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[Asklepios]

A simple thread:
Post game links to games you deservedly lost, and the lesson you learnt from losing the game.

Game: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120411-114720-992b1925.html
Lesson: Sometimes you need +cards for an engine to work, and that relying on Masquerade to be that +cards doesn't usually cut it.
I thought about playing Masquerade + BM, then decided instead to try a funky engine involving Inns and Jesters and Horse Traders. Net result: I never had enough cards in hand, and never reached $8 save on one very lucky turn when Horse Trader had increased my hand size.

Game: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120411-104551-25c6b8a0.html
Lesson: Get the treasure map after the engine, not before.
I had great visions of kings court / council room / witch engines that had a heap of gold from treasure maps. I knew that the odds of early treasure map collision were low, but hoped lookout would facilitate them. Despite superb luck getting my Moat on almost every occasion that I was KC-Witched, I still lost, and that was because my opponent built his engine first, then got the Treasure Maps afterwards,

Game: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120411-102500-f3b1a3ee.html
Lesson: The slower the game, the better Monument becomes. Playing monument and slowing down the game is a strong play.
I like Monument a lot, and registered that Ambassador would slow the game down, but also that Hunting Parties would speed it up. I also figured an early Ambassador advantage would be decisive. I could not have bene more wrong. I got off to a storming early lead, and indeed my early lead on the Ambassador war had me in a very strong position. Then it all came apart as my own VP and my opponent's Ambassador advantage started to clog up my deck, and the engine that my opponent had built while I was greening allowed him to continue to draw Ambassadors and lock me out. After that it was a slow Monument-grind to a loss.
Now if I was smart, I would have taken measures earlier in the game to up the tempo of the game. Even ambassadoring a province might have been a smart thing to do. Alternatively, I maybe should have realised that my goal was 8 provinces to get in a winning position for the game, not 4 provinces, so bought gold instead of province the first couple of times. As it was, I got to what would normally be considered a dominant position, but then got knocked down by an engine that controlled the tempo of the game.

[theory]

Game: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120412-095354-3e2820af.html

Lesson: AVeryHappyFish demonstrates his love of engines and crushes a Witch auto-play strategy by ignoring it for Workshop/Caravan/KC first.

[Asklepios]

Game: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120412-095354-3e2820af.html

Lesson: AVeryHappyFish demonstrates his love of engines and crushes a Witch auto-play strategy by ignoring it for Workshop/Caravan/KC first.

Good one. I'm not at the level of you guys, but I'd say that the lesson of that game is that Kings Court works better if you can play non-terminal draw cards to get the Kings Courts in your hand!

[RisingJaguar]

Game: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120411-102500-f3b1a3ee.html
Lesson: The slower the game, the better Monument becomes. Playing monument and slowing down the game is a strong play.
I like Monument a lot, and registered that Ambassador would slow the game down, but also that Hunting Parties would speed it up. I also figured an early Ambassador advantage would be decisive. I could not have bene more wrong. I got off to a storming early lead, and indeed my early lead on the Ambassador war had me in a very strong position. Then it all came apart as my own VP and my opponent's Ambassador advantage started to clog up my deck, and the engine that my opponent had built while I was greening allowed him to continue to draw Ambassadors and lock me out. After that it was a slow Monument-grind to a loss.
Now if I was smart, I would have taken measures earlier in the game to up the tempo of the game. Even ambassadoring a province might have been a smart thing to do. Alternatively, I maybe should have realised that my goal was 8 provinces to get in a winning position for the game, not 4 provinces, so bought gold instead of province the first couple of times. As it was, I got to what would normally be considered a dominant position, but then got knocked down by an engine that controlled the tempo of the game.

This is probably a little off.  It's weird that a person wins the ambassador war, so much they bought a curse, then the final result is totally different.  The usual answer to this is the person that was winning went BM afterwards, which is the lesson to be learned.  Ambassador thrives in an engine because one it can throw away your trash for your engine as well as use your ambassador more often.  This will allow you to keep playing tennis after you've built the lead (in BM, the ambassador doesn't always get placed with the junk).  This will really solidfy your ambassador win.  Don't worry, it's happen to us all. 

Game: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111227-121554-f6820cfb.html
Lesson: Read above.  Also was part of the dominion strategy tournament. 

[CoheedandCambria]

Those graphs look really funny

[theory]

Those graphs look really funny

Outpost is the main reason why.

[timchen]

Game: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120412-095354-3e2820af.html

Lesson: AVeryHappyFish demonstrates his love of engines and crushes a Witch auto-play strategy by ignoring it for Workshop/Caravan/KC first.

I don't agree. Maybe simulation can give some insight?
It seems to me that his turn 5 KC is the key, and he had the absolute best luck to get to it. While his KC is late in his subsequent shuffle it did lead him to the second KC. From the log his workshop draw is close to ideal as well; didn't miss a single shuffle.

[Geronimoo]

turn 5 KC when he hardly has an economy is quite lucky. Once he has the KC, everything becomes possible. On average his strategy is a losing one, but you can't blame him from trying; especially on the draw.

[Asklepios]

Game: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120411-102500-f3b1a3ee.html
Lesson: The slower the game, the better Monument becomes. Playing monument and slowing down the game is a strong play.
I like Monument a lot, and registered that Ambassador would slow the game down, but also that Hunting Parties would speed it up. I also figured an early Ambassador advantage would be decisive. I could not have bene more wrong. I got off to a storming early lead, and indeed my early lead on the Ambassador war had me in a very strong position. Then it all came apart as my own VP and my opponent's Ambassador advantage started to clog up my deck, and the engine that my opponent had built while I was greening allowed him to continue to draw Ambassadors and lock me out. After that it was a slow Monument-grind to a loss.
Now if I was smart, I would have taken measures earlier in the game to up the tempo of the game. Even ambassadoring a province might have been a smart thing to do. Alternatively, I maybe should have realised that my goal was 8 provinces to get in a winning position for the game, not 4 provinces, so bought gold instead of province the first couple of times. As it was, I got to what would normally be considered a dominant position, but then got knocked down by an engine that controlled the tempo of the game.

This is probably a little off.  It's weird that a person wins the ambassador war, so much they bought a curse, then the final result is totally different.  The usual answer to this is the person that was winning went BM afterwards, which is the lesson to be learned.  Ambassador thrives in an engine because one it can throw away your trash for your engine as well as use your ambassador more often.  This will allow you to keep playing tennis after you've built the lead (in BM, the ambassador doesn't always get placed with the junk).  This will really solidfy your ambassador win.  Don't worry, it's happen to us all. 

Interesting! So in Turn 10-14, perhaps a Hunting Party or Witch plus Native Villages would have been better than gold and silver respectively?
I managed to get to 4:0 Provinces, then it all started going wrong from the return-ambassador

[dondon151]

Interesting! So in Turn 10-14, perhaps a Hunting Party or Witch plus Native Villages would have been better than gold and silver respectively?
I managed to get to 4:0 Provinces, then it all started going wrong from the return-ambassador

Witch is probably not necessary in an Ambassador game because the Ambassador can sort of serve that purpose with a good enough setup. Part of the problem is that by the time you committed to getting Provinces without good cycling cards in your deck, you've pretty much already lost. I don't think that a single HP buy at turn 10 would have saved you there, but if you had hammered the HPs from the get-go instead of buying Provinces, then you could have wrecked your opponent's deck to the point where he wouldn't be able to get enough HPs to mount a comeback. You would also deny him the HPs and the split might have even went in your favor - in any case, he wouldn't be able to recover with Monuments if he only had 4 HPs in his deck.

One thing to learn from this is that engine Ambassador games are usually games of chicken. If there's no alt VPs on the board that benefit from Ambassador's attack (e.g., Gardens, Silk Road), then the dominant strategy is to just continue building up. For this reason, if you plan on winning with VP cards, then you can only afford to buy as many as to keep your engine running in top shape.

[Asklepios]

I think I was feeling the pressure from the Monument, and that pushed me into trying to get provinces as quick as possible.

All in all, that probably wasn't too smart, as I would have needed to get all eight provinces to end the game whereas all my opponent needed to do was to turn around the Ambassador war, then slow grind to victory with Monuments.

All in all, I think Monument / Ambassador was a stronger opening.

[dondon151]

Well, I think Ambassador / Silver is a fine opening. It lets you get to those crucial HPs faster because Silver is not dead in a collision hand, and Monument doesn't provide much early on in the way of VPs. You'd probably want to pick one up soon, but I'd personally go with Silver over Monument.

[RisingJaguar]

Game: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120411-102500-f3b1a3ee.html
Lesson: The slower the game, the better Monument becomes. Playing monument and slowing down the game is a strong play.
I like Monument a lot, and registered that Ambassador would slow the game down, but also that Hunting Parties would speed it up. I also figured an early Ambassador advantage would be decisive. I could not have bene more wrong. I got off to a storming early lead, and indeed my early lead on the Ambassador war had me in a very strong position. Then it all came apart as my own VP and my opponent's Ambassador advantage started to clog up my deck, and the engine that my opponent had built while I was greening allowed him to continue to draw Ambassadors and lock me out. After that it was a slow Monument-grind to a loss.
Now if I was smart, I would have taken measures earlier in the game to up the tempo of the game. Even ambassadoring a province might have been a smart thing to do. Alternatively, I maybe should have realised that my goal was 8 provinces to get in a winning position for the game, not 4 provinces, so bought gold instead of province the first couple of times. As it was, I got to what would normally be considered a dominant position, but then got knocked down by an engine that controlled the tempo of the game.

This is probably a little off.  It's weird that a person wins the ambassador war, so much they bought a curse, then the final result is totally different.  The usual answer to this is the person that was winning went BM afterwards, which is the lesson to be learned.  Ambassador thrives in an engine because one it can throw away your trash for your engine as well as use your ambassador more often.  This will allow you to keep playing tennis after you've built the lead (in BM, the ambassador doesn't always get placed with the junk).  This will really solidfy your ambassador win.  Don't worry, it's happen to us all. 

Interesting! So in Turn 10-14, perhaps a Hunting Party or Witch plus Native Villages would have been better than gold and silver respectively?
I managed to get to 4:0 Provinces, then it all started going wrong from the return-ambassador

The simplistic way I look at ambassador games is that there are two battles: VP count battle and Size of your deck.  VP count is what we normally battle on, getting provinces or VP points and what not.  What changes is that ambassador games leads are so reliant on how many cards each person has.  More precisely, this is important because the more cards in their deck usually mean they have more junk in their deck via ambassador. 

As you can see in your game, even though you had the VP lead, the size of the deck has a huge effect in the rest of the game.  For one, you can't play ambassador as much as you did earlier that built the lead, and when you do get it, you might have it like Province/ambassador/gold/silver/silver.  Suddenly its just a dead card.  Three, the opponent can use his thinned out deck to 'attack' consistently. 

To compensate for this, you should have a period after you win ambassador tennis, to spam useful cantrips.  Treasuries, bazaars, markets all work wonderfully whereas cards like festivals wouldn't (unless paired with other +cards) and the same go with Golds (as they take up 'space'.  The point is to continue to build (slowly at times) while attacking them (possibly to the point of giving curses, but there's times not to).  That's why engines are so strong with ambassadors, because the attack keeps coming. 

So in short, yes you should've spent more time getting hunting parties, after one gold was bought.  Obviously watch out for unneccessary three piles and you should win easily. 

[O]

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120416-161509-8114d080.html

Don't university a god damn embassy when you're ending your turn in a gardens game.

[Asklepios]

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/16/game-20120416-161509-8114d080.html

Don't university a god damn embassy when you're ending your turn in a gardens game.

Genius! I can't believe you pushed him exactly into the next VP for his Gardens!

Definitely one to learn from, I'll remember it thanks!