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SpamThis

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Cathedral
« on: November 11, 2018, 11:34:58 am »
+5

I've been playing around with a simple Cathedral strategy, that I think on most kingdoms will win a good chunk of the time. The great thing about this strategy is that if you buy one card per turn, you always have 10 cards, making shuffle-counting and analysis pretty easy.

Turn 1 (on 3/4 or 4/3): Buy cathedral
Turns 2-4: Buy silver (or silver+), trash estate (may be forced to trash a copper)
Turns 5-6: Buy one silver, one gold, trash copper (or estate if left over from turn 3/4)
Turns 7-8: Buy gold, trash copper
Turns 9+: Buy province if you can, gold if you can't. Trash copper, province, silver in that order of priority.

If opponent doesn't buy a province, game is over around by turn 18. You will have between 18-30 points. If opponent buys a province or two, game will end earlier.

It's basically a BM strategy, and like BM, that works pretty well, but works even better if you add a terminal draw: Add the biggest terminal draw in 3-5 cost, replacing a silver, and you can probably skip buying a gold or two, shifting everything one or two turns earlier. Library is amazing here: It's basically a +4 cards, you're guaranteed a shuffle, and there's only one card left in your deck. After playing a Library, chances that the Library lands in your hand next turn is 44%, meaning you'll be playing with a Library 2/3 of the time.

Silver+ would be things like Venture, Spices, Idol, Crown, Royal Seal. If you don't buy terminal draw, Baker may qualify here as well: The normal strategy wastes a lot of coin, and coffers can help smooth it out.

As for attacks, Hand-size attacks pretty much kill it (unless there's Library/Watch-Tower/Scholar around), trashing attacks do as well. I would be especially worried about 3-4 cost ones: Militia, Pirate Ship, Urchin, Brigand, Catapult, maybe Cutpurse, maybe Peasant/Soldier, maybe Warrior. A hand-size attacks reduces your playable hand to either 2 or 3 cards: The best you can hope to do is buy back whatever you have to trash. If opposing player can play the attack with any deal of regularity, you're pretty dead. A trashing attack permanently reduces your deck size by 1, meaning that you have less room for provinces + money.

The 5-6 cost attacks are just slower to get going, but once opponent gets them playing regularly, you may be in trouble: Knights, Bandit, Minion, Ghost Ship, Margrave, Goons, maybe Rogue.

Cursing/looting attacks have a small impact: They slow you down slightly. Instead of trashing copper, you have to trash the junk they give you. But they don't hurt you much, because you can trash faster than they can junk.

Other things that help: Star Chart can ensure your terminal draw shows up on shuffle. If your draw is +3 or +4, you can guarantee that you're playing the terminal draw every time. Buying it delays Cathedral by one card (or if you choose, reduces deck size to 9), but totally worth it. Salt The Earth can help you trash a province at the end when money gets a bit scarcer.

A note on the impact of +buy cards, gainers, or other perceived helpers to compensate for the forced trashing: The goal with Cathedral is to empty provinces as quickly as possible. Buying extra copper/silver doesn't help you do that. Building an engine is not the goal: Engines take longer to build than Province emptying, and you're going to lose in the long run playing 4-handed vs a 5-handed opponent.
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benedettosoxfan

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Re: Cathedral
« Reply #1 on: November 11, 2018, 12:54:52 pm »
+2

Welcome to the forum and thanks for starting a discussion on cathedral! I have to admit I'm usually too chicken to buy this and I'm really not sure how to properly play it, so I'm glad that we can get some thoughts and ideas going on. Having said that, the strategy you're describing is probably the last thing you want to do with cathedral. Here are a few things:

1. It's pretty rare that big money is the best thing you can do with any given kingdom, but it does happen. Engines run the world and in games with cathedrals and multiple gains, then I think cathedral can really shine.
2. You say you always have 10 cards, but you kind of only have 9 since you trash a card before you do anything in your turn.When you end the game, you're best case scenario is probably something like 2 golds, 1 silver, and 7 assorted victory cards (preferably provinces of course). If you are fortunate enough to draw all your treasures to afford a province, you're probably looking at a dud turn next in which you'll have to either trash a victory card or trash a treasure and buy a copper (no bueno). I honestly wouldn't be surprised if cathedral +big money is worse than straight up vanilla big money, but I'm sure some simulators can try this out.
3. If your opponent has not bought a province by turn 18 in any given kingdom, they are either building a monster deck that will mop the floor with you, or they have no idea what they're doing. A lot of games don't even get to turn 18, and cathedral seems to favor games that end quickly (like turn 13 or so). You mention that the goal is to empty the provinces quickly before an engine gets up and running, but this really isn't nearly quick enough.
4. I really like how you brought up library and draw to x cards. Cathedral seems to really favor those as long as it's part of a bigger engine. Note that if you do have a card like library or smithy, you already have an important engine piece so big money is even more unlikely to be the winning call.

I don't mean to stomp on your strategy, but I think it's a good starting point to talk about where cathedral fits in with different strategies. In the event that you encounter a big money-centered board, I think it would be interesting to think about buying cathedral at different points in the game. For example, what if you opened double silver and bought cathedral on turn 3 or 4? Your initial economy would be much better and you have more buffer room later on to prevent you from trashing golds and provinces later on.

Either way, it certainly seems to me like cathedral shines brightest in engines with lots of gains. If you are gaining one card per turn, cathedral can basically nullify a past turn if you're forced to trash something important if that makes sense. It's a risky project, but one that deserves discussion. Anyone else have any thoughts or experiences?
« Last Edit: November 11, 2018, 12:56:57 pm by benedettosoxfan »
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Awaclus

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Re: Cathedral
« Reply #2 on: November 11, 2018, 01:03:41 pm »
+5

When Cathedral is in the kingdom, the game is probably going to end somewhere around turn 8-11 when players buy kingdom cards so you should plan your strategy accordingly.
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Seprix

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Re: Cathedral
« Reply #3 on: November 19, 2018, 12:07:52 pm »
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18 turns to end the game with 18-30 points is really really slow and awful. Quite often I imagine there's got to be something better than that.
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Re: Cathedral
« Reply #4 on: November 19, 2018, 12:20:22 pm »
+1

18 turns to end the game with 18-30 points is really really slow and awful. Quite often I imagine there's got to be something better than that.

That not to say BM is bad with Cathedral, it's just very much faster than 18 turns with good enablers. The things you could do engine-wise I found is much more "good stuffy" than a proper engine due to the speed..
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William Howard Taft

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Re: Cathedral
« Reply #5 on: December 05, 2018, 10:49:41 am »
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As for attacks, Hand-size attacks pretty much kill it (unless there's Library/Watch-Tower/Scholar around), trashing attacks do as well. I would be especially worried about 3-4 cost ones: Militia, Pirate Ship, Urchin, Brigand, Catapult, maybe Cutpurse, maybe Peasant/Soldier, maybe Warrior. A hand-size attacks reduces your playable hand to either 2 or 3 cards: The best you can hope to do is buy back whatever you have to trash.

The exception to this is Torturer, which is a both a handsize reducer and increaser. Just played a Cathedral game where taking that Curse to hand saved me multiple times.
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LittleFish

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Re: Cathedral
« Reply #6 on: January 16, 2019, 06:09:12 pm »
+1

for turn 2 you will never be forced to trash copper over estate. If you have 5 coppers in hand on turn 2 you couldn't buy cathedral because of only 2 coppers
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faust

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Re: Cathedral
« Reply #7 on: January 17, 2019, 02:39:30 am »
+1

for turn 2 you will never be forced to trash copper over estate. If you have 5 coppers in hand on turn 2 you couldn't buy cathedral because of only 2 coppers
Edge cases incoming!
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LittleFish

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Re: Cathedral
« Reply #8 on: January 17, 2019, 07:50:27 am »
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Unless Pooka is in there, then you could get cursed gold for cathedral and still have to trash a copper
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Dwhit

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Re: Cathedral
« Reply #9 on: January 17, 2019, 12:00:58 pm »
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for turn 2 you will never be forced to trash copper over estate. If you have 5 coppers in hand on turn 2 you couldn't buy cathedral because of only 2 coppers

Baker in supply used my coffer with my opening 2 copper to buy cathedral
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Jeebus

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Re: Cathedral
« Reply #10 on: January 19, 2019, 12:05:45 pm »
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for turn 2 you will never be forced to trash copper over estate. If you have 5 coppers in hand on turn 2 you couldn't buy cathedral because of only 2 coppers

He said turns 2-4.
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