Topic: allfail's solo challenge #2: How to be a Dominion Hater (Read 9130 times)

timchen · « **on:** May 05, 2012, 05:07:38 am »

How did we all start to like Dominion? We were attracted by the deck building. We liked those fancy Kingdom cards and we could never get enough. Only until later we realized that not always the more the better. Still, building an efficient and capable deck is the key enjoyable element of Dominion I would say.

One day you met an extraordinary friend. A Dominion Hater. He says: "Every time I play this game I wish to get it over with as soon as possible. Building the deck is so trivial that I find no enjoyment at building my deck at all. Now I even put every effort to make my deck as weak as possible in every game I play. In fact, in a solo game I can finish the game on my own in X turns with my deck contain only Y cards."

Trying to convince him otherwise, you tries to tell him how skillful and strategic the game is. Well, he challenges you: is building a deck harder than getting rid of one? Can you finish the game faster then I do with a smaller deck at the end?

Challenge: End the game as fast as possible. At the end of game, have a deck as small as possible.
Criteria: the sum of the number of turns and the number of cards in your deck at end game. The smaller the better.

Hard mode: No Potions.

Deadline: 5/12 12PM EST

Fabian · « **Reply #1 on:** May 05, 2012, 05:18:34 am »

I'm new to this subforum, so apologies if these questions are stupid. Native Village mat counts as deck? Island cards count as deck?

Görling · « **Reply #2 on:** May 05, 2012, 08:20:48 am »

Should be Hard Mode: No Forge

Fabian · « **Reply #3 on:** May 05, 2012, 08:23:20 am »

Quote from: Görling on May 05, 2012, 08:20:48 am

Should be Hard Mode: No Forge

Very cocky, I like it

timchen · « **Reply #4 on:** May 05, 2012, 10:36:36 am »

Both count as your deck at the end of game.

Galzria · « **Reply #5 on:** May 05, 2012, 10:38:25 am »

Quote from: Fabian on May 05, 2012, 05:18:34 am

I'm new to this subforum, so apologies if these questions are stupid. Native Village mat counts as deck? Island cards count as deck?

Differs per challenge, but much more often than not... Yes. When you pull up the log afterwards, it doesn't know the difference, so "in your deck" becomes all owned non-trashed cards, no matter where you've hidden them.

Galzria · « **Reply #6 on:** May 10, 2012, 01:27:53 pm »

Lots of good challenges coming to end soon... Including this one in two days by timchen! I've still gotta get my entry in for most of these, but I've got a handful of saved logs that have decent attempts.

Schneau · « **Reply #7 on:** May 16, 2012, 07:19:15 am »

Is this challenge over? It says it finishes on 5/12.

timchen · « **Reply #8 on:** May 16, 2012, 07:41:00 am »

Yeah, will post the results in a few days. Is traveling. Entries are still welcome.

Schneau · « **Reply #9 on:** June 03, 2012, 06:38:48 pm »

Quote from: timchen on May 16, 2012, 07:41:00 am

Yeah, will post the results in a few days. Is traveling. Entries are still welcome.

How many "a few days"?

timchen · « **Reply #10 on:** June 07, 2012, 02:12:26 am »

Ok, sorry for the long wait. My bad. Better finish this up before isotropic disappears...

It turns out nobody bothered to try the easy mode. Let's do the challenge without the potion then.

Görling got first place with a score of 15. Congratulations!

He took advantage of the simple idea of forging a province into another while using Baron both to buy the Forge and to be forged as the first province. A chapel is used to trim as well. It is probably the optimum play and draw involving this strategy, emptying Provinces in 13 turns with only a Forge and a Province in hand. It would be interesting to know how many times he tried to achieve this, but it probably does not need that much luck. Notably this is also the first submission I received...

chwhite got second with a score of 18: 10 turns with 8 cards remaining in the deck. I don't quite understand his complicated plan (involving Chapel, Menagerie, Watchtower, Ironworks, Mining Village, Bridge, HoP, KC) but the idea is probably to KC-bridge and buy all the Provinces with the Watchtower in hand. The problem is that in the end I believe this strategy needs at least 8 cards in the deck. And it is hard to conceive this strategy can work much faster, if at all.

GigaKnight had a similar idea, finished at the same turn, but with one more card in deck. He scored 19 and went third.

Galzria and antony went for a Ironworks-Great Hall-Chapel 3 pile. Both need 16-17 turns to end the game without too large a deck and with 3-5 cards left.

Powerman took another approach; he went grand, and hoped to forge the majority of everything in the deck into nothing at the end of the final turn. He finished in 11 turns, but with 10 cards still left in the deck.

A lot of thanks to everyone that participated, and sorry again for the wait to everyone who is looking forward to the result.

Well, there is actually a reason for the wait:

Quote from: Fabian

What kind of score are you expecting? My buddy (Görling) got 15 with our idea, you think you'll get answers significantly lower than that?

(I'm not participating, fwiw)

I thought a lower score should be possible. Without getting a better submission, I tried to find one. It was not until today did I get the time to try my idea for a bit: my solution

It involves the famous Chapel-Ironworks-Great Hall-Island 3-piling, but one still needs a way to trash fast enough to have a small deck in time. I include Fishing Village and Watchtower to help. The idea is first to use the in-hand Watchtower to trash the hybrid VPs when you gain them to ease the burden on Chapel, and second use Watchtower to draw fresh when using the IW gaining IWs . I finished in 12 turns with a 3 card deck. It ties with the elegant forge solution.

The play is not entirely optimized, but I have already spent an hour playing. Mining village may be better than the Fishing Village here as well. So at last... we have a complicated solution that is at least as good as the elegant one by Görling.

Fabian · « **Reply #11 on:** June 07, 2012, 02:59:39 am »

Woho Görling

We tried for like half an hour or something, fwiw (a bit more including strategy discussion and such). We quickly figured out this was the best score you could reasonably (don't know about with perfect draws, didn't bother to find out) get with this strategy; he got it before I did. Only solo challenge I've attempted, it was pretty fun!

Görling · « **Reply #12 on:** June 07, 2012, 06:34:45 am »

Big ups for Fabian in helping out with design and for being generally awesome!

wuthefwasthat · « **Reply #13 on:** July 25, 2012, 01:24:01 am »

This was a fun challenge. It took me a while to figure out a good card combination and to play it well. Here's what I used:

Chapel, Watchtower, Talisman, Quarry, Mining Village, Wharf, Border Village, Forge

I got 15 three times in a row, before managing to get it down to 14.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/24/game-20120724-221633-c287986d.html

I'm confident that you can cut down by at least one turn, and with some luck and clever-er card choices, probably two or three. I don't think it's possible to end up with less than 2 cards in your deck though, without using Farmland shenanigans.

Graystripe77 · « **Reply #14 on:** July 25, 2012, 09:24:18 pm »

One day you met an extraordinary friend. A Dominion Hater.

A Hater is not my friend. Case closed.

wuthefwasthat · « **Reply #15 on:** July 26, 2012, 01:29:05 am »

Case reopened.

Not sure if this is in the spirit of the challenge (although I would argue it is, since as a Dominion Hater, I am naturally a Possession Lover), but using self-Possession, I got a score of 12.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/25/game-20120725-222751-6dcb8b16.html

You probably don't want to read the whole log. I recommend skipping to the 9th turn, as it is pretty amusing. As for the 8th turn, you can decide for yourself...

timchen · « **Reply #16 on:** July 26, 2012, 01:34:08 am »

I LOLed. Nice solution!

Morgrim7 · « **Reply #17 on:** July 26, 2012, 03:10:49 am »

Wow. I really enjoyed turn 8.

wuthefwasthat · « **Reply #18 on:** July 26, 2012, 01:04:50 pm »

Quote from: Morgrim7 on July 26, 2012, 03:10:49 am

Wow. I really enjoyed turn 8.

It was pretty amusing to play, too. Maybe you can think of better helper cards too! It was also reasonably tricky to optimize - luckily playing well doesn't matter when you have infinite turns to get what you want (get everything on NV mat).

Did you see where I almost screwed up though? Search "picking up". One of the turns of turn 8, I forgot to play Possession, so didn't Scheme it to the top of my deck. I don't notice, proceed to play my turn as normal, NVing as much as possible. I set aside my only Possession (don't be cocky - buy a spare!), without noticing (you can't tell from the log either). Then, not finding the Possession to play, I realize what happened... not only did I forget to play and Scheme it, but it's on my mat! Luckily I had at least one spare Possession turn. At this point, I King's Court Forged for a ton of Quarries and Potions, hoping to buy Possession back quickly. But, at the start of next turn, I decide that picking up from my Native Village mat and restarting is safer, so I do that instead... FAIL!

I also realized later it was silly to Scheme my Forge all the time (caused me to have to play it for random stuff, too, when I didn't want to). I could've just kept a couple spares. Whenever I'm back down to one, I can just take a turn to Forge King's Courts into new Forges.

Fabian · « **Reply #19 on:** July 26, 2012, 01:54:03 pm »

Nice 14 score wut!

Morgrim7 · « **Reply #20 on:** July 26, 2012, 09:36:32 pm »

Maybe could have used Apprentice.

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Author Topic: allfail's solo challenge #2: How to be a Dominion Hater (Read 9130 times)