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[WanderingWinder]

+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.

On the other hand, not getting the province now means you have to worry about your opponent getting both of them later. So I probably would have put the pressure on with Province+Estate, but it's a rather close call. (I would also have had a better feel for the decks if I actually played the game, too, though).

[fp]

On a general note, I think having 2-3 experts analyze a game between two novices would make for very good articles.

If any one is interested (on either side), let me know.

[WanderingWinder]

I'd be interested in providing some actual in depth analysis maybe on a weekly basis.

[tko]

I'm interested in contributing as a novice and providing some of my games where I lost so the "consent" issue isn't really an issue since we'll be discussing how bad I failed.

Here are a couple recent fails on my part:

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110706-182820-b627c1e5.html

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110630-220127-339ea951.html

[WanderingWinder]

Quickly, on the first one it looks like your only major problems are that you bought cities without any reason, and you broke the PPR.
I'll take a closer look at the second tonight.

[tko]

Quickly, on the first one it looks like your only major problems are that you bought cities without any reason, and you broke the PPR.

I find that the PPR (Penultimate Province Rule) is difficult.  I have made both bad and good decisions trying to apply it.  In this game, the Colony/Province/Dutchy purchases leave me guessing as to who is in the lead.  Maybe my issue is that I don't use the point tracker.  Or perhaps I should be tracking VP on paper or in my head and either of those efforts will help me improve.  I play Dominion because the games go quickly and I can relax... the effort of keeping track of VP feels like too much work and I therefore play lazy.

I find that determining when the right reason to buy or ignore City is another tricky one.  In this case, I wanted +Actions to support Council Rooms to bolster my Hoard.  Now City or Mining Village were both valid in this case so I was planning to get either.  In the end, I only got 1 Council Room which may have been another failing.  Also, I read that Hoard is not optimal in Colony games, so I may have taken the wrong approach altogether.

[DG]

First game - Don't buy village style cards if you don't need them, just use a couple of actions and take the odd loss if they clash. You also got into a mess with the hoard even though you might not have realised it. Get platinum or good drawing cards first so that you'll use the hoards to buy colonies and provinces. Buying an early hoard then buying a duchy to get an extra gold is poor, worse than buying a gold then a gold.

Second game - If you look at your salvaging again I bet you'll be able to see better choices for trashing. It's hard to get to the high value cards so salvaging a mountebank for a king's court or salvaging a gold for a platinum is worth it.  Trashing the curses wasn't a good idea as they give no salvage value and they protect from further attacks. The horn of plenty was a waste of time and it was always like to be a bad board for possession unless you could shrink your deck to a reasonable size, which wasn't going to happen.

[WanderingWinder]

Quickly, on the first one it looks like your only major problems are that you bought cities without any reason, and you broke the PPR.

I find that the PPR (Penultimate Province Rule) is difficult.  I have made both bad and good decisions trying to apply it.  In this game, the Colony/Province/Dutchy purchases leave me guessing as to who is in the lead.  Maybe my issue is that I don't use the point tracker.  Or perhaps I should be tracking VP on paper or in my head and either of those efforts will help me improve.  I play Dominion because the games go quickly and I can relax... the effort of keeping track of VP feels like too much work and I therefore play lazy.

I find that determining when the right reason to buy or ignore City is another tricky one.  In this case, I wanted +Actions to support Council Rooms to bolster my Hoard.  Now City or Mining Village were both valid in this case so I was planning to get either.  In the end, I only got 1 Council Room which may have been another failing.  Also, I read that Hoard is not optimal in Colony games, so I may have taken the wrong approach altogether.

You definitely need to keep track of the score! Especially in such a simple scenario where all it is is remembering how many of each green card you bought, then using the number left in the supply (and if necessary in the trash) to work out how many your opponent has. I'd preferably have you do it in your head. Also, this City thinking is twofold wrong. First, unless a pile runs out, mining village is going to be absolutely better than city. Since no piles are in danger of going, mining village would be the clear choice between the two. Second of all, you really don't need to waste time getting village-type actions to "support" card-draw. It's basically always better to just get the card draw and money. It's less clear if they're fishing villages or, more importantly, if there's some other terminal you want to be able to hit with consistency along with your card draw.

[Kirian]

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110630-220127-339ea951.html

Well, that's easy.  As soon as your opponent picked up a second Mountebank, you should have, but that's relatively minor.  The first time he hit you with KC/Mountebank was probably gg, and if it wasn't then certainly the second time was.  I think I'd have resigned at that point.

[^_^_^_^]

Ok first off all, don't call me four eyes T.T. That makes me feel down graded from happy face to weirdo . Second of all, you took a game from a while ago (I haven't played a goons game in a long time)and reviewed it. Last but not least, you didn't even ask me for permission before posting it here to be reviewed. Now, here is a recent game I would like reviewed T.T..

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201107/07/game-20110707-161517-080af945.html
In this game(3 player) I feel I didn't play my best and as such ended up with a two-way tie instead of the win I was looking for. Any suggestions to how I would've done better? I do worst in 3 player games which is why I posted this.

edit: I also was playing my first 10-20 games when I played that goons game where I first encountered goons.

[kn1tt3r]

First game - Don't buy village style cards if you don't need them, just use a couple of actions and take the odd loss if they clash. You also got into a mess with the hoard even though you might not have realised it. Get platinum or good drawing cards first so that you'll use the hoards to buy colonies and provinces. Buying an early hoard then buying a duchy to get an extra gold is poor, worse than buying a gold then a gold.

I see no reason not to go for Minions here, so opening Chancellor/Mining Village is actually fine (with the intention to trash MV for +2$ to get a Minion early). Since it's a Colony game, you want Platinum and maybe even 1-2 Gold, and propably some Village/Council Room support at some point, but without trashing Minion is still too good to ignore.

[DG]

The minions are a fair point, but if people want to learn about mistakes in their games you need to follow their line of play to some degree. The minion strategy is severely complicated by cities and needs quite a bit more explanation.

[tko]

...Now, here is a recent game I would like reviewed T.T..
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201107/07/game-20110707-161517-080af945.html
In this game(3 player) I feel I didn't play my best and as such ended up with a two-way tie instead of the win I was looking for. Any suggestions to how I would've done better? I do worst in 3 player games which is why I posted this.

Rejoicing in a tie is usually satisfactory for me.  I only see 2 issues:
Turn 7: Venture purchase with no trashing of Copper could have been better spent as a Conspirator or Laboratory.
Turn 8: Don't buy the additional Silver, Province alone is good here.

[WanderingWinder]

...Now, here is a recent game I would like reviewed T.T..
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201107/07/game-20110707-161517-080af945.html
In this game(3 player) I feel I didn't play my best and as such ended up with a two-way tie instead of the win I was looking for. Any suggestions to how I would've done better? I do worst in 3 player games which is why I posted this.

Rejoicing in a tie is usually satisfactory for me.  I only see 2 issues:
Turn 7: Venture purchase with no trashing of Copper could have been better spent as a Conspirator or Laboratory.
Turn 8: Don't buy the additional Silver, Province alone is good here.

Okay, maybe Lab would have been better than Venture on 7, but that's not a big issue. Conspirator, however, would have been MUCH worse. Venture is like sick broken with copper trashing, but it isn't weak without it.
On 8, that's horrible advice. You absolutely want to get that extra silver there. Why would you not?
The biggest issue I see is buying a Royal Seal in the opening - either Venture, Lab, or Council Room would have been significantly stronger than the barely-better-than-silver.
Other than this, I think you played well. It's just a fast board and there's not a lot you can do.

[^_^_^_^]

...Now, here is a recent game I would like reviewed T.T..
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201107/07/game-20110707-161517-080af945.html
In this game(3 player) I feel I didn't play my best and as such ended up with a two-way tie instead of the win I was looking for. Any suggestions to how I would've done better? I do worst in 3 player games which is why I posted this.

Rejoicing in a tie is usually satisfactory for me.  I only see 2 issues:
Turn 7: Venture purchase with no trashing of Copper could have been better spent as a Conspirator or Laboratory.
Turn 8: Don't buy the additional Silver, Province alone is good here.

Okay, maybe Lab would have been better than Venture on 7, but that's not a big issue. Conspirator, however, would have been MUCH worse. Venture is like sick broken with copper trashing, but it isn't weak without it.
On 8, that's horrible advice. You absolutely want to get that extra silver there. Why would you not?
The biggest issue I see is buying a Royal Seal in the opening - either Venture, Lab, or Council Room would have been significantly stronger than the barely-better-than-silver.
Other than this, I think you played well. It's just a fast board and there's not a lot you can do.

Ok thanks guys . Yeah that game was real fast. Now I'm starting to favor council a lot more than I did in my first 80 or so games.

[WanderingWinder]

So, I don't like Council Room a lot personally, because I don't like giving my opponents cards, but it can be quite strong. I do want to point out though, that like any other terminal card draw, with it in your deck, you really want to be loading up on money. So Council Room goes better with Venture than it does with lab. Lab goes better with itself. And which of those two plans is better depends on if there's another strong terminal you want to be able to play or not.

[^_^_^_^]

So, I don't like Council Room a lot personally, because I don't like giving my opponents cards, but it can be quite strong. I do want to point out though, that like any other terminal card draw, with it in your deck, you really want to be loading up on money. So Council Room goes better with Venture than it does with lab. Lab goes better with itself. And which of those two plans is better depends on if there's another strong terminal you want to be able to play or not.

Yes. This I already understand myself. However, it can still be a great addition to a lab/village deck.

[WanderingWinder]

What do you mean by a Lab/Village deck?
If you mean a Lab deck or a Village deck, then a) they're actually not very good in lab decks, and b) village decks are really bad - it would be much better if every village was a silver.
If you mean a deck with Labs AND villages, such a deck is better without the villages, and then it's just a lab deck - see a).

[^_^_^_^]

Well I mean b and you would want villages so that you can use terminal action cards.

[tko]

This has probably been done on BGG or elsewhere since it appears to be common knowledge that Villages aren't optimal... but to a player like me, I have trouble grasping that.  For example, I believe that Village-like-cards can help to play multiple Monuments, Wharfs, Mountebanks, Torturers, etc.  Is there a forum or article somewhere that does a turn-by-turn of what buying Village-like-cards does to slow you down vs. other strategies?

[Kirian]

Second of all, you took a game from a while ago (I haven't played a goons game in a long time)and reviewed it.

edit: I also was playing my first 10-20 games when I played that goons game where I first encountered goons.

The game I used was played on 04 July, only a bit over a day before I posted this.  It was somewhere around your 100th game (via CR.com).

Last but not least, you didn't even ask me for permission before posting it here to be reviewed.

Replies 7, 10, 11, 17, 18 in this thread, which I also linked on the first line of this thread.

----

That said, if you'd like me to remove my analysis, I will.

[ShuffleNCut]

Village is not necessarily bad in a vacuum however in a standard Province game you may not see a ton of benefit playing +Action/+Card chains over just buying lots of money.  You'd be better off just buying money and one or two of those good actions.

If you have a super thin deck that's dense with good cards then Village and all it's permutations allow you to play your awesome actions repeatedly thus maximizing their benefits.  If you have a deck with seven Copper and three Estates and a handful of Silver and Gold and then a few Villages and a few Smithies you're going to run into a lot of turns where you play Village and then you end up with a hand full of money and green cards or play Smithy and draw dead Villages.  Unfortunately in a lot of cases players simply curse their unluckiness without thinking how they built a deck that's at the mercy of such variance.

Keep in mind when you spend a turn buying a card that isn't Province (or Colony where appropriate) you have to make that turn up later on down the line (this applies from turn 1, with every buy you should be asking yourself "How does this help me win?").  Silver and Gold do this by letting you buy those important green cards.  Village does not in and of itself contribute to winning the game in any way; it is strictly an enabler.  In most games you don't have the luxury of time to buy your enablers and terminals and then put them together enough to matter.

[fp]

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110706-182820-b627c1e5.html

I have attached some commentary for this game

@WanderingWinder, et. al:
Feel Free to download and add your own commentary

[tko]

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110706-182820-b627c1e5.html

I have attached some commentary for this game

@WanderingWinder, et. al:
Feel Free to download and add your own commentary

@fp, thanks for the commentary.  "Had the Hoard been a Gold you could have bought a Platinum here.", was an eye-opening illustration of why Hoard isn't optimal.  "Had your City been a Minion, you could have bought another Minion here."  I bought that City on turn 4 when it's critical to improve my buying power - plus, I already had a Mining Village... I see why it was such a bad play.  Two things were over my head as while I'm learning from your commentary, I still don't fully have the grasp of the game, so I'll ask:
1. Turn 16 purchase Colony/Mining Village with 15 coin and 2 buys, "You are still stuck at one Platinum; I would have bought Platinum+Gold here. You engine allows you to buy multiple cards per turn."  Is this because I need more Platinum in my deck to fuel future Colony purchases?
2. Turn 21 Dutchy purchase with 7 coin.  "This is questionable. If you were to buy a Gold instead, that Gold would help you earn you at 4 points by buying a Colony instead of a Province." At turn 21, should I start realizing I am diluted by too many green cards and need to add Gold to increase my Treasure to Green Card ratio?

[^_^_^_^]

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110706-182820-b627c1e5.html

I have attached some commentary for this game

@WanderingWinder, et. al:
Feel Free to download and add your own commentary

@fp, thanks for the commentary.  "Had the Hoard been a Gold you could have bought a Platinum here.", was an eye-opening illustration of why Hoard isn't optimal.  "Had your City been a Minion, you could have bought another Minion here."  I bought that City on turn 4 when it's critical to improve my buying power - plus, I already had a Mining Village... I see why it was such a bad play.  Two things were over my head as while I'm learning from your commentary, I still don't fully have the grasp of the game, so I'll ask:
1. Turn 16 purchase Colony/Mining Village with 15 coin and 2 buys, "You are still stuck at one Platinum; I would have bought Platinum+Gold here. You engine allows you to buy multiple cards per turn."  Is this because I need more Platinum in my deck to fuel future Colony purchases?
2. Turn 21 Dutchy purchase with 7 coin.  "This is questionable. If you were to buy a Gold instead, that Gold would help you earn you at 4 points by buying a Colony instead of a Province." At turn 21, should I start realizing I am diluted by too many green cards and need to add Gold to increase my Treasure to Green Card ratio?

\t
Warning: I am also a novice so take this with a hand full of salt.
I forget where but I read a guide on the blog stating that you should generally(rule is often broken but this is a standard to start with) only buy a duchy with <$8 if it looks like you won't reshuffle twice before the game ends. Buy estate (<$2) if you won't reshuffle before the game ends(this is often broken). In a colony game buy a province when the game begins to turn into a race to clear the colonies and you don't have enough $ for the colonies. I may be in the wrong here in which case better players can tell me where my mistakes lie.

edit: @ kir.(abbreviated) Where did all the games go lol. I think I resigned/disconnected from quite a few lol.