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2326

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Expert Advice for Novices: What did I do wrong??

« on: August 07, 2011, 03:50:42 pm »

Another note on Ghost Ship. There is the chance of it helping your opponent rather than hurting him, especially early with potion cost cards. I'm sure someone has done the math, but there is a not terrible chance of drawing $2+P on turn 3 or 4. If this happens, your opponent can just top deck copper/potion and greatly increase the chance of getting the alchemist next turn. For this reason, I would be tempted to open merchant ship/nothing and then switch over to ghost ship for subsequent 5's.

Also, I can't find the log, but I once played a tournament game with ghost ship. In the mid game, ever time I played a ghost ship, my opponent was able to top either a tourney or province if he didn't draw them together. It didn't end well for me.

2327

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which cursing card to go for (when 2+ are available)?

« on: August 07, 2011, 03:23:35 pm »

Yeah I realize that was the general consensus here, but I find it nice to have data to back up your intuition.

And I simulated your more interesting cases.

Opening Sea Hag/silver and getting a witch at first opportunity beats Silver/Silver and getting two witches 58% to 37%.

Opening Sea Hag/Silver and ramping up to Mountebank loses to just grabbing the second sea hag 44% to 52%.
Then I wondered whether it would be better, if you happened to draw $5 before getting the second Hag, to go ahead and buy Mountebank or buy down for the second Hag, ignoring Mountebank altogether. So I ran the buy rule of just getting 2 hags ASAP versus getting the first Hag and then buying a Mountebank with 5 or a second hag with 4. These two came out tied at 48% each.

2328

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which cursing card to go for (when 2+ are available)?

« on: August 07, 2011, 02:42:18 pm »

I ran some simulations using Geronimoo's simulator for witch, mountebank, and sea hag.

The buy rules were big money ultimate looking to get two of the cursing cards in your deck. Witch and mountebank were prioritized over gold while sea hag was not. I simulated both 4/3 openings and 5/2 openings. Here are the results. Percentages are win rates.

4/3 Opening

Witch beats Mountebank 60% to 36%
Witch beats Sea Hag 52% to 44%
Sea Hag beats Mountebank 56% to 41%

5/2 Opening

Witch beats Mountebank 63% to 33%
Witch beats Sea Hag 81% to 17%
Mountebank beats Sea Hag 67% to 30%

Obviously the presence of other cards will affect what is actually best. But these data seem to suggest that you prioritize witch over the other two no matter the split, while you choose Sea Hag/Mountebank depending on the opening.

2329

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

« on: July 29, 2011, 05:02:26 pm »

I'd like to see some good examples of games in which one player buys a Curser, the other doesn't and the non-Curser wins.

IRL I successfully played counting house against two mountebanking opponents.

2330

Dominion Articles / Re: Request: Golem

« on: July 29, 2011, 04:19:27 pm »

I tried out Geronimoo's very excellent simulator creating a counting house/golem buy order. I tried both silver/silver and potion/silver openings (and counting house/copper on a 5/2). This strategy failed miserably against big money ultimate (anywhere between 15-30% win rate depending on how i tweaked the parameters).

I also tried the simulation with chancellor instead of the first silver and got roughly the same results.

2331

Dominion Articles / Re: Request: Golem

« on: July 28, 2011, 11:17:20 pm »

Correct. What happens is the golem searches the deck for (non-golem) actions. If finds the counting house and then reveals the rest of your deck without finding one. All revealed cards get discarded. You then are forced to play counting house and you've just conveniently discarded all of your coppers which get picked up. As long as you have 8 coppers total you are guaranteed 8 coin to spend.

2332

Dominion Articles / Re: Request: Golem

« on: July 28, 2011, 10:22:16 pm »

It's probably better to try to pull off the counting house combo without the chancellor. The combo will fail if the counting house is in your hand (unless all copper are currently in hand/discard) if you draw it with golem. With the addition of the chancellor, the combo will fail if either terminal is in hand with the golem. While you do need to buy an 8th copper at some point, I think reducing the chance of failure is worth it.