1. I think I figured out reasonable strategies for all of the basic deck types, the basic set ships with, except the one marked "Village Square". There were so many options, I could pick the right one. What's the best strategy? I went with Remodel mostly and really suffered. Is the best three cards to focus on in this set, Village, Throne Room, Market? Here's the list, if you've forgotten the set... http://dominiondeck.com/games/village-square
I'll start by answering your question with a question - have you tried "Smithy Big Money"? Or "Big Money" in general?
If you're new, you might not have heard the term, but "Big Money" is a strategy where you pretty much buy nothing but coins. Whenever you can, buy a province; whenever you can't do that, buy a gold; whenever you can't do that, buy a silver. "Smithy big money" is a strategy where you buy ONE smithy, and the rest money.
These look really simple, but are surprisingly powerful. BM gets you to four provinces by turn 17-18 or so, Smithy+BM gets you to four provinces by turn 14 or so. It is a common newbie mistake to focus too much on all the cool actions and combos that you can do and forget that these decks take quite a few turns to set up. Especially in just the base set, in a reasonable number of randomly-chosen sets, it makes sense to go for pure money plus a small number of actions (so you rarely/never draw more than one in hand at a time) to shore it up rather than trying to get your actions to chain. Sometimes, when you're not sure what to do, feel free to try going for silver, gold, and just one or two terminal actions. You'll be surprised at how well that does, especially against players who get carried away with too many villages.
That said, in that deck, what looks reasonable is festival/library/cellar. Festival and cellar both DECREASE your hand size; festival gives you coins and +actions; library lets you draw back up to 7 after you've played cellars and festivals for coins and not have much left in hand.
I'll also comment on the cards that you picked out as "the best to focus on" at first glance, because they're really not that good.
Village is always "safe" to have - you feel like you always draw a card with it, so there's no harm, right? Well, there IS harm - in the turns it took to buy the villages! Those could be spent to buy things that give you coins, like silver.
Throne room LOOKS really cool - you play another card twice! But with so many things around that give +actions anyway, and without any standout amazing hard-to-get card that you really want to double-play, throne room turns out to be no better than whatever else you have in your hand, and you might as well just get more of other things and not risk drawing throne room with nothing good to throne room. It's a support card for an engine here, but it's not that easy to fit in to one, since early on (when you're getting $4-size hands) it's dangerous to buy it because you might draw it as your only action (and if you're drawing $4, you probably need a silver or two to get you up to drawing $5), but later on (when you're always getting actions in-hand) youre likely to be getting $5 which could be spent on festivals.
Market is good but unremarkable. With libraries around, it's better to have festivals because you'll draw cards with library. It doesn't harm, but it doesn't help as much as you think.
2. I love games with Chapel in them and really prefer dense, tight decks. I get burned with the thief on them a lot, or any game where there's an attack and no defense. Is a Chapel deck not worth it, if the Witch or Thief is in play, and there's no defense to it.
Chapel is awesome! It does carry risks when thief is around and you're going for lots of money. But, in general, it is really good for setting up *any* deck to be what you want it to be, to get rid of those initial estates and coppers as fast as possible.
3. I win a lot with the Witch, but now my wife is learning fast and giving me a taste of my own medicine. If there's no Chapel or Moat, it seems like its a race to acquire and play Witch as much as possible. Does this seem right?
That seems quite right.
Even more so, really. In a game with Moat, it's STILL a race to acquire and play witch as much as possible. When your witch gets through the moats, it's still effective. And curses really suck to have in your deck! And, to make it worse, moats aren't that good cards to have in your deck either. So even with moats around, witch is amazing.
In a game with Chapel, playing Witch more will make your opponent waste time chapeling away curses instead of doing more useful things with his actions. Still good.
Witch is amazing and one of the best attacks in the game, INCLUDING all expansions.
4. I recently played a Lab vs. Chapel game. It was about the most fun I've had. My opponent bought a ton of labs and other cards, I went chapel with just one lab and a smithy and tried to keep the deck dense as I could. I added Great Hall and Nobles at the end, as I acquired Provinces. I won, but barely. I know it depends on the other cards in the set, but in general does a dense deck tend to beat a deck that's wide but has a prolific engine (Lab deck)?
I mean, usually a deck with less useless junk (estates, coppers) is going to be better - a chapeled-away deck with lots of laboratories is better than a large deck with lots of laboratories, but whether it's worth the actions to trim it down and how far you want to trim it down depends on what else you could be doing with those actions/buys. For example, a hamlet-library engine works fine with a large deck with lots of stuff, because you just hamlet it away and library to redraw to find your golds. Laboratory engines, since they increase handsize, are pretty okay with somewhat larger decks. Big Money just needs your average hand value to be above 8, so it's fine with some junk around as long as it's counterbalanced by golds. Other engines (e.g. conspirator engines) really REALLY need a deck to stay pretty trimmed, or if you're going for a draw-your-entire-deck-in-hand-each-turn game you probably can't afford to draw a late-game hand of copper, silver, estate, province, terminal.
5. I find a LOT of games, come down to the last few hands. I run into 3-3 province splits a lot, (especially with my wife or on BoardGameArena). Then it becomes a dance of Duthies and having the guts to buy the penultimate province, and most especially getting the perfect draw on those last two or three hands. Is this common? It seems like one unfortunate draw near the end is often the difference.
It happens. I've had a game end on estates! Where nobody was willing to buy the penultimate province, and then nobody was willing to buy the penultimate duchy (but we had both greened up our decks to the point where we couldn't buy provinces), and two other piles were gone, so it ended on estates.
But it's not just luck. I actually had a game with Jimmm.... from these forums where we had a game like that which he won. If I remember correctly, we both went for money-based decks, but picked different strategies for "a card to keep our deck going once there's lots of green in it." It might have looked like luck - we both went for mostly money with one chapel and one support card, then went 3-3 on provinces, then started buying duchies, then estates, and then Jimm got a few "lucky" hands and got the 5-3 province split, but it wasn't really luck, it's that he picked a better support card and could pull out provinces when I couldn't.
It happens less once you get powerful engines that can draw your whole deck with multiple buys - in that case, it comes down to who can get their engine set up first rather than who can get the last province. But it still happens. It also would happen less if I could just recognize that last moment I could safely buy a province and not have my opponent immediately snatch up the last one, because our decks are filled with duchies. But that's also hard.
6. Isotropic murders me. Murder. Not even close. It's because the sets are so varied and stuff like potions and colonies mess me up pretty badly (not to mention any Saboteur game, I LOATHE that card). I choose "base" as a bias, but often still get cards from various expansion. Also I seem to always get matched with players who KICK my ass...do not want to chat...and seem not only unsympathetic to newbies, but enjoy kicking them hard. I had heard the opposite, that Isotropic was full of great players who not only enjoy the game, but enjoy being an evangelist and supporter for it to new players.
Sorry 'bout your experience :/
I suppose I don't really talk much when I'm just on isotropic, a glhf at the beginning of the game and a gg at the end, sometimes a comment or two during the game if I find something particularly amusing or frustrating. Re: saboteur - usually, saboteur is just a minor nuisance... but if your opponent sets up a deck where they draw their whole deck in hand and throne room a saboteur every turn or something, that is really vicious and shuts you down entirely.
My question on Isotropic is:
a) I had heard there was a way to solo (practice) on the site, but couldn't find a button or outlet to do it. Is it true? How does one do that?
Just click "propose game" with no other players checked. It'll say "so-and-so has proposed a solitaire game" and you'll just get a game with only yourself.
For that, you can also use the controls at the bottom to not just 'bias' the selection, but to specify which cards or what sets you want. (For example, you can select '10 out of 10 cards from Base' to only play the base set, or '10 out of 10 from base', 'chapel' if you want to specifically practice that.)
I know when I started on isotropic I spent a while just playing solitaire games to get the feel for the place and for the game.
b) Is there a way to constrain the auto-match to players of your level?
There is not.
Thanks in advance for any answers and also for reading. I have read the main article on base set strategy, if there are others out there, (or better yet if you've written one about base set), I'd love to read it. I was thinking of writing an article on a newb's experience with the game, not as a strategy article, more of a "here's how to get hooked on a great game" kind of article.
You're welcome, and welcome to Dominion!
If I'm around (ftl or savfan104) feel free to message me and propose a game, we can play and I can try to give you some tips. I'm not that great - I know lots of other people on this forum and on Isotropic are far better than me - but I've been able to maintain a 50% winrate on Isotropic automatch, so I'm probably about the level of those players who you say "murder" you on the site and would probably be able to help you out. (Heck, if you want, message me on the forums and we can set up a time and meet on isotropic, otherwise if I'm online I'll be in automatch all the time. )
