101
Game Reports / Re: Piledriving Spoils
« on: November 03, 2016, 04:23:48 pm »
This has to be one of the most clever ways to win a game of Dominion that I've ever seen.
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102
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: Dominion League Fantasy League S18 (5 have joined, how many will also join?)
« on: November 02, 2016, 03:06:19 pm »Is this still happening?
Hope so!
Ok, well then count me /in! If I can't make a live draft (not sure how it's being done), I will prepare a list of all the players I want in order.
103
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: Dominion League Fantasy League S18 (5 have joined, how many will also join?)
« on: November 02, 2016, 02:11:11 pm »
Is this still happening?
104
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Untested and Unnamed Card Idea
« on: October 31, 2016, 05:46:33 pm »
This is basically just a less flexible Capital. I think it would work okay though.
105
Goko Dominion Online / Re: App no longer lets me play games
« on: October 31, 2016, 02:17:00 am »
I've been having the same issues. Tons of different issues with this release that prevent me from playing, on different accounts and after re-installs/even the web app.
It's just a broken release.
It's just a broken release.
106
Help! / Re: What is the stronger plan here?
« on: October 28, 2016, 12:43:21 am »
There's no village and the only nonterminal draw is wishing well. Horn of plenty does not work here, at least not in a mega turn.
You could play some sort of small engine here, trashing down with forager and then using wishing well for draw. But I think big money is competitive on this board as well, playing with courtyards and/or giants, with venture support. Maybe forager is good for the bm player as well if you're going heavy venture.
This is a very difficult board to play optimally, I imagine something in between money and the engine is actually probably best here.
You could play some sort of small engine here, trashing down with forager and then using wishing well for draw. But I think big money is competitive on this board as well, playing with courtyards and/or giants, with venture support. Maybe forager is good for the bm player as well if you're going heavy venture.
This is a very difficult board to play optimally, I imagine something in between money and the engine is actually probably best here.
107
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Advice for Playing Against Stef?
« on: October 26, 2016, 12:43:00 pm »there is a Stef? guy playing on MF and maybe a few more impostors
Wow he has played almost 4,000 games and is only level 29. That's no sock-puppet account.
108
Let's Discuss ... / Re: empires: forum
« on: October 26, 2016, 10:37:09 am »
What others have said is correct, at $5 forum is very nearly strictly better than cartographer. It's a great card in decks with junk, and still a good card in sorta clean decks. Forum as the only "draw" actually works if you've got a bunch of cantrips and a few key terminals you want to play.
The bottom half of the card is important too. Think cost reducers--as soon as you get 5 in play, then you can pile these for free. That's really good. You can also delay your +Buy on boards where it's inconvenient, which can be really handy but usually is less of a big deal.
Also, even if you're going to be getting thin eventually, forum is such a monster card in the early game that I often might pick one up at $5 even if there are other 5's I want. A good comparison is saying that it's the same as the duration of a dungeon. So let's not over hype it, it does cost $5, and there's a lot of competition there, but this is a really good card.
The bottom half of the card is important too. Think cost reducers--as soon as you get 5 in play, then you can pile these for free. That's really good. You can also delay your +Buy on boards where it's inconvenient, which can be really handy but usually is less of a big deal.
Also, even if you're going to be getting thin eventually, forum is such a monster card in the early game that I often might pick one up at $5 even if there are other 5's I want. A good comparison is saying that it's the same as the duration of a dungeon. So let's not over hype it, it does cost $5, and there's a lot of competition there, but this is a really good card.
109
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Advice for Playing Against Stef?
« on: October 21, 2016, 12:05:36 pm »
Play good Dominion. Don't be afraid to mirror. Don't be afraid to non-mirror. Don't panic and green too early or get complacent and build too long. Just do everything right.
110
Tournaments and Events / Re: First Crew Battle Tournament (Signups Here. First 20 to enter are in!)
« on: October 11, 2016, 06:08:22 pm »
/in
111
Introductions / Re: Who is this guy?
« on: October 11, 2016, 01:04:55 pm »Welcome!
Be sure to check out theforum gamesdiscord channel
I'm one of the most active people there lol
That's his joke, he did the same for me back when this was basically my first forum post but I had been active on discord for a month
112
2016 DominionStrategy Championships / Re: Announcing Livestreams
« on: October 10, 2016, 08:57:46 pm »113
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Most complex first game possible
« on: October 10, 2016, 02:48:40 pm »
If I didn't want to be friends with someone any longer, I would put out there:
Urchin / Cultist / Storyteller / Haunted Woods / Tournament / Black Market (Bane) / King's Court / Possession / Transmute / Knights / Young Witch
Urchin / Cultist / Storyteller / Haunted Woods / Tournament / Black Market (Bane) / King's Court / Possession / Transmute / Knights / Young Witch
114
2016 DominionStrategy Championships / Re: Round 1 Matchups & Results
« on: October 05, 2016, 04:25:51 pm »
breppert (SettingFraming) 4 : 2 Feirefiz
115
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Improving my game
« on: October 03, 2016, 12:01:43 pm »
Big money is forced upon you by the board not supporting a better strategy. In those cases simply pick the best card (or cards) that are going to help you hit your number as much as possible, and, if available, prevent your opponent from hitting their numbers. Creating an exhaustive statistical ranking and comparisons of BM strategies would be useful but tedious. Anyways, I just want to add in that many BM that are very good aren't what you would typically think.
For example, Amulet is actually pretty darn decent big money (you want two or three).
Dungeon + Treasure Trove is spectacular big money (you want two to preferably three dungeons, and one or two treasure troves).
And heck, even just triple dungeon is decent big money, on a similar level to Smithy Big Money.
So there's a lot of stuff out there, and there's still thinking necessary with BM enablers
For example, Amulet is actually pretty darn decent big money (you want two or three).
Dungeon + Treasure Trove is spectacular big money (you want two to preferably three dungeons, and one or two treasure troves).
And heck, even just triple dungeon is decent big money, on a similar level to Smithy Big Money.
So there's a lot of stuff out there, and there's still thinking necessary with BM enablers
116
2016 DominionStrategy Championships / Re: Reminder about the Discord Channel (Arranging Matches With Less PM-ing)
« on: October 01, 2016, 10:11:07 pm »Also, if you join, you get to talk to me. How cool is that?
I'm also there, to be offered as a consolation prize in those rare instances when Seprix himself is not there to offer you his words.
It just gets cooler.
117
Game Reports / Re: Change of Plans
« on: September 30, 2016, 05:30:39 pm »
First off: Good call changing plans. Sometimes this is simply the right thing to do
Anyays, I've playtested this a bunch and Trading Post BM is just better, even with all the Mission-Alms-lookout tricks. Vineyards is just never going to happen on this board; the only +Buy is level 2 cities and against Trading Post BM level 2 cities are never going to happen. Thus, the Scrying Pool player has to build to buy Provinces. But this just helps the Trading Post player, because now the Trading post player only has to get 4-5 provinces.
Also, the Scrying Pool deck is really, really bad at holding its green and thus it really has to get 5 provinces to win. And that's just too tough of an ask against a competent Trading Post player (which your opponent was not).
If there was any form of +Buy on the board it wouldn't even be close and SP would be dominant by far. But there's not, so TP-BM is the best strategy here.
Anyays, I've playtested this a bunch and Trading Post BM is just better, even with all the Mission-Alms-lookout tricks. Vineyards is just never going to happen on this board; the only +Buy is level 2 cities and against Trading Post BM level 2 cities are never going to happen. Thus, the Scrying Pool player has to build to buy Provinces. But this just helps the Trading Post player, because now the Trading post player only has to get 4-5 provinces.
Also, the Scrying Pool deck is really, really bad at holding its green and thus it really has to get 5 provinces to win. And that's just too tough of an ask against a competent Trading Post player (which your opponent was not).
If there was any form of +Buy on the board it wouldn't even be close and SP would be dominant by far. But there's not, so TP-BM is the best strategy here.
118
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Improving my game
« on: September 30, 2016, 03:11:18 pm »Piling out: To repeat Stef's advice, never just lower piles for the sake of lowering piles, except if you can end the game that turn. Either they cards actively help you win or just keep buying green instead.
This advice is definitely not universally true. It depends on how safe your lead is, how many gains you feel their deck can do a turn, and long term thinking in general. If you have a lead they can't overtake significantly in one turn, and you don't lower piles enough for them to snipe a one point win, preemptively lowering piles can definitely be an advantage. I did this just yesterday to win a League match over a few turns.
This is true, although rare in some situations you even want to start emptying piles 4-5 turns out. This is most usually true when your opponent has some sort of finicky mega-turn brewing and you have a point lead and your only way to win is to snipe piles. That said, in most cases you probably want to be the mega-turn player here and not the player hoping your opponent stalls long enough for you get the piles empty.
And I think more along what the lines of Chris is saying, yes sometimes if you're just winning by a good margin and their deck isn't capable of much, then you can go for piles a turn early. But you need to be careful about doing so, and often in these cases you'll probably win no matter what you do anyways (as long as it's sensible).
119
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Improving my game
« on: September 30, 2016, 12:54:53 pm »
Here's some quick notes:
At the start of every game, think.
1. Is this is money game or an engine game? I find that very good players get this wrong a lot (by good players I mean top-100 iso players), and even excellent players occasionally get it wrong. If it is a money game, know what your good BM enablers are. Most of this determination happens by looking at
A) Is it even possible to build an engine? This means that there needs to be draw. This includes thinning--it's important to think of thinning as just another means of draw, really. So this can mean thinning and cantrips, or draw-to-x, or of course the normal stuff that increases your handsize (village/smithy variants, lab variants). If you can't build the engine, obviously don't.
B) Are there attacks that can be effective when played every turn the whole game? They help the engine greatly and can often be the reason to play the engine in and of themselves.
C) How fast can the engine grow? If there's no +Buy or gaining, this significantly weakens the engine.
D) What's the engine payload? This is less important than most people would think in terms of the decision to go engine or not, because a smooth engine with a weak (i.e. silver) payload will demolish BM, while a great-but-not-awesome payload (say, Merchant Guild) with an otherwise very weak engine will struggle.
E) Least importantly, what's the BM enabler? I'm not going to list them here, but good, disciplined BM with a good enabler is still a good strategy against weak engines.
Ok, so that's what you need to do first, and I think a lot of people often just skip steps B-D when determining what to play. Also, in IRL games I have a rule where if I'm going to play BM we skip the board because it's just less fun. But anyways.
2. Develop a mental checklist for each card.
Examples:
A) Foretress is on the board, check for my Trash for Benefit.
B) City is on the board, what piles are going to run?
C) Salvager is on the board, ok this game is going to run more quickly toward the end.
D) Herald is on the board, how can I make a deck that will activate them often?
E) Hermit is on the board; is there a Madman mega-turn?
Etc. These mental notes exist for most cards, of course, and you develop your checklists by playing as well as the obvious things. But when you're playing at a high level, you NEVER want to whiff on a card.
3. Of course, never miss forced wins. But don't play for a forced win: play for a deck that has good pile control, and can take a forced win when there is one. This is pretty similar to drsteelhammer's note.
4. Know what your opponent's deck is capable of doing. This is pretty simple, but takes a little practice and discipline. Count their coins, buys, and gains. This will make it so you never give your opponent a forced win that you don't have to.
5. Determining whether to build for one or two provinces is rarely something you need to decide early, even for 2 player games. As you're building your deck you will realize if you can stretch your deck to 16 and 2 buys or if 8 and 1 buy (or 13 and 2 buys with extra Labs for stability or something) is all it/the game can handle. If there's junking and no thinning, though, you pretty much never want to build too long. You want to put pressure on piles, and you want those pressured piles to be colored green.
6. Don't take my free-hand advice too seriously. I'm just recently a top-100 player, and I only started playing Dominion a few months ago. Watching top players play is an invaluable resource, and I know a bunch of people's games have vastly improved just by watching Mic Qsenoch play on YouTube. Something that also helped me a ton is that you can go to gokosalvager.com and search for game logs by, like, Stef. And it's important to not just read the logs (this also goes for watching YouTube play), but to read what's in the supply, and determine your game plan, and then read the log to see where the top players decisions differed from your own. Think critically about those differences, and that should help your game a lot.
At the start of every game, think.
1. Is this is money game or an engine game? I find that very good players get this wrong a lot (by good players I mean top-100 iso players), and even excellent players occasionally get it wrong. If it is a money game, know what your good BM enablers are. Most of this determination happens by looking at
A) Is it even possible to build an engine? This means that there needs to be draw. This includes thinning--it's important to think of thinning as just another means of draw, really. So this can mean thinning and cantrips, or draw-to-x, or of course the normal stuff that increases your handsize (village/smithy variants, lab variants). If you can't build the engine, obviously don't.
B) Are there attacks that can be effective when played every turn the whole game? They help the engine greatly and can often be the reason to play the engine in and of themselves.
C) How fast can the engine grow? If there's no +Buy or gaining, this significantly weakens the engine.
D) What's the engine payload? This is less important than most people would think in terms of the decision to go engine or not, because a smooth engine with a weak (i.e. silver) payload will demolish BM, while a great-but-not-awesome payload (say, Merchant Guild) with an otherwise very weak engine will struggle.
E) Least importantly, what's the BM enabler? I'm not going to list them here, but good, disciplined BM with a good enabler is still a good strategy against weak engines.
Ok, so that's what you need to do first, and I think a lot of people often just skip steps B-D when determining what to play. Also, in IRL games I have a rule where if I'm going to play BM we skip the board because it's just less fun. But anyways.
2. Develop a mental checklist for each card.
Examples:
A) Foretress is on the board, check for my Trash for Benefit.
B) City is on the board, what piles are going to run?
C) Salvager is on the board, ok this game is going to run more quickly toward the end.
D) Herald is on the board, how can I make a deck that will activate them often?
E) Hermit is on the board; is there a Madman mega-turn?
Etc. These mental notes exist for most cards, of course, and you develop your checklists by playing as well as the obvious things. But when you're playing at a high level, you NEVER want to whiff on a card.
3. Of course, never miss forced wins. But don't play for a forced win: play for a deck that has good pile control, and can take a forced win when there is one. This is pretty similar to drsteelhammer's note.
4. Know what your opponent's deck is capable of doing. This is pretty simple, but takes a little practice and discipline. Count their coins, buys, and gains. This will make it so you never give your opponent a forced win that you don't have to.
5. Determining whether to build for one or two provinces is rarely something you need to decide early, even for 2 player games. As you're building your deck you will realize if you can stretch your deck to 16 and 2 buys or if 8 and 1 buy (or 13 and 2 buys with extra Labs for stability or something) is all it/the game can handle. If there's junking and no thinning, though, you pretty much never want to build too long. You want to put pressure on piles, and you want those pressured piles to be colored green.
6. Don't take my free-hand advice too seriously. I'm just recently a top-100 player, and I only started playing Dominion a few months ago. Watching top players play is an invaluable resource, and I know a bunch of people's games have vastly improved just by watching Mic Qsenoch play on YouTube. Something that also helped me a ton is that you can go to gokosalvager.com and search for game logs by, like, Stef. And it's important to not just read the logs (this also goes for watching YouTube play), but to read what's in the supply, and determine your game plan, and then read the log to see where the top players decisions differed from your own. Think critically about those differences, and that should help your game a lot.
120
Dominion General Discussion / Re: New first game engine?
« on: September 27, 2016, 04:04:15 pm »Wait, Merchants stack? So 2 Merchants + Silver = $4? I didn't know that. Suddenly Merchant looks a lot better and more worthy of a card slot.
But it's still not going to be a key card in the first game engine, I think. Just something that's worth picking up on a spare buy/gain.
Merchants do not stack.
"Playing Throne Room on Merchant will give you +2 when you play your first Silver."
121
Dominion League / Re: Season 17 - Results
« on: September 27, 2016, 02:18:30 pm »
I will return next season
122
Help! / Re: Familiar Vs Goons - What did I do wrong?
« on: September 20, 2016, 01:57:32 pm »Does that sim take Pilgrimage into account? Playing against a bot a few times, it seems to really help Wharf-BM.
It doesn't. The sim only takes into account what you see, just what I whipped up quickly.
123
Help! / Re: Familiar Vs Goons - What did I do wrong?
« on: September 20, 2016, 12:12:49 pm »I do not agree. Of course, part of your payload is going to be Golds and Silvers. But there is Peddler and Goons on this board.
It is hard to include Peddlers/Goons into a Wharf-BM deck with no village. Not mentioning that discarding attacks are terrible for BM decks.
The plan seems to get Goons ASAP and then buy Peddlers with Familiar, Artificer and/or Mystic help.
I coded this into the simulator (using rspeer's as it's faster to get cranking), and the simulator says that it's pretty close. I didn't optimize fully, but the fact that's it's close would lead you to believe that there are some situations in which, given the right draws, Wharf-BM is the right play here.
Buy rules for goons:
"Province" if my.getTotalMoney() > 18
"Duchy" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 4
"Estate" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
"Goons" if my.countInDeck("Goons") <= 3
"Familiar" if state.countInSupply("Curse") >= 3
"Potion" if my.countInDeck("Potion") == 0
"Gold"
"Duchy" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 6
"Peddler"
"Silver"
"Copper" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 7 # Ideally I'd also code AND goons in play here, but you're unlikely to not hit 3 late in the game so this doesn't really matter.
Buy rules for Wharf:
"Province" if my.getTotalMoney() > 18
"Duchy" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 4
"Estate" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
"Gold" if my.countInDeck("Wharf") >= 1
"Wharf" if my.countInDeck("Wharf") <= 3
"Familiar" if state.countInSupply("Curse") >= 3
"Potion" if my.countInDeck("Potion") == 0
"Gold"
"Duchy" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 6
"Silver"
"Peddler"
Goons wins 57% of the games here. Yes, discard attacks hurt big money, but they don't hurt junked big money as badly as pure big money, and Wharf's draw is good enough to overcome in many cases.
The presence of Artificer/Mystic would help the goons player a little more, of course, but it would still be fairly close. You want to be the Goons player here, but being the Wharf player would be OK, given the right draws.
124
Help! / Re: Familiar Vs Goons - What did I do wrong?
« on: September 20, 2016, 11:05:21 am »
When I do my scan of this board, there are a few things that jump out.
1. There are no villages.
2. There is no non-terminal draw.
3. There is no thinning, and there is junking
What all of this means, then, is that is basically going to be a big-money game. 1 and 2 alone is usually enough to ensure this, though sometimes with strong trashing and no junking the engine is still the right play.
You're going to want familiars pretty badly, as if junking is there you really need to do it in a game like this. I think Potion/Silver is the correct opening, even though I typically hate doing it. Hitting 6 on turn 3 is great, but it's not that great since they're not going to be able to play that goons consistently for a little while, and goons is really not that much better than a militia here. It's better, of course, but really not by much. Since you can't play multiple, it's just a militia that also gets you a few VP. The +Buy is almost a footnote, since you're not going to be hitting high numbers in this game.
Anyways, what would be my plan for this game?
Basically:
Open Potion/Silver, buy familiars while hitting 3P and you've got a good chance at playing the familiar before the curses run out. Other than that,
3: Silver
4: Silver
5: Mystic, or an Artificer if (A) the average $ value of your deck is above $1.3 or so, or (B) if it's early and the Mystic is going to possibly prevent you from getting your familiar plays in.
6: Goons, probably stop at 3, maybe even do things like pick up a 4th if one is going to miss the shuffle.
Other than that, follow the basic big money gameplay for things like provinces and duchies.
I don't think you're going to do much better than that in a game like this. Big money play requires discipline, you really need to stick to your plan and not do things like pick up an ironworks or a bridge to give yourself the best chance of winning.
Also, as a side-note, no one is talking about Wharf-BM here instead of Goons-BM. On this particular board I think Wharf-BM could absolutely be competitive--you're junked and not thinned so the Goons discard is probably only going to make you discard curses/estates/coppers. If your draws make it so that you're hitting 5 and not 6 in the early-to-mid-game, I would definitely consider Wharf-BM here, even though the downside is that you might draw a familiar or two dead.
1. There are no villages.
2. There is no non-terminal draw.
3. There is no thinning, and there is junking
What all of this means, then, is that is basically going to be a big-money game. 1 and 2 alone is usually enough to ensure this, though sometimes with strong trashing and no junking the engine is still the right play.
You're going to want familiars pretty badly, as if junking is there you really need to do it in a game like this. I think Potion/Silver is the correct opening, even though I typically hate doing it. Hitting 6 on turn 3 is great, but it's not that great since they're not going to be able to play that goons consistently for a little while, and goons is really not that much better than a militia here. It's better, of course, but really not by much. Since you can't play multiple, it's just a militia that also gets you a few VP. The +Buy is almost a footnote, since you're not going to be hitting high numbers in this game.
Anyways, what would be my plan for this game?
Basically:
Open Potion/Silver, buy familiars while hitting 3P and you've got a good chance at playing the familiar before the curses run out. Other than that,
3: Silver
4: Silver
5: Mystic, or an Artificer if (A) the average $ value of your deck is above $1.3 or so, or (B) if it's early and the Mystic is going to possibly prevent you from getting your familiar plays in.
6: Goons, probably stop at 3, maybe even do things like pick up a 4th if one is going to miss the shuffle.
Other than that, follow the basic big money gameplay for things like provinces and duchies.
I don't think you're going to do much better than that in a game like this. Big money play requires discipline, you really need to stick to your plan and not do things like pick up an ironworks or a bridge to give yourself the best chance of winning.
Also, as a side-note, no one is talking about Wharf-BM here instead of Goons-BM. On this particular board I think Wharf-BM could absolutely be competitive--you're junked and not thinned so the Goons discard is probably only going to make you discard curses/estates/coppers. If your draws make it so that you're hitting 5 and not 6 in the early-to-mid-game, I would definitely consider Wharf-BM here, even though the downside is that you might draw a familiar or two dead.
125
Introductions / breppert Introduces Himself
« on: September 13, 2016, 04:08:33 pm »
Hello!
I've been around the Dominion Discord channel a bit lately so some of you know me from there, but I thought it would be good to have a proper forum introduction before I just start putting my opinion places.
I'm a software engineer, have always enjoyed playing probability-based games (though I don't like playing cards games), but have never played any one game too much. Well, until Dominion. A friend who is a good player (but hasn't played much online since Iso got shut down) introduced me to Dominion a couple of months ago, and needless to say I've been playing a lot since then. This is especially true since I started playing online two months ago.
I've joined the Dominion League; I'm in C1 this season and have been enjoying it while at least not getting embarrassed so far (2.75 points per match through 2 matches).
See you guys around, and PM me if you want play a few games sometime.
P.S. I have little interest in the forum games, which seems important to say here if I don't want to be invited
I've been around the Dominion Discord channel a bit lately so some of you know me from there, but I thought it would be good to have a proper forum introduction before I just start putting my opinion places.
I'm a software engineer, have always enjoyed playing probability-based games (though I don't like playing cards games), but have never played any one game too much. Well, until Dominion. A friend who is a good player (but hasn't played much online since Iso got shut down) introduced me to Dominion a couple of months ago, and needless to say I've been playing a lot since then. This is especially true since I started playing online two months ago.
I've joined the Dominion League; I'm in C1 this season and have been enjoying it while at least not getting embarrassed so far (2.75 points per match through 2 matches).
See you guys around, and PM me if you want play a few games sometime.
P.S. I have little interest in the forum games, which seems important to say here if I don't want to be invited