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Topics - philosophyguy

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Dominion General Discussion / Trickiest cards to play well?

« on: March 30, 2012, 09:40:02 am »

What's your vote for the trickiest card to play well? To be more specific: for what card is there the greatest difference between how a great player would use the card and how a bad player would use the card?

I'm guessing that candidates will include cards like Inn, Mandarin, and Horn of Plenty. I'm not looking for cards where the greatest difference between poor and expert play is finding niche situations in which the card shines (e.g., Bureaucrat or Coppersmith), nor am I looking for cards where the difference is simply that good players know how to exploit the card for megaturns (e.g., multi-Goons decks).

Dominion General Discussion / Double Tactician enablers

« on: March 25, 2012, 01:48:05 pm »

I've played a couple of double Tactician games, but I mostly ended up stumbling into them. Can anyone discuss how they determine if a board offers good double Tac potential?

Dominion General Discussion / Horn of Plenty

« on: March 04, 2012, 01:55:06 pm »

I've been trying to practice with Horn of Plenty recently, and I'm wondering if anyone has succeeded in making Horn useful in a kingdom that doesn't have great drawing power. I've managed to make Horn work in strong drawing kingdoms even without trashing, but I haven't had success without lots of draw, even with strong trashing. Feel free to submit examples in which the Horn was useful even outside of megaturn scenarios; I'm trying to see ways to make that card more effective in a variety of circumstances.

Puzzles and Challenges / Hotel California challenge (you can never reshuffle)

« on: February 18, 2012, 08:40:01 am »

After playing a Goons/Inn game yesterday, I was wondering if it's possible to set up a deck that, after a given point, never reshuffles because Inn purchases keep refreshing the draw pile.

The challenge:
* Design a deck that will can go without reshuffling until the Inn pile is exhausted, by purchasing Inns and reshuffling cards from the discard into the draw pile. This means not only having enough action cards available to shuffle back in to avoid reaching the end of the draw pile, but also being able to afford Inns before the reshuffle would happen.
* Trivial solutions such as simply having enough cards to buy 10 Inns without reshuffling are not fair game
* Bonus: the deck should be immune to shuffle luck, meaning that it doesn't matter in what order your action cards are shuffled back into the deck; you should be able to purchase the Inn and have enough cards in the discard to shuffle back indefinitely.

Variants and Fan Cards / Trash-for-benefit that includes potions?

« on: February 12, 2012, 01:16:42 pm »

Right now, Apprentice is the only trash-for-benefit card that explicitly takes Potion costs into account. I'm wondering what the community would think about making a parallel adjustment to the other trash-for-benefit cards. For instance, would Salvager that gives +$2 for a Potion and +$1/coin cost be over-powered at $4? What about a Trader that could trash an Apothecary into 4 Silvers (2 for the Potion and 1 per coin)?

Dominion General Discussion / Learning Engine Building

« on: January 24, 2012, 11:07:09 am »

I have a friend who is comfortable with BM but is fairly intimidated by any sort of engine. What I'd like to do is assemble some sets that we can walk through together so she can get a better sense of how engines work and start to build her comfort level.

Can I recruit the hive DS mind to help generate a list of kingdoms that are conducive to simple engines?

Some ideas I had to start: the Village/Envoy engine assembled in the the semifinal round of the DS Championship (key cards = Village, Envoy, Remake); a Governor/Chapel engine; a Scrying Pool/Worker's Village/Conspirator engine.

Other suggestions for card combinations/Kingdom sets that demonstrate straightforward engine building techniques?

Dominion General Discussion / Combo: Chancellor/Inn

« on: January 23, 2012, 02:16:33 pm »

Much like the famous Chancellor/Stash combo, a Chancellor allows you to customize your next hand by purchasing an Inn, even if you are at the beginning of the shuffle. Since Inn's biggest advantage is generally weaker towards the beginning of the shuffle, a Chancellor allows you to tap that power at any time.

Dominion Articles / Annotated Game 9

« on: January 20, 2012, 08:33:19 am »

I wanted to thank both DG and olneyce for the Annotated Game 9. I think engine construction is one of the hardest skills to learn in Dominion, and I really appreciated the in-depth explanation of how they thought about building the engine and the sequence they wanted to put things together. If any other top-level players or engine builders wanted to do these sorts of articles, they would be very welcome!

Game Reports / My turn to complain about shuffle luck

« on: January 18, 2012, 02:37:25 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/18/game-20120118-113141-0a45f425.html

Cutpurse, Envoy, Fool's Gold, Fortune Teller, Governor, Mandarin, Scheme, Trade Route, Treasury, and Witch

I open Silver/Silver, with the goal of getting a quick Witch and then Schemes to play the Witch repeatedly.
He opens 5/2 with Treasury (!).

My turn 3: $4 -> Scheme
My turn 4: $4 -> Scheme
My turn 5: finally get $5 to buy a Witch
Not only did Witch miss the turn 5 reshuffle, but I don't draw it until turn 9, the very last card of the shuffle. Only the Schemes kept it from missing this reshuffle.
The next time I draw the Witch (minus the Schemes) is on turn 17, where it again misses the reshuffle.

Other than Witch and the 2 Schemes, I'm playing BM. Was there anything else I could have done?

Simulation / Simulators and endgame play

« on: January 14, 2012, 05:27:43 pm »

One of the areas I feel least confident about my ability to use a simulator effectively is in tweaking the endgame play (ie, when to buy Duchies and Estates). For those that are comfortable using simulators, I have a couple of questions about this:

1) When you are assessing the viability of an strategy, how important is the endgame play, in general? In other words: if I use a very simple endgame strategy for a custom bot and a baseline opponent, will the simulator lead me astray in determining whether the custom bot is at least a viable strategy?

2) Under what circumstances does endgame play make a huge difference? In other words, what kinds of games/strategies require me to get (either) bot's endgame strategy right in order to rely on the simulator's verdict?

Dominion General Discussion / What combos with JoaT?

« on: January 13, 2012, 05:47:08 pm »

I've had JoaT in a number of games recently and haven't had much luck in finding cards that work well with Jack. What cards make Jack stronger than just a straight-up double Jack strategy?

Cards that haven't worked (or if they do, I'm misplaying them):
* Lab. I thought the non-terminal draw would be useful, but apparently not. Maybe the fact that Jack loses his drawing power after a Lab is played is enough to make Jack not useful?
* Loan. Since Jack draws, getting rid of Coppers should improve the money density of the cards Jack is drawing. Apparently not.
* Expand. This might have just been bad draws, but I thought picking up an Expand with $7 would be useful in gaining a tiebreaker victory card towards the end. It turned out that I was never in a position to Expand something without compromising my ability to purchase a Duchy/Province, so I got no benefit from having the Expand instead of a Gold.
* Upgrade. Same logic as Loan.

Game Reports / Governor/Goons/Possession

« on: January 10, 2012, 07:27:42 pm »

This game illustrated some interesting strategic choices.

1) Governor normally is difficult to play well because it gives your opponent a bonus. But, Goons can at least mitigate the +card bonus.

2) On the other hand, Possession loves to prey on Governor decks. Enough said.

3) Goons is typically a great anti-Possession card, but no village-type actions, it's not an obviously dominant strategic threat.

I'd be very interested in comments about how to play this set better, because I'm sure that I did not make the best choices in a lot of places.

Help! / Playing Decks with Lots of Junk

« on: January 08, 2012, 10:35:09 am »

I just finished a game on isotropic with the following cards:

Goons
Ghost Ship
Contraband
Bridge
Sea Hag
Militia
Fishing Village
Hamlet
Crossroads
Cellar

When analyzing this board, I immediately see that 1) the decks are likely to be filled with lots of bad cards (Sea Hag, no trashing) and 2) there is almost no drawing power (only Ghost Ship gives net cards). Based on that, I guessed that the game was going to end on piles.

For me, the interesting strategic choice was whether to go for Goons or Ghost Ship early (we both opened Sea Hag/FV). Goons has the huge advantage of VP chips, but the discard attack is likely to be mild because the decks are so filled with junk. Ghost Ship is not likely to draw into great cards, but it also forces the opponent to see bad cards twice. I made the decision to use early buys for Ghost Ships and then bought Goons later, when my buying power increased. It worked out in this game, but I don't think it was the optimal strategy, and I'd be curious about other opinions.

Dominion General Discussion / Nice Interaction: Potion/Farmland

« on: January 05, 2012, 03:48:06 pm »

I just played a game and noticed this neat interaction. With the exception of Alchemists (and Possession, since it is typically bought very late in the game), most decks that buy potion-cost cards eventually don't get much use for the Potion. Farmlands is an easy way to turn that Potion into a Gold, which either increases your buying power or creates the possibility of Farmlanding the Gold into a Province later.

It's not enough of a trick to be called a combo, per se, but it is a neat little interaction.

Help! / IGG rush fails in a Colony game

« on: December 28, 2011, 12:34:55 pm »

I'm trying to figure out why an IGG rush strategy failed in this game:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/28/game-20111228-092906-bbc7f3bf.html

Key cards: Steward, Spice Merchant, Mining Village, Margrave, and IGG

I opened Steward/Spice Merchant, with the plan to use Spice Merchant to thin out the Coppers in the deck that I would get from IGGs and use Steward for money, or drawing if I needed to trigger a reshuffle. I proceeded to get all of the IGGs and drained the Duchy pile. But, instead of racing for Duchies, my opponent somehow trashed all the Curses and built his economy to be able to buy Colonies. GG.

Is Mining Village-Margrave-Steward really good enough at trashing to be able to ignore an IGG rush, or did I get unlucky/play poorly?

Dominion General Discussion / Wharf engine help

« on: December 18, 2011, 06:10:48 pm »

In this game, I tried to build a Wharf-based draw engine. But, I clearly did not manage to pull it off. I'd appreciate any advice for how I could have done better in this game.

Some comments on my thought process:

I opened Silver/Silver to maximize the odds of having a either two Wharfs, or a Wharf and a Walled Village by the end of the second shuffle. That worked out almost perfectly: I had a Wharf and Walled Village, with a second Wharf purchased on turn 5. I passed on Chapel because a) I've had problems with engines stalling from lack of money and wanted to get $ in my deck first; b) I thought I could get a Chapel later, if necessary. Since I was probably going to have spare actions from the Walled Villages, and large hand sizes, from the Wharfs, I thought I could be likely to get decent draws to trash in this particular setup.

Despite my efforts to not destroy my economy, I still didn't get enough money in the deck for multi-Colony turns. And, I don't know how much longer I could have delayed greening, given that my opponent was up 3 Colonies to 0 at turn 13.

Variants and Fan Cards / Durations that never miss the reshuffle?

« on: December 17, 2011, 09:17:57 am »

How much would it improve the value of duration cards if they never missed a reshuffle? Imagine a rule stating something like, "if you reshuffled your deck between your last clean-up phase and this clean-up phase, you may shuffle any durations into your deck when you discard them from play." Would that justify a $1 increase in price, across the board, for that version of the card?

Dominion General Discussion / Is Governor available yet?

« on: December 10, 2011, 09:17:14 am »

I looked on the BGG store last night and didn't see Governor available. Does anyone know when that card will be released (or if there's another place I should be watching)?

Dominion Articles / Rank the Promo Cards

« on: December 09, 2011, 05:54:30 pm »

I haven't seen a ranking of the promotional cards yet, so I thought I'd start one.

#5: Walled Village

Yawn. Unlike most of the Village + a bonus cards, the Walled Village's bonus is something you don't want to take advantage of. If you're regularly putting your Walled Village back on top of your deck, you shouldn't have bought a village in the first place. It's nice when you get a bad draw, but most of the time there's no reason to prefer this village over the vanilla version.

#4: Stash

Stash's mechanic is a fun novelty, but in terms of gameplay it's only mediocre. Stash is usually just a Silver with the ability to show up in groups. Masters of deck reshuffles can certainly exploit Stash, and it makes the Chancellor a much stronger card. But, your opponent can also take advantage of your Stashes with deck attacks. Stash, like Silver, is usually not a bad purchase, but you hope for more at the $5 level.

#3: Black Market

Black Market adds a lot of variance to the game. If you're lucky enough to get a curser/VP chip/village when none of those cards are present in the normal kingdom, you're in great shape. But, most of the time Black Market is a terminal Silver, and if your opponent happens to get the King's Court out of the Black Market: gg.

In some Kingdoms, Black Market's ability to play Treasures during your Action phase allows some crazy hijinks. Tactician is the obvious example, but cards like like Quarry/Workshop and Library-type drawing also benefit from Black Market.

Playing Black Market in real life does add the mess of setting up the Black Market deck, but overall Black Market is a fun card and a middle-of-the-road buy.

#2: Envoy

Envoy sets the baseline for Big Money in Province games and shouldn't be overlooked in any setup when it appears. Why does it only get a #2 ranking? Well, Smithy is almost as good in most decks. Envoy provides a little more interaction and can sometimes offer difficult dilemmas (do I let my opponent draw the Province and hope he doesn't have a Tournament, or do I make him discard the Gold?), but there's enough overlap between the two to knock Envoy out of the top spot.

Which leaves…#1: Governor

Governor hits the sweet spot of flexibility and strategic choices. None of its three options are bad, but making the right choice in a particular situation requires not only keeping track of your deck, but also your opponent's deck. Gaining a Gold is powerful; is a Silver going to give your opponent too much of an economic boost or will it clutter his engine cards? The drawing option is a non-terminal Smithy, but giving your opponent an extra card is a steep cost. Finally, the remodel effect can create some insane endgame turns, but it can backfire if your opponent turns $4s into Duchies or takes an early opportunity to trash cards.

Dominion General Discussion / Using the Spy/deck inspection power

« on: December 09, 2011, 12:15:15 pm »

One area that my play is extremely weak is spying/deck inspection abilities. I get the basics (use Navigator to discard junk hands and hurry up a reshuffle, discard your opponent's power card with a Spy, etc.), but I'm not good at valuing these abilities on a given board.

I'd like this thread to be a place for people to post feedback and/or example games of how they used spying abilities for a big edge, or how they decided that spying was/was not valuable given the specific kingdom setup. Help me learn to be a better Bond!

Dominion General Discussion / Groupthink with Noble Brigand

« on: December 04, 2011, 09:51:06 am »

Last night my in-person group did a 4-player game where everyone fell into Noble Brigand groupthink and bought out the pile, and then the game got paralyzed. In short, all the Noble Brigands prevented anyone from holding onto a Silver long enough to get to 5 coin. We couldn't figure out an alternative strategy to counter the Noble Brigands and wanted to see if anyone here could recommend an alternative:

Crossroads, Develop, Oracle, JoaT, Noble Brigand, Trader, Cartographer, Inn, Stables, Mandarin.

The obvious choice seemed to be JoaT, but we found that a single player doing even double Jack couldn't generate Silver quickly enough to overcoming getting hit by Brigands three times each turn. Develop allowed you to at least get a Silver in your next hand because it put the Silver on top of the deck, but it usually ended up being a one-shot Silver that required drawing the right two card together (Develop + either a Crossroads or NB/Jack/Trader) and wasn't sustainable. I thought about using Stables (to take advantage of the NB's Copper attack) or Mandarin (for non-Silver money), but couldn't hit $5 frequently enough to develop those decks.

Any thoughts on how to counter a group rushing NBs in this set? Or how to overcome the stall when everyone is stealing Silvers back and forth but doesn't get to keep them long enough to play them?

Dominion General Discussion / Board question

« on: November 21, 2011, 08:51:38 pm »

Earlier this evening I played a board with the following cards: Lookout, Workshop, Mining Village, Bishop, Gardens, Haggler, Tactician, Farmlands (and one more, either $4 or $5, that I can't remember).

I opened Lookout/Silver, my opponent opened Silver/Bishop. My plan (especially after he went for a Bishop) was to thin the deck and get to Goons ASAP, then use Mining Village+Goons to get tokens and win on piles. For some reason, though, the deck never took off. I trashed most of my starting cards, got 2 Goons, then a Mining Village and eventually another Goons, but then stalled. My opponent, meanwhile, bought a Tactician and lots of Gold, and eventually was consistently trashing Golds for +4 net VP, in addition to buying Province/Gold.

After a couple of shuffles of not making it to $6 and only getting one multi-Goons turn, I switched gears to Gardens, Estates, and Coppers when at least 1 Goons was in play. I managed to squeak out a victory only because my opponent didn't buy a single Gardens.

My question is: was it just bad shuffle luck that Mining Village + 2 Goons did not come together? I knew the board didn't have great drawing (with the exception of Tactician), but I thought my quick deck-thinning with Lookout and his Bishop would make that more or less irrelevant. Would this deck have benefited from a Tactician, or should I have done something else entirely?

Dominion General Discussion / Stables vs. Mountebank?

« on: November 19, 2011, 06:14:53 pm »

Earlier today I played a game with both Stables and Mountebank, and no trashing, and afterwards I was wondering if Stables could be a potential soft counter to MB. Stables is obviously not strong enough to avoid MB, but it can mitigate the damage insofar as you will have a number of spare Coppers to discard. The problem is that MB also fills your deck with Curses, so even drawing 3 cards may not be that great compared to what a different $5 card might offer.

Tl;dr: is Stables "discard coin for cards" ability worth $5 in a MB game, where you are likely to have lots of junk in your deck?

Dominion General Discussion / Buying money while building an engine

« on: November 19, 2011, 12:10:53 pm »

How do you balance building your economy while constructing an engine deck? I definitely err too far on the side of "build engine components, then buy money," and I would appreciate advice for determining when to buy more money.

As a specific example, on the board of Baron, Border Village, Colony, Conspirator, Embargo, Gardens, Menagerie, Platinum, Potion, Scrying Pool, Tactician, Tunnel, and Vault, I decided to go for Scrying Pools, thinking that Scrying + Border Village + Conspirator would be a great combo, and Embargo could slow down the Gardens option enough to make it not viable. Game link. While I ended up winning, I was slow to get to Border Village and I'm sure my play could have improved with more money at some point. Would it have been stronger to open Potion/Embargo and then pick up a quick Baron? Is there another strategy that jumps out on this board?

Dominion General Discussion / Cache

« on: November 06, 2011, 07:58:13 am »

What are your thoughts on Cache, after some initial playing time with Hinterlands? If you have a Trader or Watchtower in hand to mitigate the on-gain penalty, it seems like a no-brainer. I can imagine it being useful in a Gardens deck but don't know if it would slow down your rush too much to compensate. Obviously it's much stronger if there are Apothecaries around. I don't know if strong trashing (e.g., Chapel or perhaps Remake) is enough to mitigate the penalty. What have you discovered?