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[JThorne]

This combo appeared in a multi-player game recently. I couldn't find any discussion about it, so I thought I'd post it here to see if it's worth thinking about. It certainly won the multi-player slog in this game.

I know ambassador is already fantastic and Transmogrify is "meh." I also know that every now and then an Ambassador player will buy a curse just so that the Ambassador can hand them out, provided you have a way to line them up, which can be difficult.

However, Transmogrify is "gain a card up to 1 more than the trashed card" and is also "put that card into your hand." And it just sits there waiting for you to draw Ambassador (with at least one copper.)

Sure, it's two cards, but how great is any turn which starts "Trash a copper" followed by "Everybody else gets a curse?"

[Limetime]

Welcome to the forum! You can post an introduction here. I think this belongs in this thread. Neat interaction.

[A Drowned Kernel]

A neat trick, but probably only useful I you were already planning on returning just one card with ambassador. Getting rid of two cards is far more important in an ambassador war than switching the junk card you're giving you to a curse.

[jomini]

A neat trick, but probably only useful I you were already planning on returning just one card with ambassador. Getting rid of two cards is far more important in an ambassador war than switching the junk card you're giving you to a curse.

Not as much in multi-player. In a two person match you end up down a card against an opponent (you lose one, give one; they lose two, give one). In multiplayer you are looking at gaining 3 and losing 2. Going from "gain a copper" to "gain two coppers" is not as big of a deal - you are going to get slaughtered with coppers and estates regardless. Put another way, you have accelerating returns in 2er from each Amb play - every shuffle the Amb play increases the rate you play Amb more. In 4er, every Amb play has decreasing returns - every shuffle the Amb play increases the rate you play Amb, but less than the shuffle before.

4er Ambassador is a very weird Dominion game. The estate pile will empty, without stronger trashing (e.g. Forge, Doc, Chap, Count) you will not ever really thin your deck. Using Transmogrify would most likely be more useful to play more Amb. Hands like EEECC would work great at adding in another Amb to return estates. When your Amb collide, well if you have Transmog on tap, you can just convert one of them into a Transmog or something better (e.g. Quarry). I am not sold on the combo in 4er, but the tactical play of Ambassador is just different when you are not going to get rid of coppers and estates fast enough.

[JThorne]

Yes, multi-player Ambassador is very weird indeed. In this particular game, there were no other cursers. As expected, the estates pile did empty. There was also another cheap pile. Squire, I think? I opened Transmogrify/Ambassador, showed my trick which started a curse war and ultimately emptied the curse pile, and as everyone struggled to figure out a way to buy a Duchy or two with no trashing in the kingdom(!), I three-piled the Squire, having given away no Estates at all, and won on the strength of all those 1-pointers. It was a very strange, don't-try-this-at-home kind of win (7 points!)

I remember one other oddball Ambassador game where I got caught flat-footed. Again, multiplayer, and again, the inevitable rush to empty the Estate pile happened, at which point my wife, who had not even purchased an ambassador(!) had been sucking up the estates and maneuvering to try to exactly hit 7 with silver and a little bit of draw. Then she Inherited Crossroads. With a deck consisting of over 20 estates. I've never seen anything like the next few turns: Crossroads draw 2, Crossroads draw 5, Crossroads draw 8, buy a Province. I suppose I should have seen it coming.

I'm pretty good at two-player, but multi-player can be so unpredictable. How many people are going to go for Fools Gold? Enough to make it worthless? Will enough other players use that attack card with a marginal benefit against each other so that I can just sit back and defend and advance my position without having to buy any of them and pollute my deck? Which possible deck archetypes have the same couple of opening buys so that I can switch strategies after seeing how my opponents open? Will a pile empty fast enough to upgrade Cities? Will getting to a Province a turn as quickly as possible win a race, or will player B be so slow in getting his share that player C will have time to set up a couple of double-buys to pass me? I can see why it's so hard to simulate.

[jomini]

One of the best truisms in multi-player dominion, particularly 4er, is that is extremely worthwhile to do something everyone else isn't. BM-Moat destroys 3 other players going BM-Witch.


With Amb in 4er a lot of estate heavy (e.g. Xroads, Baron, Inheritance, mass Upgrade, Silk Roads) and copper heavy (e.g. Envoy, Stables, Advisor, Coppersmith, Apothecary, Counting house) strats become vastly more viable. Of course Gardens is good enough that you can often just pound that in 2er against Amb. Of course if you go for one of these strategies and 1 or two people follow you, then life gets really tricky. You have to compete for the key cards while the other guys actually do manage to clean out their decks.

Personally I think Transmogrify has one of the highest improvements going from 2er to 4er. Flexibility is worth a lot more and it not only allows you to be tactically flexible from turn to turn (e.g. increasing engine reliability), but it also is pretty good at letting you retool your setup as you do not have to line up the remodel card directly with the defunct cards you wish to exchange. This is very nice if you need to dump a province engine to go alt-VP slog or something.

[CG19]

You say Transmogrify is "meh", but it's an extremely versatile and useful card. Being able to take a dud hand and transform a card at will to kick off is fantastic. I can't wait to discover more uses for it.

[A Drowned Kernel]

I think people have been seriously underestimating Transmogrify in general. Even on a board where there's nothing else you can do with it, it can turn all of your starting estates into Silvers straight into your hand and then trash itself- not amazing but something I'd consider worth a $4 card a non-zero amount of the time. Once you start getting into all the crazy combos and reliability tricks you can do with and it looks pretty sweet to me.

[AdamH]

Yeah all this stuff is true, but the downside is that it's really slow. It has the duration problem that it misses shuffles, and if you get your draw going, it's hard for Transmogrify to actually find the cards you want to trash since they may never appear in the start of your hand once you're drawing a lot.

I think people are simultaneously underestimating and overestimating Transmogrify.