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[Kirian]

[As suggested/requested in this post.]

All of the analyses posted on the Dominion Strategy blog are of high-level games, where the players are playing different strategies but nearly-perfect play.  Which is as it should be; the best way to learn is to look at the best players.

Nonetheless, novices playing their own games often end up wondering:  What did I do wrong?  That strategy should have worked, so did I screw up along the way?  Or was the other guy just lucky?

The intent of this thread is for novices to post a game where they did poorly for whatever reason, and for someone more knowledgeable to analyze the game and help the novice understand what they did wrong.  So, post away!

[WanderingWinder]

All of the analyses posted on the Dominion Strategy blog are of high-level games,

I agree with this

where the players are playing different strategies but nearly-perfect play. 

but not with this. The games may be high level, but most of the time, I think they're far from perfect.

[Kirian]

Our first analysis is of this game, between ^_^_^_^, who I'll call foureyes because it's a lot easier to type, and userynamery.  The tableau is:

Chapel, Native Village, Embargo, Warehouse, Navigator, Baron, Library, Merchant Ship, Wharf, Goons.

Executive Summary:  Usery gets exceptionally lucky, drawing Baron-SCCE on both T3 and T5, and heads straight into Goons; foureyes' Chapel strategy goes south because of terminal clashes.

Openings:  foureyes opens Chapel/Baron; usery opens Silver/Baron.

Chapel and Baron are incompatible cards.  One of the objects of Chapel is to get rid of one's Estates; chances are you'll only use that Baron once, maybe twice, before it becomes a liability--and if you draw the two together, Baron is a huge liability.

Turn	Usery	Foureyes
3	8->Goons, NV	3->Silver
4	3->Silver	Chapel: E, 3C
5	8->Province	6->Goons

Usery gets ridiculously lucky, drawing Baron-SCCE not once, but twice in Turns 3 and 5.  The first he plays well; the second he plays incredibly poorly.  While a Province on T5 looks great on paper, it really clogs one's deck.  Another Goons/NV would have been a better play there.  Meanwhile, foureyes draws his Chapel on both T4 and T5--and on the latter it clashes with the Baron.  Had the Baron been a Silver instead (standard Chapel/Silver opening), this hand would have trashed two more cards and gained another Silver.  Instead, he buys Goons with the Baron.  Instead of having trashed 6 cards at this point, he's trashed 4; this is a huge difference, though the Goons will help offset that.

Turn	Usery	Foureyes
6	5->Wharf	8->Gold, NV
7	Goons; 4->Embargo, NV	Goons, 4->NV, NV
8	4->Silver	Chapel: C; 3->Warehouse

Foureyes' Chapel clashes again, this time with his Goons on T7.  On T8 he finally trashes one more card... but does not trash the Estate in hand, presumably saving it for his Baron.

Now, let's step back a bit and assume foureyes had bought Silvers instead of other terminals.  His T5, instead of Baron-Chapel-CCE, would have been Chapel-SCCE.  Instead of buying Goons, he trashes CCE and buys NV.  T6 he draws SSCCE->Goons... and reshuffles an extra time!  The only thing in his discard is Chapel/NV.

Foureyes' deck at T6:  Chapel, Baron, NV, Goons, GSCCCCEE (12 cards, av. value 11/12 plus Baron chance, av. hand value 4.5)
Thinned deck at T6:  Chapel, NV, Goons, SSCCE (8 cards, av. value 8/8, av. hand value 5)
Opponent:  Baron, Goons, NV, Wharf, SSCCCCCCC, PEEE (17 cards, av. value 13/17 plus small Baron chance; av. hand size 6 [Wharf] for av. hand value 4.6)

The small picture is that the thinned deck has more buying power.  The bigger picture is that, with judicious use of NV, the thinned deck will be playing Goons almost every turn.  After a few more buys of NV, Goons, and Wharves, the deck will be playing more than one Goons most turns.  The opponent will be pinned by the Goons, though with Wharf to mitigate it.

Even with the actual deck, this will be a close game; in fact at time of resignation the players were in a dead heat, so I'm not sure if the resignation was intentional.  But usery's deck is better by T20, and unless foureyes could end the game on a lucky turn, he's going to fall farther behind.

----

There are plenty of mistakes after T8, though, on both player's sides:

Using the Baron to gain Estates is almost always a losing proposition.  You have to desperately need that extra buy to make it worthwhile.

Buying Coppers with Goons is a great idea... in the endgame.  But unless you're more than halfway through, which you aren't by T11 (foureyes) or T13 (usery), those Copper buys aren't worth even 2 VP.  One could argue they might be worth 3 VP.

Foureyes' T16 3-Estate buy was a definite turning point.  Those 6 VP were not nearly worth the extra crap in your deck.  Another Goons, another Gold, anything but 3 Estates.  Now, later in the game, if you were going to head to a 3-pile ending, that could have been great!  But not in the midgame.

Embargoing the Coppers (usery at T19) is an interesting touch but one that hurts both players pretty equally... and probably usery worse, as he has more Goons by that point, he just hasn't been getting pairs--foureyes has, thanks to Warehouses (which wouldn't have been necessary in a thinner deck...)

----

Any other comments from the crowd?

[Silverback]

I haven't read the game log, but I stumbled here.

Buying Coppers with Goons is a great idea... in the endgame. 

This might be true in other kingdoms. In this case here I would refuse to buy coppers unless it is my very last turn.
Instead I would fill my deck with loads of Goons, Native Villages and some Wharves. Trying to get a hand where I can play 4-6 Goons in one turn and end the game on piles.

[Kimwipe]

I'm pretty sure Chapel, several Gold, and a couple of Warehouses would be much faster, but less fun than putting together a Goons engine.

[Jack Rudd]

I'm pretty sure Chapel, several Gold, and a couple of Warehouses would be much faster, but less fun than putting together a Goons engine.

Quite possibly, but not necessarily better. The point of Goons engines is - among other things - to slow your opponents down by reducing them to three-card hands. This means they don't have to build up as quickly to be effective.

[luv2breformed]

Chapel/Silver opening and I am looking to get a Wharf asap. The +buy will allow several turns of double Native Village purchases. I want to scoop up as many of the NV's as I can because that will be the limiting factor on who gets to play more Goons. Balance how many Wharves and Goons you purchase based upon how many NV's you were able to to get. Remember also that each wharf only technically counts as half an action if you are able to draw your entire deck every turn.

You will also have more buys than you want to spend each turn. Balance carefully how many dead cards you purchase, making sure you can still draw your entire deck to trash them with chapel. Keep tabs on where your opponent is at, making sure you never enable him to end game on his turn. You want to take the very last turn, and when you do drain every buy you have.

The Native Village race is where this game is going to be won or lost. If you can split them 6/4, extend the game longer, you will be able to play more goons. If you are on the losing end of the NV race, you have proabably lost, but try to rush piles hopefully before your opponent notices.

[chwhite]

All of the analyses posted on the Dominion Strategy blog are of high-level games,

I agree with this

where the players are playing different strategies but nearly-perfect play. 

but not with this. The games may be high level, but most of the time, I think they're far from perfect.

Agreed.  I'm at Level 39 and I still make mistakes all the time.

[Anon79]

The evidence on CouncilRoom does suggest strongly that Baron/Chapel is a poor opening. However, the idea of using Baron as an alternative card to power up appeals to me. What do I mean?

The canonical Chapel deck opens Silver/Chapel, trashes Estates and Coppers while usually getting one or two extra Silvers or an enabling card, then quickly starts buying Golds and Provinces, maybe trashing Silvers towards the later part too. What Baron can offer in this case is take the place of Silver; instead of buying Silver, one uses Baron to leapfrog up to Gold directly. This should not be too hard, since after all a 5-card deck of (Chapel, Copper, Copper, Estate, Baron) allows a Gold buy. Over-trashing Coppers fine too, as Estate + Baron alone allows a Silver buy, then the next turn Estate + Baron + Silver = Gold. In other words, the Baron + Estate here take the place of 2 Silvers. If Chapel and Baron collide in Turn 3 or 4, then by the same principle as in the Silver/Chapel opening we should use Chapel to trash all cards except the Baron (unless you draw Chapel Baron and 3 Estates, in which case depending on what 5's are available I think you can consider cutting your losses and trashing everything.)

What is the advantage of this compared to Silver/Chapel? If your Baron and Chapel are split between turns 3 and 4, and you draw your Baron with 1 or 2 Estates, you immediatly get a leg up to your first Gold even before you have finished trashing. The increase in speed here I estimate to be about one turn.

What is the disadvantage of this compared to Silver/Chapel? If you do not have the opportunity to trash your Baron and/or Estate once you have started building up, then they become dead cards in your hand, so your deck is less finetuned and has higher variance. To mitigate this, your Baron could fetch you extra Estates, and on rare occasions that +Buy may come in useful if it comes down to non-Province VPs.

The above argument is non-applicable to this particular set of 10, where Goons is an important $6 buy that is almost a must-get. In this specific set of 10, I am somewhat surprised by the lack of Library buys at $5... isn't the mantra "Library counters hand-size attacks"? I would seriously consider it over Wharf, since in any close game I am expecting to be Gooned every turn.

[DG]

There might be an opportunity to skip the chapel and use a baron/warehouse opening to get some early deck development. The warehouse is much stronger than the silver used in the actual game. You might be able to build that wharf/native village engine much faster or sit on your opponent's chapel with some goons. If you can grab a majority of native villages you might have a permanent advantage over the chapel player. If you've got enough actions you can use a late chapel to remove copper and buy it back with goons. Chapel openings are strong but not automatic.

Libraries would work well with the native villages and warehouses here. However once you get a lot of wharves they are much better than a lot of libraries, especially with an extra buy to feed the goons. The extra cards arriving at the start of turn really cut down on the number of bad draws.

[Davio]

If after an Isotropic game against a 20+ level player, you just ask what you did wrong, I guess most of them will be helpful, I know I will, most of the time.

[Reyk]

Chapel and Baron are incompatible cards.  One of the objects of Chapel is to get rid of one's Estates; chances are you'll only use that Baron once, maybe twice, before it becomes a liability--and if you draw the two together, Baron is a huge liability.

True for this board - where you have a very good buy for 2 and chapel/silver clash doesn't matter and you have other sources for +buy. As Anon79 I'm not sure whether this is true in general. I've seen baron used for a quick gold at the non chapel turn and then trashed. If there isn't another source of +buy you might keep baron + 1 estate.
It might be ok as an advice for new players, but then you have to say something about openings like Militia/Chapel etc.

[Superdad]

This post has good information in it, but I would make sure you have the consent of both players before you open up their game and discuss all their failings.

I personally would relish the opportunity to have top players critique my mistakes - but I have pretty thick skin and take constructive criticism well. If I did this sort of analysis on my wife's games (for example), she'd never play a game of dominion again. Some people just don't like criticism, especially in a public forum.

[Jack Rudd]

This post has good information in it, but I would make sure you have the consent of both players before you open up their game and discuss all their failings.

That's not the accepted standard with board games - at least, not with chess, which is where I'm coming in from. Chess has a lot of high-quality analysis associated with it, and this is in no small part thanks to the cultural norm that you don't need the consent of either player to publish analysis of a game.

[DStu]

And everything get's published automatically on isotropic. There is only a link on a specific game. And the difference to: "I once played a game with Worker's Village, Venture and Sea Hag" is that everybody can click the link and does not have to go to councilroom and search "DStu; Worker's Village, Venture, Sea Hag" and click on the link displayed there...

[Superdad]

That's not the accepted standard with board games - at least, not with chess, which is where I'm coming in from. Chess has a lot of high-quality analysis associated with it, and this is in no small part thanks to the cultural norm that you don't need the consent of either player to publish analysis of a game.

Typically though, the high-quality analysis are of top-level games, not of kitchen-table games. I would say that the game analysed here, while "available" publicly on isotropic falls into the category of the latter. An in depth analysis of all the failings of a kitchen-style game of chess between two casual/beginner players would probably not be well received by the players of those games - without their prior consent to having all their failings exposed publically in a forum.

Also, while this is publically available on isotropic, realistically, nobody would have ever opened this game - so saying that it's publically available isn't really a valid position to take (in my opinion).  Us pouring over and analysing their mistakes in a public forum just feels offside to me.


All that being said, I have no investment in either outcome. I'm just trying to point out that it would probably be best if both player's consent was obtained before-hand. I suppose my point of view is likely originating from the fact that most of the forums I frequent lately (MtG, WoW, LoL) moderators would insta-lock a thread like this, for violating terms and conditions for posting in the forums.

I'll just leave it at that. Like I said, I don't really care either way, I just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents to something that feels slightly offside to me upon initial impression.

[DStu]

Oh, and I didn't realized that none of the players posted the log. I think that is a different situation, I thought someone posted one of his games and let it discuss. But as an outsider just take a game and point out the failures of others, I don't know if I like this. So there I'm with Superdad.

[tko]

In this game, I mixed Chapel & Baron:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110629-200820-850d4b3e.html

But I had a lucky 5/2 start of Upgrade/Chapel, and I got even luckier after trashing 2 of my Estates to pair Baron & Estate.  While there was a chance I could Upgrade the Baron to an Upgrade, that never happened.  If I didn't get a double-Dutchy purchase in this game, I might have lost.

For Chapel & Baron to work together, you need things to go favorably for it to work.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Oh, and I didn't realized that none of the players posted the log. I think that is a different situation, I thought someone posted one of his games and let it discuss. But as an outsider just take a game and point out the failures of others, I don't know if I like this. So there I'm with Superdad.

I'd feel the same except ^_^_^_^ asked (in another thread) for this thread to be made. I don't know why (s)he didn't make it him/herself, but whatever.

[joel88s]

In this game, I mixed Chapel & Baron:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110629-200820-850d4b3e.html

Just read through this game, and since this thread is asking for expert advice, thought I'd ask for thoughts about an endgame situation that arose in it. Namely, the double duchy buy on Turn 15 tko refers to.

Leading by one, with two provinces remaining, holding $11 and two buys - what's the percentage move, take the penultimate province, or go for the double duchy? (All else being equal, of course can depend somewhat on the deck situation; in this case looks like tko had just reshuffled, with both decks pretty strong, so the duchies less likely to encumber.)

I have no opinion on this, just curious what the sages would think! 

[Kirian]

Oh, and I didn't realized that none of the players posted the log. I think that is a different situation, I thought someone posted one of his games and let it discuss. But as an outsider just take a game and point out the failures of others, I don't know if I like this. So there I'm with Superdad.

And this is why i linked the thread with the original request (from ^_^_^_^ and seconded by Eagle) along with ^_^_^_^'s permission to dredge up a game of his.  I offered to set up a thread for these sorts of things.

[Superdad]

And this is why i linked the thread with the original request (from ^_^_^_^ and seconded by Eagle) along with ^_^_^_^'s permission to dredge up a game of his.  I offered to set up a thread for these sorts of things.

And what about Userynamery's permission? You know, the guy who you said got extremely lucky, and completely misplayed his second baron, etc, etc, etc. Did he consent to this?

Again, I don't care either way, I'm just saying, it feels offside. This post does offer good discussion, but next time you do it, I would get consent from both parties. If userynamery was my wife, she'd be pretty upset.

Also... I don't feel you were too harsh on the guy. You treated him with decent respect. I feel this tangent may be taking too much attention from the original post, so this will be the last I post on it. I would just suggest if you do it again, you make sure both people are cool with it. I do really like the discussion that was generated. It is very value added.

[WanderingWinder]

The only problem there is that you often have no idea who the other guy is, and this is really going to stop this improvement process. I think that we should have a standing line open for people to opt to never have any of their games analyzed, and respect that, but if not, it's not really a big deal so long as you're fair and respectful of them.

[tko]

Some of the previous posts regarding getting consent are noble but impractical.

The only problem there is that you often have no idea who the other guy is, and this is really going to stop this improvement process. I think that we should have a standing line open for people to opt to never have any of their games analyzed, and respect that, but if not, it's not really a big deal so long as you're fair and respectful of them.

I believe "as you're fair and respectful of them" is closer to a practical solution... just don't dirt on the other player when you link to a game.

In this game, I mixed Chapel & Baron:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110629-200820-850d4b3e.html

Just read through this game, and since this thread is asking for expert advice, thought I'd ask for thoughts about an endgame situation that arose in it. Namely, the double duchy buy on Turn 15 tko refers to.

Leading by one, with two provinces remaining, holding $11 and two buys - what's the percentage move, take the penultimate province, or go for the double duchy? (All else being equal, of course can depend somewhat on the deck situation; in this case looks like tko had just reshuffled, with both decks pretty strong, so the duchies less likely to encumber.)

I have no opinion on this, just curious what the sages would think! 

I'm also curious about the double-dutchy purchase here... after I read the penultimate province article, I've had some better end-game scenarios, and others where I went Dutchy-crazy and cost myself the game.

[ackack]

+Buy or other methods of obtaining more than one card in a turn really complicate close endgame decisions. I don't think there is a comparably easy heuristic if you really have to worry about that stuff.

Your opponent has two +buy cards, Baron and Woodcutter. Baron offers the extra wrinkle that it could be used to gain an extra Estate. If you buy Province/Estate, you lose whenever your opponent can hit 13 and play one of those two cards. I think that's pretty unlikely, but it's probably still a bit less safe than buying Duchy/Duchy, when your opponent will now realistically need to use a +buy turn just to catch up to you safely. So yeah, Duchy/Duchy looks good.