My son was playing OL, game 10179054. His brothers and I served as O Wise Advisers. The board was an ambassador/Bridge Troll mess, with the only draw being cursed village, Lost City, and the dreaded Pooka. He focused on Cursed Village, which is a beautiful card except when you gain it, while our opponent built with Lost City and triple Ambassador.
After floundering around for 20 turns, and holding 8 or so curses, we panicked into buying a Pooka, while our opponent was buying caches (either to ambassador to us, because he didn't want Bandit Fort points, or because the game was just that painful). Then suddenly everything came together, we played all the right cards in perfect succession, returning 6 curses in two turns, trashing 4+ coppers, and drawing our whole deck on turn 24ish, leaving our opponent in misery (not literally; we got all the hexes), and prompting a resignation.
My questions:
- Did we just get lucky, or were we doing it right here? Was there a better way to build?
- Was the Pooka purchase actually important to the success of the engine, or was it coincidental?
- Given a 5/2 opening, would you have bought the troll and taken the curse (as he did), or would you have gone with the ambassador (or something else) to dodge the curse?
Thanks.
Squirezucco