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Author Topic: Back to basics  (Read 1833 times)

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amalloy

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Back to basics
« on: April 15, 2014, 05:31:17 pm »
+1

I was introducing a new player to the game last night, and after explaining the rules and a tiny bit of strategy I dealt out a random base-only game:

Thief, Council Room, Festival, Library, Adventurer
Cellar, Chancellor, Bureaucrat, Feast, Spy

The Festival/Library engine appealed to me, but with no trashing I wasn't sure whether it would actually work. I've certainly underestimated Council Room + money before, so I suggested she play that while I discover whether the engine is better.

It turns out to work pretty well, with a few Cellars to compensate for Library drawing me a ton of useless garbage. I also think I got some pretty lucky draws, while hers were quite bad: CR missed the shuffle often, and she was hitting 5/5/3 instead of 6/3/3 at a time when another CR wasn't really good for her. In the end I won by a lot (21-39); with more reasonable shuffles I think the engine's margin is not as high, but it clearly wins.

So I have two reasons for sharing this game. One is that it's the first time I've played base-only in like six months, and I was just really pleased to see how much better a player I am now than I was then: my deck was much more focused and smooth, because I was able to formulate a plan from the beginning, and anticipate what I would be needing in the next shuffle. The other reason for sharing is to ask for advice: I'm curious if there are any big pitfalls or opportunities that a more experienced player would see. How would you open, and what's your schedule of buys look like in an ideal world?

I opened Chancellor/Feast, so that I could get up to the $5 cards without having to buy any treasures ever. My next two turns I drew Chancellor with four coppers, so I discarded my deck and bought a Festival each time. Then I picked up a Library, two Cellars (with $4 and two buys), and alternated Festival/Library at about a 1.5:1 ratio (I got another Cellar at some point). At one point I had $4 and decided one Spy would be better than two more Cellars: this seemed really questionable to me, but it worked out okay. Maybe even Thief, to ruin the money player's deck, would have been good? I didn't try it, but I think once the engine is up and running you'd rather just slurp up Provinces than attack.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Back to basics
« Reply #1 on: April 15, 2014, 09:39:37 pm »
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Unrelated to your questions -- I wouldn't want to suggest a strategy when introducing the game to a new player, and especially not a BM strategy.  A lot of the joy in the game is figuring out what cards to buy, building your own deck and seeing how that deck plays out.  Yeah, the newbie will make mistakes, but they'll probably recognize those errors and be able to grow from it on their own.  Once a player is hooked, then I would start talking strategy. :P
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KingZog3

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Re: Back to basics
« Reply #2 on: April 15, 2014, 11:04:55 pm »
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Unrelated to your questions -- I wouldn't want to suggest a strategy when introducing the game to a new player, and especially not a BM strategy.  A lot of the joy in the game is figuring out what cards to buy, building your own deck and seeing how that deck plays out.  Yeah, the newbie will make mistakes, but they'll probably recognize those errors and be able to grow from it on their own.  Once a player is hooked, then I would start talking strategy. :P

Depends on the person. Some people do enjoy figuring it out. Usually I tell them what I'll do, and they can either do the same to play it safe or experiment with the cards themselves.
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amalloy

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Re: Back to basics
« Reply #3 on: April 16, 2014, 12:30:05 am »
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I think it does depend a lot on the person learning how you should teach. This time, I felt it was useful to  offer a feel for the mechanics of how a game can play out, and how it feels to have a deck that's getting better over time. I don't really want this thread to be about how to teach newcomers, though - it's an interesting discussion, and I'd happily have it elsewhere, but here it was just a sidenote to explain why on earth I was playing base-only in this kingdom I was curious about.
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Davio

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Re: Back to basics
« Reply #4 on: April 16, 2014, 02:21:21 am »
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Main problem with Festi/Lib is that you need both in hand to start your chain.
This means you really have to overdo on the Festivals, which will be regular Woodcutters more often than not as you'll be missing the Library.

I don't know the perfect ratio, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was like 7 Festivals and 3 Libraries or something.
The lack of card draw on Festival can really hurt its ability to start chains.
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amalloy

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Re: Back to basics
« Reply #5 on: April 16, 2014, 03:41:17 am »
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Main problem with Festi/Lib is that you need both in hand to start your chain.
This means you really have to overdo on the Festivals, which will be regular Woodcutters more often than not as you'll be missing the Library.

I don't know the perfect ratio, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was like 7 Festivals and 3 Libraries or something.
The lack of card draw on Festival can really hurt its ability to start chains.

Aren't you overlooking Cellar? Having two or three Cellars in my deck made it easy to kick off: I very rarely failed to connect my Festivals with Libraries. If you think that it should be hard even with Cellar I would love to hear why. On the other hand, at the end of the game I did have three Libraries and five or six Festivals, so I suppose you're not far off.
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Davio

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Re: Back to basics
« Reply #6 on: April 16, 2014, 04:18:34 am »
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Oh, yeah, I'm overlooking Cellar, which should help to lower the ratio, but still I find the combo okay, but not overwhelming without trashing.
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