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Payload first

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JThorne:
In continuing to improve my engine-building skills, I have a question to pose to the community: How often do you buy payload first, or at least, as early as you can afford it?

I ask because players appreciate the value of strong trashing, drawing deck, and using gainers to acquire engine pieces. Where I've often found myself, however, is focusing on these elements too narrowly and waiting too long to get payload. We all know about the Village Idiot, but there are times when I feel like a Smithy idiot. Drawing a bunch of junk feels like spinning my wheels, and I will sometimes struggle to get an engine up to speed. Drawing three cards and having $4 to spend is a wake-up call.

At some point, I started asking myself things like "How am I going to hit $5 on the second shuffle" and the answer is often "buy at least one payload card before turning towards actions/draw cards."

In particular, terminal payload cards that give any of coin/buy/attack/gain. Militia and Swindler can be good openers, for example. Weak cards like Messenger less so, but if I know I want at least one Messenger for the +buy, I'm starting to feel like buying it early and using it to spike $5 often makes more sense than prioritizing draw and buying it later only when I'm drawing deck. A card like Bridge, even if your plan is to load up on extra actions and play as many as you can get, is a card you want just one of early in the building process for the economy, then turn to actions/draw, then turn back to all the Bridges you can eat.

Payload attacks, likewise, seem better to get as early as possible, particularly junkers. I'll try to at least buy one early, then switch to prioritizing buying enough draw to play it as many times as possible, only buying multiples if there is a benefit to playing multiples in a single turn.

The point is, I've been shifting my build order from trashing/draw/payload to trashing/payload/draw and finding that's better most of the time. (Did I say "trashing" yet? Trashing, trashing, trashing. I'll open double Lookout or double Ambassador or double Forager without blinking. I need no convincing on that front. I even get misty-eyed driving by the Goodwill with their "Donate" sign.) And yeah, sometimes the payload is treasure, but I don't have to like it. I'll hold my nose and open Chapel/Silver if I have to.

And I feel like there's another reason to buy a payload card as early as possible, and it's kind of the dirty secret of Dominion strategy: Your plan might not work. I know we all love the deck-drawing, pile-controlling, meat-grinding, rock-crushing engines that most of us are capable of. But sometimes, it's just not fast enough, or the opponents' attacks are more crippling than we expected, or something about the game state changes in such a way that it's clear that the engine just isn't going to explode; payload cards are going to be more likely to get you to an alternate win condition than superfluous action/draw cards that aren't able to do their one job. You may say "but by then you've already lost," but that's not always true in messy games and can depend on what the opponent buys and in what quantity. Or just plain luck.

Special mention goes to multi-purpose cards like Steward and Count who can trash early and pivot to providing economy later, and to cards that fill the payload/draw role all at once like Torturer and Wild Hunt, so there are some fuzzy boundaries.

It all comes down to balancing draw with something worth drawing.

Comments?

Seprix:
There comes a point where you're drawing most of your deck. That's probably a good time to get some payload. There's such a thing as overtrashing sometimes. That's also a good time to not trash and pick up helpful cards instead.

Another thing to add is spiking. Do you want to get to that Forge early? Then yeah, you're getting payload first so you can trash down later. Donate games can work much in the same way, but it comes down to guaranteeing the thinning and consistency increasing later on.

Chris is me:
The rule of thumb is you buy some payload first when it slows down your opponent more than buying engine components speeds you up. So Cultist is the obvious example, but sometimes you’ll want an early Militia, Witch, etc.

trivialknot:
I'm genuinely confused about the supposed wisdom that you add payload to an engine last, or only after you're drawing your deck.  I mean, it's universally recognized that opening Silver is often correct.  Does Silver not count as payload?

Chris is me:

--- Quote from: trivialknot on November 21, 2017, 04:22:23 pm ---I'm genuinely confused about the supposed wisdom that you add payload to an engine last, or only after you're drawing your deck.  I mean, it's universally recognized that opening Silver is often correct.  Does Silver not count as payload?

--- End quote ---

Some distinguish payload and economy, even though cards often play both roles. Payload might be “Militia Attack and buy two Provinces”, while economy can be anything that makes you get more valuable cards...

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