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See, here's the thing about Prosperity and Lay's Baked chips. Prosperity has VP chips. Every time you get a chip, you eat a chip. That way, you eat your chips in more moderation than you would if you were buying Provinces. Unless you're playing a Goons engine; in that case, that's where the 80% less fat comes in. It's not as bad to eat a lot at once because they're not as bad for you.
TABLE 1: I started buying Peddlers here way too late. I went for Apothecary starting on T3/T4, but didn't end up needing it. Opened Ironworks/CM, used Ironworks to get Highways and Duplicates. I managed to get two Highways in play and call two Duplicates on a Province buy just as piles were emptying, taking the win.
Did not play tables 2-4
TABLE 5: Here, I used Hamlet and Watchtower to build an engine that turned its wheels and didn't do much else, so I took last place. No one saw Hamlet/Seaway/Madman/Bank. Masquerade/BM would have beaten what any of us were doing, I think.
TABLE 6: I lost because I did not open Wharf. I went for Throne Room-Giant before anyone else, trashing deathwing's Highways and cursing infinitehitbox. Then my Throne Rooms got Gianted and I stopped doing much of anything.
Did not play 7 or 8
TABLE 9: This is really my kind of engine. I built it soundly and won comfortably. Not much else to say about it.
TABLE 10 (Semi-final qualifier): I used Shanty Town/Rabble AND Warehouse/Menagerie for draw, just in case one didn't come together, and Butcher for payload, trashing and buying Gold. I pulled through here just in time for the win.
TABLE 12: Horn megaturn. Watchtower as draw was very tight, especially with little real trashing and opponents' Soothsayers drawing me cards. So I bought Pathfinding to put my card token on Fortress. When I would have dudded, I Lookout-trashed Fortress to put it in my hand on multiple occasions. I tried to improve my Lookouts in the mid-game by setting them up with Scout, but I never drew them together! Either way, I won this one.
TABLE 13: This played like a straightforward Governor game with Count support. I gained several Duchies on the last turn and ended the game in second place.
TABLE 14: I got a slow start to this game as a result of not opening Bridge Troll, but I still ended up winning. Ranger was great help with that; it gave me the draw and last buy I needed in the last turn.
In the final game, the choice was obviously between engine and Talisman/Market Square/Gardens. Grsbmd went for Gardens and Roadrunner and I went for the engine. In hindsight, I wonder if contesting Gardens would have been the right move, because it might have ended the game too fast for the engine to pile Provinces. My engine was worse than RR's because I didn't trash aggressively in the beginning, which made it more difficult to use my Market Squares for payload. If I hadn't acquiesced and greened early, I probably would have gotten third. That brought a lesson full circle from my first game in the tournament: no matter how many players there are, when an engine is the best strat on the board, the player who executes it well comes in first, and the player who executes it poorly comes in last.
) over Skype the last few days, it felt like a good idea to necro this thread.
