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Author Topic: Combo: Golem/Scheme  (Read 5253 times)

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J.Co.

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Combo: Golem/Scheme
« on: January 30, 2012, 02:08:44 am »
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Hey all, I couldn't find anything on the forums or strategy site, so I'm not sure if this combo has been analyzed (surely I'm not the first to mention it), but I'd love to see if someone could crunch numbers in the simulators.

The idea with the Golem/Scheme combo is to play your Golem card every turn. If you buy one scheme (and only one scheme), you'd eventually be guaranteed to be able to put your Golem back on top of the deck every turn afterwards since, after playing Golem the first time, Scheme always would come up.

To keep the engine working (and make it worthwhile), you could afford one more action card to be drawn after playing Golem. The one I stumbled on was Counting House. So you play Golem, have your Counting House and Scheme pop up (since they're the only two action cards in your deck). After cycling and discarding a lot of your deck to get to the two action cards, you ideally would have a lot of coppers in your discard, making Counting House worth a lot.

I would imagine the first priority would be to buy the Golem as quickly as possible, so maybe the best opening would just be Potion/Silver (I'm guessing a 5/2 opening wouldn't be good, but I'm not sure). If you don't get $4 and the potion together after your first shuffle, pick up the one scheme and more silvers until you can afford Golem. To me, the biggest problem with this combo is getting it started, but once you get that Golem, you're good to go. Getting to the combo obviously is badly susceptible to attacks of just about any kind. And really, adding other action cards, such as defense cards or your own attack cards, would render this combo useless.

But if you can get it going, there's not much to stop it. Greening isn't a problem, since you'll just skip all your VP cards. Hopefully, between your coin in hand and the coppers in your discard, you could purchase a Province every turn.

There's a couple of variances I can think of. One is drawing your Counting House AND Scheme early after playing Golem, making Counting House not as valuable (the same problem you'd have with Counting House anyway). At least this way, when that happens, you can return Golem to the top of the deck and try, try again. Drawing Counting House with Golem would be bad, too. Playing the Golem would find your Scheme, but put the rest of your deck in your discard pile while hopelessly searching for a second action card (which is already in your hand). The Scheme would then trigger a shuffle with the +1 card, making Counting House worthless.

So, any ideas/statistics on if the combo is worth it? Is it too slow? Are there better cards that can replace Counting House? Any other thoughts?
« Last Edit: January 30, 2012, 02:26:32 am by J.Co. »
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Qvist

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Re: Combo: Golem/Scheme
« Reply #1 on: January 30, 2012, 03:06:57 am »
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Yes this is a great combo, also with any strong attack being the third card.
It was discussed here.

You can also add a second Golem, just add one more Scheme and another third card etc. for a more powerful combo.
I would first get the attack though and then the Scheme and Golem.

Tonks77

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Re: Combo: Golem/Scheme
« Reply #2 on: January 30, 2012, 04:26:33 am »
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While Golem+Scheme+X is a great combo, I do not think that X = Counting House is the best call. Even if you do not draw Golem and Counting House together, you never know how many coppers you have in your discard when you play the counting house.

In that case just Golem + 1 Counting House + 0 other actions (except more golems) is much better, because it guarantees to put all the copper into the discard before playing the counting house.
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Zaphod

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Re: Combo: Golem/Scheme
« Reply #3 on: January 31, 2012, 12:30:48 am »
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I want to play a Golem/Scheme/King's Court game one of these days...consistently King's Courting the Golem would be fun.
« Last Edit: January 31, 2012, 12:41:09 am by Zaphod »
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J.Co.

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Re: Combo: Golem/Scheme
« Reply #4 on: January 31, 2012, 01:10:15 am »
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While Golem+Scheme+X is a great combo, I do not think that X = Counting House is the best call. Even if you do not draw Golem and Counting House together, you never know how many coppers you have in your discard when you play the counting house.

In that case just Golem + 1 Counting House + 0 other actions (except more golems) is much better, because it guarantees to put all the copper into the discard before playing the counting house.

You could do that, but getting more Golems could still take a while, whereas a simple $3-cost scheme would guarantee playing a Golem every turn a lot sooner. I guess that's something else I'd be interested to see the stats on.


Yes this is a great combo, also with any strong attack being the third card.
It was discussed here.

You can also add a second Golem, just add one more Scheme and another third card etc. for a more powerful combo.
I would first get the attack though and then the Scheme and Golem.


(Thanks. I must have skipped over that post)

I figured attack cards would be popular with this, but I was just thinking of how well this combo with Counting House handles those. In particular, I wouldn't mind if someone played Mountebank over and over if it meant bloating my deck with coppers and curses. The curses don't hurt your deck nearly as much once you have the Golem, except for your score at the end. But even with that, it'll slow the game down to the point that getting a Province every turn would overcome that. At least, that's what it would seem....

I guess I'm just really curious to see numbers if anyone can run them. I played this combo a couple of times and won easily, so I might not be seeing the downside as much. I'm just wondering how much of it is based on luck.
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ehunt

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Re: Combo: Golem/Scheme
« Reply #5 on: February 02, 2012, 10:57:25 am »
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The potion opening is probably a mistake as you'll have to get lucky to afford a golem on the first shuffle and even if you do, it won't do much good the first time you play it.
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