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[jonts26]

You just had your hindquarters handed to you and you didn't even see it coming. How was your opponent able to so thoroughly outplay you? Was it luck or skill? Taking a few moments to analyze the game log is the best way to shed light on what happened, but sometimes the sheer amount of information presented there can be a bit overwhelming. With a little practice, though, you can be a pro at knowing how to extract the most information in the most efficient manner.

This guide is aimed at beginner and intermediate players, but there’s probably a little something here for everyone.

Analyze This

How you analyze a game can be quite varied, but it all really comes down to one thing – asking questions, and lots of them. And I guess trying to answer them, too.

The first question you need to ask yourself is if the board is worth analyzing at all. And if so, to what extent. This can range anywhere from just glancing at the log to posting the game to the forum for everyone to discuss. But why might you want to be selective in which games to think about? Well, we analyze games mostly to get better. And you will improve your game much more quickly by analyzing (and playing!) more games at a cursory level than spending a huge amount of time agonizing over each one. The reason is simple; one game of Dominion tells you much less than you might think. There is tremendous variation from game to game. And within each game is a large amount of luck.

Subjectively, you should analyze a board whenever you think the game is interesting. More concretely, you should consider analyzing the game any time you and your opponent play different strategies (particularly when you were surprised by your opponents strategy, or you know your opponent to be better), when the game is close and comes down to some tricky endgame manipulation, if you feel you could have won had you done something differently, etc. So just ask yourself some questions about the game, and use the log to try to find an answer. It’s that simple.

Luck Dragons

One thing that is obvious, but not always remembered, is that the better strategy does not always win. Simply put, analysis has to go beyond 'What did the winner do right and what did the loser do wrong.' Of course, the better strategy does have a tendency to win, but luck plays a huge role in Dominion. One of the hardest things to learn about the game is how to parse what can be attributed to luck and what can be attributed to skill. The better you get at playing, the better able you’ll be to figure out what comes down to luck or skill.

Reassess the Board

Hopefully, before you bought your first card, you took a moment to read the board. How did you do? Did you properly identify the stronger cards/combos? Did your opponent see something you didn't? Did you stick with your original game plan, or try to switch tactics mid-stream? Part of post-game analysis is to make you more adept at pre-game analysis. Re-evaluating the board will give you a better feel for future games.

C-C-C-C-Combo Breaker

Combos are the heart and soul of any engine, and many Big Money boards as well. Part of pre-game analysis involves figuring out what combo is dominant. But here’s the issue. There are a ton of cards in dominion. The more complex the combo, the less likely you are to ever see it again. Combo complexity is a function of the number and uniqueness of the cards involved. And for you real life players, whether or not the cards come from the same set. Highly complex combos often do not deserve the time it would take to analyze them. Though sometimes the really clever ones deserve a moment of silent awe.

Another important distinction to make is between the core combo cards and support cards. For example, a Torturer/Hamlet/Conspirator combo is actually probably a Torturer/Village-type card combo with Conspirator support and Hamlet fulfilling the Village role. When analyzing a game, it’s helpful to figure out which is which. Going forward, you can use the core combos you’ve seen before and then figure out which other kingdom cards offer good support.

Opening Arguments

The opening two buys are perhaps the most crucial buys of the game. The purpose of the opening is to set up the strategy you identified in your pre-game analysis. When evaluating the strength of an opening, ask yourself how effective it was at getting you from your starting deck to where you wanted to go. If you identified a better strategy after the fact, what opening would have been best for that? If you opened double silver and fail to draw 5 in turns 3 or 4, well that’s poor luck. If you open warehouse/lookout and fail to draw 5, well that’s expected. When there is a power $5 such as Witch in play, you typically want one soon. The opening is what gets you there.

The Next Few Turns

Many a game are won and lost before turn 6 or so (sometimes much sooner). As such, the roles of luck and skill can be greatly magnified, and it's important to pay special attention to this portion of the game. In this stage you are still ramping up to your target deck. How quickly you get there depends on luck and buy order. What cards did you buy and when? How about your opponent? Who went into the mid-game with the better deck?

Going Green

After a couple of reshuffles you find yourself in the mid-game. Your engine is coming together and then it smacks you in the face: $8, 2 buys. Do you get another Wharf/Village pair or do you break into the Province stack? The decision of when to start greening is perhaps one of the more advanced concepts in Dominion and the answer is highly board and opponent dependent. Sometimes, your opponent buys that first Province sooner than you’d think. Did you stick with you engine in hopes of catching up while he stalls? Did you get in on the Province action sooner than you’d like so as to not fall behind?
Here is my quick, usually but not always appropriate, heuristic for evaluating your decision to go green. If at the end of the game both you and your opponent are stalling too badly to deplete the Provinces, you greened too early. If you have no trouble buying Provinces late game but are in too much of a hole point-wise to catch up, you greened too late.

Wrapping Up

Usually, by the last few turns, the game is already decided. But when it’s not, strong endgame play is often the deciding factor. Managing piles, duchy dancing, following or breaking the penultimate province rule. A good grasp of the final turns of a game won't skyrocket you up the rankings, but it will let you steal a win every now and again. And that might be good for a few levels, at least.
 
It's Dangerous To Go Alone

One of the greatly underused and underappreciated things on isotropic is that little box at the bottom of the screen that lets you communicate instantly over great distances with your opponent (using what, I imagine, must be some manner of dark magic). Many players are happy to talk about the game. I know I love Dominion, and I love talking about Dominion, and it gets a little sad and touch crazy when my only audience is that handsome fellow in the mirror. One word of advice though, don't wait until after the game ends to start talking. Get the conversation going as the game winds down. That way the other guy won't bolt halfway through typing your well thought out question.

The Rest is up to you

This guide is by no means definitive. And everyone has their own quirks and shortcuts for analysis. Perhaps this guide will serve as a good springboard for thoughtful reflection, but in the end you need to make the post-game analysis your own.

[rrenaud]

This article is too good to get responses .  Thanks!

[mischiefmaker]

The only suggestion I have is to expand the section on luck -- if I'm new to postgame analysis, what sorts of things should I chalk up to luck?

Some things I look for personally:
 - 5/2 v. 4/3 split. Did one player get a huge advantage by picking up a power $5 early? Most commonly this will happen with a strong attack like Witch, Mountebank, Torturer, though Trading Post and others can be huge difference makers if you get them in the first reshuffle. Alternatively, were all the $5s terrible and there were no $2s? If the 5/2 player has to buy down or open Saboteur/-, that's a big luck-based difference.

 - What happened on turns 3-5? Often players will have the same opening. Did one player draw Silver-Copper-Copper-Copper-Copper and get an early Gold? Did one player draw $2P and miss getting a Familiar? Sea Hag hit your opponent's Sea Hag? Remake hit 2 estates the first time and one the second time? Salvager/Island repeatedly connect with Estates? etc.

 - Drawing combos in the mid-game. If we both end the game with two Goons and a Village, the game might be decided on whether someone drew all three together at any point. Also, for some engines it's a matter of who manages to make the key cards connect first. Think Torturer-Village, Fishing Village-Wharf, Tournament-Province, King's Court-almost anything, etc. If you look back through the game log, and your opponent connected first but your decks were the same, you might have just gotten unlucky (or you were second player, which might have been due to luck).

 - End game. Did one player put together a very unlikely draw or string of draws? For example, if I have 1 Gold in my deck and you have 3, it's possible for my last two draws to go Gold-Silver-Copper-Copper-Copper, reshuffle, Gold-Silver-Silver-Copper, while yours go Gold-Silver-3 victory cards, letting me buy two Provinces to your one Duchy. You built a better deck; I just got lucky.

 - Swingy cards. If both players went for the same strategy, but your Swindler repeatedly hit my Estates while mine hit your Witch, I just got lucky. This can also happen with Possession (you possess my Silver-Copper-Copper-Estate-Province hand, then watch me draw Gold-Silver-Silver-Copper-Estate), Treasure Map, and other cards that tend to be high-variance. However, keep in mind that if only one player went for that card, then it's partly luck and partly strategy (part of strategy, after all, is minimizing the effect of luck).

[Kirian]

that little box at the bottom of the screen that lets you communicate instantly over great distances with your opponent (using what, I imagine, must be some manner of dark magic).

I want to give this more than one +1 just for this line; the inclusion of multiple memes and Falcor is icing on the cake.

[DG]

Well I must spend too much time looking at game logs because I can add to this excellent article.

1) Don't just look at your strategy, look at your opponent's as well. Even if your opponent played well enough to beat you it doesn't mean that you can't spot mistakes in play and learn how to do it even better! It can also be interesting to see how an opponent prepared a deck in the early game for a strong mid/end game strategy later. While you're playing it can be difficult to get a grasp of what your opponent is doing if you don't know the likely result.

2) You can learn a massive amount just from the cards in the deck at the end of the game. Quite often you don't realise in play that a disparity in the decks is growing but the deck contents show the truth.  As soon as you can see problems in the figures you can then go through the turns to see how the disparity was created.
-> "Why did my deck draw so badly?"
-> "Why was there so much junk in my deck?"
-> "Why didn't my lookout deal with that junk?"
-> "Why didn't I buy a second lookout on turn 5, just like my opponent?".

3) Look mostly closely at the moves you didn't expect your opponent to make or still don't understand. You might be wondering how your opponent made fool's gold work in a curse filled deck whilst your opponent had planned from the start to trash curses with farmland for fool's gold. If you still can't understand what your opponent was doing then perhaps they were crazy. It does happen.

4) Look and see how the action cards affected the other decks. These can be some of the most complex interactions in Dominion and the hardest to spot during play. For example, you might wonder why you couldn't make use of the free trashing from your opponent's bishop to accelerate your deck. Closer inspection might show that you needed more than 4 cards in hand for your plans to work.

5) Carefully examine the buys that you didn't intend to make. These can frequently let you down. Sometimes adding a silver to a deck can be worse than buying nothing at all. The same can be said for some two cost cards as well. Too many terminals can obviously clash.

6) Don't write off too much as bad luck. If you started with envoy/silver and had to buy silvers on turns 3 and 4 as well because you couldn't afford gold, well you might not have had great draws but did you have a back-up plan for 4 and 5 cost purchases? Perhaps your opponent had a plan which could make use of a variety of draws. Perhaps you could have started with an island to remove an estate from your deck before buying the envoy. Better players are lucky more often, or does it just look that way?

7) Many games are lost by mid-high level players by getting the wrong balance between deck quality and acceleration. To give an example, a loan can improve the long term quality of your deck but compared to silver it often misses the purchase of an early 5 or 6 cost card. Checking that you had the right income levels in your deck at the times you needed them is important. Checking that your deck was under control as it was expanding can be important.

[philosophyguy]

5) Carefully examine the buys that you didn't intend to make. These can frequently let you down. Sometimes adding a silver to a deck can be worse than buying nothing at all. The same can be said for some two cost cards as well. Too many terminals can obviously clash.

How early can you make that judgment? For instance, would you ever skip a Silver on the second shuffle because you only drew $4, there were no good $4s, and your long-term deck requires $5s?

[jonts26]

2) You can learn a massive amount just from the cards in the deck at the end of the game. Quite often you don't realise in play that a disparity in the decks is growing but the deck contents show the truth.  As soon as you can see problems in the figures you can then go through the turns to see how the disparity was created.
-> "Why did my deck draw so badly?"
-> "Why was there so much junk in my deck?"
-> "Why didn't my lookout deal with that junk?"
-> "Why didn't I buy a second lookout on turn 5, just like my opponent?".

So I tried to keep it pretty basic since there are, of course, a ton of subtleties of game analysis. I agree with all of your points but this one in particular I feel was an oversight on my part. Final deck composition is HUGE, and it's a super quick and easy way to get a feel for how good your final deck was compared to your opponent.

[jonts26]

The only suggestion I have is to expand the section on luck -- if I'm new to postgame analysis, what sorts of things should I chalk up to luck?

You raise a lot of good points. The thing with luck though, is it's hard to nail down, and I didn't want to get into too many specific examples. I actually think that section could be expanded to an entire article of similar length, and what you have would be a good starting point. But in the interest of basic-ness, I kept it short and to the point.

[rod-]

Luck:

1) Which cards missed the 2nd shuffle?  (Something like EE vs CC being cards 11-12 can be just as big a determinant as a card like chapel being 11th/12th.)
2) If playing mirror strategies, did one player have a preponderance of early turns with 1 less coin than needed to make an important buy (whether platinum, familiar, witch, or what have you)?  Did one have a disproportionate number of endgame turns ending on 7$ in a province game?
3) What cards were affected by random spying/swindling/jestering?

[DG]

How early can you make that judgment? For instance, would you ever skip a Silver on the second shuffle because you only drew $4, there were no good $4s, and your long-term deck requires $5s?

If you're planning to build a deck using 5 cost cards without a reliable method of getting them, and without good quality buys at cost 3 or 4, then you're in trouble. This situation shouldn't really crop up except maybe with some alchemy decks. Apothecaries, universities, scrying pools, and transmutes offer complex deck progression without silver. If you know what you're doing with those cards then you probably know whether a silver will help or not.

The silver case actually doesn't come up that often but it can be the most interesting one to talk about since it's incredibly easy to add a silver to a deck without thinking. It's far more common to overbuy terminal cards, buy low cost cards that have marginal disadvantages as well as marginal benefits, or buy a card your opponent is using even though it is no use to you. A recent case I saw for the silver involved a deck with familiars and a route to gold and platinum through treasure maps. This was a tightly managed deck, using gains for the next progression rather than buys, improved by fast cycling, and looking to pair key cards together in hand - all hints that you could skip the silver.

[Geronimoo]

I'll often use my simulator for post-game analysis (and sometimes even pre-game analysis like I open $5/$2 on a Colony board that has no real engine. Should I open Mine or Jack ? 30 seconds later I know it's Jack... I don't know if people think that's cheating???)

If you'd like to use it, but find tuning the buy rules is too hard, just post your game in the Simulation forum and one of the simulators will likely do it for you (if it's interesting enough).

[DStu]

I'll often use my simulator for post-game analysis (and sometimes even pre-game analysis like I open $5/$2 on a Colony board that has no real engine. Should I open Mine or Jack ? 30 seconds later I know it's Jack... I don't know if people think that's cheating???)

By anybody else than you: Yes!

[Davio]

Sometimes after a game on Iso where I beat up a new player pretty bad or win an intense game by a small margin, I hang around in the game and wait to see if the other player wants to talk about the game. If they do, I try to explain what I did and why I think it's better (or worse) than what they did.

And often I will admit to my own luck. I've been breaking the PPR more and more (after the initial scary insight Theory gave us) with mixed results. Sometimes you just have to take a chance.

[pulpix]

I read this post today and i really like it and i agree in most of the things u said but there's something that u didnt comment i would like to discuss so here we go:

Let's assume that i have analized a board (not a easy one but a more complex one with maybe diferent ways to play it) and i have decided my strategy and i open with 2 cards that are the best for that strategy but, on turn 3,4, i got unlucky and cant take the cards i expected to take cuz i got money split. In that case, is it worthy maybe to change the strategy or should i stick to my plan?

I dunno if u catch me what i mean but, if u dont, i could put an exemple

(Sorry about my crappy english)

[DStu]

I read this post today and i really like it and i agree in most of the things u said but there's something that u didnt comment i would like to discuss so here we go:

Let's assume that i have analized a board (not a easy one but a more complex one with maybe diferent ways to play it) and i have decided my strategy and i open with 2 cards that are the best for that strategy but, on turn 3,4, i got unlucky and cant take the cards i expected to take cuz i got money split. In that case, is it worthy maybe to change the strategy or should i stick to my plan?

I would say it is worth to think about it, but in most cases the answer is "no". I would guess the standard case is that you wanted some $5, but couldn't reach for it, and get stuck with 2x$4 or something worse. You usually can't see that in turn 3 [maybe perhaps if you are attacked, but usually a weak T3 implies good chances for a good T4] and probably buy a Silver there, or something that fits into your original plan, so the question is if in T4 you change.
Now there is the question, which card for $5, which was an important part of your strategy would you now change for which $4, that you didn't consider starting with in the first place? Maybe Trading Post/Upgrade? Realizing that whatever engine you wanted to get going that relied on the trashing might fire too late? Switching to something more BigMoneyesque?

Edit: I think the correct time to really change the gear is somewhat later, as Davio will say for example use some (usually weak) attack, and hoping to get a lucky strike to turn things around.

[Davio]

What helps me sometimes when I try to build an engine is to try visualize it and take it apart in my head. Look at all the components. Do you really need that Cutpurse in the end or is it going to be a thorn in your side, because you can't play it anymore (too few actions)? I often buy obligatory Silvers when I strike out in T3, but maybe it's better to do nothing and wait till you hit $5. Once you've got that crucial $5, you'll be able to play it a little more often, because you don't have that hampering Silver.

Something that also helps me is setting secondary objectives for myself. If you can identify some crucial cards on a board, you can ask yourself: "How will I be able to buy that card as soon as possible?" Grand Market is such a prime target and it can be reached in many ways. You can just buy a lot of Silvers. I like to buy multiple Upgrades and just Upgrade other Upgrades to GM. Vaulting and discarding your Coppers also works. Goons is also a nice target to aim for, because it's such a powerful card and playing it first can have grave consequences for your opponent. Sometimes, even Gold is a good goal and you can use Moneylender or something like that to quickly grab it.


When things don't pan out as you'd had hoped, it's always good to think things over. Cards themselves have no memory or sense of history. Every reshuffle, your deck is brand new and you should go from there. I can remember some times where my opponent and me were going for the same strategy and he had a little more shuffle luck. Instead of trying to play catch-up and hope my endgame luck would be better, there may actually be a possibility to do something different. Don't be afraid to shake things up. Buy a Thief if your opponent has exactly 2 Golds an 1 Silver in his deck. You may hit one and slow him down considerably!

Of course, some strategies are more easily turned around than others. If you don't want to make a mess of things, it may be better to stick with your strategy and just see it through to the end. If you're going for a Bridge/Native Village mega-turn, you don't want to buy useless components just because you can't shuffle good enough.

[Buggz]

Let's assume that i have analized a board

I'd rather not.. 

[Thisisnotasmile]

Of course, some strategies are more easily turned around than others. If you don't want to make a mess of things, it may be better to stick with your strategy and just see it through to the end. If you're going for a Bridge/Native Village mega-turn, you don't want to buy useless components just because you can't shuffle good enough.

If you're going NV/Bridge and you can't shuffle good enough to afford a $4 or even a $2 card, when the main component of your deck further decreases the cost of cards, you need to practise shuffling.