Print

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

[teamrocketgrunt]

I don't want to take this away from wachsmuth, because it is technically his pretty amazing comeback win to report on, but I'm posting this, because I am looking for advice:

We played this game yesterday:

Code: [Select]

Squire, Scrying Pool, Ambassador, Masquerade, Menagerie, Oracle, Wishing Well, Cutpurse, Wandering Minstrel, Laboratory
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160216/log.0.1455651170783.txt


I opened double Amb and he opened Amb-Potion. He was a bit slower to thin consequently (he did get a second Amb after that) and I felt I was pulling ahead. Then, I make one fatal mistake (I'm sure I made a hell of a lot of mistakes here) which is to ignore Scrying Pool thinking "Well, there is Menagerie and Lab, so I guess I'll be fine". This returned to monumentally bite me in the ass. My Menageries do draw amazingly for a while though and I do some half-hearted stuff like buying Province-Menagerie for a couple of turns and actually a Curse to double-junk my opponent thinking that will prevent him from getting his Scrying Pool engine to work. He does start to draw his deck though, and - thanks to SP on the one hand and my Menagerie failing to do much after a couple of Provinces clumped together on my part - a lot more consistently than me. At this point, he is four Provinces down. He then realizes (what I hadn't even seen until I saw it in action, even though he said "there's a pin possible here" in the chat ) that he could pin me with enough villages, Masquerades and Cutpurses in hand. He starts threatening that pin and I realize I will be toast unless I can outrun it. So I start revealing Provinces with my Ambs in the vain hope to escape the inevitable loss by the hairs of my ass. I didn't get there.

It was a really thrilling game, though, and the combination of the huge momentum shift and some "unconventional" attempt at escaping made this a very cool comeback (even though we, or at least I, probably did not play this anywhere near optimally).


My questions:

1. I still do not regret opening double Amb. Should I?
2. On what turn should I have gotten Potion myself (provided the answer to 1. is "no")?
3. It is clear that I started to screw around with a lot of cards I should not have favored over SP. Ignoring these mistakes, should I have tried to Amb Provinces sooner once I recognized my lead (ignoring the knowlegde I could be pinned later)?
4. Should you aim for the pin here or is that situational depending on how you come out of the Amb war with your engine?

Thank you!

EDIT: Linked the prettified log.

[Lotoreo]

Hm, while I am personally very impressed by the pin (I would not have realized it, if you had not told me), I do not think that it would have worked that well. If I get it right, he would have needed 5 copper every turn, that he can pass to you via masquerade. In combination with you giving him curses via ambassador, it feels like that would slow down the scrying pools too much. Also that means he needs 5 buys for copper every turn, so he needs additional actions for squires each turn.

I guess if you had had some scrying pools, you would have finished well before he had the pin ready.

So, my personal answers:
1) no
2) as soon as you get 4 coins after the double amb
3) don't think this would be necessary at all, if you go for scrying pool.
4) I would rather aim for a quick ending, kindda as you did, than at the pin.

[-Stef-]

If you're asking for advice about a game, please post the salvager log, it's much better readable than the raw text.
You can get it by looking up your own game in the logsearch or just cut/paste a bit around with the urls.

1. I still do not regret opening double Amb. Should I?

Yes. I'd open Masq/Potion. Buying a wandering minstell and a scrying pool on turns 3/4 is quite strong.
Depending on what opponent does you can add more trashing later. The price you're paying (not buying strong cards for a while) is not worth the investment here.

2. On what turn should I have gotten Potion myself (provided the answer to 1. is "no")?

This problematic question is exactly why I'd take masq right away.

3. It is clear that I started to screw around with a lot of cards I should not have favored over SP. Ignoring these mistakes, should I have tried to Amb Provinces sooner once I recognized my lead (ignoring the knowlegde I could be pinned later)?

Hmm... it's not so much any of these, but it's more that you need to make a plan around turn 16. This plan could be
a) buy a curse, flood your opponent.
b) buy provinces, end the game.
c) set up the pin.

I think your lead is sufficient that if you chose any of these plans, they'd lead you to victory. But what you're doing - the combination of a) and b) - that is very inconsistent. If you want to flood, flood full force. The goal is to cripple your opponent, you don't need Provinces for that. If you want to pile out the provinces, do it with everything you've got. I can see donating one or two of them to your opponent actually work out here.

4. Should you aim for the pin here or is that situational depending on how you come out of the Amb war with your engine?

It's situational / not that relevant what you aim for, but it doesn't really depend on how you come out of the amb war either. You either come out on top - and then you can choose whatever you like - or you lose it, and then you're toast.

[DG]

There is also the option to trash squires with a masquerade to gain the scrying pools and that will create new possibilities to open with.

[-Stef-]

There is also the option to trash squires with a masquerade to gain the scrying pools and that will create new possibilities to open with.

My theory about that in general is...

Familiar -> skip the potion, use squire to gain one or two.
Scrying Pool -> buy the potion, grab all the pools you can get, maybe use the squire trick to win the split.

... so while I certainly agree it's a relevant interaction here, it won't be part of my opening buys.

[AdamH]

Adam's two cents:

There's a lot going on here, the Squire->SP trick is certainly a thing but Ambassador is a thing. There are like six or seven things on this board.

Potion is pretty far down my list of what I'd want to open with. I prefer double Ambassador but Masquerade is really good too, Amb/Masq seems OK. Without the Squire trick I'd probably open either Amb/Potion or Masq/Potion.

Like, there are other ways to draw cards here, Masquerade does the job, but there's also Wandering Minstrel and Wishing Well. The option is here to constantly be on top of your deck without that much worry about diverting super-hard for Potion and then SP. Yes I want them, but I really like delaying Potion here. The biggest appeal for me is that I have a much smaller chance of my Amb or Masq missing the shuffle and being super-behind.

This seems pretty close to me, and delaying Potion for SP is something I've been tinkering with for a bit now with a good amount of success. The signs are here for that, mainly that you are preferring that to thinning, which seems pretty important this game; but it really helps that there's a super-low-opportunity-cost way to get Pools. I feel pretty good about opening with two thinning cards here.

I should also mention that I didn't notice the Squire trick until DG pointed it out. My mind is only programmed to watch out for Watchtower/Squire for that trick; I think I need to adjust my wires on this one.

[dedicateddan]

1. I still do not regret opening double Amb. Should I?
2. On what turn should I have gotten Potion myself (provided the answer to 1. is "no")?

Big engines are good here to play and defend against Ambassador/Cutpurse/Masquerade/Oracle. Big engines like scrying pool, so an early potion is in order. Stef's Potion/Masquerade line provides the best economy. Ambassador/Potion and Ambassador/Ambassador are also playable, as they keep you thin.

3. It is clear that I started to screw around with a lot of cards I should not have favored over SP. Ignoring these mistakes, should I have tried to Amb Provinces sooner once I recognized my lead (ignoring the knowledge I could be pinned later)?

You really want a big engine and a way to threaten to end the game. Buying one province into massive engine into threatening a pile-out is much scarier than stalling after a quick four provinces.

4. Should you aim for the pin here or is that situational depending on how you come out of the Amb war with your engine?

It really depends. In an even game, this board looks like province races and pileouts are the most likely endings, particularly with Ambassador->Province to shorten the game. The threat of the pin does mean you want to build more and green later.

[theright555J]

Buying one province into massive engine into threatening a pile-out is much scarier than stalling after a quick four provinces.

Quoted since this statement perfectly and succinctly summarizes how my viewpoint has changed having played Dominion since base-only in 2008.

[wachsmuth]

My start was terrible and I was way behind (not just in provinces but also in deck quality), I rationalized that my best shot was to at least threaten the pin. That absolutely was not the plan from the get go, but you know, changing priorities during the course of the game.