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Author Topic: Swedish Nationals 2014 tournament report  (Read 2089 times)

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Lekkit

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Swedish Nationals 2014 tournament report
« on: September 28, 2014, 08:50:45 am »
+15

Yesterday was the day of our Nationals. We had a pretty low turnout of 15 people. Fortunately we were doing a three player format, so 15 was still a nice number of players. The format was six rounds of 3 player games. Everybody got to be 1st player twice, 2nd player twice and third player twice. 1st place granted you 4 points, 2nd place 2,5, and third place 1. In case of ties, the points were added and divided by the amount of players who tied. After the six rounds, the three player with the most points got to play in the finals, the player with the most points going first and so on. The finals was first to two wins. If you won a game, you got to play third in the next one. The second player got to be first and the third place got to play second. In all games you got to arrange your starting 10 cards in whichever way you wanted.

I unfortunately didn't write down all the sets, so I'm mostly going by my memory of the important cards.

Game 1. Important cards: Count, Mountebank, Beggar, Shelters and Graverobber(?).

So I was third player in this game. Fortunately my mother who was first player opted for a Graverobber opener (she later told me that she intended to go for Counts and then Graverobbers to upgrade Counts into Provinces. Me and the other guy went for Mountebank/Beggar. The amount of shuffle luck I had this game was pretty insane. In the end, I ended up with three Curses and seven Provinces and a nice 51 point win.

Game 2. Important cards: Masquerade, Familiar, Alchemist, Scavenger and Shelters.

I was pretty happy to be first player on this board. We all opened Potion/Masquerade and we all got a Familiar during our first reshuffle. My Familiar missed the reshuffle and I got pummeled with Curses. I bought two Scavengers and another Masquerade which helped me getting rid of the Curses pretty good. There was no way to block Curses but we still ended up with three left in the pile after a while. We all agreed that there was no way of telling who had missed one, and decided to just play on. The other two players started to go for Alchemists while I was pretty busy cleaning up my deck. This was the only game during the entire tournament to go to time. When everybody had played the same amount of turns, we counted points. I had 12 vp. The guy to my left had 12 vp. And the guy to my right had 12 vp. We all rejoiced in our shared victory!

Game 3. Important cards: Hunting Party, Embargo, Tactician, Storeroom and Merchant Guild.

I went for Hunting Party/Embargo opening. Embargoing the Tactician. Then I proceded to be the guy who went hardest on the HPs. I ended up with six. Added a Merchant Guild and proceded to a pretty easy win after that.

Game 4. Important cards: Counterfeit, Rogue, Rats, Upgrade, Horse Traders, Trader and Shelters.

I opted to go for a HT/Silver opening in orded to get my hands on Counterfeit/Rogue early. One guy went for Upgrade and the other for Trader. I hit a lot of early 6's and got a bunch of Golds instead. Very shortly we all started to buy green cards like crazy. My Golds helped me out getting ahead in that race. A very quick and pretty uninteresting game.

Game 5. Important cards: Ambassador, Tunnel, Loan and Ironmonger.

There were a couple of other cards in the setup, but most of them I can't remember even though buying a few. I won the early Ambassador war and proceded to get a bunch of Ironmongers, two Loans and a couple of Tunnels. Although Ironmonger isn't the best enabler for Tunnel, I knew I wanted the cycling of the Ironmongers, and the random chance of free golds seemed pretty good to me. I got a bunch of lucky Golds due to the Ironmongers and the Loans and could start to buy a lot of green cards. My father who also did pretty well with his Ambassadors got some green cards as well. But with less economy he had a hard time keeping up. The third guy got the bad end of the Ambassador stick and had a deck that was mostly Coppers and Estates. He didn't have a very good time.

At this point I was guaranteed to be in the finals. I even had a good enough score that no matter how badly I would do in the final game, I would still be seated 1st in the first game of the finals.

Game 6. Important cards: Bishop, Peddler, Ironworks, Spy and Apprentice.

We all went for the same strategy here. The guy who ended up with five Ironworks could control the end of the game good enough that he won pretty easily. I got hit pretty bad by some early Spies and got a couple of vps behind everyone in the end. But fortunately it didn't really matter.

Unfortunately the guy who placed third during the initial rounds wasn't able to stay and so he forefited his place in the finals to the player in the fourth spot. One of them was my mother and the other was Hampuse1 (I think he's here on the forums somewhere). Their tiebreakers (number of wins) were the same, so they played a 2 player game to see who would advance. My mother lost that one pretty good. So the finals would be Me, luliin and Hampuse1. We're all friends who play Dominion on a regular basis, me and luliin are engaged and Hampuse1 and I play Spoils together. We also have some pretty juicy Dominion backstories as well.

Back in 2011 I won the National finals against Hampuse1. luliin came in second 2012 and won 2013. So the stakes were high.

Finals Game 1. Important cards: Tactician, Hoard, Haven, Tunnel and Spice Merchant.

I opted to go for a Haven/Tactician opening hoping to get an early Hoard and then start greening pretty quick. Both Hampuse1 and luliin went for Silver/Spice Merchant transitioning into Hoard/Tactician. I'm not sure if my start was better or if I got some lucky draws/good smoothing out with a couple of Havens, but I got a lot of early Provinces and didn't really have to slow down. In the end it was pretty close, but I narrowed out a win, luliin placing second and Hampuse1 third.

Finals Game 2. Important cards, Masquerade, Courtyard, Colony/Platinum and Tactician.

So in this game everyone opened Silver/Masquerade. There was some engine potential there with Workers Village and City. But the only draw more than one card was Masquerade and Courtyard. And in a three player game I deemed it too slow. Neither of us got very good starts. I got a couple of 8's and opted for Gold, Hampuse1 and luliin both stopped for a Tactician. After a while the Platinum pile started running low (I think there was only 1 left in the end) and we started buing Colonies. Nobody got a double Colony turn, and the turns they sacrificed to play their Tacticians, I made up for with some buying power. In the end luliin narrowed out with a win with her first player advantage, me getting in second place.

Finals Game 3. Important cards, Rebuild, Duke and Colony/Platinum.

Well, this was a fun game... Not. Neither fo us really like Rebuild. I got 4 Rebuilds, while they got 3 each. I also never trashed a Duchy, so my dukes ended up being worth 4 each. Trashing was crazy, and we were all tired after playing Dominion for a day, so neither of us had any real knowledge of the score. (Queue discussions of the point counter). So when Hampuse1 ended the game with the last Duke, he thought he had it. And so did both me and luliin. The end result was something like 43 for me, 41 for luliin and 40 for Hampuse1. Which made me the winner of not only that game, but also of the Swedish Nationals 2014. Hopefully I can make it to Worlds next year to represent Sweden there. I didn't do too well back in 2011 at Essen, and I wasn't too happy about my placement at Worlds 2013 at Gen Con either.

Either way, hope this was interesting for you to read. There aren't that many IRL reports around, and me not having either the sets nor videos makes it a bit dry. But, one have to make the best out of what you have. ;)
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Twistedarcher

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Re: Swedish Nationals 2014 tournament report
« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2014, 01:23:39 pm »
0

Being able to choose a 5/2 or 4/3 split seems interesting -- do you feel that this was a positive or a negative change for tournament play?
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Lekkit

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Re: Swedish Nationals 2014 tournament report
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2014, 01:56:36 pm »
+2

You won't lose games over a bad split. But at the same time you'll lose a game where your Chapel and Mountebank collides.

In general I think it removes one random element that I don't think add much to the game. At the same time, I feel like it's something that's good enough that I would start an argument over using it or not.
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ipofanes

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Re: Swedish Nationals 2014 tournament report
« Reply #3 on: October 02, 2014, 04:42:59 am »
+1

Which made me the winner of not only that game, but also of the Swedish Nationals 2014.

Why, congratulations of course!
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sitnaltax

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Re: Swedish Nationals 2014 tournament report
« Reply #4 on: October 03, 2014, 07:18:11 pm »
+1

Congratulations!

Between you, your mother, and your fiancee, it seems like you have quite the Dominion dynasty shaping up.
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Lekkit

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Re: Swedish Nationals 2014 tournament report
« Reply #5 on: October 04, 2014, 01:05:46 am »
+2

I know! My father also plays, and he and my mother play an insane amount of games. Like a couple of games per day. Since Prosperity. The only ones in the family who doesn't play the game is one of my sisters and the dog.
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