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[guided]

Council Room is such a bad opener, man, you're giving your opponent a free card at the exact moment when it is the most useful because they want to get an awesome buy at turn 3/4 before shuffling again.

If it beats a Venture opening I guess I can believe that. Like I said 5/2 is awful on this board, so an awful CR opening might be better than an awful Venture opening.

[krawhitham]

I think I overuse alchemist, since I have fun drawing my own deck. Interesting that big money is so much better in this case

This has been educational

I'm also in a phase of learning when to buy money instead of improving my engine. I'm also attempting to learn when to buy nothing from the mid game onwards

[DG]

That's just irrational fear of the opponent getting lucky. Sure, he might get a lucky turn 5 activation and win, but in the long run he'll have to wait a lot longer than that and lose big time.

I think you'd be surprised just how much the probabilities change when moving from 2 treasure maps in 5 cards to 2 treasure maps in 6 cards. Buying another 5 cost card which can also add value seems like a better risks than the councilroom.

[Taco Lobster]

My gut reaction was potion/silver on 4/3 as well, taking the council room over the market for the buy once I get to 5. 

5/2 is harder.  I'd worry about the council room providing good acceleration to my opponent on early hands (letting him hit a potion +$3 earlier or getting him to a gold to put into his second shuffle), the venture is, at best, a silver that (marginally) speeds up my shuffle, and that pushes me to market (which, upon reading other posts, is probably the wrong choice).

What's neat about a board like this, where there are no obvious (or unobvious) combos is being able to recognize that big money with a little support (e.g., council room) is the best strategy.  It's easy to get obsessed with building action chains and awesome engines and miss when the best strategy is the simplest strategy. 

Oooh...you could open duchy/estate on 5/2... 

[Zaphod]

I never use it, but if I open 5-2 with these options, I'm getting a Saboteur.  Really.  Every kingdom card in the set costs at least 3, so Saboteur might actually do some damage.  Even against an Alchemist chain, it'll probably hit Potions at some point and mess up my opponent's strategy.  Furthermore, assuming he opened 4-3, the first tiime he's Saboteured, he's likely to lose a card he just bought and choose to gain nothing in return.  Getting into an opponent's head early has some value.

In Dominion, there are some cards that are rarely useful, and Saboteur is one.  But there are no cards that are never useful.  I may be an idiot for suggesting it, but I stand by my choice.

[DStu]

Council Room is such a bad opener, man, you're giving your opponent a free card at the exact moment when it is the most useful because they want to get an awesome buy at turn 3/4 before shuffling again.

If it beats a Venture opening I guess I can believe that. Like I said 5/2 is awful on this board, so an awful CR opening might be better than an awful Venture opening.

Geronimoo's Bot beats itself 50:44 when starting 5/2 against 4/3.
I would guess on this board the CR-Start is not really a problem. The best strat we have fouond so far is more or less BigMoney with CR, marginally assisted by Ventures as better Silvers, but the Bot does not often buy them. Often ends with just 1 Venture in the Deck.
So when you look on what you want to buy, the 6th card in the beginning is not usefull that often. Assuming its a Copper, improving from 3->4 has no effect, 4->5 is Silver->CR with is the CR the 5/2start has already bought. 5->6 is CR->Gold, which probably is the biggest improvement, but it is also not sooo huge. The 5/2 on the other hand is likely to just skip silver completely for Ventures and Golds, and has a highly increased cycling from the beginning.

[Geronimoo]

In Dominion, there are some cards that are rarely useful, and Saboteur is one.  But there are no cards that are never useful.  I may be an idiot for suggesting it, but I stand by my choice.

...adding Zaphod to my idiot list...
Saboteur is such a weak card, please stop suggesting it. You're losing 2/3 of the games (even with a $5/$2). You might get away with it if your opponent is not very good and he also starts buying Saboteurs just to get back at you...

[Superdad]

I cannot even express in words how informative this post has been. My gut instinct was potion/silver with the goal of winning the alchemist race. Then my opponent goes big money + minor support and crushes me.

It really opened up my eyes to analysing when a solid engine is actually a tad too slow.

I'm actually very curious to know what it is about this board that makes the alchemist engine too slow. It seems like the big money deck doesn't have THAT much support, so the issue is more to do with lack of support for the alchemist engine?

So where is the problem? Is it the lack of a solid trasher? Is the problem that the alchemist deck starts strong, but then it begins to miss alchemist stacking in the later stages of the game due to poor trashing?

This has really got me thinking...

[DStu]

It seems like the big money deck doesn't have THAT much support, so the issue is more to do with lack of support for the alchemist engine?

What do you want for "ideal" support for the BigMoney. I thought pretty much by definition, BigMoney with support is BM+one card, which you have in this case. CR is quite strong for that.

So where is the problem? Is it the lack of a solid trasher? Is the problem that the alchemist deck starts strong, but then it begins to miss alchemist stacking in the later stages of the game due to poor trashing?

I'm not quite sure here. First is: No attacks. You need time to get the engine started, you get this time by attacking the other player. Trashing, I think at least some kind of trashing would be nice. The alchemist does not draw so many cards each turn, so if you need to get through 10 bad cards that's a long way. Some trash-for-benefit (e.g.Moneylender) would certainly help.

[WanderingWinder]

I cannot even express in words how informative this post has been. My gut instinct was potion/silver with the goal of winning the alchemist race. Then my opponent goes big money + minor support and crushes me.

It really opened up my eyes to analysing when a solid engine is actually a tad too slow.

I'm actually very curious to know what it is about this board that makes the alchemist engine too slow. It seems like the big money deck doesn't have THAT much support, so the issue is more to do with lack of support for the alchemist engine?

So where is the problem? Is it the lack of a solid trasher? Is the problem that the alchemist deck starts strong, but then it begins to miss alchemist stacking in the later stages of the game due to poor trashing?

This has really got me thinking...

Well, it's mostly that getting an alchemist chain up and running takes to long, even if big money has no support - taking the time out for the potion(s) is pretty big actually, and then you aren't really buying gold and silver all that much while you're going for alchemists. Meanwhile, on this board, there's nothing particularly great you can do with drawing your whole deck.

[WanderingWinder]

Also: I don't think trashing helps alchemist so much in comparison to straight-up big money. I have a feeling it'll actually accelerate just getting cash faster than it would the alchemists.

[Superdad]

I guess the point of my post could have been clearer. This thread has made me confused as to when to go with an alchemist instead of just simply going big money with minor support. For example, big money is always available, and my understanding was that it was the bounding-case slow strategy. I.e. all other options fail if they cannot be faster than big money, since big money is always available.

Therefore, if a strategy is slower than big-money, it is essentially non-feasible. Therefore, big money beating an alchemist deck leads me to believe that either:
a) Alchemist decks are completely non-viable. or
b) Alchemist deck requires certain support, which does not exist on this board and that is why it loses here.

Now, I had always thought of alchemist as a power card that typically gets a war fought over it. It was very surprising to see it lose to straight up big money + Council Room.

I'm also surprised to see that it is believed that trashing would help big money more than the alchemist player. My gut would lead me to believe that trashing would help the alchemist player more. The leaner that his deck gets, the more probable he will be drawing his potion every turn. Also, whatever terminal he goes with will also likely get played each turn as well.

The key strength of an alchemist chain (my understanding) is to have a deck that essentially does the same thing every turn. i.e. draw the entire deck, play a strong terminal, and buy the top VP card (every turn looks like this). Thus, trashing should help him more - no?

So is it the lack of a very solid terminal that is holding the alchemist back? I would think that CR is a perfect terminal for an alchemist deck, because it allows him to both ensure he gets the potion every turn, but also allows him to enter double-bigVPbuy turns (more consistently than his opponent).

In terms of the lack of speed of setting up the alchemist deck, I would have initially estimated that this board would be slow, and would allow the time. I.e. big money is typically a fairly slow deck (it's the bounding case deck on slowness, is it not?). For example, if Kingscourt/grand market were in the kingdom, I could totally see that Alchemist could be too slow. However, isn't facing off against big-money the ideal slowest opponent for the alchemist deck?


I apologize if my responses are not contributing any good discussion in this forum (or are taking it on a tangent). Please let me know if it is, and I will discontinue the discussion.

[WanderingWinder]

First of all, don't feel like you aren't contributing good discussion - you absolutely are. This is really important and vital stuff for high-level play. I think that many people thought like you (heck, look at the people who posted in this very thread that said they'd go alchemist).
Alchemist is often seen as a power card with wars fought over it. But it often isn't all that great. Compare it to Laboratory. It's strictly better than lab if you ignore costs (and possession, which hey, we do when talking about which cards are better). So look at the cost. 3p is a bit harder to get than 5. But more than that, you have to waste 1+ turns getting potions (instead of say silver).
But compare it to lab. Lab is, of course, really good. But if all you have is Labs+Big Money, it's actually not all that great. Smithy is better. You need to have a terminal you want to spam. Same thing with Alchemists, except that since you have to go out of your way for alchemist, you need to have something to slow the game down, too. Labs fall into the natural progression of a big money deck better - 3 is silver, 4 is militia until I have 2 (then silver), 5 is Lab, 6 is gold, 8 is province. Alchemists you have to restructure for, and this takes time.

On the trashing point, the reason why trashing should help BM more is that it doesn't speed up the amount of time it takes to get your chain going all that much (still have to waste ~6 turns getting the potions and alchemists, plus one for the trasher, three for some money, an extra turn or two for trashing itself and... after 11-12 turns you can start buying a province every turn). This puts you a turn or two ahead of what BM could do WITHOUT trashing, and with it, BM's still going to have you beat by 2-3 turns. Maybe in colony games the pendulum flips and it starts helping the alchemists more. But province games are just so short.
On the Council Room issue, I've sort of outlined above why you really want an attack for your terminal, but also CR is going to help your opponents an awful lot when you're playing it every turn, and it doesn't help you when they're playing it if you were drawing your whole deck anyway. Moreover, it doesn't speed your deck up more than theirs; it's more like the same amount as theirs, and since they were faster to start with, this magnifies their advantage in a way that should at least compensate for the added smoothness of your deck.
But good questions to ask, for sure.

[Superdad]

So for the most-part, jumping through the alchemist hoops should really only be done if there is a solid terminal attack that you want to be playing every turn? Otherwise, it is too slow, even against the bounding-case slowest viable opponent, which is big money + support? Or I suppose also if there is something else to use your potion on (i.e. possession would be the most obvious one, as it fulfills both roles).

I'm having a hard time seeing why I should ever play alchemists, based on the discussion in this board (which is supported by simulation data!!)


/edit, I would also guess that alchemist is a stronger strategy in a colony game? I would suspect that the alchemist deck would beat big money + CR if the game had colonies?

[WanderingWinder]

Um, well there are some boards where alchemist is good, just not nearly as many as most people think. It's often quite good if there are other good potion cards out, as this mitigates the cost of actually needing to buy the potion.
On your last point, yes. Colony games provide the length to make alchemist a viable and good strategy.