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[minovsky]

Using the recommended set from Dark Ages with Seaside. Whenever I played a game with pirate ships it always seemed to boil down to who's the fastest to get the first few copies and then luckily getting lots of successful attacks, but I don't believe that is the only strategy for such games... Any suggestions / comments would be very welcome, I am still really new at dominion so must be making lots of silly decisions thx in advance!

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140306/log.51700897e4b082c74d7e73e4.1394123722518.txt

[DG]

Native village can be a tricky card and it certainly is in this kingdom. It undermined your ambitions here. By filling your deck with zero income cards, salvager, hermit, native village, you were never able to buy key cards at 5 coins and eventually had to take coins with the pirate. You needed a plan to get a 5 coin hand and that had to involve a salvager, silver, or maybe even mercenary. A salvager might be playable in two player but it looks risky in a three player game.

[SCSN]

The best way to play Pirate Ship is to ignore it completely. If you abide by this simple and elegant heuristic you'd be making a mistake on approximately 0.1% of randomly generated boards, and this is certainly not one of them.

DG is far too modest in suggesting "maybe even mercenary"; anything but an Urchin/Urchin/Urchin open should be losing here, and losing hard at that. I'm not 100% sure whether you want a Silver or NV on T4, I'd definitely go for the NV myself but the Silver is safer if you don't feel entirely confident. Get the Mercenary as soon as you can, then trash down aggressively, get a few Treasuries and two Graverobbers.

The plan is to Graverob a Treasury into a Province and then grab it back right away.

If your opponents aren't playing discard attacks somewhat frequently (as they weren't at all in this game), I'd get a 2nd NV, otherwise I'd keep it at one. With 2 NVs your deck is going to look like this at some point: 2+ Treasuries, 2 NVs, 2 Graverobbers, Merc. If you can get the Merc on the mat you're guaranteed to get 1 Province/turn from that point onwards: draw until you have your NVs and Graverobbers in hand, don't play your last Treasury. Then play NV, putting a card from your now empty deck on the mat, play Graverobber to trash Treasury into Province, play the other NV to place the gained Province on the mat, then play the other Graverobber to get your Treasury back. If you can't get the Merc on the mat anytime soon it will be a bit more chaotic, but you should still be winning easily. On what you expect to be your last turn you should double Province, as there's little point to getting your Treasuries back.

Edit: if you can't get your last Merc on the mat after it has become useless, I'd just graverob it into an Urchin, draw the Urchin and Graverob that one into another Treasury. It'd just be so nice if you can guarantee gaining a Province and putting it on your mat each turn that it's well worth waiting an extra turn to start greening.

[minovsky]

The best way to play Pirate Ship is to ignore it completely. If you abide by this simple and elegant heuristic you'd be making a mistake on approximately 0.1% of randomly generated boards, and this is certainly not one of them.

DG is far too modest in suggesting "maybe even mercenary"; anything but an Urchin/Urchin/Urchin open should be losing here, and losing hard at that. I'm not 100% sure whether you want a Silver or NV on T4, I'd definitely go for the NV myself but the Silver is safer if you don't feel entirely confident. Get the Mercenary as soon as you can, then trash down aggressively, get a few Treasuries and two Graverobbers.

The plan is to Graverob a Treasury into a Province and then grab it back right away.

If your opponents aren't playing discard attacks somewhat frequently (as they weren't at all in this game), I'd get a 2nd NV, otherwise I'd keep it at one. With 2 NVs your deck is going to look like this at some point: 2+ Treasuries, 2 NVs, 2 Graverobbers, Merc. If you can get the Merc on the mat you're guaranteed to get 1 Province/turn from that point onwards: draw until you have your NVs and Graverobbers in hand, don't play your last Treasury. Then play NV, putting a card from your now empty deck on the mat, play Graverobber to trash Treasury into Province, play the other NV to place the gained Province on the mat, then play the other Graverobber to get your Treasury back. If you can't get the Merc on the mat anytime soon it will be a bit more chaotic, but you should still be winning easily. On what you expect to be your last turn you should double Province, as there's little point to getting your Treasuries back.

Edit: if you can't get your last Merc on the mat after it has become useless, I'd just graverob it into an Urchin, draw the Urchin and Graverob that one into another Treasury. It'd just be so nice if you can guarantee gaining a Province and putting it on your mat each turn that it's well worth waiting an extra turn to start greening.

that's helpful! thanks! I just want to clarify the part on "Then play NV, putting a card from your now empty deck on the mat". If my deck is is empty, doesn't playing NV not do anything at all? otherwise it seems to make perfect sense now that you have explained how the cards work together...
oh and also, since NV doesn't give +Card, how does a 2nd one help when opponents play discard attack frequently?
Many thanks again!

[lespeutere]

Technically, it takes a card from your drawing pile and puts it onto the mat. As there is none, nothing happens. SCSN stated that a 2nd NV helps when opponents do not play discard attacks frequently. It's to decrease the likelihood of not having NV but both Graverobbers in hand. If you discard to 3 frequently, however, you cannot play NV for +actions, play Graverobber on Treasury, play NV for taking the card onto your mat and play GR again to fetch Treasury from the trash.

[Polk5440]

The best way to play Pirate Ship is to ignore it completely. If you abide by this simple and elegant heuristic you'd be making a mistake on approximately 0.1% of randomly generated boards in two player games, and this is certainly not one of them.

FTFY

[minovsky]

Technically, it takes a card from your drawing pile and puts it onto the mat. As there is none, nothing happens. SCSN stated that a 2nd NV helps when opponents do not play discard attacks frequently. It's to decrease the likelihood of not having NV but both Graverobbers in hand. If you discard to 3 frequently, however, you cannot play NV for +actions, play Graverobber on Treasury, play NV for taking the card onto your mat and play GR again to fetch Treasury from the trash.

thanks, i totally missed the "not", that's why I was confused.

anyways, I tried that out just now (real cards so no log) and it felt so difficult to pull off. It was a 2 player game, and my opponent has amassed 5 coins on his pirate ship before I even managed to build that deck (and he wasn't really attacking me with urchin either) and wiped 4 provinces before I started to get my first... so I must still be doing something wrong... and some questions below

1) it seems that a 2nd NV is not optional, otherwise it's impossible to do 2 graverobbers and still guarantee that the province gained gets put aside on the NV mat, and if it's not the whole thing breaks apart... or did I miss something?

2) I got stalled for a long time because I was unable to trash all the other irrelevant cards, many times when merc was on my hand I had only 1 card that I want to trash (but merc requires me to trash 2 or none right?) and then I have to wait for the next shuffle to try again... I was wondering if salvager is better for the trashing? It also means that I can save the turns buying 3 urchins (tried 2 and it took forever to get them in the same turn together) to buy other components and also I don't have to wait for the two of them to show up in the same turn.

3) i had bad luck to get rid of the merc... is there a trick or is it a pure luck thing? btw in the end I got so fed up that i graverobbered it into a urchin (cantrip)

[GeoLib]

2) I got stalled for a long time because I was unable to trash all the other irrelevant cards, many times when merc was on my hand I had only 1 card that I want to trash (but merc requires me to trash 2 or none right?) and then I have to wait for the next shuffle to try again... I was wondering if salvager is better for the trashing? It also means that I can save the turns buying 3 urchins (tried 2 and it took forever to get them in the same turn together) to buy other components and also I don't have to wait for the two of them to show up in the same turn.

What cards did you have that you were not willing to trash? The deck SCSN proposed has very few cards, so you should be trashing pretty much everything (specifically, you know that it's a good idea to trash your coppers, right?). With Mercenary, you are required to trash two cards, but you can choose to do this even if you only have one in hand, in which case you just trash the one (though you don't get the bonus from merc since it's conditional on trashing two). I can't really imagine a hand in which you have only one thing you want to trash. You have 2 NV, 2 GR, 1 merc, 1 silver, cantrips, and junk. Where is there a 5-card hand with only one you're willing to trash (in which you can't play the other 3 before playing merc)? Perhaps you were unwilling to trash your silver? Once you've got your 5-costs (or perhaps even before if you can get income from merc and treasuries) then trash that away.

[WanderingWinder]

The best way to play Pirate Ship is to ignore it completely. If you abide by this simple and elegant heuristic you'd be making a mistake on approximately 0.1% of randomly generated boards, and this is certainly not one of them.

DG is far too modest in suggesting "maybe even mercenary"; anything but an Urchin/Urchin/Urchin open should be losing here, and losing hard at that. I'm not 100% sure whether you want a Silver or NV on T4, I'd definitely go for the NV myself but the Silver is safer if you don't feel entirely confident. Get the Mercenary as soon as you can, then trash down aggressively, get a few Treasuries and two Graverobbers.

The plan is to Graverob a Treasury into a Province and then grab it back right away.

If your opponents aren't playing discard attacks somewhat frequently (as they weren't at all in this game), I'd get a 2nd NV, otherwise I'd keep it at one. With 2 NVs your deck is going to look like this at some point: 2+ Treasuries, 2 NVs, 2 Graverobbers, Merc. If you can get the Merc on the mat you're guaranteed to get 1 Province/turn from that point onwards: draw until you have your NVs and Graverobbers in hand, don't play your last Treasury. Then play NV, putting a card from your now empty deck on the mat, play Graverobber to trash Treasury into Province, play the other NV to place the gained Province on the mat, then play the other Graverobber to get your Treasury back. If you can't get the Merc on the mat anytime soon it will be a bit more chaotic, but you should still be winning easily. On what you expect to be your last turn you should double Province, as there's little point to getting your Treasuries back.

Edit: if you can't get your last Merc on the mat after it has become useless, I'd just graverob it into an Urchin, draw the Urchin and Graverob that one into another Treasury. It'd just be so nice if you can guarantee gaining a Province and putting it on your mat each turn that it's well worth waiting an extra turn to start greening.

96% of percentages which contain all 9s  or only 1s and 0s are made up on the spot.

Seriously, Pirate Ship is worth consideration significantly more often than that, even in 2-player games. Like, maybe 5% of the time there? Not that you want to get it that often, if your opponent is playing well anyways.
Also, I don't think you need the 3rd urchin if you hit urchin/urchin collision turn 3 (there's like a 23% chance of this). I'm also not 100% convinced that this is just winning straight-up, IF you miss collisions for a while. But it's at least close (and probably still winning if you can collide before like your 4th reshuffle), and crushes if you do, so it still has GOT to be the way to go. This is certainly not the strongest engine ever, not even really a strong one, it looks to me, but there is just nothing else going on here, particularly in the face of discard attacks.

[SCSN]

If you adjust for the fact that I was talking about all randomly generated boards and not about all boards with Pirate Ship and nine other cards, our numbers don't differ that much. Based on my personal experience—which is all I have to go by—Pirate Ship is good in ~1/1600 - 1/1200 games, and I chose the 1/1000 as a conservative, nicely rounded estimate—I don't like being overly bleak.

About the 3rd Urchin on T3: you need at least five Mercenary plays to rid your deck of all the nonsense, and with only one Merc this is just going to take ages, but to get a second anytime soon you really want more than just 2 Urchins or Merc/Urchin in your deck, and that's why a 3rd Urchin on T3 is mandatory regardless of whether your first 2 collide. Besides, you don't want much else before you hit 5 via Merc, as anything that isn't a cantrip is going to slow down the trimming even more.

[minovsky]

What cards did you have that you were not willing to trash? The deck SCSN proposed has very few cards, so you should be trashing pretty much everything (specifically, you know that it's a good idea to trash your coppers, right?). With Mercenary, you are required to trash two cards, but you can choose to do this even if you only have one in hand, in which case you just trash the one (though you don't get the bonus from merc since it's conditional on trashing two). I can't really imagine a hand in which you have only one thing you want to trash. You have 2 NV, 2 GR, 1 merc, 1 silver, cantrips, and junk. Where is there a 5-card hand with only one you're willing to trash (in which you can't play the other 3 before playing merc)? Perhaps you were unwilling to trash your silver? Once you've got your 5-costs (or perhaps even before if you can get income from merc and treasuries) then trash that away.

It's not what I am not willing to trash, it's more like all my other cards are the engine components. I had several turns where my hand was merc, NV, Graverobber, Graverobber, copper/estate. with my deck not completely drawn, I couldn't played the NV which means I couldn't play merc, and then i have to wait for the next reshuffle which again ended up something like that hand... or maybe there is something I can do with hand that I couldn't see, if so please let me know so I can do better next time thx!

If you adjust for the fact that I was talking about all randomly generated boards and not about all boards with Pirate Ship and nine other cards, our numbers don't differ that much. Based on my personal experience—which is all I have to go by—Pirate Ship is good in ~1/1600 - 1/1200 games, and I chose the 1/1000 as a conservative, nicely rounded estimate—I don't like being overly bleak.

About the 3rd Urchin on T3: you need at least five Mercenary plays to rid your deck of all the nonsense, and with only one Merc this is just going to take ages, but to get a second anytime soon you really want more than just 2 Urchins or Merc/Urchin in your deck, and that's why a 3rd Urchin on T3 is mandatory regardless of whether your first 2 collide. Besides, you don't want much else before you hit 5 via Merc, as anything that isn't a cantrip is going to slow down the trimming even more.

Just replayed this against a bot: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140307/log.51700897e4b082c74d7e73e4.1394253589746.txt
The bot is kinda close behind my neck so can you take a look and see whether my buying sequence or anything could be further improved? looking back I can probably wait a little later before buying NV?
I opened urchin/urchin and was planning to go a 3rd to see how that works out but got the 2 urchins on T3, since I have 5 coins i went for treasury instead. I did get another urchin in T5 and get another mercenary for faster trashing.

Also do you mind answering my earlier question on how I can pull this with only 1 NV? Don't you need 1 NV for the +actions to play 2 graverobbers and another NV to discard the province gained?

Also, I don't think you need the 3rd urchin if you hit urchin/urchin collision turn 3 (there's like a 23% chance of this). I'm also not 100% convinced that this is just winning straight-up, IF you miss collisions for a while. But it's at least close (and probably still winning if you can collide before like your 4th reshuffle), and crushes if you do, so it still has GOT to be the way to go. This is certainly not the strongest engine ever, not even really a strong one, it looks to me, but there is just nothing else going on here, particularly in the face of discard attacks.

I did miss collisions for quite a while in my game yesterday with real cards (no log) and lost by a big margin... if nothing else really works with this kingdom, does that mean a competent opponent would mirror and then it all boils down to who gets better luck for drawing?

***

Thanks everyone for your inputs into this thread!! Appreciate it 

[eHalcyon]

Why couldn't you play the NV in that situation? If you put something important onto the mat, you can just take it back next time. Alternatively, you can choose to take from the mat even when the mat is empty.

[minovsky]

Why couldn't you play the NV in that situation? If you put something important onto the mat, you can just take it back next time. Alternatively, you can choose to take from the mat even when the mat is empty.

because 1) my mat already has an estate and a copper on it (I manage to place them on the mat because some turns before there were only 1 card left in my deck and I was able to be 100% sure that the card was a copper/estate), and I don't want to draw them back together if playing NV this time places something important on it. and 2) if I play NV doesn't that mean I have to play the 2 graverobbers before I can play merc? there are already some cards costing 3-6 in the trash that I do not want to gain (and clearly I won't be trashing other action card in my hand I suppose?)

[eHalcyon]

Why couldn't you play the NV in that situation? If you put something important onto the mat, you can just take it back next time. Alternatively, you can choose to take from the mat even when the mat is empty.

because 1) my mat already has an estate and a copper on it (I manage to place them on the mat because some turns before there were only 1 card left in my deck and I was able to be 100% sure that the card was a copper/estate), and I don't want to draw them back together if playing NV this time places something important on it. and 2) if I play NV doesn't that mean I have to play the 2 graverobbers before I can play merc? there are already some cards costing 3-6 in the trash that I do not want to gain (and clearly I won't be trashing other action card in my hand I suppose?)

So your example hand was Mercenary, NV, Graverobber, Graverobber, single junk card.  If you already had junk cards on your NV mat, you can play NV to pick up the mat and then trash two junk cards with Mercenary.  If your mat is empty, you could play NV, Graverobber on the other Graverobber for a Province and then Mercenary to trash the junk card in your hand.  If you feel it's too early to start greening or you don't want to lose the second Graverobber, you could play Mercenary and trash NV and the junk card, buying back another NV afterwards.

But why do you have two Graverobbers in your hand without a Treasury anyway?  You want to pick up Treasuries first, as the ultimate targets for Graverobber as well as economy after trashing down but before greening with Graverobber.  Pick up the Treasuries and continue trashing down with Mercenary.  Treasury is nice because it won't get in the way in your hand the way that Graverobber does, making it easier to clear your deck of the starting junk.  Along with Mercenary, it provides some coin to let you pick up Graverobber afterwards.

[SCSN]

Just replayed this against a bot: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140307/log.51700897e4b082c74d7e73e4.1394253589746.txt
The bot is kinda close behind my neck so can you take a look and see whether my buying sequence or anything could be further improved? looking back I can probably wait a little later before buying NV?
I opened urchin/urchin and was planning to go a 3rd to see how that works out but got the 2 urchins on T3, since I have 5 coins i went for treasury instead. I did get another urchin in T5 and get another mercenary for faster trashing.

I applaud you for replaying this game, keep doing things like that. Reading and even thinking about things away from the game is only of limited value. You learn best from deliberately practicing what you find yourself having the most difficulty with.

Back to your game... On T7 you buy nothing with 4, while you had so far only 1 NV, I'd definitely get the 2nd here. You seem to be worried about puting good cards on them but that's not a big deal, you can just take them of later.

Here is my first attempt, have a look at it. Not sure why my opponent did much worse against me than he did against you; maybe he felt intimidated.

Also do you mind answering my earlier question on how I can pull this with only 1 NV? Don't you need 1 NV for the +actions to play 2 graverobbers and another NV to discard the province gained?

You can't pull it off with only one NV, but if you're opponent plays an Urchin every turn (which you should do too if he mirrors your strategy), the clean combo breaks down anyway because at the minimum it needs 5 card hands. A 2nd NV may or may not still be good, but I find it really hard to make that judgment without knowing the exact decks and state of the game.

[minovsky]

was away for the weekend. thanks for all the insights again

So your example hand was Mercenary, NV, Graverobber, Graverobber, single junk card.  If you already had junk cards on your NV mat, you can play NV to pick up the mat and then trash two junk cards with Mercenary.  If your mat is empty, you could play NV, Graverobber on the other Graverobber for a Province and then Mercenary to trash the junk card in your hand.  If you feel it's too early to start greening or you don't want to lose the second Graverobber, you could play Mercenary and trash NV and the junk card, buying back another NV afterwards.

But why do you have two Graverobbers in your hand without a Treasury anyway?  You want to pick up Treasuries first, as the ultimate targets for Graverobber as well as economy after trashing down but before greening with Graverobber.  Pick up the Treasuries and continue trashing down with Mercenary.  Treasury is nice because it won't get in the way in your hand the way that Graverobber does, making it easier to clear your deck of the starting junk.  Along with Mercenary, it provides some coin to let you pick up Graverobber afterwards.

you are right, I didn't think about getting the junks back to my hand and then trash them with merc... and very true as well about trashing NV together with the junk and getting it back later. Thanks for the tips!

I do have 2 treasuries, but since they are cantrip I didn't mention them as they were already played... I suppose I could have graverobbered one of them into a province but I thought it might not be easy to gain it back (opponent has graverobber as well) and more importantly I thought having a province in my deck without a sure way to put it on the native mat immediately would bloat my deck and make it quite difficult to have the exact right cards needed for this engine, is that reasonable or should I have gone out for the province anyways?

Just replayed this against a bot: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140307/log.51700897e4b082c74d7e73e4.1394253589746.txt
The bot is kinda close behind my neck so can you take a look and see whether my buying sequence or anything could be further improved? looking back I can probably wait a little later before buying NV?
I opened urchin/urchin and was planning to go a 3rd to see how that works out but got the 2 urchins on T3, since I have 5 coins i went for treasury instead. I did get another urchin in T5 and get another mercenary for faster trashing.

I applaud you for replaying this game, keep doing things like that. Reading and even thinking about things away from the game is only of limited value. You learn best from deliberately practicing what you find yourself having the most difficulty with.

Back to your game... On T7 you buy nothing with 4, while you had so far only 1 NV, I'd definitely get the 2nd here. You seem to be worried about puting good cards on them but that's not a big deal, you can just take them of later.

Here is my first attempt, have a look at it. Not sure why my opponent did much worse against me than he did against you; maybe he felt intimidated.

Also do you mind answering my earlier question on how I can pull this with only 1 NV? Don't you need 1 NV for the +actions to play 2 graverobbers and another NV to discard the province gained?

You can't pull it off with only one NV, but if you're opponent plays an Urchin every turn (which you should do too if he mirrors your strategy), the clean combo breaks down anyway because at the minimum it needs 5 card hands. A 2nd NV may or may not still be good, but I find it really hard to make that judgment without knowing the exact decks and state of the game.

Yes I didn't go for the 2nd NV because I was worried about putting the good cards on the mat...

I looked at your game, turn 12's execution is amazing, I would not have thought about playing it in that sequence myself to get the last graverobber and get rid of the merc!! also saw your turn 7 doing exactly as eHalcyon described above... I've a long way to go to think so clearly like you guys!

let say if the opponent mirrors and everyone has all the required cards and is playing urchin every turn without having gained any greens yet. what could be done to break the stalemate? start getting gold and use real money to buy the greens?