“Assumedly dondon” is indeed me
Brief overview of the tournament formatFor those of you who don’t want to dig up the thread containing the link to RGG’s website, here’s a rundown of the tournament format. All games played were 3-player games, no more, no less, and all games except for the final round game had a time limit of 35 minutes. Forge!!! covered this pretty succinctly.
First round gamesEach player plays 3 games with predetermined sets from Base and Intrigue. The top 9 players, ranked by number of 1st place wins, then by total number of points, go onto the second round. 2nd place rankings do not count (i.e., getting 2nd place is functionally as bad as getting 3rd place). As it just so happened, there were only 8 participants in this qualifier, so everyone got a free pass to the 2nd round. I just took this opportunity to get to know the other players and fool around a bit. Because we were short 1 player, the tournament organizer stood in as a player to allow for 3 games to go on simultaneously.
Second round gamesEach player plays 3 games. The 1st of the 3 games is a predetermined set from Base and Intrigue, with Governor to round out the kingdom. For the 2nd of the 3 games, each player, in turn order, removes a card from the kingdom and replaces it with another one of their choice from Base or Intrigue (kind of like veto mode, but not really). For the last of the 3 games, the players are shuffled to different tables, and repeat the veto process. The top 3 players, ranked by number of wins, then by total number of points, advance to the final round.
Final round gameThe 3 finalists play 1 game using a predetermined set from Base, Intrigue, and Cornucopia. 1st place is declared winner of the tournament and gets all the glory that goes with it, etc.
Other stuffTurn order is decided randomly. Kind of like drawing numbers from a hat, except replace the hat with a table and replace the numbers with face-down Copper / Curse / Estate cards.
First round: game 1Bridge, Chapel, Council Room, Mining Village, Market, Masquerade, Militia, Pawn, Torturer, VillageWe were able to peruse these kingdoms upon arrival, prior to actually starting the tournament, and this set jumped out to me as having the most interesting somewhat-diverging strategies. Village-Torturer is strong, and players who can fire off a Torturer chain first would be at an advantage. The first decision that I had to make was how to build the engine: Chapel trashes quickly, but Masquerade is a hard counter to a single play of Torturer and doesn’t result in tempo loss. I opened Masquerade / Silver; my opponents opened with Chapel. Forge!!! was one of my opponents this round, so hopefully he can chime in with his thoughts. I recall that he was terribly unlucky and couldn't reach $5 for awhile.
Sadly, I’ve not much experience with Torturer, as my IRL play group has Torturer banned and I don’t play on Iso. I handled opponent Torturer attacks well, but by the time I got my own engine going, the Curses were nearly gone, and shortly afterwards, repeated plays of Council Room – Militia started to hurt. My deck was in relatively good condition, with no Curses, but it was a little too large to draw reliably with 3 Torturers and a Council Room, so I had to settle for 2nd in this match.
First round: game 2Baron, Festival, Ironworks, Moat, Moneylender, Smithy, Swindler, Trading Post, Upgrade, WitchUpon skimming this kingdom, I debated whether it would be worth focusing on playing defensive with Trading Post and Upgrade or playing offensive with Swindler and Witch. From my experience, 3-player games tend to have some sort of equilibrium where a defensive player wins against 2 attackers and an offensive player wins against 2 defenders.
My opponents in this round were the tournament organizer and a player who looked like she wasn’t really familiar with the game (from here on referred to as Kristi) – she was picking up Coppers with her extra buys and greening really early on Duchies and Estates. The tournament organizer seemed to be playing in more of an obstructive manner (i.e., a lot of Swindlers) instead of playing to win, which helped me out a lot in the end. I opened Moneylender / Silver, picking up an Upgrade with my first $5, fully intending to play defensively, but neither opponent actually picked up a Witch. On my next 2 $5s, I picked up a couple of Witches, picked up some Golds, and steamrolled to victory. I think I had something like 7 or 8 Provinces by the end of the game, and I had to buy Gold when I would normally prefer Duchy in order to end the game on Provinces. Due to this, I got a huge score in this game (51 points IIRC) whereas other players scored in a much more reasonable range, as expected from a Witch game.
First round: game 3Bureaucrat, Laboratory, Minion, Saboteur, Spy, Thief, Throne Room, Tribute, Wishing Well, WoodcutterI had a hunch that this was going to be a race for the Minions, because when compared to the previous 2 games, this kingdom was rather lackluster. No trashing makes a Minion strategy difficult to get running consistently, and more opponents competing for a Minion split makes a pure Minion strategy downright unfeasible. Regardless, I buckled down and hammered the Minions, while my opponents (one of whom was Forge!!!) chose to ignore them entirely.
Unfortunately, my deck was not coming along at a good speed, and I was nervous by the fact that once my engine was up and running, my opponents had already split ~6 of the provinces, and I wasn’t able to do double-Province turns to catch up. After that, I hammered the Labs and Throne Rooms, and picked up a couple of Thieves and a Saboteur to effectively pin my opponents. I picked up a few of the Provinces and Duchies while thrashing their decks, and by the time 1 Province was left in the supply, neither of them had enough treasures to reliably draw $8 for the last Province.
I was confident that this game was mine, because from that point on, my opponents’ decks could only get worse… until the tournament organizer announced that there were only 3 minutes remaining for the round. Each of my turns took over a minute to play, and I was afraid that there wouldn’t be another chance to get some more points. I bought the last Province and came in 3rd place for this one, but it was really close: 33 – 31 – 30. One more turn, or another Sab hit on a Province, and I probably would have come out on top.
In retrospect, this strategy would have been a lot more decisive if I had forgone a few Minions for Labs in order to secure the pin. It's hard to match up Throne Rooms with the desired actions when you repeatedly force yourself to play with 4-card hands.
IntermissionMost of the players took this opportunity to grab lunch, but I wasn’t feeling hungry and wanted to peruse the kingdom for the next game. I chatted strategy with a player named Matthew (I forgot his Iso username; sorry Matt!) and a few others, among them a really amicable guy named Miles, Forge!!!, and the tournament organizer (whose name was Michael).
Second round: game 1Cellar, Courtyard, Shanty Town, Steward, Conspirator, Militia, Feast, Scout, Mine, GovernorGovernor rears its head in this first game, which was a predetermined set. It didn’t seem like many of the players were aware of the Governor engine, so my plan was just that – except a Governor engine is harder to do when your opponents split the Governors. Nevertheless, I dove into the game with Governor / Cellar on a 5/2 split, hoping to cycle more quickly to Governors, gaining Gold, which would allow me to buy more Governors. I picked up a Steward along the way to act like a poor man’s Chapel, but it ultimately was only used twice to trash cards, and I found that a Militia was more useful instead because it was pretty difficult to line up my Governors with my Golds.
In the end, I wasn’t too keen on trying to go for the Governor mega-turn, since I was falling behind and I would risk not being to catch up due to running out of remodeling targets for my Golds. I get a double-Province turn with Governor, get a Province-Duchy turn the same way, and pick up another Duchy and another Province. During the game, I had realized, after picking up the last Governor in the supply, that we had accidentally left the randomizer card in the kingdom, which meant that there were 11 Governors split between all of us. When I drew the errant Governor, I took it out of my deck and replaced it with a Duchy, which would have been my next preferred $5 had I not been able to get Governors. Turned out that this made the difference, as I scraped a 33-30 victory over Matt, who came in 2nd place (I don’t remember who my other opponent was this round). Though, if you think about it, having that extra Governor likely would have put me up even more…
Second round: game 2Cellar, Courtyard, Shanty Town, Steward, Masquerade, Feast, Conspirator, Adventurer, Market, MineForge!!!, Miles, and I drew cards to determine our turn order, and to my chagrin, I drew last. Forge!!! drew 1st in the turn order and vetoed Militia, replacing it with the relatively useless Adventurer to facilitate a Governor strategy. IIRC I think Miles actually vetoed Governor and replaced it with Market, but I would have vetoed Governor anyway because it confers a huge first player advantage. I knocked out Scout and replaced it with Masquerade; BM Masquerade with Courtyard was actually in a game that I practiced the previous night with my IRL play group, and I was very comfortable with the strategy, even though there is still a small first player advantage. I opened Masquerade / Silver, serendipitously drew $6 on turn 3 for a Gold, picked up a couple more Golds and a Courtyard, and won by a comfortable margin.
Second round: game 3Cellar, Courtyard, Chapel, Shanty Town, Steward, Workshop, Militia, Laboratory, Market, FestivalFor this round, I was matched against Kristi and Matt. I drew second in the turn order; Matt first, and Kristi last. Seeing fantastic potential for a Conspirator engine, Matt brought Chapel into the game. I, too, saw the same thing, and selected Workshop. Come Kristi’s turn, she decided that she didn’t like Conspirator because it was a card that she wasn’t familiar with, and vetoed it… I’m not entirely sure what she picked, but I think it was Lab.
Matt and I, our hopes dashed, nevertheless stuck with our original plan and opened with Chapel. Matt drew $5 and picked up Festival; I got $4 and opted for Militia instead, hoping to hurt a couple of opponent Chapel hands. Kristi opened with Militia as well, but since she didn’t open Chapel, I mostly ignored her for the rest of the match. Between rounds, someone had given her some instruction on her playstyle and decision-making, and she showed a
significant improvement compared to our previous match (if you get a chance to read this, your improvement was markedly astounding).
Matt trashed most of his deck down and seemed to be going for a Festival-Courtyard draw engine, which is extremely suspect at best because Courtyard is only a net +1 card and Festival is a net -1 card. I instead hammered the Markets, grabbing 5 of them, then picked up 3 Golds and a handful of Labs. At this point, I had exactly $16 in my deck and could reliably play my Militia every turn, leaving my opponents permanently with 3-card hands. 3 double-Province and 3 single-Province turns later, I emptied the Province pile with 9 of the 12 Provinces for a convincing rout.
Final round gameSecret Chamber, Village, Fortune Teller, Hamlet, Great Hall, Jester, Nobles, Menagerie, Harem, RemodelAfter the results tallied from the previous games, it was Forge!!!, a guy named Brian, and me in the tournament final. At this point I had developed somewhat of a reputation as
that guy, in no small part due to those 2 games that I played with Kristi where I won by a huge margin. I admitted to Forge!!! that because I didn’t own Cornucopia and didn’t play on Iso, I had never actually played a real match with Cornucopia cards before. It didn’t seem like Brian had any experience with Cornucopia, and he confirmed that after the game.
At first glance, this kingdom really strongly favors Hamlet-Menagerie, especially due to the presence of Remodel, and with both Village and Nobles, one can also integrate a draw engine. So I do exactly that. I open Remodel / Silver, turn my Estates into Menageries, buy a couple of Silvers, Hamlets, and Villages, and start buying Nobles and a Jester with my decent money density. I had a slight bit of good luck being able to convert all of my Estates to Menageries with my first 3 Remodel plays. Quite soon I was able to draw my whole deck, bought some more money, got a second Jester by hitting Forge!!!’s Jester with my Jester, and managed to get exactly $16 in my deck (in no small part due to an extra Copper that Forge!!!’s Jester gave me). I got 3 double-Province turns, grab another Province, and empty the Province pile by using Remodel on a Province. Brian wasn’t aware of the Hamlet-Menagerie interaction and really didn’t have a coherent strategy, and Forge!!! forgot about Remodel’s utility in this kingdom, and his engine got up and running much later than mine.
Unfortunately, my turns took
absolutely forever. My apologies to Forge!!! and Brian, and kudos to both of you for your patience.
Final thoughtsI had to come all the way down from my university to attend this tournament, which entailed approximately 2+ hours of commuting in either direction due to the train schedule being completely uncooperative on weekends. The outcome aside, I really enjoyed the tournament; the participants were all extremely amicable and patient people, the venue was pleasant, and the tournament organizer was very patient with my (probably annoying) constant questions and requests.
Congratulations to Forge!!! for getting 2nd place; he was a solid player and definitely deserved a high placing.