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1

Game Reports / Good Luck and a Small Deck

« on: January 25, 2012, 02:32:35 pm »

I had my first game on isotropic against a lvl 40+ player (papaHav). I think it's good example of how luck can turn what could have been a very lopsided game into a win for the more average player.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120124-213337-cb06a980.html

I want to first and foremost thank papaHav for the game. I thought it was an interesting board, and it was quite fun and instructive to see the choices that a high-level player makes.

My strategic thoughts (which don't amount to too much) were:
1) Forge could be good (never mind that I had no plan on how I was going to use Forge; I just marked it as a likely buy)
2) Quarry could accelerate my buying Forge
3) +Buy is on Worker's Village and Trade Route ... don't think a Village chain will be fast enough in this game, but a smaller deck from the Trade Route trashing is good.

Based only on these 3 minimal thoughts, I opened Trade Route/Quarry. Looking back, Trade Route was to slow, I think, for this game. My opponent opened Quarry/Silver, which seems to make more sense here.

On turn 5, I trash an Estate. This seems like a good idea at the time, but it means that I have one less card to use with Forge later when I need costs to add up ...

As luck would have it, I get the first Forge on Turn 6, which papaHav matches on turn 7.

My Turn 8 looks a lot like my turn 5 ... and I'm really unsure of whether this was the right move. I had both Trade Route and Forge, and I could have cleared out my hand with the forge and picked up a $5 ... but I was concerned about my economy, so I decided to keep the coppers and remove another Estate. Thoughts on this particular turn would be appreciated from stronger players.

Regardless of my choices, papaHav got to do nothing on turns 6 and 8. Luck was definitely in my favour here.

Turn 10 I decide my Trade Route is only going to hinder me and trash it and a copper for a Silver.

papaHav grabs the first Platinum on his turn 10, and at this point, I feel like I'm behind. This leads to my aggressive Forge use for the rest of the game.

With my small deck, I end up drawing just right, using Forge to rush the Colonies after pushing my economy to Patinum x 2, Copper x 1, finishing with 5 Colonies. I count this as a lucky win.

2

Help! / Play Mistakes

« on: January 24, 2012, 04:26:25 pm »

Here's a game I lost last night: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120123-212908-3f31223a.html

Kingdom: Adventurer, Apprentice, Border Village, Fairgrounds, Fishing Village, Grand Market, Menagerie, Moat, Moneylender, Watchtower

I'm pretty sure I know where I went wrong in this game, and I'll outline my thoughts. I'd appreciate any feedback, either on the game itself or on my analysis.

======================================================
Those who don't want to read my wall of text below, the TL;DR version: I decided to rush provinces instead of fighting for GM, had the lead, then lost the game on what I believe to be a number of play mistakes. Also, my choice of strategy might be wrong as well.

The main questions:
1) Was the turn 7 Province buy alright in this case?
2) Turn 14/15 Duchy - mistake?
======================================================

So, I opened 2/5. Four (ok, five) cards stand out to me on this board: Apprentice, Grand Market (and Moneylender to try and gain an early GM), Fishing Village and Menagerie. With a 2/5 split, I'm torn about whether I should take the fishing village or go for the Apprentice, especially as my opponent will definitely go for the FV and aim for those Grand Markets. In the end, I decide that Apprentice is the card I want. I pick up Moat/Apprentice, while my opponent picks up Fishing Village/Moneylender (his strategy is apparent).

I get lucky on Turn 3 and my Apprentice draws my Moat and I buy an early Gold. My opponent picks up FV on turns 3 and 4 (I grab a FV on turn 4, too), then decides on turn 5 that he wants Border Village and Apprentice instead of Gold. I opt for a 2nd Gold on my turn 5, and ANOTHER one on turn 6.

Turn 7 is when I stop and have to make a choice. I have $8 to spend. Do I buy the early province? I know typically, the early province buy is not a good idea, but I'm confident (maybe too confident) in my Apprentice and my slim deck. I have 3 Gold already that I can work with ... so I bought the province.

Turn 8, 10, and 11 I buy Provinces, so I have 4. However, I also trashed a Gold on turn 10, significantly reducing my deck's buying power. Obviously, this is not a great state to be in, but I thought I had a good chance to stay ahead, as my opponent's deck was only just getting off the ground.

Turn 14/15 seems like another mistake. I should have bought a Gold at least once to help increase my buying power. One more province would break my opponent's chances in this game, I think, and that extra Gold instead of a Duchy would have been nice (or maybe Fairgrounds, if I had been paying attention ... see below).

Turn 17 I saw an opportunity, as I had 8 different cards in my deck so far, and the VP race was going to be close ... so I bought a Fairgrounds ... and, what do I do on Turn 18? Do I buy Any of Silver/Menagerie/Moneylender to push my Fairgrounds to 4VP? Nope, I buy an Estate. I would still have lost (by 1 VP instead) ... but it still bothers me that I counted, knew I needed one more ... then made the sub-par Estate purchase ...

Anyways, let me know what you all think. Sorry for writing so much.

3

Game Reports / My fastest win so far ...

« on: January 21, 2012, 05:29:30 pm »

So, I just played the following on Iso:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/21/game-20120121-140751-7321dd6f.html

There were 4 provinces gone by turn 9, 3 in my deck, 1 in the trash.

There's a significant amount of luck here, I'm sure ... but it was rather cool to see how fast Salvager and Apprentice could take off (with help from Hoard).

4

Game Reports / Pirate Ship? Justr try to pillage my deck! :P

« on: December 03, 2011, 03:37:12 pm »

A couple interesting items came up in my game just now. Thought I'd share.

This was a Colony game, with Pirate Ship. Both my opponent and I bought ourselves some Pirates ... but mine were much more effective (early on due to luck, later on due to no treasure in my deck). This opened up a very cool strategy for me in the end, thanks to Native Village and Bishop.

Game record http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/03/game-20111203-122410-76ecd7d7.html

Long story short, I bought all 8 colonies and finished the game with 5 cards in hand: Native Village, Bishop, Pirate Ship (10 coin tokens), Colony, Colony.

5

Game Reports / A Bridge Too Far ...

« on: November 28, 2011, 06:38:48 pm »

I probably should have posted numerous Games already, as I'm trying to improve, but I don't want to spam this board endlessly. I already play this game too much.

Anyways, here is a recently played game. I won, but all advice is welcome; I'm sure my play will make stronger players cringe. Instead, I was thinking about asking how my opponent could have played to take this game away from me.

Game Log here: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111127-222532-58abe632.html

Some questions ...

Opening - Was Potion a decent opening buy for this game?

Turns 7/8 - Should I have used one of these buys to pick up my Margrave? I was concentrating on getting more buying power, since the Golem was frustratingly slow to come ...

Turn 12 - Was this purchase a mistake? I could have started on the Provinces instead, but I thought I might need a couple more targets for my Golems

Turn 13 - Opposite question from Turn 12. Is this too early to get into the provinces?

Turns 14/16 - Was my spamming the Conspirators a good idea? I thought it might be good to have a Three-Pile end option, and the Conspirators seem to work very well with Golem. I also thought maybe a couple WW might be useful, though I never did get anything extra off them.

(Extra) Turns 17+ - Any comments on my Endgame play?

===============================================================================================

This ain't no top-player game, but here's my own analysis. You can skip it if you're not interested, but if you do read it, please correct any of the thoughts I've put down here. I found that going through the game like this helped me decide what I wanted to ask.

Bridge, Conspirator, Golem, Margrave, Merchant Ship, Nobles, Outpost, Potion, Salvager, Scout, and Wishing Well
My Opening: Silver/Potion
My Opponent's Opening: Silver/Bridge

Opponent plays first.

With the opening buys, I'm pretty sure my opponent is going to try and build some sort of multi-Bridge engine. When I considered that myself, I thought it would be pretty hard to do since the only village effect available was the Nobles (if you don't count the Golem). I want the Golem, which is more versatile in my opinion. In addition, I can buy a couple of bridges later Golem can activate them for me. I thought this would be a better strategy, especially since I think there's a better way to get multiple buys on the board: Margrave. (Side Note: To be honest, I missed the fact that Salvager was there. That might be a better opening, but I don't know ...)

So, my plan was to go for the Golem and Margrave, maybe picking up a Bridge along the way.

(I discovered the TABLE tag after doing all the manual formatting; something to remember for the future)

Code: [Select]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                loraleigh                                       Marcus316
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turn 3  |       Bridge                                 |        $3P -> Silver
        |       $5 -> Nobles                           |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turn 4  |       $4 -> Bridge (shuffle)                 |        $4 -> Bridge (shuffle)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turn 5  |       $3 -> Silver                           |        $3P -> Silver
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turn 6  |       Nobles (2 Actions)                     |        $3 -> Silver (shuffle)
        |       Bridge                                 |
        |       Bridge                                 |
        |       $5 -> Nobles (shuffle)                 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turn 7  |       $4 -> Conspirator                      |        Bridge
        |                                              |        $6 -> Gold
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turn 8  |       Nobles (3 Cards)                       |        $6 -> Gold
        |       $5 -> Merchant Ship (shuffle)          |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turn 9  |       Conspirator                            |        $4P -> Golem (shuffle)
        |       $4 -> Salvager                         |

Having to wait until turn 9 to get my first Golem was a bit painful. I couldn't even afford a Margrave until Turn 7, but by then I opted to continue with Big Money until I could get the first Golem. I figured the one Bridge would be enough of a hit for now in case I drew the Golem early.

As for Turns 7 and 8, I had enough to purchase Gold, so I skipped the Margrave purchase for now. The +3 Cards and +1 Buy are only useful if I have enough Treasure to make my buys worthwhile.

On to my opponent's buys ...

Deck Problem:
Opponent purchases almost exclusively Action cards, and only Nobles can make them work together, which isn't always useful. As early as Turn 7 and Turn 8, my opponent had unused actions in hand (a Bridge on both turns, dead in the hand). Part of the problem is too few Treasures, as both these turns were with hands containing only $2 worth of Treasure.

Lesson:
Money is king. If there's not enough in your deck (or you can't get to it fast enough), your opponent will be at an advantage. Even in this Kingdom, where many of my opponent's cards are effectively Silvers (+$2), being able to play only 1 or 2 of these at a time is not as effective as being able to lay out all your treasure.

I think the Nobles my opponent purchased on Turn 3 was a mistake. With $6 on Turn 3, a Gold would have been good for my opponent. If my opponent had bought the Gold instead, his/her hand on Turn 6 could have been: 2x Bridge, Gold, Silver, Estate. Even though the Bridges have collided, it doesn't affect the purchasing power. My opponent could still buy a Nobles (or another Gold), and would not have been slowed at all.

On with the game:

Code: [Select]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                loraleigh                                       Marcus316
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turn 10 |       Nobles (3 Cards)                       |        $5 -> Margrave
        |       $6 -> Nobles                           |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turn 11 |       Nobles (3 Cards) (shuffle)             |        $5P -> Golem
        |       $6 -> Nobles                           |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turn 12 |       Bridge                                 |        (shuffle) Golem (Bridge, Margrave)
        |       $4 -> Potion                           |        $8P -> Nobles, Bridge (shuffle)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turn 13 |       Nobles (2 Actions)                     |        $9 -> Province
        |       Nobles (3 Cards)                       |
        |       Merchant Ship                          |
        |       $3 -> Silver                           |
My deck is finally off the ground, and I begin to go green, as I asked above:
1) Is it too early to start going for Provinces? If so, why? or;
2) Should I have begun a turn earlier instead of picking up a couple more targets for my Golem?

As for my opponent, all of his/her numerous actions are still making it hard to keep buying. There will be a lot of catching up to do, and not enough time to do it. A couple of early Gold buys would have made the game much easier on him.

The rest of the game is pretty much endgame. I wonder whether my multiple Conspirator buys in the late game were a good idea or not (as asked above).

New players, let me know if

6

Game Reports / I'm sure you've all seen this type of board before ...

« on: November 24, 2011, 01:04:29 am »

Forgive my newness, but here's the first time I ran up against KC+Torturer ... and just to make things more painful, add a few Golems ... and Wharf, of course.

Obviously, I haven't played too many games with Torturer in the Kingdom, so the danger didn't occur to me until it was too late. I think I put up a valiant effort before I got thrashed at the end.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/23/game-20111123-215327-f17d0834.html

Any advice for the poor new player would be appreciated, if anyone cares to comment.

7

Dominion General Discussion / Nothing like online play to prove how bad I am ...

« on: November 24, 2011, 12:27:25 am »

Hello folks! Figured I'd post here.

Love Dominion, but I'm just starting to get a feel for strategy. There is a lot of info on this site and in the forums ... but for a complete n00b like me, where should I start? Do you guys have a "New Players start here" thread somewhere?