Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[dmk]

OK, this one is definitely more interesting than the 1st.

http://dominiondeck.com/games/ootd-2

(p) Vineyard
(2) Chapel
(3) Great Hall
(3) Ambassador
(3) Swindler
(3) Smugglers
(3p) Philosopher's Stone
(4) Sea Hag
(4) Farming Village
(4) Young Witch

Really weird setup with no 5+ cards, 2 VPs, and a bunch of attacks.

4/3 = Ambassador/Ambassador? Sea Hag/Ambassador?
5/2 = Sea Hag/Chapel?

[Taco Lobster]

Which card is the defense against Young Witch?

My off-the cuff would be to open Chapel/Young Witch on 5/2 or 4/3.  Sea Hag is too slow for Chapel.  I'd focus on a big money chapel deck, and pick up Farming Villages at 4 to help hunt for gold to help once the deck fills up with provinces.  Farming Village will also help in digging through any Curses/Estates that come your way from Sea Hag/Young Witch/Ambassador as the game progresses.

There's no +Buy to support Vineyards, so I wouldn't go there.

Of course, this is a board where you can (and probably should) react to your opponent's strategy.  If they are loading up on Farming Village and Young Witch, a Swindler can trash those for Potions and slow them down.  It may make more sense to go that route and cripple your opponent's deck rather than push for chapel-money. 

Hmmm...if you wanted to empty piles (curses, plus 2 others, probably farming village and...great hall?), Farming Village, Young Witch, and Smugglers might be appropriate, but it seems like your opponent would have to be cooperating to a certain extent (you would need Smugglers to make up for the lack of a buy, so you want your opponent to hit one of the 2 piles you are focusing on).

[WanderingWinder]

I would probably go Ambassador/Silver (double Amb is also very reasonable) and laugh at my opponent if they go for curse-givers. (Okay, I wouldn't actually laugh).
Chapel/Money is also reasonable, but there's so much good trashing it doesn't seem worth it to go for curse-givers. Potion cards can be totally ignored. Actually I think this is still rather boring with the exception of whether Ambassador or chapel is the way to go - either way, beyond this, it's going to be very close to just going Big Money.
I guess the next most interesting thing is when to buy the swindler.

[ackack]

I guess the next most interesting thing is when to buy the swindler.

It's not obvious to me one would be desirable at all, since Provinces, Duchies and Golds are all unswindlable in this setup. Seems like if you wanted to play one at all, early is probably best (or if you happen to get out to a big lead). I'd get Smugglers over Swindler here.

[Taco Lobster]

Young Witch's filtering is relevant - it can help a Chapel get to 6 earlier to buy a gold.  I'm not sure the ambassadors = no curse giving attacks, particularly if you're chapeling them away as soon as they get put in your hand. 

[WanderingWinder]

Well, but after very long at all, you can't just assume that you can chapel stuff away instantly. Yes, you'll get it eventually, but it'll be a nuisance in the meantime. And with 2 Ambassadors rolling, you're going to get those curses back more quickly with the ambassadors than the chapel could.

[Taco Lobster]

But if the Young Witch gets you a gold earlier, that will help a lot in weathering future attacks and let you purchase an Ambassador/Farming Village down the line.  Double Ambassador is a high risk, high reward open.  If you get one Ambassador and at least one Estate per hand after the first shuffle, I doubt Chapel will catch-up.  If you get double Ambassador and 3 coppers, it's a different story.  Young Witch/Chapel is slightly less luck based - the Young Witch will let you flush the Chapel and cycle your deck a little if it ends up in a hand that you don't want to chapel away (e.g., Chapel, YW, 3 coppers).

I'm not sure, but it doesn't seem so obvious that I would call either strategy laughable.  I've learned that laughing at an opponent's open is a good way to get over-confident and lose.

[KMueller]

I like the Chapel better as defense against the attacks, and to avoid the curse and copper tennis match. However, it is susceptible to the Swindler, as it may get turned into an estate. The Ambassador is better suited, as your opponent is forced to turn it into something useful.

Overall, I would be tempted to go with the Chapel/Money, with villages, a Young Witch and a Smuggler supporting cast.  But, if my opponent went with Swindler, I would react with an Ambassador.

[Zaphod]

Looking at this set...wow, Ambassador, Swindler and two Curse-dealing cards?  That's a lot of different ways to clutter up your opponent's deck.  You can Chapel or Ambassador away all the crap you're about to get, or you can stock up on Farming Villages and  Philosopher's Stones.  A  Philosopher's Stone could be worth major coin in that set, and Farming Villages would bypass some of the garbage in your deck to draw them.

There should be an eleventh card, but you only list ten.  With Young Witch in there, you need a bane card.

[ShuffleNCut]

I was just asking the Ambassador vs Sea Hag question in another thread.  I'm pretty sure Amb/Amb is going to out perform any of the other options here.  You will trash just as fast as a chapel player (chapel + sea hag = four possible trashes in two actions, same as two ambassadors) and you can hand back any curses you may receive as well as bloating your opponent's deck with more crap (chapel + sea hag = they get one card, two ambassadors = they get two cards).

It's also harder to get the 2x silver+2x copper off witch than you'd think early on, especially when facing multiple ambassadors.  Young witch is slightly worse than sea hag early on even if the bane card is crap; giving your opponent four card hands early on is pretty good before he has golds in his deck.  When the curses are gone you will probably be trashing hag so the fact that it does nothing in the end game is less relevant. 

Also, I think I would probably go straight big money/ambassador and not bother with farming villages and such.  If there were a market or easy +buy out there I might try to go for some turbo vineyard/great hall/farming village disaster but that kind of feels terrible.

[Amaranth]

Note that there is (sort of) a +buy card to boost the Vineyard's value. Smugglers.

[DG]

I'd probably look to play ambassador(s)/young witch/village(s) for a while, buying great halls while the size war is being fought, then taking an option to move onto vineyards. Curses, great halls, and vinyards will probably then deplete, or swindlers might deplete something else. I suspect that trying to ride out the deck expansion with philospher's stones for provinces will just result in you just getting 10 curses for a losing game. I suspect swindlers can be ignored as a calculated risk.

The extra attack cards probably push the balance in favour of ambassador over a chapel as there will be a continual deterioration of your deck and you might as well pass that problem back to your opponent. The villages also help ambassadors more than chapels.

Knowing the bane card for the young witch will change everything btw.

[WanderingWinder]

I tend to agree with DG at least on the Phil Stone issue. I love the card, I've used it to beat Ambassador before, but I was honestly probably quite lucky to do so, and this board doesn't have any other trumps for it either. The problem is that, although the Phil Stones will be worth a zillion dollars, you'll almost never be able to get them into your hand. So you'll get maybe two provinces but just be blown off the board. The GH+Vineyards idea is interesting...
But the thing is, on a board like this, I'm not so much going to have a single, grand net strategy going into the game. I have to watch very much what's happening on the board and what my opponent is doing and adjust accordingly. A lot of boards, that's not as important, but with something like this, with a lot of directions and potential interaction and different speeds, it's critical

[Rjax36]

I would open ambassador chapel (in that order if I don't have 2/5 since ambassador is the more predictable card, it seems)

In this setup there is no powerful engine to be bought, the game will ultimately be won by money.  This means that deck speed and size are of the utmost importance (for example, if there was fishing-village + envoy + goons i would be a bit more concerned with building up my money sooner). Chapel Ambassador beats ambassador ambassador on money boards (I tested this a few times with a friend and it did not seem close, at all.)

If my opponent doesn't get an ambassador (sea hag/YW + chapel maybe?) I would pick up a farming village and a sea hag (or maybe buy a curse, it depends on the exact situation) to punish them.  Once i've won the size war I would begin slowing building my money up. 

If my opponent concedes the size war quickly and tries to buy golds to seek in some provinces and win on piles (since I'll have been buying gh's), then I'll need to keep pace (transitioning from GH to silver earlier than i would like to), but it shouldn't be so hard considering how slow their deck will be.

Note that smugglers is useless against ambassador-chapel.  Swinder can be annoying if it gets multiple lucky hits, but really every non-trashing terminal you buy on this board is a HUGE risk.  I woudln't touch either of these cards. 

The potion cards don't seem like they would work here...too slow. 

[Teproc]

This is a tough choice, mainly between Amb and Chapel, and I think it mainly depends on your opponent's strategy. Id he goes for a curse-giver, Amb is infinitely better, but if he doesn't, I like Chapel/Silver much better.

[Amaranth]

Knowing the bane card for the young witch will change everything btw.

Especially if the bane card is Lighthouse, but Hamlet would strengthen the Potion strategy quite a bit.

[Thisisnotasmile]

There are only 10 cards there. There should be 11 for a Young Witch game. Obviously the site which generated this set hasn't been adjusted to deal with bane cards, so none of the given cards are the bane. Choose your own 11th card if you're desperate to know what the bane is.