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tim17

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Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« on: October 26, 2016, 12:45:37 pm »
+7

So the Neat and potentially useful card interactions thread is great, but one thing I often find myself asking is how good various combos are relative to each other.  For instance, we know that warehouse/treasure map and hermit/market square are both “potentially useful” combos, but is one of them significantly better than the other?  A lot of times, the answer to such a question is “depends on the board”, but I’m interested in what happens when it doesn’t.  I’d like to ask the question “If you have two combos (A and B) and neither has any board support, which wins the majority of the time when pitted against each other?”

I’m not sure if something like this has been done before.  If it has, I’d be interested to see the results.  If not, here is my attempt to do so.  Feel free to skip to the bottom where I actually start listing combos.

To formalize the game I want to play, I’m going to start with a list of 2 card (or possibly “uh, card-shaped thing”) combos and attempt to rank them.  Here are my rules:

Say we want to compare combo A and combo B.  Construct a board with only the base cards (no colonies/shelters or anything) and the components of these two combos.
-   Play a 2 player game where one player plays combo A and the other player plays combo B.
-   The combo A player can only buy base cards or components from combo A.
-   The combo B player can only buy base cards or components from combo B.
-   Both players are attempting to play optimally subject to these constraints (i.e. maximizing their probability of winning).
-   Randomize starting player.
Combo A beats combo B iff combo A wins the majority of the time.

Some qualifiers to note:
1.   Determining the winner of a matchup seems like it could be pretty difficult to do.  “Playing optimally” might be hard for more difficult combos (e.g. upgrade/rats), and determining who wins the majority of the time with confidence might also be hard for two closely matched combos.
2.   There is no guarantee that the results are transitive.  It would be nice to still have a ranking that at least closely conforms to the results, maybe with notes as to which relations are violated.
3.   Due to the constraints of the game, some notoriously good combos will not do well.  For example, king’s court/bridge is great, but it would do terribly in this game, since it has no trashing.
4.   More generally, the constraint of only getting two kingdom cards seems to be fairly restrictive.  I can think of a lot of strong deck paradigms (goons engine, horn megaturn) that wouldn’t work here.  I guess that means that dominion is actually a pretty interesting game.
5.   Along the same vein, this idea feels somewhat like a generalization of the question “What’s the best big money strategy?” since that question is more or less the one card version of my question.
6.   I’m not sure if there are things like Donate that ruin this game.  It would be less fun if the top 13 combos were Donate/X or something.  If that ends up being the case, I want to veto Donate (or whatever the offending “uh, card-shaped thing” is) for this game.  This is obviously subjective.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With all this setup, I’m going to provide a starting point to build off.  I’ll list a bunch of combos and provide a preliminary guess as to how they rank.  I make no claims as to the completeness of my list (There are obviously a lot of good combos that I’ve missed/not bothered to include), or the correctness of my ranks (I’m sure a lot of my ranks are off, some are probably way off).

1. Counting House/Travelling Fair
2. Ferry/Rebuild
3. Royal Carriage/Bridge
4. Villa/Jack of all Trades
5. Masterpiece/Feodum
6. Dungeon/Tunnel
7. Ferry/Governor
8. Hermit/Market Square
9. Scavenger/Stash
10. Ferry/Cultist
11. Lurker/Cultist
12. Courtyard/Delve
13. Witch/Delve
14. Mountebank/Delve
15. Cultist/Delve
16. Cultist/Dominate
17. Crossroads/Gear
18. Inheritance/Ironmonger
19. Bonfire/Jack of all Trades
20. Hunting Party/Tournament
21. Apprentice/Market Square
22. Dungeon/Treasure Map
23. Ferry/Mountebank
24. Wharf/Fool's Gold
25. Magpie/Pathfinding
26. Storeroom/Encampment
27. Jack of all Trades/Counterfeit
28. Gear/Treasure Trove
29. Forager/Highway
30. Ranger/Lost Arts
31. Native Village/Bridge
32. Wharf/Coin of the Realm
33. Forager/Minion
34. Fishing Village/Wharf
35. Beggar/Gardens
36. Courtyard/Quest
37. Ironworks/Gardens
38. Gear/Counterfeit
39. Inheritance/Magpie
40. Forum/Fool's Gold
41. Counterfeit/Capital
42. Beggar/Triumph
43. Urchin/Save
44. Masquerade/Lost Arts
45. Artificer/Storyteller
46. Duplicate/Duke
47. Forum/Duke
48. Hermit/Artificer
49. Embassy/Tunnel
50. Upgrade/Rats
51. Gear/Lost Arts
52. Alchemist/Dominate
53. Native Village/Apothecary
54. Treasure Trove/Gardens
55. Horse Traders/Duke
56. Forager/Peddler
57. Loan/Minion
58. Junk Dealer/Graverobber

Please comment if you want to include any combos, or if you find one of the current rankings to be off (or if you have any other questions or comments).  If you want to include a combo, it would be helpful to also figure out where it ranks.  I can keep this list updated if anyone else besides me actually cares about this at all.  Also, I'm not going to include any combo that loses to straight money, even if it is good with other support (e.g. kc/bridge).
« Last Edit: December 01, 2016, 01:24:34 pm by tim17 »
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gloures

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #1 on: October 26, 2016, 01:14:45 pm »
+2

When looking at 2 card combos, there´s a need to differentiate between combos that are strategys just by themselves (like Counting House/Travelling Fair, Hermit/Market Square, etc) and combos that just provide very good support for the cards around them, or that can at least be made a lot better by the cards surrounding it. For example, Upgrade/Rats, is a wonderful combo if there are other good 5´s around, but quite weak otherwise (do keep in mind though, that strong 5´s is actually quite common), Fishing village/Wharf is quite good by itself, but will only be amazing if there are other strong cards you can also play with all the extra actions you should have.

Sure, there are also cards that make those combos I called "strategys just by themselves" even stronger (Bank comes to mind in the Counting House/Travelling Fair one http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=15459.0 ), but the diference is that those things are quite rare, most of the times you´ll be playing them with no support whatsoever.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2016, 01:16:22 pm by gloures »
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tim17

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #2 on: October 27, 2016, 12:03:53 pm »
0

When looking at 2 card combos, there´s a need to differentiate between combos that are strategys just by themselves (like Counting House/Travelling Fair, Hermit/Market Square, etc) and combos that just provide very good support for the cards around them, or that can at least be made a lot better by the cards surrounding it. For example, Upgrade/Rats, is a wonderful combo if there are other good 5´s around, but quite weak otherwise (do keep in mind though, that strong 5´s is actually quite common), Fishing village/Wharf is quite good by itself, but will only be amazing if there are other strong cards you can also play with all the extra actions you should have.

Sure, there are also cards that make those combos I called "strategys just by themselves" even stronger (Bank comes to mind in the Counting House/Travelling Fair one http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=15459.0 ), but the diference is that those things are quite rare, most of the times you´ll be playing them with no support whatsoever.

Yes, I agree.  The game I've described focuses on the former.  I'm not trying to rank combos based on how good they are with surrounding cards; I just want to rank them based on how good they are by themselves.  For instance, Upgrade/Rats can be great with other good 5s, but this game ranks it based on how well it can 3 pile rats/upgrades/duchies.  It's not that I'm not interested in how good combos are with other support; it's just that it seemed difficult to construct an exercise like this using that metric.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #3 on: October 27, 2016, 04:06:16 pm »
0

RC / Bridge is faster than Masterpiece / Feodum. I really don't understand how it could not be.

Is Villa / Jack really all that as well?
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #4 on: October 27, 2016, 04:15:43 pm »
+1

Is Villa / Jack really all that as well?

It makes sense. You use Jack to get rid of estates, so that at the start of your turns you can play all your treasure, buy Villa, and play jack to draw 5 cards.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #5 on: October 27, 2016, 04:58:01 pm »
0

I've played both Villa/Jack and Villa/Watchtower before. Both are good if there are other engine pieces in the deck. If not, they're just okay.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #6 on: October 27, 2016, 08:13:57 pm »
+1

Rebuild + Ferry is very fast.  Possibly the fastest 2-card "combo".

Some boring fast money strategies that use only two card-shaped-things:
Courtyard + Delve
Courtyard + Quest
Jack of all Trades + Bonfire
Jack of all Trades + Counterfeit
Gear + Treasure Trove
Gear + Counterfeit
Gear + Lost Arts
Masquerade + Lost Arts
Urchin + Save
Cultist + Ferry
Cultist + Delve
Mountebank + Ferry
Mountebank + Delve
Witch + Delve
Governor + Ferry
Governor + Mission
Wharf + Coin of the Realm
Wharf + Fool's Gold

Some great openers that might be good in isolation:
Tournament + Gear
Tournament + Masquerade
Tournament + Ambassador
If you get 5/2, sadness...

And then there's Donate.  What is the best single card to pair with Donate?  I'm going to guess Governor.
Turn 1: Buy Silver
Turn 2: Buy Silver
Turn 3: Buy Governor
Turn 4: Donate down to Governor + 2 Silver, pay off 4+ debt (if you can only pay off 2-3 debt, keep an extra Copper)
Turn 5: Gain Gold, pay off debt
Turn 6: Remodel Silver to Governor, buy Governor
Turn 7: Gain Gold, Remodel Silver to Governor, draw three, Gain Gold, Buy Governor
Turn 8: Do amazing things with your 5 Governors and 3 Gold (3 Provinces and net 0 Gold is a low bar)
Turn 9: Pile out the Provinces, or close to it

Sometimes you get slowed down by a turn, and you do help your opponent a little (especially if they like Silver), but this seems very fast.

Donate + Page would also be good, I expect.  Champion + mass Warrior is an option, and will wreck some decks, but a Hero + Treasure Hunter also seems really fast and solid.

Donate + Fool's Gold seems reliable.  Donate on turn 4 and keep 3 Fool's Golds.  You can pay off all debt and buy another Fool's Gold on turn 5.  Then, you can start Provincing beginning turn 6.  Guaranteed 3 Provinces before you can have a dud turn (where you can buy another Fool's Gold or a Duchy).
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JThorne

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #7 on: October 27, 2016, 08:49:26 pm »
0

Listing Donate combos starts to get silly, almost like listing King's Court combos. I recently opened Treasure Map/Cellar/Treasure Map/Donate. Silly!


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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #8 on: October 27, 2016, 11:48:10 pm »
0

Quote
Rebuild + Ferry is very fast.  Possibly the fastest 2-card "combo"
This is False.
This "combo" takes at least 13 turns while counting house traveling fair takes 12 or so.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #9 on: October 28, 2016, 03:28:29 am »
+1

Donate + Page would also be good, I expect.  Champion + mass Warrior is an option, and will wreck some decks, but a Hero + Treasure Hunter also seems really fast and solid.

I once opened Peasant/page and bought Donate T3. Quite good! Disciple on Hero and you have all you need
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #10 on: October 28, 2016, 03:32:52 am »
0

Donate + Page would also be good, I expect.  Champion + mass Warrior is an option, and will wreck some decks, but a Hero + Treasure Hunter also seems really fast and solid.

I once opened Peasant/page and bought Donate T3. Quite good! Disciple on Hero and you have all you need

That's pretty awesome actually, they alternate being non-terminal and your fugitive can discard the silver from treasure hunter!
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aku_chi

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #11 on: October 28, 2016, 09:07:06 am »
0

Quote
Rebuild + Ferry is very fast.  Possibly the fastest 2-card "combo"
This is False.
This "combo" takes at least 13 turns while counting house traveling fair takes 12 or so.

Not so.  It takes, at a minimum, 7 turns.  See here.  Of course, a 7-turn Province pile-out require remarkable luck, but I played some solitaire games and piled the Provinces on turn 9-10 on average.  Also, Rebuild performs very well against megaturn style decks, because it can remove a bunch of VP before the opponent's megaturn kicks off.  So, I'm confident that Ferry + Rebuild is favored against Royal Carriage + Bridge and Hermit + Market Square, and I suspect that it is favored against Travelling Fair + Counting House.  Against a money strategy, you play it a little slower, grabbing Estates on a missed 3 to grab more points.  It should be possible to get 5 Provinces by turn 11-12.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2016, 11:28:53 am by aku_chi »
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #12 on: October 28, 2016, 09:58:23 am »
0

/tag
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #13 on: October 28, 2016, 12:07:14 pm »
+2

So combos. I don't want to start another lengthy debate about that word, but there's a difference between "two cards that are good" and a combo. I mean there has to be some synergy beyond what the individual cards do.

Rebuild + Ferry is very fast.
Not a combo; Ferry does what it always does - make key pieces of your deck more easily attainable. Rebuild doesn't interact with Ferry in a significant way.

Courtyard + Delve
This is just Big money with 2 Big Money enablers that don't have any special synergy.

Courtyard + Quest
Here we have synergy since Courtyard brings you to 6 cards and stores away the good ones.

Jack of all Trades + Bonfire
Not even sure this beats plain DoubleJack.

Jack of all Trades + Counterfeit
Small synergy as JoaT gains Treasures and Counterfeit trashes them for benefit.

Gear + Treasure Trove
Gear + Counterfeit
Just good cards without any synergy.

Gear + Lost Arts
Masquerade + Lost Arts
This is only a combo in the sense that Lost Arts-any terminal draw is a combo.

Urchin + Save
I guess there's always synergy between Save and cards that want to be lined up with other cards.

Cultist + Ferry
Cultist + Delve
Mountebank + Ferry
Mountebank + Delve
Witch + Delve
Governor + Ferry
All non-combos due to lack of synergy. Ferry/Governor might even be bad because it lets your opponent remodel Estates into Governors during your turn.

Governor + Mission
This qualifies as a combo I think.

Wharf + Coin of the Realm
Wharf + Fool's Gold
I don't think there's any special snergy here.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #14 on: October 28, 2016, 12:21:53 pm »
0

So I agree with most of your post so sorry for singling out a few things.

Jack of all Trades + Bonfire
Not even sure this beats plain DoubleJack.

I'm not sure you realize  how good this is if you feel DoubleJack is better. Jack / Bonfire gets you to a small deck with ~4 Silvers and a Jack extremely fast. This is one of the most potent ways to lead into many engines and it is even a passable money variant. You have to try this, it is extremely good like you wouldn't believe.

Quote
Jack of all Trades + Counterfeit
Small synergy as JoaT gains Treasures and Counterfeit trashes them for benefit.

While I wouldn't say this is a combo like Jack / Bonfire, calling this a small synergy is a big understatement. Jack thins your Estates, multiple Counterfeits thin your Copper, seems kind of obvious how this works. Similar to Jack Bonfire you can either lead into an engine or play a money variant out of this, with the benefit for the engine of dealing with the Silver load.

Quote
Gear + Lost Arts
Masquerade + Lost Arts
This is only a combo in the sense that Lost Arts-any terminal draw is a combo.

Agreed on Masq but not Gear. With Gear you basically can set aside any number of cards. It greatly magnifies the benefit of Gear's setting aside to give you gigantic hands, make all of your bad cards miss the shuffle, smooth out Provinces, etc. It kind of lubricates your Gears basically - the whole is better than the sum of the parts. Maybe not a combo if only because Gear is already pretty good terminally.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #15 on: October 28, 2016, 12:54:15 pm »
+6

It's really not Ferry's fault that it is synergistic with a crap ton of cards, in these examples faust seems to be ignoring two general synergies involving Ferry:

- Moving the price of a card you specifically want a bunch of copies into a range where you can buy it almost every turn.
  * Bonus points if the card is "monolithic" in whatever sense you please (i.e. Rebuild, Cultist, other stuff).
- Getting a card which is more powerful the sooner you get it, sooner.

These are more specific than just "a card costs $2 less". They also happen to apply to a bunch of Dominion cards, but they are still clearly "synergistic", oh hey Ferry is really good.

The faust comment about Wharf/FG not having synergy is insane to me. Wharf gives +buy which lets you buy a bunch of FG (a card which is better when you have several copies of it), which are easier to pair up because you can draw them with Wharves, which produces big $$$ which you can use effectively because Wharf gives +buy.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #16 on: October 28, 2016, 01:53:21 pm »
+1

So combos. I don't want to start another lengthy debate about that word, but there's a difference between "two cards that are good" and a combo. I mean there has to be some synergy beyond what the individual cards do.

If you reread my post, you will notice that the only time I used the word "combo", I put it in scare quotes.  Indeed, I went out of my way to describe the two-card money strategies as "boring fast money strategies that use only two card-shaped-things".  As you and other posters have noted, some of the strategies have more synergy than others.  I believe my post followed the spirit of the OP: "this idea feels somewhat like a generalization of the question “What’s the best big money strategy?” since that question is more or less the one card version of my question."  Like the OP, I agree that this exercise demonstrates that the best strategy in a given kingdom rarely involves only two card-shaped things - and Dominion is more interesting as a result.  The very strongest two-card strategies are exceptions that prove the rule.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #17 on: October 28, 2016, 01:58:22 pm »
0

So combos. I don't want to start another lengthy debate about that word, but there's a difference between "two cards that are good" and a combo. I mean there has to be some synergy beyond what the individual cards do.

Maybe I shouldn't have used the word "combos" in the title of this thread.  Oh well.

In terms of my initial list, I basically just played a bunch of them and went by feel.  For example, I'd play Travelling Fair/CH against RC/Bridge, and it felt like TF/CH would win the majority of the time.  In none of my matchups did I really get enough of a sample size to say anything conclusive.  There have been a few comments stating beliefs about strengths of some of the "combos" (quotes here because of the above quote).  If there appears to be evidence for any of these statements, I'll update the above list (I'm not questioning them, it's just not clear to me whether they're just hunches or verified facts).  I don't know much about the sims, but if they can be useful at all here, that seems like it would be valuable evidence.

I'd also like to check out ferry rebuild and see where I think it might fit in (as well as a few of the others listed if/when I get the chance).
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #18 on: October 28, 2016, 02:45:03 pm »
+1

Sim result:

Jack+Bonfire 79% - DoubleJack 16%

This should be evidence that there's plenty of synergy to call it a combo.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #19 on: October 28, 2016, 02:58:44 pm »
0

Is Travelling Fair/Counting House that strong?

I only get it to 46% win rate vs DoubleJack.

Code: [Select]
<player name="Counting House/Traveling Fair"
 author="Geronimoo"
 description="">
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="Optimized"/>
   <buy name="Travelling_Fair">
      <condition>
         <left type="countAvailableMoney"/>
         <operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="10.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countBuysLeft"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Counting_House"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="5.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Travelling_Fair">
      <condition>
         <left type="countAvailableMoney"/>
         <operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="7.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Counting_House"/>
   <buy name="Travelling_Fair"/>
   <buy name="Copper"/>
</player>
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Rabid

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #20 on: October 28, 2016, 03:03:18 pm »
0

« Last Edit: October 28, 2016, 03:05:23 pm by Rabid »
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #21 on: October 28, 2016, 03:08:51 pm »
+1

http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Combo:_Counting_House_and_Travelling_Fair

I guess bot is greening to early.
Oh, I now see it. It's playing it all wrong. It's not topdecking the Coppers. Sim needs refactoring to make that combo work.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #22 on: October 28, 2016, 03:52:32 pm »
0

There is some nuance to the Counting House + Travelling Fair combo that the wiki doesn't cover.  One common mistake is to green too late.  The cards in your deck are a resource in this strategy.  You only need to top-deck five cards if you have an empty draw pile.  For instance, with 15 coins and 3+ cards in your deck, it is usually correct to buy Travelling Fair and topdeck a Counting House and a Province.  There are some other micro-optimizations regarding when to topdeck that I mention in this topic.
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tim17

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #23 on: October 29, 2016, 08:45:34 pm »
+1

Okay, ferry rebuild seems really good to me, courtyard delve and wharf fools gold are also strong. I'm adding them to the list and moving a couple others around after looking at them a little more, though I still don't have anything that I would call "sufficient evidence" for any of my ranks. I'll take a look at jack bonfire to try to see where it might fit in, as well as a couple others at some point.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #24 on: October 31, 2016, 11:06:14 am »
0

I think some clarification is in order.

It seems to me that what you're looking for are indications of which monolithic strategies are fastest when those strategies involve a specific combination of (usually 2) cards.

The question is this: Which combos are truly monolithic? When playing Scavenger/Stash, Hermit/Market Square or Counting House/Traveling Fair, is it ever possible to add any other cards to make the deck perform faster? My guess would be no, because the interaction between those combinations of cards is extremely specific. On the other hand, Stash and Counting House cost $5...do you open Silver/Something on a 3/4 when playing those decks?

Many of the "combos" listed cannot be said to be monolithic, because many of them are just exceptionally fast BM strategies, or quick Duchy gainers like Upgrade/Rats, or Rebuild, which can be helped by sifting and gainers, or any number of other strategies that would benefit from playing additional cards.

You can't compare combos directly in a vacuum if they can be accelerated by adding other cards, so evaluating "relative strengths" becomes difficult.

That said, an interesting starting point would be to post sim results for these combos, including the non-monolithic ones, just to see the average turns to 5 or 8 provinces.

Of course, as interesting and potentially useful as this information might be, attacks really throw a wrench in the gears of some of these, not to mention that Empires also blows up everything by adding huge number of Alt+VP in the form of token generators and Landmarks, meaning that even when you recognize a kingdom with a great combo in it, the sim results are thrown out the window.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #25 on: October 31, 2016, 11:49:04 am »
0

Quote
You can't compare combos directly in a vacuum if they can be accelerated by adding other cards, so evaluating "relative strengths" becomes difficult.

You totally CAN do this, and quite easily in fact. It's just a question of how valuable it is to do so and what the resulting information means.

There's still a lot to dispute and a lot to measure analyzing these strategies in a vacuum - but at least in theory most of this can be simulated, so getting these results is a lot easier than getting other, more actually useful results.
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tim17

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #26 on: October 31, 2016, 12:22:24 pm »
+1

Quote
You can't compare combos directly in a vacuum if they can be accelerated by adding other cards, so evaluating "relative strengths" becomes difficult.

You totally CAN do this, and quite easily in fact. It's just a question of how valuable it is to do so and what the resulting information means.

There's still a lot to dispute and a lot to measure analyzing these strategies in a vacuum - but at least in theory most of this can be simulated, so getting these results is a lot easier than getting other, more actually useful results.

Yes, in fact the goal of this exercise is to attempt to do this.  There are obviously shortcomings to this idea.  Of course there could be other cards that could help or hinder these combos.  Of course there may be attacks or other cards present that could interrupt the combo.  There are other shortcomings as well.  My hope is that, if say one were to evaluate a board with fool's gold, wharf, and forum, one might be able to start by saying wharf fool's gold is better than forum fool's gold, and then from there figure out whether parts of the two strategies could be combined, or whether there are other cards/events/landmarks that might help or hinder one versus the other.

You may believe that the benefit of having such a "vacuum" ranking is marginal at best, and you're probably right.  I personally find the question interesting and tractable enough to explore it.  If you disagree, feel free to spend your time focusing on more useful questions or approaches.
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tim17

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #27 on: December 02, 2016, 09:42:01 am »
+2

I’m pretty sure very few people still have any interest in this thread, but I have for whatever reason continued to look at things, and I’ll likely stop soon, so I decided to talk about what I’ve found in case anyone else ever wants to look more at it. 

After having looked at a bunch of combos (again with no simulator data, so my results are not really substantiated), I’ve come up with the list currently in the OP.  I’ve gotten other combo suggestions, but none that seem like they would place particularly high on the list.  My rankings are based on playing combos against each other head to head IRL, attempting to get a sense of which one wins the majority of the time based more on feel than a large sample size (again, not rigorous by any means).  Since the 3-4/4-3 start happens 5/6 of the time, I didn’t look at what happens on a 5-2, so that also introduces some error (though perhaps not too much).  I wanted to do some sort of summary; initially I considered writing up something about each combo, but I don’t really like the idea of going through all of the mediocre combos that are just barely better than straight money.  Instead, I think I’ll just talk about the better combos on the list, and maybe hit a few bullet points mentioning any other surprising results.  I’ll do this the less climactic way of starting at the top and working my way down.  I’ve included some descriptions of how I was playing the combos, but I’m not sure how close to optimal my approaches were.  I’ll separate each one into a different post.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #28 on: December 02, 2016, 09:43:16 am »
0

1. Counting House/Travelling Fair

After having seen this combo in action previously, I wasn't surprised to see it at the top of the list.  On the first shuffle, I’d buy tf topdecking as many coppers as possible each turn, hoping to hit 5 before the first reshuffle.  It turns out that this only fails if you get 4 the first 3 turns, which I believe happens with probability 1/6 here.  Additionally, you want to avoid the counting house coming up in the first hand of the second shuffle.  The probability of either of these bad events happening is still below 50% I believe, and if neither of them happen, you should be able to topdeck ch’s and coppers to avoid a second reshuffle.  If this all works out, the combo reaches 4 provinces in roughly 9 turns and 8 provinces in roughly 11 turns.  It beats the other top strategies simply because more than half the time neither of the bad events happen, and assuming they don’t, it’s just too fast for anything else to compete with.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #29 on: December 02, 2016, 09:44:24 am »
0

2. Ferry/Rebuild

This one was suggested earlier in this thread and ended up obviously being quite strong.  There’s nothing too subtle about it; ferry rebuild on T1, buy a rebuild T2, then grab a few more rebuilds on the next few turns, eventually adding in more estates as necessary (you likely won’t ever hit 5 to buy a duchy).  It reaches 4 provinces in 9-10 turns, and then starts stalling on green a bit, taking somewhere around 17 turns to get all 8 provinces, though it can pile the provinces in probably around 12-13 turns if it tries to mill them.  While it can sometimes be about as fast as CH/TF (when neither of the bad things happen for CH/TF), it usually loses anyway because CH/TF  has somewhat better endgame control.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #30 on: December 02, 2016, 09:45:46 am »
0

3. Royal Carriage/Bridge

No surprise to see this here; I think most of us know roughly how this works.  Open bridge/silver and try to get a bunch of RC’s as fast as possible.  I think you do want to add in a couple more silvers and maybe another bridge or two if you fail to hit 5 or have a spare buy, but you probably don’t want the deck to get too big.  Once you have at least 6 carriages on the mat and a bridge in hand, it’s all over.  With 5 carriages you can get 3-4 provinces in a turn, but usually you try to get 6 on the mat and it ends up being all or nothing.  It appears to take around 12-13 turns to hit the megaturn, at which point it’s simply a question of whether the number of provinces/duchies you can buy will give you the lead.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #31 on: December 02, 2016, 09:46:46 am »
+1

4. Villa/Jack of all Trades

Somewhat of a surprise to see this here, though maybe it shouldn’t be, since both of these are particularly strong 4s.  Open Jack/silver, then pick up more jacks when you hit 4.  On turns when you have at least 4 dollars and a jack in hand, you’ll want to play all treasures to pick up a villa, then use your jack to draw.  Once you have a couple villas in your deck, you have the +buy to pick up several jacks at once.  This builds to a bit of a megaturn where you go through your deck, buying out most of the remaining villas, and end up with enough to buy usually 3 provinces at once, at which point the provinces slow down future turns quite a bit.  Some care needs to be taken to leave enough villas in the supply so that you can get through your deck on the megaturn, and for this reason is somewhat less viable in realistic situations when your opponent is contesting villas.  Often you’ll hit the megaturn on T8 or T9, and then pick up a 4th province on the next turn.  With all the silvers, it should still only take around 5 more turns to get the last 4 provinces, so it picks up all 8 provinces in around 15 turns.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #32 on: December 02, 2016, 09:47:22 am »
0

5. Masterpiece/Feodum

Not too much of a surprise to see this here.  It has the advantage of not competing for provinces, so any deck that struggles to get all 8 will not do well against it.  Open Silver/Silver, picking up more silvers and masterpieces whenever you hit at least 5.  Maybe pick up a feodum on a random 4 hand, but usually don’t start taking feoda until you’re around 21 silvers.  From here, the decision to buy feodum vs masterpiece can usually be made greedily.  It reaches the 27 point threshold in 11-12 turns, and the 51 point threshold in around 15 turns.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #33 on: December 02, 2016, 09:48:11 am »
+2

6. Dungeon/Tunnel

This was probably the biggest surprise of the list for me.  Of the four combinations dungeon/warehouse + tunnel/treasure map, I would have guessed that dungeon + tunnel would be the strongest, but I did not expect it to be this much stronger.  The key is that, in order to activate tunnel, you only have to play a dungeon on this turn or last turn.  If you open dungeon/tunnel and alternate between dungeons and tunnels after that, it is likely that you’ll never fail to activate a tunnel.  Once you have 3-4 of each, you’ll start hitting 8 and buying provinces.  It gets to 4 provinces in slightly more than 10 turns on average, and then struggles with the green a bit more, taking probably around 17-18 turns to get all 8.  The added points from the tunnels means that other combos often need to win the province split in order to win.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #34 on: December 02, 2016, 09:49:23 am »
0

7. Hermit/Market Square

I think this combo has already been looked at in considerable detail previously.  Open Hermit/Hermit, then pick up some odd number of hermits and at least 4-5 market squares while turning hermits into madmen.  The number of each of these will depend on how big of a megaturn you’ll need to win.  5 Madmen, 2 Hermits, and 4 Market Squares should be enough to hit 4 provinces (though remember that you probably trashed your estates).   Usually, you’ll want to get more like 5 or 6 market squares to have enough coin and buys to win on your megaturn.  If you need all 8 provinces, probably you’ll want something like 6 madmen, 3 hermits, and 7 market squares.  For the 4 province threshold, it takes about 11-12 turns, and around 14 turns for the 8 province threshold.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #35 on: December 02, 2016, 09:50:03 am »
0

8. Ferry/Governor

Nothing too interesting here.  Ferry governor T1 and then pick up governors with 3, using governors mostly to gain golds early on.  Unfortunately you can’t remodel anything into more governors.  Usually you’ll build until you have around 8 governors and then have a big turn where you draw a bunch and remodel a couple golds into provinces and buy another province.  It takes around 11 turns to get to 4 provinces.  You can get all 8 in around 14 turns, though you have to build a bit more if you want to do this.  It seems to come up a little short against Hermit/Market Square partially because H/MS has better pile control, and partially because the silvers and draw from the governors can be a decent help to H/MS.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #36 on: December 02, 2016, 09:51:09 am »
0

9. Scavenger/Stash

Again, something most of us probably knew about.  Open Scavenger/Silver, then pick up a second scavenger and stashes on subsequent turns.  Once you can play a scavenger to top deck your other scavenger, you can add more stashes, hoping your scavengers don’t collide along the way.  4 stashes is enough for full reliability with no opponent interaction, but probably it’s more optimal to stop at 2 or 3 and just start picking up provinces.  It reaches 4 provinces in 10-11 turns, and 8 provinces in 14-15 turns.  It seems to lose to Ferry/Governor partially because F/G has better control, and partially because the draw from governor can be bad if it causes scavengers to collide.
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tim17

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #37 on: December 02, 2016, 09:51:41 am »
+1

If you’ve actually read this far, I’m really surprised.  You also might be wondering how far into the list I’m going to go.  I’ll still go a decent bit further, though maybe in a little less detail.  In particular, the next 7 combos are all boring money/attack decks, so I won’t talk about them individually.  The most noteworthy thing I found was that Courtyard/Delve appears to beat Junker/Delve.  Delve is great with courtyard, and this deck just gets provinces before the junker manages to hurt it too much.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #38 on: December 02, 2016, 09:52:43 am »
+1

17. Crossroads/Gear

This is one of my favorite combos (and perhaps it should be a little lower on this list since my “wanting it to win” may have biased my intuition).  Still, its speed is undeniable.  Open Gear/Gear and pick up a Crossroads T3.  The idea is to set aside green and possibly a crossroads with the gears.  To start your turn, play a crossroads, hopefully to draw a decent amount, then play gears to set aside the green and maybe another crossroads if you have one and can afford to set it aside.  Pick up a gold when you hit 6 (it’s not too unlikely that this happens T4), and then pick up provinces whenever you hit 8, picking up more gears and crossroads/ when you miss.  If you have 3 crossroads and 4 gears, you should be able to set aside a crossroads and 3 green cards each turn, which is often enough to draw a deck of up to 21 cards.  The nice thing about this though is that after picking up green, the crossroads just start drawing more, so the deck can often just power through and keep drawing itself.  It manages 4 provinces in 10-12 turns, and all 8 in 16-17.  It doesn’t like junking, so it loses to the junker/money strategies.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #39 on: December 02, 2016, 09:53:29 am »
0

18. Inheritance/Ironmonger

This is kind of boring.  Pick up ironmongers and silvers until you hit 7, at which point the inheritance makes it fairly easy to repeatedly hit 8.  If you ever miss, you often want an estate, though perhaps a duchy if it’s late enough.  It reaches 4 provinces in 11-12 turns, and all 8 in around 16 turns.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #40 on: December 02, 2016, 09:54:01 am »
0

19. Bonfire/Jack of all Trades

Open Jack/Bonfire.  Use bonfire to trash coppers and the jack to trash estates.  On turn 6 or 7, your deck will consist of a jack and 4 silvers (maybe a gold if you missed jack but not bonfire one turn).  Here, you’ll want to just start buying provinces, probably picking up treasures when you miss since this deck doesn’t like greening much.  It should hit 4 provinces in around 10-11 turns, and then takes somewhat longer to get all 8.  It seems to lose to the above combos because they stand up better to greening and keep their estates.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #41 on: December 02, 2016, 09:55:07 am »
0

20. Hunting Party/Tournament

Open Tournament/Silver, picking up hunting party on 5+, tournament on 4, and silver on 3 over the next few turns.  Once you hit 4-5 hunting parties/tournaments, you should be able to hit 8 and get a province.  From here, hunting parties are great for activating tournaments, and you can sometimes even get 2 prizes in a turn with them.  Steed and Followers are always great, princess can also be valuable here and can sometimes be worth picking up first to get more buys for more HP’s and tournaments.  It hits 4 provinces in 11-13 turns, and all 8 in around 17 turns, though it can also pick up duchies along the way, and get a couple extra points from followers.  It gets crushed by anything that can parry a tournament before it hits 8, so it doesn’t do well against Jack/Bonfire.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #42 on: December 02, 2016, 09:56:19 am »
0

21. Apprentice/Market Square

While it might not be too surprising that this combo works, it sure is a lot of fun to play.  Open Silver/Silver, and then pick up market squares on 3 or 4 and apprentices on 5+.  Prioritize trashing estates and silvers over coppers, and activate market square’s discard as early as possible.  Once you collide an apprentice with a gold, start trashing golds with your apprentices to draw your deck, still discarding market squares.  After you have around 6 or 7 apprentices, the first 3 or 4 will draw your deck, and the remaining ones can pick up extra golds.  To illustrate, suppose your deck and discard pile are empty.  Trash a gold with an apprentice, discarding 3 market squares, and then draw the 3 golds and 3 market squares.  Each apprentice is effectively “gain 2 golds, putting them into your hand”.  It turns out this does drain the gold pile, so don’t plan on having one huge megaturn where you buy all the provinces.  It usually takes 2 turns at the end of the game to get enough green to win.  This hits 4 provinces in 12-13 turns, and all 8 in 14-15 turns.  While it doesn’t keep its estates, it often has enough late pile control to make up for it; just make sure you have enough market squares to get to the number of buys you need.

From here, I’m just going to pick out a few of the remaining combos that I like or think are interesting.
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tim17

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #43 on: December 02, 2016, 09:57:40 am »
+1

26. Storeroom/Encampment

Storeroom gives encampment exactly what it needs: +buy and a guarantee of hitting 4 to double up on encampments early, and sifting to find plunders later.  Open Storeroom/Storeroom, then usually you’ll be able to pick up 5 encampments on the next 3 turns.  On T6, use an encampment and a storeroom to get a plunder.  T7/T8 is when shuffle luck makes the biggest difference; it hurts a lot if the plunder ends up on the bottom of the shuffle.  From here, pick up any remaining encampments and more plunders, using storerooms to find encampments and plunders in your deck.  Usually even if you don’t hit a plunder with your first encampment, you can play a storeroom to probably find one, meaning it’s rare that you’ll have to return multiple encampments in a turn.  Pick up a 3rd storeroom if you have a spare 3 or 4.  Ultimately, you’ll want to be playing as many plunders as possible and start to buy provinces.  Even if you lose the province split, the plunder points will often give you the edge.  This usually reaches 27 points in 12-14 turns, and 51 points in 17-19 turns, but offers decent control and stands up reasonably well to greening.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #44 on: December 02, 2016, 09:58:20 am »
0

29. Forager/Highway

This combo is interesting in that it has a somewhat narrow path to victory.  Everything is nonterminal and there’s no sifting or draw, so it really doesn’t like green.  The goal is to get a bunch of highways in play and then play 3 foragers to pick up 4 provinces.  After that, you’ll probably have to trash foragers to foragers to avoid trashing provinces if you want more +buy.  Open Forager/Forager, then pick up another forager and a silver on T3/T4 (unless you hit 5).  Be sure to trash a copper and silver ASAP so that your foragers are worth 2.  Feel free to pick up more foragers until you hit 5.  At this point, load up on highways while trashing everything else.  Once you get at least 7 highways in play and have hopefully 3 foragers in hand, play them all to get 4 provinces.  This usually happens around T11/T12.  Since it doesn’t like green, it takes quite a bit longer to get all 8, though often you’ll be able to afford to trash a couple provinces in order to pile them more quickly.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #45 on: December 02, 2016, 09:59:22 am »
0

34. Fishing Village/Wharf

I’m mentioning this because to me it represents a standard engine that can be built with 2 cards.  It has +Actions, +Cards and +Buy, but no trashing, not much payload besides treasure and no alt vp.  This deck usually builds up to double provinces before it starts greening.  It gets 4 provinces in 13-14 turns, and all 8 in around 16 turns.  In real games, I’d imagine that there may sometimes be a question between playing one of the combos on this list (or something similar) and playing an engine.  In theory, one could try to determine whether the engine is better or worse than FV/Wharf and use that along with this list to maybe answer such a question.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #46 on: December 02, 2016, 09:59:48 am »
0

35/37. Beggar/Gardens, Ironworks/Gardens

I believe these are two of the fastest (2 card) gardens strategies in dominion.  I have the beggar one ahead on my list, but I’m not sure if that is in fact accurate or not.  Again, I point this out in attempt to give a sense of how gardens rushes/slogs stack up against other combos.
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tim17

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #47 on: December 02, 2016, 10:00:21 am »
0

40. Forum/Fool’s Gold

For whatever reason, I like this combo.  Maybe it’s just because fool’s gold makes good use of the non-handsize-decreasing sifting as well as the +buy on gain of forum.  Open FG/FG, hope you hit 5 to pick up a forum (though if you don’t initially it’s not the end of the world), and then pick up more forums and FGs as you go.  Ideally you’d like to hit 13 to go Forum/Province when you start greening, and the additional forums will help manage the provinces well.  It takes 13-14 turns to hit 4 provinces, and 18-19 to get all 8.  It is one of a number of “1 province a turn” strategies on this list.
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tim17

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #48 on: December 02, 2016, 10:00:53 am »
+1

41. Counterfeit/Capital

I mention this only because I find it interesting to have a deck that merely attempts to collide 2 stop cards in a hand of 5 cards repeatedly.  The counterfeit trashing helps a little.  The thing that makes it work is that, when you do collide counterfeit and capital, you have at least 13, sometimes 16, enough to buy 2 provinces.  It’s speed has a bit higher variance than a lot of other combos, due to the necessity to get lucky with collisions.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #49 on: December 02, 2016, 10:01:42 am »
0

49. Embassy/Tunnel

Another “benchmark” type combo.  While the tunnels do help, this isn’t too far off from embassy/bm.  The tunnels provide some extra vp so you don’t necessarily need to win the province split.  Open Silver/Silver, then buy only embassies, tunnels, and provinces for the rest of the game (except for maybe the odd duchy/estate late game).  It usually takes around 14 turns to hit 4 provinces, though it does have some variance depending on embassy collisions.  Again, the tunnels often give the vp edge when up against a more standard “4 provinces in 14 turns” deck.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #50 on: December 02, 2016, 10:03:04 am »
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50. Upgrade/Rats

I like this one because it uses rats and is a rare instance of a 3 pile strategy on this list.  It is not easy to play correctly (or maybe susceptible to bad shuffle luck; I can’t really tell sometimes).  Open Rats/Silver.  Buy upgrade on 5 coin, rats on 4 coin, silver on 3 coin, and copper on less than 3 coin.  Play rats to trash estates then coppers.  Upgrade rats into upgrades, silvers into rats, or estates into silvers.  Attempt to keep the ratio of rats to upgrades close to 2 to 1 in the early and midgame.  Be sure to buy a card every turn to give rats enough fodder for you to be able to get all 20 of them without trashing upgrades or duchies.  Once your deck is mostly upgrades and rats, play upgrades on rats to get all ten upgrades, then start upgrading rats into duchies.  Managing the piles is often difficult.  Later in the game, you’ll need to make sure you keep/play enough rats to get the pile to run out by the end while avoiding getting so many rats that you find a hand of only rats.  If things go reasonably well, it can 3 pile in around 13 turns.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #51 on: December 02, 2016, 10:03:40 am »
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55. Horse Traders/Duke

I point this out mostly because of how low it places.  It’s a fairly well known combo, but ends up being only a bit better than straight money.  Other combos in this category include:

Loan/Minion (57)
Vault/Grand Market (not listed)
Alchemist/Herbalist (not listed)

I’m not convinced these last 2 are even better than straight money, though the combos still have utility in decks with other support.  In general, many combos in dominion are valuable, but only with other cards (e.g. quarry/talisman), so they don’t make the list but can still be very noteworthy.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #52 on: December 02, 2016, 10:04:29 am »
+3

This final post concludes my summary (for now at least).  I’d love to see what any simulators have to say about any of this, but I haven’t bothered to attempt to use them myself.  If I ever look at this further, that’s probably what I’d do next.  Again, I’m sure there are combos that I’ve missed, but this is what I’ve come up with (apart from a few other options that I didn’t bother with because I don’t think they’d end up very high on the list).  I’m sure there are other cards that combo well enough with delve to place fairly high, as well as some other hunting party combos and probably a few donate combos.  I looked at a few delve combos and one hp combo to get an idea, but wasn’t particularly interested in enumerating as many as possible.

Again, the motivation of this whole exercise was to develop an intuition for how to compare different “good” strategies on a board.  While most of the time, an optimal strategy won’t consist of just 2 cards, having a sense of 2 card interactions at least provides a base from which to begin.  To illustrate, I’ll close with an anecdote.  A few weeks ago, I played a few IRL games with a friend.  One of them had a nice engine with hamlet, menagerie, and haggler.  However, the board also had bonfire and jack of all trades.  Normally I would have probably played the engine, but after having seen how good bonfire/jack is from this exercise, I went with that instead.  My opponent built the engine.  I ended up winning; I’m not 100% sure that bonfire/jack was faster than the engine with the trashing, but it was nice to have the confidence that I wasn’t grossly overestimating the power of the combo.  My hope is that others can be able to make such judgments after having looked at my list without having to go through this exercise for themselves.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #53 on: December 02, 2016, 12:40:20 pm »
+1

I really admire the amount of work you put into this list.

And as much as I hate to be that guy, I'm afraid I'm going to have to be one of the first to say that I have significant doubts if this information is particularly useful for anyone other than beginners, and even then, it may even harm their ability to get better at playing Dominion if they take it too much to heart.

To begin with, playing a few sample games, either IRL or on-line, really isn't helpful. You should have started with the simulators from day one. In fact, the simulators show that some extremely naive old-school strategies are competitive with some of the combos you list here. Double-Jack gets to four Provinces at turn 12-13, and no one plays double-Jack these days. There is already an extensive discussion of Counting House-Travelling Fair, complete with detailed statistics and simulator results demonstrating its effectiveness; that's a real combo. Many of the items on your list are not, and should not be used as a benchmark for anything.

For example, I refuse to believe that the Jack/Bonfire "combo" is a real thing. Bonfire is a very good copper thinner, and its presence in a kingdom is often going to mean that an engine is viable. The fact that you won a single game against an engine player is virtually meaningless. Jack/Bonfire as you describe it is a trashing/money strategy, and that is known to be extremely weak, for the exact reason you list: It hates greening. There's even a whole thread, started by a relatively new player quite some time ago, describing Chapel/Money as a strategy, because that player had just discovered the incredible power of deck thinning. But this player was simply thinning and buying Gold, which seems powerful until you buy green. Experienced players jumped into that thread and explained the situation, including simulator results and statistics outlining the damage greening does after thinning, which is why flooding beats thinning in the absence of mitigating actions.

I don't really mean to be critical; it's just that this thread looks like it has a lot of information, and if anything, I want to warn newer players against taking too much from it. If a player sees Forager and Highway in the kingdom, if their first thought is "combo" and thinking about this list, they're going to lose a lot of games. Highway is a spectacularly game-warping card, and yes, it likes trashing and +buy to enable the megaturn, but Forager is possibly the worst example of both. The same goes for Ferry: If a player sees Ferry with any of the combos you list and "recognizes" something from this list and acts on it, they're going to lose a lot of games. Ferry is another spectacularly game-warping card-shaped object and there's almost always something better to do with it. And look at poor Fishing Village/Wharf. 13-14 turns to 4 Provinces? Two of the most powerful engine cards in the game, and this list makes them look weaker than Jack/Bonfire? I can't accept those results.

Here's a reality check:

Most beginners play engines, and they're really bad at it. Chaining together actions is fun, and money is boring. Testing any of these combos against bad engine building isn't helpful. Optimized engine building is extremely tricky, but is the ultimate test of Dominion skill.

I've learned a lot about playing properly by reading this forum. Learning to think in terms of shuffles instead of turns. Triggering shuffles, gains missing the shuffle, the importance of cycling and whether it makes certain cards more or less powerful, careful management of economy, principles of exponential growth in engine building, building engines for overdraws depending on the presence of sifting...not to mention the various effects of discard/junking attacks and how they determine whether the game is going to end on piles or not. Then there's pile control. The list of important play principles goes on and on.

Look at the game reports thread and how people analyze a kingdom, or how some players will experiment with a kingdom and try some alternate strategies. "Combos" almost never appear; What I was saying originally about the danger of attempting to analyze combos in a vacuum still applies: With very few exceptions, it's not useful information, and can actually be detrimental to player advancement if taken too seriously.

Card interactions are unquestionably important. It's just that their role in decision making can't and shouldn't be oversimplified into a combo speed chart. If you see Tunnel with a discarder, your question should never be "how fast can those two cards get to 4 Provinces by themselves." It should be whether or not there are cards that allow you to intentionally collide the tunnel and the discarder, when you should buy Tunnel (on what shuffle) whether the cycling is good enough to buy Tunnel and use "free" gold as economy, skipping Silver in the process, whether that economy is going to be used in an engine or money strategy, and whether the engine is going to support single buys, double buys, or a mega turn. Buying a bunch of Tunnels and a bunch of one other card is almost never going to be the answer, and information about how fast Tunnel/whatever gets to 4 Provinces simply isn't useful in answering the questions you need answered.

Bottom line: This thread is named "relative strengths of 2-card combos." I do not believe that what you have posted so far actually represents the relative strengths of these combinations of cards when they're used optimally.
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Limetime

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #54 on: December 02, 2016, 12:49:50 pm »
0

Simulators are really bad at some of these combos.
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Chris is me

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #55 on: December 02, 2016, 01:37:43 pm »
+1

I was going to respond to the whole post, but This is a good start:

Quote
For example, I refuse to believe that the Jack/Bonfire "combo" is a real thing.

You're talking out your ass here. Go actually play a game with it, and tell me it isn't a combo. It's very, very real. It's strong both as a money variant and as a lead into an engine, and it deserves every bit of praise it gets in this thread.
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #56 on: December 02, 2016, 01:51:01 pm »
0

I was going to respond to the whole post, but This is a good start:

Quote
For example, I refuse to believe that the Jack/Bonfire "combo" is a real thing.

You're talking out your ass here. Go actually play a game with it, and tell me it isn't a combo. It's very, very real. It's strong both as a money variant and as a lead into an engine, and it deserves every bit of praise it gets in this thread.

It's true that Jack/Bonfire is often not the best strategy on some random board on which it appears, but that's usually because there is some strategy that starts out Jack/Bonfire and goes into a monster engine that starts triple Provincing by turn 12 or something. Sometimes there isn't an engine in which case Jack/Bonfire is a very fast money strategy. The fact that your deck is so thin means that you get to play Jack often, which helps sustain your average coins/card value. The bit of sifting from Jack helps too.

PPE: Oh you already mentioned the engine lead-in thing. It's especially good if there is TFB available to turn the Silver into cool stuff.
« Last Edit: December 02, 2016, 02:25:54 pm by singletee »
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #57 on: December 02, 2016, 01:52:41 pm »
0

I'm a little late to this discussion so apologies if this has already been stated, but...  I feel a very important aspect of a "combo" is its resiliency to attacks.  So like Hermit/MS can get mucked up by discard attacks and Copper junking etc. while Travelling Fair/CH doesn't really get screwed up by anything except maybe Minion/Pillage/etc.  When I see a neat combo (or even boring things like straight Jack, Gear, etc.), it's the first thing I ask -- are there attacks that can blow it up?  (Oh and simulators are bad at answering that sort of thing, right?)  Was this taken into account for these rankings?  I might even go so far as to say I don't really care how good combos are relative to each other when compared in vacuums -- I only care how many attacks, and what types of attacks, each are resilient to.  I feel that would be more helpful than anything in deciding if they're the right thing to do on the board or not.
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Chris is me

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #58 on: December 02, 2016, 02:27:20 pm »
0

I was going to respond to the whole post, but This is a good start:

Quote
For example, I refuse to believe that the Jack/Bonfire "combo" is a real thing.

You're talking out your ass here. Go actually play a game with it, and tell me it isn't a combo. It's very, very real. It's strong both as a money variant and as a lead into an engine, and it deserves every bit of praise it gets in this thread.

It's true that Jack/Bonfire is often not the best strategy on some random board on which it appears, but that's usually because there is some strategy that starts out Jack/Bonfire and goes into a monster engine that starts triple Provincing by turn 12 or something. Sometimes there isn't an engine in which case Jack/Bonfire is a very fast money strategy. The fact that your deck is so thin means that you get to play Jack often, which helps sustain your average coins/card value. The bit of sifting from Jack helps too.

PPE: Oh you already mentioned the engine lead-in thing. It's especially good if there is TFB available to turn the Silver into cool stuff.

Even if there's not, in the worst case you can Bonfire a few Silver if they stop being manageable. You should be able to spare $3 and a Buy at some point, particularly since you're paying for Bonfire with the Silvers you would be trashing.
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tim17

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #59 on: December 02, 2016, 09:49:13 pm »
+5

I really admire the amount of work you put into this list.

And as much as I hate to be that guy, I'm afraid I'm going to have to be one of the first to say that I have significant doubts if this information is particularly useful for anyone other than beginners, and even then, it may even harm their ability to get better at playing Dominion if they take it too much to heart.

To begin with, playing a few sample games, either IRL or on-line, really isn't helpful. You should have started with the simulators from day one. In fact, the simulators show that some extremely naive old-school strategies are competitive with some of the combos you list here. Double-Jack gets to four Provinces at turn 12-13, and no one plays double-Jack these days. There is already an extensive discussion of Counting House-Travelling Fair, complete with detailed statistics and simulator results demonstrating its effectiveness; that's a real combo. Many of the items on your list are not, and should not be used as a benchmark for anything.

For example, I refuse to believe that the Jack/Bonfire "combo" is a real thing. Bonfire is a very good copper thinner, and its presence in a kingdom is often going to mean that an engine is viable. The fact that you won a single game against an engine player is virtually meaningless. Jack/Bonfire as you describe it is a trashing/money strategy, and that is known to be extremely weak, for the exact reason you list: It hates greening. There's even a whole thread, started by a relatively new player quite some time ago, describing Chapel/Money as a strategy, because that player had just discovered the incredible power of deck thinning. But this player was simply thinning and buying Gold, which seems powerful until you buy green. Experienced players jumped into that thread and explained the situation, including simulator results and statistics outlining the damage greening does after thinning, which is why flooding beats thinning in the absence of mitigating actions.

I don't really mean to be critical; it's just that this thread looks like it has a lot of information, and if anything, I want to warn newer players against taking too much from it. If a player sees Forager and Highway in the kingdom, if their first thought is "combo" and thinking about this list, they're going to lose a lot of games. Highway is a spectacularly game-warping card, and yes, it likes trashing and +buy to enable the megaturn, but Forager is possibly the worst example of both. The same goes for Ferry: If a player sees Ferry with any of the combos you list and "recognizes" something from this list and acts on it, they're going to lose a lot of games. Ferry is another spectacularly game-warping card-shaped object and there's almost always something better to do with it. And look at poor Fishing Village/Wharf. 13-14 turns to 4 Provinces? Two of the most powerful engine cards in the game, and this list makes them look weaker than Jack/Bonfire? I can't accept those results.

Here's a reality check:

Most beginners play engines, and they're really bad at it. Chaining together actions is fun, and money is boring. Testing any of these combos against bad engine building isn't helpful. Optimized engine building is extremely tricky, but is the ultimate test of Dominion skill.

I've learned a lot about playing properly by reading this forum. Learning to think in terms of shuffles instead of turns. Triggering shuffles, gains missing the shuffle, the importance of cycling and whether it makes certain cards more or less powerful, careful management of economy, principles of exponential growth in engine building, building engines for overdraws depending on the presence of sifting...not to mention the various effects of discard/junking attacks and how they determine whether the game is going to end on piles or not. Then there's pile control. The list of important play principles goes on and on.

Look at the game reports thread and how people analyze a kingdom, or how some players will experiment with a kingdom and try some alternate strategies. "Combos" almost never appear; What I was saying originally about the danger of attempting to analyze combos in a vacuum still applies: With very few exceptions, it's not useful information, and can actually be detrimental to player advancement if taken too seriously.

Card interactions are unquestionably important. It's just that their role in decision making can't and shouldn't be oversimplified into a combo speed chart. If you see Tunnel with a discarder, your question should never be "how fast can those two cards get to 4 Provinces by themselves." It should be whether or not there are cards that allow you to intentionally collide the tunnel and the discarder, when you should buy Tunnel (on what shuffle) whether the cycling is good enough to buy Tunnel and use "free" gold as economy, skipping Silver in the process, whether that economy is going to be used in an engine or money strategy, and whether the engine is going to support single buys, double buys, or a mega turn. Buying a bunch of Tunnels and a bunch of one other card is almost never going to be the answer, and information about how fast Tunnel/whatever gets to 4 Provinces simply isn't useful in answering the questions you need answered.

Bottom line: This thread is named "relative strengths of 2-card combos." I do not believe that what you have posted so far actually represents the relative strengths of these combinations of cards when they're used optimally.

You're probably right, but I don't really care.  I enjoyed trying to work this out as an exercise regardless of whether or not it's useful.  If anything positive can be gleaned from it, that's just a bonus.  Dominion is too complex of a game to be able to accurately analyze true strengths of combos in an exercise like this.  I guess I just wanted to make a tractable exercise first, and then I tried to set the parameters of the exercise so that they could be as close as possible to something that might yield accurate information.  I still personally feel that this list does give me a baseline for thinking about strategies (at least in some cases), even if it's necessary to factor in a lot of other information in order to get to anything useful.
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aladdinstardust

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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #60 on: December 03, 2016, 01:24:49 pm »
0

I actually think this list is highly useful, but perhaps that's just because I have a categorical mind. I like to have things listed out so that I can remember them better.

I completely understand the idea of new players not understanding the subtleties of the game, and yes their reliance on combos might hurt them short term, but let's face it, new players are going to make A LOT of mistakes. Understanding these combos, and card interactions in general is a huge step toward understanding Dominion outside of big money strategies. Maybe focusing on combos and ignoring the kingdom as a whole will lose them a few games, but that's more the process of learning than anything. In the end, I think it's better to be aware of the combos than to be demolished by them without ever seeing it coming.

Anyway, something that really stood out to me when looking over this list was the inclusion of Dungeon/Tunnel. Is it really better than Storeroom/Tunnel? Storeroom can discard as many as 8 cards per play, whereas Dungeon does 2 and 2. Granted, the +action is nice, and if you line up three or more it outweighs the discard power of a single Storeroom, but at the cost of a +buy and flexibility (as to how many cards you actually want to discard). Also, Storeroom doesn't mind greening as much because you can always sift to 2 Gold, 2 whatever and still Province.

I suppose the +action on Dungeon does allow you to sift faster after just a couple of extra turns, so you generate more Gold, but I was still surprised to see that combo on the list as I've yet to try it out.

However, this definitely brings to light what JThorne was mentioning about the necessity of eventually looking at combos outside of a vacuum. If Storeroom, Dungeon, Tunnel, and Lost Arts are on the table, I feel like I'm going for Storeroom with a +action. If there are any village variants, I might go for those, too, since the +buy makes it possible to pick them up without losing too much speed (especially if its Port!).

Just some thoughts. Great post!
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #61 on: December 03, 2016, 03:17:27 pm »
+3

Anyway, something that really stood out to me when looking over this list was the inclusion of Dungeon/Tunnel. Is it really better than Storeroom/Tunnel? Storeroom can discard as many as 8 cards per play, whereas Dungeon does 2 and 2.

Tunnel doesn't need you to discard lots of cards.
It needs you to discard a card from a large selection.
So Storeroom sees 4 + 4 cards.
Dungeon sees, 6 + 6 7 cards.
« Last Edit: December 05, 2016, 12:41:04 pm by Rabid »
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Re: Relative strengths of 2 card combos
« Reply #62 on: December 05, 2016, 08:20:34 am »
+1

Anyway, something that really stood out to me when looking over this list was the inclusion of Dungeon/Tunnel. Is it really better than Storeroom/Tunnel? Storeroom can discard as many as 8 cards per play, whereas Dungeon does 2 and 2.

Tunnel doesn't need need you to discard lots of cards.
It needs you to discard a card from a large selection.
So Storeroom sees 4 + 4 cards.
Dungeon sees, 6 + 6 cards.

Dungeon actually sees *7* cards on the second turn. Nearly as good as Embassy.
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