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26
General Discussion / Anti-Joke Thread
« on: September 07, 2012, 12:22:00 pm »
So jokes are good, but anti-jokes, well, they're good too. And you know what they say about anti-jokes:  they are a type of indirect humor that involves the joke-teller delivering something which is deliberately not funny, while the audience expects something humorous, and when this does not happen, the irony itself is of comedic value.

I'll start.

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Why the long face?" The horse says nothing because it lacks the necessary cognition to comprehend English. It becomes confused by the noise and unfamiliar surroundings and causes thousands of dollars in property damage as it frantically gallops out of the bar.

27
Dominion Isotropic / Down Again?
« on: July 07, 2012, 10:46:42 pm »
Seems Iso just quit on me. Guess I'll have to go play dominion on Funsockets.

28
Introduction

So you’d like to learn all about the best ways to play all of the various alternate VP strategies? Well too bad. This isn’t that guide. The purpose of this article is to give general guidelines for how to play with or against general alt vp strategies after someone has decided to take the alt vp plunge.

For the sake of clarity, I will introduce a little terminology that I like to use. Every alt VP can be utilized in at least one of three ways depending on the board: Rush, Slog, and Support. I’ll define these and give guidelines for how to approach these games when you are playing these strategies, either uncontested or in a mirror, or how to counter an opponent who does.

The Rush
Common Players: Silk Road, Gardens

Typically, whether engines or big money, you begin the game by ramping up your deck quality and then switching to buying green. The rush strategy aims to end the game as soon as possible, while your opponent’s deck is still setting up.

Uncontested

When rushing uncontested, it is often best to get a large number of the support cards before any of the green. The reason is simple, you are looking to drain 3 piles as quickly as you can. The support card pile is often one of those you aim to drain and getting more of them early acts as an accelerant, letting you drain the green pile faster towards the end of your rush. Keep a close eye on your opposition, however. They may try to steal some of your green. And while you appreciate the help expediting the end of the game, you still can’t give up too many points or else you could find yourself falling behind.

If your rush begins to fail, and things are coming together too fast for your opponent, you find yourself in the position of no longer being able to end the game. Now you’re in bad shape. But the very cards which are good in rushes also tend to be decent enough in slogs that you can try to transition into a new game plan as a desperation ploy. As for how to play the slog, well, keep reading.

Mirror

If you find both you and your opponent going for a rush strategy, you need to rethink your plan. In fact, ending the game ASAP is no longer a priority since you know your opponent isn’t building up to province level points. These games actually play somewhat closer to standard non alt VP games.

Your main goal becomes instead to win the VP split. And if you can sneak in a duchy or two, all the better. As such, you want to start greening much much sooner than if you are uncontested. If you win the split, you find yourself in a nice position and your goal switches back into ending the game soon, since unlike with Provinces, draining your alt VP pile doesn’t end it then and there. Switch back into rush mode and drain those other piles. If you find yourself on the wrong end of the point split, you need to rebuild your shambled economy and hope to be able to grab some provinces or duchies before your opponent can end it. This means that at almost all costs, avoid piles that are likely to drain, including estates. While the couple extra points might be nice in a low scoring game, you are only hastening your own demise.

Counter

Sometimes, you deem the rush support inadequate and opt to go the traditional VP route, only to see your opponent come to a different conclusion. Whether you underestimated the rush potential or your opponent overestimated it, you should no longer play as you would in a province mirror.

For a standard Gardens/Silk Road rush, the rusher will probably have about 35 points at game end. For you, that means about 5.5 Provinces. That’s actually somewhat daunting for many games. However, you could also steal a few of the rushed green cards yourself. Say your opponent’s gardens will be worth 3 points end game and yours will only be worth 2. Well, every garden you buy, that’s a 5 point swing. Almost as good as a Province, and for half the price. The drawback, of course, is that each rushed green card you buy brings the game closer to piling out, which you don’t want until you can secure some more points. It’s a tricky balance and completely dependent on game state, but usually it’s a good bet to steal 2-3 of the rushed green cards later in the game, while focusing on pounding enough provinces and duchies to secure a VP lead.


The Slog
Likely Candidates: Duke, Fairgrounds, Vineyards, Silk Road, Gardens, Goons

Like a rush, a slog seeks to gain the bulk of it's points from sources other than Provinces. Unlike, a rush, however, it does not seek to end the game quickly. Just the opposite, you want the game to go on as long as possible. Either the cards you are slogging with continually increase in value (like Gardens or Vineyards), or they put you in a strong position to obtain more than half of the available VP (like Dukes or Fairgrounds).

Uncontested

Uncontested, you play exactly unlike how you play a rush. Slow the game down. This often means don’t buy provinces, even with $8. Getting all 8 provinces by yourself is quite an ordeal. Unless there is a good mega turn engine out there, decks begin to crawl to a halt once you pass the 5 or 6 province mark. It’s the last couple provinces which are the toughest ones to get, so if you buy a province or two, you’ve made the game significantly shorter.

Attacks are also very good at slowing the game down, particularly cursers and hand size reducers. These attacks tend to hurt the province player much more than the alt VP player.

Mirror

As with rushes, when in a mirror strategy, the main goal is to win the important VP split. Often this means dipping into the green a little early and then working on increasing their value after you secure the split.

Counter

How do you counter a slog? With a rush. Specifically, you rush provinces. But don’t just start buying them out right away. You need a solid game plan. Don’t expect any help from your opponent in draining them. You need to get 8 all by your lonesome. In normal province matches, you end up diverting for duchies once the Province pile starts to dwindle. You do NOT want duchies here (excepting Duke games). Every green card you get that isn’t a Province pushes the end of the game further from you, making it easier for your opponent to secure the VP lead. Keep your eye on the target and get draining. Particularly nice here are end game accelerators like Remodel and Salvager. If you find yourself in a rush for provinces don’t be afraid to pick up a number of these types of cards in the mid-game.

As with rushes, you also want to consider denying green to your opponent. But in this case, every extra green you get lengthens the game instead of shortening it because it becomes harder for you to buy Provinces. So again, you need to figure out the proper balance between denial and game length. Remember to think of each VP you buy as a sum of the points it gives you and the points it denies your opponents. If I only have 2 duchies, I might still buy a duke in the late game, because it’s an 8 point swing.

Support
Works with: All of them

Most alt VP cards are not strong enough to give you the option to forgo Provinces. But even if you choose to pursue a more standard Province based strategy, the precense of alt VPs can significantly alter the landscape of the game by providing support. We can even consider curse giving cards as a form of this. It is important to consider the total number of points available in any kingdom. With no alt vp’s or curses, including starting estates, there are 86 total points. That means once you secure 44 points, you’ve won. But add in even the lowly Great Hall, and you increase the number of points you need to guarantee victory. This does one very important thing, it takes pressure away from winning the Province split. With enough support, you could lose the province split 6-2 or even 7-1 and still pull off victory.

Generally, this benefits engines greatly. Each support VP you add, the more time you have to set up against a big money opponent. As big money slows to a crawl once the green starts coming, you can keep on building up, looking to snatch enough points to close out the win. Particularly nice are dual type victory cards as they do more than just junk up your deck.

Colonies

No alt VP has a greater average effect than Colony and it’s life partner Platinum. You can have 8 point dukes and I’ll stick with my 10 point colonies. And good luck competing with fairgrounds without black market, or Vineyards without a killer kingdom. Colonies beat all but the best supported slogs because there are just so many more points on the board to get. And they beat all but the fastest rushes because I only need 2-3 colonies to beat you instead of 4-5 provinces.

It’s probably best to think of Colonies as support VP. Or at least, they behave that way. Since you add 80 points to the game, you give engines a lot more time to set up and big money tends to fall by the wayside.

Multiplayer Considerations

My analysis is mostly based for 2 player Dominion. However, alt vp can change things significantly when more than 2 players are going at it.

Consider 3 player dominion. Imagine you want to try a rush strategy but the other two players don’t follow you. Now you need to drain 12 of whatever card you are rushing, and likely 12 estates as well. That’s 8 extra cards you need, which gives the non-rushers plenty more time to get their engines together. Now consider the opposite case. 2 rushers vs 1 non-rusher. With 2 rushers, there are only 6 vp cards to get per player. That means the rush is even faster, giving the province player even less time to set up.

A similar thing happens with slogs. If one player wants to go provinces, well there are now 12 of them. If 8 is hard to get, 12 might take forever. On the flip side, if two players want provinces, there are only 6 per player which is significantly easier than 8.

These effects are even more pronounced with 4 or more players where the number of victory cards doesn’t increase with the number of players.

tl;dr Alt VP's are cool.

29
Dominion Articles / Masquerade
« on: July 01, 2012, 06:09:25 pm »

Introduction

I love masquerade. But not because it’s awesome. Well, it is awesome, but that’s not why I love it. The first Dominion I owned was Intrigue. And there are some fun cards in there, but none quite so fun as Masquerade. I would buy it almost every game and shout MASQUERADE!!! and wave my hands in the air upon playing it. Clearly this is a card designed for partying. And waving my hands in the air is about the extent of my dancing skills. Something I’m told should never be done at actual parties.

Masquerade is one of the strongest cards in the game. In fact, the most recent Top 5 $3 card list has it second only to Ambassador. And rightfully so. This seemingly innocent card is, in fact, a powerhouse. People are typically drawn to the card by the neat passing mechanic. However, for most games, the passing mechanic is the least important aspect of the card, though still not unimportant. In fact, if you had a card which just offered +2 cards and the ability to trash a card, it would be just as strong for many games. But the ability to pass does lead to some very fun interactions and the occasional situation when the correct pass means the difference between winning or losing.

Big Money

Masquerade is in the top tier of non-attack enablers for big money games. Well, Wharf might be the top tier by itself, but Masq is surely only a notch below. Both the card draw and trashing for Masquerade are fairly weak, but the combination of the two is what gives it such strength. Normally trashers are poor big money enablers. But the card draw means that after trashing you still have a 5 card hand to work with. Consider other trashers which leave you with 3 or fewer cards. It is significantly harder to ramp up your economy with gimped hands in the early game. Additionally a trasher which gives +2 cards greatly improves cycling speed allowing the card to come back into your deck faster.

Since estate trashing is so much more desirable than copper trashing for money games, you likely won’t need a second masquerade. But adding another strong terminal into your deck is often the right play. Since Masq only draws two cards, collisions become more unlikely than other terminal draw cards. Often in money games with another strong enabler, the correct move is to get both, and usually the masquerade first.

Cursing attacks in particular tend to dominate money games. Masquerade counters them harder than most, so the best move is typically to open masquerade and transition into your curser. Though special mention should be made for Sea Hag, which is simply crushed under Masquerade’s weight. The combination of no early game economy and the decent chance that that curse comes right back to you simply gives the Hag no chance. Familiar is often weak enough in big money games anyway, but it is particularly weak against masquerade due to the curse passing and sheer speed of the card. It is also generally a good counter to Torturer. Take a curse and pass it right along. Though a well supported torturer chain will still be able to give you curses faster than you can pass them off.

One final point, and this is particularly true with Masquerade/Money mirrors, is that keeping an estate either by refusing to pass it or just refusing to trash it, can give you a huge advantage in the end game. You only need to win by 1 point. Certainly in the early game you want to aggressively remove estates but as the game wears on you need to start considering the worth of each estate you see.


Engines

While Masquerade shines in Big Money games, it is darned good in engine games too. Again, it’s not the best card draw, and it’s not the best trasher, but it does both. And the thinner your deck gets, the more often masquerade comes around to play, giving you good deck acceleration. Masquerade is particularly strong as an opening when there are strong $5 engine cards you want like wharf and bazaar. While Masq/Silver opening makes it difficult to see $6 for a little while, $5 is still very likely.

But the card is a double edged sword in these games. As you thin and improve your deck, you start running the risk of having a great hand, only to have a masquerade played on you. So in any engine game that involves Masquerade, do not over-trash your junk. Trash just enough so that you are likely to still have a card to pass on an opponents masq while still being able to fire your engine reliably. Easier said than done.

Special mention should be made for discard attacks. Masquerade has a love/hate relationship with discard attacks. In an engine where both masquerade and discards attack exist, you likely end up having to keep a junk card, even if masquerade never ends up being played. So the discard attack hurts even more than usual. Likely, the best counter to this combo is to get it going faster.

Slightly less special mention goes to cards which are top-decked. Alchemist, Treasury, Scheme, et al. if top-decked too aggressively will force you to pass good cards more often.

Possession

Possession is not an attack. This is because your opponent cannot actually hurt your current hand or deck at large with it. Excepting, of course, when masquerade or ambassador is on the board. Passing is not trashing and it's not gaining. So any cards you pass while possessed remain passed. Now, masquerade/big money is fast, and if there is no good engine, it’s unlikely that your opponent is able to buy possession, play it, and pass enough points to himself before you can drain provinces. But it there is an engine, not buying masquerade is often the safest choice unless there is a good way to trash it fairly quickly. Except, well, masquerade might be the card you need to really ramp up your engine and there might be no other trashing. Then what? Well, buy a masquerade anyway. If your opponent also has the same idea, you better hope the shuffle luck fairy is on your side. Because a bad hand or two can make the game very lopsided. If your opponent does not buy a masquerade, you are likely in a good position to set up your engine faster, and get and play possession first. Then buy a second Masquerade and pass it on over. Note: This is not a good way to make friends.


The Pin

Well, I can’t go ahead and write an article on masquerade without at least mentioning the infamous pin potential. By now, most Dominion enthusiasts are aware that the unique passing ability of Masquerade can lead to a game state where you can trash your opponent's entire deck while leaving them with a 0 card hand every turn. Note that this only really works in 2P games, as you can only trash the deck of the player to your left, while any other players are free to do whatever they wish.

The pin comes in a variety of flavors. The only truly required card is masquerade, but the other cards in potential pins are all fairly specific. Finding specific 3 and 4 card combos is exceedingly rare given the amount of possible kingdom configurations. As such, I won't bother going into great detail but read this post for a detailed break down of possible pin methods.

Regardless of what cards you use, the goal is to reduce the opponent's hand size and then play a throned or king's courted Masquerade with no cards left in your draw or discard. You pass no cards but you do receive a card from your opponent, which you immediately trash. Thus, each time you play Masquerade, you trash a card from your opponent's deck while reducing their hand size by one. Just rinse and repeat until their entire deck is trashed. Also note: This, too, is not a good way to make friends.

30
Solo Challenges / jonts' Solo Challenge 1: Low Point (Finished)
« on: May 15, 2012, 11:27:02 pm »
Everyone is always trying to see how many points they can get. Well not today. Today I want to see how few points you can get.

Kingdom: Gardens, Vineyards, Fairgrounds, Forge, Wharf, University, Trade Route, Feast, Mining Village, Crossroads, !Colony
Conditions: End the game in 20 turns or less with all 8 copies of Gardens, Vineyards, and Fairgrounds still in your deck.
Scoring: Lowest score wins
Ends: Tuesday 5/22 at 6:00 PM EDT.


1st, 2nd, 3rd shall receive 3, 2, 1 points respectively. May the worst player win!

31
Introductions / Ithaca
« on: April 28, 2012, 04:22:29 pm »
Hey,

Figured I'd introduce my self for some easy upvotes just to say hi.

I'm currently a grad student at Cornell University.
I discovered Dominion about a year and a half ago. I discovered iso a year ago.
I enjoy board/card games, baking, climbing trees, baseball, procrastinating, and the Oxford comma.
I play a decent variety of games, but the three I play regularly are Dominion, Bridge, and Poker.
I once finished off an entire giant jawbreaker. I've debated putting it on my resume.

32
Game Reports / Sometimes the cards play you
« on: April 14, 2012, 12:07:13 am »
Sometimes with just the right draws, silly things can happen. I just played this game with Jfrisch where I got insanely lucky, and was able to leverage it into the kind of strategy you just can't plan for. I thought I might as well share it.

With 5/2 opens, we both ignore Mountebank and open Tactician/nothing due to the presence of forge. I get lucky enough to draw my tactician turn 3, buy a forge turn 4 and play tactician again turn 5. Now here's where it gets fun. Turn 6 I draw forge with 2 estates and 7 coppers. Well, after a bit of thinking, I forge everything into a trader. My deck now totals 4 cards, but it's about to grow in a hurry. Turn 7 I trader my forge and I'm off to the races. By turn 15 I buy my 7th province.

33
Dominion Articles / A Primer on Luck
« on: February 27, 2012, 10:40:22 pm »
Luck. Who needs it? amirite?

We’ve all had games where we’re just need to buy that last province to bring home the win only to look down at $7. Twice. In a game with as much shuffling as Dominion, there is understandably a lot of luck involved.

So what exactly is luck? It is everything outside of the control of the players involved. In my definition, anything that can’t be attributed to skill, is attributed to luck. And vice versa. It is often said that good players create their own luck. Well, a more technically accurate way of saying this is that skilled play often looks like luck to the unskilled. I say skilled play and not skilled players, because skilled players are often capable of incredible feats of incompetence from time to time. Also saying skilled players wouldn’t make grammatical sense. Anyway, over a large enough sample, every single person has exactly the same, neutral, luck. If you think others tend to get luckier than you, either you just aren’t as good as you think or you are bad at recognizing luck. Speaking of which...

You Are Bad at Recognizing Luck

The human psyche is wrought with cognitive biases. The important ones for right now though are the self serving bias, outcome bias, and negativity bias. Additionally, you are generally quite poor when it comes to assessing randomness. When taken together this means that you tend to attribute positive results to your own skill and negative results to opponent's good luck. And you will have a tendency to remember the ‘bad beats’ (either real or perceived) more than your own good fortune. And the really cool part, knowing that you have a tendency to do this doesn’t stop you from doing it. Also knowing that knowing this doesn’t stop you from doing this. And knowing that knowing that knowing … you get the idea. You’re still going to do this.

Discerning Luck from Skill

So how do we decide where in the luck/skill dichotomy a result falls? Well, the primary way is through experience. The more familiar you are with the game, the better you get at separating the two. For instance, a new player might complain that their treasure maps didn’t collide. But an experienced player knows that the odds of treasure maps colliding any time soon without support aren’t all that great. However, for a good number of example cases we have basic probability on our side. So we can more accurately assess the chances of certain events succeeding and get an objective feel for some measure of luck. More on that in a bit. First, how do we deal with our fortunes.

Deal With It

If you find yourself in the enviable position of favor with the Luck Gods, how do you press your advantage? For the most part, you don’t actually need to do anything special. Keep an eye on your opponent but keep using your better deck to attack more, build economy faster, and grab more points in the end game. Early good luck tends to snowball into wins. Late good luck tends to just end the game with a win. There are however, times when particularly good fortune presents an interesting opportunity. An unexpected 5 copper hand in the midgame? Buy that Mint and do your happy dance. Turn 3 $7 hand? Expand or Forge could be your friend even if you wouldn’t normally buy them later. Indeed, good fortune can enable strategies and engines which would never be viable normally, but become amazing when just the right conditions are met. Keep an eye out for these.

Conversely, if you find yourself in probabilistic deep water, maybe even before you’ve made a single decision, what do you do? Well, you have a few options. Though keep in mind, if you find yourself in a hole, you probably aren’t winning anyway. Have Fun!

Curse the Fates: Sometimes helps, though often the Fates just decide to screw with you even more. This option is not mutually exclusive with the following ones.

Hope for the best: Especially when there is a clearly dominant strategy, you really just have to hope luck swings to your side. Or maybe that your opponent makes a mistake. Maybe you opponent's Mountebank and Chapel will fall to turn 5? Probably not though.

Try a different strategy: Sometimes there are competing strategies which are viable. This might be a good time to experiment. You could also try a higher variance, high risk, high reward strategy.

Assume Good Luck:
This applies mostly to late game. Figure out what you need to win and assume your opponent wont steal it from you. If you’re trying to decide whether or not to buy the penultimate province, decide whether you need just one or both to win. If it’s both, well you have to hope the other guy can’t snag the other first.

Specific Examples

It would take too much pixel ink to go over every instance of luck in the game. I’m giving what I feel are the most important. It’s not comprehensive so please feel free to add anything you want in the comments.

First Turn Advantage:
There is a lot of debate about exactly how much first turn advantage is worth, and it varies from board to board, but it is quite significant. For reference, my winning percentage in games where I go first is 8.9 percentage points higher than in games where I go second.

The opening split: There is a 27.8% chance that both players do not get the same opening split. (And this is even more exaggerated when Noble Brigand and Nomad Camp are in play). Most boards favor either a 4/3 or a 5/2 opening to some extent. In fact, some strategies are only possible with one split or the other (Mint/Fool’s Gold comes to mind). This means that in more than a quarter of games, one player is given an advantage simply by how good they are at stacking the deck.

Missing the reshuffle (openings): The opening buys are often structured by what you want on turns 3 and 4. but sometimes you never even see those cards until turn 5. The odds are fairly low (26.7% for one missing, 1.7% that both missing) but the results can be devastating.

Missing the reshuffle (general):
In the general case, you want to play your good cards as often as possible. Barring several unique cases, the most you will see a card is once per shuffle. But if a card falls to the bottom of the pile, you miss one play of it. Especially early and with good cards, these misses can have a large snowballing effect.

Terminal Collisions: Terminal collision odds can be found here. In an optimal terminal/deck size ratio, you still expect a few collisions, especially early. If you don’t get them, you got lucky. If you get more than expected, you got the opposite. Congrats.

Turns 3 and 4: I’d recommend reading the forum posts on openings. Part 1 and Part 2. If you open silver/silver, the odds of drawing a $6 hand on turns 3 or 4 is 42.4%. Hitting Gold (or Goons!) is somewhat lucky, but can be hugely beneficial. Additionally, if there’s a $5 you really want, you have a 91.2% chance of getting it. So to open silver/silver and not get your Witch is quite unlucky (and often game over). Opening things which don’t guarantee $2 (Fishing Village, Spice Merchant, Salvager, Loan, etc. ) decreases your chances by varying amounts. So keep that in mind during the first two turns.

The Potion Cards: A special case of the above. When opening potion/silver your chances of missing 2P, 3P or 4P are 18.3%, 34.5%, and 66.3%, respectively. And particularly in the case of Familiar, it could very well be game over if you miss. So don’t do it.

Swingy Cards: Some cards are simply higher variance than others, but can’t often be overlooked due to their strength. Familiar, Swindler, Tournament, Embassy, Mountebank - I’m looking at you. My Mountebank hits 5 for 5 and you get 1 for 4? Tough cookies. Deal with it.

Overpaying: Generally, you don’t want to pay more than you have to for something. This doesn't mean you should never overspend. Indeed it’s often the correct play. But for instance when there’s a critical $5 card, you’d much rather your opening split be 5/5 instead of 6/4. This is also true when you’re paying $7 for Duchies and Golds (usually when you’d rather have a province).

The Midgame: By far the hardest part of the game to judge luck is in the midgame. So much so that I don’t really have any general tips for you. Well maybe this: If you’re building an engine, pay attention to your deck composition at any given turn. What are the odds of drawing all the key engine components you need on any given turn?

End Game: And finally, we come to the end of things. The most obvious and frustrating possibility of luck is failure to draw enough to buy a province. But before you go crying bad luck from drawing a couple of $7’s in a row, consider you may in fact have beaten the odds to get even that much. Check your final deck composition. If your average $/card is much less than 1.6, don’t be expecting too many provinces. Also, if you find you have to spend $13 for a province, you’ve also likely been unlucky.

Conclusions

Bad luck sucks.

34
Council Room Feedback / Expansion Data
« on: February 24, 2012, 02:22:16 pm »
So I haven't seen any mention of this new feature which popped up on my player page. It was really interesting to see that I quite excel with Base set cards and am apparently terrible with Hinterlands.

How are these values calculated? I imagine it's some sort of aggregation of the data on the popular buys page.

35
Dominion Articles / Scheme
« on: January 18, 2012, 06:12:32 pm »
Muwahahaha. Your nefarious plans are finally coming together. The pieces are in place and now it is time to execute them. But wha't this? Everything fails to come together at the right time? That contemptible hero has thwarted you yet again with nothing more than dumb luck and a stupid face. AND he gets the girl. Where is the justice in this world? If only your nefarious plans had been nefarious ... schemes. Then your plans would be impervious to blind chance.


Scheme is, quite simply, awesome. It's basically like the stage crew for a rock band. It's never standing in the limelight, and really isn't anything special on its own, but it works to let the main players do their job. Without it the band has much less time to rock out and compose killer riffs and snort coke and ...i think this analogy got away from me. Anyway, Scheme is very often worth a pick up as it lends itself very well to most engines and can be used for sever very clever plays.

The Reliable Engine

We've all had games where we play a Torturer only to draw 3 Villages you cant use. Well Scheme gives you all the benefits of a complex engine, while reducing the variance of shuffle luck, sometimes to zero. Being able to top-deck a Village/Smithy pair or a couple of Hunting Parties or whatever else it is that makes your engine go is an amazingly useful ability. Almost any engine can benefit from the addition of some Schemes.

Of course, there is a balance to strike. Every time you buy a Scheme, you aren't buying another engine component. So in a sense, Scheme sacrifices raw power for reliability. Normally this is a good thing, but it can be taken too far. If you find yourself returning way more actions than you need to draw your deck or the Schemes themselves because you don't have enough other things to return, you've likely over-invested.

The Non-Colliding Terminals

In Big Money type decks which only buy a few actions, Scheme can, essentially, act like a second copy of whatever flavor of terminal action you're using. By getting to top deck your terminal for use in consecutive hands, you reduce your collision chance to zero (or closer to 0 when you have blind draw). This, however, comes at a price. Whenever you draw your Scheme after your terminal, you only get to play the terminal once that reshuffle. Had the scheme been an actual second copy of the action, you'd have gotten two plays. Over the course of a game, the double terminal deck gets more plays of the terminal action than the scheme/terminal deck. So typically, you favor a second terminal over a scheme.

However, when a card is more important to play early, where the chance of collision is higher, scheme/terminal becomes the better option. Specific examples of terminals which benefit from a scheme include Jack of all Trades, Sea Hag, and Witch.

Particularly Good Combos:

Almost any action in the game could find some benefit from scheme in the right engine. I could spend all day listing them, but I've just highlighted a few particularly interesting or powerful uses.

King's Court - This is definitely the king of Scheme combos. KC/Scheme doesn't actually need any other actions to be useful. KC/KC/Schemex3 lets you start every turn with 9 cards, guaranteed. Though the odds of having no other useful action are slim. Replace that third scheme with, lets say, ALMOST ANYTHING, and you are poised to do some truly ridiculous things.
Outpost - Scheme/Outpost needs a third card to work, but scheme effectively neutralizes the typical drawback of outpost by ensuring your 3 card hand has what you need in it.
Hunting Parties - Hunting Parties let you set up some really fast combos that can reliably get a Province per turn, until, of course you don't draw a Hunting Party. Then your deck with a single gold and a ton of green can't do much of anything. And since you really only need one silver in your deck, there is no lost opportunity cost for picking up a scheme when you fail to hit $5. Scheme turns the already reliable and fast Hunting Party stack into a true juggernaut nearly immune to greening.
Conspirator - Normally, the correct way to play scheme is to top-deck your other actions. In a scheme/conspirator deck you want to put back 2 schemes every turn. This guarantees that every conspirator you play is activated.
Remake - open Remake/Scheme and trim your deck super fast while still building up economy by turning estates into silvers. Then as you transition into an engine, you already have a Scheme to help smooth it out.
Double Tactician - These kinds of decks, when properly set up can do some amazing things and lead to extremely fast games. But if you fail to draw a tactician to play, you can easily find yourself playing catch up. Scheme will thoughtfully place that old Tactician right back on top for you to keep it going.

When Not to Buy

Scheme isn't a card you always want to buy. It's typically a great addition to any engine and can potentially boost a Big Money deck but there are some specific times when you might want to avoid them.

The one true counter - There is one card which absolutely destroys Scheme. I am referring of course to Minion. Not only does it force you discard the nice things you top-decked, but because you are discarding your good cards, the pool you have to draw your new 4 card hand is weaker. Double Ouch.
Discard attacks- While not enough to completely forgo scheme, discard attacks do discourage it a little. First, you don't want to top-deck too many cards because you'll just have to ditch them. Second, you might want to hold on to Schemes when you get hit, but the blind draw on them could mean you end up discarding a better card from hand than what you draw, which creates a bit of a dilemma.
Already reliable engines - As I said before, Scheme sacrifices power for reliability. But when you have an already reliable engine, and particularly when you have engine components at the same price point, you can probably forgo schemes altogether. Something like Wharf/Fishing Village is a good example.


Happy Scheming

36
Dominion Videos and Streams / Getting in on the action
« on: January 16, 2012, 01:13:33 pm »
I decided to record a video commentary finally. You can find it here for now.

First off, thanks theory and WanderingWinder for previously working out a lot of the kinks. Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that.

Second, I'd love some feedback on the quality and content. Also I tried to fill up all that white space on the right but if anyone has good ideas for what else can go there, that would be appreciated.


37
Dominion Articles / Post-Game Analysis Guide
« on: December 12, 2011, 04:20:17 pm »
You just had your hindquarters handed to you and you didn't even see it coming. How was your opponent able to so thoroughly outplay you? Was it luck or skill? Taking a few moments to analyze the game log is the best way to shed light on what happened, but sometimes the sheer amount of information presented there can be a bit overwhelming. With a little practice, though, you can be a pro at knowing how to extract the most information in the most efficient manner.

This guide is aimed at beginner and intermediate players, but there’s probably a little something here for everyone.

Analyze This

How you analyze a game can be quite varied, but it all really comes down to one thing – asking questions, and lots of them. And I guess trying to answer them, too.

The first question you need to ask yourself is if the board is worth analyzing at all. And if so, to what extent. This can range anywhere from just glancing at the log to posting the game to the forum for everyone to discuss. But why might you want to be selective in which games to think about? Well, we analyze games mostly to get better. And you will improve your game much more quickly by analyzing (and playing!) more games at a cursory level than spending a huge amount of time agonizing over each one. The reason is simple; one game of Dominion tells you much less than you might think. There is tremendous variation from game to game. And within each game is a large amount of luck.

Subjectively, you should analyze a board whenever you think the game is interesting. More concretely, you should consider analyzing the game any time you and your opponent play different strategies (particularly when you were surprised by your opponents strategy, or you know your opponent to be better), when the game is close and comes down to some tricky endgame manipulation, if you feel you could have won had you done something differently, etc. So just ask yourself some questions about the game, and use the log to try to find an answer. It’s that simple.

Luck Dragons

One thing that is obvious, but not always remembered, is that the better strategy does not always win. Simply put, analysis has to go beyond 'What did the winner do right and what did the loser do wrong.' Of course, the better strategy does have a tendency to win, but luck plays a huge role in Dominion. One of the hardest things to learn about the game is how to parse what can be attributed to luck and what can be attributed to skill. The better you get at playing, the better able you’ll be to figure out what comes down to luck or skill.

Reassess the Board

Hopefully, before you bought your first card, you took a moment to read the board. How did you do? Did you properly identify the stronger cards/combos? Did your opponent see something you didn't? Did you stick with your original game plan, or try to switch tactics mid-stream? Part of post-game analysis is to make you more adept at pre-game analysis. Re-evaluating the board will give you a better feel for future games.

C-C-C-C-Combo Breaker

Combos are the heart and soul of any engine, and many Big Money boards as well. Part of pre-game analysis involves figuring out what combo is dominant. But here’s the issue. There are a ton of cards in dominion. The more complex the combo, the less likely you are to ever see it again. Combo complexity is a function of the number and uniqueness of the cards involved. And for you real life players, whether or not the cards come from the same set. Highly complex combos often do not deserve the time it would take to analyze them. Though sometimes the really clever ones deserve a moment of silent awe.

Another important distinction to make is between the core combo cards and support cards. For example, a Torturer/Hamlet/Conspirator combo is actually probably a Torturer/Village-type card combo with Conspirator support and Hamlet fulfilling the Village role. When analyzing a game, it’s helpful to figure out which is which. Going forward, you can use the core combos you’ve seen before and then figure out which other kingdom cards offer good support.

Opening Arguments

The opening two buys are perhaps the most crucial buys of the game. The purpose of the opening is to set up the strategy you identified in your pre-game analysis. When evaluating the strength of an opening, ask yourself how effective it was at getting you from your starting deck to where you wanted to go. If you identified a better strategy after the fact, what opening would have been best for that? If you opened double silver and fail to draw 5 in turns 3 or 4, well that’s poor luck. If you open warehouse/lookout and fail to draw 5, well that’s expected. When there is a power $5 such as Witch in play, you typically want one soon. The opening is what gets you there.

The Next Few Turns

Many a game are won and lost before turn 6 or so (sometimes much sooner). As such, the roles of luck and skill can be greatly magnified, and it's important to pay special attention to this portion of the game. In this stage you are still ramping up to your target deck. How quickly you get there depends on luck and buy order. What cards did you buy and when? How about your opponent? Who went into the mid-game with the better deck?

Going Green

After a couple of reshuffles you find yourself in the mid-game. Your engine is coming together and then it smacks you in the face: $8, 2 buys. Do you get another Wharf/Village pair or do you break into the Province stack? The decision of when to start greening is perhaps one of the more advanced concepts in Dominion and the answer is highly board and opponent dependent. Sometimes, your opponent buys that first Province sooner than you’d think. Did you stick with you engine in hopes of catching up while he stalls? Did you get in on the Province action sooner than you’d like so as to not fall behind?
Here is my quick, usually but not always appropriate, heuristic for evaluating your decision to go green. If at the end of the game both you and your opponent are stalling too badly to deplete the Provinces, you greened too early. If you have no trouble buying Provinces late game but are in too much of a hole point-wise to catch up, you greened too late.

Wrapping Up

Usually, by the last few turns, the game is already decided. But when it’s not, strong endgame play is often the deciding factor. Managing piles, duchy dancing, following or breaking the penultimate province rule. A good grasp of the final turns of a game won't skyrocket you up the rankings, but it will let you steal a win every now and again. And that might be good for a few levels, at least.
 
It's Dangerous To Go Alone

One of the greatly underused and underappreciated things on isotropic is that little box at the bottom of the screen that lets you communicate instantly over great distances with your opponent (using what, I imagine, must be some manner of dark magic). Many players are happy to talk about the game. I know I love Dominion, and I love talking about Dominion, and it gets a little sad and touch crazy when my only audience is that handsome fellow in the mirror. One word of advice though, don't wait until after the game ends to start talking. Get the conversation going as the game winds down. That way the other guy won't bolt halfway through typing your well thought out question.

The Rest is up to you

This guide is by no means definitive. And everyone has their own quirks and shortcuts for analysis. Perhaps this guide will serve as a good springboard for thoughtful reflection, but in the end you need to make the post-game analysis your own.

38
Puzzles and Challenges / Exception to the Rule, Part 5
« on: December 03, 2011, 05:26:03 pm »
Inspired by this thread: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1088.msg17400#msg17400

When would you buy a feast with more than 4 coin to spend?

I can think of several, but I'm sure there are more.

39
Puzzles and Challenges / A Riddle in Three Turns
« on: November 08, 2011, 12:43:13 am »
Let's gather 'round and take a seat.
It's time to play a game so sweet.

I draw hand one, what do I see?
There's Coppers two and green cards three.
I shrug my shoulders, give a sigh,
With buy unspent, I draw my five.
And what a sight do I behold,
I've drawn enough to buy a Gold!
But right before the card is bought,
My perfect hand has gone for naught.
This wasted turn I now deplore,
I nary silver can afford.
And second turn ends like the first,
With Coppers played, but undispersed.
Begin turn three and I lose heart.
My deck's the same as at the start.

What happened to produce this show?
For you to guess and me to know.

40
Dominion General Discussion / How often would you like to use Colonies?
« on: October 31, 2011, 05:31:05 pm »
I like Colony games. A lot. Their presence can potentially change the strategy space quite a bit, giving slower engine strategies a chance to get going.

With Hinterlands out, however, there is only about a 15.9% chance of actually playing a game with Colonies. While I'm not advocating that every game should use Colonies, I would like to see them more often.

My poll question is this: Given a full random set of kingdom cards, what percentage of games would ideally include Colony/Platinum for you. In other words, replace the current selection criterion with just a RNG using this probability.

Note: I realize this selection method would technically qualify as a variant. So no, I'm not suggesting Isotropic actually implement this. Mostly I'm just curious.

41
Dominion Isotropic / Mandarin Bug Report
« on: October 15, 2011, 09:12:27 pm »
Just tried swindling a card into a mandarin and isotropic broke. It's probably some coding error in handling the on gain when it isn't your turn.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/15/game-20111015-180747-b3ef7367.html

So maybe don't try swindling things into mandarins. Not that it was actually a good strategic move. I was just curious.

42
Dominion General Discussion / What's your dominion pet peeve?
« on: August 29, 2011, 02:37:17 am »
I thought it might be fun to share these with each other.

My pet peeve, and this is more related to the isotropic implementation of the game, is when my opponent continues to reveal tournaments after I've revealed a province. I realize you've bought 8 of them because they are fun to spam early, but I don't need to know that you drew a hand of 4 dead tournaments. Let's just move on.

Note: If there is a reason to keep revealing them (i.e. conspirator or peddler) then by all means go ahead.

43
Dominion Articles / Combo: Ghost Ship + Fortune Teller
« on: August 18, 2011, 02:44:12 am »
Ok, so this probably isn't the most practical combo in most circumstances, but here's a game I played recently where I used it to great effect.

Having gained most of the alchemists, I was able to pull this off nearly every turn from midgame on. Ghost ship on it's own, played every turn, is a devastating attack. What the fortune teller adds is the inability for the opponent to top deck useful things hoping for a better turn next time, making it that much nastier. I suppose one way to somewhat circumvent this would be to use a victory card as a shield for one other card.  Since they are both terminals, you need a village type card. This makes the combo practical only in large action chain engines.


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