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[assemble_me]

So, I wanted to do this a long time ago.
I'm posting some of my games here where I think I played really well or totally poor. Maybe some of you would like to take a look and comment the matches.

1) http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20140413/log.50e7525ee4b0b5b74140a6c0.1397415110611.txt

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Swindler, Advisor, Mining Village, Talisman, Treasure Map, Jester, Rabble, Venture, Grand Market, King's Court

This really looks like an engine to me. And it's a Colony game, so I totally want to build that engine.
Mining Village is a village, Rabble is draw that attacks, there's KC and GM. I'm going for it but things never seem to come together, probably because my deck is so bloated. After many painful turns with a lot of bad plays I can go off getting a huge mega turn which is much better than I had expected. My swindler that turn helps me to pile Colonies but I could have simply gotten all the Provinces istead. Overall, I feel I just won because my opponent played even worse than I did. The problem seems to be that there's no trashing and there are a lot of attacks. Maybe I should have just grabbed a few attacks, money and grabbed the points I could get.


2) http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20140413/log.50e7525ee4b0b5b74140a6c0.1397417820145.txt

Code: [Select]

Transmute, Crossroads, Stonemason, Lookout, Warehouse, Bridge, Silk Road, Spice Merchant, Harvest, Horn of Plenty

Here's Horn of Plenty, and I really like Horn engines. But the problem is, there is no real draw and only weak trashing. Crossroads is the only village. I'm totally sure that the engine can't work out here. Looking further, I see there's Bridge + Silk Road, which I think is a thing. My opponent opens the same way I do, but is going for the HoP. I think I build up quite well, grab two Silvers, four Bridges and add two Crossroads, which should help me to play multiple bridges early on and with the many expected green cards later. I decide that Crossroads should become the third pile to be depleted. Maybe I could have bought a copper on a spare buy, but other than that, I think I got a really clean win, driving piles quickly. After the match I realized a single Dutchy would have been worth 11VP, but I've been just so far ahead there was no reason to lengthen the game.

[luser]

So, I wanted to do this a long time ago.
I'm posting some of my games here where I think I played really well or totally poor. Maybe some of you would like to take a look and comment the matches.

1) http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20140413/log.50e7525ee4b0b5b74140a6c0.1397415110611.txt

Code: [Select]

Swindler, Advisor, Mining Village, Talisman, Treasure Map, Jester, Rabble, Venture, Grand Market, King's Court

This really looks like an engine to me. And it's a Colony game, so I totally want to build that engine.
Mining Village is a village, Rabble is draw that attacks, there's KC and GM. I'm going for it but things never seem to come together, probably because my deck is so bloated. After many painful turns with a lot of bad plays I can go off getting a huge mega turn which is much better than I had expected. My swindler that turn helps me to pile Colonies but I could have simply gotten all the Provinces istead. Overall, I feel I just won because my opponent played even worse than I did. The problem seems to be that there's no trashing and there are a lot of attacks. Maybe I should have just grabbed a few attacks, money and grabbed the points I could get.

That is definite engine, first player that reliably plays kc-rabble will win as opponent will be reduced to 2 card deck. Opponent had luckier start and if he bought king courts instead platinum he would won.

Your problem here was mostly lack of buying power as villages without draw are useless and kc is key here.

I would open double swindler as engine pieces are expensive and as attack.
Turn 5 should be rabble.
A turn 11 jester should be rabble. Also swindler should swindle venture to duchy.

[-Stef-]

Welcome to the game reports section of the forum...


I agree that you played the second game really well. Engine won't work here, and your opponents play doesn't make too much sense.
If he does mirror you, I think your 3rd bridge is a bit too much. Maybe Silver+crossroads in stead? That only works if you plan on buying the bridge in turn 4 during your turn 3 though.


The first game... yes it's an engine, yes someone will megaturn at some point.
You already explained why it is far from ideal (no trashing, some junking).

However, there is no means to end the game without the megaturn, and KC is very explosive, so you'll just have to go for it.
Try to go off before your opponent does. I.E. Add Kings Court, Rabble, Mining Village to your own deck, and use Swindle/Jester to disrupt your opponents.

I don't like your opening village, that's only a good plan if the components you want are really cheap ($3 with some good $2 cards).
Here they cost $5, $4 and $7, so I'd open Swindler/Silver.
I also disagree with your trashing of villages so early.

Stay away from buying gold, platinum, treasure maps, green cards... well you already did that.

[Davio]

Yeah, the first game screams engine, but you have to be patient and watch for 3 piles.

Swindler should be excellent as even hitting a $4 card can hurt your opponent and turning GMs into Golds may hurt him as well.

I would probably open either Swindler/Swindler or Swindler/Silver here, depending on the day of the week. Skip all kinds of treasure cards here. I like Advisor probably more than your average Joe, but your deck is too junky for it here.

The Swindlers and Jesters will mostly decide the outcome I'm afraid and you can easily get lucky or unlucky with them. You just have to bite the bullet and try to come out ahead. Just be patient.

It will probably take a lot of time to get to GM, but I think it's worth it in the end. You can trash MVs to get to GM, because KC-GM will also give you actions.

[DG]

In the second game you need to be able to buy some duchies if your opponent takes some of the silk roads. I think you're ok there but it's hard to tell whether you were aware of that or whether it just fell into place with the draws.

[assemble_me]

Thanks a lot for the comments so far!

In the second game you need to be able to buy some duchies if your opponent takes some of the silk roads. I think you're ok there but it's hard to tell whether you were aware of that or whether it just fell into place with the draws.

Actually, during the game I hadn't thought about things that might got wrong. But I knew my Silk Roads would be worth 4VP and I could easlily count his Province and Duchy points.

Add Kings Court, Rabble, Mining Village to your own deck, and use Swindle/Jester to disrupt your opponents.

Sounds good, at least that was my plan .

I would open double swindler as engine pieces are expensive and as attack.

I don't like your opening village, that's only a good plan if the components you want are really cheap ($3 with some good $2 cards).
Here they cost $5, $4 and $7, so I'd open Swindler/Silver.
I also disagree with your trashing of villages so early.

I would probably open either Swindler/Swindler or Swindler/Silver here, depending on the day of the week. [...]

It will probably take a lot of time to get to GM, but I think it's worth it in the end. You can trash MVs to get to GM, because KC-GM will also give you actions.

I shivered when I read the log seeing I've opened Swindler/Mining Village. I remember, my plan was to use it as one shot GM to get a real one, wich is also the reason for trashing it so early. But thats probably a mistake, I guess it's better to go Swindler/Silver or double Swindler, get Rabbles and King's Courts first and GMs later. Probably, it's pretty bad luck that my first MV gets swindled into a Treasure Map, too...

Stay away from buying gold, platinum, treasure maps, green cards... well you already did that.

Yeah, all that stuff was because of his Swindler and my Jester (I guess I don't want to give him a second Plat )

[flies]

So, I wanted to do this a long time ago.
I'm posting some of my games here where I think I played really well or totally poor. Maybe some of you would like to take a look and comment the matches.

1) http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20140413/log.50e7525ee4b0b5b74140a6c0.1397415110611.txt

Code: [Select]

Swindler, Advisor, Mining Village, Talisman, Treasure Map, Jester, Rabble, Venture, Grand Market, King's Court

This really looks like an engine to me. And it's a Colony game, so I totally want to build that engine.
Mining Village is a village, Rabble is draw that attacks, there's KC and GM. I'm going for it but things never seem to come together, probably because my deck is so bloated. After many painful turns with a lot of bad plays I can go off getting a huge mega turn which is much better than I had expected. My swindler that turn helps me to pile Colonies but I could have simply gotten all the Provinces istead. Overall, I feel I just won because my opponent played even worse than I did. The problem seems to be that there's no trashing and there are a lot of attacks. Maybe I should have just grabbed a few attacks, money and grabbed the points I could get.

This engine is actually incredibly tricky.  I just played several games against bots and lost about 5 in a row before I figured out what was going wrong.  Perhaps this speaks more to me being slow on the uptake, but for an inexperienced player i think it would be really hard.

Swindler and Jester both attack whatever's on top of your deck while rabble puts victory cards there.  These effects anti-synergize.  I mean, JEster after rabble will curse, but the power of rabble is the two-card hand, and these attacks destroy that effect.  Additionally, both of those attacks will deplete piles, especially if they connect with King's Court, which means your time to build is shorter than it might appear at first. 

You want your late turns to do something like KC-KC-rabble -> draw deck -> KC Grand Market, buy stuff.  To get there, you start with double swindler to hurt your opponent, then go hard for MV and Rabble.  Early KC is more important than GM.  Trash MV if it gets you to $7.  Once you've got two KC's, now you want to get as many GMs and KC's as you can.  GM is your main source of economy, but a few silvers will help early on.

So once into the late game, you only hurt yourself by playing swindler - you can hurt yourself A LOT if you hit provinces, and you are also likely to turn curses into copper.  Turning duchies into 5-cost actions is fine, but you're still undoing the effect of your rabbles to get there.  Jester is little better (in theory, you could rabble a bunch, curse your opponent with the Jester, then Rabble some more, otherwise don't bother - note that curses will be mostly gone by then). 

If you're winning, then swindling province into province is good, and both Swindler and Jester help bring the game to a close, but they still negate the effect of your rabbles.  If you're playing a mirror, then some of my tactical advice will be wrong. 

Anyway, this kingdom is really interesting.  Thanks for sharing.

Here's me losing:
http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/static/logprettifier.html?20140416/log.5075b25251c30da02a09b898.1397679261803.txt
http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/static/logprettifier.html?20140416/log.5075b25251c30da02a09b898.1397679466676.txt

Starting to get it:
http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/static/logprettifier.html?20140416/log.5075b25251c30da02a09b898.1397680382821.txt
http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/static/logprettifier.html?20140416/log.5075b25251c30da02a09b898.1397680824724.txt

and finally winning:
http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/static/logprettifier.html?20140416/log.5075b25251c30da02a09b898.1397682675802.txt
http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/static/logprettifier.html?20140416/log.5075b25251c30da02a09b898.1397681919586.txt
http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/static/logprettifier.html?20140416/log.5075b25251c30da02a09b898.1397681359307.txt

[assemble_me]

Wow, flies, that's pretty amazing, so you really worked through that kingom

Swindler and Jester both attack whatever's on top of your deck while rabble puts victory cards there.  These effects anti-synergize.  I mean, JEster after rabble will curse, but the power of rabble is the two-card hand, and these attacks destroy that effect.  Additionally, both of those attacks will deplete piles, especially if they connect with King's Court, which means your time to build is shorter than it might appear at first.

Yea, I've noticed that, too. Some of my "bad plays" involved the three attacks. One turn I put a curse on top of the deck instead of a green card and play Jester right after that, so you really have to focus on the order of actions and the order of your opponent's top cards.

You want your late turns to do something like KC-KC-rabble -> draw deck -> KC Grand Market, buy stuff.  To get there, you start with double swindler to hurt your opponent, then go hard for MV and Rabble.  Early KC is more important than GM. 

Yea, that's mostly corresponding with my conclusion, I feel that's got to be right.

[luser]

This engine is actually incredibly tricky.  I just played several games against bots and lost about 5 in a row before I figured out what was going wrong.  Perhaps this speaks more to me being slow on the uptake, but for an inexperienced player i think it would be really hard.

Engine in original game was relatively easy to put off. You handicaped yourself by omitting colonies+platinum. For province game engine looks bit slow, you likely need also pile duchies for win.

My main concern is that double swindler, then venture BM, it counters attacks of engine player.
Swindler removes copper for venture.
Jester improves venture player by adding treasure or harms engine player by adding treasure.
Rabble is lot weaker once venture per turn is likely as you discard rabbled cards away.

Swindler and Jester both attack whatever's on top of your deck while rabble puts victory cards there.  These effects anti-synergize.  I mean, JEster after rabble will curse, but the power of rabble is the two-card hand, and these attacks destroy that effect.  Additionally, both of those attacks will deplete piles, especially if they connect with King's Court, which means your time to build is shorter than it might appear at first. 

You want your late turns to do something like KC-KC-rabble -> draw deck -> KC Grand Market, buy stuff.  To get there, you start with double swindler to hurt your opponent, then go hard for MV and Rabble.  Early KC is more important than GM.  Trash MV if it gets you to $7.  Once you've got two KC's, now you want to get as many GMs and KC's as you can.  GM is your main source of economy, but a few silvers will help early on.

So once into the late game, you only hurt yourself by playing swindler - you can hurt yourself A LOT if you hit provinces, and you are also likely to turn curses into copper.  Turning duchies into 5-cost actions is fine, but you're still undoing the effect of your rabbles to get there.  Jester is little better (in theory, you could rabble a bunch, curse your opponent with the Jester, then Rabble some more, otherwise don't bother - note that curses will be mostly gone by then). 

That is good advice

[assemble_me]

So, my opponent makes it pretty easy for me to win here. Going for this engine seems to be a bad idea, he even ignores Possession which would have been my only point to go for it. My question is: In which order do you want to go for Masterpiece / Feodum when uncontested? I've gone for a few Masterpieces early on when I hit $6+ for the economy, tried to get lots of Feoda so he couldn't deny me to get them (well, he could have just denied me Masterpieces instead, I guess), then I could outrace Masterpieces with 3/4$ overpay. After that i would have tried to go for the last four silvers, but instead I drew 8$ two times, so I just went for the last provinces.

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140421/log.50e7525ee4b0b5b74140a6c0.1398090989812.txt

Code: [Select]

Vagrant, Apothecary, Masterpiece, Oasis, Sage, Feodum, Silk Road, Highway, Mystic, Possession

[qdread]

Masterpiece/Feodum seems like the right decision here. I think the clear consensus would be to go for Masterpieces first, whether or not they were being contested. The Silver flood will help you get Provinces! Having a few Feodums denied to you would not be a big problem if they were essentially dead in your opponent's deck and slowed him/her down from buying Provinces and ending the game.

[Davio]

It's a nice board for Feoda ánd Silk Roads.

Basically, a player focusing only on Provinces is going to lose and this is more of a money-based game since there are no extra buys or gains (other than Possession) and no extra actions (for multiple Possessions).

I don't know the optimal ratio of Masterpiece/Feodum, but you probably don't need to clear out Masterpieces as you can quite easily start Provincing along with your opponent and drop down to Feodum/Silk Road if you don't hit $8. By the time Feoda and SRs are gone you can choose between emptying Masterpieces or looking for Duchies/Estates depending on the scores.

[assemble_me]

I played an interesting board yesterday and still don't know how to really play it right:

Code: [Select]

Haven, Watchtower, Fortress, Butcher, Contraband, Count, Cultist, Horn of Plenty, Wharf, Border Village
Here's my log: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140425/log.50e7525ee4b0b5b74140a6c0.1398451483393.txt

It was a Colony/Estates game yesterday. I replayed this with against bots twice.
So, it's of course a big, big engine board. You want lots of Wharves, Horns, and Border Villages if you hit 6 (or 6+5, 6+6...). With so many hot engine components and Cultist, the game will probably end on piles.
You probably want early Watchtowers to defend against your opponent's Cultists and to topdeck these nice components, Border Village + Wharf on top will guarantee to kick off next turn.

My questions are:
Do you want Cultists? Watchtower is really good defense and you could pick up more Wharves instead.
Do you want a Count? Trashing is nice, but if you have enough Wharves you may just power through your deck and draw those Coppers and Estates. You could pick up another Wharf instead.
Do you want a Butcher? Again, trashing is nice. You may also trash single Ruins which slipped through your Watchtower defense, and there's also Fortress for some trashing tricks, although that might be to slow here, and again, on 5$ you probably rather want a Wharf or a Horn.

Yesterday, I had 5/2 and opened Cultist/Haven. I picked up a second Cultist, then a Count, went for Wharves afterwards and then Horns, but I feel, I played this far from optimum.

[KingZog3]

While Wharf is amazing, it does take twice as many Wharfs than Council Rooms to draw your entire deck. So you will want trashing with either Count or Butcher. Also I think a HoP based deck will win. It's not hard to get 8 different cards in play, and even if the game ends on piles you can cash them for duchies and BV's to end the game faster.

[DG]

That one is a bit tricky. The easy bit is to not take a haven if you open with cultist. It will only get in the way and you'll have plenty of chance to get useful havens later. You will need a wharf/border village engine in the mid game with a controlled deck but sequencing your buys to get there is tricky with a number of options. Butcher+fortress is tempting but so are horns of plenty. The ending is going to be a complicated looking 3 pile ending with border villages and ruins running out early, but a good engine here should have a lot of buys and gains anyway so the deck that comes out of the initial ruins/trashing stage strongest will probably have what is needed to close it out.

[assemble_me]

So, here I've got another one, played just a minute ago.
My opponent and I went for something quite similar. You want GMs and Goons and there's not a lot more to do, I think. Counterfeit should help to get to GM. He starts picking up Great Halls early, which I don't like at all. I feel like, my second Courtyard was a mistake, that should have probably been a Silver. I don't know, if picking up that Treasury was too late. The question at that point for me was Silver vs Treasury, so I expected the Treasury to be better, even though I'd wanted to start greening soon. And a few times I wasn't sure whether I should trigger that reshuffle or not.
So, what did go wrong besides that, what did my opponent well to win the GM split? Is Silver/Silver better than Silver/Courtyard here?

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140517/log.50e7525ee4b0b5b74140a6c0.1400342359098.txt

Code: [Select]

Courtyard, Chancellor, Great Hall, Masterpiece, Counterfeit, Mandarin, Mint, Treasury, Goons, Grand Market

[luser]

So, here I've got another one, played just a minute ago.
My opponent and I went for something quite similar. You want GMs and Goons and there's not a lot more to do, I think. Counterfeit should help to get to GM. He starts picking up Great Halls early, which I don't like at all. I feel like, my second Courtyard was a mistake, that should have probably been a Silver. I don't know, if picking up that Treasury was too late. The question at that point for me was Silver vs Treasury, so I expected the Treasury to be better, even though I'd wanted to start greening soon. And a few times I wasn't sure whether I should trigger that reshuffle or not.
So, what did go wrong besides that, what did my opponent well to win the GM split? Is Silver/Silver better than Silver/Courtyard here?

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140517/log.50e7525ee4b0b5b74140a6c0.1400342359098.txt

Code: [Select]

Courtyard, Chancellor, Great Hall, Masterpiece, Counterfeit, Mandarin, Mint, Treasury, Goons, Grand Market

Mainly you should buy mint at turn 3. Also do not buy copper with one vp. A opponent great hall was acceptable, his other choice was silver.

I tried few solo games and it looks that courtyard-bm is best strategy here. Open courtyard/silver, get mint with 5 coppers, then second courtyard and buy gold/counterfeit/silver.

[Eevee]

So, here I've got another one, played just a minute ago.
My opponent and I went for something quite similar. You want GMs and Goons and there's not a lot more to do, I think. Counterfeit should help to get to GM. He starts picking up Great Halls early, which I don't like at all. I feel like, my second Courtyard was a mistake, that should have probably been a Silver. I don't know, if picking up that Treasury was too late. The question at that point for me was Silver vs Treasury, so I expected the Treasury to be better, even though I'd wanted to start greening soon. And a few times I wasn't sure whether I should trigger that reshuffle or not.
So, what did go wrong besides that, what did my opponent well to win the GM split? Is Silver/Silver better than Silver/Courtyard here?

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140517/log.50e7525ee4b0b5b74140a6c0.1400342359098.txt

Code: [Select]

Courtyard, Chancellor, Great Hall, Masterpiece, Counterfeit, Mandarin, Mint, Treasury, Goons, Grand Market

Mainly you should buy mint at turn 3. Also do not buy copper with one vp. A opponent great hall was acceptable, his other choice was silver.

I tried few solo games and it looks that courtyard-bm is best strategy here. Open courtyard/silver, get mint with 5 coppers, then second courtyard and buy gold/counterfeit/silver.

I think grand markets and goons should beat courtyard-bm quite easily. Having to play with three card hands against an opponent with an unlimited amount of buys (and end game control) is pretty hard. Counterfeit is one of the top enablers for grand markets.

Both strategies want to open courtyard-silver though, and maybe it is better to big money if you don't get an early mint.

[assemble_me]

Mainly you should buy mint at turn 3. Also do not buy copper with one vp. A opponent great hall was acceptable, his other choice was silver.

I tried few solo games and it looks that courtyard-bm is best strategy here. Open courtyard/silver, get mint with 5 coppers, then second courtyard and buy gold/counterfeit/silver.

I think grand markets and goons should beat courtyard-bm quite easily. Having to play with three card hands against an opponent with an unlimited amount of buys (and end game control) is pretty hard. Counterfeit is one of the top enablers for grand markets.

Both strategies want to open courtyard-silver though, and maybe it is better to big money if you don't get an early mint.

I think I didn't take Mint into consideration early on; I rather wanted the Counterfeit as I expected it to help to get GMs sooner. But the thin deck would have probably been pretty good. So thanks a lot, I haven't seen this.
Usually I don't buy Coppers for 1VP, but in this case, with no Coppers and 2 Counterfeits in my deck, I think that's reasonable.