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schadd

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empires: donate
« on: July 21, 2016, 06:48:07 pm »
+6

if i get ousted because of the Capitalizing Issue then at least i'll have taken the cool one with me



only these two coins? that other guy gave me 8 silvers, and i couldn't say no!


the power card. the one card in dominion that i can think of the fewest reasons to skip. gardens, i guess. but i mean, having donate there makes all the other things more appealing. i would go as far as to say this is the single most effective thing to purchase given the amount of money it costs. it also has plenty of finesse to using it properly; generally you want to trash anything that won't be in your 5-card hand for next turn but maybe i just lied? especially if you pick it up after having bought more than 6 cards. but even opening with it: do you get it on turn 1 or 2? or some mysterious and completely different turn than those ones? is there some insane combo that you must open with such that you would want to take it on turn 3? how do you approach it if you want to trash curses that you get later? there are so many different kinds of times that you want to trash, and unlike the other trashers, you can't just make the decision to buy it once and then keep using it whenever it comes up. you gotta get another one every time, and it's a big decision. 8 debt!


  -is this the best
uh card-shaped thing
that dominion has ever had? is the game finally broken, did we break it
  -even if it's not broken or the best card or if both of those classifications are dumb, does this card make for significantly different games than those of most other cards? or does it just feel like a particularly good chapel, or a particularly particularly good steward?
  -if you've bought it, have you bought it a different number of times than 1 time? did you get it on a different turn than turn 2?
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aku_chi

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Re: empires: donate
« Reply #1 on: July 21, 2016, 07:22:39 pm »
0

Yes, Donate is the best card-shaped thing that Dominion has ever had.  Its presence completely changes how a kingdom is played.

I've only played with it once, but I bought Donate on turn 7 (for the first time) and it worked out well (I beat an opponent who bought Donate on turn 3).  I remember getting an early Soothsayer for Gold gaining.  IIRC, I trashed down to Soothsayer, Baker, Engineer, Herald, two Chariot Races, and two Golds.  I paid off my debts on turn 8 and bought a Province a turn starting on turn 9.  I also gained an extra Gold or two (via Soothsayer), and some extra Heralds and Chariot Races (via Engineer) for VP and to keep things smooth.

A turn 2 Donate does seem pretty good on a lot of boards.  Turns 2 and 3 are "spent" trashing 3 Estates and 2-5 Copper.  That's comparable to best-luck Chapel, plus you don't end up with a Chapel in your deck!  Whether or not you buy Donate a second time should depend on (a) the payload available, (b) the draw available, (c) how much you've been junked, and (d) the other trashing options available.

I found it interesting to consider the baseline Donate + kingdom money performance.
Turn 1: Buy Silver
Turn 2: Buy Donate, trash all but Silver + 4 Copper.
Turn 3: Pay off debt.
Turn 4: Buy Gold.
Turn 5: Buy Gold.
Starting on turn 6, you should be able to alternate on Province + Gold buys to reach 5 Provinces by turn 14.

It could be better to instead go for a turn 3 or 4 Donate and end up with (usually) 1 fewer Gold, 2 more Silvers, and 1-2 fewer Copper, but the Province timing doesn't change much.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2016, 07:54:21 pm by aku_chi »
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trivialknot

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Re: empires: donate
« Reply #2 on: July 21, 2016, 07:43:31 pm »
0

I've only played with Donate once so far, and I think I bought it on turn 5.  I wanted a gold+Mandarin in there first.  It's not just that I wanted to pay off the debt, it's also that I wanted to trash as much copper as possible and have payoff leftover.

In that particular game, there was basically one viable strategy: Mint golds and buy Provinces.  Mint was the only way to trigger Labyrinth, and engine stuff was missing.  This left me wondering if Donate often leads to more scripted games.
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Seprix

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Re: empires: donate
« Reply #3 on: July 21, 2016, 07:59:20 pm »
0

This card is potentially OP with a +buy card. Just pick up engine pieces and then buy Donate with the spare +buy.
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Chris is me

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Re: empires: donate
« Reply #4 on: July 21, 2016, 09:00:53 pm »
+1

I'm not sure how early you want to buy this. You want to minimize lost turns by this - if you're going to lose more than one turn after you buy it I THINK you're buying it too early? But fuck I don't know this card changes lots of things.

I need to play with this a lot more than one time to get a feel for it.
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drsteelhammer

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Re: empires: donate
« Reply #5 on: July 21, 2016, 09:39:55 pm »
+3

I'm not sure how early you want to buy this. You want to minimize lost turns by this - if you're going to lose more than one turn after you buy it I THINK you're buying it too early? But fuck I don't know this card changes lots of things.

I need to play with this a lot more than one time to get a feel for it.

You shouldn't "lose" any turns after donate. Your deck is supposed to do something after being thinned, whether that is attacking, (vp-)gaining, etc... buying stuff is the only thing you can't do and I wouldn't mind not doing that.

In my first game with Donate I bought it on T5, having Encampment, Legionary, Gold and Chariot Race in my deck which I thought was pretty good.
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Chris is me

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Re: empires: donate
« Reply #6 on: July 21, 2016, 09:58:53 pm »
0

I'm not sure how early you want to buy this. You want to minimize lost turns by this - if you're going to lose more than one turn after you buy it I THINK you're buying it too early? But fuck I don't know this card changes lots of things.

I need to play with this a lot more than one time to get a feel for it.

You shouldn't "lose" any turns after donate. Your deck is supposed to do something after being thinned, whether that is attacking, (vp-)gaining, etc... buying stuff is the only thing you can't do and I wouldn't mind not doing that.

In my first game with Donate I bought it on T5, having Encampment, Legionary, Gold and Chariot Race in my deck which I thought was pretty good.

This was more of a response to the suggestions of T2 donate than anything else. T5 donate, obviously you'll have enough to do even without  one turn of buying stuff, and you won't lose more than one turn of buying anything with 5 good cards.
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jomini

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Re: empires: donate
« Reply #7 on: July 22, 2016, 08:20:23 am »
+3

T2 is good for the right setup. It is particularly good on a lot of 5/2 boards where the alternative is waiting until at least T4 to donate and you get a strong opener.


It would be extremely powerful on a 5/2 Soothesayer setup:

T1: Soothesayer
T2: Buy donate, pay 2 debt
T3: give curse, gain gold
T4: give curse, gain gold, pay 3 debt
T5: give curse, gain gold, pay off debt, spend $3
T6: give curse, gain gold, buy province.

If you keep a copper, then you can buy a $5 on T5 for added fun.


Another power opening would be a 5/2 Ball -> Tmap -> Donate
T2: Buy donate, pay off 1 debt
T3: Gain 4 gold
T4: Pay off debt, buy a $5
Keeping around a copper will let you buy a $7 on T4; Expand seems like it could be crazily good here.

Feodum would be another power T2 opener:
T1: Feodum
T2: Donate, pay 3 Debt
T3: Pay off debt
T4: Buy a $6

A case could be made to grab a silver on T2, but it would depend on the board how much that would be worth. Say you do that and hit a $4 on T3, that means that on T4 you end with 4S/a $4. That will often be worse than 3S and a $6/5. It would be exceedingly rare not to go Feodum/Donate as your opener on a 5/2.

There are a lot of gainers that would tempt me to mess around with a T2 Donate: Hop (with Nec - end T4 with copper, nec, silver, Hop), and $4; Iw (end T4 with Copper/Iw/Silver/Silver & no debt), Treasure trove (end T4 with Trove, 2 Gold, 2 Copper), and Alms.


Crazy things, like a T1 Inheritance might also come into play. Something like Inherit/Baron or Inherit/Poorhouse could work very well - pay off the debt on T4, grab a village and start hitting 8 on T5.


I could even see very rarely going for a T1 Donation. Say something like Donate (pay off $5 debt), have deck of $5 & pay off debt (maybe a $2 like Courtyard), buy Windfall, buy Donate (trash all but 1-2 copper), buy Windfall. Having a deck of 6 Gold & a Copper or two on T6 is basically 4 provinces by T10-T11. Very few things will be in that league.


While these are obviously extremely good candidates for an a really early Donate, my guess is that you want Donate earlier if you have an option to gain a lot of buying power quickly on the debt repayment turns. I also think repayment over two turns is not so terrible if your alternative is to wait through a $2 turn or buy something, like Silver, that you do not really want.

Mostly I suspect that T1 will be exceedingly rare, T2 will be for power openings & maybe strong gainer openings. T3 - T5 will be the sweet spot, very rarely would I expect to donate after T5.
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werothegreat

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Re: empires: donate
« Reply #8 on: July 22, 2016, 10:07:35 am »
+5

In my first game with Donate I bought it on T5, having Encampment, Legionary, Gold and Chariot Race in my deck which I thought was pretty good.

I can attest to this and it was bullshit and I was basically guaranteed to lose as soon as he did that
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Re: empires: donate
« Reply #9 on: July 22, 2016, 11:35:56 am »
0

In my first game with Donate I bought it on T5, having Encampment, Legionary, Gold and Chariot Race in my deck which I thought was pretty good.

I can attest to this and it was bullshit and I was basically guaranteed to lose as soon as he did that

Someone donate some sympathy for this man. He has clearly bought a ticket on the Salt Train.
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JThorne

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Re: empires: donate
« Reply #10 on: July 22, 2016, 12:55:08 pm »
0

Quote
Quote
In my first game with Donate I bought it on T5, having Encampment, Legionary, Gold and Chariot Race in my deck which I thought was pretty good.

I can attest to this and it was bullshit and I was basically guaranteed to lose as soon as he did that

I love that this deck is a self-defending build in a mirror match ("Legionary? Ok, I'll keep Encampment and Gold.")

What exactly were you planning that suddenly became irrelevant?
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werothegreat

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Re: empires: donate
« Reply #11 on: July 22, 2016, 03:51:44 pm »
+1

Quote
Quote
In my first game with Donate I bought it on T5, having Encampment, Legionary, Gold and Chariot Race in my deck which I thought was pretty good.

I can attest to this and it was bullshit and I was basically guaranteed to lose as soon as he did that

I love that this deck is a self-defending build in a mirror match ("Legionary? Ok, I'll keep Encampment and Gold.")

What exactly were you planning that suddenly became irrelevant?

Since I didn't have the good Fortune to open 5/2, I picked up a couple Overlords.  The debt, plus his constant early Legionarying, meant that I had never had enough to outright buy a Gold, so I had to grab a Treasure Trove.  I think there were also Bridge Trolls involved.
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ehunt

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Re: empires: donate
« Reply #12 on: July 23, 2016, 07:16:28 am »
0

I played a donate/familiar game with faust.
The structure was cool; there were functionally three different mini-games:
1) set-up a little, donate at some point, get familiar.
2) give out curses
3) donate again, build-up, win.

Faust won; essentially, he had about a 1.5-turn advantage over me after step 1 by making a better decision about when to donate (I did it a turn too early, he built a bit first), which then built up in step two to something like a 2 turn advantage, so that he was comfortably ahead in phase 3, but not so far ahead that he was guaranteed to win even if he got really bad luck.

The structure of the game reminded me of this magic card:
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?printed=true&name=shahrazad

I suspect most donate/cursing games are going to go like this.
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ced

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Re: empires: donate
« Reply #13 on: July 24, 2016, 09:44:43 am »
+1

I played a donate/familiar game with faust.

I actually played Donate/Familiar too, with Rabid. The payload was Farmers' Market - I used Charm to gain them (alongside Villages or just with the +buy), while he used Engineer. He Donated a turn earlier, but I decided to wait a little longer and pick a Gold up first. This proved to be game-winning, as I gained control over the FMs and he wasn't able to buy the second Donate without falling too far behind.
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Re: empires: donate
« Reply #14 on: July 05, 2017, 09:50:12 am »
+1

I found it interesting to consider the baseline Donate + kingdom money performance.
Turn 1: Buy Silver
Turn 2: Buy Donate, trash all but Silver + 4 Copper.
Turn 3: Pay off debt.
Turn 4: Buy Gold.
Turn 5: Buy Gold.
Starting on turn 6, you should be able to alternate on Province + Gold buys to reach 5 Provinces by turn 14.

I have a couple of variations to suggest to this strategy for playing Donate-BM.

The first works if you have $4 or $3 on your first turn:

Turn 1: Buy Silver
Turn 2: Buy Donate, trash all but Silver + 2 Copper.
Turn 3: Pay off debt.
Turn 4: Buy Silver.
Turn 5: Buy Gold.

Now your deck is GSSCC, versus GGSCCCC with your suggestion. Either way you just buy Golds and Victory cards for the rest of the game (perhaps silver if you miss $5 or have exactly $5 and don't want a Duchy at that stage). My version has a slightly higher money density after Turn 5 (1.80 versus 1.71) but your version will hold up slightly better as you start to green. Not sure which is better.

My other variation is to play as you suggest until Turn 5, but then to forgo a Gold buy on (say) Turn 6 and buy another Donate instead, trashing 4 Coppers and keeping just 2 Golds and 1 Silver. You'll have at most 2 debt left after doing this so you're guaranteed another Gold buy on Turn 7. If you want, you can then buy Provinces on all of the next three turns, to leave yourself with a deck of 3 Provinces, 3 Golds and 1 Silver after Turn 10. Absent attacks, this is 100% guaranteed as soon as you are dealt at least $3 on Turn 1, and you're about 40% to reach 5 Provinces in 12 turns. Passing up a Gold to trash 4 Coppers obviously improves your money density overall, and having just a single Silver plus Golds and Victory cards means you never find yourself with the dreaded $7, so the density you have is slightly better focused towards Provinces and Golds (and eventually Duchies). This seems clearly better than either of the options that doesn't buy a second Donate.
« Last Edit: July 05, 2017, 12:46:00 pm by arflutter »
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