Without a combo, Lurker is a fine-but-middling card that acts like half of a super workshop. In engine decks, you usually want to trash first, then add Lurkers as payload.
Do you still approach it like this if your opponent opens with lurker? I mean, even if they just start with one then they can trash stuff worry free and easily pick it up later. I'm not disagreeing, just sincerely asking. When my opponent gets a lurker, I always pick at least one up to keep them honest, but I'm not sure if this is the right play.
It’s usually worth contesting Lurker to deny your opponent the chance of “saving” powerful actions in the trash. Depending on the board, this could mean getting 1, 2 or more Lurkers - or just threatening to gain one mid-turn.
The first (and more important) is gaining action cards from the trash. Two of them is like a super-workshop that can gain good actions like King's Court and Grand Market.
The second is trashing cards from supply. This gives Lurker decks a lot of pressure on the piles and leads to shorter games that involve dancing around lowered piles.
Trashing cards from supply also leads to combos with cards with on-trash abilities like Fortress, Catacombs, Hunting Grounds, and Cultist. These combos are quite powerful and generally worth prioritizing early on.
Without a combo, Lurker is a fine-but-middling card that acts like half of a super workshop. In engine decks, you usually want to trash first, then add Lurkers as payload. Somewhere around the mid-game, you'll have to make a judgement call on whether the game is likely to be determined by piles or total VP. If it's piles, add additional Lurkers. If it's VP, stay at just a few Lurkers and build a deck that has enough money to buy VP.
A lot of it depends on the board, but a lot of playing Lurker well comes down to paying a lot of attention to the threat of three piling endings.
“Fraction of deck drawn” is greatly correlated with buildup speed. Overdraw with midturn gaining gets that number greater than 1, which is awesome. Having less dud turns is a nice bonus too.
The idea is to see what ranking BMU corresponds to on the shuffle IT leaderboard. The "Big Money Ultimate" account doesn't have a subscription, so it will be mostly base games.
This can serve as an approximate anchor between bot-on-bot matches and the shuffle IT leaderboard. Any new bots that we create will play a number of games against the BMU bot to initialize their expected ranking.
It's easy to underestimate how good trashing a few cards early on is. Translated to coins, I'd estimate a single trash is worth around 4. So, if there's trashing, opening with it is usually a good idea.
Keep in mind the price points you need to hit. If there's Hunting Party, you'll want an early $5 hand. King's Court, you'll need to find a way to spike 7.
In general, I recommend erring on the side of trashing a little too much over trashing too little, particularly if mid-turn gaining is on the board.
The only +Buy is Spice Merchant, so any really big deck is going to need that. With Banquet, you should always have enough treasure if you're careful enough.
I think I would get a Spice Merchant for thinning, add an Archive or two, and then build up an Archive/Crossroads draw engine with Mills and Highways and Spice Merchant for +Buy.
You can build pretty big with Crown and Plunder, but Provinces look like they will run relatively quickly on this board, so you'll have to switch into some of VP rather at some point. Duchies are actually OK if you need to extend the game, as an Archive/Crossroads/Border Village stack can draw through them just fine
What percentage of your rated games do you record?
If you're not recording, do you still narrate your thought process aloud?
When I'm recording, I usually have a reason to. This new youtube channel was created mostly to document the 2017 Championships. Of course, once the channel was up, I uploaded a couple more videos on engine builds and Nocturne previews. I'm often in offices that people are shuffling in and out of, so I don't usually have a chance to narrate out loud.
The 2017 Dominion Online Championships were quite an exciting tournament. With a turnout of 389 players, it was the biggest dominion tournament ever, as well as the debut of new tournament-friendly features on the new dominion client.
To make it far in a tournament, you have to play well. Some games are one from clever plays on both sides. But some games are also decided by P1 advantage and shuffle luck. You need a little luck at precisely the right time, and boy did that happen here.
In the semifinals, I was down 1-3 against jsh357, then won a couple of engine games to force a game 7. I thinned down with Donate, built up a Plaza/Witch engine, and won the Plaza split, partially at least, due to P1 advantage.
Then in the finals, I was down 1-3 against Mercury444F, then won a couple of engine games to force a game 7. I thinned down with Remake/Bonfire, built up a Plaza/Witch engine, and won the Plaza split, partially at least, due to P1 advantage.
Recording of my matches (including the finals) are up on youtube here:
A big thanks to Shuffle IT for hosting the tournament. Another big thanks goes out to the moderation team - drsteelhammer, assemble_me, Deadlock39 and irrationalE.
And finally, a big thanks to the community for coming out and competing, spectating and discussing. It was great to see so many people excited about competitive dominion come together for this event.