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[Forge!!!]

Embassy/Fools Gold

Workers Village/Peddler

Governor/Militia or Margrave

These are things I've noticed seem to work relatively well together and I was curious what general public/scripts had to say about if they're actually any good or not.

[Graystripe77]

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/08/game-20111208-144122-fb387713.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/08/game-20111208-144519-3ba34005.html
I say that Embassy/Fool's Gold is a great combo, even with a 4/3.


Might I add that Nomad Camp is a GREAT enabler for Fool's Gold:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/08/game-20111208-144702-6ff1846c.html

And Salvager may also be a good enabler:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/08/game-20111208-145031-0292ef12.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/08/game-20111208-145757-73f5c491.html

Even Lookout:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/08/game-20111208-145232-d9c90c41.html
Sorry for all the logs, I just kinda like this combo.

[Elyv]

worker's village/peddler is amazing, especially if there's a non-terminal at 4 or 3.

[theory]

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/08/game-20111208-144122-fb387713.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/08/game-20111208-144519-3ba34005.html
I say that Embassy/Fool's Gold is a great combo, even with a 4/3.

In both those games you drew your FG's together on turn 4.  If they hadn't been drawn together, you couldn't get to the $5 for the Embassy fast enough.

[Graystripe77]

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/08/game-20111208-144122-fb387713.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/08/game-20111208-144519-3ba34005.html
I say that Embassy/Fool's Gold is a great combo, even with a 4/3.

In both those games you drew your FG's together on turn 4.  If they hadn't been drawn together, you couldn't get to the $5 for the Embassy fast enough.

Good point. I think this combo works better with an enabler, such as my game w/ Nomad Camp

[Forge!!!]

Interesting, thanks for showing those games. How many turns is generally indicative of a good combo?

[Graystripe77]

It depends, for me it is generally <14 turns, but some players may think of around 11 turns as a fairly good combo.

[jsh357]

Governor + hand-reducing attack is definitely brutal (See turn 13):
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/18/game-20111118-152940-e335e849.html

I haven't seen it come up since this game, but if I ever do it'll definitely be a strong consideration.  Epic card advantage no matter what way you look at it really.

[ftl]

Interesting, thanks for showing those games. How many turns is generally indicative of a good combo?

Very roughly:

Flat out Big Money gets 4 provinces in about 17 turns. If a combo does worse than that, it's essentially useless. (Exceptions - if it slows down the opponent by more than that, like with attacks.)

Big Money plus one other card is the next baseline. BM+Envoy is about 13 turns or so for 4 provinces. (Someone correct me if I'm not remembering the number right - it should be 13 or 14 or so? Maybe 12?)

If a combo can do better than BM+Envoy, then it's very good and definitely something to watch out for whenever the cards appear.

If it's between BM+envoy and BM, then it's situational - keep an eye out, but expect that there'll often be something better around, even something simple like BM+one card.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

More like 14-15 for bmu.

It all depends on the board, really.  Some boards can end the game regularly by turn twelve, but this requires a lot of moving parts that are simply not available in I'd say ninety-five percent of games.  This is the reason that Embassy, Apothecary, Salvager, Apprentice and Scrying Pool, among others, are so powerful; they make the backbone of most super fast decks.  But each of these cards requires really great support in order to start rushing Provinces with any kind of staying power by turn seven.  5/2 Embassy is an exception, maybe.   That card is a beast.

On a board with no super combos Big Money Plus can indeed win, but even these cards are sometimes missing.  That is the time to start looking at cards like Explorer, an often poo-pooed card that performs extremely well on synergy-less boards.  Bureaucrat has his place, and so does the maligned Chancellor!

[Geronimoo]

Skill plays a large role as well. If a newbie is going to build a strong engine he'll probably make a lot of mistakes and need 20 turns to set it up (or even completely fail), a level 10 will take 16 turns, a level 30 takes 13 and a lvl +40 will assemble all parts in 12 turns.

On the other hand, the number of turns needed to finish the game with a big money deck will be much closer for all skill levels. The newb will still take +20 turns by buying unneeded actions, the level 10 takes 15 turns, the lvl30 about 14 and same for lvl40. Their are far fewer mistakes to be made (mostly it will be extra unneeded actions and greening too late).

So even though their will be many boards where an engine is viable, poor play will make it inferior to the big money deck that's available (this is how I get a LOT of my wins even against very good players).

[heatthespurs]

Governor + hand-reducing attack is definitely brutal (See turn 13):
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/18/game-20111118-152940-e335e849.html

I haven't seen it come up since this game, but if I ever do it'll definitely be a strong consideration.  Epic card advantage no matter what way you look at it really.

Governor +cards advantage also work well with Minion
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/09/game-20111209-084750-cc56dcb7.html

[play2draw]

I played a game today where I managed to open 5/2 Governor/Chapel. My deck boiled down to three governors, one militia, and a fat stack of gold and I had four provinces by turn 10 I think I won 6-2 on Provinces.

[mischiefmaker]

worker's village/peddler is amazing, especially if there's a non-terminal at 4 or 3.

Hm. I'm not sold on this. Unoptimized, a WV/Peddler bot gets wrecked by BM. This jives with my experience, which is that without trashing, by the time you connect a bunch of worker's villages, you're in a big hole, and even once you get a bunch of peddlers, when you start greening, cantrip engines clog up pretty fast.

Adding draw or attacks doesn't help:

WV/Peddler/Militia loses to Militia 42-53
WV/Peddler/Smithy loses to Smithy 43-51

If there's trash-for-benefit on the table, though, WV/Peddler is really strong, and wildly underestimated by the simulator.

(Caveat: It's entirely possible I just don't know how to tweak the simulator properly.)

[WanderingWinder]

worker's village/peddler is amazing, especially if there's a non-terminal at 4 or 3.

Hm. I'm not sold on this. Unoptimized, a WV/Peddler bot gets wrecked by BM. This jives with my experience, which is that without trashing, by the time you connect a bunch of worker's villages, you're in a big hole, and even once you get a bunch of peddlers, when you start greening, cantrip engines clog up pretty fast.

Adding draw or attacks doesn't help:

WV/Peddler/Militia loses to Militia 42-53
WV/Peddler/Smithy loses to Smithy 43-51

If there's trash-for-benefit on the table, though, WV/Peddler is really strong, and wildly underestimated by the simulator.

(Caveat: It's entirely possible I just don't know how to tweak the simulator properly.)

But probably there's SOME other action that helps you out. Though I agree that it really depends on the strength of that action.

[Forge!!!]

worker's village/peddler is amazing, especially if there's a non-terminal at 4 or 3.

Hm. I'm not sold on this. Unoptimized, a WV/Peddler bot gets wrecked by BM. This jives with my experience, which is that without trashing, by the time you connect a bunch of worker's villages, you're in a big hole, and even once you get a bunch of peddlers, when you start greening, cantrip engines clog up pretty fast.

Adding draw or attacks doesn't help:

WV/Peddler/Militia loses to Militia 42-53
WV/Peddler/Smithy loses to Smithy 43-51

If there's trash-for-benefit on the table, though, WV/Peddler is really strong, and wildly underestimated by the simulator.

(Caveat: It's entirely possible I just don't know how to tweak the simulator properly.)

But probably there's SOME other action that helps you out. Though I agree that it really depends on the strength of that action.

Yeah, the one game where I got absolutely destroyed by this combo, there was a lot of good trashing. He bought all the peddlers in a few turns with Workers Village and then got to play a majority of them each turn. I suppose you could say that Workers Villages are one of the best possible cards to buy peddlers with, but peddlers just aren't that amazing of a card to begin with.

[mischiefmaker]

I have this nagging feeling that I *must* be missing something, as Elyv and WW are both significantly better players than I am (and WW is more skilled with the simulator to boot), but...

I tried simulating WV/Peddler/Mountebank and WV/Peddler/Witch, and they both lose to their respective BM+2X strategies. Tweaking the buy rules gets me close, something like 49-46, but still on the losing side (and, perhaps I'm interpreting this incorrectly, but it seems like if buy rules make a big difference that makes the strategy harder to play correctly).

I did find that WV/Peddler/Chapel and WV/Peddler/Steward both thrash BM pretty soundly, but that's not too surprising since BM doesn't really benefit much from trashing. WV/Peddler/Warehouse and Cellar seem to be pretty good too.

So I think I would feel comfortable saying that this is a reasonable combo on a board with good trashing or good sifting (I bet it's pretty good with Spice Merchant, Stables, and Cartographer), but it's not that great otherwise. That is, in the context of the original question, Embassy/FG and Governor/Militia you can pretty much just buy a bunch of those cards and ignore the rest of the board, and you'll likely be at least competitive (my definition of a combo). Not so with WV/Peddler.

Again, I have a nagging feeling that I'm missing something. Please tell me what it is!

[Forge!!!]

I have this nagging feeling that I *must* be missing something, as Elyv and WW are both significantly better players than I am (and WW is more skilled with the simulator to boot), but...

I tried simulating WV/Peddler/Mountebank and WV/Peddler/Witch, and they both lose to their respective BM+2X strategies. Tweaking the buy rules gets me close, something like 49-46, but still on the losing side (and, perhaps I'm interpreting this incorrectly, but it seems like if buy rules make a big difference that makes the strategy harder to play correctly).

I did find that WV/Peddler/Chapel and WV/Peddler/Steward both thrash BM pretty soundly, but that's not too surprising since BM doesn't really benefit much from trashing. WV/Peddler/Warehouse and Cellar seem to be pretty good too.

So I think I would feel comfortable saying that this is a reasonable combo on a board with good trashing or good sifting (I bet it's pretty good with Spice Merchant, Stables, and Cartographer), but it's not that great otherwise. That is, in the context of the original question, Embassy/FG and Governor/Militia you can pretty much just buy a bunch of those cards and ignore the rest of the board, and you'll likely be at least competitive (my definition of a combo). Not so with WV/Peddler.

Again, I have a nagging feeling that I'm missing something. Please tell me what it is!

Could we settle on

1. Workers Village is probably the best card with which to buy Peddlers

2. WV/Peddler can be very effective in heavy trashing games and probably not much else


I am also a much worse player than everyone else here, so feel free to prove me wrong =P

[werothegreat]

And Salvager may also be a good enabler:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/08/game-20111208-145031-0292ef12.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/08/game-20111208-145757-73f5c491.html

In a two-player game, you'd never get that many Fool's Golds.

[Epoch]

Could we settle on

1. Workers Village is probably the best card with which to buy Peddlers

...No?

I don't know why that would be the case at all.  What has Worker's Village got going for it that other sources of non-terminal +buy don't?

I mean, non-terminal +buy is a somewhat thin list of cards.  I think this is exhaustive:

Grand Market
Market
Festival
Worker's Village
Hamlet
Pawn
(hahahah, double-activated Cities, BUT SRSLY FOLKS)

So, of that list, you could probably argue that Market and Festival, and certainly Grand Market, are just too late-blooming to support a mainly-Peddler strategy.  And Pawn, if it gives you +buy and is non-terminal, lacks +card.  But what's WV's got that Hamlet doesn't have?  Well, card advantage, I suppose.  But Hamlet in return has a lower-price point, which is to say that if you go Hamlet->Discard Estate for +buy, you can reasonably buy 2x more Hamlets, while WV is not going to let you buy 2x WV's.

But more importantly, I just wouldn't go WV->Peddler unless there were terminal actions that I was going to use the WV's +actions for.  Not that that's a terribly high bar (some useful terminal action), but on its own, it doesn't look like the best Peddler enabler to me.

[Forge!!!]

Could we settle on

1. Workers Village is probably the best card with which to buy Peddlers

...No?

I don't know why that would be the case at all.  What has Worker's Village got going for it that other sources of non-terminal +buy don't?

I mean, non-terminal +buy is a somewhat thin list of cards.  I think this is exhaustive:

Grand Market
Market
Festival
Worker's Village
Hamlet
Pawn
(hahahah, double-activated Cities, BUT SRSLY FOLKS)

So, of that list, you could probably argue that Market and Festival, and certainly Grand Market, are just too late-blooming to support a mainly-Peddler strategy.  And Pawn, if it gives you +buy and is non-terminal, lacks +card.  But what's WV's got that Hamlet doesn't have?  Well, card advantage, I suppose.  But Hamlet in return has a lower-price point, which is to say that if you go Hamlet->Discard Estate for +buy, you can reasonably buy 2x more Hamlets, while WV is not going to let you buy 2x WV's.

But more importantly, I just wouldn't go WV->Peddler unless there were terminal actions that I was going to use the WV's +actions for.  Not that that's a terribly high bar (some useful terminal action), but on its own, it doesn't look like the best Peddler enabler to me.

Apologies, I should have said best at buying peddlers. As in, if someone told you go and buy the 10 peddlers as fast as you using one other card, I would probably choose WV. Although you make a compelling case for Hamlet. Of course, whether you SHOULD go and try and buy all 10 peddlers in a game, WV or not, is a completely different question, and I would guess the answer is often no.

[Epoch]

Apologies, I should have said best at buying peddlers. As in, if someone told you go and buy the 10 peddlers as fast as you using one other card, I would probably choose WV. Although you make a compelling case for Hamlet. Of course, whether you SHOULD go and try and buy all 10 peddlers in a game, WV or not, is a completely different question, and I would guess the answer is often no.

Hmmm.  Are we talking just single-card-plus-Peddler strategies?  I mean, presumably the fastest ways to get all the Peddlers are things like Bridge, KC, Highway, Ironworks kinds of strategies.

I played around a very small amount with Hamlet vs WV -> Peddler on isotropic.  My not-statistically-significant sample size confirmed my intuition that Hamlet gets you all 10 Peddlers faster than WV.  But I wouldn't be shocked to find that this was not true on more testing.  I WOULD be shocked if Hamlet or WV -> Peddler beats Big Money -- I wasn't getting all 10 Peddlers until like turn 10 or so, and that deck even at turn 10 doesn't seem awesome to me.

[ackack]

I WOULD be shocked if Hamlet or WV -> Peddler beats Big Money -- I wasn't getting all 10 Peddlers until like turn 10 or so, and that deck even at turn 10 doesn't seem awesome to me.

With 10 Peddlers and a fair number of Hamlets and WVs, I'd be surprised if you couldn't swing 4 Provinces by turn 15 given the scenario you describe, which obviously beats Big Money. This neglects that that deck with its +buy also retains the flexibility to spend its first big turn doing something like Gold/Gold.

Generally Peddler rushes seem formidable to me. It could be that this is because if both parties go for it the loser is absolutely screwed, and this is a common scenario. But I'm pretty sure that in most situations where a legit Peddler rush existed, if I went for it and the other person didn't they pretty much had no shot at winning.

[Epoch]

With 10 Peddlers and a fair number of Hamlets and WVs, I'd be surprised if you couldn't swing 4 Provinces by turn 15 given the scenario you describe, which obviously beats Big Money. This neglects that that deck with its +buy also retains the flexibility to spend its first big turn doing something like Gold/Gold.

Fair enough.  But, seriously, these were decks that were 1 or 2 Silvers, 10 Peddlers (and, sure, Peddlers are admittedly pretty good), and a bunch of essentially cantrip +buy cards.  That's not obviously an awesome deck.

I ran through a test game just now, and sure enough, with Hamlet->Peddler, I got 4 Provinces on turn 14.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/15/game-20111215-135700-04bdc594.html

[WanderingWinder]

I have this nagging feeling that I *must* be missing something, as Elyv and WW are both significantly better players than I am (and WW is more skilled with the simulator to boot), but...

I tried simulating WV/Peddler/Mountebank and WV/Peddler/Witch, and they both lose to their respective BM+2X strategies. Tweaking the buy rules gets me close, something like 49-46, but still on the losing side (and, perhaps I'm interpreting this incorrectly, but it seems like if buy rules make a big difference that makes the strategy harder to play correctly).

I did find that WV/Peddler/Chapel and WV/Peddler/Steward both thrash BM pretty soundly, but that's not too surprising since BM doesn't really benefit much from trashing. WV/Peddler/Warehouse and Cellar seem to be pretty good too.

So I think I would feel comfortable saying that this is a reasonable combo on a board with good trashing or good sifting (I bet it's pretty good with Spice Merchant, Stables, and Cartographer), but it's not that great otherwise. That is, in the context of the original question, Embassy/FG and Governor/Militia you can pretty much just buy a bunch of those cards and ignore the rest of the board, and you'll likely be at least competitive (my definition of a combo). Not so with WV/Peddler.

Again, I have a nagging feeling that I'm missing something. Please tell me what it is!

Cursers are not the actions I want to try to get a bunch of actions chained together against. I was thinking more like terminal silvers (say like a monument), card drawers, that kind of thing.