Dominion > Game Reports
Horse Traders + Duke/Duchy
WanderingWinder:
Here is a game where I showed some of the power of Horse Traders in a Duchy/Duke Strategy. My opponent was Blooki (Triceratops), consistently a top-10 player on Isotropic. Here is the spread: cards in supply: Duke, Ghost Ship, Horn of Plenty, Horse Traders, King's Court, Moneylender, Royal Seal, Smithy, Walled Village, and Wishing Well
Note: I'm using the abbreviations HT for Horse Traders and WV for Walled Village.
Blooki went first and opened Silver/Moneylender. I opened Silver/Horse Traders.
Blooki WW
Turn 3: 4-> Walled Village 6->Duchy
4 Moneylender,6->Gold HT, 5->Duchy
5 Moneylender,6->Duchy HT, 5->Duchy
6 WV,4->HT (return WV) 4->HT
7 WV, Monelyender, 8->Duchy (return WV) 4->Silver
8 WV,3->Silver (return WV) HT,4->HT
9 WV, HT, 6->Duchy (return WV) 4->Silver
10 WV, 6->Duchy (return WV) HT, 5->Duchy
Okay, there are a few things I want to point out here. All the Duchies are now gone, I've just gotten my fourth to make it an even split. I could have bought a gold on turn 3, but with the HT strat, I think this was the right way to go. I'm not sure about blooki buying a Duchy rather than a province on turn 7 - yeah, he wants to deny my, but he's trying to win the game on provinces (I think), and he's really hurting his chances to do so. I think on one or two of the fours that I went silver, I should have gone HT. I probably also should have bought coppers with some of my extra buys. Moneylender doesn't seem to work well with Duke boards. But the thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is WV, which just looks worthless here. Also, you can assume that Walled village is getting returned every chance it can (I'm going to stop putting it)
Blooki WW
11 WV, Moneylender, 3->Silver 3->Silver
12 WV, HT, 5->Duke HT, 7->Duke+Estate
13 WV, 8->Province 5->Duke
14 WV, 3->Silver HT, 7->Duke+Estate
15 WV, 3->Silver 0->Copper
16 WV, Moneylender, 5->Duke HT, 6->Duke+Copper
17 WV, Moneylender, 8->Province HT, 6->Duke+Copper
18 WV, 3->Silver HT, 5->Duke+Copper
19 WV, 4->Smithy 3->Estate
20 WV, HT, 5->Ghost Ship HT, 5->Estate x 2
21 WV, 4->HT 3->Estate
22 WV, HT, 6->Gold 4->Estate
23 WV, Moneylender (no copper), 2->Estate
Game Over
Decks:
Blooki: 2 Prov, 2 Gold, 4 Duchy, 2 Duke, 1 GShip, 2 HT, 1 Moneylender, 1 Smithy, 1 WV, 6 Silver, 4 Estate, 1 Copper
WanderingWinder: 4 Duchy, 6 Duke, 3 HT, 4 Silver, 10 Estate, 11 Copper
Final Score: Blooki 36, WW 46
Obviously imperfect play from both sides here, but still fairly good, and I think this shows the general strength of the HT+Duke Strategy.
lefaiison:
Interesting game! I don't like the fact that Blooki switched gears after seeing you were going for the Duchy spam, as changing your game plan to copy your opponents game plan usually means you're going to be behind. You've already committed to a HT->Duchy/Duke strategy, which means you won't be suddenly buying a Ghost Ship to attack him or something.
Given my hindsight, and *seeing* exactly what you're doing for the first 10 turns obviously is going to greatly bias my opinion, but had he gone for a mega KC - draw combo, do you think he could have finished you off with 8 Horn of Plenties -> 8 provinces before you can get enough Dukes?
Given a start of Gold on turn 4 and 5, I don't think it would've taken him that long to get a deck of something like KCx3/Smithyx3/WVx3/HoPx8/WW/MoneyLender/Silver/Gold/Royal Seal.
Edit -- I just tried it solo, and forgetting to buy a HT myself early for the extra buy once my engine is going slowed me down a bit, but on turn 17 I would've cleared all 8 provinces, faster than your HT/Duchy/Duke strategy.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201106/28/game-20110628-130837-590935c9.html
I'm not trying to dismiss your strategy either, it does seem like it's a good one given certain setups. Especially if your bait your opponent into buying Duchies to try to slow your strategy down, but I'm just saying in this given setup (with KC + HoP), that Blooki probably should've not changed gears.
Geronimoo:
I've simulated your question of turn 3 Gold vs turn 3 Duchy: If your opponent is going for Duchies as well you should indeed buy the Duchy over Gold turn 3, but if your opponent was initially going for a Province strategy and then switch when he sees you going for Duchy/Duke, then you should buy the Gold first (this will allow some Duchy/Silver buys which will greatly help your late game when you're swamped with green).
Reyk:
Yes, Wandering Winter has a feeling for this ;-)
We played this game yesterday:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110628-083424-c205e441.html
I knew this post, but obviously didn't read through the copper part in the game vs. Blooki. But hey, copper turn 1, duchy turn 3 - thats really insane. The point is to have the right balance between green cards, HT and copper (2 of them required per turn). But it's still baffling to me whether the additional copper buys help to avoid HT clash und too much green cards or hinder the HT to be played more often. But I guess some additional copper will do good here.
Anyway it's clear that you have to stick to HT and nothing else when going for Duchy/Duke. I played for Dukes from the beginning as well, but wanted to execute someting like farming village/bridge/workshop -> Duchy + buy Duchy. This is somehow stupid given the HT speed. Even if the first part with the three action cards succeeds (which is not very likely without trashing) I probably can't buy the second Duchy as well.
On a sidenote: What if the other player ignores Dukes altogehter (maybe buys 2 Duchies) and goes for a Province engine with additional point potential (Nobles, Harem)?
Superdad:
In both of these sample games, wouldn't simply going for a province pile empty counter this? It looks like having the opponent try to counter by buying dukes/duchy is actually helping him, because the game ends faster on 3-piles. His turn 1 copper, turn 3 duchy deck would certainly be countered more effectively by letting it stall out longer and just racing him on provinces.
The games are going to turn 20-23h... if instead the opponent just went for a province empty, they could easily have 6+ provinces at this point, with the HT/Duke/Duchy opponent having a much weaker overall deck.
Sure, his later dukes are getting stronger if he is allowed to take them all, but he will still have a hard time getting to $5 regularly, even with HT. Meanwhile, even a pure big money strategy could empty provinces fairly close to this point.
Am I missing something? It seems to me that the opponents did him a favor when they fought him on dukes/duchy, because they ended the game before his deck REALLY stalled out.
For a comparison... how long would a duke/duchy/Horse trader strategy take to 3-pile Duke/Duchy/Estate without assistance from the opponent? I'm willing to bet it is upwards of turn 30.
Couldn't a province empty strategy get all 8 provinces by the time the duke/duchy hit say 6/6 duke/duchy? That would be 48-51 points (for the province player) vs 54-58 points (depending on #estates).
/edit... it's closer than I thought... I had miscalc'd the provinces at 8 points each!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version