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[Deadlock39]

I thought this was a board that was interesting enough people would like to see it.

Code: [Select]

Hamlet, Develop, Tunnel, Woodcutter, Feodum, JackOfAllTrades, Treasure Map, Cartographer, Inn, Hoard
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20141017/log.50e7525ee4b0b5b74140a6c0.1413586242911.txt

I managed to get the win here, but I am sure my play was far from perfect.  I am interested in what people think about the board.

Jack has one of it's best friends, Hamlet, which plays nicely into Feodum, and Tunnel has support from Hamlet, Inn, and Cartographer.

[Awaclus]

I think Tunnel is probably just a waste of time here. It slows you down early, and there shouldn't be enough time to catch up against someone who just plays a simple Jack money strategy with a Hoard. I'm not sure if you want a Hamlet, probably not unless you have only $2. Feodum might be nice if the game drags and you have a lot of Silvers, but not something that should hugely affect your strategy.

[Davio]

I don't think it's that clear-cut, Awaclus.

A Tunnel strategy certainly feels a little Rube Goldberg here compared to (double)Jack/Hoard, but I wouldn't dismiss it so easily, because there is a lot of support for it. The points from it are often overlooked, but are actually a solid part of the card.

[Titandrake]

I think Tunnel is too slow, Jack/BM with Hoard and potentially a Feodum buy early on seems better, Hamlet is really nice with Jack and I think you buy it over the Silver after the turn 3/4 shuffle.

Well, what I would actually do is open Jack/Develop and do Develop shenanigans, but that may be slower. Silver -> Jack + Hamlet is very nice. Develop - Feodum is of course always nice, and with both Jack and Develop it's more reasonable to pick it up for the on trash. You can also use it as a source of Copper trashing which decreases hand size for a Jack-based semi-engine (I say semi-engine because you won't have time to build as much, but you should be able to get better cycling with similar money output to Jack-BM)

Other fun Develop tricks here are Develop a $4 into Cartographer + Tunnel, then play either a Jack or a Cartographer to discard the Tunnel, Develop an Inn to shuffle actions in during your turn, Develop $4 into Duchy + Tunnel late game...I don't care if it's potentially slower, not exploring all the Develop tricks you can do on this board is a travesty. There's an argument for either Jack/Hamlet or Jack/Develop if you go this route, I'm not actually sure which I like better.

[assemble_me]

Ha, I just thought "You know that board".
I guess our strategies weren't too far apart from each other. Your turn 13 was really crazy and probably the turning point within the game. I probably should have bought a Province instead of my first Hoard, but on the other hand I wanted that Hoard so bad before that shuffle and had a +Buy around. Also, I probably should have taken the PP instead of a Feodum in turn 16 because the longer game would favor you with your extra Silver gaining and extra Feoda.

Btw: I'd always want some early Hamlets along with Jack in a Jack/Money deck, even if it's just for the cycling. Not sure if Tunnel was right but with Hamlet and Inn which both also work well with Jack and also Cartographer around, it seemed good, at first glance at least.

[TomConerly]

I played a reasonable amount of solitaire on this board. I'm not sure if I tested the right strategies, but this is what I came up with:

Double jack (opening jack/hamlet) BM with a single hoard.

Open hamlet/develop. Develop estates into tunnels, buy hamlets/tunnels early. Once you can get to 5 add in cartographers first and then inns. Unless you hit the dream (turn 3 develop/estate top deck tunnel into hamlet turn 4) getting to $5 takes a while so you end up playing hamlet/tunnel for a while which is too slow. Roughly half of the time this strategy gets crushed by double jack. The other half of the time it's close (and it's hard to draw conclusions about the end game playing solo). I think best case this strategy wins half of those close games (for a 25% win rate vs. double jack).

Open silver/silver. Focus on adding cartographers and inns (having a few more cartographers than inns seems best). Buy tunnels when you don't get $5, but only get 2. You want to focus on cycling (you can delay getting the tunnels until turns 6-7 if you hit $5 on turns 3-5). A hamlet or two is ok, but you don't want more as they make your cartographers/inns worse (and you don't really need them since you have inn to discard tunnels in hand). From playing solo this strategy seems competitive with double jack. Again I haven't played the end game, but this strategy can get 4 provinces about as fast as double jack (and it has 3 estates + 2 tunnels to win on a 4-4 split). If anyone wants to test this I'm curious how well this competes with double jack in real games.

After testing I realized that silver/woodcutter is no worse than sliver/silver. Occasionally the extra buy can be helpful (if you get $5 on turns 3/4/5, then hit $6 on turn 6 you can buy both tunnels in one turn).