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Author Topic: Request: Farmland  (Read 6213 times)

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philosophyguy

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Request: Farmland
« on: May 08, 2012, 10:44:19 am »
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I'm looking for strategic thinking on Farmland. The obvious enablers for Farmland strategies are $6 cards (so you have more targets to Farmland into Provinces). Other than that, what circumstances allow Farmland to shine? Does Farmland have any use prior to the heavy greening stage of the game? Any nifty combos you've discovered?
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BubbleBoy

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Re: Request: Farmland
« Reply #1 on: May 08, 2012, 11:26:02 am »
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If you go for Farmland like crazy, you can turn your Farmland into a Province every time you buy Farmland, essentially turning all but a couple of your Farmlands into $6 Provinces. I've never actually tried this and it probably doesn't work very well, but it's an option.

Farmland can work well with a strategy that takes advantage of green cards, particularly Silk Road and Crossroads. But usually, I've found that Farmland doesn't work super well in any particular strategy. A move I like to make with it late-game when I have $9 is buy it and then turn a Gold into a Province, getting you 2 VP more than just buying a Province. That's the best use I've ever made of it.
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...Or, I guess you could just buy a Province.

jsh357

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Re: Request: Farmland
« Reply #2 on: May 08, 2012, 11:41:02 am »
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I will occasionally buy Farmland mid-game to trash Estates in to $4 I'm concentrating on, e.g. Caravan, Conspirator.  Only useful if you don't need Gold, I guess.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Request: Farmland
« Reply #3 on: May 08, 2012, 11:49:18 am »
+1

Here's a thread with lots of Farmland strategy / tips:

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1228.0
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LastFootnote

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Re: Request: Farmland
« Reply #4 on: May 08, 2012, 12:57:00 pm »
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Generally speaking, I've had best success with Farmland when there's a $4 card available that works best in the early game. Cards like Baron, Bureaucrat, Cutpurse, Jack of all Trades, Moneylender, Nomad Camp, Remake, Sea Hag, Spice Merchant, Trader, Treasure Map, and Young Witch can be good openers, but lose utility as the game wears on.

You open with one of these cards. Then in the mid-game, probably earlier than you think you should, buy a Farmland and trash your early $4 card, remodeling it into Gold or another useful $6 card. After that, use your Farmland to bootstrap yourself to Provinces.
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ecq

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Re: Request: Farmland
« Reply #5 on: May 08, 2012, 02:06:35 pm »
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If you go for Farmland like crazy, you can turn your Farmland into a Province every time you buy Farmland, essentially turning all but a couple of your Farmlands into $6 Provinces. I've never actually tried this and it probably doesn't work very well, but it's an option.

Farmland can work well with a strategy that takes advantage of green cards, particularly Silk Road and Crossroads. But usually, I've found that Farmland doesn't work super well in any particular strategy. A move I like to make with it late-game when I have $9 is buy it and then turn a Gold into a Province, getting you 2 VP more than just buying a Province. That's the best use I've ever made of it.

Similarly, if you go for Gold like crazy, you can just buy Provinces.

Buying a Farmland and trashing a Farmland for a Province only nets 6 VP.  Any time you do that, you could have just bought a Province if you had any other source of $2 instead of a Farmland.  Further, other sources of $2 aren't nearly as bad to have in your hand as Farmland when you only have $5.

Ways I use them:
  - As BubbleBoy mentioned, late in the game, trashing a Gold to a Province for 8VP instead of 6VP.  Especially good in Gold-heavy games.
  - Trashing a Curse into a $2 card, especially a late-game Estate.  Buying a Duchy gives you 3VP, +1 dead card.  Trashing a Curse to, say, a Lighthouse is 3VP, +0 dead cards.  Trashing a Curse to an Estate is 4VP, +1 dead card.
  - Trashing a card that's no longer useful into a card that's more useful.  This is generalizing what LastFootnote said.  Potion -> Gold seems to come up most frequently.  Things like Witch -> Expand are also decent once the curse pile is empty.
  - Estate -> Silk Road.  It's marginally better than just buying a Silk Road.
  - Copper -> Crossroads.
  - Bishop fodder.

I've never used them as an integral part of a strategy, though.  Almost always, they're just ever so slightly better than what I would have bought or a slight boost to VP totals in the final turns.  I'd love seeing game logs and descriptions of situations where Farmland really comes into its own.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Request: Farmland
« Reply #6 on: May 08, 2012, 02:21:27 pm »
+2

I think it's well-known that Farmland works like Harem late game. It's 2 VPs, and along with $6, it buys a Province. However, early game, when you're not buying provinces, it's weaker, since you can't use it for $2. The times when I feel like Farmlands have been most useful is when building draw-engines with $4 villages. Building these types of engines, particularly with an attacking $5 smithy (Margrave, Rabbel, Torturer), you're often okay delaying Gold, since early on, you just want engine pieces. Paying $6 to trash an Estate, and get a village AND a future Harem is not a bad deal here. And since you're drawing larger-than usual hands in these decks, you more often have something worth remodeling in hand.
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Empathy

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Re: Request: Farmland
« Reply #7 on: May 08, 2012, 02:37:03 pm »
+2

Let's not forget farmland+border village.

Just grab your favorite 5 with border village, then use the border village as fodder for farmland.
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Asklepios

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Re: Request: Farmland
« Reply #8 on: May 11, 2012, 08:44:40 pm »
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I think another thing worth mentioning is that when a card has some of its benefit on buy/gain (or just on buy in farmland's case) then once its in your deck its less valuable to than a card of its price ought to be. This makes it a good target for trash-for-benefit like Apprentice or Bishop.

By this category of cards I mean things like Farmland, Border Village and Ill-Gotten Gains, all of which have strong effects as you acquire them, but then later on become a dead 2VP card, a village and a weak silver respectively. Hitting these cards with a trash-for-benefit card gives you lots of benefit for not much deck value lost. In comparison, if you Bishop a Laboratory or a Gold, then you weaken your deck a lot more.

This isn't so much a combo, more just a general thought to bear in mind when formulating overall strategy for a kingdom. You can Farmland that Estate into a Bishop, and later Bishop that Farmland. You can Farmland that Silver into an Apprentice, then later, Apprentice that Farmland. Or to put it another way, when you buy Farmland you get $8 worth of Benefit for a $6 price tag, so long as you have the means to reclaim the $6 that is tied up in the card.

Overall though, I think the main use of Farmland is for brinksmanship purposes: setting things up so that you have the edge when scores would otherwise be even or marginally in your opponents favor. The classic use is to buy one on the last turn on a three gold hand, Farming a Gold into a Province, and thus getting 2 more VP than you might otherwise have had. Works for Colony games too, if you're looking at Platinum + $6. Once or twice I've even found that Farmland is a good way to three-pile a game, when emptying a $4 pile will end the game, but you also need the 2 VP to get ahead as the game ends. Its a situation that has come up more often than I might have expected, and generally worth being aware of. Mostly then Farmland is a bit like Chapel, in that its card you probably won't want multiples of in your deck, but whose presence you have to be aware of when you're watching the game's tempo.

I'd agree also with using Farmland to get rid of action cards that no longer serve a purpose for you. I find Moneylender and Spice Merchant often diminish in usefulness in mid game, and with a hand of $6 plus one of those cards, its better to Farmland them into gold rather than just buy the gold.

« Last Edit: May 11, 2012, 08:54:46 pm by Asklepios »
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Request: Farmland
« Reply #9 on: May 13, 2012, 09:07:58 pm »
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when you buy Farmland you get $8 worth of Benefit for a $6 price tag, so long as you have the means to reclaim the $6 that is tied up in the card.
You have to be a little careful with this, because if you don't draw the Farmland with the trash-for-benefit card on the first shuffle after buying it, it actually does a significant amount of damage, causing you to buy a card with $3 less value compared to Gold on the turn you had it. So then you missed out on a chance to get another $3 worth of trash-for-benefit fuel.
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Asklepios

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Re: Request: Farmland
« Reply #10 on: May 14, 2012, 04:01:32 am »
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I'd definitely agree with that. You need means to get the Trash for Benefit consistently, so that means quite a small deck, but happily Apprentice and Bishop both feed into this.
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