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26

Help! / Young Witch/Tunnel, Ironworks/Island, Ambassador, City: how do you play this?

« on: April 15, 2012, 07:44:32 pm »

This was one of the more insane boards I've ever played. Lots of strong combos available.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/14/game-20120414-172058-a4d1f133.html
Young Witch, Tunnel, Ironworks, Island, Ambassador, City, Mining Village, University, Minion, Explorer, Cutpurse

We both went for Young Witch/Tunnel, but after I'd played a bit I wish I'd opened Ironworks before going into the YW/Tunnel combo. How would you have played with this kingdom? I personally found the choices offered overwhelming.

27

Dominion FAQ / FAQ Feedback

« on: March 19, 2012, 05:52:27 pm »

Should add something along the lines of "I/my friend discovered that if you just buy money you'll win all the time" and link it to this. I know it's covered in the Dominion Lingo dictionary, but it does seem to crop up often enough as a separate thread.

28

Dominion General Discussion / opening Inn allows for 5/3/5 opening

« on: March 02, 2012, 02:30:57 pm »

I recently played a game where I got a 5/2 split on a board where the $5s were Inn and Outpost, but there were good $4s and $3s on the board. I do tend to hate to waste a 5/2 opening so I started thinking about it and realized that if you buy an Inn you end up with a 5/3/5 opening (5/6s of the time anyways).

It only works if you get the $5 before the $2, but if you do what you do is open Inn, shuffle it into your deck then draw your next hand which most of the time should be Inn and some variation of 2 or 3 Estates and 1 or 2 Coppers. Play the Inn and you're guaranteed to draw your remaining card and a Copper. You will have a hand with 3 Estates and 3 Coppers giving you $3 on this hand and also guaranteeing that all your Estates missed the premature reshuffle so your next hand will be all Coppers for $5 again. Admittedly not every deck wants an Inn, but if you were planning on using Inns for something other than their on-buy effect anyways than this is a great way to get your deck started. Sometimes this might even be preferable to opening with a strong $5 as you will be able to pick up that $5 on turn 3 (barring your opponent's attacks messing with your deck).

29

Council Room Feedback / CouncilRoom errors

« on: February 26, 2012, 02:05:17 pm »

It looks like Council Room may have been infected with some sort of virus or possibly hacked as everything you go to on CouncilRoom shows a link to btdsde.com or other website I've never heard of.

Oh it appears to have been fixed now.... so nevermind I guess. I only noticed it for about 30 seconds so it's quite possible this problem affected no one but me.

30

Game Reports / Golden Deck Dancing

« on: February 07, 2012, 09:11:47 pm »

Just played this interesting game where binder and I both played Golden Deck variants, getting them going at about the same time.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201202/07/game-20120207-180252-2ddf408a.html
Key cards: Bishop, Remake, Hunting Party

On turn 12 there are 2 Provinces left and I'm 2 points behind. If I break PPR I'll lose by 2 points so I buy a Gold reasoning that if he breaks PPR I can use the extra points from trashing the Gold to overcome the 2 point deficit. He breaks PPR and I win on turn 13. However, if he had seen what I was doing and instead followed my lead and bought a Gold would we have been forced in a Golden Deck stalemate of sorts where we both just refuse to break PPR and let the other person win playing an incredibly long robotic game of gradually wearing down the Gold pile, then the Bank pile, then some other pile? Or is there some way out of this I'm not seeing?

31

Puzzles and Challenges / Odds that olneyce has never played a Masquerade pin before

« on: January 30, 2012, 02:02:48 pm »

In game 3 of the tournament finals olneyce lost setting up a Goons/Masquerade/KC pin. In his write-up after the game he said that he'd never played the pin before. At the time he played this game he had played 1364 games logged on council room. What are the odds that he'd never played a variation on this pin on isotropic before?
 
This should be relatively easy for a statistician or probability whiz. My memory of the solutions to this problem are a little rusty so I thought I'd throw it out to the group. (Hint: there are currently 157 Dominion kingdom cards.)

32

Rules Questions / Trader with Torturer

« on: January 26, 2012, 09:36:10 pm »

When you reveal a Trader to prevent yourself from gaining a Curse from a Torturer (there's a number of other situations where this applies, but this is what I just played) should you not gain the Silver to your hand or does it replace the in hand gain and just let you gain it normally instead?

33

Help! / Complicated Black Market game... help?

« on: January 23, 2012, 05:46:20 pm »

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120122-215826-7804494c.html
Black Market, Hoard, Inn, Potion, Salvager, Scrying Pool, Tactician, Trader, Treasure Map, Tunnel, and Vineyard
This was a fairly complicated board and mwfeldman thrashed me in this game despite the fact that I picked up a Chapel from the Black Market deck on turn 4 and then the only curser in the game (a Sea Hag) on turn 5. My goal in this game was to dig in the Black Market for swingy cards (there were a lot available), which worked except for the winning part. Then using them to support my strategy of using Tacticians and Inns with Tunnel to pick up treasure. I picked up a Hoard (turn 10) which I think was actually too late to be useful, but aside from that I'm not sure what my mistakes were.

mwfeldman went for Scrying Pools pretty heavily. I think he was going for a Scrying Pool/Vineyard strategy which I thought I wouldn't have any trouble with once I had the Sea Hag, but he transitioned out of it at some point. He picked up a variety of strong actions in the Black Market too, (Governor/Fishing Village/Masquerade), but he only had a single Gold and 2 Silvers so I thought his economy was pretty weak.

I'm kindof confused what ended up happening in this game. Presumably my strategy was flawed in some way, but I can't see what went wrong exactly. Any help is appreciated.

34

Game Reports / Giving an Envoy as an attack

« on: January 17, 2012, 06:21:44 pm »

This game wasn't so exciting as a whole, but I can't stop thinking about this sequence of turns. The preamble to it is my opponent had been buying a lot actions and trashing his Coppers (with a Spice Merchant). There were no Villages or other +2 action sources, he'd also picked up a few too many terminals. I was playing a pretty straight Masquerade game.

Code: [Select]

--- tantastik's turn 6 ---
tantastik plays a Scheme.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action.
tantastik plays a Smugglers.
... gaining a Silver.
tantastik puts a Smugglers back on the deck.
(tantastik reshuffles.)
(tantastik draws: 3 Coppers, a Smugglers, and a Spice Merchant.)
After watching this I draw $6, but know he's got a Smugglers sitting in his hand. I really don't want to give him a free Gold. So I buy a card that will at least be okay in my deck, but will be terrible in his deck, Envoy. He'll be drawing all his terminals and I can make him discard his treasure. He then proceeds to mindlessly gain the Envoy.
   

Code: [Select]

   --- Jorbles's turn 6 ---
   Jorbles plays a Pawn.
   ... getting +1 action and +$1.
   Jorbles plays a Masquerade.
   ... drawing 2 cards.
   ... trashing an Estate.
   Jorbles plays 3 Coppers and a Silver.
   Jorbles buys an Envoy.
   (Jorbles reshuffles.)
   (Jorbles draws: 2 Coppers, a Pawn, a Silver, and a Masquerade.)


--- tantastik's turn 7 ---
tantastik plays a Spice Merchant.
... trashing a Copper.
... drawing 2 cards and getting +1 action.
tantastik plays a Scheme.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action.
tantastik plays a Smugglers.
... gaining an Envoy.
tantastik puts a Scheme back on the deck.
(tantastik draws: 2 Coppers, 2 Schemes, and a Silver.)
Now I can buy a Gold without giving him a freebie. I picked up my Envoy here and decided that it would hurt his deck more than it would help mine and promptly passed it to him.

Code: [Select]

   --- Jorbles's turn 7 ---
   Jorbles plays a Pawn.
   ... getting +1 action and +$1.
   Jorbles plays a Masquerade.
   ... drawing 2 cards.
   Jorbles plays 3 Coppers and a Silver.
   Jorbles buys a Gold.
   (Jorbles draws: 4 Coppers and a Silver.)
His turn 8 was the high point of the whole thing, which happened the next turn when he got to play his new Envoy for the first time. He still picked up a Gold, but the Envoy was very unhelpful in the process, and he promptly trashed the other Envoy (I imagine) in disgust.

Code: [Select]

--- tantastik's turn 8 ---
tantastik plays a Scheme.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action.
tantastik plays a Scheme.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action.
tantastik plays an Envoy.
... (tantastik reshuffles.)
... drawing an Envoy, a Scheme, a Spice Merchant, and 2 Estates.
... discarding a Scheme and putting the rest into the hand.
tantastik plays 2 Coppers and 2 Silvers.
tantastik buys a Farmland.
... trashing an Envoy.
... gaining a Gold.
tantastik puts a Scheme and a Scheme back on the deck (first on top).
(tantastik draws: a Smugglers, 2 Schemes, and 2 Estates.)
I guess the interesting point being that in a deck not designed for it a terminal card drawer can be terrible. Having the Envoy did end up helping him once, but the rest of the time it ended up being a dead card in his hand and twice he played it only to discard a bunch of actions. Do you guys ever do shenanigans like this with Smugglers to mess with your opponents deck and do you think it was actually worth it for me to? I'm pleased with the result, but I'm not sure it was worth the risk.

The game itself ended up bogging down when he picked up a Saboteur and managed to knock out some of my economy after I'd started greening, but I managed to slog it out for a win trashing a Farmlands to gain the final Province.

35

Rules Questions / Tacticians, Golem, +Action Drawer

« on: December 05, 2011, 07:25:03 pm »

Let's say hypothetically you have a couple Tacticians in your deck and a Golem. At the start of your turn you play the Golem and hit a Tactician and for the sake of argument a Laboratory. You play the Tactician first discarding your current hand and then the Laboratory drawing your other Tactician and a Copper. You then play the second Tactician and discard the Copper ending your turn.

On your next turn do you get +10 cards, +2 buys and +2 actions? If that is the case has anyone ever managed to pull something like this off getting themselves a super duper Tactician turn?

36

Game Reports / Stables vs. Alchemist vs. Scrying Pool

« on: November 29, 2011, 01:38:09 pm »

Lost this game by a point, but I thought the board was interesting enough to talk about.

game link

Alchemist, Fairgrounds, Feast, Forge, Pawn, Potion, Scrying Pool, Spice Merchant, Stables, Stash, and Steward

We had an asymmetrical start with me getting 5/2 and SadHolandaPanda getting 4/3. When I had initially seen the board I was considering playing a Alchemist/Scrying Pool hybrid strategy, but after getting the 5/2 start, I figured I'd be at a disadvantage if I didn't try something that involved a $5 card so I ended up opening Stables/Pawn and SadHolandaPanda opened Steward/Potion which I would likely have opened if I hadn't gotten 5/2.

I bought a second Stables and a Steward to start trashing with. I ended up using the Steward for the +$2 a little more than I thought I would once the game got going using it to try rushing the provinces hoping for a 5/3 Province split, especially once I saw that SadHolandaPanda was going for a pure Scrying Pool deck, which I figured would be a stronger end game engine.

I broke the PPR hoping to hit the 5/3 split and ended up barely losing on a 4/4 split when I missed the fifth Province and had to settle for a Duchy.

Questions I wanted to throw out there, if I'd had a 4/3 split, would an Alchemist/Scrying Pool hybrid strategy have been more effective than a pure Scrying Pool?
With the 5/2 split is a Stables engine my best strategy here? If I did it again I probably would have done the same thing, but picked up an extra Silver when given the opportunity instead of trashing Coppers and taking a Pawn. (As I did on turn 5). The Coppers aren't too bad when you need to discard them in order to use the Stables effectively.

37

Puzzles and Challenges / Most points with no VP chips.

« on: November 25, 2011, 07:29:03 pm »

This puzzle got me thinking. What's the most points you can get in a game without VP chip cards? So no Bishop, Monument, Goons scenarios, but all other Kingdom cards are allowed, including Colonies/Plats, Potions, Black Market (you can stack the Black Market deck also), Young Witch (and Bane), etc. You are playing solitaire and normal endgame conditions apply.

38

Simulation / Improvement on BankWharf

« on: November 23, 2011, 07:28:23 pm »

I often tend to buy Duchies at 4 instead of 5 and was wondering how that simulated. Interestingly it improved on BankWharf in Province games and Colony games (though only very slightly in Colony games). It did not improve the DoubleJack algorithm.

Code: [Select]

# Play Big Money including Banks, except buy Wharf with every $5 buy.
# This differs from Geronimoo's BankWharf in that Duchies are bought
# when there are only 4 Provinces left, instead of when there are only 5 left.
{
  name: 'BankWharfD4'
  author: 'Jorbles'
  requires: ['Bank', 'Wharf']
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Colony" if my.countInDeck("Platinum") > 0
    "Province" if state.countInSupply("Colony") <= 6
    "Duchy" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 4
    "Estate" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Platinum"
    "Bank"
    "Gold"
    "Wharf"
    "Silver"
    "Copper" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 3
  ]
}


39

2011 / Tournament size and time length

« on: November 21, 2011, 04:43:50 pm »

How big were you guys planning this tournament to be and how long should people plan to be in it for? I don't think it'll be an issue for me, but if someone is planning to travel they might need to take that into account when registering.

I ask because with the numbers of registrants at this point if there's a week for each match this might be a month and a half long tournament (or longer).

40

Dominion General Discussion / Province vs Colony

« on: November 14, 2011, 02:51:59 pm »

In a Prosperity game (ie. one with Platinums and Colonies) is it ever worth it to try and rush the game and go for Provinces instead of waiting until you can hit $11 and go for Colonies? It's something I've always wondered about. I've tried it on a few specific boards with mixed success, but was wondering how the forum would weigh in on this.