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philosophyguy

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Board question
« on: November 21, 2011, 08:51:38 pm »
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Earlier this evening I played a board with the following cards: Lookout, Workshop, Mining Village, Bishop, Gardens, Haggler, Tactician, Farmlands (and one more, either $4 or $5, that I can't remember).

I opened Lookout/Silver, my opponent opened Silver/Bishop. My plan (especially after he went for a Bishop) was to thin the deck and get to Goons ASAP, then use Mining Village+Goons to get tokens and win on piles. For some reason, though, the deck never took off. I trashed most of my starting cards, got 2 Goons, then a Mining Village and eventually another Goons, but then stalled. My opponent, meanwhile, bought a Tactician and lots of Gold, and eventually was consistently trashing Golds for +4 net VP, in addition to buying Province/Gold.

After a couple of shuffles of not making it to $6 and only getting one multi-Goons turn, I switched gears to Gardens, Estates, and Coppers when at least 1 Goons was in play. I managed to squeak out a victory only because my opponent didn't buy a single Gardens.

My question is: was it just bad shuffle luck that Mining Village + 2 Goons did not come together? I knew the board didn't have great drawing (with the exception of Tactician), but I thought my quick deck-thinning with Lookout and his Bishop would make that more or less irrelevant. Would this deck have benefited from a Tactician, or should I have done something else entirely?
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chwhite

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Re: Board question
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2011, 09:02:22 pm »
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Would this deck have benefited from a Tactician

Yes, yes, a trillion times yes.  Tactician is stupendous card draw, and plays very well with Goons.
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ftl

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Re: Board question
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2011, 09:17:56 pm »
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Well, since you have Goons, you could use the Goons for virtual money and then try to always tactician, giving yourself 10-card hands each turn. Tactician seems like it would have helped.

Since there isn't any card draw on this board, besides Tactician, and no useful cantrips, it seems like just a no-card-draw goons engine is going to stall - there's nothing you can buy with the goons that won't clog up the engine! Without double-tactician-ing, you'd have to be really really aggressive with the Lookout and Bishop-trashing, to make sure that you trash every new thing you buy with the Goons. And that's hard, because you buy multiple things per turn (hopefully).

As for doing something else - well, I'm not experienced enough to say. Workshop-Gardens is the obvious combination but Bishop is pretty nice against Gardens since the Gardener can't take advantage of bishop-based trashing. A while back there was a board discussed here which was similar, it was Bishop-Goons-City against Ironworks-Gardens, and it was really close. Workshop is worse than IW but Mining Village is worse than City (for massive goons turns, that is) so it seems like this board would be pretty close too.
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chwhite

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Re: Board question
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2011, 09:23:48 pm »
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Well, since you have Goons, you could use the Goons for virtual money and then try to always tactician, giving yourself 10-card hands each turn. Tactician seems like it would have helped.

Since there isn't any card draw on this board, besides Tactician, and no useful cantrips, it seems like just a no-card-draw goons engine is going to stall - there's nothing you can buy with the goons that won't clog up the engine! Without double-tactician-ing, you'd have to be really really aggressive with the Lookout and Bishop-trashing, to make sure that you trash every new thing you buy with the Goons. And that's hard, because you buy multiple things per turn (hopefully). 

You can always buy more Mining Villages with the Goons, or buy Bishops and sacrifice them to each other.  Workshop/Gardens would give me pause, but other than that this board has all the elements for a functional no-stall Goons engine.
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ftl

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Re: Board question
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2011, 09:39:17 pm »
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Fair enough, I exaggerated the danger of stalling. But it would take a Goons+Bishop OR Goons+Tactician engine (or both!) to avoid stalling, you wouldn't be able to do it with just the Lookout plus opponents' Bishops like the OP tried. You're right, I didn't address that. My bad.
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jotheonah

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Re: Board question
« Reply #5 on: November 22, 2011, 01:16:41 am »
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I would have gone Goons-Gardens from the get-go. (Wow that was an alliterative sentence).

Basically just like you played it, but without the trashing  - as many villages and Goons as I could manage and then rush the Gardens, buying copper with extra buys.  Maybe one or two Workshops to snap up the Gardens faster, especially once your green card/Copper stall gets unbearable. Normally I object to buying copper just to use a buy, even in the case of Goons or Gardens, but when it's powering up both? If you have all the Gardens in a multiplayer game, each copper bought with double Goons is worth 3.2 VP. Those coppers are Duchies! Obviously that's an unlikely case. But say you have a modest 5 Gardens in a 2p game. Buying a Copper with two Goons is still 2.5 VP, 3.5 for an estate. Which means a single double-Goons turn with five Gardens (no other money in play) nets 12 VP - two Provinces!

The only drawback to Goonsing with no money is deck slag and a Gardens deck screams for deck slag anyway, so it's like a horribly bloated match made in heaven, IMO. A tactician certainly wouldn't hurt, not just for the cards, but for the extra action (another Goons = another 2 VP) and the extra buy (an extra VP per Goons played).

But here, I've completely ignored the original question. Was it bad shuffle luck that, in a very thin deck, you couldn't get MV+Goons+Goons together?

I think it's always asking a lot for three cards to collide in a particular proportion, but it does sound like Lady Luck shafted you a bit.  But the thing is, if you rely on luck when there's a way to cheat it, your bad luck is really bad strategy.  And Tactician was made to cheat luck, especially in thin decks. So if your strategy heavily depends on cards coming into your hand together, don't ignore the Tactician. Especially when virtual money abounds, as ftl pointed out.
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