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[Mean Mr Mustard]

<b> Here Toaday, Here Tomorrow</b>

This week we will all play matches dominated by Seaside.  Each match is seven total games.  Make sure that you set Isotropic's filter system to include exactly six cards chosen at random from Seaside!

Please report your results in this thread, and have your match completed by 18:00 GMT Thursday 12 April.  Good luck and have fun!

If you wish to play future matches, feel free to do so... but wait to post the results in that week's thread.

Please make up outstanding matches before the end of Group Stage and report them in the correct week's thread.  Also, if you spot an error in point totals speak up!

Week 2 Match-ups

Eurasia Group:

Geronimoo (12)
vs
Nucleus ( 12 )

Rabid ( 16 )
vs
Mangsky (10)

lespeutere ( 18 )
vs
Dubdubdubdub ( 8 )

MrEevee (16)
vs
luliin (6)

Central Europe Group:

Fabian ( 20 )
vs
ugasoft (13)

ArjanB (7)
vs
StickaRicka (16)

JanErik (14)
vs
Lekkit (18)

angboy (11)
vs
Tonks77 (13)

Eastern America Group

Wandering Winder (10)
vs
Mic Qsenoch ( 20 )

angrybirds (11)
vs
Masticore (16)

Voltaire (2)
vs
Robz888 ( 16 )

zxcvbn2 (9)
vs
blueblimp (12)

Atlantic Group:

Young Nick ( 16 )
vs
DG ( 8 )

Kirian ( 14 )
vs
Jonts26 (22)

Greystripe77 (6)
vs
fit1one (10)

elahrairah13 (10)
vs
andwilk (12)

[Fabian]

ugasoft beats Fabian 5-2

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/05/game-20120405-225512-dd81be44.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/05/game-20120405-225912-397c29e0.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/05/game-20120405-230336-8d9e30f5.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/05/game-20120405-231256-d240a7ae.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/05/game-20120405-232408-5472e03a.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/05/game-20120405-233228-38d07f0b.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/05/game-20120405-233753-2e36a0b7.html

I'm (well, I was) 12-1 or 13-1 in tournament matches lifetime I believe, and proceeded to "lose 4-0" (if this was regular best of 7 format) in what felt like 10 minutes to what I believe is the lowest (second lowest?) ranked tournament opponent I've played. That was.. humbling.

If I was a sore loser I would complain like a crazy person about pretty much every game, but I'm not, so I won't Nice playing you ugsaoft, good luck in the rest.

[ugasoft]

ugasoft beats Fabian 5-2

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/05/game-20120405-225512-dd81be44.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/05/game-20120405-225912-397c29e0.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/05/game-20120405-230336-8d9e30f5.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/05/game-20120405-231256-d240a7ae.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/05/game-20120405-232408-5472e03a.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/05/game-20120405-233228-38d07f0b.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/05/game-20120405-233753-2e36a0b7.html

I'm (well, I was) 12-1 or 13-1 in tournament matches lifetime I believe, and proceeded to "lose 4-0" (if this was regular best of 7 format) in what felt like 10 minutes to what I believe is the lowest (second lowest?) ranked tournament opponent I've played. That was.. humbling.

If I was a sore loser I would complain like a crazy person about pretty much every game, but I'm not, so I won't Nice playing you ugsaoft, good luck in the rest.

It was a pleasure for me to play against one of the greatest Dominion player on Iso.
I still cannot believe I won.
I'm sorry for Fabian, which is, in my opinion, still the favorite of our bracket.
Probably with these 10 points I'll do nothing, but this was my best match so far and I'm proud of my playing!
I may have been lucky in a couple of matches, but in game 5 with tactician in play and several goons and KC in deck I got closer to another win, I missed 2 buys (a single KC in 10 cards...). But it's obviously lame and a "troll attempt" to complain with the luck in that match!!

I wish Fabien good luck for the rest of the tournament!

p.s. letting only first player of each bracket passing to next turn is too luck-dependent in my opinion... A single "wrong day" can kill a strong player...
Would be better to let best 2 pass the round, so we'd have 8 players in Mustard and 8 in Kirian. With another two 8-player divisions we could select final four... Is it too late to propose such a change?

[WanderingWinder]

Wow. Just wow. I'm dumbfounded as to the result of that match. At a quick glance, Fabian must have been terribly unlucky. To be fair to ugasoft, I don't think he actually played that much worse strategies than Fabian in most of the games (1 or 2, yes), and had a slightly better strategy, IMO, in maybe one or two of them (but this is very slight, and Fabian is at least as good a player as me overall, so I could be wrong here; I'm specifically referring to the Jack game, where I would actually have preferred just silver/Jack, eventually getting MS; on the other hand, ambassador is not so great with Jack anyway, so maybe lookout is better nevertheless....)
Games 3 and 7 are the most confusing to me, the ones where just looking at it, I'm like 'clearly Fabian's strategy is better here'. Though maybe in game 7, it isn't? I find that a little hard to believe, but maybe it's at least not so lopsided as my gut thinks. The rest, it seems like ugasoft is at least doing something pretty reasonable, so I'd probably give him at least 40% in each of those, though second player in most of them... okay, still scratching my head here.

[lespeutere]

Wow. Just wow. I'm dumbfounded as to the result of that match. At a quick glance, Fabian must have been terribly unlucky. To be fair to ugasoft, I don't think he actually played that much worse strategies than Fabian in most of the games (1 or 2, yes), and had a slightly better strategy, IMO, in maybe one or two of them (but this is very slight, and Fabian is at least as good a player as me overall, so I could be wrong here; I'm specifically referring to the Jack game, where I would actually have preferred just silver/Jack, eventually getting MS; on the other hand, ambassador is not so great with Jack anyway, so maybe lookout is better nevertheless....)
Games 3 and 7 are the most confusing to me, the ones where just looking at it, I'm like 'clearly Fabian's strategy is better here'. Though maybe in game 7, it isn't? I find that a little hard to believe, but maybe it's at least not so lopsided as my gut thinks. The rest, it seems like ugasoft is at least doing something pretty reasonable, so I'd probably give him at least 40% in each of those, though second player in most of them... okay, still scratching my head here.

Good to see I'm not the only one struggling with these logs. There is one point I'd like to disagree with you, though, which is jack/amb. According to councilroom it is a superior opening compared to jack/lookout (which is rated lower than jack/silver) and slightly better than jack/silver. I was pretty surprised, actually but look at the outcome: 2 coppers for ugasoft and 7 for Fabian.
I'm still totally dumbfounded by the mountebank vs. salvager game..

[DG]

I like the salvager opening on game 3 and that's the game Uga won with the worse draws turns 3/4. Uga got the better draws on most of the others but he usually followed a decent plan through to a good conclusion for those wins.

Interestingly the lighthouse strengthens the kingdom for ambassadors in game 2. Ugo gets 5 provinces in 13 turns since he can use the ambassador to shrink the deck then spend two coppers on the lighthouse. The lighthouse then works in good combination with the jack as a superior silver. The village works well in a small deck. It all comes together.

[philosophyguy]

Looking at Game 7, I think ugasoft's strategy gets an edge because of the Inn. Being able to functionally get an extra play of the Pirate Ships in each shuffle tips the balance. There's no doubt that ugasoft had luck in hitting so many early Silvers and Smithies rather than Copper, but the Inn consolidated that advantage really well.

[Geronimoo]

ugasoft had a little more luck, but also played really well. That's a good way to beat the best players in the world. Fabian made a few mistakes, but those might have been out of frustration and only proves he's human and far from unbeatable (like buying Upgrade over Gold mid game when he was initially going Smithy BM is pretty terrible, but ugasoft's Pirate Ships were hitting every time)

[Fabian]

Geronimoo, what do you base that Upgrade vs Gold comment on? Have you done extensive in-depth simulation of the Smithy/BM vs Pirate Ship/Native Village/Inn/Upgrade [with luck] on turn 6 matchup? I wouldn't mind and just ignore it normally, but a lot of people listen to you and view you as an authority figure, so please just stop with the "this is terrible" comments that you make so often towards me. "I think this is terrible" looks a lot better imo, and certainly is a lot more accurate imo.

philosophyguy, I agree Inn is what made his deck in game 7 crushing me completely, but I don't think he gets to that point without some very lucky Pirate Ship'ing earlier in the match, and I would disagree pretty strongly it "gives his strategy an edge". Though maybe if I'd have bought that Gold..

DG, game 3 is actually probably the game I felt I got most unlucky of all the games, though maybe I feel that way because it's (imo) the game where my strategy was so clearly the strongest, and a perfect storm of crap (at this point we were already joking in chat about how ridiculous the games were, and with every Swindler I played it got funnier, especially the last one of course which loses me the game if he has $8 or $10 and 2 buys, which he did) ended up with me exactly 1 point behind, so it just felt more tilting? I dunno.

lespeutere, councilroom opening data is imo not a useful method of evaluation for all sorts of reasons. That said, it's definitely possible Ambassador is good here, though I wouldn't put much stock in the "because look at the end result" argument, either.

WW, your post seems pretty much accurate to me. I'm not sure about the Jack game either and think it's close, but I wouldn't expect Ambassador to crush anything completely here with average draws on both sides.

ugasoft, I definitely think you played well overall and capitalized on your draws very well, I hope you don't take any offense to the discussion here.

[lespeutere]

lespeutere, councilroom opening data is imo not a useful method of evaluation for all sorts of reasons. That said, it's definitely possible Ambassador is good here, though I wouldn't put much stock in the "because look at the end result" argument, either.

Surely you're right about the councilroom data to not be taken as opening directives. I would've thought lookout works better with jack here, though, as you will have thought, too. And not only here, but in general since there is no collision problem and some kind of deck sorting effect. And then councilroom is not that bad for evaluation, either, although there will be people opening jack/amb or jack/lookout who don't know what they're doing.
For the "end result" argument, I'd like to defend that because coppers are not something you buy here in late game to somehow get the last province or like 2 golds you gain from fool's gold when your opponent buys the last province.
Imho most of us were surprised jack/amb worked out that well, and I just liked to point out that maybe those who are (incl me) should not be.

In general I don't think ugasoft should take any offense from the comments and I'm pretty sure he doesn't. As he said he acknowledges you (with full right) as one of the greatest players and is (and should be) proud of this match.

[Fabian]

The thing with the "look at the end result" argument is it's results oriented thinking. It's possible to dig up a log of pretty much any strategy and say "this is strategy is good, it worked perfectly here". Given that an Ambassador/Jack opening is terrible *and* given that an Ambassador/Jack opening proceeds to draw perfectly and crush some other opening, the end result is decks that will look like "2 copper here, 7+ copper there", but it doesn't eliminate the original assertion that Ambassador/Jack opening is terrible.

You can't be sure that a strategy is good just because it worked one time. The same principle applies to match results (I won three in a row against jonts26, clearly I'm much better than him!)

Here's a great recent example of a game where you could be like "wow nicely played man look how insane your deck got!" but as Geronimoo correctly points out, getting insanely lucky does not a good strategy make, and one shouldn't look at the end result to evaluate whether a play/opening/strategy is good unless your sample size is a lot bigger than 1. It's not a convincing argument to say "x is good because look x worked really well here!", in general.

[DG]

I'll agree with Geronimoo. I winced when I was reading the game log and saw that upgrade for 6 coins. Don't need a simulator for that one. The swindler in game 3 is less obvious but the more you look at it, the weaker it looks. It only shines on a very lucky hit of a mountebank or salvager, and even then the replacement will get salvaged out, just like the mountebank was.

[Fabian]

You misunderstand me DG. I'm not saying Geronimoo is wrong (he might very well be right, I don't know just like he doesn't and you don't), I'm saying his way of expressing it is wrong.

As for game 3, agree to disagree I guess. I would point out though that it's impossible to know the your opponent is getting 3+ Salvager on turn 1/2 when deciding whether to buy Swindler or not, but if I understand you correctly buying multiple Salvagers is a good counter to Swindler which you typically don't see (well, I don't anyway)?

[DG]

I wouldn't have played with so many salvagers but I would certainly have played with a salvager. I would certainly rate that as a poor kingdom for a swindler, so if it is good value then it is only on the assumption that it is powerful despite the kingdom.

[Geronimoo]

It's the internet... it's hard to get your point across while taking into consideration other people's feelings, yet making sure you mean it and also do it in a concise manner.

So what I meant to say was: "I think buying the Upgrade is terrible, because Upgrade is a dead draw with the 2 Smithies, and light trashing is known to be bad for Big Money strategies (mostly because of opportunity cost) an it was bought over Gold which is the cornerstone for a succesful Big Money strategy. This looked like a buy out of frustration or a misclick."

But let there be no doubt about it, I respect your game and overall attitude toward the game immensely Fabian.

[Fabian]

<3 let's all kiss and make up yay.

FWIW I think it's a bad buy too, and I for sure was on mad monkey tilt at this point in the game, and match.

[ugasoft]

Wow, how many comments.

@Fabian, I "don't take any offense to the discussion", don't warry, there's no reason for me to feel bad!

I reviewed our matches and I think yes, game 3 was ridicolous. My strategy was inferior and I was expecting to lose... your swindler hit my estates, my golds (replacing with gold), my curses (repacing with curses)... two times you played mounterbank and I had a curse to discard.... and at the end you had best accidental PPR violation ever! I may say I had 4 provinces and a slim deck, so the odds was high to hit a province, but I was truly lucky.

Reviewing other matches I think I played well and in almost any match our strategies were both good. I think I missed the garden match. I'm noob with garden, and I was not able to split them at least 5-3... While I think that the Pirate Ship and the Jack matches my strategies were strong, and luck was not essential.

In the jack matches I was thinking about going asap to the second Jack, but I'm addicted with Ambassador... and there were sources for +action (Mining Village). With no +action card, I don't know if I had changed my strategy...

In the pirate match, I think that with all that enablers (native, inn, bazaar, upgrade) it was the right strategy. If I didn't hit your "big money" but coppers, I would have reached high pirates value in the same way. Only thing that let me think about going in depth with multipirates was the absence of +buys...

[Fabian]

ugasoft, you fail to mention the most deliciously awful thing with the Swindler game, which is that the only Swindler I "hit" turns a copper into a curse which immediately gets reshuffled into your hand which you then immediately discard to my first Mountebank. Just delicious

[Lekkit]

From a tournament strategy perspective, this is probably one of the best upsets that could happen for me. This also shows that anyone's got a chance of knocking off a few games of the top players. I was really happy when I got beaten by WW by "only" 4-3 in the second IsoDom (I think it was). It's soo good for the "lower ranked" players to see that with a bit of luck and not playing terribly it's worth entering these tournaments.

Having played Fabian IRL a few times I kinda feel for his loss, but I'm pretty sure it would be unwise to count him out just yet. Congrats to ugasoft and keep it up Fabian!

[Stick In The Mud]

Grey stripe beats fit1one 4 -3

[blueblimp]

blueblimp 8 - zxcvbn2 6

Altogether mostly very enjoyable engine games, as I expected from Seaside. Many of my favourite cards from the expansion showed up: Tactician, Treasure Map, Ambassador. The only annoying game was Game 2, which was interesting but too long.

Game 1: zxcvbn2 27 - blueblimp 37: BM+Wharf is good
Game 2: zxcvbn2 52 - blueblimp 49: Weird possession slog... masquerade and tactician involved
Game 3: blueblimp 56 - zxcvbn2 28: Caravans key to big Goons turns
Game 4: zxcvbn2 38 - blueblimp 21: Terrible Warehouse/Treasure Map luck
Game 5: blueblimp 29 - zxcvbn2 18: After Ambassador, I built the better draw engine
Game 6: zxcvbn2 17 - blueblimp 30: 5 province megaturn from Ambassador/$10 Pirate Ship/Tactician/Worker's Village
Game 7: zxcvbn2 42 - blueblimp 34: How not to play Silk Road

Detailed comments:

Game 2: Seeing his Masquerade opening and having opened Tactician/Haven myself, I figure I can play a Possession each turn, use his deck to buy VP, and use his Masquerade to pass me his VP--even though I can only play one Possession per turn. This sort of works, but his Possessions disrupt my double Tactician plan, and I get some poor luck on Possession turns, not managing a colony buy while he gets two--although later I pass one of them to me. Really strange game, which in the end I lose by violating PPR.

Game 3: Goons is here, as are villages. The only way to increase hand-size is Caravan, so I identify this as a key card and get a 8-2 split on them. From there, it's much easier for me to get big Goons turns and take the win.

Game 4: This is possibly the worst luck I have ever had with Treasure Map. Despite opening Warehouse/Treasure Map and buying four Warehouses, I don't connect my Treasure Maps until turn 14. I could (and probably should) have bought more Maps, so that's not to say my play here was optimal.

Game 7: He opens Cutpurse/Ambassador without much engine potential, while I open Horse Traders/Silver with intent to go Silk Roads. Should be an easy win, right? But I buy too many Estates early instead of coppers, so once the Estates and Silk Roads are gone, I hit $4 over and over and can't get enough Duchies to win.

[Geronimoo]

Game 7 is very very strange. Your decision to go for Silk Road in response to your opponent's Ambassador is solid. Your opponent then starts making a bunch of mistakes (at least, I would have played these different and they might not be big mistakes):

-turn 4 he buys a Horse Traders while you have no attacks AND he has 3 terminal actions already. Silver would have been better there.
-turn 5 he plays his Ambassador to return 2 Coppers instead of an Estate, but the mistake is he could have played Merchant Ship instead which would lead to 2 good buys
-turn 7 he buys a Potion... Vineyard is nice as extra green for Silk Roads, but buying a Silver instead would have enabled Province buys later in the game which is much nicer green
-turn 17 he doesn't buy Copper yet his deck is getting flooded with green
-turn 19 he buys a Native Village which doesn't help at all to revive his economy (the +VP for Vineyards is hardly worth it)

Yet he wins easily!!! There are 3 reasons for this: he fights you on the Silk Roads, you go for the Estates a little too early and him having the one Merchant Ship. This card is an economy all on its own.

[zxcvbn2]

Yeah, I didn't really decide to go for SR until around turn 4, so that game was really a bad case of me changing my strategy part way through. All of your comments are appreciated for the advice, and I realize I was very lucky.

[blueblimp]

Thanks for your analysis. I may also have bought too many Horse Traders. My reasoning at the time was that between Amb and Cutpurse, they would get triggered enough that they wouldn't significantly clog my deck, but in hindsight I think some of them would have been more helpful as silvers.

A comment on the Vineyards, too: the Potion worked out very well for him. The first time he used it, he bought a Silk Road in the same turn, so arguably the SR+VY turn was superior to getting a single Province. The second time he used it, if that Potion were a silver, he'd have only $7; by that point, the estates were gone, so Duchy+VY is better than Duchy alone. The third and final time he used it, if the Potion were a Silver, he'd have only $3 (and the Estates were gone), so without the Potion he wouldn't be able to get any green at all.

In the end, his VYs accounted for 6 points by themselves, and 4 more points by bumping up his SRs one level, for a total of 10 points, greater than the margin of victory.

[Geronimoo]

He was able to pair his only Potion and only Horse Trader in two critical turns which enabled the Duchy+VY and Silk Road+VY. If he's less lucky he buys only a Vineyard those turns.
It just looks like a bad bet on average (but it might not be as bad as I feel).