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Messages - Epoch

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1
Game Reports / Rats!
« on: February 14, 2021, 08:28:39 pm »
I had two fun wins on dominions.games today, both featuring Rats:

First game:  Worker's Village + Pooka + Rats + Transmogrify

I got two transmogrifies and would use them (usually on Rats) to start off my WV + Pooka engine on rounds when I didn't get both a WV and a Pooka in hand.  WV allowed me to keep myself in Coppers to feed to Pooka and Rats, and I could use my Cursed Gold freely and feed the curses to Rats.

Second game:  Hunting Party + Rats + Fortress + Warehouse + Forge

Hunting Parties would seek out my Forge, and I'd forge two rats into a province, pretty much every turn.  Fortress provided a no-risk way to keep the Rats gains going once my deck had been pretty thinned, and Warehouse let me continue drawing my whole combo even late game when I had a ton of provinces -- it was a Colony game, so I bought out all 8 Provinces, which obviously ordinarily slows you way down.

Both were against opponents significantly lower-level than I was, so a more efficient opponent might've prevented these fun combos from being game-winning (especially the second game, when my opponent didn't really contest Hunting Parties at all, which was clearly a mistake).  But my view is any time you can turn Rats into profit, you gotta try.

2
Game Reports / Re: Gardens/Silk Roads/Vineyards loses to... Library?
« on: March 17, 2012, 09:14:37 pm »
Hmmm.  I tried a couple of sample games with FV + Chapel + Library, and it's actually really fast.  I didn't pull any 8 Province in 19 turn games, but I did 20 and 23 turns, and I'm not going to say that I didn't make any mistakes, either.

3
Game Reports / Re: Gardens/Silk Roads/Vineyards loses to... Library?
« on: March 17, 2012, 11:53:56 am »
Well, hamlet goes really really well with library. It's not too surprising to me that chapel+FV+Hamlet+'brary can get everything, fast.

Hamlet and Fishing Village!  That's some sick drawing with Library.

4
While PD isn't a terrible bane, there are no extra buys on this board (except for the pseudo-extra-buy from Horn of Plenty).  If people are diverting a substantial number of $3+ buys into PD, it's pretty weak.  If you happen to get $2 buys (or extra buy-alikes from Horn of Plenty), it's pretty strong.

5
Help! / Re: Winning Without Touching Gardens/Workshop
« on: March 02, 2012, 06:40:04 pm »
If you tune the Monument bot to also buy Gardens and green earlier it will crush the Workshop/Gardens player

Hmm, I can tune them in different ways that play better or worse against each other's strategies.  Like, if you keep Workshop/Gardens the same and let Monument buy Gardens very aggressively, Monument wins -- but that's because Workshop/Gardens currently takes a very mellow approach to Gardens, only getting them after it gets 8 Workshops.  Then tune Workshop/Gardens back to stop letting Monument take most of the Gardens, and it gets better again.  I imagine you could then tune Monument again -- not sure where the equilibrium point is.

That said, I'm not trying to make any terribly strong claims about how to play on that board -- it looks complicated.  But lots of the stuff being claimed in this thread seems just... weird.  Like, if someone's gonna claim that University is a good buy on this board, I want to see something more concrete than "University lets you gain a card and gives you +2 actions so you can play two Workshops."

6
Help! / Re: Winning Without Touching Gardens/Workshop
« on: March 02, 2012, 05:53:29 pm »
I do not believe most of the things said in this thread.

In Geronimoo's simulator, Workshop/Gardens crushes Monument 76-21.

I am not sure that I believe that Village is a terribly good buy in a typical Workshop/Gardens situation -- it seems okay in testing solo, when you're not contesting Gardens or Workshops, but I feel like using Workshops/$3 buys on Villages would leave you behind in the early game if someone else where fighting you for those piles.

I very much do not believe that Universities are a good buy in a typical Workshop/Gardens deck, unless there is an amazing $5 Action to make Universities worth it.

EDIT:  Oh, and I'm not sure in what world "Gardens/Workshop without a Village is fairly slow."

7
Game Reports / Throne Room, Grand Market, Embassy... and Royal Seal
« on: March 02, 2012, 03:00:42 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201203/02/game-20120302-115526-5d31002d.html

Just played a very interesting game.  I don't think that my win was much other than luck, because I didn't actually think of this interaction, but just lucked into it.  However, check out my turn 17:

  — Epoch's turn 17 —
   Epoch plays a Throne Room.
   ... and plays a Grand Market.
   ... ... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action, +1 buy, and +$2.
   ... and plays the Grand Market again.
   ... ... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action, +1 buy, and +$2.
   Epoch plays a Conspirator.
   ... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action and +$2.
   Epoch plays a Conspirator.
   ... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action and +$2.
   Epoch plays an Embassy.
   ... drawing 5 cards.
   ... discarding 3 cards.
   Epoch plays a Grand Market.
   ... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action, +1 buy, and +$2.
   Epoch plays a Grand Market.
   ... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action, +1 buy, and +$2.
   Epoch plays an Embassy.
   ... drawing 5 cards.
   ... discarding 3 cards.
   Epoch plays 4 Silvers, a Potion, and a Royal Seal.
   Epoch buys a Grand Market.
   ... putting the Grand Market on top of the deck.
   Epoch buys a Throne Room.
   ... putting the Throne Room on top of the deck.
   Epoch buys a Throne Room.
   ... putting the Throne Room on top of the deck.
   Epoch buys a Conspirator.
   ... putting the Conspirator on top of the deck.
   Epoch buys a Vineyard.
   (Epoch draws: a Silver, a Grand Market, 2 Throne Rooms, and a Conspirator.)

Royal Seal enables me to turn my first, um, kiloturn into a near-guaranteed megaturn by setting up TR-TR-Grand Market-Conspirator.  This leads to, on turn 18, $40 + potion and tons of buys = buy out the remaining 5 Provinces and a vineyard for the win.

Usually, it's hard enough to set up TR-trees that it's not necessarily worth the effort outside of a deck that's already drawing most of itself each turn.  But Royal Seal, Throne Room, and +buy lets you snowball into bigger and bigger turns.

(NateY, my opponent, was a gentleman and a pleasure to play against, and we had a nice chat post-game.)

8
Help! / Re: Scrying Pool and Apothecary
« on: March 01, 2012, 11:33:58 am »
Scrying Pool: Really great for engines, but you need a lot of ingredients to make it viable, otherwise it's really, really slow. First and foremost you need good action density (either through lots of actions or good trashing). Getting high action density usually means +buy somewhere (or at least virtual buy from Ironworks, Haggler, or something). Money producing actions are usually necessary. Your best friends are cards which give buys and money like markets and festivals. Villages may or may not be required depending on if you want to play more than 1 terminal per turn. You are hampering early game economy so cheap spammable actions are your friends as well. I'm a huge fan of woodcutter in these decks (as long as you have a village). I'd say you usually want to open potion and get 5-6 pools quickly. You will fall behind most big money strategies, but hopefully you can catch up with no problem.

Scrying Pool also really, really likes Cantrips, making Hamlet one of the best complements to SP (+buy, low-cost action, village when necessary).  Pure no-op Cantrips like Great Hall (or to a slightly lesser extent Pearl Diver, or Village if there's no use for the other +actions) are, obviously still no-ops, but if you draw two cantrips with SP, you play the cantrips, get whatever their bonuses are, and dig further down for more SPs to cycle your deck, which keeps you going.  Makes it a lot quicker to get to the point where you're turning your deck every turn.

9
Help! / Re: What happened here?
« on: March 01, 2012, 11:23:59 am »
Except then your top cards (Minion, etc.) just get discarded by the minions. So it doesn't really have much of any use.

Forge is right, but I think he stated it somewhat confusingly.  So how it works is:

Player 1:  I play Scheme!
Player 1:  I play Scheme again!
Player 1:  I play Scheme again!!
Player 1:  I play three Minions!
Player 1:  I put my three Minions on the top of my deck and then draw them!
Player 2:  I play a Minion, you discard your whole hand (those three Minions).  Sucker.

10
Game Reports / Re: Alternative VP Battle
« on: February 29, 2012, 10:56:11 am »
My thoughts on Oasis vs. Silver:  As long as the money density of your deck is $1 or higher, and you always have a useless card to discard,

The thing is, those two things oppose each other.  The higher the money density of your deck is, the less likely you will have a useless card to discard.  If your only useless cards are your three initial Estates, by the time you add three Silvers (or a Silver-equivalent action) and thus raise the money density to $1, and then add the Oracle, you're saying, "I want one of five cards to be an Estate, when there are 3 Estates out of 15 cards."  As soon as your Estates are less than evenly spaced through the deck, that stops being true.  Add a few more Silvers or whatever, and that becomes even less true.  Add a few Oracles, so that you need more than one Estate at a time, and you see the problems with going Oracle.

A deck that's likely to have chaff cards to discard but also have a money density of $1 or higher is one which has lots of chaff, but lots of high-value money, too.  But this is a case where averages sort of fail us.  Yes, the arithmetic mean of such a deck may have an Oracle being worth $2, but what actually happens is that lots of times the Oracle is worth $1, and less often it's worth $3 or $4.  Which is sort of good, but leads to a number of dead turns.

11
Game Reports / Re: Alternative VP Battle
« on: February 28, 2012, 03:38:03 pm »
Oasis is good if you can use its draw or its discard.  It'll struggle to have a higher buying power than Silver in most decks.  Its point is more like "I have a payload card I want to get to," or "I'm going to end with Watchtower or Library or Jack of All Trades to make its discard irrelevant," or "I have Tunnels."

12
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Worst Kingdom Design Thread!
« on: February 28, 2012, 02:24:54 pm »
What's the context for "annoying" here?  Length of time of your opponent's turns on isotropic?  Because, yes, these would make for very long turns.

13
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Lookout-style attack?
« on: February 27, 2012, 05:27:42 pm »
Hmmm, so, this has nothing to do with Lookout, really, but a potentially interesting idea is:

Whatever - $whatever
Action - Attack
Whatever generic bonuses

Each other player turns over the top two cards on their deck and trashes one of their choice.  If the trashed card costs $0, that player gains a Curse.  Otherwise, the player draws cards equal to half of the cost of the trashed card (round down).



So, the idea (no doubt imperfectly implemented) is that the card mitigates the swinginess of its own attack.  If you benefit from the trashing, then you get a Curse.  Otherwise, if you're forced to trash a high-value card, you get a bonus.

Plus: Bridge/Highway/Princess interactions!  In a probably broken way!

Getting the card right would, I think, take a huge amount of playtesting.

14
Dominion Articles / Re: Not Combos -- Cards that don't work well together
« on: February 27, 2012, 01:22:11 pm »
No, because you can't play the Silver and Tactician without a Black Market.  You need a +$ action of some type.

Duh.  Yes.  Hence the entire point of the secret chamber.  Somehow, in my mind, you could choose not to discard the Silver.  My bad.

15
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Lookout-style attack?
« on: February 27, 2012, 01:20:40 pm »
Whatever - $4
Action - Attack
+1 Action

Each other player reveals the top three cards of his deck.  That player chooses one of those cards and trashes it.  You then choose to discard any number of the cards remaining two cards.  Any cards not discarded are put back on the opponent's deck in the order you choose.

The trashing could be good or bad for you, but the other parts of the effect are likely to hurt your opponent, right?

16
Dominion Articles / Re: Not Combos -- Cards that don't work well together
« on: February 27, 2012, 01:14:50 pm »
For the double-tactician/secret chamber thing, you really just need a single Silver, right?  Hardly seems difficult.

17
I don't think you're right.  I think that if, say, a Witch gave Curses that were +1 VP instead of -1 VP, it'd be a pretty bad card.

You're right that the VP swing given by Curses isn't usually the most compelling part of the attack -- the deck dilution is -- but the deck dilution part is informed by the negative VP part.  The $5 Cursers, at least, don't dilute your deck all that fast.  What really slows down Cursing games is the obligation of all players to invest in Cursers that are less good at building their own decks than equivalent non-attacks would be.  And you have to invest in Cursers because you're worried about getting a big negative VP drain on your deck, and the best defense to that is giving your opponent an equivalent pile of Curses.

Maybe Geronimoo can quickly confirm for us, but I think that if Curses gave +1 VP instead of -1 VP, single-Witch or single-Sea-Hag would lose to single-Smithy, and they might lose to straight up BMU.

18
Dominion General Discussion / Re: What to Prioritize?
« on: February 23, 2012, 04:27:57 pm »
Is Gold always better than Adventurer in this case?  With a few Ventures in the deck, I'd have thought Adventurer would do very well.

It is possible for Adventurer to be better than Gold.  It will be if you can reliably play Adventurer when you get it, and when your average money value is > $1.5.  But I'm avoiding it for a few reason:

1.  Venture is essentially "Adventurer, but better."  In any case where you're considering getting Adventurer instead of Gold, you should strongly consider Venture instead of Gold.

2.  There is a possibility of terminal-clash here.  You're opening with a Swindler, and your opponent could easily put some more terminals in your deck via Swindler.

3.  When Adventurer is better than Gold, it's usually not MUCH better than Gold, unless you've done something like heavily trashed your Coppers.  Which you aren't going to do in this game.

19
Dominion General Discussion / Re: What to Prioritize?
« on: February 23, 2012, 04:05:12 pm »
You can NOT ignore Familiar on this board.  You have to open Potion/Swindler and hope that your Potion does not get Swindled.  Then, basically:

Familiar when you get a chance.
Phil Stone if you're at $3-5+P and there's no point in Familiars.
Scrying pool if you're at exactly $2+P
Silver at $3
Tournament at $4
Venture at $5
Gold at $6
Standard greening rules, just using Tunnel for its VP value, not trying to combo it.

20
Game Reports / Governor/King's Court/Monument/Colony
« on: February 22, 2012, 07:01:16 pm »
This was a hell of a game.  I won, though it was close, and I was never sure I was doing the right thing.  Was I?  You tell me!

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201202/22/game-20120222-155824-cceb786e.html

So I went with a fairly straightforward Governor Golds->Provinces strategy, ignoring Colonies for the most part (I head-checked in the direction of Colonies at one point by remodeling a Province into a Platinum, which ended up clearly hurting me).  Got lots of Monuments on the theory that Monuments are undervalued, particularly with KC, but so did he.  In his last turn, I made the nerve-wracking decision to remodel a KC into a Province, and then kept his point differential low by remodeling a Monument into a Duchy.

21
Dominion General Discussion / Re: What is the worst card in Dominion?
« on: February 22, 2012, 06:15:38 pm »
Could you elaborate?  And is it better than Governor with Governor?

I am not WW, but some obvious reasons why Adventurer is good with Governor:

1.  You get lots of Gold & Silver in your deck owing to your Governors and your opponent's governors.
2.  Adventurer can be Governored into a Province.
3.  You can also get scenarios where you might use Adventurer, get a Gold & a Silver into your hand, and then Governor the Gold and play the Silver.  Though this depends on having multiple Actions available to you.

As to whether Adventurer is better than another Governor, well, you can't Governor a Governor into a Province.  So there's at least some call to buy an actual $6 instead of a $5.  And my experience is that typically in Governor games the Governor pile is depleted at some point.

Do you get a single Adventurer over Gold?  Presumably you do if you expect that for most of the plays of Adventurer, your average money value in your deck is > $1.5 (so, say, once you have 2 Golds & 2 Silvers?  11 money, value = $17, average = 17 / 11 = $1.54).  It doesn't take long for your average money value to exceed $1.5 in a Governor game.

22
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cards you only need one copy of
« on: February 22, 2012, 04:22:58 pm »
You could potentially buy multiple Chapels in a Vineyards game which lacked other $2 actions.

23
Well, you can modify it to make it an auto-win for player B if player A concedes: Player B has put a Scrying Pool on top with Scheme (6th card) with which he can draw any number of KCs and Bridges. If Player A has exactly half the points in play and would actually be the 2nd player (win the tie) then that Curse could spell A's doom.

You don't even really need to do that.  Like, suppose that player B really just has the combo right now (plus, well, presumably enough money to buy KCs and such).  So player A goes, "Ah-hah!  I take 1 Curse (now 9 Curses left) and buy 1 Estate (now 7 Estates left)!"

Player B then goes, "Cool, while you do that, I buy 1 more Torturer (which I will put as the sixth card on the top of my deck.  Next turn, if you want to defend 2 cards, you'll need to take at least 2 Curses."

And if player B goes, "No problem, I'll defend a Gold and a Gold and, take 2 Curses (now 7 Curses left), and buy a Duchy (now, say, 5 Duchies left)," then player A goes, "And while you did that, I bought a 3rd KC.  So now my combo is KC/KC/KC/Scheme/Scheme/Torturer/Torturer.  Sure, I can't actually place my second Torturer on the top of the deck, but if it's in the 14 cards after the first Torturer, I'll find it, and now you're not looking at 4 Torturers per round, you're looking at 6.  To defend a 2 card hand, you need to take 4 Curses."

And so forth.  That's without using any card that's not stipulated as being in the kingdom to begin with.  If there is any +buy, or player B started out with Actions beyond the bare minimum needed for his combo, then player A is even more sunk.

24
I suspect that this will be viewed the same as that thief lock puzzle from BGG back in the day.  If someone does it to you, just don't play with them any more.

Er, who do you read as the aggrieved party here who should stop playing with presumably the other person who's being bad?  The positions read as fundamentally symmetrical here: neither player can move the game towards the end without losing.  Neither player can force the other player to move the game towards the end.  Who's the bad guy?

In RL, if this happened, I'd say, "Okay, looks like a draw to me."  I'm just interested by the notion that a Dominion game could end up in a state where the game-theory-correct behavior for both players is "do not drive the game towards completion, indefinitely."  There aren't a lot of such game situations in Dominion -- usually, someone has a path towards increasing their chance of winning.

25
I dunno, unless player A has a ridiculously crappy deck; he should be able to take a curse and then buy at least an Estate to keep in the lead. He should be able to do this enough times to force a win by 3-piling.

This doesn't work in lots of very believable scenarios.

Take the KC/KC/Scheme/Scheme/Torturer scenario.  When Player B has that lock in place, player A is reliably tortured thrice per turn.  That means that if player A wants to take only one curse, he's also playing a 2 card hand.  But he's also betting that his two card hand will survive whatever player B does after the combo.  After playing the combo, player B has a 15 card hand and 6 available Actions.  What if he has another Torturer or two in those 15 cards?  Then player A gets to be Tortured again, and potentially again.  If he wants to defend his 2 card hand (and thus ability to buy an Estate), he has to take 2 Curses or 3, and end up net down points.

Or, what if Player B can just end the game on his turn whenever he wants to, with that 15 card, 6 Action hand.  Player A might not get a chance to ever buy his Estate.

If two piles are already run out (not impossible, given the stipulation that player A has a majority of the non-negative VP in the game), then player A presumably can win by slowing buying out the Copper pile.  But if not, and Player B has a reasonable deck behind that combo, he very likely is going to feel that taking any Curses gives him the loss.

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