I think the endgame dance is also something that higher ranked players do better.
A lot of games have 2 players just basecamping and trying to first get their engine in full gear before they focus on the VP cards. Sometimes you'll just be plain behind in those games that it doesn't make any sense to try and build that same engine any more. So maybe you just have to start grabbing some VP cards and hope that your opponent ignores VP cards altogether and builds up his engine for so long that when it's done, it's too late.
This is also caused by "Autoplay" mode. I am a quick player myself so when I see a board, sometimes I just conjure up some simple linear strategy that even the simulator could play for me. When I have this amount of $, I will buy this, etc... When I'm really focused however, I think about every card in the kingdom, every buy, every card I play, what's left in my deck, when I want to reshuffle, what my opponent's doing and what his deck is like.
It won't surprise you that Dominion is a game of imperfect information, much like poker. Your "job" as a player is to best make use of the information you have at any given time. And that information changes over time. You may have started out with a strategy but had a bad shuffle. Time to evaluate again. The cards have no memory. Hoard doesn't know it's "supposed" to show up when you can buy a Province. Your opening buys don't know why they shouldn't be one of the two bottom cards of the deck.
Sometimes it's very hard to breakaway from the default power cards and the default engines. We can stare at the price levels and automatically think: A $6 MUST be better than a $5. A $5 MUST be better than a $4. Often, this will be true, but not always. Good players recognize these exceptions better.
Every kingdom will have its own traps and unique possibilities. Whether it's a power card that's useless or a crap card that's fantastic you shouldn't exclude anything. Great players may have a better arsenal of tricks they already know, but it's their inherent understanding of relative strengths and the risk they're willing to take with new combinations that makes them better, not playing the same strategy over and over again.
I think it's important that we're all willing to fail. A ranking can have a suffocating effect on a player. Once a player reaches the high 30's and cracks the top #200 or something of best Dominion players in the world, the fear starts creeping in. The fear of losing.
I can speak from experience here. I used to accept only matches against lower ranked players and use basic strategies to ensure wins. I wasn't learning anything or growing as a player, I was just maintaining my position. The fun with which I once started this fantastic game had somehow slipped away. I was using Dominion as something to just pass the time, not to enjoy it as the game I once loved.
Eventually I started to play less and less and my ranking slipped from 36 to 32 and I felt kind of..... liberated. Not worrying about my ranking so much anymore made me fall back in love with the game. Now I don't worry so much about crazy strategies anymore. I don't care if I lose with 0 points or win with 100. Sure, I still play to win and try my hardest to achieve it, but the winning itself is not the be all end all anymore.
I think this is true for a lot of journeys in our life. The more we gain, the more we stand to lose, so we just try to maintain. But maintaining is not living. Maintaining is dying, slowly. I'm not saying you should be reckless, give up everything and travel the world as a nomad (you can still do that if you want to though), you should just realize that Dominion is just a silly game. The ranking is just a tool that you can use to find players of your own skill level.
If you start looking at the ranking as a goal instead of a means, you can easily lose sight of the most important thing about any game and why games are designed: TO HAVE FUN!
So go out there, play and HAVE FUN!!
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Topic: What's the difference between a level 30 and a level 40 player? (Read 46542 times)