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[LibraryAdventurer]

Kingdom: Vineyard, Masquerade, Trade Route, Armory, Feodum, Remake, Festival, Haggler, Wharf, Goons
https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20151225/log.0.1451030946542.txt
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?
(I can't seem to get the log-prettifier link to go this log, so I posted separate links.)

Code: [Select]

Vineyard, Masquerade, Trade Route, Armory, Feodum, Remake, Festival, Haggler, Wharf, GoonsI went for Wharf+Festival with a Goons or two. He went for Goons +Feodums.
I keep underestimating Feodums.

[Titandrake]

Remake-Feodum is interesting and I actually haven't played that before.

That being said, more than 2 Goons + Vineyard should devastate Provinces or Feodum.

This is actually a really hard board to play. All I know is that you want lots of Festivals soon, but I'm not sure what the best way to do that is, and Masquerade is a potential threat. I'd do Remake/Masq or Remake/Silver, pick up Armory early to gain Remakes, then Remake Remake into $5 costs you want. Later on you can use that Armory to gain the 1 Potion you want. Not at all sure that's right.

[ehunt]

I second Titandrake: this is a very difficult board, with many competing good strategies:

First, we have:
1) two of the strongest trashers in the game are available
2) the strongest draw in the game is available
and
3) Goons is available

Alternatively, we have

4) the high-power Vineyard, with
5) a great enabler for it (Armory).


Mitigating (1)-(3), but only slightly, is that everything's terminal (the draw, the trashing, the goons-ing), and the only village is the good but expensive Festival. Hitting 5 early will be crucial, so I think a Masquerade/Silver open is appropriate; hopefully that will be the only Silver you have to buy, preferring Festival on 5, a second Masquerade on <5, and Festival/Wharf/Goons as appropriate.

On most boards, (4)-(5) suggest a rush-oriented Vineyard strategy, but, even ignoring the presence of Goons, the expensive price of Festival suggests building up a bit first before going for Vineyards will be the right way to go. With Goons, one has to worry that the Vineyard rush will just get straight-up outscored (Goons being one of the few strategies that provides more sheer points than Vineyards). If the opponent gets all ten Festivals, we expect the opponent to get multiple turns playing 4-5 Goons, and even one such turn is gg, especially with the extra buys from Festivals and Wharves lurking.

Finally, a slight, but important, mitigation to (1)-(3) is that there's nothing cheap to buy, which slightly hurts the Goons engine (because it can't pick up tons of extra points till the very last couple turns).

All of this suggests a hybrid strategy, but one predominantly centered around the (1)-(3) deck: build up a Goons engine as described above. If the opponent doesn't compete for parts; you'll win, don't worry. If the opponent does, pick up a Potion and maybe an Armory; finding the right time will be the key to winning or losing.

Feodum seems like a waste of time here; it simply can't compete with multi-goons for points. (Province is also a waste of time until the last turn or two.)

[Chris is me]

I don't see this as a difficult board to decide what to play at all. You have excellent trashing, draw, a Village, and Goons. Armory allows you to pivot to buying a few Vineyard a turn once you've built up as payload in addition to all your Goons points you'll be racking up. A predominantly Vineyard strategy needs some buildup to get to those 5 cost enablers in Festival, etc. so you might as well build just a little more and play a Goons deck. Now, exactly how and when you pivot to Vineyard takes some finesse / skill, but the basic map of the game strategy is abundantly clear here. If you can play multiple Goons per turn with a strong engine with lots of trashing, there's no reason to go to Provinces other than as an odd tiebreaker. Just keep building.

[luser]

As almost always in goons engine games you don't want vineyard. These are decided by who is player that could three pile and win by ton of points and vineyards hurts you.

This game would almost certainly end on wharf, festival and estate piles. With wharf its easy to line up 3 festivals, 4 goons and two additional coins and pile estates for 40 vp. You couldn't get that lead by adding vineyard in mix.

[Chris is me]

As almost always in goons engine games you don't want vineyard. These are decided by who is player that could three pile and win by ton of points and vineyards hurts you.

This game would almost certainly end on wharf, festival and estate piles. With wharf its easy to line up 3 festivals, 4 goons and two additional coins and pile estates for 40 vp. You couldn't get that lead by adding vineyard in mix.

What? You can easily get to nearly 10 VP per Vineyard on this board. If the engine player is only scoring 40 VP in the game, it's very possible for a Vineyards + engine player to overtake that.

[Titandrake]

I don't see this as a difficult board to decide what to play at all. You have excellent trashing, draw, a Village, and Goons. Armory allows you to pivot to buying a few Vineyard a turn once you've built up as payload in addition to all your Goons points you'll be racking up. A predominantly Vineyard strategy needs some buildup to get to those 5 cost enablers in Festival, etc. so you might as well build just a little more and play a Goons deck. Now, exactly how and when you pivot to Vineyard takes some finesse / skill, but the basic map of the game strategy is abundantly clear here. If you can play multiple Goons per turn with a strong engine with lots of trashing, there's no reason to go to Provinces other than as an odd tiebreaker. Just keep building.

The overarching plan seems clear, but it's hard to figure out what the best way to get there is. Do you do Remake or Masq as your opening trasher? Or maybe both? How do you plan to get all these $5/$6 costs you want? You want to prioritize Festival because whoever wins that split is in a much better position, but then you need to balance picking up Festivals with picking up the draw needed to do something with them. Meanwhile, Armory can be nice, but it's clunky when you're building because the key cards are all $5+. On the other hand, if you have enough Remakes, you can turn gained $4s into $5s, but is that actually worth it? And so on and so forth.

What you want to do isn't that bad. Executing it correctly is.

Re: Vineyard: With Festival, Wharf, and Goons as your key cards, you're going to have excess buys, so it's worth detouring for Vineyard.

[Co0kieL0rd]

You both made questionable decisions here. Most importantly, you both ignored Vineyards. The engine potential here is enormous with Wharf, Goons and Festival and you can gain so many cards that Vineyard turns into a monster, an abomination of points. The same is true for Goons which you both should have gotten a lot more of (I'd expect the pile to be empty by turn 16-18).
Failboat did not even buy a single Wharf and that's just ridiculous. He committed to Feodums and was only able to win because you were misled to do the same when you should just have gone for Provinces and Vineyards. The game should have ended way before turn 28 - on piles over which you had much more control! Instead you wasted your time with Feodums and put 15(!) Silvers into your deck when one would have been enough, as ehunt pointed out. Feodum is such a sloggish card (without strong enablers anyway) and you junking your deck with Silvers gave Failboat enough time to bloat his own Feodums and snatch the last Province.
I repeat, you could have ended the game faster and with a surmounting lead by building the engine correctly (no Silver junk), playing lots of Goons, getting all 8 Vineyards (which should be worth at least 8 points each) and forcing a win via a 3-pile-ending.

[LibraryAdventurer]

This is something I love about Dominion. One board can have several different viable strategies, and any one of them can win depending on what your opponent does and how well you play the strategy you picked. I'll have to write down this kingdom to play again another time.
I didn't think Vineyards would be worthwhile when all the actions are terminal except festival and there's no $2 actions.

[luser]

As almost always in goons engine games you don't want vineyard. These are decided by who is player that could three pile and win by ton of points and vineyards hurts you.

This game would almost certainly end on wharf, festival and estate piles. With wharf its easy to line up 3 festivals, 4 goons and two additional coins and pile estates for 40 vp. You couldn't get that lead by adding vineyard in mix.

What? You can easily get to nearly 10 VP per Vineyard on this board. If the engine player is only scoring 40 VP in the game, it's very possible for a Vineyards + engine player to overtake that.

No, you cant if you face semicompetent oponent. Piles would definitely run out by turn 15 both in mirror and nonmirror. So I don't see how you could by that time have engine that can three pile while getitng 4 vineyards while you start with two card hands from goons+masquearade.

After trying few games with bots I found that best opening is double masquerade as its extra draw allows you buy festivals more aggresively while trashing and attacking with goons.

[Dingan]

I would love to try this Kingdom, as I have no idea what the best route to victory is.  That being said...

Feodum feels completely wrong to me.  I can't quantify why, but it just seems like Goons/3-piling, and/or Vineyards, are waaaay better.

Being thin (Masq) and having pile control seems key.

Are people ignoring how Goons-Masq is a thing?  Yes, Goons is less powerful when your opponent has some Wharfs on deck, but I think Goons-Masq is still relevant here.

I love Festivals, and would probably rush them and Wharves as first priority, while thinning with Masq.

I might pick up an Armory later (definitely not open with it, as you want $5's early, not $4's), solely to gain Potions.  I think having multiple Potions, 3 or 4, could certainly be good, assuming you have the draw and buys to play them in the same turn you gain them.  I could see the game ending on Festival/Wharf/Vineyards, with the last turn of the game being a Goons "megaturn".  Or maybe you ignore Vineyards altogether and the game ends on Festival/Wharf/Estate, as luser mentioned.

If you don't go Vineyards, I wonder how relevant Haggler is here.  The only real reason I'd use it is for Goons + Festival or Wharf.  Obviously, you don't want it if you're buying Silvers or Remakes, so not sure.  But if you're buying Goons, I guess Haggler > Armory.

I'd probably open Masq/Silver, start thinning, and buy $5's asap.

But like I said, I have no idea.  I'll actually be playing tonight, about 10 hours from now, if anyone wants to play this Kingdom.  Any takers??

[JW]

Basically I think luser is right, this should 3-pile on Festival/Wharf/Estates using Goons for points, and Goons is enough points that Vineyards doesn't matter. Vineyard is a costly distraction (and so is Armory for Potions) and Feodum is completely noncompetitive.