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26
Game Reports / A cruelly laid trap...
« on: April 29, 2012, 01:51:55 am »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/28/game-20120428-224752-792e4b75.html

Turn 17 and I have enough to buy a province by simply playing vault (or no actions...), but I have no +buy and ending the game will make me lose 39-40 (no point counter but I counted). So I play my masquerade as a desperation play (its completely unnecessary), and much to my joy he instinctively passes me an estate. I win 40-39.

27
Game Reports / Monumental Comeback
« on: April 25, 2012, 02:59:32 pm »
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120424-191223-79663fb8.html

cards in supply: Colony, Contraband, Counting House, Crossroads, Hamlet, Monument, Platinum, Remake, Secret Chamber, Shanty Town, Venture, and Watchtower

Me an Obi Wan Bonogi both go for slightly different versions of Remake-enabled Shantytown/Crossroads/Hamlet/Watchtower engines. He goes for Platinum and Venture while I spam Monuments, eventually picking up 7.

Turn 16 it feels quite obvious that my opponent picked the better strategy (which... he still probably did). The score is 52-25 and there's one colony left, and his economy isn't really dead yet.

Turn 17 I play 5/7 of my monuments and pick up a province (colony suicide ends the game). Miraculously, Obi Wan Bonogi stalls and only hits platinum-copper, and can only take a duchy. I was thinking at this point that he was greening with duchy a bit too early.

Turn 18 I play 7/7 of my monuments and with my hamlet-given 2 buys am able to buy the last colony and a province to win by 2 points.

Obi Wan had even (45%) prospects at ending it with a colony/monument play his next turn and probably had a 75% chance to win if I couldn't end it that turn.



28
Help! / How was this so close?
« on: April 24, 2012, 04:11:33 am »
I know winning logs are generally frowned upon but what I would have expected to be a blowout win came down to the last turn (if I had only enough to buy a Duchy, i'd have lost.)

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120423-131807-d89bb024.html

I used to play Alchemist every time I saw it on the board (when I was high 20s in rating), and nowadays I tend to ignore it in ~85% of games. I see the opportunity for Alchemist-Horn of plenty-other stuff but I see Mountebank on the board and think that will blow the other options away. The black market deck isn't really that enticing or threatening, so I open silver/silver gunning for Mountebanks while my opponent opens Potion/Black Market.

My opponent picks up his first Mountebank turn 9, and ten or so turns later I find myself scrambling to pick up half the VP as my opponents massive engine rears its head.

Usually I would blame something like this on luck, but I grab mountebanks on turns 3 and 5 and he doesn't seem to get particularly lucky with his BM deck pulls.

29
Dominion Articles / When to delay cursing
« on: April 22, 2012, 06:08:39 pm »
Early and often is the conventional dominion strategy for cursing attacks. And it's true most of the time: we figured out awhile ago that the real terror of a deck bloated with curses is not the negative VP, but rather that dead cards in your hand are incredibly damaging. It follows from this that we want to distribute curses, and thus kill your opponents deck, as quickly as possible.

Four cursegivers sometimes create exceptions to this rule, for various reasons:



1) Followers
This exception is the most obvious, and has two reasons; One, it's nearly impossible to get followers into your deck "quickly", and two: Followers junks up your deck as much as your opponents. Surprisingly, followers could be considered a card closer to Goons than say, Mountebank.




2) Young Witch with a mediocre or worse bane.
A case could be made that this is similar to any curser with Moat on the board, but 85% of the time the bane will be significantly better than moat (15%, i'm looking at you, secret chamber and moat); so much so that it's really a different case.

Your opponent might pick up one or even two banes in the opening, making young witch a relatively weak prospect. But in the midgame if they continue to spam the weakish bane, you're going to pretty easily cruise to a victory with your superior cards. If they ignore the bane outside the 1-2 from the opening, midgame their is often bloated enough that you can significantly slow them down if you start focusing on cursing then with a well timed buy*. Is the only reason this works psychological (meaning that with perfect play this case  wouldn't exist)? Probably. But you're opponents are human, so it works. This is especially true if you find that you actually will benefit from the effect of young witch in your deck.




3) Ill Gotten Gains with trashing

We have mastered IGG down to a science. The IGG rush is one of the most methodically crushing strategies, so much so that people find it boring. The IGG Rush works well without trashing, or even with some trash for benefits (Expand, Salvager, Apprentice, remake to an extent) but fails hard against other trashers (Lookout, Masquerade, sometimes Forge, Chapel). You should probably ignore IGG in any of those cases.

Except you shouldn't. Like young witch and her banes, people won't buy those trashers en mass (unless it's masquerade. I do not endorse trying IGG if your opponent has more than one masquerade on any circumstances, ever.)  So while an all out IGG rush against those cards is very likely to fail without support, a well timed buy* or two can be a major annoyance, though not a crushing blow, to your opponents deck.

So whats a well timed buy* anyways? When you elect to curse midgame with young witch or IGG, you really want to pay attention to the shuffles. The closer your opponent is to the shuffle, the better the time it is to start buying IGG. The closer you are to a reshuffle (or if your cycling your deck each turn), the better the the time it is for you to buy young witch. This is, once again, due to the somewhat subjective psychological aspect of dominion and limiting your opponents timing; if your opponent has one or two more hands in their shuffle, they might love to buy another masquerade to counter your curse, but they draw 6$ and now would have to severely overpay for a counter.




4) Familiar
Familiar is probably the most maligned curser. This is because of its immense cost due to the way we play dominion on isotropic (if whenever we played with a potion cost we played with 3-5 of them, people would have a much higher opinion of all potion cards, even transmute.) But the nay-sayers are right: Opening potion-silver is often a mistake with trashing on a board: Geronimoos unoptimized familiar bot beats the unoptimized remake bot only 52-45; a small margin for a curser. With other things aiding trashers, Remake is often a far better opener than familiar because familiar kills your economy in the short term (the potion is like a curse) while remake will jumpstart theirs too quickly for familiar to slow them down.

But as with the other cards, a potion doesn't necessarily need to be bought in the first round or not at all.

Look at the following game: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120421-140353-f310ab74.html
With spice merchant and remake on the board, both me and Michael Harris think that familiar is against too much trashing and open remake/silver. On the second reshuffle I hit
remake-C-C-C-C, while he hits Remake-E-E-C-C, essentially killing my chances at winning a mirror match. Shifting my strategy, I pick up a potion on turn 5 and proceed to fill him with 8 of the ten curses (I took two from his torturer when I could trash them). He successfully trashes them all, but the curses slow him down so much that I eek out a 4 point victory. Except for perhaps buying one too many nobles, Michael Harris played his strategy close to optimally, making me believe it was the decision to grab familiars that let me win.

Note also that if I opening potion-silver, remake-spice merchant would almost certainly have crushed me (guessing that the odds are roughly 75-25 there)

30
Solo Challenges / Suggestion: Combine challenge points?
« on: April 21, 2012, 03:59:15 pm »
We seem to have many people running their own series of solo challenges here, which is great.

But at some point we might run into competition among challenges if more than one maintain a round of standings: do you participate in both and do ok in both, or try to maximize your time in one as to be in the top of the leaderboard of one?

If you guys combined the leaderboard in some way I feel that it would be a cool way to ring in a bunch of the F.DS community in a competitive atmosphere outside Isodom and the likes.

I don't know if any of you but Ozle are actually keeping a running tally (and I don't know if Ozle is continuing... he seems to be MIA) but it seemed like a cool idea to me.

31
Rules Questions / Possession and Hinterlands interactions
« on: April 20, 2012, 03:24:24 am »
Mostly I can discern the outcomes via careful thought of the text.. but these simply seem ambiguous to me.

Possession text for reference: "The player to your left takes an extra turn after this one, in which you can see all cards he can and make all decisions for him. Any cards he would gain on that turn, you gain instead; any cards of his that are trashed are set aside and returned to his discard pile at end of turn."

Trader: Which side(s) can reveal trader upon the possessed player gaining a card?

Noble Brigand: Who is the attack played on? If the possessed player plays the on-buy attack, does the player who played the possession gain the cards back (which would be oddly hilarious).

Ill-Gotten-Gains: Who gains the curse? If the possessed player gains the curse, which I think is the case (on-gain wording matches possession, unlike NB's on-buy) does the cursed get sent to the player who played the possession?

32
Just played a game where I unwittingly tried to play this, not thinking about just how they antisynergized... Don't. Really really don't.

I mean it.

'Tis all.

33
Game Reports / Niche Combo: Mint, Remake, Courtyard
« on: April 17, 2012, 01:09:25 am »
Courtyard-Remake, good opening (High probability of Remake-E-E-C-C)

Courtyard into Mint, Conceptually good opening (Easier to trash 5 coppers, but your economy gets too trashed)

Courtyard-Remake into Mint, Elite opening

in real game
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120416-220108-7445dbb5.html
in solo
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/16/game-20120416-220323-e3edc40b.html
Of course, both these had the second reshuffle go optimally....

34
Dominion General Discussion / How does black market affect cards?
« on: April 03, 2012, 10:54:43 pm »
Black Market has one of the most love/hate relationships with players on Isotropic. (OK, mostly hate.) The random swinginess of the card can be devastating: pulling a mountebank turn 3 in an otherwise BM game is devastating.

Whether black market is worth buying is entirely dependent on the cards in the deck. Sometimes, however, a kind-of-reverse-effect occurs: drawing it from the black market (or simply the existence of black market) makes the card more or less desirable. There are different "levels" in which Black Market can affect a card. The following incomplete list is my attempt at a categorization; feel free to suggest/add.

Concrete improvement: The actual limitations of the card are changed uniquely (relatively) by Black Market:
--Mandarin
--Mint

Competitive Improvement: Their effects become more powerful because you no longer have to worry about the competition of your opponent.

--Tournament (no competition for Prizes)
--Ambassador (One way to win the ambassador war? have your opponent have no ambassadors..)
--Lone Cursers (There are no curse-givers in the supply; you now have free reign to distribute all ten)

Black-Market Improvement: These cards don't necessarily improve from being in the BM deck, but are generally improved because of the inclusion of Black Market in a deck:

--All of Cornucopia (OK... not really.. But Fairgrounds, Menagerie, Fairgrounds, Horn of Plenty, Fairgrounds, Hunting Party to an extent, Fairgrounds, etc.)
-Tactician
-Draw to ___ cards (watchtower, library, jack, occasionally minion)

Neutral Effect: These cards powers don't really change whether found in the BM deck/game, even though you might be ecstatic to find them in the deck:

-Majority of cards, including cursers when there is other cursing on the board.

Negative Delay Effect: Cards that you are less likely to want from the Black Market deck due to the delay in obtaining them.
-Some trashers (trading post, chapel, steward, remake, not Remodel, Expand, Forge)
-Possession/Golem (by the time you pull them out of the deck...)
-I'm sure i'm missing some here.

Single Card negative effects: Cards that you are less likely to only want one of:

Minion
Potion-cost cards
Duke
Hunting party (still good, just not great)
Bridge
Highway
Ill Gotten Gains
Torturer

Degenerate Cards: Waste of BM deck space.
Fools Gold
Treasure Map
Peddler

35
Game Reports / An engine game where develop was key:
« on: April 02, 2012, 11:12:52 pm »
cards in supply: Council Room, Develop, Grand Market, Harem, Horse Traders, Island, Noble Brigand, Potion, Scrying Pool, Shanty Town, and University

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/02/game-20120402-200356-4cd26b85.html

Basically, a University/Scrying Pool game with no good way of gaining coin, outside of Horse Traders (bad because you want a thin deck with little to discard with Scrying pool), Noble Brigand (bad because... it sucks) and Grand Market. A uni/scrying pool engine with any combination of Horse Traders/Noble Brigand/Money actually probably fairs pretty poorly against Council Room-BM, and it takes ages to get enough coin with HT to rack up a bunch of grand markets.

So, after spamming Council Rooms (drawing my deck), I use university to pick up two more develops (I bought one early for trashing, and because I thought I could develop into.. harems), scrying pool to pick em up, then developing three council rooms into Grand Markets, then drawing them with some horse-traders shanty town shenanigans.

36
Game Reports / How the hell did this happen...
« on: March 31, 2012, 02:09:52 am »
I won on turns. Thank god for that, otherwise I might have had to quit the game..

I saw his opening and stopped concentrating on my play *too* much, but still wasn't like, actively ignoring strategy. I'm just dumbfounded...

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201203/30/game-20120330-230737-3393862d.html

37
Puzzles and Challenges / Untraditional opening
« on: March 29, 2012, 09:44:01 pm »
When is it optimal play to open Duchy-X in your first two buys? feel free to be as creative as you'd like within the confines of a 4 player game

My solution:

Deck: Embargo, Duchess, Vineyards, Golem, Bank, Outpost, Saboteur, Noble Brigand, Gardens, Silk Road

4P game, you're P4. You, P2, P3 have 2-5, P1 has 4-3

P1 buys Noble Brigand
P2/P3 buy embargo
You buy Duchess or Embargo

P1 buys silver
P2/3 Embargo silver and Noble Brigand, buying Saboteur
You buy duchy: Now it can get saboteured into a silver with any luck, and you gain duchess.
 

38
Puzzles and Challenges / Mega-curse turn
« on: March 25, 2012, 02:31:50 am »
You are playing a standard 4 player dominion game with no possession, King's court, throne room or black market. You have 12 cards in your deck, ten of which are curses. On a normal turn with a 5 card hand, you play one action and buy one card, and end your turn. On that turn you distribute 20 curses, emptying the curse pile.

How is this accomplished?

39
Game Reports / A long (endless?) and painful ambassador grind
« on: March 19, 2012, 03:32:20 am »
If Jeebus reads this I want to apologize for ignoring you in the lobby; after I left the game page I thought you had left.

I almost wanted to do an annotated game off of this, but it's so long (and only halfway completed...) that I'd rather just throw it up here. 

I'll grab the CR log when I can but heres the Iso:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201203/19/game-20120319-000548-e2102e3a.html

I started this game thinking I was lucky when Jeebus hit 5-2 on an ambassador turn, but his fourth turn (stables->ambassador 2x estate) kind of neutralizes that. I can't help but think that my opening monument was my first critical mistake: While obviously monument likely plays a pretty large role due to the extended nature of the ambassador game, it slowed me down at the start and feels premature now, and the collision risk is just too great.

I went for double-tactician pretty quickly after realizing that his fourth turn was going to set me behind significantly in the dreaded ambassador war; his stables (an excellent call) was highly effective at cycling and drawing his ambassadors constantly. Double-Tact was a bit slow to set up, especially giving that I really needed inn to do more than play a single ambassador a turn. Nevertheless, it did what I wanted it to do: I tied up the ambassador war at least (through strategically ignoring curses than returning two at once) and Jeebus had to abandon cursing me (at one point we had a comical 13 estates in the supply, the largest i've ever seen in 2P).

Unfortunately at this point Jeebus's economy and engine had picked up significantly, with -5 stables and inns, and he started picking up margraves for the +buy and to slow me down a bit. Jeebus correctly kept on ignoring green: a couple provinces in and I could start pounding curses on him if I shaped my deck up a bit first. The result was this bizarre game that by turn 26 had no green cards bought and only 1/10 curses distributed or something.

I pick up a governor: the only card he ignored (he said he doesn't know how to play it at all, and that ambassador was his best card.. which it appears to be). I don't know if transitioning my deck into a governor-doubletact engine would have worked at all (he would still be hitting me with ambassador). It was my only real chance at gaining a lead, since he had a heavy lead on everything else. I play a few turns through and notice (with a small hint of irony) that my deck was too clogged with monuments, ambassadors and a copperless stables to make an effective governor deck (in my opinion), so I resigned on turn 26.

I don't really know how the game would have ended if I didn't resign: jeebus thought Stables/Monuments/Inns might eventually have been 3-piled, but that seems hard to imagine because of the limited coin that existed in his deck and the 0 coin in my deck.


40
Dominion Isotropic / Isotropic Bug- Trader/Possession/Embargo?
« on: March 16, 2012, 02:33:23 am »


Sorry for the bad quality of the picture, the computer i'm on is using an archaic MS Paint.

I didn't know where to post this since I only saw CR and DS feedback forums, not iso.

Error message in case picture clarity is too crappy:

ERROR:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/projects/sites/public-dominion/game.py", line 2120, in run
    done = p.TakeTurn()
  File "/projects/sites/public-dominion/game.py", line 1879, in TakeTurn
    done = player.TakeTurn(turn_mode=next)
  File "/projects/sites/public-dominion/game.py", line 1721, in TakeTurn
    self.BuyCard(c)
  File "/projects/sites/public-dominion/game.py", line 1563, in BuyCard
    v.fn(c, self)
  File "/projects/sites/public-dominion/game.py", line 1546, in gain_embargo_curses
    gained = player.Gain([cards.basic.Curse] * em)
  File "/projects/sites/public-dominion/game.py", line 705, in Gain
    self.possessed_by, what)
  File "/projects/sites/public-dominion/game.py", line 1008, in Say
    msg = msg.format(*fmtargs)
AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'color_article_definite'

41
Game Reports / Bad luck or bad play?
« on: March 04, 2012, 02:29:11 pm »
I lost a bucket-load of games with swindler Yesterday, and the entire time I was cursing bad luck. I know *some* of it has to be luck, but maybe some of these games can enlighten me on how to better counter swindler. THese are all (including lucky) of the games I saw with swindler in them.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120302-230648-8455984b.html
Swindler Venture-> Mint and then Province gets swindled into a Peddler last minute, making me lose by two. Is Swindler enough reason to go into an mostly unsupported Goons deck? (mint/venture is a favorite combo of mine)

I hit two golems, which is nice in that they took them out of play for a turn but also wasn't very harmful.


http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120302-231503-fb01aeb1.html

Swindler Province-> Province enabling him to end the game a turn earlier, before my deck with 10 Grand Markets fired off for what I believe is a sufficiently big Megaturn to win.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120303-172814-f75f73c4.html

Swindlers my swindler FOUR TIMES out of six plays. Besides that it seemed to be a mirror match which I think I should have won (6 Wharf 4 WV > 4 Wharf 6 WV, probably)

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120303-173626-52d94b7f.html

Swindlers my critical 5's twice in what was also mostly a mirror match. The last turn, he swindles my duchy back into a 5 (he would have won by 3 anyways but it was cruelly ironic)

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120303-234711-2fcacc33.html

My 1st reshuffle swindler hits two estates, then he hits a copper his first play. Island > Tournament might also have been a mistake (I was planning to pick one up after but didnt really see a chance)

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120303-185550-bfbaab90.html

I ignore swindler and win. I think swindler was close to luck-neutral here (he did hit Bridges and Fishing Villages... as he should have, as they were the most common cards in my deck)


http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120303-143306-11367fc9.html

He swindler's my original salvager into a gardens, which is annoying but not deadly since I draw the gardens early with Salvager. Not sure about this one.


There was one last game where my turn four 4$ was swindled into a gardens. I kinda-sorta-ragequit and stopped playing swindler games after that.

42
Game Reports / The closest thing I've ever seen to a Vineyards Rush
« on: March 02, 2012, 08:44:46 pm »
Vineyards games usually don't end nearly as quickly as Workshop-Silk Roads or Gardens games because 1) Vineyards potion costs prevents gaining the VP card/buying more than one typically, 2) The primary gain is actions, meaning you usually try and fine-tune an engine that takes a bit longer to set up but ultimately is stronger.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201203/02/game-20120302-143341-0d00c7ad.html

Now, my opponent was a bit of a village idiot, and because of that helped me 3pile slightly by buying 4 Worker's Villages. Regardless, 3piling out in 11 turns seems ridiculously quick for a non-mirror (I had 25/30 of the 3-pile cards).
 
Unfortunately this seems to be more of a confluence of a ridiculous amount of Vineyards-Friendly cards, rather than one simple combo:

Chapel-- You really don't want much money in vineyards games, and cantrip actions go well in high density
Talisman- Since Vineyards wants a lot of Actions more than a lot of VP cards, Talisman works much more effectively in Vineyards than Gardens or Silk Roads
Workers Village- Goes well with Courtyard and provides the vital +buys to make the rush work (both to amass 6-action buy phases and to buy multiple Vineyards)
Courtyard/Wishing Well-Allows me to draw my deck, but also are CHEAP actions allowing me to grab 6 actions only with two buys and C-C-C-Talisman-Talisman

43
I seem to enjoy trying anything with Trader, and found this one in a board with nothing going on and found it to be relatively strong (though by no means great). The basic concept is to flood your deck with a large amount of silver so that wishing well has a high probability of being a lab. I was getting ~15.25 turns average, but I was playing really quickly. Also, it has a lot more staying power than BM/Smithy, hitting 8 provinces in like ~20.5 turns. Unlike trader/cache, this strategy is really difficult to play correctly (even as a human) and I would be seriously impressed if someone got a decent version of the strategy running on a simulator.

The basic strategy (really, really not optimized)

Open 4/3 Trader/Wishing Well

Trader Order: Estate>Other Trader>Copper>Silver (keeping in mind not to trader away something if it knocks you down from 8)

Wishing Well guessing: Copper early on, silver after 2nd reshuffle (maybe third), taking into account cards seen if you want to be optimal (its hard) If you have a hand like WW-C-C-C-Trader, obviously guess estate if you have any left.

Buy: Wishing well with 3 (I think ALWAYS WW>Silver, though i'm not sure), trader with 4-5 until you get 3-4 of them, gold possibly with 6, province with 8.


I'd love to see if anyone can turn this from a better-than-BMU strategy into something that can challenge BM-Smithy.

44
Game Reports / Why I hate 4-player
« on: February 29, 2012, 12:21:16 am »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201202/28/game-20120228-210652-56a7af96.html

I'm sure luck was mostly on my side for the majority of the game (Steward-E-E-C-C 3rd turn is nice) but these types on endings just anger me so much. Dan the Chemist has 8$, 2 buys on his 12th turn and 18 VP. There are two provinces left and it's a four player game, so the odds that he sees another turn are pretty minimal.

But instead of buying the last province and either
A) Tying for a win in 4P if I grab the last
B) Losing if I miss and G Rated buys the last
or
C) Winning outright if Cakewalk buys the last,

he inexplicably takes his chances on Duchy-Great Hall. I wouldn't be annoyed if he had merely ruined his own chances, but because he passed the province I lost my chance (which would have happened) of tying for the win, instead having to get the penultimate province and lose to G Rated.

I wouldn't say anything about this if this was an in-person game or a non-counter game, but it really irks me when people are too lazy to type !status, and because of this make moves that affect the other players. I guess this isn't really any different from playing a suboptimal strategy though.


45
Variants and Fan Cards / Vantage Point: An improved Scout
« on: February 27, 2012, 02:35:49 pm »
So there was some discussion on the worst-cards list, and the placement of Scout in the worst 4$ list made me want to come up with an improved version of scout that isn't just tacking on an extra card. Excuse the poor naming, I wanted something remotely keeping with the theme, and lookout is taken...

4$
Vantage Point
_____________

Reveal the next 4 cards in your deck. Put any revealed Victory cards into your hand. Return them to your deck in the order of your choice.


+2 Cards
--------
In most games, I think it plays similarly to Smithy. One obvious problem that worries me is the deck rearranging principle, which might be too strong as a mega-courtyard (though courtyard does only cost 2$, so this could be ok).


If the rearranging does prove too strong, I also thought of this version.


4$
Vantage Point
------

+2 Cards

Reveal the next 4 cards in your deck. Put any revealed Victory or Curse cards into your hand.

____________

It loses the oracle-esque advantage, but becomes significantly more powerful in cursing games (which I believe doesn't break it; Watchtower, Trader, Lighthouse and Moat also become especially more powerful in cursing games..)

46
Game Reports / Was I lucky or did I pick the right strategy?
« on: February 21, 2012, 07:28:45 pm »
I just played http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201202/21/game-20120221-161718-c8e2aae9.html, a (imo) very interesting game with Ben Warden. I won by a relatively large spread (21), but this is pretty small in the context that A) he was playing mega-turns for 30+ points and B) He had to buy down to prevent me from winning by running provinces/colonies out on two occasions.

He chose to go for a KC-Enabled Scrying pool engine. I honestly didn't really consider the possibility, since nomad camp was the only + buy, but it seems obvious that ignoring it entirely was a mistake. I went BM with one trader, an envoy, and Banks, with a bit of the Cache-Trader trick I like. I thought 79 points in 20 turns seemed on the high end for my strategy.

I don't really know how to do simulations, but I think because of the ridiculous amount of choice needed for Ben's strategy that a simulator would do very, very poorly with his.

47
I don't really play a cohesive strategy against torturer games... I only have general guidelines, and feel like I could really improve in these games.

What I do:

-Discard more frequently if I have cursers myself, since they affect the split.
-Take the curse in general if i'm at 6,8, or 5 when there is a critical card I need (IE the curser itself)
-Take the curse (or resign...) more frequently if I know I'll be getting hit by another torturer after the first.
-Take the curse more frequently if I think discarding significantly decreases a chance at a 2+ torturer (or other curser) combo.
-Discard all if my hand is 4- and I get hit by 2+

48
Game Reports / Embargo Madness
« on: February 13, 2012, 07:04:40 pm »
I played this game against -Stef-, so I guess half of the reason I'm posting this is to gloat.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120212-162245-f7831f6b.html

Before I saw my hand, I was thinking Masquerade would make this a relatively tame opening, the debate being between Masquerade/Caravan or Masquerade/Silver (Caravan, I think). Then I noticed the 5-2 opening.

-Stef- had a mirror opening and we both thought after the game that his Horn of Plenty-Embargo opening was weak, since HoP is stuck at 2-3 early on. I opened IGG/Embargo, and was lucky enough (with slight statistical aid from the Curse/HOP in his first reshuffle) to Embargo the masquerades before he could grab one to pass back the curse.

-Stef- later double-embargos the IGG's. I think that this might have been a mistake, since Masquerade is a pretty good counter to an IGG rush, though I'm not sure.

The whole time I felt like I didn't really have a coherent strategy, other than "goons, grand market good". So while I didn't play particularly poorly in my opinion, I'm interested in what both of us could have done better.

Oh, and the 3-pile ending was fun. 5 Curses, 2 embargos to buy out and only 4 buys. No problem, buy 2 embargoed embargos and a double embargoed Ill Gotten Gains and 3 pile with a buy left for style points.

49
Dominion General Discussion / Simulator help: Trader/Cache
« on: February 13, 2012, 04:53:51 pm »
The combo is obvious, but I'd like to know if possible how good it is to play specifically around this combo, and I don't really have any experience with the simulators. I suspect its virtually tied with BM/Smithy.

Assume 4/3 opening.

What I would like to know if possible:
1) Is one or two traders optimal
2) on 5$ w/o trader hands, should you buy cache or silver
3) When to shift to duchies (roughly)
4) How it actually fares against BM/Smithy.

Play rules are relatively straight-forward except for the above. Remember that buying a Cache with trader in hand is preferable to buying a gold.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

50
Game Reports / Did it have to be this long?
« on: February 07, 2012, 06:29:41 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201202/07/game-20120207-152303-7861fe49.html

A tactician-Bank game... my (unranked) opponent opened Tact-Duchess, and only fell behind due to a few small tactical errors (Horse traders with bank..) IMO.

With 4 colonies out on Turn 13, I bought a duchy with 6$ thinking a double-colony turn for each of us was possible. This may have been a mistake

We had bought out 7 Colonies by turn 15.. and then I didn't pick up the last one until turn 27. I went for an estate over playing tactician on turn 17 as a desperate attempt to keep a tiebreak point up (he'd need Col-Duchy I believe not to lose on turns.

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