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Author Topic: Combo: Horn of Plenty/Native Village  (Read 3839 times)

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chwhite

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Combo: Horn of Plenty/Native Village
« on: April 02, 2012, 06:05:54 pm »
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So, everyone is aware of the Native Village/Bridge mega-turn combo, where you build up a huge Native Village mat and cash it all in for a boatload of Provinces on the last turn, using the stored draw of Native Village to get lots of Bridges in your hand, and have the +Action to play them all.

Well, Horn of Plenty is another card which has similar mega-turn potential with Native Village, as seen in this game I just finished:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/02/game-20120402-144850-fccaf6e3.html

Obviously, HoP/Native Village is a little trickier to pull off, as you can't just mindlessly buy the two components, you do need to pick up enough other pieces to boost your Horns to $5.  And since HoP is $5 and not $4, getting it started is possibly a little more difficult.  However, as long as those two cards are in the kingdom, there is clearly mega-turn potential.  HoP, NV, and Copper/Silver/Gold gets you to five unique cards already, and the +Actions of Native Village ensures that no matter what else is on the board, you can find three other cards to help you on your way to $8 Horns.  The other cards were actually pretty weak here; Chancellor and Talisman are not the sorts of buys that strike fear into the heart of your opponent, but they were good enough to get to $8.  The Oasis and Cellar were actually more crucial, the Oasis providing cycling and cash, and Cellar was used once to ensure that I got all seven of my Horns in hand for the final turn.  There really wasn't any reason for me to buy a Wishing Well, I was just upping variety to make absolutely sure the Horns would max out.

Getting to start $5/$2 was a boost in this game, but even 4/3 starts should be able to transition into this deck well, probably opening Silver/Silver-equivalent and then picking up lots of Natives and Horns starting on Turn 3.  As for counters, my initial feeling is that this combo should beat most other strategies, but it's not quite as dominant as NV/Bridge: it should be beaten by strong cursing, Goons engines, and Ironworks rushes at least.  (Though if there's good trashing about, NV/HoP can probably handle most curse-givers).  Of course, except for something like Ironworks/Gardens, you can likely add NV/HoP to these other elements, you just can't ignore them like you might be able to for NV/Bridge.
« Last Edit: April 02, 2012, 06:15:14 pm by chwhite »
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DG

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Re: Combo: Horn of Plenty/Native Village
« Reply #1 on: April 02, 2012, 06:52:24 pm »
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I'm not convinced that this wouldn't snag up more often than it succeeds, particularly if you get your key cards put onto your village mat for an unrecoverable loss. Would you have been safer starting harvest/native village? Securing five to spend seems more important than gaining extra cards, especially since the mat strategy begins to unravel when the deck expands too much. I think the wishing wells can work here since they can test the top of the deck before playing the native village.
« Last Edit: April 02, 2012, 06:55:09 pm by DG »
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chwhite

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Re: Combo: Horn of Plenty/Native Village
« Reply #2 on: April 02, 2012, 07:01:10 pm »
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I'm not convinced that this wouldn't snag up more often than it succeeds, particularly if you get your key cards put onto your village mat for an unrecoverable loss. Would you have been safer starting harvest/native village? Securing five to spend seems more important than gaining extra cards, especially since the mat strategy begins to unravel when the deck expands too much. I think the wishing wells can work here since they can test the top of the deck before playing the native village.

Starting Harvest would not have been a good idea here; it's almost never a good idea, since at the beginning you'll be hard-pressed to do better than terminal silver.

Sure, any NV combo strategy is going to run the risk of having important components get buried under the mat; I think in practice you'd need to get really unlucky for it to ruin you.  It may be necessary to do things like buy a second or third Silver in order to keep your buying power high enough turn-to-turn; in fact this game featured me buying a second Silver and watching my first Horn get buried fairly early, and it didn't pose much of an issue.

It is certainly true that HoP is not necessarily the best opener for this strategy on 5/2; Harvest is a poor enough choice that it was the best opener for this particular set.
« Last Edit: April 02, 2012, 07:03:21 pm by chwhite »
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DStu

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Re: Combo: Horn of Plenty/Native Village
« Reply #3 on: April 03, 2012, 01:22:18 am »
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I would guess that the $3-cantrips are not as unimportant as it sounds in your text. You really like $5 horns, but without cantrips or card draw that is really unlikely to happen. Of course NV/HoP/Copper/Silver/Gold are 5 unique cards, but you need to have them all in a 5 card hand, and terminal Silvers also don't help. You may have no dublicates, no Estates in these hands. Especially you don't have double HoPs at $5.

Oasis, WW gives you something usefull to pick up at $3. Oasis, while it doesn't rise the number of played cards over 5, can handle dublicates and Estates. WW is an extra card played even if you guesses incorrectly. You "just" got 3 HoPs from HoPs, but megaturn at turn 16 is already kind of on the edge. It should usually be enough too win (while of course better player than this Fabian ;P should get more than one Province in 16 turns), but you shouldn't take much more time.


There are of course enough possibilites for support, any cantrip at $2 and $3 and probably $4 will help you, as well as card-draw (maybe even the +2cards, as NV+Moat is like a cantrip), so I would still call this a combo. You just need to look out if there is some kind of support.  And depending on how weak the support is, I also would be afraid of hand-size reduction, as if you struggle to get your HoPs to $5 with 5 cards, it doesn't get much better if you only have 3.
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