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[tim17]

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.

[tim17]

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.

[tim17]

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.

[JThorne]

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.

[Limetime]

Simulators are really bad at some of these combos.

[Chris is me]

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

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.

[singletee]

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

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.

[Dingan]

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.

[Chris is me]

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

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.

[tim17]

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.

[aladdinstardust]

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!

[Rabid]

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.

[mameluke]

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.