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[Awaclus]

Bureaucrat is clearly better. Not only does it attack your opponents by putting a useless card atop their deck, but it gives you a free silver that you are guaranteed to pick up in your next draw. The combination of these two things makes the Bureaucrat a valuable card in Dominion. Buying Bureaucrat as soon as possible is almost always the correct play. It even guarantees at least $2 of buying power for the next turn!

[markusin]

Not far behind of Bureaucrat is Explorer. It doesn't have the attack, but the Silver you gain from it goes into your hand so that you can use it on the same turn. If that wasn't enough, you can gain a Gold instead, into your hand, if you have a Province in hand. Provinces are a worth a huge amount of points, so you'll be wanting to scoop them up as fast as possible. Explorer lets you get the most out of those early Provinces.

At the very least, Explorer has got to be the best $5 cost card ever.

[eHalcyon]

Not far behind of Bureaucrat is Explorer. It doesn't have the attack, but the Silver you gain from it goes into your hand so that you can use it on the same turn. If that wasn't enough, you can gain a Gold instead, into your hand, if you have a Province in hand. Provinces are a worth a huge amount of points, so you'll be wanting to scoop them up as fast as possible. Explorer lets you get the most out of those early Provinces.

At the very least, Explorer has got to be the best $5 cost card ever.

[JacquesTheBard]

I actually kinda like Explorer, for reals.

[silverspawn]

I actually kinda like Explorer, for reals.

I do too. It's a cool card.

[qmech]

Is silverspawn Explorerspawnspawn?

[markusin]

I actually kinda like Explorer, for reals.

I do too. It's a cool card.

So do I, actually. I believe it was the card I had the highest win-rate-with percentage with on Iso.

[DG]

Has to happen sometime (turn 1):

DG	plays 5 Copper
DG	uses 1 coin token
DG	buys Doctor
DG	overpays for Doctor with 3 coins
DG	looks at Estate
DG	trashes Estate
DG	looks at Estate
DG	trashes Estate
DG	looks at Estate
DG	trashes Estate
DG	gains Doctor
DG	draws Copper, Copper
DG	shuffles deck
DG	draws Copper, Copper, Copper

[florrat]

It would be even better to draw Doctor during clean-up.

[liopoil]

It would be even better to draw Doctor during clean-up.

Depending on the kingdom, that could be worse.

[liopoil]

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20141130/log.513befabe4b0da6e3de05837.1417399722610.txt

liopoil   plays Crossroads
liopoil   reveals hand: Duchy, Great Hall, Great Hall, Estate, Stonemason, Estate, Duchy, Outpost, Province, Great Hall, Great Hall, Silver


Easily the most cards I've drawn with crossroads. It could have been even more, but I decided it was better to discard an estate than an outpost or herald to oasis twice earlier in the turn. My final deck had more green than not-green.

[JW]

With a Scrying Pool engine, I bought Mandarin out of Black Market, putting 5 Golds and Cache back on top of deck, and then re-drew them and played them again, and played Mandarin as well. Mandarin payed for itself and gave $16 extra! 

[eHalcyon]

Presumably you used something other than Scrying Pool to re-draw all the Treasure?

Also, Cache purchased in a Scrying Pool engine?  Sounds like a weird board.

[JW]

Presumably you used something other than Scrying Pool to re-draw all the Treasure?

Also, Cache purchased in a Scrying Pool engine?  Sounds like a weird board.

Used other cantrips that were drawn with Scrying Pool. It was against a bot so my quality of play did not need to be that high because bots do not know how to use Scrying Pool or Black Market and let you build huge engines by not seriously contesting components :-).

I had more money than buys on a turn that I wanted to buy Mint, and Cache was the most useful card I revealed with Black Market with 0 actions left (keeps a little money in deck, adds fuel for Forager/Masquerade). http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/static/logprettifier.html?20141205/log.516ce511e4b082c74d7a526a.1417812059456.txt#1-13

[Elanchana]

Ela vs. SophiesWorld

I saw Chapel/Market/Lab/VillSmith and decided to get a super thin Province-a-turn deck, while she (I'm just going to say "she" and hope I'm right) went for a Woodcutter/Gardens slogrush. It was going smoothly for me until around turn 17 when she spotted my strategy working better and dove into the main three VP piles to boost her score and her Gardening power, while I had a misclick moment and grabbed one of the Gardens for myself to weaken hers. We then went into a full-on "who can buy the most VP" battle until the Gardens and Estates both ran out and the Village pile was on the edge. I still had the lead and I wanted to get the last few Villages out of the way because it was only a matter of time before her Gardens leveled up and surpassed my Province lead... but of course she noticed this too and did everything she could not to empty the pile. It got to the point where she had completely closed the gap between our scores with Gardens and VP buys, but thankfully I both was P2 and had enough money to buy the last Village so I ended the game, expecting to compromise at a tie and get some rating points from beating a higher-ranked player. What I did not expect was my ONE Gardens miraculously leveling up at the last minute and granting me a one point victory!! I even got an "oh wow" from SophiesWorld in the chat afterwards.

Sometimes it's all about the stoppers.

(I thought I remembered her style of play from somewhere! I looked our game history up on Salvager and it turns out that this "oops, she's catching on" thing happened once before and I barely managed a tie. She's L25 on the Iso leaderboard and I'm L10 right now so I feel pretty proud of myself.)

[theblankman]

Ela vs. SophiesWorld

I feel like if you're gonna build the engine here you want to go for two-province turns.  I'd have to play it to be sure you can get there fast enough though.

[Elanchana]

Ela vs. SophiesWorld

I feel like if you're gonna build the engine here you want to go for two-province turns.  I'd have to play it to be sure you can get there fast enough though.

I'd usually go for the double Province engine too, but when I saw her trying to rush the Gardens I felt like I needed to get my deck to greening point faster.

[theblankman]

Ela vs. SophiesWorld

I feel like if you're gonna build the engine here you want to go for two-province turns.  I'd have to play it to be sure you can get there fast enough though.

I'd usually go for the double Province engine too, but when I saw her trying to rush the Gardens I felt like I needed to get my deck to greening point faster.

I did play a few test games and was able to get all 8 provinces in 17-20 turns.  It's actually a pretty fast engine for base only.  Don't be too scared of the Gardens player's early lead.  They'll have 3- or maybe 4-point Gardens by the end of the game, and it can take them a bit longer to end the game with Woodcutter than Workshop, giving you a chance to overtake with Provinces.  From there, you have the better deck. 

Often if you're playing an engine against big money or a pile rush, you should expect to fall behind and plan to catch up and win later.  Don't worry about that; engines are supposed to start greening later.  You usually don't want to cut your planned build short because of the scoreboard.  If you lose, well, maybe you didn't build the engine quite right, or maybe the engine just wasn't quite as good as you thought.  But on this board I think you were right to want the engine. 

[Awaclus]

Yeah, double Province turns against a slog player is good. The slog player wins the long game, so you need to empty the Provinces very fast, and the slog player isn't going to buy a single Province so you're guaranteed to be rewarded for your more powerful deck. Also, don't buy Gardens when you could have bought a Province, because that makes the game longer which works out in the slog player's favor.

[WanderingWinder]

So the thing about that game is, you should build the engine forever. Draining the gardens isn't really a big deal if they can't end the game. And they can't. So you build forever and eventually go for at least 2 provinces per turn, and you ought to win pretty easily. They'll need at least 20 turns or so (probably closer to 25) to get enough VP to overcome 8 provinces, and even if it goes that long, you just get some gardens or duchies yourself (at the end!) and really should be very very fine. Woodcutter/gardens isn't really a thing.

I don't think I really agree that the Gardens player has the long-term advantage; their deck just gets worse and worse. Obviously with enough time, they will build up enough points to be insurmountable. But that takes so very long that it's just not realistic.


In general, I find this to be one of the biggest problems of newer players building engines: they panic about being behind and green too early.

[Awaclus]

I don't think I really agree that the Gardens player has the long-term advantage; their deck just gets worse and worse. Obviously with enough time, they will build up enough points to be insurmountable. But that takes so very long that it's just not realistic.

But that almost happened here. Well, with optimal play by the engine player, it shouldn't be relevant on this board, but there are times when it is actually relevant and on top of my head I can't really imagine a very likely scenario where it's bad to buy the Province instead of denying a slog VP card.

[TrojH]

Code: [Select]

Candlestick Maker, Pawn, Squire, Apothecary, University, Rats, Market, Witch, Fairgrounds, Goons
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20141226/log.516d0d03e4b082c74d7aa823.1419640727489.txt

A game with Shelters. I bought a Rats near the end, just because Fairgrounds was on the board, and I wanted another differently-named card. 

Unfortunately, the Rats did me no good, since I finished with 19 different cards.

Why on earth did I trash my Hovel? Eight points down the drain! 

[liopoil]

How not to execute a pillage "pin": http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20141227/log.516fc05ae4b082c74d7e0ceb.1419720513450.txt

Okay, not a pin, but I had an engine that would play pillage every turn to ensure he could not buy a province each turn to give me enough time to catch up and win. And it would have worked too, if I had simply stopped him from getting apprentice...

turn 17: I discard his throne room instead of apprentice. He apprentices the province and goes on to double province. If I discard the apprentice, he has to throne oracle and at best gets a single province. This is bad, but I still have complete control over the game.

turn 19: He has a bad hand with only 2 coins and two fortresses. I discard a fortress (the right call) and play 3 oracles, surely I can prevent him from drawing his apprentice, right? The first time I see copper-pawn. If I put it back he can't do anything, but he can get a pawn in his next hand and I'd rather he didn't have that, so I decide to discard it... stupid, right? It gets worse. The next play I see silver-pawn, and use the same reasoning and discard again! Now I'm asking for it, but with the third play of oracle I see copper-throne room. If I just put this back I still have the game in hand easily. No, I discard without thinking, and suddenly his fortress can draw absolutely anything and I have to pray it isn't apprentice. Well, maybe it's still okay, I can just keep building and he won't be able to end it and I can take the long way back to victory with duchies and harems. Nope, I decide to take 3 of the last 3 provinces... and then remember that it's bad if he draws apprentice. Well, that's what happens, and I lose.

This isn't really the right thread for this, but I don't really know where better to put this. We need an "I threw it away!" thread. Okay, there is actually one of those, but that was about a specific game. This wasn't a misclick.

[sudgy]

I one time came back from being behind six provinces by making a pillage engine (using Rogue/Graverobber, can't remember which), and getting all almost all the rest of the points.

[GwinnR]

There is no thread for 2015? Doesn't matter.

Taxman is no Mine (and not even a Mint), but a nasty discard attack:

Code: [Select]

skrz: turn 14
skrz plays Taxman
skrz trashes Gold
(...)
skrz gains Platinum
(...)

GwinnR: turn 14
(...)
GwinnR plays Taxman
GwinnR trashes Platinum
skrz discards Platinum
GwinnR gains Platinum
(...)

skrz: turn 18
(...)
skrz plays Taxman
skrz trashes Gold
(...)
skrz gains Platinum
(...)

GwinnR: turn 18
(...)
GwinnR plays Taxman
GwinnR trashes Platinum
skrz discards Platinum
GwinnR gains Platinum