thanks!!!
in the midst of this break, i've been thinking that i should probably say more about some of these recent league matches. the issue is that when i can take my time, i actually *do* have reasons for all the wacky things i try. clearly they're bad reasons, but i need to work out why.
i'm mainly thinking of that monstrosity with apothecary & sea hag, the game that took 50 minutes on my stream or something ridiculous like that. that was the one that got mic & SCSN real chatty. some of the stuff they mentioned, like triggering bad shuffles and playing cantrips before apothecary, is just an issue of habit that i need to beat out of myself (see also: bad discards in mercenary games!). there are other things i am curious about, though...
again, log for this one:
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150730/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438311967794.txtgetting 1 lookout & 2 sea hags - this was strongly criticized. my thinking here was that winning the curse split would be extremely important with lookout as the only trasher, but i guess apothecary/cartographer make lookout trashing so much easier that this is wrong? and the reason i only got 1 lookout is that with apothecary involved, i figured i really didn't want to trash any more copper than i already had. this is likely a major fundamental issue with how i approach apothecary, hence why i'm bringing this up.
general quality of my deck - i currently tend to see apothecary as a "steady 1 province per turn" card. it's just hard for me to picture any bigger engine being reliable with a card that WANTS so many junk cards in your deck. so i got just enough money to get a province, with a bunch of apothecaries & cartographers to ensure i draw the whole deck. i clearly should've gotten an herbalist at some point - think i was scared with curses being involved and needing $7P for a good turn with it. but that seems more important in the midgame for building the engine, no? really don't get how double-province turns would be a thing in this game. what am i missing here? is this one of those games where 2nd potion would be worth it?
also, one last thought on this game: i probably would've been better off going explorer-BM if i were just trying to win that one game. but i figured apothecary had to be better if played well, and look at all the questions i got from trying that!
finally,
a game i played recently vs. furuderika got me thinking. as you can see this is an awfully generic board, and i decided to try a madman-horn of plenty megaturn. do the lack of draw and the crappy treasure trashing kill the chances of that working? i actually managed to get a bunch of horns in play one turn, but with 1 unique short of provinces or so. i'm thinking if i don't blow my wad early, that could actually be the winner even with the problems this board offers...?
madman is another card i have no idea how to manage in general, as you can tell from that log. timing is a mystery to me, as well as deciding when to pass up buying good cards for madmen.