types of strategies only enabled by a specific card interaction that we don’t talk about because we still haven’t discovered them. For obvious reasons, I can’t give you an example. I also can’t really tell you how to be able to discover more of them. But what I can tell you is that the obstacles apply universally in all games of Dominion ever, so you’re going to need the elegant solution.
The parting words
With all that being said, this idea is relatively new, so it might also be incomplete. You can sort of see its evolution if you look at my posts from the past year or so; within that time, I have moved from firmly sticking with WW’s deck types (including “combo”) to claiming that hoarding coin tokens should be classified as its own strategy even though it sucks, to claiming that Native Village/Bridge is also the same strategy as the coin token hoarding strategy and that it should no longer be classified as a combo deck, to claiming that golden decks are another legitimate deck type, and now we have this.
I might be failing to see some obstacles that are actually there. I have already considered some rules of the game that kind of hinder you a little, such as not being able to look through your discard pile or not being able to see your opponent’s hand, but you can’t really fix those with deckbuilding so I don’t see a reason to treat them as obstacles.
Ultimately, I think that as the number and the complexity of card-shaped things keeps going up, we are going to see more and more of completely new types of strategies, and simply calling them all “combo” is not going to make us prepared for them. There certainly needs to be some kind of a framework that allows us to understand what made a strategy work even when it doesn’t fit our preconceived notions of how strategies should be categorized. This has been an early attempt at it.
