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Tombolo

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Opening Mandarin
« on: March 02, 2015, 10:51:00 am »
0

What's the board's opinion?  I'm staring at a 5/2 split on a board where I don't really like any of the 4's and 5's.
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A Drowned Kernel

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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #1 on: March 02, 2015, 10:54:37 am »
+1

What's the board? Pretty much impossible to say otherwise.
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Tombolo

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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #2 on: March 02, 2015, 10:57:26 am »
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Well I was looking more for a general opinion but here the board was Hoard, GM, Altar, Mandarin, CR, Feast, Oasis, BM, Stonemason, Pawn.

Went for Oasis/Stonemason/GM, with Mandarin and BM support.  Lost narrowly to a bot.
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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #3 on: March 02, 2015, 11:01:45 am »
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Council Room seems like a better bet than opening Mandarin here, it's great cycling and it's going to be better for spiking 8 to get SM/GM.
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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #4 on: March 02, 2015, 11:07:07 am »
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Personally, I would almost never buy Mandarin as an opening, even with the variety of cute tricks that seem doable.  Slowing yourself down a turn early on is terrible, especially if there's no other good $5 option.  You're better off taking a Silver and maybe getting Mandarin later when you have good treasure to topdeck instead.
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DG

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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #5 on: March 02, 2015, 11:40:38 am »
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When you put mandarin and oasis together you get less benefit than the sum of their parts. Hoard seems like it fits council room better than mandarin. You should get your grand markets by overpaying 6 for a stonemason but a province may still look better value in a treasure deck. There isn't enough trashing for a great grand market deck.
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Grujah

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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #6 on: March 02, 2015, 02:23:48 pm »
+2

Personally, I would almost never buy Mandarin as an opening, even with the variety of cute tricks that seem doable.  Slowing yourself down a turn early on is terrible, especially if there's no other good $5 option.  You're better off taking a Silver and maybe getting Mandarin later when you have good treasure to topdeck instead.

I'd do it on a Hunting Party board.
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Titandrake

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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #7 on: March 02, 2015, 02:44:41 pm »
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Opening Mandarin is usually bad. If I remember correctly, Mandarin/Silver/nothing isn't the worst thing you can do, but it's pretty far down. On most boards, there will be something else that's better than losing a turn.

In fact Mandarin in general is not a very strong card...it's something you buy on boards which are fairly weak, usually Big Money boards where you only expect to hit 1 Province a turn at best. The ideal way to gain Mandarin is to either gain it during the action phase through a card like Feast/Altar, or to use it to topdeck mostly Silvers and Golds. The actual effect of playing a Mandarin is very good in big money games (compare to Courtyard), but picking it up is tricky.

If there is literally no other $5/$4 cost that looks okay and the board is really that slow and money-based, I'd open Mandarin/Silver and hope to get lucky and hit $6, since that sounds better than Silver/nothing. It sucks, but in that position everything's going to suck.
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Seprix

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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #8 on: March 02, 2015, 02:45:27 pm »
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Personally, I would almost never buy Mandarin as an opening, even with the variety of cute tricks that seem doable.  Slowing yourself down a turn early on is terrible, especially if there's no other good $5 option.  You're better off taking a Silver and maybe getting Mandarin later when you have good treasure to topdeck instead.

I'd do it on a Hunting Party board.

A HoP board is awesome with Mandarin too, though you probably don't need to open Mandarin there.
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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #9 on: March 02, 2015, 02:54:40 pm »
+9

Well I was looking more for a general opinion but here the board was Hoard, GM, Altar, Mandarin, CR, Feast, Oasis, BM, Stonemason, Pawn.

Went for Oasis/Stonemason/GM, with Mandarin and BM support.  Lost narrowly to a bot.

Got $5, but don't like any of the $5's?  Buy a Feast.  Duh.
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Deadlock39

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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #10 on: March 02, 2015, 03:01:34 pm »
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With the right board Mandarin/Mint can be okay.  As with the other situations mentioned here, it probably isn't good, but might be better than your other options.

liopoil

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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #11 on: March 02, 2015, 03:29:23 pm »
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I might buy on on turn 2 as P2 after my opponent played a T1 noble brigand. And that's why P1T1 noble brigand is awful.
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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #12 on: March 02, 2015, 04:25:11 pm »
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I'm with Dingan, I think buying Mandarin when you don't like the 5's is feast logic.. you're buying a card whose primary purpose is to guarantee you hit 5$ next turn.  And later on it's actually pretty good at making you hit 5$ at the expense of Gold turns, which is the same tradeoff the board seems to be pushing you away from.

Basically the only thing that makes Mandarin/nothing good is TFB, that makes it a 5$ whatzit that gives you an extra early 5$ turn, which is alright if you get that TFB collision you wanted.

Oh and there's Hunting Party Mandarin, I don't know if that's a turn 1 thing but I know it's a thing.  I don't understand why it's a thing but I've seen WW thing the thing.
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Deadlock39

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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #13 on: March 02, 2015, 06:07:18 pm »
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I recall a really old post questioning if buying a number of Mandarins and then Apprentice could be a thing, but I am pretty sure the consensus was it wasn't very any good.

popsofctown

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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #14 on: March 03, 2015, 11:45:30 am »
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I recall a really old post questioning if buying a number of Mandarins and then Apprentice could be a thing, but I am pretty sure the consensus was it wasn't very any good.
I think Salvager is a little better because early on your money density is less than 1.0
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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #15 on: March 03, 2015, 04:24:09 pm »
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Oh and there's Hunting Party Mandarin, I don't know if that's a turn 1 thing but I know it's a thing.  I don't understand why it's a thing but I've seen WW thing the thing.
Not sure if it's universally a thing, but if you buy Mandarin/HP/- on turn 1, the cycling speed of HP helps make up for Mandarin, Mandarin does help you hit $5, which gets you another HP, and once you get up to speed, you can use Mandarin to top deck an HP, making sure the party never stops. Not a guaranteed win, but an interesting combo.

That said, there are definitely a lot of Mandarin nombos out there. And then there are things like Mandarin/Tactician which can be awesome with the right support and way too slow in others.
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DG

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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #16 on: March 03, 2015, 05:52:06 pm »
+1

I don't see the problems with mandarin openings. If you stick to basics they seem quite logical. You can put cards like stables and mandarin together to do good things and as a bonus you are assured of a stables after buying your mandarin. If you want to play duchy/duke then starting with a few mandarins might seem ok.
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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #17 on: March 04, 2015, 10:28:28 pm »
+19

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jomini

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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #18 on: March 05, 2015, 01:30:21 pm »
+1

I don't see the problems with mandarin openings. If you stick to basics they seem quite logical. You can put cards like stables and mandarin together to do good things and as a bonus you are assured of a stables after buying your mandarin. If you want to play duchy/duke then starting with a few mandarins might seem ok.

What does Mandarin giver you? -1 card, - action, +$3. How much is a card worth early game? $.7. Playing Mandarin then is expected to be just a bit better than a terminal silver. We have a terminal silver, we call it Duchess, it costs $2. Well it might be good with boards where you need to hit $6 or higher, because you either top decking a copper (neutral) or an estate/shelter (negative) for next turn you have the choice of how to skew your income a bit. This gives Mandarin slightly better odds for making price points above $5. But the numbers already posted show only a slight gain there.

How then can Mandarin cost $5? Because late game, +1 card can be really cheap and as importantly, replaying your treasures can actually be good. For instance in a Library, Menage, etc. engine, Mandarin can give $3 as the card draw is the same (you will draw 1 more card with Lib, but have 1 more card on deck top; Menage goes from +1 card to +3 more often). In a regular engine, you can get some decent mileage out of using the top decking to setup next turn (e.g. Tr -> Mandarin, top deck a village/Hunting Grounds for an 8 card starting hand). Likewise there are a huge number of cards (e.g. Farming village, wandering minstrel) that can mitigate the -1 card cost.

None of that applies in the opening.

Now take your example, suppose you get lucky and on T3 you hit Stables/Mandarin. You discard a copper, your draw an expected 2 coppers/1 estate now you have an expected hand of CCECCEMand. Nice you can get an early gold and top deck a copper. What if you didn't have the Mandarin? You'd have CCECCEC most likely - no gold, but you can get another Mandarin. Without the Mandarin your effective deck size is 6 cards for cycling (Stables count for -2), with Mandarin, your expected deck size is 8 (Mandarin counts as +2) if you buy a second Stables or 11 if you bought a gold. Also, remember that you are a full turn behind on deck cycling. As your effective deck size creeps down, the rate at which you see those nice high cost cards you buy increases.

The key effects in dominion are not typically money, you can almost always get money into a deck without too much trouble. The things you want to see the most often are trashing, gaining, and attacks. Mandarin makes it take that much longer to see any of those more powerful effects. A terminal silver with some $ smoothing just isn't worth $5 and a turn penalty on seeing it in the early game.  Later the put back treasures clause may not be a handicap (particularly if you can use Mandarin to drop a big draw enabler like Menage as well) and -1 card slows you down a lot less.

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DG

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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #19 on: March 05, 2015, 02:05:10 pm »
+1

Quote
The key effects in dominion are not typically money, you can almost always get money into a deck without too much trouble.

For a standard big money deck, getting bigger and better treasures is usually a winning difference.
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Chris is me

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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #20 on: March 05, 2015, 06:09:35 pm »
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What does Mandarin giver you? -1 card, - action, +$3.

Mandarin is subtly different than -1 card - it's one card on top of your deck. This seems trivially different, but it can be an advantage in certain situations, and these situations really define Mandarin's utility. After all, it would be extremely unfair to say Courtyard is only as good as Moat, correct? I go into this more below. (I think it's clear you understand this, but it's not the same as -1 card and I'm annoyingly pedantic sometimes)

Quote
Well it might be good with boards where you need to hit $6 or higher, because you either top decking a copper (neutral) or an estate/shelter (negative) for next turn you have the choice of how to skew your income a bit. This gives Mandarin slightly better odds for making price points above $5. But the numbers already posted show only a slight gain there.

There is one situation you're leaving out - you can top deck another terminal action. Combine this with the Mandarin opening guaranteeing another $5 buy on the next turn, and you've got pretty strong buying power early on without all of the drawback of a terminal Gold. If you want a deck with two other terminals early on (e.g. Mountebank, Witch), strong buying power, but without the risk of collision or the necessary $6, Mandarin is a cool way to do this. It isn't exactly game breaking, but it's occasionally useful and should be kept in mind.

Its top deck ability can also be used to move useful Actions to hands that need them. Take this hand: Mandarin, Copper, Copper, Copper, Stables / Hunting Party / Whatever. Very plausible for the second reshuffle. You can already hit $6 for the early Gold, so why draw cards you won't use?

Quote
In a regular engine, you can get some decent mileage out of using the top decking to setup next turn (e.g. Tr -> Mandarin, top deck a village/Hunting Grounds for an 8 card starting hand). Likewise there are a huge number of cards (e.g. Farming village, wandering minstrel) that can mitigate the -1 card cost.

None of that applies in the opening.

It absolutely does, because right after you bought Mandarin you bought another card, presumably an Action, for $5 that you can top-deck with it. The effect has immediate utility, and in some ways is best in the early game since you're really getting Mandarin for the Gold-like buying power a shuffle (or two) earlier than you otherwise would.

I'm not trying to say Mandarin is a stellar card, but I think it's a smidge underrated. Putting cards on the top of your deck for later is handy. Opening Mandarin is an option that should be considered a little more often than it is.
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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #21 on: March 05, 2015, 07:22:29 pm »
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Is opening Mandarin/Mint a thing? The big drawback of opening Mint is that it trashes your early buying power, but Mandarin will compensate for that.
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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #22 on: March 05, 2015, 07:24:24 pm »
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Is opening Mandarin/Mint a thing? The big drawback of opening Mint is that it trashes your early buying power, but Mandarin will compensate for that.

I was just thinking Mandarin/Doctor, but I guess Mint would work, too.
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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #23 on: March 05, 2015, 07:24:42 pm »
+1

obligatory mandarin/mandarin/mandarin/apprentice opener reminder
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Re: Opening Mandarin
« Reply #24 on: March 05, 2015, 08:30:13 pm »
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Quote
The key effects in dominion are not typically money, you can almost always get money into a deck without too much trouble.

For a standard big money deck, getting bigger and better treasures is usually a winning difference.

Yeah, but there is a reason the Big Money tends to only be competitive on sparse boards with few options. In any event, on a Big Money board, you want something more powerful than Terminal Silver-ish thing.

Quote
Mandarin is subtly different than -1 card - it's one card on top of your deck. This seems trivially different, but it can be an advantage in certain situations, and these situations really define Mandarin's utility. After all, it would be extremely unfair to say Courtyard is only as good as Moat, correct? I go into this more below. (I think it's clear you understand this, but it's not the same as -1 card and I'm annoyingly pedantic sometimes)
Yes I do get this, Chris, but the difference with Courtyard is that it is $2 and so is Moat. For $2 buys you +2 cards -1 action and some bonus for Courtyard that is something your money or higher odds of hitting your engine. For Moat that bonus is protection from attacks. For an early game Mandarin, you are looking at a terminal just barely better than Silver that actively decreases your odds of hitting engine.

Now sure, later in the game this analysis does not hold. Using Manadarin to send back cards is big, but we are talking about as an opener. At most you will start with Mandarin, some $5, and a $2 (barring Baker or Nomad camp). It really is giving your self a terminal silver (on average) that slows down your cycling.

Quote
There is one situation you're leaving out - you can top deck another terminal action. Combine this with the Mandarin opening guaranteeing another $5 buy on the next turn, and you've got pretty strong buying power early on without all of the drawback of a terminal Gold. If you want a deck with two other terminals early on (e.g. Mountebank, Witch), strong buying power, but without the risk of collision or the necessary $6, Mandarin is a cool way to do this. It isn't exactly game breaking, but it's occasionally useful and should be kept in mind.
With Witch or Mountebank, you just open straight to those. If have no other card, I can't collide period. Getting a curse or better curse/copper into my opponent's deck a shuffle earlier is far more important than having a gimped gold. Think about it this way. We both open 2/5. You go Mandarin -> Witch, I go Witch. I'm going to give you your first curse a turn sooner on average. So if you go first I can curse you on T3 or T4 before you shuffle (T3 you buy a witch and shuffle, after T4 you have at least 5 cards left in deck). If I go first, you cannot curse me before I shuffle again (after T3 I have 0 - 2 cards left in deck, you can first draw your witch on T4).  I'm pretty likely to end up winning the curse split 6:4 and very unlikely to lose it 4:6.

Essentially, delaying the play of the curse giver is pretty close to taking an extra curse. Buying embargoed gold is worse than buying silver for money density.

Quote
It absolutely does, because right after you bought Mandarin you bought another card, presumably an Action, for $5 that you can top-deck with it. The effect has immediate utility, and in some ways is best in the early game since you're really getting Mandarin for the Gold-like buying power a shuffle (or two) earlier than you otherwise would.
Yeah, but that delays the useful $5 yet another turn. The curse givers are obvious, delay playing them and the other guy has better odds of winning the curse split. That is big without curse trashing. Major trashers, like Count or Trading post, also don't want to wait and potentially miss a shuffle.

You need to have a really good reason for wanting to hit $6 to delay playing your other $5 buy.

Mandarin is a decent card, I actually like it and think it is a bit underrated, largely because it is so bad as an opener. Gaining it off University is pretty good on a lot of boards, using it as virtual coin while setting up a 7 card hand to start next turn is also good. But opening it? No, I like seeing my power cards sooner & more often too much for that.

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