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[GeoLib]

In one of my league games I got absolutely obliterated by amalloy. The Kingdom:

Code: [Select]

Courtyard, Nomad Camp, Treasure Map, Young Witch, Counterfeit, Highway, Saboteur, Wharf, Border Village, Farmland, King's Court
The Log: http: https://www.gokosalvager.com:8889/static/logprettifier.html?20140519/log.50ca9bbae4b0c3bfb6b97227.1400554562955.txt

He opened YW/Silver and I went Silver/Silver figuring that hitting 5/6/7 was more important than the cursing. After that I feel like I played reasonably well and there weren't very many difficult decisions to be made, but I got utterly destroyed. I never even played a King's Court. Where did I go wrong? Was YW just obviously the right call here? Did I mess something else up?

[HiveMindEmulator]

Should be Courtyard/Silver. It's the bane, and it helps hit 6 really easily for BV+Wharf.

[amalloy]

Should be Courtyard/Silver. It's the bane, and it helps hit 6 really easily for BV+Wharf.

Courtyard/Silver was the other opening I considered. I really don't like Silver/Silver - you don't want lots of treasures in this deck, because it will make lining up KC hard; and Courtyard is at least as good at hitting 5 or 6 as a second Silver is. I decided YW would be better because there's no way to get rid of the curses, and you didn't take a Courtyard; plus YW avoids triggering a shuffle before getting in your t4 buy, whereas a Courtyard on t4 forces a terrible shuffle.

But I think it's pretty close: if you'd opened Courtyard I was probably skipping the YW myself. And also I got quite lucky to draw my one Wharf with my one KC on turn 7, as soon as I bought the KC. Once that glorious connection happened, the game was basically over.

Edit: the video from my POV, if you want to see what I was thinking at the time, without the benefit of hindsight.

[SCSN]

I hope this "skip the Curser"-trend set in by Andrew catches on as that sure is going to win me a lot of games!

I'd open Courtyard-Silver indeed but get a YW for my 2nd 4. With no trashing, a non-spammable bane and KC on board, skipping the Curser while your opponent doesn't guarantees you that you'll get all 10 of those lovely purple cards in your deck, and there's just no way to recover from that.

plus YW avoids triggering a shuffle before getting in your t4 buy, whereas a Courtyard on t4 forces a terrible shuffle.

Why do you think this? If you have $4 or $5 on T3 you get a YW or a Wharf, in which case you'd LOVE to trigger that reshuffle. If you have 3 or less I'd get a 2nd Courtyard so that you can trigger a fantastic reshuffle on your rather mediocre T5.

[amalloy]

plus YW avoids triggering a shuffle before getting in your t4 buy, whereas a Courtyard on t4 forces a terrible shuffle.

Why do you think this? If you have $4 or $5 on T3 you get a YW or a Wharf, in which case you'd LOVE to trigger that reshuffle. If you have 3 or less I'd get a 2nd Courtyard so that you can trigger a fantastic reshuffle on your rather mediocre T5.

I was imagining a scenario like: t3 I have like $3 or $4, and buy whatever mediocre thing; t4 I draw the Courtyard. If I play it, I'll likely hit $6 easily enough, but I'll have triggered a shuffle in the meantime, so that the cards I buy t4 don't get shuffled in until t6 or even t7.

[SCSN]

But you're not considering how that "terrible shuffle" actually looks like: it's just your T3 hand + T3 buy. It's impossible for your T4 buy to get shuffled in later than T5 clean-up, and unless your T3 buy lands on the bottom you can ensure that you actually shuffle it in during T5 itself.

[Davio]

The real question is what to transition into?

Highway is really nice with the Buys from Wharf.
Counterfeit provides you with treasure trashing and buys and you could always explode back up with Treasure Map.

But I think it's 3 pile long before you hit that stage of the game with BVs, Wharves and Curses gone (and 1 Duchy or something).

[amalloy]

But you're not considering how that "terrible shuffle" actually looks like: it's just your T3 hand + T3 buy. It's impossible for your T4 buy to get shuffled in later than T5 clean-up, and unless your T3 buy lands on the bottom you can ensure that you actually shuffle it in during T5 itself.

Quite right. I hadn't considered that in detail. The shuffle isn't so bad after all. The irrevocable cursing still seems pretty good, but I'm certainly willing to believe that the extra buying power from Courtyard is more important.

[DStu]

I think you can think about skipping the early YW here, but only if you bane with Courtyard, in order to get to your BV/Wharfs/KC fast.  I also don't like Silver here, Silver can't get KCed, you don't want it here. You also need a YW somewhen (although your deck never came to the point), because you want to catch up on Curses by KCing the YW.

I think amalloy also got reasonable lucky here with the T7 KC-Wharf connection after T6 KC.  I felt the KC was too early watching the video, but well, you make your own shuffle luck.  But with just two other actions in the deck that could as well have been a dead KC this shuffle.  Even with the connection T7 is lucky, could have well been T8 or T9 with the same chances.  And with Kinging Wharfs that makes a huge difference.


The rest of the game, Sabbing him to death is of course a possibility, I think I would have taken 2 or 3 Highways before that, with trillions of buys saving $2++ on all these power cards this pays of in 1 round, in case he catches up you can still get (the now cheaper) Sabs to put him back to the ground.

[Mic Qsenoch]

I'm a little surprised this effect hasn't been mentioned yet, but with 3 or so Courtyards you can have close to 100% protection by putting Courtyards back on top of your deck. This really does make YW skippable, but you have to get the Courtyards.

In the early game you want Courtyards on top because you want to play them. It gets a little worse in the midgame, but once your KC-Wharfs are humming you can still afford to put a Courtyard on top because you'll draw the deck anyway.

[Davio]

You could take a couple of Curses if this allows you to accelerate faster.

Courtyard has a bit of an opportunity cost which is better spent on BVs/Wharves/KC's I think...
You could grab one extra Courtyard during your second shuffle instead of YW, but after that I don't think you'll have much time for it.
Once you get KC-Wharf going, you can just plow through, it's that strong. I might consider a Counterfeit along the way to help me clear out some Coppers, maybe grab some Highways, but it's hard to look so far ahead into the game; that's all just tactics.

[amalloy]

You could take a couple of Curses if this allows you to accelerate faster.

Courtyard has a bit of an opportunity cost which is better spent on BVs/Wharves/KC's I think...
You could grab one extra Courtyard during your second shuffle instead of YW, but after that I don't think you'll have much time for it.
Once you get KC-Wharf going, you can just plow through, it's that strong. I might consider a Counterfeit along the way to help me clear out some Coppers, maybe grab some Highways, but it's hard to look so far ahead into the game; that's all just tactics.

I don't understand this argument: it doesn't seem self-consistent. How can you say that KC+Wharf is so amazing that you don't care about Curses, and then in the next breath say that you want to spend a precious $5 buy on Counterfeit to thin a couple Coppers? Surely you'd rather just have another Wharf, which can be kinged to draw past all the Coppers in the world.

[GeoLib]

You could take a couple of Curses if this allows you to accelerate faster.

Courtyard has a bit of an opportunity cost which is better spent on BVs/Wharves/KC's I think...
You could grab one extra Courtyard during your second shuffle instead of YW, but after that I don't think you'll have much time for it.
Once you get KC-Wharf going, you can just plow through, it's that strong. I might consider a Counterfeit along the way to help me clear out some Coppers, maybe grab some Highways, but it's hard to look so far ahead into the game; that's all just tactics.

I don't understand this argument: it doesn't seem self-consistent. How can you say that KC+Wharf is so amazing that you don't care about Curses, and then in the next breath say that you want to spend a precious $5 buy on Counterfeit to thin a couple Coppers? Surely you'd rather just have another Wharf, which can be kinged to draw past all the Coppers in the world.

Yeah, I don't see when you pick up the counterfeit here. Unless, as in amalloy's case, you've already won.

[Davio]

You could take a couple of Curses if this allows you to accelerate faster.

Courtyard has a bit of an opportunity cost which is better spent on BVs/Wharves/KC's I think...
You could grab one extra Courtyard during your second shuffle instead of YW, but after that I don't think you'll have much time for it.
Once you get KC-Wharf going, you can just plow through, it's that strong. I might consider a Counterfeit along the way to help me clear out some Coppers, maybe grab some Highways, but it's hard to look so far ahead into the game; that's all just tactics.

I don't understand this argument: it doesn't seem self-consistent. How can you say that KC+Wharf is so amazing that you don't care about Curses, and then in the next breath say that you want to spend a precious $5 buy on Counterfeit to thin a couple Coppers? Surely you'd rather just have another Wharf, which can be kinged to draw past all the Coppers in the world.

Yeah, I don't see when you pick up the counterfeit here. Unless, as in amalloy's case, you've already won.

I said "I might", but it would just depend on how the game pans out. In an ideal world, sure, give me the Counterfeit for free, but I do understand the arguments for getting another Wharf. If you split the Wharves 4-6 or 5-5 and are Cursed up, getting a Counterfeit might help a bit as would Highway, but I already stated you most likely won't have time for it.

You can't just grab the cards you want and put them in your deck without considering your opponent; you have to consider the real game where your opponent is likely pursuing the same kind of strategy and fighting you for cards. In that case, tactics like I mentioned might be worthwile, but it's really hard to judge beforehand.

KC-Wharf has the ability to blast through most things, but you have to connect them at some point. If that turns out hard to do, adding a Counterfeit to clear some of the junk could help, especially if you find yourself with too many dead Wharves because of a lack of BV's.