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Bridge builder

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Strategies in intrigue
« on: February 10, 2014, 02:50:27 pm »
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I and a few of my friends have recently started playing dominion after I had bought the intrigue dominion set. Currently we are at the state where everyone always builds a big money deck, and nothing interesting happens :-\ .Are there some other strategies in intrigue that i could try to beat my friends with, particurally something that beats big money with ease? Are there comboes hidden in the set?  If you suggest something, could you also tell What kind of set of 10 cards would you use to hide that you are going to play a new strategy?

(sorry for grammar, not native english speaker)

----

Edit: sorry for being so unclear, we only play 1v1 games.

An example board: Mining village, steward, torturer, bridge, duke, wishing well, great hall, pawn, courtyard, swindler.

In this board he builded courtyard - torturer big money, i builded swindler - courtyard - torturer big money.

I got some lucky early game swindles and won.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2014, 05:50:08 pm by Bridge builder »
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jsh357

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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2014, 03:04:41 pm »
+1

Welcome!

What you are asking is a pretty broad question. In general, a well-constructed engine should beat big money on most boards, but learning to create one takes experience.  It may be helpful for you to post an example kingdom you played where all players went Big Money, then we can take a look to try and provide pointers.  In most cases, there is a strategy that should win out.  Also, keep in mind that if you are playing with more than 2 players, a lot of the strategy you see discussed here doesn't always apply.

One really simple way to go about thinking about beating big money is this: Consider that Smithy + Big Money is almost always better than Big Money.  If that's true, then a deck that can play many Smithies and also have an extra Buy should in turn be a LOT better than Big Money.  The challenge is constructing a deck that does this successfully, and it varies from game to game.  Therefore, it's generally more useful to look at individual games to learn about engine building.

For example, on a board with Mining Village, Nobles, Masquerade, and Pawn: An engine that uses Masquerade to trash, Pawn to get a +Buy, and Nobles + MV for draw (Probably Gold and Silver for money, but the presence of cards like Conspirator will also work) should win against Big Money most of the time.  Strategies like Masquerade BM are probably still strong, but not unbeatable by any means.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2014, 06:01:13 pm by jsh357 »
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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2014, 06:47:29 pm »
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An example board: Mining village, steward, torturer, bridge, duke, wishing well, great hall, pawn, courtyard, swindler.
The bolded cards form one of the best combos in the Intrigue set. Well, Torturer combines well with any village, actually.
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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2014, 06:52:31 pm »
+1

Hi, welcome. jsh addressed general concerns so let me tackle the example board you presented.

Big money would lose so so so so so so so badly to a proper engine. Specifically, you are going to want to trash coppers and estates (and curses) with steward and then buy lots of mining villages and a few torturers. After that, you play at least 2-3 torturers per turn and your opponent is basically done for. But there's other cards you can throw into your engine to help a lot. Bridge is a great source of +buy since playing multiple bridges lets you get lots of cheap components. Great hall and duke give extra sources of points in the event that your opponent gets too many provinces too soon. And swindler is an annoying attack (which works better against another engine player since torturer is the better attack against a big money player).
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GeoLib

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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2014, 07:39:33 pm »
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If you suggest something, could you also tell What kind of set of 10 cards would you use to hide that you are going to play a new strategy?

I would advise against stacking a particular kingdom with a combo so you can crush your friends with it. It's not very nice and is probably a good way to no longer have friends who want to play dominion against you. By all means learn how to build engines though! Just try to find the engine in a random set rather than hand-picking the cards before hand.

Geronimoo's article on the first game engine is a great place to start (http://dominionstrategy.com/2012/07/30/building-the-first-game-engine/), but it uses cards from the base game, so I don't know whether you would find it useful.

In general though, I echo what others have said: aggressively trash your starting cards, buy attacks, cards with "+cards", cards with "+actions" (both of those should be >1, otherwise they're just replacing themselves), and cards with "+buy."

Give it a shot in your next game and then post a report on the forums, and people will be happy to give you some pointers!
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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #5 on: February 10, 2014, 09:42:16 pm »
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Masquerade is a really powerful trasher that I think tends to look innocuous to new players. Masq-BM (Big Money if you're not familiar with the lingo) is pretty powerful but it's even better in an engine, and it tends to totally negate cursing attacks, especially in 2-player.
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #6 on: February 10, 2014, 10:35:52 pm »
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... and it tends to totally negate cursing attacks, especially in 2-player.

This part is just not true, I would say that you often want the curser as well as the Masquerade. The main reason being that putting a curse in your opponent's deck has a more immediate effect than trashing a card from yours (it comes into play a turn earlier in a sense). EDIT: I'm not actually sure this makes any sense at all, probably depends on shuffles, someone should tell me if I'm talking nonsense here. So getting the curser usually helps you win the deck size war, though Masquerade does tend to negate the VP effect from curses.

I started thinking about this, so here's a list of my opinions about Masq vs. Junkers (I strove for completeness):

Witch - I say it's generally worth getting a Witch for the reason I mentioned before. The +2 cards can compete with Masq in terms of cycling, you will get to play the Witch as often as the Masq roughly (once you have it).

Mountebank - Very often worth getting as you dish out 2 junk cards instead of 1.

Soothsayer - May be worth getting if you have a good use for Golds, though I think Masquerade would indicate avoiding this card in the early game.

Torturer - Masquerade defends very well here, but it only "negates" Torturer on a board where the right call is Big Money. On an engine board you are still buying those Torturers usually (for the draw and the attack).

Sea Hag - This card is hurt a lot by Masquerade, in large part because you won't be playing the Sea Hag as often as they play the Masq.

Young Witch - Masq as bane makes Young Witch pretty bad, otherwise you still might want the YW at some point (like Witch, it is equal with Masq for cycling).

Familiar - Sometimes you can get 2-3 Familiars and just swamp your opponent in a couple turns, but this one is going to depend heavily on the other kingdom cards, you may need to skip the Potion to get key $4-$7 cards. I like pairing Masquerade with Familiar.

IGG - I would guess that simulators show Masq-BM (with 2-3 Masquerades) going for Provinces beats pure IGG rush. I don't know how Masq-BM does against IGG/Masq BM (could be another case of wanting to get both). Masq into engine should counter IGG pretty well.

Followers - Umm (running out of inspiration), Followers is still good because discard, definitely a case of wanting Masquerade + Curser usually. If the kingdom has strong enough draw, Followers will be a lot worse against Masquerade.

Ambassador - Masquerade can counter Ambassador quite well, especially if the $4s/$5s are important, but you usually still want to win that deck size war with Ambassador (often want both
cards).

Cultist - Still worth it because it dishes that junk so fast (cycles faster than Masq).

Marauder - Depends on how bad you want the Spoils, but Masquerade does counter the attack part pretty well.

Swindler - Hitting $5s with Swindler still awesome, the Copper->Curse is much worse. Often want both. Hitting Masq is pretty cool.

Jester - You silly goose, Jester is a gainer!!! Which I suppose means it is helped a little bit by Masquerade removing junk.

I'm not talking about Noble Brigand even though the wiki wants me to.

It's not uncommon for the Cursers to become more important later in the game as well, if Masquerade passes are becoming infrequent, or if your opponent will have a harder time matching Masquerade with a Curse in hand. Sometimes the couple VP or extra junk can make enough of a difference in a close game.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2014, 10:56:34 pm by Mic Qsenoch »
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DG

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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #7 on: February 10, 2014, 10:55:38 pm »
+2

There are a lot of new strategies in intrigue that you can beat your friends with but you should really work them out for yourself. I'm guessing that you're going through the usual stages of Dominion that most new players go through:
- Buy lots of action cards that don't fit together
- Play big money - decks with simple actions and lots of treasures that you can't play as badly
- Add more action cards into the treasure decks as you understand the game better
- Building complex decks with action cards working together for many benefits, surpassing the simple treasure decks

Keep with it and you'll move out of the big money stage. If you group were finding interesting decks in the base set but can't find them in Intrigue then you probably just need more time to learn the cards. It's quite easy to buy cards like shanty town, coppersmith, ironworks, tribute, wishing well, etc, at the wrong times.
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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #8 on: February 10, 2014, 11:25:36 pm »
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An example board: Mining village, steward, torturer, bridge, duke, wishing well, great hall, pawn, courtyard, swindler.
The bolded cards form one of the best combos in the Intrigue set. Well, Torturer combines well with any village, actually.

If you've never seen a torturer chain in full force then you might not appreciate how dominating it can be.  The above kingdom wants early trashing (open steward) leading into mining village/torturer with multi-bridge as the long term payload.

This kingdom is actually a good example of a board where money should get crushed very reliably by a well constructed engine.
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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #9 on: February 11, 2014, 04:04:32 am »
+1

This part is just not true, I would say that you often want the curser as well as the Masquerade. The main reason being that putting a curse in your opponent's deck has a more immediate effect than trashing a card from yours (it comes into play a turn earlier in a sense). EDIT: I'm not actually sure this makes any sense at all, probably depends on shuffles, someone should tell me if I'm talking nonsense here.
Yeah, it depends on shuffles. But you still often want the curser as well as the Masquerade, I'd just say that the main reason is that there are only so many cards in your starting deck that you want to trash and that there are only so many Curses in the supply you can deal out, so just focusing on Masquerade and skipping the curser or vice versa isn't always as powerful as doing both.
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brokoli

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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #10 on: February 11, 2014, 06:21:22 am »
+1

Scout.
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sudgy

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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #11 on: February 11, 2014, 11:24:14 am »
+3

Scout.

Bridge builder, I'm just letting you know, this is a joke.  It is a common joke here to say scout is amazing (when it actually isn't).

EDIT: And, if you've been on the forums long enough, you'll see that this post is in a sense a joke as well (even though the content is still true).
« Last Edit: February 11, 2014, 05:07:56 pm by sudgy »
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   Quote from: sudgy on June 31, 2011, 11:47:46 pm

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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #12 on: February 11, 2014, 01:58:57 pm »
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Scout.

Bridge builder, I'm just letting you know, this is a joke.  It is a common joke here to say scout is amazing (when it actually isn't).

Which is sad because base + intrigue have actually some chance to have a board where scout could be useful.
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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #13 on: February 11, 2014, 04:11:45 pm »
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I will usually skip cursers on a board with Masquerade. If my opponent buys the curser, I simply buy another Masquerade.
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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #14 on: February 12, 2014, 12:04:31 am »
+3

Scout.

Bridge builder, I'm just letting you know, this is a joke.  It is a common joke here to say scout is amazing (when it actually isn't).

EDIT: And, if you've been on the forums long enough, you'll see that this post is in a sense a joke as well (even though the content is still true).

You see, on the forums, it has become a running gag that explaining a joke makes it funnier. Therefore, by explaining sudgy's explanation of a joke, I have created the metajoke of explaining jokes.
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Bridge builder

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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #15 on: February 12, 2014, 03:03:26 am »
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I tested torturer / mining village / bridge today, buying 3/7/4 of them. that didint seem that good, i lost the game barely, points 24 (me) vs 27 ( opponent ). i had trashed all my original point cards, he didin't.

He was playing big money with torturer and courtyard, and almost always had green to discard to my torturer.

the board was steward, bridge, torturer, mining village, courtyard, duke, minion, upgrade, secret chamber, coppersmith.

-----

Edit: he got a few curses but had enough green to negate the -1:s.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2014, 03:19:26 am by Bridge builder »
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dondon151

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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #16 on: February 12, 2014, 03:06:03 am »
+1

He was playing big money with torturer and courtyard, and almost always had green to discard to my torturer.

Are you sure your opponent was responding to Torturer correctly? If you play more than one per turn, he won't have things to discard to Torturer.
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DStu

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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #17 on: February 12, 2014, 03:22:21 am »
+3

I tested torturer / mining village / bridge today, buying 3/7/4 of them. that didint seem that good, i lost the game barely, points 24 (me) vs 27 ( opponent ). i had trashed all my original point cards, he didin't.

He was playing big money with torturer and courtyard, and almost always had green to discard to my torturer.

the board was steward, bridge, torturer, mining village, courtyard, duke, minion, upgrade, secret chamber, coppersmith.

It's of course difficult to tell without seeing the game, but some things that you can use to your advantage that you maybe haven't in this particular set:
- Endgame control: You don't want to put the game into a state where you opponent can win it on their turn in a win, especially if you are playing an engine. ESPECIALLY if you are playing THIS engine.  You have bridges, if you play all 4 of them you can buy Duchies for $1.  Don't buy the next-to-last Province, buy Duchies instead.  Now your opponent can't buy this Province without the danger of losing, but YOU are the one who can easily buy multiple Duchies per turn, they can only buy 1.  In the long run, they can't win out this.
- You really want to play multiple Tortures per turn. 1 Torturer is a weak attack, but 2 nearly forces you opponent to take a Curse or give up their next turn.  I can't imagine how this didn't work out with your engine, maybe there was too much money in it? Playing 3 Torturers/turn is your first and most important target here, once your are there you will destroy your opponents deck beneath Curses.  So buy as less money as neccessary, maybe 1 Silver, Bridges are nearly as good as money and will help you get Villages. But your primary target are the Torturers, all your starting purchases should serve to get and play these.

That's generally to Village/Torturer(/Bridge), some more notes to the kingdon:
- Duke: remember when I said you can easily buy multiple Duchies per turn? Look at Duke...   When you feel like you are behind, you can totally ignore the Provinces, esp. in 2 player.  A big money player needs time to get 8 Provinces to end the game.  When you don't help them, you have this time to get your points on other ways. Alt-VP is great for engines for this reason, and here you have Duke.  Get 3 Dukes and each Duchy is worth a Province, and with 4 Bridges in play each just costs $1, there you go.
- Minion: Not sure about this, but it doesn't really hurt in your deck, and when you can play it before the Torturer, your opponent is on 4 cards to discard 2 (or take the Curse), which forces to take the Curse as you can't do much with 2 cards.  Also, just having it in the deck discourages taking the Curse on a good 5 card hand (in anticipation of discarding 2 out of 6 cards to the next Torturer), because you maybe could just have a Minion in hand and force a discard to 4 anyway. 
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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #18 on: February 12, 2014, 07:25:36 am »
+3

At this point I'll mention that torturer+treasure is quite a strong strategy and it can compete with a slow developing torturer+village deck. The card that changes things here is the steward. You should be able to use the steward for trashing, coins, and draw in this game, usually the sign that the steward is going to be a good card.
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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #19 on: February 12, 2014, 08:33:06 am »
+1

Yeah, courtyard and torturer are a pretty vicious big money combo.  There is a good chance that was the best strategy on that board.
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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #20 on: February 12, 2014, 11:17:02 am »
0

Yeah, courtyard and torturer are a pretty vicious big money combo.  There is a good chance that was the best strategy on that board.
I get Steward/Torturer/MiningVillage/Duke to 45% against Courtyard/Torturer in the simulator, so my money is on the engine if played by humans.
Code: [Select]
{
  name: 'Engine'
  author: 'Dstu' #tweaked by Jorbles
  requires: ["Steward", 'Torturer', 'Mining Village', "Duke", "Minion", "Bridge"]
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Mining Village" if my.countInDeck("Mining Village") + my.countInDeck("Torturer") > my.countInDeck("Mining Village") + 2
    "Torturer" if my.countInDeck("Torturer") < 4
    "Steward" if my.countInDeck("Steward") < 1
    "Silver" if my.countInDeck("Silver") < 2
    "Bridge" if my.countInDeck("Bridge") < 2
    "Province" if my.countInPlay("Bridge") > 5 and my.countInDeck("Province") + state.countInSupply("Province") - (my.countInDeck("Duke") + 3) * my.countInDeck("Duchy")/6 > 8 - my.countInDeck("Province") - state.countInSupply("Province")
    "Duchy" if my.countInPlay("Bridge") > 3 and my.countInDeck("Duke") > my.countInDeck("Duchy") - 3
    "Duke" if my.countInPlay("Bridge") > 3
    "Mining Village" if my.countInDeck("Mining Village") < 4
    "Mining Village" if my.countInDeck("Bridge") > my.countInDeck("Mining Village") - 3
    "Bridge" if my.countInDeck("Bridge") < 6
    "Estate" if state.gainsToEndGame() == 0
  ]
 
  miningVillageTrashPriority: (state, my) ->
      [no]
}

edit: adding
Code: [Select]
  torturerPriority: (state, my) ->
      ["discard"]
gets it to 50/50, so to add to the advice: You want to avoid taking the Curse as much as possible, as you want it in your opponents deck.

Also want to add that my engine above is not very well constructed, it just plays for the long game with Duchy/Duke with the option of piling out the Provinces with some crude heurisitcs on the points (there is a function somewhere for this, but I was too lazy to search for it).  You have much more option with the engine like going for Provinces when you are in the lead, but it's hard to tell in advance for the bot when this is the case.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2014, 11:40:09 am by DStu »
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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #21 on: February 12, 2014, 11:20:31 am »
+2

I tested torturer / mining village / bridge today, buying 3/7/4 of them. that didint seem that good, i lost the game barely, points 24 (me) vs 27 ( opponent ). i had trashed all my original point cards, he didin't.

Did you trash your coppers?  That would have made a huge difference.
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flies

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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #22 on: February 12, 2014, 11:25:13 am »
+2

I tested torturer / mining village / bridge today, buying 3/7/4 of them. that didint seem that good, i lost the game barely, points 24 (me) vs 27 ( opponent ). i had trashed all my original point cards, he didin't.

He was playing big money with torturer and courtyard, and almost always had green to discard to my torturer.

the board was steward, bridge, torturer, mining village, courtyard, duke, minion, upgrade, secret chamber, coppersmith.

Here are your engine components:

steward for early trashing (double steward opening probably)
upgrade for later trashing and gaining (turn stewards, silvers into villages and/or bridges)
mining village/torturer for draw and attack.  (the village split can be decisive cuz it determins how many bridges you can play.  aim to play at least 3 most turns.)
bridge for payload.
duke in case things go all to hell and you need to rely on alt-vp to beat a province deficit.

By the end of the game you should have trashed nearly all your copper and estates, and you probably will only have two or three treasures.  (playing the bots, I usually ended up trashing a single minion for gold.)

This engine should reliably crush any money strategy, but it's a tricky to pull off since you have to know when to trash with steward and when to take money (especially difficult in the second reshuffle), and you want to use upgrade effectively, which is difficult in general, and bridge just opens up the decision space even more. 

This strategy will aim to three-pile on mining village and two other piles, which depend on the way the game has turned out.  Probably curses will be one.  Minion is a good choice for the third because you can pick a bunch up essentially without any downside to your deck.  It's kind of a nice bonus to your torturer attack: suppose your opponent takes two curses intending to drop them to the next torturer but instead you play a minion.  Or you play a minion before the torturer so their decision is to take the curse or drop to two cards, which is again brutal. 

So basically you want to play 3-4 torturers and 3-4 bridges every turn.  If you can do this (and you can if you win the village split), there is just no way the money player can recover.

Here's a sample game from several runs against the bots: http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20140212/log.5075b25251c30da02a09b898.1392220551637.txt

I expect a better engine-builder would have gotten this running sooner; I was able to start drawing my deck turn 13.  The bot hadn't bought any vp by this point.  If he'd been playing some torturer/courtyard money combo, he'd probably have had a province or two by this point, but not all that many given the torturers I was throwing out prior to that point.  Turn 14 I defensively buy a province just in case of a surprise 3-pile from my opponent, and turn 15 i buy out the minions and the curses for the win (note that I gained curses from my opponent's torturers on its T14).

Here http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20140212/log.5075b25251c30da02a09b898.1392222160544.txt I was able to pick up 9 villages with insanity resulting.  Probably I'd have been better off with more bridges and fewer torturers.

Key things to observe here are how to use upgrade and the general strength of trashing.
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Bridge builder

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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #23 on: February 12, 2014, 02:58:31 pm »
+1

Played again tonigh with the same 10 cards. and i won! it seemed ineffective at first, he was buing provinces at turn 6, but the torturers really did some work this time, i was able to chain a lot of them. in the end of the game i got a goddraw with 5 bridges and won instantly,  buying the 5 provinces that were left, by trashing all the 5 villages i played for 2€.
 
I started steward-steward, then got this hand thrice ( ! ) in a row: steward, 3 copper, 1vp green card. i bought a torturer in the first and a village in the second and again a torturer on the third. what would have been the optimal play there?

And yes, i was trashing the coppers.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2014, 03:03:11 pm by Bridge builder »
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dondon151

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Re: Strategies in intrigue
« Reply #24 on: February 12, 2014, 03:04:53 pm »
+2

With cards that trash, you almost always prefer trashing early over buying a card if you can only choose one. You no longer want to trash when your deck starts running out of total money.
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