Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Roadrunner7671]

If you have a 5/2 on a Baker board with Chapel, is Gold/Chapel a good opening? Why or why not?

[Marcory]

Is there an edge case that makes 'Depends on the Kingdom' the wrong answer to this question?

[Roadrunner7671]

Is there an edge case that makes 'Depends on the Kingdom' the wrong answer to this question?

I am sure there is. However, maybe someone *cough, cough* would say what type of kingdoms this is a good opening, and what kind of kingdoms this isn't a good opening.

[popsofctown]

I'd argue that the 5's would have to be so awful, awful, awful, that this isn't worth analyzing or thinking about or making a thread for.  A gold is only marginally better than a solid 5, especially early on, so you would want to save that coin token for a rainy day.

[AdamH]

For the two-card kingdom of Baker and Chapel, I'd open Gold/Chapel on a 5/2, but it's pretty close. This will probably never be the case in an actual game of Dominion, though. I'd usually open with some other fiver and Chapel and be happy that I get to keep my beautiful token.

[DG]

The basic comparison is baker/chapel vs gold/chapel. Baker/chapel will give faster trashing and then better control when building any sort of complex deck. The coin tokens should provide enough income for the next important kingdom card. Gold/chapel suits a deck with high/sustained income from treasures. It is worth remembering that chapels are not particularly good in big money situations anyway.

[Davio]

If you draw Baker and Chapel together, you can trash 4 cards and keep yet another coin.
If you draw Gold and Chapel together, you can only trash 3 cards and buy a mediocre card up to $4.

[theJester]

Isn't that opening anti-synergistic with itself?

Opening Chapel means you want to go for an engine. And in engine, you'd never buy Gold over these super important $5 and $6 cards - at least early in the game, where you want to get your engine running ASAP.

Opening Gold means you think some kind of Big Money variant is dominant on this board; in which case you probably don't want Chapel at all.

[Awaclus]

Opening Gold means you think some kind of Big Money variant is dominant on this board; in which case you probably don't want Chapel at all.

I think you do want Chapel even in big money when you get to open Gold, especially when Baker is also on the board.

[Chris is me]

Isn't that opening anti-synergistic with itself?

Opening Chapel means you want to go for an engine. And in engine, you'd never buy Gold over these super important $5 and $6 cards - at least early in the game, where you want to get your engine running ASAP.

Opening Gold means you think some kind of Big Money variant is dominant on this board; in which case you probably don't want Chapel at all.

I wouldn't say never at all - there are plenty of engines where Gold can be a source of economy, and you do need something to buy those $5 cards with. A board with a lot of engine components but not a lot of virtual Coin stands out. Say a board with Baker, Chapel, Smithy, Village, Market Square, and some other garbage cards.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Isn't that opening anti-synergistic with itself?

Opening Chapel means you want to go for an engine. And in engine, you'd never buy Gold over these super important $5 and $6 cards - at least early in the game, where you want to get your engine running ASAP.

Opening Gold means you think some kind of Big Money variant is dominant on this board; in which case you probably don't want Chapel at all.

I wouldn't say never at all - there are plenty of engines where Gold can be a source of economy, and you do need something to buy those $5 cards with. A board with a lot of engine components but not a lot of virtual Coin stands out. Say a board with Baker, Chapel, Smithy, Village, Market Square, and some other garbage cards.

Might want to take Market Square out of the example, I don't feel like I'll be buying many Golds there.

[popsofctown]

I forgot that a board that gives you a coin token has to have the decent 5$ card, Baker, itself

Yeah, I doubt you ever want the gold.

[markusin]

I forgot that a board that gives you a coin token has to have the decent 5$ card, Baker, itself

Yeah, I doubt you ever want the gold.

But on 2/5 you can still be guaranteed this opening option with Borrow.

[iguanaiguana]

I forgot that a board that gives you a coin token has to have the decent 5$ card, Baker, itself

Yeah, I doubt you ever want the gold.

But on 2/5 you can still be guaranteed this opening option with Borrow.

If you do that, you risk giving yourself a hand of chapel/gold/x/x and trashing only two cards
 You also increase the chances of T5 chapel. So that looks like a bad option on most any board.

[markusin]

I forgot that a board that gives you a coin token has to have the decent 5$ card, Baker, itself

Yeah, I doubt you ever want the gold.

But on 2/5 you can still be guaranteed this opening option with Borrow.

If you do that, you risk giving yourself a hand of chapel/gold/x/x and trashing only two cards
 You also increase the chances of T5 chapel. So that looks like a bad option on most any board.

The important thing is that we acknowledge this. With Baker, you can always go Chapel/Baker and that should almost always be better than gaining Gold.

Plus in the case of x/x/Chapel/Gold you can still buy a $3.

[nate_w]

Man. I guess I'm the only one who thinks this would be pretty strong a fair amount of the time. One of the only issues with chapel is a lack of economy early. Having a gold makes it much easier to never buy a silver. I mean even if you're going chapel with bakers, a gold in there makes you able to buy bakers without wasting coin tokens. The trashing is so strong I'm not worried about slightly worse cycling.

Would I open gold/chapel every board? Of course not. Could I see doing it some not insignificant portion of the time and being quite happy with it?  Yeah.

[GendoIkari]

If you draw Baker and Chapel together, you can trash 4 cards and keep yet another coin.
If you draw Gold and Chapel together, you can only trash 3 cards and buy a mediocre card up to $4.

Only up to right? Since you spent the token to buy the Gold.

[jomini]

In general I'm going to go with "no". Baker gives you much finer control of your early trashing and with just about any engine potential, gold just isn't that important. Say I go Chapel/Baker/Village/Cr/B-crat. Gold is useless, I can get coin cheap for no effort with that setup. Similarly things like Conspirator, Fishing Village, Minion, Bridge, and the like all make it relatively easy to boot strap up without the gold.

Which goes back to a more fundamental question - why do we want gold in the first place? Outside of edge cases, 3 silvers = 2 golds; the opportunity cost on purchase is $9 vs $12. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it can be a full turn when building up an engine (and it usually is if you have anything, even Upgrading the Chapel, that can gain a silver). Of course you get these six coin with only two slots of draw in deck ... but Chapel makes those cheap. With Chapel out, you basically get 4 stop cards for free. I'm just not that worried about the space efficiency of Gold here.

So I'd take a lot of other things first: Gainers (like Altar, Butcher, Hoard or Soothesayer), +2$ attacks (Mountebank, Minion, Goons, Rogue, Jester), cantrips (Baker - which is not an option if it is in the Bm deck, Market, Lab), or even all the $5 draws if there are sub $5 villages out.

I suspect most boards have something that works better for engine so I'm either opening something very strong, Baker, or maybe even Bm/Chapel over Chapel/Gold. 

Sure there are a few boards like/Colonies/no +buy/Venture that might make Gold compelling, but those will be very rare.

[Davio]

If you draw Baker and Chapel together, you can trash 4 cards and keep yet another coin.
If you draw Gold and Chapel together, you can only trash 3 cards and buy a mediocre card up to $4.

Only up to right? Since you spent the token to buy the Gold.

Hmm, yes, it was $3 before but I edited it.

[ehunt]

Isn't that opening anti-synergistic with itself?

Opening Chapel means you want to go for an engine. And in engine, you'd never buy Gold over these super important $5 and $6 cards - at least early in the game, where you want to get your engine running ASAP.

Opening Gold means you think some kind of Big Money variant is dominant on this board; in which case you probably don't want Chapel at all.

I think this is an error caused by dichotomous engine/not-engine thinking. There's a wide range between boards that are so big-money oriented that one doesn't even want to buy a chapel, and boards where the engine is so good that Gold is a bad card that junks up your deck.

I think everyone else is underestimating the gold buy on this board, which will help you pick up engine pieces quickly.

[AdamH]

I do believe BM+Baker benefits from Chapel more than most other BM strategies. I'd be really surprised to learn that BM+Baker isn't very much improved by Chapel.

If we randomly generated 20 boards with Baker and Chapel, I'd be really surprised to see more than 3 where I'd open Gold/Chapel on a 5/2. I totally just pulled that number out of nowhere.

[theJester]

Isn't that opening anti-synergistic with itself?

Opening Chapel means you want to go for an engine. And in engine, you'd never buy Gold over these super important $5 and $6 cards - at least early in the game, where you want to get your engine running ASAP.

Opening Gold means you think some kind of Big Money variant is dominant on this board; in which case you probably don't want Chapel at all.

I think this is an error caused by dichotomous engine/not-engine thinking. There's a wide range between boards that are so big-money oriented that one doesn't even want to buy a chapel, and boards where the engine is so good that Gold is a bad card that junks up your deck.

I think everyone else is underestimating the gold buy on this board, which will help you pick up engine pieces quickly.

Not at all. My point was not that Gold is necessarily useless in engine games (in absence of other cards, it can be a good payload), but that I'd never pick it early in the game (especially as an opener), where getting all of these engine pieces is much more important. Once I'm confident my engine is up and running, then it's time to add Golds at will.

Note: by "never" I don't mean 100% absolutely never, in any circumstances, with no edge cases. It just means that right now I can't think of any kind of board where it would be an optimal strategy. Who knows, maybe someday I'll play a kingdom which will change my mind. But as of now, I have troubles imagining board where Chapel/Gold truly is the best opener.

[GendoIkari]

Who knows, maybe someday I'll play a kingdom which will change my mind. But as of now, I have troubles imagining board where Chapel/Gold truly is the best opener.

Hmm, what if you have Platinum, Mine, and no other cards that you would even consider (all villages, etc).

[popsofctown]

Who knows, maybe someday I'll play a kingdom which will change my mind. But as of now, I have troubles imagining board where Chapel/Gold truly is the best opener.

Hmm, what if you have Platinum, Mine, and no other cards that you would even consider (all villages, etc).

Mine/Chapel is the nuts, then, right?  Chapel Gold collision is just as much of a hiccup as a Chapel Mine collision in terms of moving towards actually getting some Platinums so you wanna start Mining early, right?

[jomini]

Oh there are edge cases for Gold/Chapel. For instance, I'd be tempted to do it on basically every Develop/Kc/Baker board.

Trash everything but the gold, buy a Dev at some point, trash all my starting cards, Dev (Gold -> Kc/Baker) and be off into insane engine land. There is a really old puzzle somewhere where I took a single Gold into 8 provinces in 4 turns with Dev/Kc/Gov.  Yes, you lose some control of the trashing, but you do not have to spend a turn on getting a Gold/Kc and instead can leap in really quickly into a Kc engine.

Another shot would be Remodel/Tournament. Something like T3/T4 Remodel, T5/6 Tournament or Province, and T7/T8 start hitting prizes reliably. Again I think this is on average faster than going Baker first and getting Province from cash/coins/Tournament.