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Author Topic: People say saboteur isn't that great of a card...  (Read 3444 times)

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azadin

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People say saboteur isn't that great of a card...
« on: April 21, 2014, 10:36:12 am »
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Game log



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Apothecary, Loan, Conspirator, Pirate Ship, Plaza, Baker, Junk Dealer, Margrave, Saboteur, Treasury
So people are always saying that Saboteur isn't that great of a card, and for the most part, you can ignore it, even if the other player decides to try to hit you with it. Well in this game, my opponent gets a Saboteur really early (turn 5). At first I thought it was a little odd, since there are better 5s here and the only other one he had picked up was a Junk Dealer (Baker opening). I ignored the presence of his Saboteur most of the game, and by turn 12 or 13, my engine was really starting to kick in, but then his Saboteurs really started to kill my important pieces.

Turn 14 I buy two Saboteurs because my engine can handle them at this point. I have actions left over and am overdrawing my deck (even capable of playing plazas to discard treasures and redraw them). I start to hit back, and then both of our decks just plummet. I feel like I barely squeak out the win here, knowing on the last turn that he only has one buy, there are 2 estates left, we are tied, and he went first. So in taking the Estate, I ensure that he loses if he ends the game by buying the last Estate, or that if he buys a Duchy then we will Duchy dance until one of our decks is able to overcome the other first.

I was not comfortable with how this turned out, and I feel like it was entirely the Saboteurs that changed the landscape. Without their presence, my deck would have stomped my opponents'. What could I have done better here? What did I do right?
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BadAssMutha

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Re: People say saboteur isn't that great of a card...
« Reply #1 on: April 21, 2014, 12:25:34 pm »
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Interesting board. There seem to be two things that make Saboteur stronger than usual here. The first is strong trashing, which enables an engine and makes Sab better off the bat. I also think trashing helps Sab a little in that when you lose a card from a trimmed deck, it hurts more than losing a card from a large deck. The second thing to note is that this is a strong engine board with no components at $3. Sabbing a $5-cost card forces the opponent to take nothing or a Silver, which is less than ideal with the engine. You're also likely to have quite a few $4's, which really hurt when Sabotaged. Your opponent kickstarts his cycling a little quicker by picking up the Loan with his opening buy, which lets him play the Sab a little more than usual.

Given that Saboteur did become a factor, you could start saving coin tokens for a megaturn. This lets you have money that's immune to the Sab, as well as make your green less vulnerable. Also, if you'd known the game would go this way, it could be interesting to try an Apothecary play, since they're immune to Sab and taking Copper for other things that did get Sabotaged wouldn't be terrible.
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DG

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Re: People say saboteur isn't that great of a card...
« Reply #2 on: April 21, 2014, 01:04:29 pm »
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This game is moderately interesting as it seems to have a tipping point but I'll come to that later. A few things seem to help the saboteur here.
- Trashing to build an engine with repeated saboteur plays
- Limited +buy that requires a terminal action
- Key cards
- Engine income cards (treasury, baker, plaza, conspirator)
- No cheap useful cards to replace any trashed engine cards

To defend against saboteur you can trash out the rubbish from your deck so the saboteur might trash your deck but you drawn hands will get no worse. You both did this in your game. The next thing to do is buy cards faster than your opponent can trash them. There is possibly a tipping in this kingdom where a deck can buy cards faster than cards are trashed but it's not predictable and could come unstuck anyway if key cards are trashed. If you can steam ahead then you can get the most key cards, get a lead, and choose to go green (and accept some lost provinces but gaining good cards while empty piles) or use saboteurs yourself.

The doomsday scenario is quite possible here where you both play saboteurs until you have really small decks, maybe even five cards each. In this case you just want the best remaining cards possible in your deck , including key cards, while your opponent has a degrading deck that can't regain impetus. Apothecaries change the dynamics of that. Any ultimate solution may be unique to this kingdom (with the baker coins etc) and a stalemate looks possible.
« Last Edit: April 21, 2014, 01:05:48 pm by DG »
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sudgy

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Re: People say saboteur isn't that great of a card...
« Reply #3 on: April 21, 2014, 01:26:34 pm »
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Saboteur's only use is in engines like this.  If I see a good engine where I can easily get extra actions and saboteurs, I go for it.  Although that's only happened once or twice :/
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   Quote from: sudgy on June 31, 2011, 11:47:46 pm

azadin

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Re: People say saboteur isn't that great of a card...
« Reply #4 on: April 21, 2014, 02:29:27 pm »
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Your opponent kickstarts his cycling a little quicker by picking up the Loan with his opening buy, which lets him play the Sab a little more than usual.

I thought about doing this as well, but I REALLY wanted to hit 5, and I wanted two Junk Dealers which would churn through the coppers pretty fast anyway. Silver helps me hit 5 sooner and the Junk Dealers can still take care of the coppers pretty quick. I still wanted a few treasures in there for the Plazas later on, anyway. I think my opening was fine here.

Given that Saboteur did become a factor, you could start saving coin tokens for a megaturn. This lets you have money that's immune to the Sab, as well as make your green less vulnerable. Also, if you'd known the game would go this way, it could be interesting to try an Apothecary play, since they're immune to Sab and taking Copper for other things that did get Sabotaged wouldn't be terrible.

I might have considered an Apothecary based engine had I known he was going to go Sab. Would be interesting to see how that would turn out. As for the megaturn, I'm not sure it'd work too well with Margrave being the only +buy and Plazas needed for the +actions to play them. With saboteur consistently hitting those key cards, I don't think a megaturn would happen.

To defend against saboteur you can trash out the rubbish from your deck so the saboteur might trash your deck but you drawn hands will get no worse. You both did this in your game. The next thing to do is buy cards faster than your opponent can trash them. There is possibly a tipping in this kingdom where a deck can buy cards faster than cards are trashed but it's not predictable and could come unstuck anyway if key cards are trashed. If you can steam ahead then you can get the most key cards, get a lead, and choose to go green (and accept some lost provinces but gaining good cards while empty piles) or use saboteurs yourself.

I opted to use a couple Saboteurs myself, but I'm wondering if the turn I bought two (or the turn I bought a Plaza and two Conspirators) should have been double Province?

Saboteur's only use is in engines like this.  If I see a good engine where I can easily get extra actions and saboteurs, I go for it.  Although that's only happened once or twice :/

If I recognize a kingdom where this is possible again, I will definitely go for it. It is much stronger in kingdoms like this than I had given it credit for.
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DG

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Re: People say saboteur isn't that great of a card...
« Reply #5 on: April 21, 2014, 03:34:35 pm »
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Quote
I opted to use a couple Saboteurs myself, but I'm wondering if the turn I bought two (or the turn I bought a Plaza and two Conspirators) should have been double Province?

Getting some bakers to store coin tokens might be better than going for conspirators for immediate income. You can then accumulate key cards and continue to strengthen the deck while keeping end game control (tokens to spend for provinces).
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azadin

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Re: People say saboteur isn't that great of a card...
« Reply #6 on: April 21, 2014, 04:14:02 pm »
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Getting some bakers to store coin tokens might be better than going for conspirators for immediate income. You can then accumulate key cards and continue to strengthen the deck while keeping end game control (tokens to spend for provinces).

When would you get the Bakers though? Would you have gotten them instead of the two Saboteurs on turn 14? Or would you still have gotten those, but gotten Bakers earlier in place of the Conspirators? I'm just trying to get a better feel for how to defend against Saboteur so I apologize for what might be very silly questions.
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DG

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Re: People say saboteur isn't that great of a card...
« Reply #7 on: April 21, 2014, 04:23:22 pm »
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The bakers are a general comment about keeping end game control as opposed to putting green cards immediately into the deck, although it suits this game where you can win a saboteur war and have coin tokens to spend on vp at the close. I'm not going to root through the logs again sorry.
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