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51

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #1 - Sad Saboteur

« on: July 29, 2011, 01:15:41 pm »

.
Garden      8 x 23 = 184
Vineyard    8 x 25 = 200
Colony      8 x 10 =  80
Province    6 x  6 =  36
Duchy       3 x  3 =   9
Estate     10 x  1 =  10
Great Hall  7 x  1 =   7
------------------------
                     526
[/spoiler]

Well done! I was fixated on using Counting House and therefore needed mid-turn gaining as well as a mid-turn TRed-Trusty Steed to cycle, draw the Counting House and cycle the Coppers to the discard pile again ending up with a very cumbersome solution. Apothecaries was a great call whoever came up with it. I bet this solution could be improved. The Great Hall vs Duchy has already been mentioned. I think you're also missing 7 Coppers as well. Bag of Gold can grab the last Gold and Trusty Steed the last Silver. That should bump your Gardens.

52

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #3 - 3's a crowd? Who says?

« on: July 29, 2011, 12:56:10 pm »

I think I got more actions for puzzle A.

play Throne Room->King's Court->(Tribute, Mining Village) (-1 +12 +6)
play 9 more Mining Villages (-9 +18)

total of 26
Cards in play: Throne Room, King's Court, Tribute

Nicely done.

53

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #4 - Covert Curses

« on: July 29, 2011, 01:11:12 am »

::sigh:: Guess I'm going to have to make it harder.

54

Puzzles and Challenges / Blooki's Puzzle #4 - Covert Curses

« on: July 29, 2011, 12:20:21 am »

timchen the Puzzlemaster, Bob the Village Idiot, Nhu Bi the Noob and Zero R. Hero are playing their first Dominion match. They understand and abide by the rules perfectly, but their decisions and strategies are questionable to say the least. Though you have to give them credit for experimenting and trying to learn on their own. Throughout the entirety of the game, other than Curse, no two players have gained cards of the same name.

After many clumsy turns, Zero R. Hero realizes at the beginning of his turn that he can end the game on piles by buying the final curse although he is unsure if that will give him the victory. You see, this match has reached a curious game state. All four of our players are holding no cards in their hands and have no cards in their draw or discard decks.

Uninterested in such an anomaly, Zero R. Hero proceeds to buy the final curse. Ironically, the supply stacks of Sea Hag, Young Witch, Mountebank, Familiar, Torturer and Jester all remain untouched as they have been all game.

Our foursome then begins to tally up their points only to discover that they've all tied at a score of -1!!! If only our hero could've lived up to his name, victory would have been his.

How is this possible?

Oh yeah, no Masquerade (you're not getting by that gain constraint that easily ).

55

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #3 - 3's a crowd? Who says?

« on: July 28, 2011, 11:39:47 pm »

Apparently, we all forgot that it is actually better to replace the embargos by treasures if possible.

So the better solution would beuse cellar as your third action!

Details:

setup: Bank, Embargo, MV, Cellar, Scrying Pool, Counting House, Mint, Young Witch, black market (with a full BM deck), Contraband, Royal Seal.
The BM deck with the extra CH, SP, etc, should have enough action cards, more than 29 gold+39 silver+8 plat+9 contraband+9 royal seal+1 Talisman+1 Loan+1 HoP+1 Quarry=98 cards.

Start with 4*Plat+Scrying.
Scrying to get 9* embrago, 9*mv, CH, cellar, 94*actions, Venture.
MV to draw 9* banks. cellar to draw the 98 treasures. Venture to draw 8*Venture+last Bank.
Total=(12*5+29*3+39*2+59*1+9*1+9*3+9*2+3+(12+29+39+59+9+9+4)*10+55+36)=2042!


Edit: Forgot Harem. Also the Mint...

The new total would be 2049.

This is brilliant! Awesome!

Is your action/treasure balance in the kingdom correct?

In light of this new development, non-Mining Village actions are pretty much Scrying Pool/Cellar fodder to get as many treasures as possible. Is there any way to squeeze Harem or Stash into the kingdom and still draw them?

And to think, earlier you were calling my number absurd.

56

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #3 - 3's a crowd? Who says?

« on: July 28, 2011, 09:38:26 pm »

Ah. I am really stupid.

Just use CR to draw 4 Platinums. The piles running out are copper and MV. Choosing Copper or Venture to run out should be the same. So the answer is 5*9+1*60+1*9+10*(9+60+9)+55+38-5=982!?

Personally, I'd rather have the last Bank than Copper.

57

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #3 - 3's a crowd? Who says?

« on: July 28, 2011, 09:01:18 pm »

IMHO it is much harder to make puzzles than solving them .

Well I essentially just come up with an idea and solve it as I go along. I think the hard part about making them is making them challenging, but not tedious. I don't like how Puzzle #1 turned out. I'm happy with #2 & #3. Had I not disallowed Philosopher's stones though I would've wanted to kill myself.

58

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #3 - 3's a crowd? Who says?

« on: July 28, 2011, 08:58:59 pm »

Ouch. I know your trick now. Clever.

Now I know part C. KC+CR+any +buy. Play 10 Contrabands and then buy Mint. 1+4+10-1=14 buys left!


EDIT: I guess I roughly have it. Scrying pool to pull 10 MV+9 Embargo+Adventurer+CH+Venture. Originally have 4 Platinums. 10 MVs draw 10 banks. Adventurer pull another 2 platinums. Venture pulls 8 Ventures+1 Platinum. Total=5*7+1*60+1*9+(7+60+9)*10+55+38=957! Oops, did I get it wrong somewhere?

You need one less Copper to avoid 3 empty piles and you have to pay for your Mint. Also, there are better alternatives to Adventurer. And the arithmetic series for your Bank calculation is 45 rather than 55 I believe. But yeah, you basically got it!

Edit: My mistake 55 was correct.

59

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #3 - 3's a crowd? Who says?

« on: July 28, 2011, 08:50:08 pm »

Ouch. I know your trick now. Clever.

Now I know part C. KC+CR+any +buy. Play 10 Contrabands and then buy Mint. 1+4+10-1=14 buys left!

Still have no idea how part B can have such large number...

Bingo! Man, you're good at these. I need to make them harder.

For some reason I was obsessed with using Black Market to buy the Mint, but I guess I don't need to. That frees up a whole card for parts B & C. I expect both answers to improve now.

And part B is ridiculous because of Bank.

60

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #3 - 3's a crowd? Who says?

« on: July 28, 2011, 07:52:57 pm »

I have to give up on part B... your number is too absurd.

While I can improve my solution using counting house or scrying pool, it in no way approaches the number you posted.

Let me double check that the +coin is the number when you only have 3 cards in play. i.e., treasure in your hand does not count.

It appears for me to be impossible, as your number is so large that there must be some setup-size limited effect with a single play of the card (unless it trashes itself). As far as I can see, the above two cards are the only examples.

You're right. My number is too absurd. I had a mistake. I played one too many Embargoes added an extra $2! Will fix that now.

Here's a not very helpful hint: My solution requires 7 different cards to be in the supply and I play at least one copy of each.

61

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What do you do with a Possession + Ambassador game?

« on: July 28, 2011, 07:19:05 pm »

So the question I have is this: In an ambassador game with possession (and no trashing), do you ignore the ambassadors?  Do you deliberately gunk up your deck with green early? 

I wouldn't ignore Ambassadors and I wouldn't gunk up my deck hard unless I felt I could end the game.

I'd aim to get a sizable, but not deck-crippling lead. Making sure I only have one Ambassador in my entire deck and that my opponent has as many as possible after the early-game. Getting as many Possessions of my own as I can (hoping to Ambassador away my opponent's Possessions/green as a top priority). Looking for any opportunity to end the game.

Don't forget to keep fancy little tricks in mind like not necessarily returning your opponent's Estates, Duchies & even Provinces under the right conditions to the supply in an effort to end the game while you still have the lead.

Like I said in the other Possession thread though. In matches between equally skilled players involving high variance power cards, one should expect and get used to being in coin flip situations.

62

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #3 - 3's a crowd? Who says?

« on: July 28, 2011, 07:04:28 pm »

A: I think you are correct.

EDIT: thought of something better.

B: 10 MV+9 embargo+KC+Salvager+Vault, with opponent played KC*6 CR*10, your hand start with 9 horse traders, and you reveal them under opponents attack. You have 5+30+2+9-12-3=31 cards in hand when you play the vault, you salvage your colony in hand. Total=20+18+33+31=102 coins.

Sorry, I changed it to a solitaire puzzle. Council Room was giving me headaches for part B.

Excellent job though finding the key cog to Part A.

63

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #3 - 3's a crowd? Who says?

« on: July 28, 2011, 06:40:33 pm »

Puzzle A

If my math is right, 108 actions.

Using 10 King's Courts, 10 Cities, and 9 Villages (obviously the last two can be substituted for any Village:
KC-KC-KC etc. gets you 19 slots with which to triple an action, which you use on your 19 Village-types for 6 actions each.  Voila, 108 Actions.

Hope you have a Diadem!

Ah, I think you are misunderstanding the puzzle. I'll clarify.

64

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #2 - Confused Swindler

« on: July 28, 2011, 06:15:24 pm »

Isn't it simpler for one player to have a moat in hand and the other player to use a lighthouse on their turn (earlier in round 3)?

Haha, whoops. Reworded.

65

Puzzles and Challenges / Blooki's Puzzle #3 - 3's a crowd? Who says?

« on: July 28, 2011, 06:13:45 pm »

Anybody who has played live Dominion knows how tedious it can be to count Actions, Coin & Buys when you've got a lot of cards in play. So let's keep things simple. 3 puzzles, 3 things to count, 3 unique cards each! It's Blooki's Puzzle #3!

Our Hero is playing a solitaire Dominion game. She has only 3 cards in her play area, each with a different name.

Puzzle A - What 3 cards give her the most possible Actions and how many?

My best answer: 23

Puzzle B - What 3 cards give her the most possible Coins and how many?
For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to say no Philosopher's Stone.

My best answer: 971

Puzzle C - What 3 cards give her the most possible Buys and how many?

My best answer: 14

Hint: This puzzle was designed to be answered in order. Each solution should help you with the subsequent solution.


Acknowledgements
The puzzle has been solved by timchen. Congratulations!
Be sure to check out his solution for Part B below. It's way better than mine.

Deadlock39 has come up with a better solution for Part A below as well.

Here are my solutions:

Puzzle A
Hand: Trusty Steed/King's Court/Tribute/2 Mining Villages (1 Action)

Play King's Court + Tribute revealing 6 actions (-1 Action  +12 Actions / 12 Actions)
Play & trash 10 Mining Villages (-10 Actions  +20 Actions / 22 Actions)
Play Trusty Steed (-1 Action  +2 Actions / 23 Actions)

Cards in play: King's Court, Tribute, Trusty Steed

Puzzle B
Hand: Scrying Pool/4 Platinums (+$20)

Play Scrying Pool & drawing 10 Mining Villages, 9 Embargoes, Counting House, Envoy & Venture
Play & trash 10 Mining Villages drawing 10 Banks (+$20 +$[Bank Value])
Play & trash 9 Embargoes (+$18)
Play Envoy & draw 4 Platinums (+$20)
Play Counting House & draw 59 Copper (+$59)
Play all treasures (Venture pulls 8 Ventures & 1 Platinum +$14)
Buy Mint (-$5)

Bank Value = 10*(9 Plats + 59 Cops + 9 Vents) + (arithmetic series 1-10 is 55) = 825

Grand total: $971
Cards in play: Scrying Pool, Counting House, Envoy

Puzzle C
Hand: Princess/4 Contrabands (1 Buy)
Durations: King's Court & Wharf (+3 Buys / 4 Buys)

Draw 6 Contrabands
Play Princess (+1 Buy / 5 Buys)
Play 10 Contrabands (+10 Buys / 15 Buys)
Buy Mint (-1 Buy / 14 Buys)

66

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #1 - Sad Saboteur

« on: July 28, 2011, 05:37:27 pm »

Your kingdom consists of at least: Gardens - Throne Room - Saboteur - King's Court (though I don't know why this is here, maybe you're working off of an earlier version of the puzzle) - Fairgrounds - Vineyards - Philosopher's Stones - Scrying Pool - Worker's Village - "some other sources of +buy" - sources is pluralized - Goons (see Thisisnotasmile's comment) - Secret Chamber - Quarry - Talisman (how did these get in your hand BTW? Worker's Villages?) - Bishop - Tournament (or did you forget how you are able to have all of these $2+ cards?)

17 Kingdom cards and counting. Do you see a problem?

Okay, let's pare down to what's needed: Tournament, scrying pool, gardens, throne room, worker's village, vineyards, saboteur, secret chamber, fairgrounds, minion. Main source of money will be drawing lots of cards with scrying pool, secret chamber to discard them all for money, then using the get 4 silvers and discard deck ability of trusty steed, and drawing them all over again.

I'd say you've essentially solved it. May I suggest some minor tweaks.

I'm not sure why you would want Minion in the kingdom though. My solution shares some elements with yours, but is different enough. I have more coin, but I run out of buys. In your solution, you can only discard and redraw once with Trusty Steed so as written I think you'll be short on coin. You probably should swap out Minion for Chancellor. After doing that, depending on your final coin and buy count our final VP tallies should rival each other.

67

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #1 - Sad Saboteur

« on: July 28, 2011, 05:25:25 pm »

How about this?

Our villain is so nice that he actually played a black market, putting 2 quarries down. He played a princess after that. Our hero has tons of KC and Goons but for some reason failed to even gain one VP token before this turn. (It is possible, as you can scrying pool all the goons and play other cards.)

Original post says no Black Markets. But if there were, your solution would beat the pants off of mine.

68

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Thought exercise: nerfs and buffs

« on: July 28, 2011, 03:23:26 pm »

I'm well aware of how to use the cards I've mentioned. I think my parenthetical comment made it clear that I was trolling a bit. Again, I reiterate, I am not saying Thief isn't worse than those cards, but rather that as the number of players increase Thief experiences power gains those other cards do not (maybe Cutpurse does to some extent) and I would imagine at least approaches the same tier as some of those.

69

General Discussion / Re: Dominion intrudes on real life

« on: July 28, 2011, 03:18:57 pm »

"Chuck" and "Game of Thrones", eh? Looks like Dominion, after conquering "real life," is advancing on "fictional life" too!

70

Puzzles and Challenges / Blooki's Puzzle #2 - Confused Swindler

« on: July 28, 2011, 03:15:39 pm »

This one should be much easier and less laborious than the other one.

It is our Hero's 3rd turn in what's shaping up to be an interesting 3-player Dominion game in which no players have bought the the same card. Eager to fill her opponents' decks with rubbish in this Moat-less and Lighthouse-less kingdom set, our Hero plays a Swindler only to discover that while neither player neither opponent gains a card from her Swindler! How can this be?

Note: I'm interpreting a revealed Watchtower as a successful gain followed by a successful trash or topdeck. You are welcome to use Watchtower in your solution, but it will not successfully prevent our Hero's opponents from gaining cards.

ElyV already got the solution I was looking for (Minion and Vault are alternatives to Council Room).

I actually really like timchen's Mint solution so much that I'm going to enhance the original puzzle to reflect it. I hope that's alright with you

For all intents and purposes, you have solved this puzzle. Good job you guys! I'm making these modifications for future readers who would like to try.

Here is the full solution:
Turn 1
P1 - Buys Black Market.
P2 - Buys Council Room.
Hero - Buys Swindler.
Turn 2
All players do nothing.
Turn 3
P1 - Buys $4 card off of Black Market
P2 - Plays Council Room, buys Mint, trashes 7 Coppers.
Hero - Plays Swindler.

P1 has no draw deck, reshuffles & reveals her Turn 3 purchase. There are no $4 cards in the kingdom. P2 has only 5 cards in his deck and they are all in his hand.

71

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #1 - Sad Saboteur

« on: July 28, 2011, 02:58:15 pm »

Okay, let's say the hero (looking more and more like a villain...) has gathered the ridiculous gardens deck - (50+ coppers - well, after this turn he'll have 50+ of them), 40+ silvers, 16 or so potions, and 10 or 9 of every other kingdom card than TR (which he has 8 of) and saboteur and King's Court and fairgrounds. So his gardens are worth about 20 each - so about 160 there. Then plus vineyards brings him up to 304, plus whatever number of estates he has. Now let's see how much more he can get...

It goes without saying that he has an enormous number of philosopher's stones with him, worth over $10 each. He scrying pools all his actions in one massive hand, drawing some worker's villages and other sources of +buy. Eventually, using the one $6 card - goons (I don't know how many +buy you can get from <$4 cards), and secret chambering down to just his philosopher's stones, he purchases a bunch of colonies, provinces, duchies, and fairgrounds and maybe coppers, trashes 10 quarries and 10 talismens with TR'ed bishops. (+30 vp) Obviously he wins because his opponent has ragequit already.

I'd have a chain of cards he could play but this margin isn't sufficient to contain it :p

Your kingdom consists of at least: Gardens - Throne Room - Saboteur - King's Court (though I don't know why this is here, maybe you're working off of an earlier version of the puzzle) - Fairgrounds - Vineyards - Philosopher's Stones - Scrying Pool - Worker's Village - "some other sources of +buy" - sources is pluralized - Goons (see Thisisnotasmile's comment) - Secret Chamber - Quarry - Talisman (how did these get in your hand BTW? Worker's Villages?) - Bishop - Tournament (or did you forget how you are able to have all of these $2+ cards?)

17 Kingdom cards and counting. Do you see a problem?

72

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Thought exercise: nerfs and buffs

« on: July 28, 2011, 02:07:18 pm »

Regarding Thief, I think it has the reputation it does because 2-player play is so prevalent in our community. It's a lot more reasonable of a card in 3+ player games w/ few to no non-treasure sources of coin.

I played a 3p game a couple weeks back with Thief and no non-treasure sources of coin except for I think Vault.  Both my opponents went Thief, I went straight Vault/BM.  I got like four Golds thieved from me and still won by a very wide margin.

I'm not convinced Thief is even useful in multiplayer.

I have no experience to speak of so maybe you're right. I was careful in choosing the words 'more reasonable' though. I can't imagine Thief stays below the Navigator/Fortune Teller/Harvest/Cutpurse/Adventurer (lists like these are always fun because we get to see people rise up and defend them) level of usefulness in such games.

73

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Cost This Card #1- Jack's Court

« on: July 28, 2011, 01:57:04 pm »

At one point, I was thinking up cards for a possible Shakespeare-themed fan expansion, and I came up with a very similar idea:

Elsinore
$5
You may choose an Action from your hand and play it thrice.  At the end of your turn, trash all Action cards in play except for Elsinore.

This is just asking for Golem rage.

74

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Thought exercise: nerfs and buffs

« on: July 28, 2011, 01:55:21 pm »

Regarding Thief, I think it has the reputation it does because 2-player play is so prevalent in our community. It's a lot more reasonable of a card in 3+ player games w/ few to no non-treasure sources of coin.

75

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Blooki's Puzzle #1 - Sad Saboteur

« on: July 28, 2011, 01:48:21 pm »

So, let's say he plays TR TR Princess Saboteur (remaining card doesn't matter). That least our hero free to have any $4 or less card.

This is true. Mind modifying it as a spoiler for anybody who might want to solve the puzzle from the beginning?

Also, everyone's totally on the right track to my intended solution.