Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Polk5440]

Here's a game I played with nate_w yesterday.

Code: [Select]

Duchess, Fool's Gold, Chancellor, Familiar, Thief, Wandering Minstrel, Baker, Horn of Plenty, Hunting Party, Harem
Familiar is such a focal card that it's easy to forget that sometimes it's just not that great even when there is no trashing. Here, the only draw is Hunting Party, and I decide that I want to hit those hard. Nate, turn 1 opens Potion signalling Familiar. I am going to be getting a bunch of curses, so Fool's Gold is looking not so hot. But should I follow and get Familiar? Suppose I don't. I am going to get 10 curses. If I follow, I get a Potion and, say, two Familiars and splitting the curses.  That saves me 5 points, gives me five fewer junk cards in the deck, but two additional different cards to stop the Hunting Party draw (Potion and Familiar) and I get behind on the Hunting Parties. Hunting Party and Wandering Minstrel provide such good filtering that I think the right move is to not get the Potion and go for winning the HP split. Horn of Plenty helps me win the split, and pick up additional cards that I need (it's the only way to get extra gains/buys in this kingdom) as well as provide the late game points. Winning the HP split leaves Nate with not much to do after emptying the curses.

The only thing to be careful of is piles. I kept waffling on how hard to hit Wandering Minstrels. It's a good for me, but I can't let the pile get too low too quickly and risk a three pile ending before I catch back up in points. Late, I pick up a Duchy for safety (not sure if it was right), pull ahead the next turn on points, and focus on staying ahead and emptying the WM pile myself.

[TheMirrorMan]

Looking at this board, I'd plan only one familiar. Then go for the HP split. The HP will probably let you redraw the familiar in most cases. Then pick up random stuff along the way (especially WM, maybe even a FG ?) and then start getting HoPs ... HP has the annoying thing though that you can't get several HoPs at once - so you're dependant on drawing the whole deck with the HP. The potion here will help too (another different card makes the HoP stronger).

[KingZog3]

WM, Baker and Hunting party seem like a really good plan. I think it's possible to avoid Familiar. With 10 curses in your deck, coin tokens seem nice and WM and HP will skip most of them.

[DG]

I'm not sure why you both skipped chancellor there. Good card.

[Asper]

I'm not sure why you both skipped chancellor there. Good card.

That's actually true here, especially for Nate. I don't get why he would open Potion/Silver instead of Potion/Chancellor here.  It's one of only three terminals on the board (the other two being Duchess and Thief... You know what that means) and also is a great help in getting Familiar fast. The only possible harm it could do on this board is HP stopping for it instead of something better, but even then it's a Silver+. Seeing that Nate also bought HoP and Harem, Hunting Party obviously wasn't his main concern.

Edited because of ninjas.

[Polk5440]

I'm not sure why you both skipped chancellor there. Good card.

I almost did, but I was planning on creating a deck consisting of HP, WM, Copper, Silver, Gold, HoP, Baker, and... one other card (to make 8 for HoP). I decided Harem was going to be better than Chancellor because of the points.

HP-Chancellor might have been better to open, but I am not sure. I didn't want to get bogged down by too many different cards early knowing the curses were coming. The HPs would basically go through my deck for me. That happened quite often, so I am not sure the benefit of Chancellor is as great as it first appears for my deck.  (I didn't pick up WM on the first chance, either, opting for more Silver, for the same reason. Also not sure about this, but as I mentioned, I was thinking about bad three piles.)

For Nate, I agree, Potion-Chancellor is probably better.