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1026

Dominion General Discussion / Re: THE Dominion Card List(s): $4 cards Part 2/3 posted

« on: January 10, 2012, 01:36:46 pm »

The thing with cross roads & scout is more situational. If you need those cards regardless (e.g. cross roads is the only +action out there and you are playing estate tennis), it becomes a better card.

Of the self-replacing 3 coin or less cards the ones better than GH for a pool deck are:
menage
village (only if you still need +action)
ww
hamlet (only if you still need +action or +buy)
oasis
warehouse
scheme
pawn

argueably:
pearl diver

sure, most all of those are likely better with pool decks, but my criteria was better than silver and GH has a number of times where it is most likely a better addition to your deck than silver.

As I said, I doubt this changes the rankings, but there are situational uses for GH and I think it earns it middling ranking honestly.

1027

Dominion Articles / Re: Seaside: Treasure Map

« on: January 10, 2012, 01:16:10 pm »

Another good combo card is salvager. It clears outs estates & the odd copper, improving your odds of hitting both maps. Also, if you can get it in the 4 gold turn (either by using a haven-like effect or by just having enough salvagers), you can move from 12 coin & 1 buy to 15 coin & 2 buys allowing for either an immediate province & duchy buy or to buy any engine card. I also find that salvaging the golds/provinces can quickly push to endgame.

One of my favourite enabling cards is apprentice. It trashes to improve map odds and as a non-terminal draw it allows for easy treasure map pairing. Further, when you trash a gold/province, you can easily draw your whole deck and play +buys to utilize your gold for multiple big purchases.

There is a really easy way to pair up treasure maps - abuse an inn right before a reshuffle. On the last turn before a shuffle, buy an inn. Now pull your two treasure maps out of the discard & shuffle them into the deck. For the trivial case, you could have 3 cards in the deck and pull 2 maps out of the discard.

Optimally  this would be: open whatever/map, on turn 3, buy a second map. On turn 4 you should have 5 cards in hand, 2 in deck, and 6 cards in the discard (which must include one map). You have a 5/12 chance that your first map is in your hand and a 7/12 chance that it is in the discard or the deck. In either of the latter cases, you can buy an inn (assuming you have 5 coin) and then pull the map(s) out and shuffle them into your deck. Turn 5 cash in the maps. This idiotically quick treasure map also fails if you don't hit 4 coin on turn 3 or 5 coin on turn 4, get hit by a minion on turn 5, or are forced to reshuffle early (spy, governor, council room, thief, etc.). If you do miss, you can just buy a different 5 and then try your luck with 2 maps in deck or buy an inn just prior to the next shuffle. Inn/treasure map should also combo well with chancellor - place your entire deck (including two treasure maps) into the discard, then buy an inn, pull the maps from the discard into the deck, shuffle the deck consisting of nothing but maps & other actions you'd like, and then trash the maps next shuffle.

Another way to get maps to hit without a lot of dead time is to acquire & draw the maps at the same time. For instance, a TR/upgrade deck can churn estates to silvers, buy TR/upgrade/draw, and trash out the coppers. With this setup you can then upgrade silvers to maps and every card in your deck is essentially self-replacing (TR/upgrade giving +2 actions and +2 cards, and any single draw card or TR/Draw uses at most one action). Once you hit, you can upgrade upgrades into golds or TR into duchies. In general, if you can acquire, draw & play cards in the same turn, treasure map is an extremely powerful way to cash that combo out. Even something like TR/council room/IW can manage an easy shot pairing the maps up.

1028

Dominion General Discussion / Re: THE Dominion Card List(s): $4 cards Part 2/3 posted

« on: January 09, 2012, 04:25:53 pm »

One note I'd correct on the list: Great Hall has several cards other than IW that it pairs up well with; I doubt it changes rankings a whit, but it can be better than silver pretty early with some of the following combos:
Scrying pool: GH is a free net card, given the shortage of 3 coin self-replacing cards this often the best 3 coin buy in a scrying pool game
Scout: See scrying pool; though scout tends to lack the drawing power to make even GH/Scout viable on its own.
Crossroads: Another free + card, but it can also be used multiple times
Cartographer/Apothecary (Spy/Pearl Diver/etc).: When you know you can control the top of your deck, GH can be a cheap way to draw your next engine card into hand and leave your cartographers and apothecaries to dig deeper into the deck, again most any self replacing card will work here, but again there are very few that are as cheap as GH.

On a larger note, in 2 player GH is a quick pile to empty for your third pile. It's cheap and it only takes 8 buys.

1029

Dominion Articles / Re: Alchemy: Apothecary 2.2

« on: January 09, 2012, 01:07:39 pm »

WW: I realize that apothecary may more likely to be hit due to reshuffle dynamics, but I also see where you can swindle an awful lot more if you can churn with apothecaries, I mean you are starting on off with an expected +3.66 cards per apothecary (1 native and 4 chances at 8/12). I also realize that curses aren't so nasty in an apothecary deck if you can deal with them at all. Apothecaries greatly increase the odds that you can chain actions, draw curses when you already have 8 coin, etc. This ignores options like farming village which also make it more resiliant.

Is apothecary more vulnerable to swindler than other attacks? Yes. Is it the best attack against apothecary? Probably (sea hag is also pretty vicious in its placement). Is swindler more damaging to apothecary decks than others? Some, yes losing coppers (the most likely hit early game) hurts more, but once the curse stack is gone there are very few cards that swindling will hurt. Compare that to chapel/action decks and it tends not to look so bad.  Will it stop an apothecary deck cold? Not so much.  Apothecary decks are among the best for dealing with curses and also allow quick cycling of your own swindlers.

1030

Dominion Articles / Re: Alchemy: Apothecary 2.2

« on: January 09, 2012, 09:28:53 am »

I'm not sure I'd call swindler the silver bullet.

Sure, you lose coppers and gain curses, but: unlike a lot of action cards apothecary is immune to being swindled itself. We all know how much it hurts to have engine cards get swindled into something useless (duchy, garden, chancellor), but apothecary can only be swindled into a university. This leaves you immune (up until the apothecaries run out of the supply) to losing engine cards.

As far as the actual damage from swindled cards there are three responses - buy more copper, deplete the curse pile yourself, and use the top deck control to deal with the curses. If you have +buy, coppers can be bought to keep the engine alive. Once the curses are gone, swindler will very kindly force them back into coppers; for this reason I like going swindler/potion - we most likely split the curses, but if my opponent doesn't have apothecaries I can muck up his engine cards (or duchies) pretty much the whole game while he eventually risks a 1 VP swing every time he swindles me. Better still you can play much safer with things like witch when running apothecary. The odds of dead drawing a second witch are pretty low and you can often set up when to pull through rabble-junk and when to draw terminals. Also, top deck control lets you deal with curses in a surprisingly effective manner - NV, assured draw off an upgrade, and easy mass forge of doom.

I'd also consider expanding to 4 types of engines, the fourth being megaturn play. Coppersmith + apothecary + buy can be strong with no other engine components, with a cheap village, like hamlet/CS/Apoth, CS/Apoth can set up some amazing megaturns with just copper. Secret chamber and vault can allow individual coppers to be drawn/discarded multiple times (e.g. apoth/village/sc/apoth can use just 6 coppers to hit 12 coin). Because this is setting up for multiple province or colony buys, deck clogging is not as much of an issue and the tempo is very different from a cycling deck.

1031

Dominion General Discussion / Re: stockpiling on trash for benefit cards

« on: January 07, 2012, 09:01:06 am »

I can only think of 5 times I have intentionally "spammed" trash for benefit.
1. Apprentice. +1 action and the ability to spam draw cards means that multiples of this are not dead, but that late game +5 cards can either enable mega turns or allow me to drag a dying deck along for just one more province/duchy. The key here is +buy and a reasonable way to build value. Common enablers are things like hoard, highway, bridge, transmute, crossroads, ironworks, haggler, etc.
2. Upgrade spam. I don't think I have come across a case where upgrade is good and where more upgrades aren't better. You can use them to trash out garbage quickly with no collision worries and only play an effective -1 card when you do. Once you have taken out the trash you can either start in on the silvers (normally upgraded estates) making throne rooms, spies, or such ... or you can start trashing upgrades with upgrades (I'm a huge fan or trashing them for nobles, harems, massable goons, and border villages - the last being perfectly fine to do for upgrade an upgrade -> BV + upgrade sometimes).
3. Transmute is a difficult card, it is a pretty poor trasher and it is so very slow. That being said, when it is worth it (e.g. venture) I normally end up spamming the buggers. While slow, I can get some gold and then turn the coppers into "potential duchies". This is rather powerful late game when there is no other way to hit duchies. Also this is extremely good in a duke game where you can buy silver (or even copper) after you have done a quick duchy rush to help empty out the duke pile and crunch coppers (and later anything) to empty out the transmutes.
4. Scrying pool. If there is nothing else good in the 3/4 range I may gain a bunch of trash for benefits. Getting rid of coppers & estates means I can keep drawing. Something like village/transmute/secret chamber means that mostly useless transmutes make for cards I can draw/discard multiple times and late game maybe burn into multiple duchies.
5. Border village. Remodel a remodel to a border village and a strong 5. This adds +action to my deck and gets me a five I may want more than gold e.g. minion.

Most of the other trash for benefits situations stall out if you overbuy. Sure I'll double up on expand or remodel, but if you go heavy enough you:
A. lack support cards
B. don't get to thin out your deck
C. have triple collisions - remodel/remodel kinda works, but remodel/remodel/remodel leaves you with a dead 2 card hand.
D. May delay effective game end - one of the charms of cash for benefit is that you can hit provinces to speed up endgame and diminish the points left the other player can nab. I.e. If I'm holding province/silver/silver/copper/remodel I can buy a duchy and trash a province into a province. If I'm holding province/silver/copper/remodel/remodel I can remodel a remodel into a duchy xor a province into a province.

Long story short - generally stockpiling trash for benefit isn't good without high +actions (either on the specific cards or in your deck) or a special mechanic (transmute a copper -> transmute, transmute a transmute to a duchy; scrying pool & actions) that makes the cards valuable in a way that estates & coppers are not.

1032

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Epic Cursing

« on: December 20, 2011, 02:46:14 pm »

Great puzzle. But you get 3 curses by yourself. Counter question:
"What single card gives out the most curses not affecting yourself and how is this accomplished?"
(King's Court a Witch doesn't count, because these are two cards)

I get 2 curses in a 2-player game and 9 curses in a 4-player game too

I see several possibles:
Play a +buy (say bridge), buy 2 IGG
Play haggler, buy BV, gain 2 IGG
Remake two things into IGG
Thief & gain two IGG

1033

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Farmland vs Silver

« on: December 20, 2011, 08:44:23 am »

I think the big thing people are missing is that green decks are not as nasty as they used to be. Back in early dominion, sure a deck full of green was pretty weak - the only thing to do with it was remodel it and that was horridly inefficient (duchy/garden -> gold -> province) and the only card with anything like green synergy was garden. Now every expansion has some better way to trash high value cards for benefit, some green synergy, or both. Without buys scout/cross roads loves a fat green deck and farmland is an excellent way to covert dead copper into engine turning green. Salvager doesn't care what it eats, so go for it if you have the odds. May as well get +2 coin onto something else rather than buy a gold never to use.

I mean take just one quick & dirty combo - bishop. With bishop you can trash down to a 5 card hand pretty easy (particularly if your opponent is also using a bishop or you have some other trashing in the mix). Your goal hand is Bishop/silver/gold/two other cards. Your play is to bishop one of your other cards, buy a farmlands & remodel the last card to anything that cost +2 coin. Your next hand - bishop the other card, buy a farmland & remodel the old farmland to a province. Every turn from then on, you gain 5 points and have a residual 6 points in VP.

Now every board won't be setup for using green cards, but enough of them are that farmlands is not a bad play. I mean Hinterlands, in particular is a great set for green cards. Develop, Oasis, Oracle, Scheme, JOAT, Crossroads, Silk Road, Trader, Cartographer, Haggler, IGG, Inn, and Mandarin all work better than BMU with green cards, often by a lot. Farmland is a decent enough card that seems quite well balanced once you consider the full mix of cards out there.

1034

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Farmland vs Silver

« on: December 19, 2011, 01:38:54 pm »

For a start, farmland works well with green friendly cards - silk road, scout, farming village, cross roads, hoard, venture, adventurer, etc. Where a silver isn't that great or may even clog things up (if I'm running a lean venture deck I don't want silvers stopping my venture chains early).

For a bigger thing, don't overlook the value of trashing estates & coppers for better cards. Strong 2's & 4's make farmlands much more valuable (for instance getting a village out of an estate and having province bait in deck can be quite helpful). Or consider a swindler game, buying farmland lets me turn my 4th chancellor (in a no +actions game) into something useful (like a royal seal) and if my opponent swindles the farmland I don't care - he can only give me something better.



Other concerns:
Silver is vulnerable to thief, noble brigand, and ghost ship while farmland is not.

Farmland can be fed to something else next turn (e.g. a salvager) while also allowing the remodeling of another card. E.g. buy farmland, turn a village into a festival ... apprentice a farmland for six cards. This is almost strictly better than gold if you are certain of trashing your 6 coin purchase for benefit instead of playing it.

Bridges, highways, etc. can allow for fun hijinx - eg. a TR/Bridge lets you turn coppers into TR. It is also a good bit easier to get farmland down to marginal prices and spam it.

Farmland can work well as a late game tie breaker - a hand of S, S, S, G, Estate can become +8 points instead of +6.

However, going back to your narrow scenario - using every farmland remodel to remodel a farmland. Well lets look close at that. Say you have an empty hand the first time and some engine that allows you to always have the previous farmland up for remodel (say scout/cross road). With a farmland your VP totals climb up:
2, 8, 14, 20, 26 (game ends)

Without farmland:
0, 6, 12, 18, 24 (game ends)

So in the case where you always purchase farmland and always remodel farmland to a province, then you come out 2 points ahead instead of buying treasure.

1035

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What are the worst cards you can draw out of the Black Market?

« on: December 18, 2011, 05:51:49 pm »

minion isn't a let down. Sure you can't chain them for endless movement and +coin, but on the other hand they complement far too many strategies too well to be close to horrid. For instance they help limited draw strategies quite a bit by allowing both an action neutral +coin disappearing card and cycling to hit the key combo cards more easily. They also work well with menagerie engines and TR/KC chaining.

Jester is still pretty good, it takes a pretty long time before odds of hitting black market buys top even 25%. being the only possible cursing attack can be huge.

It is pretty rare where a unique attack is low on my list of things I'd like to get from the BM.

1036

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Ignoring actions

« on: December 18, 2011, 05:44:46 pm »

A note on the popular "make a list of villages" idea - for the strictest criteria where the card could never be a better purchase than a treasure (or stock VP card) when playing optimally - villages can be better buys than silver or nothing.

As a corner case consider a deck where the average treasure is 2.1 coin (say hitting nothing but 6 - 10 coin for as long as mathematically possible) in a colony game. At this point, silver decreases the value of the deck, but what about nothing?

Well as noted a +2 action/ +1 card village theoretically can allow you to better time reshuffles. This is of marginal utility, but regardless is "better than nothing".

I suspect that this corner case is pretty rare (perhaps getting to plat as soon as mathematically possible and getting to colony as late as mathematically possible), but it represents a possible game state where villages are superior to silver.

1037

Dominion Articles / Re: Rank the Promo Cards

« on: December 16, 2011, 04:04:19 pm »

My point is more that tables where black market is a good buy to begin with are rather rare -- rarer than stash in my estimation.

Black Market has four qualities going for it:
1. Its a terminal silver
2. It allows treasure play during the action phase.
3. It allows access to cards not in the kingdom.
4. It comes with a quasi +buy.

Arguing that quarry/BM is good combo on the basis of 1 & 4 is pretty weak. I mean woodcutters can do the same thing and I don't think anyone says that woodcutters + quarry is a good combo. More often this is more of a three card combo e.g. BM/upgrade/quarry is quite strong without other +buy. I just don't see a way see all that many true 2 card combos for BM. Quarry/BM "works" but not much better than things like wood cutters and a lot worse than things like goons.

You can play the lottery to find a card that gives an ability not found outside of the BM deck (cursing, trashing, discard), you can build 2.5ish card combos to take advantage of abilities, 2 &4, or you can buy a silver. Now don't get me wrong when I see good BM combos - like quarry/village/IW or BM/village/library/discard then sure - it can be quite useful but these things are just too rare to make it worth chasing, most of the time.

1038

Dominion Articles / Re: Not Combos -- Cards that don't work well together

« on: December 16, 2011, 01:25:26 pm »

I'm not sure how adding in a couple of purchases makes it that much slower. Cellar, for instance is a 2 coin card that you can spam buy off any 2, 7 or 10 coin hand without too much trouble. Granted, my play is biased towards colonies, but cellar/golem/wharf was pretty blindingly fast to 4 colonies.

1039

Dominion Articles / Re: Rank the Promo Cards

« on: December 16, 2011, 01:18:33 pm »

The +buy/quarry synergy, though isn't going to sell me on most BM decks unless there is something else out there to make quarry useful. E.g. some honest +buy, some useful 2, some village support so I can avoid massing terminals, etc. Even then, on a lot of boards I'd get better synergy out of most other +buys.

1040

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What are the worst cards you can draw out of the Black Market?

« on: December 16, 2011, 01:08:54 pm »

Peddler doesn't have its cost reduced by +actions, true, but bridges, highways, quarries, and the odd princess do apply. Given that these things all make good combos for effective +buys, it isn't unreasonable to combo them with BM to make for a 2 or 0 coin peddler. I mean honestly, I think half of my good BM games have involved quarries.

1041

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What are the worst cards you can draw out of the Black Market?

« on: December 16, 2011, 12:19:43 pm »

In order of decreasing likelihood of annoyance:
1. Treasure map
2. Peddler (though a self-replacing copper isn't bad if I've already gotten the price down to 2 or 0)
3. Potion cost cards (on a board where I have no reason to go potion)
4. Alternate victory-only cards - garden, fairground, duke, silk road all are pretty lousy except at the very end when they might give you a couple of more points than you could otherwise nab.
5. Reactions - because with few exceptions they are generally bad and really suck late game when odds are low of having them in hand. Not to mention that a lot of boards aren't big on attacks (or worse are ones where I want to be attacked).
6. Villages - because there are rarely situations where just one village will make my deck significantly stronger, and if another source of +action is out there, I'm likely already using it if multiple terminals are good (though the case of using TR or KC as "+action" would be an exception).

1042

Dominion Articles / Re: Not Combos -- Cards that don't work well together

« on: December 16, 2011, 12:08:04 pm »

Golem/warf works really well with any discard. Yes it requires 4 wharves, but you need 10 coin off a warf hand to buy 2 in a go - that ain't exactly hard. After that cellar, warehouse, young witch, hamlet, secret chamber, vault, horse traders, oasis, embassy, and inn will all allow you to drop wharves into your discard and increase your odds of hitting the cards you really want. Yeah, sometimes you will hit your discarder (or an enabling village) instead of a wharf, but that should end up being fairly rare.

So yeah, this is bad with no assistance, but with a lot of boards it can be quite strong.

1043

Dominion Articles / Re: Rank the Promo Cards

« on: December 16, 2011, 11:54:39 am »

AJD: The big combo potential with quarry/BM is that you can put the quarry(ies) in play and then break out card gainers. For instance village + black market + quarry (goes into play during BM play) + Iron Works allows for you to gain a goons with the IW. Likewise, you could do something like village/BM/Quarry/upgrade to turn an estate into an upgrade or turn a copper into a BM. The synergy is that black market lets you play quarry during the action phrase and bring down the prices of all the actions for the rest of the action phase.

This combo can get really nasty with tricks like village/BM/quarry/swindler - where you can swindle 5 coin actions down into silvers (4/6 into estates, or even something really hilarious like KC -> curse) or village/BM/Quarry/Saboteur - where every sab can only hit VP & cash (it floors people when you play KC/sab and flip past all those engine cards to knock 3 provinces into duchies).

Royal seal, quarry, and diadem all work this way - you get more benefits by having they active in the action phase thanks to BM.

When they can work, these combos tend to be quite strong. However in order to work they normally need a good bit of support - e.g. BM/quarry only works with some source of + action, some sort of card gainer, something worth the effort (e.g. KC, goons), and (likely) some way to get good odds of hitting the combo. This support just makes these types of combos unreliable and not as good as simpler stuff with stash.

1044

Dominion Articles / Re: Rank the Promo Cards

« on: December 15, 2011, 01:47:19 pm »

I'd put stash ahead of BM. BM market is exceptionally fiddly and a crapshoot. Yes BM/Tactician is good, but pretty much everything else is a 2.5 or worse card combo - quarries need mid-turn card gainers to actually do something useful for example.  Further, even with tactician  there are a lot of other options for having strong megaturns every time: (secret chamber, vault, forge, golem/draw, etc.). It is just harder to get to work well.

Stash, on the other hand, will always allow you to clump silvers for a reasonably strong hand most reshuffles at a minimum.

It works well with a lot of combos:
Stash/Chancellor
Stash/Mint
Stash/Wishing Well
Stash/Venture
Stash/Hunting Party/draw
Stash/Loan
Stash/Cross Roads

It also works as a marginal to decent counter to deck inspection attacks, noble brigands, thieves, pirate ships, and jesters.

This is NOT to say that stash is strong, just that I think the order for the promo cards should be:
5. Walled Village
4. BM
3. Stash
2. Envoy
1. Governor

Governor is hard to play well, but it is just so much more versatile than than envoy. You can easily mitigate the +1 card with any hand reducer (and have a +action built in), the point gain on the last turn with the remodel option can be insane (easily offsetting duchy gains) and gain a silver can be an attack on many decks. Not to mention how well this sucker can feed on itself (KC a Governor to gain a gold, draw it, and then remodel it into a province).

1045

Dominion Articles / Re: Updating the Top 5 lists

« on: December 13, 2011, 05:28:39 pm »

I think like you don't rate Peddler like how it was if it cost $8, you can't rate Duchess as if it cost $2. Of course, the effect of Duchess is much weaker, you can't pull of all these nice tricks you can pull of with Peddler (perhaps only KC it for $6 when there is no alternative for money...), and it will never* be an important part of any engine. But which $2 is**?
When you play BM-ish, a free terminal Silver when you are in the middle of the greening-stage, and the game seems to drag out a little longer (why else would you buy this Duchy?) is 'nice'. Yeah, you won't buy it for $2, but you also don't buy a Peddler for $8.

*for suitable definition of "never".
** Yes, I know NV/Bridge...

Massively important:
**Crossroads/scout (+actions & huge draws)
**Crossroads/nobles
**Hamlet/limited draw (Library, Watchtower, Jack) (discard useless cards to draw better ones)
**Hamlet/Tunnel/draw (Council room, smithy, envoy, etc.) (discard the tunnels & + actions to get more draw)
**Fools gold/draw (council room)
**Fools gold/mint

Can be important:
**Herbalist/Alchemist (ensure never ending potion draws)
**Pawn/limited draw (discardable coin & +buy)
**Haven/limited draw (remove cards for more drawing power)

And that is leaving out things like NV abuse beyond bridges (e.g. cartographer abuse to bury all the dross in the mat).

1046

Dominion General Discussion / Re: When to buy Explorer

« on: December 13, 2011, 05:12:51 pm »

Explorer/remodel/any village is pretty strong with good trashing. If you can trash down enough, you can get some strong turns of explore a gold, remodel a gold into a province & buy a province (or duchy). Getting two high value cards per turn can be strong without +buy.

In general, trash for benefit works well with explorer. Gain 3 or 6 value & getting to use it same game is pretty good if you are looking for forge bait in an engine deck.

Still it pretty much needs to be a weak set of 5s (e.g. no attacks, no cartographer, etc.) that would make explorer good.

1047

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Times when you play an Action for no benefit

« on: December 13, 2011, 04:00:41 pm »

A couple of other cases:
11. To clear the hand in case of mandatory golem actions. E.g. I have nobles, golem & a curse in hand and a remake in the deck. I might get two useless actions out of nobles in order to be safe from the mandatory trash.
12. Mostly contrived, but I could see playing something like vault (with nothing left to draw or wish to discard) in order to induce your opponent to discard garbage so you have better odds of getting a better card from masquerade.
13. Likewise, I could in theory see playing a dead council room or other opponent aiding card (vault, dead hags with horse traders in play, etc.) to help the next player buy the last province instead of the guy after him to seal my victory. E.g. I have 4 provinces & a duchy, next player has 3 provinces, and last guy has 3 provinces & 2 duchies, then I'll play a dead council room hoping that the next player hits 8 coin and ends the game.
14. I could see playing a dead council room to muck with an opponent's reshuffles. E.g. I have a hand of council room, gold, gold, minion, nothing else playable (discard or deck), and + coin from earlier fishing villages. My opponent meanwhile has a lot of good cards in hand with all his green in the discard, and nothing in the draw deck. I might drop the council room to trigger his reshuffle and then minion him to make his power cards miss the shuffle.
15. Very contrived, I could see playing governor even when golds are exhausted in order to either slow down hot decks with silver or to provide treasure feed for pirate ships (maybe the opponents are running really small TR/Remodel decks?).

1048

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Exception to the Rule, Part 5

« on: December 09, 2011, 03:33:02 pm »

Here's the first 10 I see:

1. I want a feast so in the future I can play village -> feast (empty city pile) -> mass activated city spam of doom. On my turn. Also, I might also want to avoid activating cities by buying the last city before my opponent's turn.
2. I'm pretty sure I will be able to TR/KC it in the future for better reward.
3. Fairgrounds
4. Vineyards
5. I have 2 buys and I really need exactly one of something else (e.g. I need get cross roads for +actions and will later turn the feast into a second council room).
6. I can play 3 highways before playing the playing it for a province later.
7. I need 4 coin feed for farmland (e.g. duchies bought out, I hit 5 coin so  I buy a feast so I can trash it later with farmland to get another farmland).
10. I have a big (draw the whole deck) scrying pool engine, there are no better actions left to buy, and I don't want kill my engine with duchies just yet.

1049

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Using the Spy/deck inspection power

« on: December 09, 2011, 12:52:09 pm »

Well the big edges from spying come from conditional drawing and differential attack cards.

Start with the latter. Spies get a lot more valuable when you are going to pair them with your attack cards - namely jester and swindler. Being able to fish until you can leave something strong on top is radically powerful (the best being things like late game province -> peddler swindles or leaving top deck plat to jester). This can also be valuable for tribute where you want to leave things like islands or harems on top.

The biggie for conditional drawing is where you either only be able to draw certain cards (or card types) or where you can lace together strong cycling. For instance apothecary/spy is insanely good. Apothecary will leave up your green and actions allowing you to engineer spy sequences of: draw the card you want, discard a green (or whatever), draw, discard. Other times when you will want conditional drawing are things like scrying pool where dumping the odd treasure or green card can go a long way (also the synergy free draw of spies with SP is huge, as is the ability to churn through a long streak of killer opponent cards). Spies are also strong when you have cards with dangerous plays - upgrade being the prime example - knowing what you are going to hit can tell you when you should pass.

In general, spies get more powerful the more uneven your deck distribution. A pure silver deck gets much less benefit from spies than a deck of mixed plat and copper. High variance is good for spies. Cards that create high variance are things like KC, TR, Plat (highest variant card out there IMO), baron, etc. I'd easily say that spy is effectively +1 action +1.5 cards (given that you will play disproportionately more of your good cards and your opponent fewer, on some boards I'd even say that could go up to +1 action /+2 cards effectively).

1050

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: King's Court/Scheme

« on: December 09, 2011, 12:30:31 pm »

A very simple counter to this would be masquerade. If you are always going to have a hand consisting of 5 cards strong cards then masq will rob you of either a strong attack or a scheme.

I'd say the biggest enabler of this combo would be baron (early +coins, and a +buy) and maybe quarry.