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51

Dominion Articles / Re: Don't Play Everything!

« on: March 13, 2013, 01:35:39 pm »

Without going to the point were you are playing copper one by one, the article could also talk a little about the treasures.
You should not play all your treasures, all the turn for mostly the same reason as for actions:
- giving deck information to your opponent, eg. if you don't need that bank don't play it.
- creating unwanted shuffle with a venture
- or worse play a loan when it as more chance to hit a silver or a gold than a copper (you may only discard it but that still prevent you from playing it)

And the loan example is a point i think may be missing in your article:
the randomization and expectation part of the game.

Sometime an action (or treasure) can have both a possible positive and negative outcome:
So you want to not play a card not only when it's bad for you (with all the details and example of the article) but when the expecting negative outcome is greater than the positive outcome.
And that again also depend on the notion of risk taking.

So that you will not only have to weight negative versus positive of playing something but of the level of risk you want to take:

Let's take a made up example:
you have an hand with a golem and 1 colony. you know that in the rest of your deck you have: 7 poorhouses and 1 ambassador.
with a little luck you could hit 2 poorhouses save your turn and buy a province.
on the same time if you hit the ambassador you will have to give that colony to your opponent.
So you have a decent chance to 8VP but a small but not negligible chance to give 22 points to your opponent.
Do you play it ?

Of course: It depends ^^

in that case it depend on the level of risk taking. if your are currently winning why take the risk ? on the same time if you are losing and that could save you: go for it.

So yes to sum up my point is:
there can be time when you will have to ponder the expected positive outcome of the card versus the negative one. It's not because something as a chance to be positive that you should do it (another example would be playing the sea hag when there is no curse because there is a chance to discard your opponent's good card, don't do it: it helps him seeing that good card more often).
And that pondering will have to take into account all the available information about the current state of the game including the level of risk you are ready to take.

52

Dominion Articles / Re: Fortune Teller

« on: March 07, 2013, 12:43:14 pm »

Great article, i would never have guessed that FT could be such an effective attack in the right conditions.

That said i am a little curious about one point you don't talk about in your article:
The case where there is some kind of trashing and no cursers. In those cases FT attack will not find any valid target in the mid game when the estates will be removed from opponent deck and the attack will become an advantage for your opponent in the part of the game.

That doesn't necessarily mean FT is bad anyway in those cases as shown in your game with Obi-Wan Bonogi but it all depend of your opponent greening strategy.

If going for a province split that could mean, FT will only be back in business for a few last turns in the end (of course they are critical turn where a bad hand can mean a lost so it might still be worth it).
If one of you goes for Alt VP then it's a slog and FT will be working for a lot of turns as well explained in your article.
But if your opponent has a either an explosive greening strategy where he will green only during one turn (eg: KT-bridge combo), or a greenless strategy (a golden deck for example) then FT attack is pretty useless.

Maybe they are kind of an edge cases but i feel, kingdom with trashing and no curser are pretty common.

Also what about the interaction between FT and Shelters, in a game with shelters there is pretty good chance than overgrown estate may be in your opponent hand when you play FT once again making the attack accelerating opponent shuffling instead of actually attacking it. Doesn't FT lose a lot of strength as an opener in those cases ?

53

Dominion Articles / Re: Knights

« on: February 18, 2013, 06:09:59 pm »

I was wondering.

Wouldn't also be interesting to talk about the interaction between Knight and the Cornucopia set ?

Knights on the board, means Fairgrounds get pretty good. With a theoretical maximum at 10 PV, but more realistically they have a decent potential to be 8 VP and at the very least very easy to be 6VP.

Knights also prevent hunting party deck from working well. at least they work very well to get the knights but you will have a hard transitioning out of them towards a more constructive engine because your hunting party will chock on them.