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[TrojH]

Code: [Select]

Tournament, Walled Village, Bandit Camp, City, Mandarin, Merchant Guild, Soothsayer, Stash, Witch, Harem
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20141029/log.505e9c9c0cf2ef979299a7c0.1414608048368.txt

On this board, my opponent and I both opened Tournament/Silver.

Our strategies diverged after that.

I wanted to get to the Provinces as quickly as possible, and start cashing in on prizes. So when I had to choose a curser, I picked Soothsayer to get extra Gold. My opponent had an eye on a big drawing engine, so he chose Witch. He ended up getting two Witches, while I got just one Soothsayer: when I had a chance to get a second Soothsayer, I grabbed a Gold instead. I knew I'd lose the Curse split, but getting to Provinces was my top priority.

When my opponent grabbed his first City, I responded in kind. But after that, I decided not to fight him for Cities; I decided to pull the City trap on him. I'd keep the Tournament, City, and Curse piles all roughly even, so they'd all empty at about the same time, and he wouldn't get much benefit from the Cities.

I got my Province early, and grabbed my first prize: a Trusty Steed. (Not Followers, since Curses were draining quickly enough as it is.) I didn't get any more prizes; on my next opportunity, I knew the game was drawing to a close, so I grabbed a Duchy instead.

It looked like I was going to pull it off: Cities gone, Curses gone, and I grabbed the penultimate Tournament with a sizable lead. Alas, I couldn't finish the job. My opponent bought Province/Duchy, I only had 3 coins (I bought an Estate), and then my opponent bought Province/Province/Tournament to win the game. It all came together for him at the very last minute.

What do you think, folks? Did I just get unlucky, or did he have the better strategy?

[Awaclus]

I'm not sure about Cities, but Soothsayer is slow and clumsy and most likely not worth it in Tournament games IMO.

[HiveMindEmulator]

My instant reaction from the title is that Witch/City should win easily. I'm surprised it was close. Soothsayer has to be wrong. I think there are very few situations in which Soothsayer is better than Witch. And Tournaments are not such a huge deal here, as the Curses are going anyway, and City does what you want Trusty Steed to do. Also, you don't really need that much Gold for Tournament. You'd be better off just drawing more, as that helps both buy Provinces and line them up.

[shark_bait]

I'm joining the Witch bandwagon.  With Witch you get a bonus of +2 Cards when you play it.  With Soothsayer you get nothing when you play it and your opponent starts their next hand with a free $5-cost Lab.

[amalloy]

Like the other respondents, I thought Witch/City sounded pretty cool, but I noticed something else troublesome in your story: you tried to keep the Tournament pile about as low as the Curse pile? Emptying Tournaments is not often that great: you just want to line one up with a Province, you don't want to fill your deck with them. Once your opponent has a Province or two, those Tournaments start to feel more and more like Curses. I see that at the end of the game you had seven of them, and the pile was empty: you helped your opponent get the surprise pile-out on you. Plus, you had to spend a bunch of time buying all those up, when Silvers would probably have been more helpful; contrarily, your opponent had a bunch of top-tier Cities for a couple turns, meaning that picking up a Tournament at the end to finish it was easy for him. If you had not bought any Cities at all, and not aimed so hard for the Tournament pile, you could have denied him those two turns of activation, and denied him the pile-out.