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[Dingan]

Code: [Select]

Chapel, Scrying Pool, Urchin, Ironmonger, Apprentice, Cartographer, Haggler, Hoard, Hunting Grounds, Expand
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150429/log.516d4577e4b082c74d7b716e.1430362154985.txt

Disclaimer: I think I would have lost this game had it not been for my opponent's royal misclick on their T13 (accidentally not playing their 2 Hagglers).

Obviously the key here is winning the Ironmonger split, so that you can play more terminal engine components -- Expands, Hagglers, whatever.  And Hagglers are huge so that you can gain all the engine components in the absence of +buys; and also to feed your Apprentice, Merc, Expand, etc.  So that was the plan -- thin down, get a Haggler asap, use it to buy things like Hunting Grounds and snag Ironmongers, etc. etc. etc.  But my opponent and I had 2 different approaches to such a goal, and I'm wondering which one was better.

He (or she?) opened Silver-Chapel, while I opened Urchin-Urchin.  In hindsight, the Silver-Chapel was probably better because it is faster -- get that Haggler earlier, get those Ironmongers, etc.  U-U is just a little too slow here because you don't actually get much economy until you can play the Merc and collide it with a Silver or something, so getting the first Haggler would usually take longer.  And that's exactly what happened -- I got my first Haggler on T8 while opponent got theirs on T5.  So if it weren't for the attacking aspect of Merc, I would have been very behind at that stage of the game (I was behind at mid-game, but not by much IMO).

Thoughts?

[Awaclus]

I'd open Chapel for sure. I think the more interesting question is if you should open Potion or Silver.

[Dingan]

I'd open Chapel for sure. I think the more interesting question is if you should open Potion or Silver.

Potion?  No way.  There are no +buys, so if you had x Hagglers in play and you had, say, $6-1P to spend, I'd much rather go HG + x Ironmongers than Pool + x Coppers.  Plus drawing your deck is easy here once you have enough HG and IM, and maybe also an Apprentice, so there's not really a big need for Pools.

[Chris is me]

I'd open Chapel for sure. I think the more interesting question is if you should open Potion or Silver.

Potion?  No way.  There are no +buys, so if you had x Hagglers in play and you had, say, $6-1P to spend, I'd much rather go HG + x Ironmongers than Pool + x Coppers.  Plus drawing your deck is easy here once you have enough HG and IM, and maybe also an Apprentice, so there's not really a big need for Pools.

I think the idea is that if you go Potion, by the time you actually get X Hagglers in play, you should already have plenty of Scrying Pools, and you can just Expand or Apprentice the Potion away. With Cartographer support, Scrying Pool can easily pick up huge chains quickly, and if you're clever you can even stack your Ironmonger draws so you get however many Actions you need. That said, I think you're right in that Hunting Grounds and Ironmonger provide sufficient draw, and I wouldn't necessarily go Scrying Pool here.

[Awaclus]

I'd open Chapel for sure. I think the more interesting question is if you should open Potion or Silver.

Potion?  No way.  There are no +buys, so if you had x Hagglers in play and you had, say, $6-1P to spend, I'd much rather go HG + x Ironmongers than Pool + x Coppers.  Plus drawing your deck is easy here once you have enough HG and IM, and maybe also an Apprentice, so there's not really a big need for Pools.

There's Haggler and Expand, that's practically +buys. The point of Scrying Pool is that then you don't need any Hunting Grounds at all to draw your deck, which frees up a lot of terminal space for payload, which means you don't need that many Ironmongers and your payload can still be stronger than your opponent's. Obviously you wouldn't play your Hagglers on a turn where you want to buy a Scrying Pool, but you probably won't have too many of those turns anyway since you don't have a Haggler in the early game and you don't have to buy more Pools in the late game.

The reason why you would consider Silver over Potion is that with a Potion/Chapel opening, it's a bit clumsy to get economy in the early game.

[Rabid]

I'd open Chapel for sure. I think the more interesting question is if you should open Potion or Silver.

Surely Chapel + Ironmonger is better than Chapel + Silver.
I think I like Chapel + Potion more though.

[-Stef-]

I would open urchin/potion.

Not entirely convinced it's best, but it feel's good.

[Venescas]

I would open urchin/potion.

Not entirely convinced it's best, but it feel's good.

I'm curious to know what you'd get on T3 and 4? Say, you get a Scrying Pool; do you get another Urchin, or do you start on Ironmongers or possibly Haggler and hope Scrying Pool is enough to trigger Urchin? (I'd probably get Ironmonger)

[JW]

I'm curious to know what you'd get on T3 and 4? Say, you get a Scrying Pool; do you get another Urchin, or do you start on Ironmongers or possibly Haggler and hope Scrying Pool is enough to trigger Urchin? (I'd probably get Ironmonger)

If you open Urchin-Potion, you definitely want a Scrying Pool and another Urchin on the next shuffle to maximize chance of getting Mercenary and because you'll want 2 Mercenaries. To quote an Urchin master:

Two Mercenaries are simply mandatory, and getting two should be your top priority whenever you want one at all.

One of the biggest recurring mistakes I see is people not buying a 3rd Urchin after connecting on T3 or 4. The purpose of the 3rd Urchin is not to speed up the time of your first connection, but to get to a deck containing two Mercs as quickly as possible.

Pretty much the only exception to this is if you already trashed down with e.g. Chapel and only use the Mercenary for its discard attack.

[Dingan]

I'm still not convinced on the whole Scrying Pool thing.  Main reasons being:

(1) Haggler is almost useless when you buy a SP.  Sure, you might only buy a few (4?) SPs, during which time you may not even have a Haggler yet, so this isn't that big of a deal.

(2) While you're buying SPs, your opponent can snatch more Ironmongers.

(3) Eventually, you're going to be drawing your deck.  In which case, any unplayed Ironmongers are useless.  Mainly, they cannot village you more actions.  And you definitely want as many actions here as possible (for the reasons I've already stated).  So for example, say your deck is thinned of junk.  You play a SP and that draws your deck.  You still have only 1 action, and there is no way to get more.  Where is you economy going to come from???  1 Haggler?  Merc?  A Silver?  A Gold?

(4) Once thinned of junk, you can get the benefits of (3) (fairly reliably drawing your deck every turn) through the other components besides SP, which would avoid the pitfalls mentioned.

I just don't see it.  But hey, this is probably why I'm not an expert player.  Maybe we'll have to agree to disagree.

[dondon151]

You don't have to trash literally everything in your deck; it might even be beneficial to keep 2 stop cards so that you can draw most of your deck with an SP and then play an Ironmonger for +actions.