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Author Topic: To Rebuild or not to rebuild…  (Read 4427 times)

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brokoli

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To Rebuild or not to rebuild…
« on: March 16, 2015, 07:29:16 am »
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Courtyard, Great Hall, Lookout, Workshop, Cutpurse, Farming Village, Tournament, Rebuild, Fairgrounds, Bank
So, thanks to goko freezing, I couldn't play the game completely. I was going for a rebuild strategy anyway, with cutpurse/silver as opening.
But looking at the board now, I am very tempted by a kind of engine : the reasons are fairgrounds and tournament. Tournament is always good, and fairgrounds here seems particularly viable with workshop and the prizes. Rebuild could play for the "engine", for something like Great Hall => Fairgrounds. I don't know if this really works but it looks at least really interesting. With followers around, you can slow down a rebuild opponent a little bit, and princess for the +buy can help to get the variety for fairgrounds.

So, any hope that the fairgrounds strat could work ?
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Re: To Rebuild or not to rebuild…
« Reply #1 on: March 16, 2015, 08:15:52 am »
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I don't believe you can defeat straight Rebuild/Tournament here. The issue is that a Rebuild player doesn't actually have a hard time connecting his Tournament - arguably, he might even get the Province earlier. Draw is weak here with Courtyard (there are things you can do with Courtyard/Farming Village, but still). There's no +buy except for Princess. I mean, Princess/Workshop/Fairgrounds is pretty cool, but hard to line up and if your opponent denies you the Princess, your whole deck falls to pieces.

So conclusion: It's an interesting deck with nice little combos, but I don't think anything beats Rebuild/Tournament. The main problem is that Tournament actually combos with Rebuild, which very few other cards do. This, and you're not going to slow down the Rebuild player a lot by not buying Provinces, which is usually why Fairgrounds strategies are viable.
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SCSN

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Re: To Rebuild or not to rebuild…
« Reply #2 on: March 16, 2015, 08:23:02 am »
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I really dislike going engine here. Tournament is much better for the Rebuild player than it is for the engine (Rebuild into Province asap in stead of getting tons of Duchies first). On average the Rebuild player should connect Province first, upon which he can just deny Princess and have it be game over.

What might happen some of the time though is Rebuild transitioning into some sort of pseudo-engine, as when you open Courtyard-Silver (which you should) and get Princess, it's conceivable that at some point you prefer a second Courtyard + FV over another Tournament. Fairgrounds is irrelevant until the Duchies are gone, though I'd take them over Duchy if my opponent is going for them.
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brokoli

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Re: To Rebuild or not to rebuild…
« Reply #3 on: March 16, 2015, 09:15:49 am »
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Oh, I didn't know about that Rebuild / Tournament synergy.

What might happen some of the time though is Rebuild transitioning into some sort of pseudo-engine, as when you open Courtyard-Silver (which you should)
Why should I ? I like cutpuse personally ! It gets you $5 easily while annoying the opponent. And Rebuild is not that good with terminal draw, though I can imagine courtyard is different from the others, with the ability to topdeck a card.
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Re: To Rebuild or not to rebuild…
« Reply #4 on: March 16, 2015, 11:30:52 am »
+2

I played 3 games on this board against Awaclus, trying my engine against his rebuild.

The first one he wins easily. I open lookout/workshop and only trash my second card on turn 8, which happens to be a courtyard.
The second game he still wins but it is really close, even though he gets a very early prize. I switched to opening double lookout, which feels much better. Note that I could have won had I not misplayed turn 13 (should buy province not fairgrounds). But he probably also made some suboptimal plays.
The third game I get both my lookouts on turn 3 and win easily.

Conclusions? no, not really any conclusions. Both strategies have a reasonable chance of winning. The engine is a lot trickier to play, so on your first try you're probably better off with rebuilds. Awaclus opted to open tournament/silver rather the courtyard/silver, and continues to buy rebuilds. Both choices seem reasonable to me although alternatives are available.
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Chris is me

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Re: To Rebuild or not to rebuild…
« Reply #5 on: March 16, 2015, 03:33:10 pm »
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You're implying "not Rebuild" is ever really an option...

Seriously though. Rebuild is going to win on most boards, and I think this is one of them. Cards like Farming Village are tailor made to play in a Rebuild deck. You have the rare opportunity to Rebuild into Province with a card that isn't Duchy (I would argue you *always* buy Fairgrounds on 6 against someone who isn't playing Rebuild). Farming Village is good in a Rebuild deck (keeps VP in the deck), Cutpurse is great for hitting $5 and stopping your opponent from doing so, Lookout can rid you of a few Coppers, and the Rebuild player is going to be able to Tournament faster.

A really good player could carefully make the engine win some of the time, but I wouldn't take the engine bait here. I'm kinda lazy I guess.
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Awaclus

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Re: To Rebuild or not to rebuild…
« Reply #6 on: March 16, 2015, 04:27:23 pm »
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You're implying "not Rebuild" is ever really an option...

Seriously though. Rebuild is going to win on most boards, and I think this is one of them. Cards like Farming Village are tailor made to play in a Rebuild deck. You have the rare opportunity to Rebuild into Province with a card that isn't Duchy (I would argue you *always* buy Fairgrounds on 6 against someone who isn't playing Rebuild). Farming Village is good in a Rebuild deck (keeps VP in the deck), Cutpurse is great for hitting $5 and stopping your opponent from doing so, Lookout can rid you of a few Coppers, and the Rebuild player is going to be able to Tournament faster.

A really good player could carefully make the engine win some of the time, but I wouldn't take the engine bait here. I'm kinda lazy I guess.

I'm not sure if Rebuild wins on most boards. It probably does in practice since everyone (including me) always goes for it, but I'm really not convinced that it's the best strategy over 50% of the time.


You should ignore Farming Village, Fairgrounds, Cutpurse and Lookout entirely if you're going for Rebuild here against a non-mirror. Why? Because Fairgrounds costs $6 and you pretty much always want a Rebuild for $6. You have three Estates at the start, so Rebuilding them into Provinces gives you 18 VP already, and then you just need to Rebuild the Provinces into the remaining Provinces as fast as you can and then you win, basically. That should be your plan, at least. If things don't go as planned, you might want to get an additional Duchy or a Fairgrounds at some point if it starts looking like you need it, but there's Tournament which gives you the Duchy for free, so you still don't necessarily have to buy it. If you need the extra green but can't collide Tournaments with Provinces, it's still easy to purchase the extra green card on the fly when you need it, and the later you can get it, the later you should get it because that way you'll have the information required to make the decision about needing an extra green, and then you can actually do stuff with the Rebuild you got earlier instead of having a dead card cluttering up your hands. You should get a Province if you're lucky enough to hit $8, though.

Farming Village and Cutpurse are $4 cards and you pretty much always want a Tournament for $4 (I didn't do this in the second game and I'm not sure if it made any actual difference, but I'm pretty sure that it was a mistake). Farming Village isn't super good because you probably won't have too many terminals in your deck (if you're lucky, you'll get both Princess and Followers, but you don't need a Village for two terminals in a deck that doesn't draw itself every turn), and you probably won't have too many green cards in your deck either (because you only have 3 or a few more), so most likely it doesn't do anything for you. Cutpurse isn't super good because your opponent doesn't even need to hit $5 if he's not going for Rebuild, which is the only $5 card on the board. Tournament, on the other hand, is super good because having lots of them makes it more likely to collide them with Provinces, and it gives you economy while it doesn't slow down your cycling. You might want to do what SCSN suggested and open Courtyard/Silver instead of Tournament/Silver, I'm not sure which one of them is better but I personally like the Tournament opening more.

Lookout is horrible for Rebuild. In Rebuild games, you never have to hit more than $5, and Copper actually helps you hit $5 so it's not that bad. You still want to get rid of it if you can do so for free, because that way you'll draw Rebuilds more often, but you don't want to get rid of it bad enough to spend an early $3 buy on a card that takes up a card slot in your hand without bringing you closer to hitting $5. And you obviously don't want to trash Estates.

On the other hand, all four cards are very much useful for the engine player.

I think that the Rebuild strategy might be a bit stronger here, but it's pretty close.
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Chris is me

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Re: To Rebuild or not to rebuild…
« Reply #7 on: March 17, 2015, 11:30:26 am »
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The point of Farming Village here isn't really to be a village, but that it lowers your Victory card density without slowing down your cycling. Every Farming Village is both a non-Victory card spot in your deck, and it also guarantees a card that's worth *something* enters your hand. On this board in particular, I guess Tournament is going to be better most of the time, but if you didn't hit $5, Farming Village is a pretty good consolation prize. It'll either get you money to hit $5 next time, another Rebuild to speed your deck up, or whatever your terminal of choice is on the board to slow your opponent down.

Perhaps it's not really that good, I could be dumb here. Rebuild isn't exactly my specialty.
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Awaclus

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Re: To Rebuild or not to rebuild…
« Reply #8 on: March 17, 2015, 11:48:49 am »
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The point of Farming Village here isn't really to be a village, but that it lowers your Victory card density without slowing down your cycling. Every Farming Village is both a non-Victory card spot in your deck, and it also guarantees a card that's worth *something* enters your hand. On this board in particular, I guess Tournament is going to be better most of the time, but if you didn't hit $5, Farming Village is a pretty good consolation prize. It'll either get you money to hit $5 next time, another Rebuild to speed your deck up, or whatever your terminal of choice is on the board to slow your opponent down.

Perhaps it's not really that good, I could be dumb here. Rebuild isn't exactly my specialty.

Well, it's better than nothing. But it's only very marginally better than nothing. If there is something available that clearly benefits you (such as Silver in many situations), then Farming Village is probably worse than that.
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Robz888

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Re: To Rebuild or not to rebuild…
« Reply #9 on: March 17, 2015, 11:51:09 am »
+2

The point of Farming Village here isn't really to be a village, but that it lowers your Victory card density without slowing down your cycling. Every Farming Village is both a non-Victory card spot in your deck, and it also guarantees a card that's worth *something* enters your hand. On this board in particular, I guess Tournament is going to be better most of the time, but if you didn't hit $5, Farming Village is a pretty good consolation prize. It'll either get you money to hit $5 next time, another Rebuild to speed your deck up, or whatever your terminal of choice is on the board to slow your opponent down.

Perhaps it's not really that good, I could be dumb here. Rebuild isn't exactly my specialty.

You're not making a lot of sense here. Tournament doesn't cost $5, it costs $4. Any time you can buy a Farming Village, you can buy a Tournament instead.

All Farming Village does here is cycle you steadily more impressively as you pick up Green, but still, the cycling is pretty bad. And you aren't taking advantage of the extra +Action. Perhaps there will come a time where Tournaments are likely to be blocked and you don't want any more of them, but you're probably taking Great Hall at that point.

So I don't really think Farming Village is doing much, if anything, for the Rebuild deck.

On a separate note, in response to Awaclus and Stef's games, are we so sure the Rebuild deck should open Silver/Tournament, instead of Silver/Cutpurse?
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Re: To Rebuild or not to rebuild…
« Reply #10 on: March 17, 2015, 12:03:13 pm »
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On a separate note, in response to Awaclus and Stef's games, are we so sure the Rebuild deck should open Silver/Tournament, instead of Silver/Cutpurse?

In a mirror, I think Silver/Cutpurse is better then Silver/Tournament. But since he knew I was going to play engine (or I already showed with lookout), and I mostly want to hit $2 early and $3 once, taking the tournament looks fine to me.
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Re: To Rebuild or not to rebuild…
« Reply #11 on: March 17, 2015, 12:09:18 pm »
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On a separate note, in response to Awaclus and Stef's games, are we so sure the Rebuild deck should open Silver/Tournament, instead of Silver/Cutpurse?

In a mirror, I think Silver/Cutpurse is better then Silver/Tournament. But since he knew I was going to play engine (or I already showed with lookout), and I mostly want to hit $2 early and $3 once, taking the tournament looks fine to me.

Right, but my thinking is the Cutpurse can really mess you up if you open Lookout/Lookout. Some possibility of dead hands, setting you back. I guess what you're after is so cheap that maybe it doesn't matter and that wouldn't happen.
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Chris is me

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Re: To Rebuild or not to rebuild…
« Reply #12 on: March 17, 2015, 01:39:59 pm »
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You're not making a lot of sense here. Tournament doesn't cost $5, it costs $4. Any time you can buy a Farming Village, you can buy a Tournament instead.


My hands got ahead of my brain here - I meant to say "in the absence of Tournament, if you didn't hit $5". some other hypothetical kingdom. There's a point where if you add more Silvers, you're just making it less likely that you'll hit Rebuild in a shuffle, but you still want to hit either Silver or Rebuild or both every hand. Farming Village effectively increases the odds of hitting both cards. I think there's an argument for it, just not a very good one.
« Last Edit: March 17, 2015, 01:41:41 pm by Chris is me »
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