Dominion Strategy Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Pages: [1]

Author Topic: Combo: Animal Fair & Way Of The Butterfly  (Read 2395 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

BeXXsoR

  • Herbalist
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5
  • Respect: +22
    • View Profile
Combo: Animal Fair & Way Of The Butterfly
« on: May 03, 2020, 01:14:22 pm »
+12

 

This combo from Menagerie works well on all boards and leads to a superfast game. Way of The Butterfly lets you turn 7$-actions into provinces, and Animal Fair is a very easy to get $7-action card. The combo resolves around buying any actions, trashing them to get Animal Fairs and turning those into provinces.

Strategy:
There's no setup phase needed, you start from the get-go following these simple rules:
  • If you have no action in hand, you buy any action you can afford
  • If you have one action other than Animal Fair in hand, you use it in your buy phase as the price for Animal Fair
  • If you have multiple actions without Animal Fair in hand, you may play as many as you like, as long as you keep one in hand to buy Animal Fair with it
  • If you have an Animal Fair in hand, you play it as the Butterfly to turn it into a province
With this you have a sure way to very fast provinces. The only pitfall may be in your Animal Fairs colliding, so that you have to discard one unused and only see it again in your next shuffle.

Example game:
  Turn 1&2: buy two action cards
  Turn 3&4: Assume they don't collide, you can trash both of them on turn 3 resp. 4 for 2 Animal Fairs
  Turn 5: probably no action in hand, so you buy a new action
  Turn 6: maybe you draw an Animal Fair here, play it as the butterfly to turn it into a province, and buy another action
  Turn 7-xx: rinse and repeat, always turning Animal Fairs into provinces during your play phase, and using the other actions to buy new Animal Fairs in your buy phase. If you are lucky, you may get the 4th province as early as turn 9 or something.

Most of the time, this combo is completely independent of the rest of the board, cause in most cases you do not care what your actions do, you just use them to buy Animal Fairs. There are, however, some action cards that work better than others:
  • Most important: cards with on-gain- or on-trash-effects: First one that comes to mind should be Fortress - You can use one Fortress to buy Animals Fairs again and again. This works even better with sources of +Buy, as you get the Fortress back into your hand after trashing for Animal Fair, so you can use it again for a second one. Another card that works well is Lackeys, as it's on-gain-effect provides you with villagers, that can help with situation in which your Animal Fairs collide
After that, there are some actions that work well if you get to play them (i.e. only when they collide with other actions):
  • Trashers: Chapel, Steward, ...: You can play the trasher to thin your deck, hoping to draw your Action Fairs more frequently later on.
  • Cheap sources of +Buy: Pawn, Candlestick Maker, Market Square, ...:. They may set up a turn where you can get multiple Animal Fairs at once, if you happen to still have multiple actions in your hand after playing the cheap +Buy. (Travelling Fair would work super well, as it gives you +Buy without needing to play an action. But it's highly unlikely for a kingdom to include both Travelling Fair and Way of The Butterfly, let alone Animal Fair ...)
  • Action card gainers: Workshop, Ironworks, ...: These are great to play as they give you further fuel for Animal Fairs.
  • 4$-actions: If both players go for this combo, provinces are likely to be split 4-4, so it might be useful to have a $4-card that can be butterflied into a Duchy
  • Villages: These might help out with collision of Animal Fairs (If you haven't trashed them until that point)
Most of the time though, you are not even going to play your actions, as they are all gonna be trashed for Animal Fairs.

Counters:
It's tough to think of any hard counters. Trasher attacks could work if they find your Animal Fairs, but even then they'll have a hard time putting in good use (e.g. Swindler would need another &7-card on the board, which is higly unlikely; Knights or Giant only trash $3-$6 cards). Handsize-Attacks don't do much, because you only need one action in hand to get an Animal Fair, and only one Animal Fair in hand to get a province. Junkers only delay the process marginally. Deck order attacks might be the worst when they discard your Animal Fairs, delaying their turning-into-province until the next shuffle.

That's it for this combo. One last thought I want to mention is that the theme is just great: You're going to all the Animal Fairs, seeing all the big and strong Animals - but their strongest power only comes to light when you turn them into Butterflies :D :D
Logged

ftl

  • Mountebank
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2056
  • Shuffle iT Username: ftl
  • Respect: +1345
    • View Profile
Re: Combo: Animal Fair & Way Of The Butterfly
« Reply #1 on: May 03, 2020, 06:10:04 pm »
+2

Another potential synergy - 2-cost actions. It's pretty easy to draw a hand of, say, Animal fair, CCEE. It'll be a lot faster if that turn gets you a province and a cheap action, rather than just the province.


How fast have you found it? I just did a few spitballed games vs bot and found that without any support, it's not really much faster than an okish BM, which isn't that great. Maybe I'm not playing it right.
Logged

BeXXsoR

  • Herbalist
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5
  • Respect: +22
    • View Profile
Re: Combo: Animal Fair & Way Of The Butterfly
« Reply #2 on: May 04, 2020, 01:46:23 pm »
+1

$2-actions are definitely a good synergy! I played a couple of sample games vs. Bots today. I got the 4th province at turn 11-13, which is quite good on most boards I think. I stumbled upon the same "Animal Fair + $2" hands that you described, where $2-actions really help.
One thing I noticed is that after the 4th province I sometimes had a deck without action cards anymore, that's where the strat gets stuck a bit. Maybe focussing on getting action cards early and only later trashing them into Animal Fairs does better.

Here are some sample games (Notation: C=Copper, E=Estate, P=Province, A=Action, AF=Animal Fair):

Game 1: 4th province on turn 12, one action left in deck
T1&2: Buy 2*A
T3: CCCEE - Buy A
T4: ACCCE - Trash A for AF
T5: ACCEE - Trash A for AF
T6: AF+ACCE - turn AF into P, trash A for AF
T7: AF+CCCC - turn AF into P, buy A
T8: CCEEP - do nothing
T9: AF+CEPP - turn AF into P
T10: ACCCE - Trash A for AF
T11: CCCCE - Buy A
T12: AF+CEEP - Turn AF into P

Game 2: 4th province on turn 11, two actions left in deck
T1&2: Buy 2*A
T3: ACCEE - Trash A for AF
T4: CCCCE - Buy A
T5: ACCEE - Trash A for AF
T6: CCCCE - Buy A
T7: AF+ACCC - Turn AF into P, trash A for AF
T8: ACEEE - Trash A for AF
T9: AF+AF+CCC - Turn AF into P, Buy A
T10: AF+CCCP - Turn AF into P, Buy A
T11: AF+CEEE - Turn AF into P

Game 3: 4th province on turn 11, 5th and 6th on turn 12 and 13. Early focus on getting action cards, Pouch and Tracker helped a lot (Po=Pouch, T=Tracker)
T1: Po+CCCE - Buy 2*T
T2: CCCEE - Buy A
T3: ACCEE - Trash A for AF
T4: T+Po+CCE - Play T, Buy 2*T, Topdeck 2*T
T5: TTTCC - Play T, Trash T for AF, Topdeck AF
T6: AF+TCCE - Turn AF into P, trash T for AF
T7: AF+TTCE - Turn AF into P, trash T for AF
T8: Po+CCCE - Buy A (A was $4-action this time, maybe 2*T would've been better)
T9: AF+ACEP - Turn AF into P, trash A for AF
T10: CCCCE - Buy A (A is $4-action with idea to maybe turn into Duchy later)
T11: AF+Po+TCP - Turn AF into P, trash T for AF
T12: AF+ACCE - Turn AF into P, trash A for AF
T13: AF+CEPP - Turn AF into P
Logged

Titandrake

  • Mountebank
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2210
  • Respect: +2854
    • View Profile
Re: Combo: Animal Fair & Way Of The Butterfly
« Reply #3 on: May 04, 2020, 06:13:54 pm »
+4

4 Provinces in 11 turns is pretty fast, but still beatable on some boards. I think trying to play this as a pure Animal Fair rush is a mistake. Instead you should play the board about as normal, partway through you convert actions to Animal Fairs, then start cashing in Butterflies. That should speed it up.

It's good enough that I assume you do Animal Fair + Butterfly in some capacity whenever those two cards show up.

Logged
I have a blog! It's called Sorta Insightful. Check it out?

faust

  • Cartographer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3374
  • Shuffle iT Username: faust
  • Respect: +5138
    • View Profile
Re: Combo: Animal Fair & Way Of The Butterfly
« Reply #4 on: May 08, 2020, 01:29:19 am »
+2

Can I just say Rats?
Logged
You say the ocean's rising, like I give a shit
You say the whole world's ending, honey it already did
Pages: [1]
 

Page created in 0.043 seconds with 20 queries.