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Messages - Skumpy

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576
Dominion General Discussion / Re: The swingiest card ever
« on: June 27, 2017, 01:30:10 am »
Tournament is an example of the second. Maybe you draw it with Province, maybe you don't; it's a big difference. This makes it feel like it's all about luck, even though the card actually favors the better player.

Totally anecdotal but last night I played a game where my opponent opened tournament/silver and then played tournament/silver + 4 coppers to buy inheritance to play on silver, then he bought a Province the next turn and immediately started buying up more provinces and winning prizes.

This sounds familiar...

577
Dominion General Discussion / Re: The swingiest card ever
« on: June 26, 2017, 11:02:00 am »
*cough Black Market *cough

578
Dominion Online at Shuffle iT / Re: Loading old games
« on: June 24, 2017, 02:05:06 am »
Is there a reason why we can't reuse/copy the old Isotropish log prettifier? I loved that tool.

579
Rules Questions / Fortune + Potion
« on: June 22, 2017, 04:11:20 pm »
Does Fortune double Potions as well as $?

580
Dominion League / Re: Season 22 - Results
« on: June 21, 2017, 09:24:14 pm »
C1: Luckat 4 - 2 Skumpy

581
Game Reports / Re: Funny in a sad, WTH way
« on: June 17, 2017, 03:34:45 am »
Let me quote one of our most sage (or is the mystical?) posters in response.

If you are not Marin, I would not recommend to try the engine.

This is the most dangerous sort of nonsense to listen to if you care at all about improving your Dominion game. If you always take the easy way out, if you never try to build an engine that's slightly more difficult to execute than Wharf-Fishing Village, if you never try something completely ridiculous even, afraid that you might horribly fail (which you inevitably will, over and over and over again), you will never ever become like Marin, let alone become much better than he ever was, which is certainly possible: Dominion play is in its infancy.

What holds most players back is not a lack of innate intelligence or talent, but a failure to express their playfulness and curiosity, lazy habits of thought that process boards in terms of obvious stock-strategies in stead of having an eye for each kingdom's particular splendor, lacking any sort of healthy contempt for conventional wisdom, not trusting their own experience more than anything, but at the same time lacking the courage to go completely against it, just to try out something new. And what's perhaps worst of all is saying to yourself things like "I'm no Marin"; it's at that moment, with that exact phrase, that you resign yourself to mediocrity, as you'll soon start building an identity around it, and from that point onward, whenever your playful spirit wakens and graces you with a creative idea, you'll have this voice in your head that laughs at it and has you saying "nah, that's just not me". Most players, in short, simply deprive themselves of the freedom to discover what's possible.

And I'm totally fine with that. I'm just speaking specifically if you're playing competitively and winning is your number 1 priority (whether that's justified or not is besides the point), then it's reasonable to play with what you know over what you don't know. If I've created a perception that I personally play simple stuff, I can see how that happened, but believe me, I don't do that.

Having said that, I feel like I improve more not by experimenting and playing bad engines myself but by seeing/hearing others play good engines, whether I'm the opponent or somebody else. If I play somebody worse than me (according to rankings anyways), and I lose with a faulty engine to their bm, that doesn't tell me what works, it tells me what doesn't work and even discourages me from trying it again because it didn't seem realizable. I need to see somebody else play it well to convince me that it is indeed a strategy (assuming I wasn't successful with it).

If I have a board with rebuild and some moat engine with like shanty town moat Vassal and forager I am not going to go with the engine even though it is a 5(or 4)

Firstly, Rebuild's an exceptional case. More often that not, straight Rebuild will win. When Rebuild came up once, my opponent asked if we could skip it because it's such a game warping card, to which I instantly agreed (though the alternate Sea Hag/Smithy that actually happened that game wasn't much fun either). I suspect I'm not the only person who's done that here.

Secondly, speaking as a mediocre player, those 4 cards don't sound engine-worthy to me in the first place. I would play Big Money, or at least Forager-Shanty Town-Big Money or even just Shanty Town-BM, over that engine because I believe it would be faster and the engine would take too long to build. If I lose that game to you, that's because my analysis fell short, and now that I see it does work, now I have an increased understanding of how to play engines better (a loss that probably will happen: see below).


Side note relating to my first post here:
I've taken statistics so I understand that this is a very very small sample size, but in my last 3 competitve matches against Seprix, markus, and Limetime, I would consider 7 of the 16 games played to have BM as the best strategy (you could argue that Prince-Envoy is an exceptional BM case and Caravan-Festival-Outpost w/o trashing or any other played terminals is probably closer to engine than BM, now that I think about it).

Limetime, take the game we played tonight (in a match where I was unsurprisingly and thoroughly put in my place): if I tell you (you meaning the reader, not you personally Limetime) there's a board with Develop, Procession, Mining Village, Artificer, and Market Square, wouldn't you think that that board is probably screaming engine? I thought so too, only to get crushed by a simple Militia+Relic pin because I severely underestimated the lack of draw. There was also a Wall game where we both began by trashing down with Loan with Scavenger and Trader for more support before we parted paths: I went for a Remodel-Hoard approach, Limetime went for the Oracle-BM (I lost). And finally, a simple game that began with Remake thinning (picking up some Schemes along the way) before my genius brain calculated that Noble-Brigand-Delve would swiftly and certainly defeat Merchant Guild+Peddler.
 
That was half a match of BM, and based on prior experiences from this year, I would say at least 30-40% of all the games I've played have been similar. I play Engines when I think they can work, but I play plenty of BM when I don't see anything on the board that I think can beat the less complicated approach.

And if when I say BM you think of something much simpler....sorry.

582
Game Reports / Re: Funny in a sad, WTH way
« on: June 16, 2017, 06:36:24 pm »
Just because the number of engine-enabling cards goes up doesn't mean that engine playability follows suit. I think hope we can all agree that most engines require
1)Solid Trashing
2)Village
3)+draw
4) Payload (of some variety)
5) Gainers

Not a perfect or cumulative list (and I didn't post on the Engine-debating thread from a few weeks back because that's not something I feel qualified to give an opinion on), but I believe the 5 types from above are nearly almost always present on the boards where Engines clearly surpass BM. If a board is missing even one of those 5, the engine still might be the best option, but now the BM at least deserves a lot more consideration.

That's not really the case. You need payload and either +draw or any trashing at all (doesn't need to be solid necessarily). Splitters are only required if the draw or the payload requires them, and gainers are not required at all.

For instance, if you have Highway and Market Square and Trader in the kingdom, you can definitely play an engine by trashing your Coppers (but not the Estates) with your Trader.

I don't really want get into a big discussion about engines with you, considering you have more analysis and experience with your own personal definitions, but I'll give it a go.

First off, if we harken back to the days of old when there were only 5 classifications of a deck, I'd consider that to be more of the combo deck. Whenever I see Highway with Market Square/Market/Grand Market/Worker's Village, you'd better believe I'm going to try to find a way to make it work since that 2 card synergy makes for a fun and simple megaturn. However, if you want to insist that this is an engine, I'll try to break it down by the 5 standards I made up on the spur of the moment.

Trashing: Trader is far from a good trasher normally, I'd agree. But this scenario is a little different than a more common engine for a few reasons. First off, since it's your only terminal, you're never going to have a turn where you have collision and have to neglect playing a payload-esque terminal (like, say, a militia). Next, let's say you do trash one estate for the silvers (because you're going to need to get very lucky to hit 5 otherwise): that means you only need to play the trader 9 times total to guarantee you can draw your whole deck (Trash all but one copper, leaving yourself 4 total stop cards). And that's a guarantee draw - you'll be able to draw most if not all a few turns before then as well. And since your number of stop cards is continuously decreasing, you can play your Trader at an accelerating rate.

Villages: None here, clearly. But when you say "Spltters are only required if the draw or the payload requires them", you make it sound like the number of engines involving draw or payload requiring splitters is comparable to the number that don't require splitters. Which I don't buy at all. 9 engines out of 10, you're going to need at least a couple of splitters, since there just aren't that many great nonterminal payload or nonterminal draw. I'm not saying no engines can function without them - just that there are far more than can't than those that can.

Draw: Normally, I'd consider cantrips to not count as draw, since it doesn't actually increase your hand size. But since you'll be drawing most, if not all, of your deck before too long, I'd give this board half-credit.

Payload: Highway + buys is plenty payload.

Gainers: Market Square (Sorry if I hadn't made it clear before, but when I say gainers, I mean 'cards that enable you to gain more than 1 card a turn. Which includes +buy. And if you did figure out what I meant before and you still thought gainers are not necessary, then to say an engine can outpace BM when you're only gaining 1 card a turn, then that engine had better have good trashing and some very good payload other than +$, which in turn will probably need some +action and +card to enable it. Meaning that engine will very likely need to satisfy the other 4 categories).

So that totals .5 + 0 + .5 + 1 + 1 = 3   
I might've been able to get away with rating trashing and draw higher too. But I don't consider a Highway/Market Square to be representative of the standard engine. Also, I stand by what I said before with

I believe the 5 types from above are nearly almost always present on the boards where Engines clearly surpass BM. If a board is missing even one of those 5, the engine still might be the best option, but now the BM at least deserves a lot more consideration.

Play the Highway/Market Square (or most engines with not all of the 5 components) against a sub level 40 player who will just play a standard Smithy-BM game. You'll clearly win but the final score will be a lot closer, you'll have to play much more accurately, and you won't have as much room for bad luck

Please don't think I'm an anti-engine person because of these posts. I'm not very good at playing engines myself, but I still think an engine-variation is the correct play 80,90% of the time. But I do have to say one last very controversial thing: just because an engine is the CORRECT play doesn't mean it's the correct play FOR YOU. There are complicated engine boards where players in the top 10 or 20 so can make something out of what looks like nothing, but if you're ranked significantly below that and you try to follow, you're going to make mistakes (I can say from experience). That's a fact, right up there with death and taxes. And if you're not playing the engine perfectly on a board that requires a lot of thought and effort to make it work well at all, then  a simple bm could give you an equal chance as your half-realized engine (Not that I'm saying you'll win. Play bm against a top-10 on an engine board, and it's a forgone conclusion). But as a mediocre player, for people around my skill level, if it's not obvious how long an engine will take to build or how powerful it has the potential to be, even after trying to use bm-draw as a benchmark, that should be an indicator that if you don't trust yourself in a competitive match to play it perfectly, at least give consideration to the bm.

Quote
So I have no math or research to back this claim up, and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm wrong here, but I believe engine capabilities have decreased with every new expansion and will continue to do so. Since the ShIT release with Empires, maybe it's because I don't fight as hard as most to find and play the engine, but I've played plenty of bm games.

Math to show that you are wrong: Effect is close to zero after 3-4 expansions. With your simplification that cards of each type have same effect one could generate board by first selecting types(as probablility of each stays constant) then select cards for each type. Board could be unrealizable because we don't have enough cards of one type in which case we try again. Probability change could be bound by prob of unrealizable board, if there are 5 cards of same type it requires to have 6 cards of one type in board which is unlikely.

I'm dumb and bad at math, so I need you to hold my hand and walk me through this to make sure I'm getting you correctly. First, let's say my simplification that cards of the same type do the same thing, and also that cards will only satisfy one type, is offset by that not all cards will even fit into an engine strategy at all (off the top of my head, Taxman, Prince, Counting House...there's three cards that will rarely see use in an engine). You're saying that deciding if an engine is playable is equivalent to first generating 10 types of cards (based on what I came up with for the need types), and checking to see if we did indeed get 5 different types in those 10. It's your last sentence that confuses me - getting 6 copies of one type isn't the only way that we can get a not-so-perfect engine. It could be a board with something like 3 of A, 2 of B, 2 of C, 3 of D, none of E. Probably still an engine, but again, now one that's much more comparable with a bm strategy.

You guys make my head hurt:(

That's 2 of us, believe me.


TL:DR
In my opinion*:
All of 5 of the card types - great, play an engine!
4: Play the engine if you're really good at Dominion. Otherwise, give some consideration, make sure you know what you're doing, think about every turn.
<=3,3.5 - Time to really think about that BM
*All with exceptions, such as Highway/Market Square. Also, plenty of weird cards like Procession and Remodel twist around what constitutes an engine in the first place.




Everybody, feel free to give me hell below!

583
Game Reports / Re: Funny in a sad, WTH way
« on: June 15, 2017, 01:27:35 pm »
So I have no math or research to back this claim up, and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm wrong here, but I believe engine capabilities have decreased with every new expansion and will continue to do so. Since the ShIT release with Empires, maybe it's because I don't fight as hard as most to find and play the engine, but I've played plenty of bm games.

Just because the number of engine-enabling cards goes up doesn't mean that engine playability follows suit. I think hope we can all agree that most engines require
1)Solid Trashing
2)Village
3)+draw
4) Payload (of some variety)
5) Gainers

Not a perfect or cumulative list (and I didn't post on the Engine-debating thread from a few weeks back because that's not something I feel qualified to give an opinion on), but I believe the 5 types from above are nearly almost always present on the boards where Engines clearly surpass BM. If a board is missing even one of those 5, the engine still might be the best option, but now the BM at least deserves a lot more consideration.

So why do I mention this? Consider Omastar's game: Library, Embassy, Catacombs, Wild Hunt, Torturer. That's 5 terminal draw cards, so the board effectively goes down from 10 to 6 cards, one of which is Counting House. Omastar also posted another game a week ago featuring Raze, Chapel, Ambassador, Steward, Remake, Altar, and Salvager (Plus Remodel and Expand, which if you don't count as trashers, then maybe you can count them as accomplishing the same purpose as the other). These are isolated and somewhat extreme incidents, but hopefully my point is becoming more clear: the more cards you add to Dominion of the 5 types above, the higher your chances of creating a random 10 card board that features many of 1 or 2 of those types and neglects totally another 1 or 2

I was playing an IRL game with a friend when he advised me I was overbuilding, not because I was waiting too long to green (I was, but that's besides the point), but because adding more engine cards increases the chance that I'll start a turn with all terminals/stop cards. I didn't believe him for a good while, but the math checks out with the right ratio of Villages/draw/stop cards. And I think the same reasoning applies to creating a random board.

If this is still sounds dumb and hopelessly incorrect, consider a bag containing 2 red marbles and 2 blue marbles, and another containing 50 of each. If you draw 2 marbles from each bag, which are you more likely to get 1 of each color from? Bag A is (1/2)*(2/3) * 2 (chances of drawing blue then red + chances of drawing red then blue) = 2/3. Bag B is (49/50) * (50/99) * 2 = 1/2. Same logic applies to the board: adding more marbles of 5 colors increases the odds that drawing 10 out of the bag while result in many sharing the same color.

I'm not at all saying that Dominion is ruined or Engines are never playable. It's still my favorite game, and Engines are still plenty frequent enough that the game is still fun. I just want to try to stop the misconception that more engine cards necessarily means more engine boards.

584
Rules Questions / Re: Patrol + Mill
« on: June 10, 2017, 10:49:05 pm »
If I play a Patrol and one of the revealed 4 cards of my deck is a Mill (Action-Victory), do I put the Mill into my hand or onto my deck? Thanks

Patrol: "Put the Victory cards and Curses into your hand" Mill is indeed a Victory Card, so it goes in your hand.

Think of Mill (and other similar Action-Victory cards like Nobles) as both Action and Victory, and do what the card instructions tell you to do. So if Patrol had said "Put the Actions and Treasures onto your deck, and the rest in your hand", then since Mill is an Action too, the Mill would have gone onto your deck. But Patrol doesn't say that, fortunately.

585
Dominion Online at Shuffle iT / Re: Tooting my own horn
« on: June 08, 2017, 05:36:45 am »
Out of curiosity, I get why Stef and SCSN don't want to be on the leaderboard, but who is the idontknow guy in second on Dominion Scavenger? Because if he was on the official leaderboard, we'd be that much closer to an Abbot and Costello sketch.

"Who is the guy in first place?"
"I don't know who's in first!"
"He's in second, we're not talking about him."

586
Tournaments and Events / Re: Yet another Dualset Tournament!
« on: June 06, 2017, 03:03:20 pm »
Skumpy 3 - 2 Seprix

Seprix starts 1,3,5,

Dark Ages + Empires (Skumpy wins)
Seaside + Guilds (Seprix)
Adventures + Cornucopia (Seprix)
Intrigue + Hinterlands (Skumpy)
Base + Promos (Skumpy)

Also, I think we need some rule clarification: what does 'lowest seeded player mean' (as in #8 vs #9, who is the lower seed)? You could argue both ways, for numerical value or strength of player. When I hear lower seed, I think of #9, but it makes more sense to me to define it in favor of #8 to give home court advantage.

587
Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Revenge of Dominion Picture Trivia
« on: June 05, 2017, 08:49:16 pm »
And since this thread just got revived, I'm pretty dang sure my answer for #6 is correct. Could I get a re-check on that ome?

Kind of, but not really.

I mean, I found this on like line 8 of google image searching "warrior arena", and this is 2 months after the challenge was first posted. I don't know, I feel like it's a valid alternative answer, but it's up to you obviously.


588
Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Revenge of Dominion Picture Trivia
« on: June 01, 2017, 05:11:47 pm »
8 is either steward/duchess or golem/duchess

Every pair has a card from Empires in it, so while you may have gotten 1 of the words right, it's definitely not the final answer yet.

And since this thread just got revived, I'm pretty dang sure my answer for #6 is correct. Could I get a re-check on that ome?

589
Tournaments and Events / Re: Yet another Dualset Tournament!
« on: May 31, 2017, 11:04:23 pm »
Not sure how free I'll be the next couple weeks, but if you need a 16th player....

/in

590
Dominion League / Re: Season 21 - Results
« on: May 31, 2017, 09:16:32 pm »
On second thought, I'll play in 22.

591
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: criterion game
« on: May 29, 2017, 01:56:45 pm »
John Lennon
Vladimir Lenin
A hobo
Lucille Ball
Anderson Cooper

592
Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: criterion game
« on: May 29, 2017, 02:58:32 am »
how likely they are to be stoned at any given moment?

I'm sensing we have a winner....

If not:
Seth Rogen
Ian MacKaye

593
Dominion League / Re: Season 21 - Results
« on: May 23, 2017, 08:59:16 pm »
Sorry, just wanted to clarify:  it was D1: Skumpy 5 - 1 McGarnacle; it was recorded the other way around.

594
Got all my Dominion boxes back on their tables. Haven't played IRL for like 2 months because of remodeling.

Presumably your house is now worth $2 more!

I knew someone would say that. Skumpy made the exact same joke in our league match.

Clearly I've been influenced by the refined, sophisticated comedic talent of f.ds

595
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Convert coin into coin tokens, but...
« on: May 19, 2017, 05:41:40 am »
I like the idea, but it doesn't really seem like a supply pile that you can really take advantage of; if you can run an engine, for instance, what's the point of picking up multiple copies?

As far as I know, there's no overpay event yet in official or fan cards (could be wrong, I'm not a fan card aficionado), so I think this could be a neat first. 2* seems most balanced to me (possibly 1*), but it would give a big advantage to 4-3 openings over 3-4.

Also, if it was an event, you might be able to take out the copper-clause. Get $4 on a turn and there's nothing good to do, then turning it into 2 coin tokens would have it's niches.

596
Dominion League / Re: Season 21 - Results
« on: May 13, 2017, 05:50:36 pm »
D1: Skumpy 5 - McGarnacle 1

I'm gonna sit out Season 22, hoping to be back for 23.

597
Played a League match where my opponent (luckat) discovered/invented the Diplomat/Ruined Village combo.

598
Dominion League / Re: Season 21 - Results
« on: May 06, 2017, 10:31:34 pm »
D1: Skumpy 4 - 2 Luckat

599
Dominion League / Re: We need your kingdoms again :)
« on: April 23, 2017, 03:58:40 pm »
How do we find old games? Do we just have to note the number after playing?

You can use Dominion Scavenger, courtesy of breppert, so long as you remember your opponent and/or time you played the game.
http://dominion.lauxnet.com/scavenger/


600
Dominion League / Re: Season 21 - Results
« on: April 19, 2017, 12:35:28 am »
D1: Skumpy 5 - 1 Water Polo DMo

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