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Author Topic: minion tactics note  (Read 6698 times)

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ehunt

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minion tactics note
« on: August 01, 2015, 06:35:42 am »
+28

When your deck centers around Minion as a sort of self-contained engine, typically, given a starting hand of the form (say)

Minion-Minion-Steward-Copper-Estate

you will play the first Minion for +2, then play the second for the 4 cards, hoping this process will get you to 8. In such a deck, it's better if Minions clump; Minion - Minion - Minion - Copper - Estate is almost surely a province hand; Minion - Silver -Copper - Copper -Copper is very frustrating, because it often draws another hand with exactly one Minion.

However, sometimes, the point of the deck isn't so much to make money Minion-ing as to play key action cards again and again; principally, Goons, but also Monument, possibly Knights, possibly some new cards I haven't thought about. Let's imagine a thin deck with some Minions, Goons, and Villages, but no draw other than the Minion. Then you tend to want a very different distribution of Minions in the deck In fact, assuming your deck composition is the same in both cases,

Minion-Minion-Village-Goons-Copper

can be a less desirable hand to see at the start of your turn than

Minion-Village-Goons-Copper-Copper.

Why? With hand one, if you play village, Minion for coins, Goons, and then use a Minion to draw 4 fresh cards, there's one fewer Minion for you to draw, and so the probability that you reach the second Goons in your deck is lower. But playing that second Goons is much more important than taking +2coins from the extra Minion. So clumpy Minions are bad in this deck, not good.

It gets worse if, after playing a hand like the above, you shuffle into Minion-goons-goons-copper. You could go hunting for your villages, but if you find them, will you get back to your Goons? Probably not if you've already played 3 Minions.

There is a simple, but counterintuitive, solution to this problem. Not always, but sometimes, when you draw the "clumpy-Minion" hand, you need to shuffle a perfectly good Minion back in! That is, play Village, Goons, then Minion for new cards, discarding the other Minion. The point is that later in the hand is a much better time for you to know whether you are going to need that second Minion for the draw or for the +2 coins. Committing yourself to the coins now means you can't use it for the draw later.

Again, this isn't for always; it's for thin decks where you're hopeful you'll see the Minion you discarded again. If there's little hope of that, then take the coins. This may already be obvious to experts, but it's something I've only just started doing after maybe 15000 games of Dominion, and it seems useful to share.
« Last Edit: August 01, 2015, 06:39:52 am by ehunt »
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liopoil

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #1 on: August 01, 2015, 12:47:37 pm »
+1

This is also good if you already have all the coins you need this turn, or you almost certainly will. It's okay if you don't draw it again the same turn, as long as it makes it into a shuffle which it otherwise wouldn't.
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markusin

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #2 on: August 01, 2015, 01:18:28 pm »
0

Yes, I've started to diwcard extra Minions myself in order to increase the chance of drawing key cards. I only really thought about it after seeing videos of other players do it, however. This is really useful information that should be highlighted so that it becomes common knowledge. Minions are more than just a self-synerhy engine card. It can enhance other engines too.
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ancientcampus

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #3 on: August 01, 2015, 03:41:23 pm »
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Cool, thanks!

I've done this exactly once, against a bot, where I was running the engine more for fun and less worried about provinces outracing me. How often have you had cause to do it in a serious game?

qmech

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #4 on: August 01, 2015, 08:35:02 pm »
+1

Cool, thanks!

I've done this exactly once, against a bot, where I was running the engine more for fun and less worried about provinces outracing me. How often have you had cause to do it in a serious game?

It's quite common.  There are lots of times when you don't need an extra $2 but are desperately starved for card draw.  Not "wasting" a Minion on +$2 is then an entirely natural play. 

The big problem is that Minion tends not to be particularly reliable as a draw engine, so the payoff needs to be large to make it worth a go.
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #5 on: August 01, 2015, 09:56:16 pm »
+3

I have no memories of ever doing this, though it's got to be right sometimes. I'd say it's rather rare or I've messed it up a lot. I'm not prepared to pick between those two.
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SCSN

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #6 on: August 01, 2015, 10:25:33 pm »
+2

I do it reasonably often and I'm pretty sure I've seen Mic mess it up a few times on stream, so if that's a unbiased sample he should know which of those two to pick.
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-Stef-

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #7 on: August 02, 2015, 05:27:51 am »
+3

I have no memories of ever doing this, though it's got to be right sometimes. I'd say it's rather rare or I've messed it up a lot. I'm not prepared to pick between those two.
I do it reasonably often and I'm pretty sure I've seen Mic mess it up a few times on stream, so if that's a unbiased sample he should know which of those two to pick.

'reasonably often' sounds like way too much to me. In fact I think Mics 'rather rare' is still too frequent. But yes it does happen and always playing your minions is a mistake.
But I'm afraid it will be a bit like people 'not bad triggering shuffles' when that makes no sense at all. Most of the time it's simply best to take whatever you can from this turn.
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One Armed Man

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #8 on: August 09, 2015, 10:44:53 pm »
+1

Quick note about the Minion-Goons example: The cards are attacks, as well. The order of which attack you play first may have an impact. If your opponent has to discard and draw up to 4, then discard down to 3, they will have a slightly weaker hand on average compared to a player that just discards down to 3 (from a 5 card hand). They are also getting further into their deck, so Goons-first may be better if they are still developing their engine. Minion-first is better if they are greening, though.
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ehunt

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #9 on: August 10, 2015, 07:28:06 am »
0

Quick note about the Minion-Goons example: The cards are attacks, as well. The order of which attack you play first may have an impact. If your opponent has to discard and draw up to 4, then discard down to 3, they will have a slightly weaker hand on average compared to a player that just discards down to 3 (from a 5 card hand). They are also getting further into their deck, so Goons-first may be better if they are still developing their engine. Minion-first is better if they are greening, though.

Good point!

I should add that bridges, merchant guilds, and outposts are all cards that also might make you want to "go fish."

I really don't have a sense of how common this is. More often than "never," but certainly not most games with Minion + Goons.
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jomini

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #10 on: August 12, 2015, 01:10:48 am »
+1

Quick note about the Minion-Goons example: The cards are attacks, as well. The order of which attack you play first may have an impact. If your opponent has to discard and draw up to 4, then discard down to 3, they will have a slightly weaker hand on average compared to a player that just discards down to 3 (from a 5 card hand). They are also getting further into their deck, so Goons-first may be better if they are still developing their engine. Minion-first is better if they are greening, though.

Good point!

I should add that bridges, merchant guilds, and outposts are all cards that also might make you want to "go fish."


I really don't have a sense of how common this is. More often than "never," but certainly not most games with Minion + Goons.

I'd imagine it is pretty rare in really competitive play. With contested Minions you are looking at 4-6 minions. Without other draw, that gives you 21 - 29 cards of total draw in hand. This puts a pretty harsh cap on how many stop-cards you can manage before digging for the skipped Minion doesn't do much good. If you have 4 or fewer skipped cards, as is just about always the case with fully trashed Goons/Bridge/Etc. decks, then saving a Minion actually makes it harder to play out the dross. If you have say 8 skipped cards (and you can count on your opponent to flip your starting hand), then you only go from a 50% chance of hitting your power cards to 75% (slightly less). Keeping 2 minions back might move you up to around 85%. Fishing for two Goons means you go from a 75% chance of hitting at least one/25% chance of both, to maybe 90% of hitting at least one and 75% of hitting both.

How good is this? Well for a competitive Goons game where VP chips are that insanely important, let's say you are fishing for 2 Goons of 5, you will be making 3 buys. 9 VP vs 15 VP is nothing to sneeze it, but 6 VP will routinely be overwhelmed by who gets to end the game and green out. Even losing a buy to get down to 6VP is still in the range where piling out is a likely win. What is the downshot?

Well, suppose you do wiff (it happens 25% of the time or so); now you draw up the goon cards (Goons/Goons/Minion/X/X) and your opponent dumps them into the discard. If you get more Minion clumping next turn, well that can be multiple turns lost.

With larger skipped card counts, this will only get worse. You need to burying more Minions to draw through the bigger discard, but having more skipped cards means that you need more Minions just on the first pass (e.g. 6 Minions, 4 Villages, 12 skipped cards, already needs 18 cards of draw or 4 Minions). This means that clumping in the second time through can be a whole turn lost. You can easily get something where your 2 Minions end up in the middle of 4 of 12 cards, get flipped during the other guy's turn and you draw a hand that is stuck. Losing a whole turn on an exponential growth curve is pretty harsh, particularly if Goons or whatever isn't your main source of component growth (e.g. Altar in deck).

In general this sort of strategy is a high variance one. You are trading sure odds of intermediate payout for low odds of terrible payout and possibly decent odds of modest payout. Hence doing this from a position of strength is unlikely to be generally strong. Obviously there are cases where the payouts scale differently at tilt towards going for the best odds of drawing stuff (e.g. you start the hand with Kc-Bridge in the discard, you need to fish for a Wt so you can churn copper/curses with your Goons), but I cannot imagine this is a common high level tactical play.

Now if you aren't looking at a mirror, this is likely different. 8 or 10 Minions is a lot more draw with an easier time of flipping through the deck a second time. Of course, things that are competitive against stuff like Goons/Minion are likely glass cannons where you need to make sure your points are in quick (e.g. something like Hop/draw).
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ancientcampus

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #11 on: August 12, 2015, 10:55:20 am »
+2

Great timing! This specific scenario came up in the Dominion League S9 Championship.



The commentators specifically mention this discussion. XD

Edit: the moment in particular was at 9:44. The "Link to current time" feature didn't seem to work here.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2015, 11:28:03 am by ancientcampus »
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qmech

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #12 on: August 13, 2015, 04:39:36 am »
+2

Dominion streaming has both hands with a split screen now?  It's turning into a real esport.  Good job team!
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AdamH

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #13 on: August 13, 2015, 07:42:59 am »
+8

Dominion streaming has both hands with a split screen now?  It's turning into a real esport.  Good job team!

I'm doing my best <3

Really, the next step is just to get the game more exposure. MtG has a higher barrier to entry for viewers and a large following anyways, so I know the hurdle of "it's just a bunch of cards flying around and I don't know what's going on" can be overcome, we just have to get more people watching and let it spread. I know the content is good enough for that.

And I think the next way to get more exposure is to join a gaming network, like Union For Gamers. Their requirements for membership are "Minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 views in the 30 days OR 8,000 views in the 30 days" -- I'm not close to 1000 subs (I have just under 300 but that number has been growing more rapidly these past few months. I'm still not close though.) but video views? Let's check that stat:

Well I have like 3500 video views in the past 30 days, but that's mostly because I didn't make any new content for like 2 months because I got married. Earlier this year I got about 7000 views in January and 6500 in April, so it's definitely attainable. The more time I put into making content, the more views I get; the issue is time. Every chance I get, I stream Dominion, it's one of my favorite things to do. I'm trying to make that happen more often, but I'm also trying to focus on my IRL group because, you know, Adventures.

I don't know of any other channel that has enough views/subs for this. Wandering Winder and Qvist have more subs than me but I don't know about views. It's also a travesty that the DominionStrategy YouTube channel doesn't have Mic Qsenoch's account linked :(

It appears I've rambled quite a bit here. Sorry about that. Feel free to +1 this post in appreciation for my work on the champion matches, though :P
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Awaclus

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #14 on: August 13, 2015, 08:34:04 am »
0

It appears I've rambled quite a bit here. Sorry about that.

Well, it was pretty relevant to the topic of Minion tactics after all.
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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #15 on: August 13, 2015, 09:30:52 am »
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Great timing! This specific scenario came up in the Dominion League S9 Championship.

The commentators specifically mention this discussion. XD

There was a point in the 3rd game as well that feels very similar to me and I think everybody missed it (at least the commentators did, I don't know about twitch chat): http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150809/log.50b20dc3e4b0c9ce0cf27eb3.1439142959003.txt#1-8

Sure there is a difference between minion-minion and haven-scrying pool, but it still feels similar because it's between 'take profit now' and 'hope for more profit due to higher action density on next shuffle'.

And off course it worked out beautifully or I wouldn't be mentioning it here :)
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popsofctown

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Re: minion tactics note
« Reply #16 on: August 13, 2015, 10:34:21 am »
+3

Man, I need to read more of this stuff to master these hot new Dominion: Intrigue cards.
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