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Author Topic: Set up the longest sequence of known top-decked cards  (Read 3036 times)

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jonaskoelker

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Set up the longest sequence of known top-decked cards
« on: November 19, 2017, 11:27:22 am »
+1

Pick a kingdom of your choice. Make a sequence of plays, after which you know 0 or more of the cards on top of your deck. What's the longest sequence of known cards you can set up?

Example solution:

The kingdom is Baker, Vault, Native Village, Ratcatcher, Duchess.
Open Vault/Ratcatcher, and buy Native Village and Duchess later.
Trash all Estates and mat the Ratcatcher.
Put all but 5 cards on your NV mat.
On the megaturn, unmat all your cards with NV; discard 7xCopper to Vault; play Duchess, shuffle, look at a Copper and put it back.

Now your deck has seven known cards on top, all of which are Copper.
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Re: Set up the longest sequence of known top-decked cards
« Reply #1 on: November 19, 2017, 11:50:18 am »
+3

Simple better solution: 10 Stashes
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   Quote from: sudgy on June 31, 2011, 11:47:46 pm

Awaclus

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Re: Set up the longest sequence of known top-decked cards
« Reply #2 on: November 19, 2017, 12:01:27 pm »
+2

There's Baker, Expedition, Travelling Fair and Ghost Ship in the kingdom.
Buy a bunch of Bakers and play them again and again over multiple turns to acquire 23094857239048571908475098327409582734098572309485720934875019827435928374095827349187240958273049857230948572903847509187345 tokens, then spend them all and buy Travelling Fairs and Expeditions until you have drawn your entire deck which contains the maximum number of cards a deck can possibly have. Then your opponent plays Ghost Ship.
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jonaskoelker

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Re: Set up the longest sequence of known top-decked cards
« Reply #3 on: November 19, 2017, 12:23:43 pm »
+1

There's Baker, Expedition, Travelling Fair and Ghost Ship in the kingdom. [Use the first three to draw "everything", then put it back to your opponent's Ghost Ship.]
With Baker, Lurker, Hireling, Vault, Herald, Bonfire and Travelling Fair you can do at least 2 better:

Use Lurker/Hireling/Bonfire to set up an arbitrarily large number of "at the start of your turn, draw a card" effects, enough to draw your deck.
Use Baker to gain 4 6 coin tokens.
On the megaturn: discard everything to Vault, buy Travelling Fair, then topdeck everything with Herald's overpay effect; use Travelling Fair to topdeck Herald.

My solution strands a Vault in play where your solution strands 3 cards in hand; 3 - 1 = 2.

Open questions:
  • If you get all the cards, how many is that?
  • Can you do better than 2-piling? That is, can you play cards to gain cards in a way that's a net win?

EDIT: additions in italics, deletions in strikethrough. Thanks, navical.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2017, 12:49:56 pm by jonaskoelker »
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navical

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Re: Set up the longest sequence of known top-decked cards
« Reply #4 on: November 19, 2017, 12:26:53 pm »
+1

On the megaturn: discard everything to Vault, then topdeck everything with Herald's overpay effect.

My solution strands a Vault in play where your solution strands 3 cards in hand; 3 - 1 = 2.
You need Travelling Fair as well, to topdeck the Herald - it can't topdeck itself with its overpay.
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Awaclus

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Re: Set up the longest sequence of known top-decked cards
« Reply #5 on: November 19, 2017, 12:27:41 pm »
0

There's Baker, Expedition, Travelling Fair and Ghost Ship in the kingdom. [Use the first three to draw "everything", then put it back to your opponent's Ghost Ship.]
With Baker, Lurker, Hireling, Vault, Herald, Bonfire, you can do at least 2 better:

Use Lurker/Hireling/Bonfire to set up an arbitrarily large number of "at the start of your turn, draw a card" effects, enough to draw your deck.
Use Baker to gain 4 coin tokens.
On the megaturn: discard everything to Vault, then topdeck everything with Herald's overpay effect.

My solution strands a Vault in play where your solution strands 3 cards in hand; 3 - 1 = 2.

Open questions:
  • If you get all the cards, how many is that?
  • Can you do better than 2-piling? That is, can you play cards to gain cards in a way that's a net win?

The problem is that you have Baker, Lurker, Hireling, Vault and Herald taking up space from cards like Black Market, Rats, Hermit, etc. that increase the number of cards that you can have in your deck, whereas I only need 2 kingdom cards.

EDIT: Because of Black Market, this is not actually true because I can just have Ghost Ship in the Black Market deck, and you can have everything other than Baker in there too (but if you do, you also need Black Market in play to buy Herald, so it's only 1 card better).
« Last Edit: November 19, 2017, 12:31:56 pm by Awaclus »
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jonaskoelker

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Re: Set up the longest sequence of known top-decked cards
« Reply #6 on: November 19, 2017, 01:07:34 pm »
0

The problem is that you have Baker, Lurker, Hireling, Vault and Herald taking up space from cards like Black Market, Rats, Hermit, etc. that increase the number of cards that you can have in your deck.

As you point out, they can go in the Black Market deck. Let's count cards—I think the kingdom piles which add the most cards are:
  • Black Market: allthecards.jpg
  • Exorcist adds 31 Spirits
  • Page and Peasant: 30 each (10+5+5+5+5)
  • Any one Potion-cost card adds 16 Potions
  • Spoils-gainers: 25 (10 from itself plus 15 Spoils)
  • Leprechaun: 22 (it lets you gain 12 Wishes without trashing Magic Lamp.)
  • Rats: 20
  • Vampire: 20 (it adds 10 Bats.)
  • Young Witch: 18-22 (it adds a Bane pile, which can be a normal 10-card pile, or an 8- or 12-card victory pile.)
  • Ruins-givers: ? — 10 from itself, plus 10 Ruins per opponent. (Marauder does both Ruins and Spoils.)
  • Curses: 10 per opponent.
  • Tournament: 15 (10 from itself plus 5 Prizes)
  • Each Heirloom card adds one Heirloom to the game per player, and reorganizes which cards start where.
  • Necromancer adds 3 Zombies.
  • Victory piles have 12 cards in 3+ player games.
Did I miss anything? Of these, only Page, Peasant, Rats and Victory piles (in 3+ player games) need to be in the kingdom to add cards; the rest can be in the Black Market deck and add the same number of cards (minus 9 for being in the BM deck, but then some other card is in the kingdom).

Together, Cutpurse, Masquerade and Thief move all your opponents' cards into your deck. (Against bad shuffle luck, you may need to Crown a Thief to get past 3xEstate and to a treasure.)
« Last Edit: November 19, 2017, 01:10:22 pm by jonaskoelker »
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Awaclus

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Re: Set up the longest sequence of known top-decked cards
« Reply #7 on: November 19, 2017, 01:25:20 pm »
0

Did I miss anything? Of these, only Page, Peasant, Rats and Victory piles (in 3+ player games) need to be in the kingdom to add cards; the rest can be in the Black Market deck and add the same number of cards (minus 9 for being in the BM deck, but then some other card is in the kingdom).

Well, if you use the Dominion Online rules, then any cards that require setup can't be in the Black Market deck.
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jonaskoelker

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Re: Set up the longest sequence of known top-decked cards
« Reply #8 on: November 19, 2017, 02:05:02 pm »
0

When it comes to gaining, I had this vague idea:

Play Overlord as Crown, crowning Overlord as Crown, about 10 times.
The last Overlord is played as a Ferry'd Artisan (or Altar trashing Fortress), gaining Mandarin, topdecking all your Overlords.
The remaining Overlords that were played as Crown the first time are played as Bridge the second time, reducing the cost of Colony into Artisan/Altar range.

Before this, put the +1 card token from Teacher on Overlord, such that you draw the Overlords back up.

Do this again, playing Overlord as a gainer (Ironworks seems nice) instead of Bridge the second time.

Fiddle like a maniac with getting the details right. Finish this off with playing Vault, then a Royal Seal, buying first Herald, topdecking everything, then Mandarin, topdecking and getting topdecked by the Royal Seal(s).

But then it occured to me: I can just stockpile a bunch of coin tokens, buy Travelling Fair a bunch of times, buy all the cards left in the supply, with Herald being the last card, and topdeck all the things.

All that's left is discarding all the cards.

Playing a Vault will accomplish this, but that strands a Vault in play.

Another way of doing it is this: play Overlord-as-Crown, crowning Overlord-as-Crown, crowning Overlord-as-Crown, crowning Overlord first as a self-trasher, then a Mandarin-gainer, which topdecks the remaining three Overlords. The second play of Overlords 3 and 2 can be as something other than Crown—in particular, it can be Lurker to gain Overlord from the trash, followed by Vault. Note that Lurker is a Mandarin-gainer if there is a Mandarin in the trash, and Lurker (on an earlier turn) can put one there.

If you add Overlords you can add plays of actions costing up to $5, for example a Black Market or Storyteller which lets you play one or more potions, just in case you need to buy a potion-cost card in your buy phase.

The kingdom would then be Overlord, Crown, Mandarin, Herald, Lurker, Page, Peasant, Rats, Vault, Black Market, <a free slot>. Events/Landmarks: Bonfire, Travelling Fair.

Note that this works without using coin tokens: on the megaturn buy phase, you can have $(12*5+30*3+39*2+52*1+9*5) if you 2-pile Platinum and Gold and Crown 9xPlatinum, which is $324 total; Mandarin will put those back in an order you choose (and, hence, know). Since there's at most 22 piles to drain (4 Victory, 5 Treasure, Curse, Ruins, 11 Kingdom) and it takes at most $13 per pile ($2 for Travelling Fair, the most expensive pile is Colony at $11), then we have enough: 13*$22 = $286 < $324. All the gained cards are topdecked with Travelling Fair, and all the others are top-decked by overpaying for Herald; each card to be topdecked this way has provided us with $1 through Vault.

EDIT: in order to gain a Bat, you probably need to have Vampire in the kingdom, so that takes up the free slot. You also need to play the Vampire, which casts a Hex upon both their houses your opponents. If you steal all their cards first, the worst this can do is give them a Copper or a Curse. Each of these will happen at most once per Hex-shuffle, and we only need to play Vampire 10 times, so this won't 3-pile Platinum, Gold and Curse (or, less likely, Copper). In any case, if we 2-pile Copper and Curse first, then steal their decks, we lose $7 worth of payload, but had a slack of at least $38. So the solution still works.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2017, 02:20:04 pm by jonaskoelker »
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jonaskoelker

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Re: Set up the longest sequence of known top-decked cards
« Reply #9 on: November 19, 2017, 02:14:40 pm »
0

Well, if you use the Dominion Online rules, then any cards that require setup can't be in the Black Market deck.
Let's find four optimal solutions, then: paper vs. online rules, and 2 vs. 3+ players.
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Re: Set up the longest sequence of known top-decked cards
« Reply #10 on: November 19, 2017, 02:59:21 pm »
+2

As with Dominion itself, big money is the benchmark any strategy has to beat.

Big money: Bonfire your starting Estates, buy all the Copper. Now you trivially know every card in your deck. (-8
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jonaskoelker

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Re: Set up the longest sequence of known top-decked cards
« Reply #11 on: November 19, 2017, 03:04:36 pm »
0

[kingdom:] Overlord, Crown, Mandarin, Herald, Lurker, Page, Peasant, Rats, Vault, Black Market, Vampire. Events/Landmarks: Bonfire, Travelling Fair.
For Overlord to be played as a self-trasher, there needs to be a self-trasher in the kingdom. Luckily, everything works if I put Herald in the Black Market deck and drain said deck (but for Herald) before the megaturn, and add e.g. Pillage. Watchtower needs to be in the Black Market deck.

Then, on the megaturn, I play Overlord1 as Crown, Overlord2 as Crown, Overlord3 as Crown, Overlord4 as Crown, Overlord5 as Crown, Overlord6 as Pillage, Overlord6 as Lurker (gaining Mandarin), Overlord5 as Lurker (gaining Overlord6), Overlord4 as Vault (discarding all Crowns and non-treasures except Watchtower), Overlord3 as Black Market, playing all your treasures, buying Herald and topdecking all the cards in your discard pile, revealing Watchtower to topdeck Herald, Overlord2 as Mandarin, topdecking Watchtower. Now you have no cards in hand.

Go to your buy phase, buy Travelling Fair and all the cards (topdecking them), finishing off with a Mandarin, topdecking all the treasures and that Mandarin.

Edits: Herald goes in the Black Market deck, Watchtower gets added there. Also, Young Witch had to be in the Black Market deck to have an 11-card Kingdom in the first place, but plenty of cards can be banes (Lurker, Peasant, Page, but not Black Market itself).
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jonaskoelker

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Re: Set up the longest sequence of known top-decked cards
« Reply #12 on: November 19, 2017, 03:20:02 pm »
0

Big money: Bonfire your starting Estates, buy all the Copper. Now you trivially know every card in your deck. (-8
As far as I'm aware, the only way to put Estates in play is to buy Inheritance. How are you going to do that with only Copper and Estates in your deck?

If you don't want to copy my Ratcatcher solution, what you could do is open Chapel, then Chapel any Estate it connects with, or Save it until it does. (If you have Chapel but no Estate, you have $4 which is enough to afford Save.) Once you have Chapel'd 3xEstate, play Chapel without trashing, then Bonfire it. Then buy 46 Coppers, for a 53-card deck. Eventually this hits a clean shuffle, at which point you know the 48 Coppers that aren't in your hand. If you want to get fancy, add Mandarin to the board and buy it after a clean shuffle. Then all your 53 Coppers are in your deck, your Mandarin is in your discard pile, and that's all your cards.
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