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[Kirian]

It is ON!

I'm not going to spend the time typing out all the pairings here.  Pairings are at:

http://isodom.challonge.com

Top players are in Bracket A, low-rank players are in Bracket C.  There is one bye each round in both A and B.

Matches are best-of-five, but do not play a sixth if there is a draw (i.e. 2-2-1) at that point.

Match results are due by Monday 18 June at 06:00 EDT/10:00 GMT.  Finish your matches by Sunday, in other words, unless you plan to get up early Monday morning.  Note that due to the nature of a Swiss tournament, unplayed matches cannot be made up.  Rules about dropouts are in the signup thread.

Good luck!

[Robz888]

Do we play all 5 regardless? If someone wins 3-0, does it just end?

[Mic Qsenoch]

Do you mean June 18? I thought the rounds were a week long.

[Kirian]

Do we play all 5 regardless? If someone wins 3-0, does it just end?

Yes, they're best-of-five.  Only the match win counts.

Do you mean June 18? I thought the rounds were a week long.

Apparently I'm unable to look at a calendar properly.  Fixed.

[b33]

Do we send you the logs for each match after we play them?

[Kirian]

Do we send you the logs for each match after we play them?

Post the logs to this thread, along with analysis if you like.  I'll try to post a format in the first post in a bit.

[blueblimp]

blueblimp 3 - andwilk 2

Game 1: blueblimp 41 - andwilk 24
Game 2: andwilk 39 - blueblimp 32
Game 3: blueblimp 37 - andwilk 30
Game 4: andwilk 47 - blueblimp 41
Game 5: blueblimp 32 - andwilk 21

Boring boards overall. First player won every time.

The most interesting game was game 3, where my attempt to build a HoP-megaturn engine was derailed by some poor early draws ($2 on T3, Upgrade on Copper on T6) but then got some good luck later on to win anyway.

[WanderingWinder]

blueblimp 3 - andwilk 2

Game 1: blueblimp 41 - andwilk 24
Game 2: andwilk 39 - blueblimp 32
Game 3: blueblimp 37 - andwilk 30
Game 4: andwilk 47 - blueblimp 41
Game 5: blueblimp 32 - andwilk 21

Boring boards overall. First player won every time.

The most interesting game was game 3, where my attempt to build a HoP-megaturn engine was derailed by some poor early draws ($2 on T3, Upgrade on Copper on T6) but then got some good luck later on to win anyway.

They don't look TOO boring. But not so great. Except game 3, where there's a LOT of stuff that looks reasonable, without anything being very strong at all. Lots of options there.

[blueblimp]

blueblimp 3 - andwilk 2

Game 1: blueblimp 41 - andwilk 24
Game 2: andwilk 39 - blueblimp 32
Game 3: blueblimp 37 - andwilk 30
Game 4: andwilk 47 - blueblimp 41
Game 5: blueblimp 32 - andwilk 21

Boring boards overall. First player won every time.

The most interesting game was game 3, where my attempt to build a HoP-megaturn engine was derailed by some poor early draws ($2 on T3, Upgrade on Copper on T6) but then got some good luck later on to win anyway.

They don't look TOO boring. But not so great. Except game 3, where there's a LOT of stuff that looks reasonable, without anything being very strong at all. Lots of options there.

Well, I'd summarize as:

Game 1: To me this is obviously a Ghost Ship slog. I get a Trader to clear some clutter to help mitigate later Ghost Ship plays, but since he picks up a Smugglers early (which seems like a clear mistake to me), I don't have to worry. I feel I read this board better.

Game 2: Our strategies here are very similar and I think this was mostly decided by whose Mountebanks hit better. His decision to get two Mountebanks instead of just one was possibly better, but maybe less significant than the curse moating.

Game 3: This is a pretty interesting board, yeah, but the early draws I have, combined with his VP pressure from the tunnels, mean I don't have as much time to build as I would like. So my engine is bad, but then by luck just barely works out later on (on turn 17 I double Province). So I felt my play decisions were mostly overridden by luck, which thankfully tilted in my favour.

Game 4: This was frustrating because he went Noble Brigand early, and despite me having a Moneylender and preferring action money over Silver and Gold, I lose anyway. Plus the Alchemist engine here looked pretty reasonable, although in hindsight maybe there wasn't enough opportunity to really explode. Also, I didn't put enough forethought into using the Farmlands.

Game 5: I transition from Masquerade BM into Envoy BM by passing him my Masquerade. He does something complicated that doesn't really work out, although maybe if he were first player...

I may just be spoiled by playing too many interesting boards on alts, where nowadays I mostly will bias Prosperity, sometimes along with some other interesting expansion. With these biases, pretty much every game is interesting.

[WanderingWinder]

blueblimp 3 - andwilk 2

Game 1: blueblimp 41 - andwilk 24
Game 2: andwilk 39 - blueblimp 32
Game 3: blueblimp 37 - andwilk 30
Game 4: andwilk 47 - blueblimp 41
Game 5: blueblimp 32 - andwilk 21

Boring boards overall. First player won every time.

The most interesting game was game 3, where my attempt to build a HoP-megaturn engine was derailed by some poor early draws ($2 on T3, Upgrade on Copper on T6) but then got some good luck later on to win anyway.

They don't look TOO boring. But not so great. Except game 3, where there's a LOT of stuff that looks reasonable, without anything being very strong at all. Lots of options there.

Well, I'd summarize as:

Game 1: To me this is obviously a Ghost Ship slog. I get a Trader to clear some clutter to help mitigate later Ghost Ship plays, but since he picks up a Smugglers early (which seems like a clear mistake to me), I don't have to worry. I feel I read this board better.

Also a ghost ship slog to me. Except, I really really don't like trader here. A huge huge thing is playing your GS every turn, and then you gold is pretty important. Lots of silvers can detract from your ability to GS (and slow you down getting there), and looking at a hand of 3 silver doesn't do you a lot when on the receiving end of the attack. Don't think I really like smugglers either, though I'm a touch less sure about it.

Game 2: Our strategies here are very similar and I think this was mostly decided by whose Mountebanks hit better. His decision to get two Mountebanks instead of just one was possibly better, but maybe less significant than the curse moating.

You both ignore jack in favour of remake, which I find quite questionable here. Now, you do want mountebank at some point, so doublejack is far less appealing, but... well, inn is going to work sorta nice with the jack, and remake is just not so appealing at all on me to this board. It slows you down more early on, which is important. And later, it's also not as good, I don't think. At some point, monuments can be important, too, but it really depends on how things shape up. You have to balance your terminals and inns...

Game 3: This is a pretty interesting board, yeah, but the early draws I have, combined with his VP pressure from the tunnels, mean I don't have as much time to build as I would like. So my engine is bad, but then by luck just barely works out later on (on turn 17 I double Province). So I felt my play decisions were mostly overridden by luck, which thankfully tilted in my favour.

Okay, so much that can go on here. The HoP mega-turn strategy. Well, the problem here is, to get it to work, you need lots of HoP, probably a few upgrades to trash, and the other nicest cards are... Lab and highway. Everything costs 5, and it's very hard to get it all together. Now it still might work, but... well, I can't say I like the coppersmith. It doesn't work well with the oasis, it doesn't work well with the upgrade. It does work well with labs, of course. Upgrade also, synergizes with highway (on this board), lab, not so much with coppersmith, oasis. Oasis goes with lab and tunnel, but not HoP (well, multiple oases anyway) or coppersmith or upgrade. So my point is that it's a little discombobulated.
He, on the other hand, goes with a upgrade-into-oasis-tunnel. I don't think oasis-tunnel is that great to start, and I think he overly-aggresively tunnels here. I would like a lab into this strategy a lot better.
What else can you try? Well, there's other ways to mega-turn, but the HoP will be similar. You can play BM-lab. Or BM-coppersmith lab, which seems not so bad here. And/or get a jester at some point, but not against the tunnel opponent so much maybe?

Game 4: This was frustrating because he went Noble Brigand early, and despite me having a Moneylender and preferring action money over Silver and Gold, I lose anyway. Plus the Alchemist engine here looked pretty reasonable, although in hindsight maybe there wasn't enough opportunity to really explode. Also, I didn't put enough forethought into using the Farmlands.

Going Noble Brigand early is actually good here because... there's not much else. Your action money is moneylender and treasury, which is not so great in terms of action money. You need lots of treasuries, which is slow. And alchemists, also slow.. This is going to make it pretty tough going. I expect a Big Money + buy some NBs if they go for too many silver/gold to be about best here. Basically, I'm actually pretty surprised it's as close as it is.

Game 5: I transition from Masquerade BM into Envoy BM by passing him my Masquerade. He does something complicated that doesn't really work out, although maybe if he were first player...

I think I'm surprised this one is so close too. I don't think his complicated thing is much good at all. Spice merchant and masq just do not mix well. I also think that even if you just go duchy-running, his deck is on the verge of falling apart anyway, whereas yours has some stamina. Keep in mind that there's very little left he wants to pass.

I may just be spoiled by playing too many interesting boards on alts, where nowadays I mostly will bias Prosperity, sometimes along with some other interesting expansion. With these biases, pretty much every game is interesting.

As an aside here, I don't find that 'oh, we're both building an obvious engine here' is really more interesting than, say, double-jack. But that's just me.

Also, I'm not playing in this tournament, but I'm going to try to give commentary on a lot more games than I normally would. Probably not ALL of them, as much in detail as I'm doing here.

[Robz888]

I may just be spoiled by playing too many interesting boards on alts, where nowadays I mostly will bias Prosperity, sometimes along with some other interesting expansion. With these biases, pretty much every game is interesting.

I'm going to have to get better with Prosperity, since this is the set everybody is apparently biasing in favor of. (Or I should start biasing everything but Prosperity, to compensate.)

[blueblimp]

Good comments.

Also a ghost ship slog to me. Except, I really really don't like trader here. A huge huge thing is playing your GS every turn, and then you gold is pretty important. Lots of silvers can detract from your ability to GS (and slow you down getting there), and looking at a hand of 3 silver doesn't do you a lot when on the receiving end of the attack. Don't think I really like smugglers either, though I'm a touch less sure about it.

My idea was: if that Trader kills a single Estate, then as far as cluttering my deck, it's neutral. And I'm pretty happy with a lot of Silvers because it means I can buy Ghost Ship over Gold, winning the GS split (which I do by 8-2), then hope later to do things like play a Ghost Ship into a 4 Silver hand (which happens on turn 22).

You may be right though that the Trader is not worth it. I was iffy on it even during the game.

You both ignore jack in favour of remake, which I find quite questionable here. Now, you do want mountebank at some point, so doublejack is far less appealing, but... well, inn is going to work sorta nice with the jack, and remake is just not so appealing at all on me to this board. It slows you down more early on, which is important. And later, it's also not as good, I don't think. At some point, monuments can be important, too, but it really depends on how things shape up. You have to balance your terminals and inns...

Yeah Jack is probably better than Remake here. I guess I was thinking that Remake could help trash the Coppers from Mountebank, but that isn't very relevant in a treasure-oriented game. (Too much playing Prosperity bias, I think. )

Okay, so much that can go on here. The HoP mega-turn strategy. Well, the problem here is, to get it to work, you need lots of HoP, probably a few upgrades to trash, and the other nicest cards are... Lab and highway. Everything costs 5, and it's very hard to get it all together. Now it still might work, but... well, I can't say I like the coppersmith. It doesn't work well with the oasis, it doesn't work well with the upgrade. It does work well with labs, of course. Upgrade also, synergizes with highway (on this board), lab, not so much with coppersmith, oasis. Oasis goes with lab and tunnel, but not HoP (well, multiple oases anyway) or coppersmith or upgrade. So my point is that it's a little discombobulated.
He, on the other hand, goes with a upgrade-into-oasis-tunnel. I don't think oasis-tunnel is that great to start, and I think he overly-aggresively tunnels here. I would like a lab into this strategy a lot better.
What else can you try? Well, there's other ways to mega-turn, but the HoP will be similar. You can play BM-lab. Or BM-coppersmith lab, which seems not so bad here. And/or get a jester at some point, but not against the tunnel opponent so much maybe?

I stand by the Coppersmiths. I don't really want more than a single Silver since my only draw comes from Labs. Coppersmith is a decent card on T3/T4, then later I can upgrade it to a Laboratory to try to win that split. (Turns out he wasn't really fighting me for them anyway.)

In hindsight, I should have got another Upgrade rather than the Horn of Plenty (which I got with hope to snag some Labs and Highways in midgame). It was urgent to clear Estates, Coppers, and the Coppersmith. Even if I had done this, I'm not confident any sort of HoP megaturn could really work out with only Labs for draw.

Going Noble Brigand early is actually good here because... there's not much else. Your action money is moneylender and treasury, which is not so great in terms of action money. You need lots of treasuries, which is slow. And alchemists, also slow.. This is going to make it pretty tough going. I expect a Big Money + buy some NBs if they go for too many silver/gold to be about best here. Basically, I'm actually pretty surprised it's as close as it is.

With me not buying Silver/Gold and not caring much about the extra Coppers (because of Moneylender), NB seems really awful. It's basically just a terminal $1. You're right that Treasury is a bit weak for action money. I might have been better off focusing my play around getting multiple NB plays per turn, which would really cripple his deck, plus get me the treasure I needed to fully use my buys.

I think I'm surprised this one is so close too. I don't think his complicated thing is much good at all. Spice merchant and masq just do not mix well. I also think that even if you just go duchy-running, his deck is on the verge of falling apart anyway, whereas yours has some stamina. Keep in mind that there's very little left he wants to pass.

His complicated thing is a bit clever in that he uses Envoy to get a large hand-size, then uses Cellar to bring in good cards. I might have done better to discard his Cellar more often.

As an aside here, I don't find that 'oh, we're both building an obvious engine here' is really more interesting than, say, double-jack. But that's just me.

I agree, but there's lots of interesting things that can go on when the players have different opinions about what's the best way to build that engine. In non-engine games, although there are interesting decisions to be made, there's a lot less flexibility.

[WanderingWinder]

...

The thing is, I don't like trader in game 1, and I don't know that I like smugglers, but I REALLY don't like both, and I REALLY don't like mashing a thousand ghost ships.
I don't really like opening oasis-coppersmith in that one. My preference would have been for me (lone?) silver, if I went the coppersmith route. Which I think I might well. Also I ought to note that Highway can work with HoP here.
In order to use that cellar trick, you MUST Inn -> envoy, and with only one of each... I don't know, seems like it's hanging on a thread to me.
But the Brigand game is the big thing for me.  So there's three things going on. You can play Big money, you can play what you did, and you can play money/NB. What I'm saying is, I think that Big money (with treasuries) should beat your alchemist/treasury/moneylender thing fairly handily, and Money/NB beats money. Now, this doesn't mean that NB/Money beats what you did. But I think it probably does; consider how money would do if the NB was totally dead, if you never play it... I imagine money is doing decently well even then. And then you can play it for some benefit occasionally... now obviously I should point out, that normally you grab lots of noble brigands, in a mirror kind of match, or really anytime that they buy lots of silver and gold. But if they do something like you did, with NONE of that, then you stop buying more NB, obviously, and just go with silvers. And so it's a question of whether the optimal strategy is opening with just money, twirling into NB if they follow and sticking with money if they go to the moneylender-alchemist thing, and moneylender-alchemist thing if they go NB, or whether you just open NB/money and twirl a little into straight money if they do moneylender-alchemist thing. And I'm fairly strong that it's the latter.

[popsofctown]

Trader hitting Estate isn't clutter neutral.. You have 2 Silvers in place of 1 Estate.  With respect to Ghost ship, that is indeed more clutter.

[andwilk]

blueblimp 3 - andwilk 2

Game 1: blueblimp 41 - andwilk 24
Game 2: andwilk 39 - blueblimp 32
Game 3: blueblimp 37 - andwilk 30
Game 4: andwilk 47 - blueblimp 41
Game 5: blueblimp 32 - andwilk 21

Boring boards overall. First player won every time.

The most interesting game was game 3, where my attempt to build a HoP-megaturn engine was derailed by some poor early draws ($2 on T3, Upgrade on Copper on T6) but then got some good luck later on to win anyway.

Just a few things to add...

In game 3, I feel if I had added another Lab or two it would have worked out better for me.  With most of my treasure being Gold, I felt my deck could withstand the extra green from over-committing on Tunnels.

In game 4, I added the NB more to keep you away from buying Silver and Gold.  Alchemists are slow and so is building up money with Treasuries.  With Farmlands in play, I wasn't all that worried about NB holding me back from $8 when it did.

Overall, I was disappointed that the first player won every game.  It felt like holding all my service games in a tennis match, yet still losing the match.  Playing in these last few IsoDoms have opened my eyes even more to how important starting as first player in Game 1 in a series, especially a shorter best-of-five series (the first player is 12-0 in my opening matches of IsoDom 4/5). 

[rspeer]

Young Nick 3 - rspeer 2

1. rspeer 47 - Young Nick 33: We both ignore chapel. I go for HP and Wharf. He goes for HP and Ghost Ship. His Ghost Ships hit often enough to make me get nervous and start questioning my faith in Wharf, but I stay ahead on VPs.
2. Young Nick 69 - rspeer 35. Playing Ambassador-pong doesn't slow down YN's Goons engine, and revealing Tunnel against it doesn't do enough.
3. rspeer 45 - Young Nick 57: A different sort of Jack game as we both go for Gardens. I stop greening a bit after Gardens, playing for the long game and assuming YN will stall. Whoops, right, jacks don't stall.
4. rspeer 56 - Young Nick 49: I play an Envoy/Horn of Plenty deck resembling one that Geronimoo creamed me with once upon a time. Except, now that I look back at that game, Geronimoo had King's Courts also. I managed to win anyway with a very fortuitous comeback, despite the slow engine.
5. Young Nick 20 - rspeer 14: This game is Ironworks heaven. YN's Spice Merchant might have given him the tempo he needed to win.

[Young Nick]

Young Nick 3 - rspeer 2

1. rspeer 47 - Young Nick 33: We both ignore chapel. I go for HP and Wharf. He goes for HP and Ghost Ship. His Ghost Ships hit often enough to make me get nervous and start questioning my faith in Wharf, but I stay ahead on VPs.
2. Young Nick 69 - rspeer 35. Playing Ambassador-pong doesn't slow down YN's Goons engine, and revealing Tunnel against it doesn't do enough.
3. rspeer 45 - Young Nick 57: A different sort of Jack game as we both go for Gardens. I stop greening a bit after Gardens, playing for the long game and assuming YN will stall. Whoops, right, jacks don't stall.
4. rspeer 56 - Young Nick 49: I play an Envoy/Horn of Plenty deck resembling one that Geronimoo creamed me with once upon a time. Except, now that I look back at that game, Geronimoo had King's Courts also. I managed to win anyway with a very fortuitous comeback, despite the slow engine.
5. Young Nick 20 - rspeer 14: This game is Ironworks heaven. YN's Spice Merchant might have given him the tempo he needed to win.

I agree with most of what rspeer says here. Here are any additional comments I might have about the match.

1. Do either of us have a high enough action density to make Tribute a worthwhile purchase? If so, an engine that is fueled by Tributes could be great, with Wharves for draw, but Merchant Ships for money and Ghost Ships to bring the opponent to tears.

2. I thought that I made a huge mistake when I auto-piloted and bought a second Quarry over a second Ambassador on turn 3. Upon reflection, it probably was a mistake, but not as costly as I thought it may be. rspeer did not quite explain how engine-happy this board was with Tactician (also good for Tunnel), Goons, Bazaar, and Throne Room. I should have picked up a Develop earlier, I am sure. I think neither of us played it all that well. Tunnel was probably a mistake, seeing as the Golds kind of get in the way. I also had a huge blunder in turn 16 where I Ambassadored away my last card in hand, an Estate, and thus my Tactician did not trigger. In a mirror, this would have been death and destruction. Overall, a fantastically fun board.

3. He greened a bit earlier than I did, but my Festivals gave me the endurance needed for this game.

4. I saw what rspeer was doing, but I never figured it would actually work! I was so far ahead that we both thought I had it in the bag. My turn 19 was straight out of hell. My Envoy flipped all 3 of my other actions (a second Envoy, a Rabble, and a Walled Village) and two Estates.
If rspeer had not ended it when he did, I would have taken the last Province. This game confuses me.

5. The best game of the match. This is a Scryping Pool dream board, especially with Ironworks. Ironworks will gladly pick up any and all of the following: Great Halls, Islands, Spice Merchants, Caravans, Potions, Walled Villages, and more Ironworks. I end up three-piling while ahead before his deck gets rolling. Spice Merchant is huge here. I mean huge! Without the deck trimming, it would have been tough to get a regular draw from Scrying Pool, though Island helped with that, too. I ended up picking up two SM's and setting one aside via Island. rspeer was playing for the longer game, I guess, and I comfortably destroy the rest of the Ironworks pile for a smooth W. I will mention that I trust both of us would have been wrecked by a lvl 40+ opponent here. How to handle this loaded board is beyond me. Comments welcome!

Thanks for the match rspeer.

[Fabian]

Fabian 3 - 1 help im a bug

Fabian 33 - 34 bug
I go for Treasure Maps with a Talisman, and am lucky enough to have them hit early. Early enough where I feel I can ignore King's Court and race for Province pretty easily. I buy my fourth on turn 12 and feel pretty reasonably safe, but from there I choke pretty hard and go on to lose.

Fabian 48 - 39 bug
A pretty BMesque game with Monument (and later Farmland) as the key cards. bug goes for more actions than I do early, with multiple Remodels and getting a third Monument a few turns before I do, and Festivals and stuff. Meanwhile I have lots of $6 cards (Farmland and Gold) and can turn those into Provinces reasonably safely, even though he cleverly runs out the Farmlands pile to make it a bit harder.

Fabian 31 - 21 bug
We open Silver/Smugglers and slowly start buying lots of expensive stuff (Bazaar, two Tactician each, then Goons with Council Room/Minion making guest appearances). I have more Goons in my deck, and with a small lead and three Goons lining up on a Tactician turn I can buy all but one Fool's Gold with a big enough VP chip lead to feel safe.

Fabian 38 - 32 bug
Sea Hag/Silver game where bug goes for Apothecaries and more of an action chain and I buy some Golds and Silvers instead. He wins the curse split 6/4 but I can buy enough green cards to put the game away. There's a one turn window after he's got two Duchy+Estate turns where he could catch up, but his deck isn't really equipped to buy Province at that point, and his blind Embassy comes up with $3P.

Thanks for the games bug!

[popsofctown]

When do I freak out if my partner hasn't pmed me?

[WanderingWinder]

When do I freak out if my partner hasn't pmed me?

Not yet.

[zxcvbn2]

When do I freak out if my partner hasn't pmed me?

Thursday or Friday, probably?

[qmech]

lespeutere 66 - qmech 44
Governor is still a tricky card.  Fool's Gold was probably a mistake.  It took a while for my Scheme cover to kick in against Young Witch.  I'm non the wiser about how to play Governor now.

qmech 47 - lespeutere 32
Mountebanks lead to Governor almost being ignored.  The single copies did a lot of work though, so this isn't a good example for Robz.

lespeutere 23 - qmech 40
A fun Trader/Smithy game that ends with a gorgeous run of luck for me.

lespeutere 43 - qmech 41
Double Jack.

qmech 36 - lespeutere 34
Loved lespeutere's Venture/Apothecary.  It seems like it should do well against my almost pure Big Money.

[cayvie]

Fabian 3 - 1 help im a bug

Fabian 33 - 34 bug
I go for Treasure Maps with a Talisman, and am lucky enough to have them hit early. Early enough where I feel I can ignore King's Court and race for Province pretty easily. I buy my fourth on turn 12 and feel pretty reasonably safe, but from there I choke pretty hard and go on to lose.

Fabian 48 - 39 bug
A pretty BMesque game with Monument (and later Farmland) as the key cards. bug goes for more actions than I do early, with multiple Remodels and getting a third Monument a few turns before I do, and Festivals and stuff. Meanwhile I have lots of $6 cards (Farmland and Gold) and can turn those into Provinces reasonably safely, even though he cleverly runs out the Farmlands pile to make it a bit harder.

Fabian 31 - 21 bug
We open Silver/Smugglers and slowly start buying lots of expensive stuff (Bazaar, two Tactician each, then Goons with Council Room/Minion making guest appearances). I have more Goons in my deck, and with a small lead and three Goons lining up on a Tactician turn I can buy all but one Fool's Gold with a big enough VP chip lead to feel safe.

Fabian 38 - 32 bug
Sea Hag/Silver game where bug goes for Apothecaries and more of an action chain and I buy some Golds and Silvers instead. He wins the curse split 6/4 but I can buy enough green cards to put the game away. There's a one turn window after he's got two Duchy+Estate turns where he could catch up, but his deck isn't really equipped to buy Province at that point, and his blind Embassy comes up with $3P.

Thanks for the games bug!

Good games, Fabian. I don't remember exactly what I said but I do remember already being on tilt at the start of the match and it pretty much continued through it . So sorry if I was particularly whiny.

I felt pretty thoroughly outplayed.

[Fabian]

Good games cayvie. I kinda got that sense yeah, but no worries Good luck in the rest!

[lespeutere]

lespeutere 66 - qmech 44
Governor is still a tricky card.  Fool's Gold was probably a mistake.  It took a while for my Scheme cover to kick in against Young Witch.  I'm non the wiser about how to play Governor now.

qmech 47 - lespeutere 32
Mountebanks lead to Governor almost being ignored.  The single copies did a lot of work though, so this isn't a good example for Robz.

lespeutere 23 - qmech 40
A fun Trader/Smithy game that ends with a gorgeous run of luck for me.

lespeutere 43 - qmech 41
Double Jack.

qmech 36 - lespeutere 34
Loved lespeutere's Venture/Apothecary.  It seems like it should do well against my almost pure Big Money.

1: Just thought governor prefers provinces over colonies as you get those golds you can remodel. Since it never was my plan to get provinces, FG seemed reasonable. YW, I'm not so sure about it anymore.

2: Don't really see the difference except for my expand and his GM he could pick up early. I'll put that more or less into 1st player advantage.

3: This was devastating. Still don't know how it happened I was beaten by 17 points or 6 provinces in 14 turns - just by one trader and 2 smithies. Never even got to play my goons (not that it would've helped).

4: Double Jack, never got to trash my estates, didn't break PPR in the end - any my better cash ratio payed off.

5: Also liked apothecary/venture. However, I made a mistake on t14 when I triggered the reshuffle. And finally I broke PPR when I should not have..

[Grujah]

My opponent didn't show up. Will try to reschedule.

[kulap]

greatexpecations 3 - 2 kulap

• greatexpectations 5 - 22 kulap
• greatexpectations 56 - 18 kulap
• kulap 24 - 27 greatexpectations
• greatexpectations 16 - 33 kulap
• greatexpectations 38 - 24 kulap

[Robz888]

lespeutere 66 - qmech 44
Governor is still a tricky card.  Fool's Gold was probably a mistake.  It took a while for my Scheme cover to kick in against Young Witch.  I'm non the wiser about how to play Governor now.

qmech 47 - lespeutere 32
Mountebanks lead to Governor almost being ignored.  The single copies did a lot of work though, so this isn't a good example for Robz.

Well, it's a good example of how Governor is hard to pass up entirely, even on a board where it doesn't dominate.

[Obi Wan Bonogi]

Stumbled into Tlloyd during auto-match, we agreed to play for Iso before it begins.  I don't think he realized it was bo5 because he bolted out the door after the first game.  I will try my best to finish out the series - although I'm slightly worried that he may have quit Dominion for the rest of his life after THIS.  The dumbest luckiest comeback I have ever put on somebody. 

[Smithe]

Smithe-3 jmieden-0

Game 1:http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120611-180815-6d5c9110.html
Game 2:http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120611-181754-f5498393.html
Game 3:http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120611-182535-84b1a3ab.html

[Lekkit]

@Obi Wan Bonogi: Seems like Monument and King's Court are always present when the most epic comebacks are made.

[WanderingWinder]

Comments on rspeer-YoungNick:
Game 1: I would think that BM-Wharf beats what either of you did.... tribute is all that's there for an engine, and it shouldn't be reliable enough against a BM-Wharf deck, I don't think.
Game 5: VERY interesting. I'm not totally sure that scrying pools or spice merchant are the greatest here, but they might well be. I do know that ironworks is amazing, whatever you do.

[WanderingWinder]

Fabian-Bug.
Game 1: I'm confused by the decision to go treasure maps here. Talisman is really not much of an enabler, at least I didn't think, and this board screams out engine to me. But you know, Fabian is really good, so maybe I'm missing something?

[WanderingWinder]

lespeuture-qmech:
Game 3: So, does trader REALLY help that much? People seem to be in love with that card around here, and I'm not so convinced it's worth it in such games.
Game 5: Apothecary-venture is an interesting idea which hasn't really occurred to me, but I can't help but wonder how it fares against a more conventional BM strategy.

[WanderingWinder]

greatexpectations-kulap:
Game 1: I'm not understanding why Ironworks/Silk Road isn't played here. I mean, KC and TR and Wharf and familiar and potentially governor are all very nice cards, but I don't see them overcoming.

[WanderingWinder]

Bonogi: Maybe I'm missing something. Let's grab the CR log. Hmm, it doesn't have the nice thing at the bottom where you can see the score and deck compositions at every step (bug?). In any case, it looks like quite a good comeback, but not something that I'd call the biggest thing ever.

I guess you haven't seen this

[jmieden]

Smithe-3 jmieden-0

Game 1:http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120611-180815-6d5c9110.html
Game 2:http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120611-181754-f5498393.html
Game 3:http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120611-182535-84b1a3ab.html

Game 1: Smithe 50, jmieden 39- I ignored the Ghost Ships and went with Nobles early and I think that was the defining feature of the direction of the game. I also picked up defenses for the impending curse war (Mountebank, Young Witch (WW bane), and Familiar were all out, but almost completely unbought) that never happened (I had 1 Mountebank in the end, he only stocked Ghost Ship and Nobles). He had 3 provinces by turn 15 and I greened early and stalled out.

Game 2: Smithe 74, jmieden 56- Goons game with potential for Workers Village/Rabble engine. I just couldn't get going at all. I didn't get $6 until turn 11, he had a lot of smart buys and this ended up not being close.

Game 3: Smithe 50, jmieden 47- Close game; I wasn't paying attention to how many colonies were left and had tons of collision on my Mountebanks early, whereas he pulled Steward with each curse I sent him. I was frustrated and wasn't thinking well and he outplayed me. 

Overall: Smithe 3- jmieden 0. I do think I got some bad luck in a couple cases, but was generally just outplayed. I didn't keep in mind basic principles like PPR and counting my terminals and he rolled right over me. Thanks to Smithe for 3 great games.

If anybody has any advice for me on how I should have handled these games better, I'd love to hear your feedback. Thanks!

[greatexpectations]

greatexpectations-kulap:
Game 1: I'm not understanding why Ironworks/Silk Road isn't played here. I mean, KC and TR and Wharf and familiar and potentially governor are all very nice cards, but I don't see them overcoming.

ugh, this one was a mess by me.  i opened IW planning on grabbing the potion for familiar as i did and then going hard for SR.  i saw he didn't appear to be contesting SR so i figured i would try to grab some wharves and try for a couple farmlands and maybe a province or two.  my strategy was starting to unravel, and this was compounded by the potion missing the shuffle and the familiar being drawn dead every time.

if not for IW/SR, i think KC/wharf with 1-2 governors was the best bet.

[zxcvbn2]

Game 2: Smithe 74, jmieden 56- Goons game with potential for Workers Village/Rabble engine. I just couldn't get going at all. I didn't get $6 until turn 11, he had a lot of smart buys and this ended up not being close.

Maybe I'm completely wrong, but I definitely would have gone silver over lighthouse early in that game when you had $3. I think this could have improved your luck, if only marginally. I also wouldn't have given up and started buying a whole bunch of estates and coppers at the middle-end instead of continuing to try to match up your goons. He had to buy out all the provinces, you had plenty of time to keep building your engine and get it functioning.

[Robz888]

Bonogi: Maybe I'm missing something. Let's grab the CR log. Hmm, it doesn't have the nice thing at the bottom where you can see the score and deck compositions at every step (bug?). In any case, it looks like quite a good comeback, but not something that I'd call the biggest thing ever.

I guess you haven't seen this

I re-watch this one periodically, always convinced it was a hallucination. "There's just no way I lost, right? Right? Surely, I win this turn. Okay, this turn I end it. Really, it has to... Nooooooo!"

[lespeutere]

lespeuture-qmech:
Game 3: So, does trader REALLY help that much? People seem to be in love with that card around here, and I'm not so convinced it's worth it in such games.
Game 5: Apothecary-venture is an interesting idea which hasn't really occurred to me, but I can't help but wonder how it fares against a more conventional BM strategy.

You mean it didn't occur to you here, or it never occured to you? Last case'd make me a little proud, gotta admit.
+buy would've been nice to grab apothecary + venture. I think then it has a decent chance.

[WanderingWinder]

lespeuture-qmech:
Game 3: So, does trader REALLY help that much? People seem to be in love with that card around here, and I'm not so convinced it's worth it in such games.
Game 5: Apothecary-venture is an interesting idea which hasn't really occurred to me, but I can't help but wonder how it fares against a more conventional BM strategy.

You mean it didn't occur to you here, or it never occured to you? Last case'd make me a little proud, gotta admit.
+buy would've been nice to grab apothecary + venture. I think then it has a decent chance.

Never occurred to me as a thing. Not that there's been all that much reason, but... well, I do think it's clever. Doubt it's like mega-strong, but very clever. And pretty reasonably good in one of those vacuums where there's no other power strategy.

[Fabian]

Fabian-Bug.
Game 1: I'm confused by the decision to go treasure maps here. Talisman is really not much of an enabler, at least I didn't think, and this board screams out engine to me. But you know, Fabian is really good, so maybe I'm missing something?

I'm not happy with my play here. My feeling was that Talisman would be good in the early game to win Hamlet and Fishing Village wars. It would then be used in the midgame, after you had some Rabbles (and a KC if you're lucky) to boost your purchasing power with Treasure Map, since I felt this would turn into one of those games where you can't buy King's Court very easily since your deck has no treasure, and once you have your KC's you can't do very much since your deck has no treasure. I still think Treasure Map has merit on this board (look how slowly bug's deck, basically what I envisioned minus the TM's, operates, having to buy super awkward Golds which ideally should be Rabbles or KC's), but I'm quite unhappy with what I talked myself into doing. That said, I got very lucky with them and should be a huge favorite to win from turn ~6 and on.

Edit: Felt like trying it out, something like this is roughly what I had in mind. 6 Provines in 16 turns with nothing special in the luck department I think? It's certainly not an attempt at a "perfect" game, in any case Note that I open Talisman/Hamlet to mimick my actual game where I had $5/$2 (I'd definitely prefer Talisman/Fishing Village)

[Qvist]

Here are my games against bedlam.
Previously I dropped down to level 22 after a long hiatus and I did some playtesting, falling down to even level 19, so I wasn't that confident.

Qvist 56 - 51 bedlam
This basically a Wharf-BM mirror match, with the addition of Goons. I don't know if skipping Goons would even be better. What do you think? My earlier Expand might have given me the win.

bedlam 40 - 77 Qvist
Nothing very good in the cheap range here in this Colony game, so we bought Highways for $5 in another mirror match and switched then over to Cities. He did the mistake to green too early instead of buying more Cities what gave me the win.

bedlam 41 - 40 Qvist
5/2 was definitely Mint/Fool's Gold for me. But I hit 2 times Mint + Copper + 3 Estates what was crucial. Then I thought that I had to hurry and went green way too early and stalled badly. So he could catch up and won by a 1-point margin.

Qvist 37 - 21 bedlam
bedlam tried to combine Coppersmith and Counting House, but that was a little bit too complicated, because he didn't pick up additional actions with Crossroads and additional buys with Pawn.  I went basically Rabble-BM with a Salvager mixed in, for a clear win.

We decided to play the fifth game even though it was over.

bedlam 30 - 53 Qvist
This was an interesting game in which I decided to skip King's Court. I had no idea what to do. What would you've done with
Baron, Bishop, Forge, Fortune Teller, Horn of Plenty, King's Court, Lighthouse, Lookout, Potion, Talisman, and University?

I thought a while and with no good action to play three times, I tried to build the Golden Deck with Forge/Bishop, because there was Baron to get Forge early. It was the first time for me to try this. It took a while and I made 1-2 mistakes, but then it worked really nice. bedlam tried something too tricky with Talisman to get multiple Bishops, but that there was no Village beside of University to get it done.


Thanks bedlam for the nice games and the discussion.

[turkman]

Jorbles [2 wins] and Turkman [3 wins]

First player won the first four games with both players following the same general strategy albeit with some minor differences. The last game found us diverging more than the other games, though we both jumped on witch early in the game as it seems players tend to do. The most exciting board for us both, I believe, was the second game where there were a lot of terminal actions, including goons. The least satisfying game for me was a horse traders / duke / duchy game.

Here are the results of the 5 games we played.

Jorbles 41 / Turkman 31
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/12/game-20120612-173211-ae60f3f6.html

Turkman 107 / Jorbles 76
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/12/game-20120612-174454-f1c91b7c.html

Jorbles 37 / Turkman 33
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/12/game-20120612-175029-8632c457.html

Turkman 69 / Jorbles 32
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/12/game-20120612-180000-610691e5.html

Turkman 42 / Jorbles 30
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/12/game-20120612-181013-0606f90a.html

[Robz888]

Robz888 defeats shark_bait 3-1

We had some very, very fun games, although they were decided entirely by my bursts of good luck, which were unfair to my opponent throughout. Interesting games, though! 3/4 Colony, and I normally hate Colony, but these were neat--if not strategically variable.

shark_bait 21 - 29 Robz888 http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/12/game-20120612-180759-84189938.html
Some easy Torture chaining with Fishing Villages for both of us. We Swindle some Torturers into Counting Houses, and later they are a welcome presence and the only way to string together $8. My superior luck begins.

shark_bait 28 - 42 Robz888 http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/12/game-20120612-181533-42d95eb2.html
We both get to King our Mountebanks, but he does it twice. That's game, right? Well, not when my only Province immediately finds one of my only Tournaments. I use Trusty Steed to flood my deck with Silver. He has no purchasing power, and that's that.

shark_bait 49 - 47 Robz888 http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/12/game-20120612-182820-d7586fed.html
With Mountebank again, we both go for Apothecaries. Expand and Trade Route are the real stars, though. It's anyone's game for the last 5 Turns, where hilariously neither of us can buy any points, and I'm stuck trying to whittle down the Trade Route pile to nothing and win off my 1 point lead. But he finally gets a drop of good luck and wins the game. Also he had 2 Spies that were seemingly useful.

Robz888 36 - shark_bait 35 http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/12/game-20120612-183530-601ecbad.html
Mostly similar strategies--buy lots of Hoards, get Great Halls and Green--but I think the only mistake was probably made by me when I picked up a useless City. I thought Great Halls would run, but he smartly Greens faster and I am in catchup mode. Too bad he gets a bad hand and I steal the thing.

Thanks to my opponent! He was a great sport about having way worse luck

[shark_bait]

Despite having pretty awful luck at times during my series with Robz888, those were some of the most fun games of dominion I have played since the DS Championships! 

In game 1, we proceeded to a typical Torturer chain style but both getting swindler.  I thought I might have a chance with his deck in a worse state, but what can I do when his Counting House, yes that's right, his Counting house nabs him 2 Provinces.  Regardless, the back and forth nature of the swindling and torturing made for an exciting game.

In game 2, I actually felt bad at first.  Yup, I felt bad that my beginning draws were so good!  Mountebank, Cellar and KC or Turn 3, 4 and 5 respectively compared to his Mountebank, Tourny, Mountebank.  At this point, I think it's GG.  I have the FPA and I figure with a Mountebank and a Cellar to boot, his deck will be destroyed in no time.  Well when my KC draws dead the first time, he curses me a bit and basically pulls a rabbit out of a hat.

In game 3, well let's just say this was perhaps the most fun game of dominion I have played.  With an identical 5/2 start, we both start Mountebanking up the curses.  We both pick up a few Apothecaries to grab up copper and some Expands and start pounding the provinces mostly via trashing.  Then we stall.  I am 1 point down with 1 Province left. 

Turn 26, Robz has $7. 
Turn 28, my Expand is one shy of the province. 
Turn 28, Robz expand comes w/o a card > $5. 
Turn 30, I get $7. 
Turn 30, Robz gets $7. 
Turns 30 and 31, Robz brings the Trade Route to 1 remaining, threatening to 3-pile with a 1 point lead. 
Turn 32, Robz draws dead, needing only $3 to end the game. 
Turn 33, I Expand a Duchy into the last province squeaking out the win.

Game 4, close game for sure.  Could have gone either way.

Code: [Select]

— shark_bait's turn 10 —
   shark_bait plays 2 Coppers and 3 Silvers.
   shark_bait buys a Province.
   (shark_bait reshuffles.)
   (shark_bait draws: 2 Hoards, 2 Coppers, and a Trader.)

Basically, both of my Hoards, were in the last 1-4 cards of my deck so that when I reshuffled they missed it.  Consequently the 2 Golds gained also missed that reshuffle.  This was perhaps the most disappointing stroke of luck.

[qmech]

lespeuture-qmech:
Game 3: So, does trader REALLY help that much? People seem to be in love with that card around here, and I'm not so convinced it's worth it in such games.

Trader has two extra things going for it beyond the Silver: it's a mild disincentive to opening Swindler, and it leaves open the possibility of an early Cache->Silverx2 which would have been huge (but did not actually come up).  The fact that lespeutere's Trader missed a reshuffle is also suggestive.

Overall I think the rapid Silver gaining was important here, both for its purchasing power and expanding the deck enough that it could absorb a second Smithy.  My favourite turn:

— qmech's turn 7 —
   qmech plays a Trader.
   ... trashing a Silver.
   ... gaining 3 Silvers.
   qmech plays 2 Coppers and a Silver.
   qmech buys a Smithy.

This set me up brilliantly for the rest of the game.

[WanderingWinder]

I guess the thing is, it (the silver gaining) is not very rapid. You trash an estate, it gives you two silvers, which may or may not (probably most often does) put you one silver ahead at that point, if you can get it to line up. Tradering a silver nets you only two. It's a bit slow. I think the bigger point is not so much for this specific game, though I'm not at all sure of it there, but more in general. I'm seeing it get bought at virtually every game it's available in this tournament, and my impression is that it's not THAT good.

[Lekkit]

I haven't heard from ddubois yet. I've sent him a PM, but got no response. And I'm kinda running out of times that I'm able to play. :S

[BadAssMutha]

BadAssMutha defeats methods of rationality in an somewhat unlikely 2-1-2 match.

Game 1: BadAssMutha 37 - 37 methods of rationality
I thought my Tunnel strategy, fueled by Navigator and Inn would get me a win for sure. A misclick on turn 7 made me keep cards I should have discarded with Nav, making me miss out on another Gold, but more importantly, giving me a dead turn of $2 on turn 8. Probably could have won otherwise, but got out of it with a tie.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120612-201920-8667196e.html

Game 2: methods of rationality 34 - BadAssMutha 30
Never really developed a cohesive strategy, and ultimately paid the price on this one. My Tacticians probably weren't the best investment.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120612-202812-62b314a1.html

Game 3:BadAssMutha 34 - methods of rationality 34
Here I get sucked into a Duke-Duchy battle I didn't want to pursue, but still got out of it with a tie. Things are looking grim, I need both of the next 2 games to win the match.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120612-203533-0eacc308.html

Game 4: BadAssMutha 46 - methods of rationality 24
I opened Sea Hag/Silver vs. Sea Hag/Warehouse in the hopes of getting an early Jester. It paid off, and methods' Hags weren't able to cycle a ton, and I still gave out 4 of the curses. Menagerie turned out to be extremely useful in this longer game.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120612-204757-b51d8f33.html

Game 5: BadAssMutha 48 - methods of rationality 24
My Highway/Ironworks strategy came together even better than I could have hoped. methods opened with Ironworks/Trade Route, while I went with IW/Silver, which got me to highway quicker.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120612-205602-9fd57e36.html

Great match!

[Kirian]

I haven't heard from ddubois yet. I've sent him a PM, but got no response. And I'm kinda running out of times that I'm able to play. :S

And indeed this would be the time for people to start worrying.  I'll create a thread for that.

[Mic Qsenoch]

HiveMindEmulator wins 3-2 against Mic Qsenoch

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/13/game-20120613-070556-159c64d2.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/13/game-20120613-072014-34899791.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/13/game-20120613-072552-65b06d15.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/13/game-20120613-073020-7ad2adb9.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/13/game-20120613-074320-71d7b0f9.html

See game two for an example of how not to play Dominion by me.

[HiveMindEmulator]

HiveMindEmulator wins 3-2 against Mic Qsenoch

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/13/game-20120613-070556-159c64d2.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/13/game-20120613-072014-34899791.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/13/game-20120613-072552-65b06d15.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/13/game-20120613-073020-7ad2adb9.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/13/game-20120613-074320-71d7b0f9.html

See game two for an example of how not to play Dominion by me.

Game 1 I got a 5/2 opening with Witch/Haven, plus a nice Inn timing on a post-Witch turn, so I was able to jump out to a 5-0 Curse lead and kind of coast.
Game 2 was a weird one. KC but no cantrips or villages (the only +action on Cellar). He opted to skip Sea Hag. Once I KC'd my Sea Hag, i just tried to run piles out, though that ended up making it pretty close, since neither of us really had any money. A lucky Remodel here or there and anything could have happened. Probably going Sea Hag BM would have beat either of us here.
Game 3 I went Envoy/Hoard/Harem vs Hoard/Nobles, and it looks like Nobles worked out better. The Envoy caused me to miss Hoards a couple times, while Nobles just picked them up cleanly.
Game 4 was a Chancellor/Stash game. He opened Chancellor/Chancellor and I opened Chancellor/Silver. With more Chancellors, he was able to hit them earlier in shuffles to win.
Game 5 he went for some sort of Big Money deck with Hoards and a few actions while I went for a Scheme/Golem-powered Hamlet/Council Room, with Ironworks/Jester for setup, and Hoard & Transmute to gain a couple Golds and Duchies. Playing 3 Council Rooms per turn is scary, but being able to Scheme back the Golems for back-to-back 15 point turns makes it worth it.

[Jorbles]

Jorbles [2 wins] and Turkman [3 wins]

First player won the first four games with both players following the same general strategy albeit with some minor differences. The last game found us diverging more than the other games, though we both jumped on witch early in the game as it seems players tend to do. The most exciting board for us both, I believe, was the second game where there were a lot of terminal actions, including goons. The least satisfying game for me was a horse traders / duke / duchy game.

...

Turkman 107 / Jorbles 76
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/12/game-20120612-174454-f1c91b7c.html

I didn't actually enjoy this Game 2 board much, Monuments and Goons, but no Villages or card multipliers to make them fun. I found we were playing the same strategy, but Turkman had some better luck and that snowballed. It was painfully long (38 turns). The last half of the game was just me trying to draw the game out enough that I could comeback, but there wasn't really much chance of it.

Turkman 42 / Jorbles 30
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/12/game-20120612-181013-0606f90a.html

I deserved to lose this final one, (and thus the match). I totally missed the Pawn/Peddler combo going into it and decided to go for a BMish Witch/Merchant Ship game. When I saw Turkman play more than one Pawn in a turn it clicked what he was doing and I realized I liked his strategy more than my own. With Remodel on the board Peddlers were very strong. I tried picking up Cities to comeback, but then he correctly stalled buying out the whole stack of Peddlers to put off activating them until I could play Witch to get out the last Curse. Pawn has always been a blind spot for me and hopefully this game will make me remember that it is a useful source of +Buy.

All in all though, it was kindof a dreary round. Turkman was a great player, but these boards weren't particularly exciting. BMish mirror matches are dull, but the one game that wasn't a mirror he had a better read on the board and deserved to win. Best of luck in the rest of the tournament!

[Stringer Bell]

Well, I got beaten to a pulp. Only really had a shot in the first game, the second and third were blowouts. I even got to go first in games 2 and 3 and still got heavily beaten.

Game 1
IGG ran two piles out really early, so I thought it would be a good game for City, since I would be quickly getting to level 3 on it. There were so many Coppers, Curses, and IGGs in my deck that a big engine was probably not a great idea.
Game 2
I think we both had a similar idea here, to go for Tunnels and cards that would discard to gain Golds. I underestimated the power of Venture in this, opting to try to parlay those Golds into Provinces through Governor.
Game 3
This might have been my favorite game of the bunch, even though I lost by 24 points, because there was so much scoring and each turn could be a ten or twelve point turn if the cards landed right. I'm interested to see what people thought of this one, I'm not sure what my mistake was here.

[yuma]

yuma 3 - heron 2

heron-43 yuma-34 Masquerade game where his mostly big money beat my crappy half engine.

heron-38 yuma-34King's Court Torturer game where heron got a 5/2 opening with crossroads around as well. It was game over from the start but I at least stayed competitive.

yuma-41 heron-40 Rabble Big Money beat Oracle Big Money with both opening Trading Post mostly because of first player advantage and heron breaking PPR--although he broke it to win in game 1.

yuma-33 heron-30 My engine barely eeks out a win against Merchant Ship Big Money, again PPR broken.

yuma-83 heron-70 Goons game with Fishing Villages and Envoy. I thought the game was over after heron's 19 pt turn 19, but I managed to come back for the win with my advantage of +2 goons.

Thanks for the games.

[b33]

Teproc 2  b33 2   1 draw

game 1: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-061314-4d47eebc.html
     this game university,city, mining village, oasis.   His winning strategy was going university city, I figured I could get to provinces sooner and opened oasis MV to get to quick gold, then I believe I
bought too many MV's which helped him get to 2 empty piles faster  for his cities. Do you guys think if i avoided the MVs that BM might have worked?

2:  http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-062158-ceb2452f.html
IGG game we tie

3: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-064355-be1a3a3c.html

best comeback i ever had especially in tournament game; not a shocker Kc and goons were involved though apprentice was key in there to getting me plus actions when KC'd.

4: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-065805-e8f9b127.html
double ambassador game  I undertrashed and he got to the big money sooner.

5: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-071504-3479c1f4.html
   Tep had some bad luck this game, accidentally trade routing a province, and he said he missed the duke/hoard.

Enjoyed the games. Teproc was a great opponent.

[O]

O - 3 Kenuru - 0

I'm sorry to Kenuru that I was such a spacey and disrespectful opponent.

I didn't notice the time and just assumed that someone was randomly playing me a match set, so when he said "wow I'm off my game today" I agreed , which is totally not OK in a tournament atmosphere. 

Then I checked my laptop time and it was 9:10 and I was like "holy crap I'm late for my tournament match".... and then I realized I had just won my tournament match.

I outplayed Kenuru twice and eeked by in a mostly-mirror Hag/FG game, mostly by luck.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120613-210206-a23b8a8f.html

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120613-210621-f82d1f21.html

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120613-211324-8f699072.html

[Teproc]

In reply to the above :

Game 1 : Pretty much what he said. I figured University would get me to the Unstoppable City Chain quick enough, and it worked very well.

Game 2 : Yeah, nothing to see here, except that b33 chose to go for Duchies before the IGGs were finished. Having only recently come back to the game, I haven't played a lot of IGG games, so what do you all think of that ?

Game 3 : Yeah, I don't really know what I did wrong. I'm really interested in your feedback on that one.

Game 4 : Yep, what b33 said.

Game 5 : Looking at the board, I considered Duke, and opted against it because I saw no enabler... when I first got 6, I realized Hoard was on the board. I decided that I had started the game with a Province plan in mind, and that I would stick to it, which was a mistake. I also think I played pretty badly all around after that.

Also, I accidently trashed a Province instead of a Potion... but it ended up being fine, since b33 won that one pretty handily.

I can only reiterate what b33 said : he was a very enjoyable opponent.

[Rabid]

MrEevee 1
Rabid 3

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-095646-3317462b.html

HP Cutpurse mirror match
I win due to P1 advantage.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-100353-9701d9a4.html

A more interesting game, Islands, into city / noble brigands.
I'm not sure how or why I won this game?

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-101132-0db51a8f.html

Young witch / Loan (bane) mirror.
Mr Eevee correctly adds a second YW, for an easy win.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-101846-27180044.html

Best board of the match, Young witch / tunnel / Scheme (bane) / tactician.
Even though my YW were mostly blocked by scheme, tunnel + discarder is still really good.

[-Stef-]

dghunter79 vs -Stef-    2-3

1 - 0 (40-37) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-122117-e5bd90d0.html
1 - 1 (31-41) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-123447-5f27c7f6.html
1 - 2 (27-42) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-124727-0409e764.html
2 - 2 (51-21) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-125921-e8d31672.html
2 - 3 (resign) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-131428-eae1b86e.html

I started out on this tournament really nervous. As a result, I didn't really look at the set & make a plan, but just started buying some cards. Oh Boy. Dominion is not the game for that.

1 - 0 (40-37) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-122117-e5bd90d0.html
We start on a board with a Vault that says BigMoney and a black market and a embargo that say engine. Now I should know the vault has a bigger mouth, but find myself back trying to build an engine anyway. This happends to me from time to time, and more if I'm not thinking. With no +actions in the regular kingdom, I quickly feel sorry for this decision. Can't go back though. Embargo gold, then provinces, and just hope to get some good stuff from the Black Market. Somewhere in there I accidentally buy a vault in stead of another Stables (yes I'm really nervous) and dghunter justly wins the first game.

1 - 1 (31-41) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-123447-5f27c7f6.html
Game number two I'm still a bit shocked by my silliness diving into an engine, and hey, with this nice article on the front page of DominionStrategy I decide to give silver/smithy a try. Somewhere in turn 5 I notice he tries to build an engine and I'm somewhat scared that he can do it. Under normal circumstances, on a board like this, I'd almost certainly be building an engine. If he somehow finds time to squeeze in some golems, I'm afraid he'll make it. Fortunately he doesn't, and hey, smithy/silver isn't that bad a plan (espescially with vault as backup) and it ends favorably. At some turns he's only 1 or 2 points short of being able to buy the last prov and win though.

1 - 2 (27-42) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-124727-0409e764.html
Game 3 has a really fascinating board. It has tournament, that usually terminates all other plans, but here are some interesting options. Workers village, throne room, embassy to draw it all. Forge and salvager to get rid of the lesser cards. And with Black Market, Fairgrounds and Vineyard there's a *huge* amount of alternate VP available. KC and goons are somewhere in the BM deck.
One of the best boards I've seen to completely ignore the tournament and all provinces, and just start building a nice and all powerful engine. Not for me though, not today. I just keep grabbing tournaments and provinces like a mad man. I even start buying duchies real soon to get some points. Exactly the kind of thing I usually hope my opponent does. Right before a critical reshuffle I come back to my senses though and realize I need to end this game. So I buy my second salvager for 6. I'm a bit lucky, they line up with my provinces, so even though he goons a lot I can still trade my provinces for new ones and end it. Salvager is a very nasty card for engines, because you can't really stall your opponent. One to remember.

2 - 2 (51-21) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-125921-e8d31672.html
We play a colony board and this is the first one I really look at before starting to play. Basically I only see Witch and Mountebank and maybe maybe expand. There's also a golem that is really nice but with this ugly price to buy one. I'm pretty confident on my silver/silver opening, but dghunter79 buys potion/silver. At this point I feel as though the match is over. Whew, played not too well, but managed to get away with a win anyway. *reallity check*. He hits 4P *AND* 5 in his first reshuffle. In stead of winning, I already lost.

2 - 3 (resign) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-131428-eae1b86e.html
The final game is this first one I'm really happy with my own play. I look at the board for a while and decide I want to build up some options with a thinner deck, so I open Spice Merchant/Silver. He gets a Ghost Ship, and appears to go Ships-money-points. At that point I decide I don't want to buy a single green card, but just alchemists, monuments and a ghost ship every turn. It worked even better then I hoped.

[DG]

DG 0 : 3 Marin

I'm not going to lose any sleep over these. Three games where Marin played well and I didn't get the draws to compete.

Marin 53 : 33 DG http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-112459-7c897f5d.html
Marin 27 : 18 DG http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-114416-74cba18e.html
Marin 18 : 17 DG http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-115347-754c33a3.html

[WanderingWinder]

BAM-methods of rationality:
1: I don't know about your strategy in general. Navigator/tunnel seems a bit weak to me. But apprentice will help a bit, inn will help a good bit, and opponent's ghost ships will help a good bit, at least in some cases. You can counter them fairly well, anyway.
3: This one confuses me. I'm not sure what you were going for, or how you got 'sucked into' a duchy/duke thing. If you don't think it's strong, then just don't go for it, don't let yourself get sucked it. If you do think it's strong, why don't you want to do it. Moreover, I'm not sure why either jack for provinces or jack for dukes (not sure which is better) shouldn't basically be the dominant thing here. REALLY confused as to why the jack player has all this other stuff like outpost in his deck.
5: Ironworks/Trade route seems such a slow opening. My question here would be silver/silver into IW/Highway, or IW/silver. I think I'd go with the latter.

[heron]

Thanks for the games yuma.
I think, (as you're probably tired of hearing) that I need to work on not breaking PPR.

For some reason, I find it fun.

[Geronimoo]

Great comments on the games, Stef.

[popsofctown]

Mergus 3-1 over pops.

Here's the last game's log http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-184151-bb375395.html

I could get the rest from CR later I guess.

I'm too sore a loser by nature to do any discussion of it now.

[ednever]

ednever 3-2 over zxcvbn2

Game logs in order:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-191035-ed17e550.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-191958-d75a2fcf.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-193444-89707e7d.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-194842-2292cc15.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-200902-16cde52e.html

Some highlights:

Game 1: I go very heavy on Traders with no alt-VP. Bad idea. ZX takes a couple of Rabbles and blows me away.

Game 2: Alt VP. Bureaucrat/Duke game with Crossroads. I pick up Feasts and use them to win the Duchy race. Then it's just clean-up

Game 3: Interesting but painful game. I open 5/2 and pick up a Haggler instead of an Upgrade or a Ghost Ship. ZX gets GS's going long before I do but I have more Fishing Village. I finally get it going and the Haggler gets put to good use. I sneak in a victory.

Game 4: Governors/Margrave. I was way ahead (Horse Trader open helped) and then couldn't finish it off. I should have picked up a little bit of gold earlier.

Game 5: Best game of the bunch. If you want to read a log, this is the one. It's a fantastic weird kingdom.
Bishop, Colony, Governor, Island, Market, Masquerade, Militia, Minion, Pawn, Platinum, Shanty Town, and Tournament

My plan was: Use Governors to draw to get Tournaments lined up with Provinces. Use Militia to drop ZX's hand size back down. I ignored silver for Shanty Town (Since Militia would be my only terminal I thought I would use it as a cheap lab). ZX went for what I think was a more traditional Governor/Militia play with more money. I think there was likely something else here using Masquerade, or maybe even Island into Bishop with Governor to provide the Golds and Shanty towns the actions.

As it stood ZX took the lead, but I jumped back with a double Colony turn. Then he got ahead again. I broke PCR very nervously on turn 18 taking a Colony and a Province. He folloed up with his own breaking of PPR taking the second last province. I finished it off with a remodled Gold.

All very close games. Lots of fun!

Ed

[zxcvbn2]

Thanks for the games ed. These were, IMO, the most intriguing kingdoms I've had in IsoDom as of yet. Let's see:

Game 1: I go very heavy on Traders with no alt-VP. Bad idea. ZX takes a couple of Rabbles and blows me away.

I think the only reason I get away with a win in this one is Ed never gets a card-drawer, rabble is the only one in this game. In hindsight, he didn't even get five until he was going for duchies, though, so I think that's just bad luck on his part.

Game 2: Alt VP. Bureaucrat/Duke game with Crossroads. I pick up Feasts and use them to win the Duchy race. Then it's just clean-up

I just couldn't get over four early in this game. Also, in desperation I went for Noble Brigand hoping he won't be able to get to five later on, but his hoards prevent that. I really didn't play this well, but I did really like the kingdom.

Game 3: Interesting but painful game. I open 5/2 and pick up a Haggler instead of an Upgrade or a Ghost Ship. ZX gets GS's going long before I do but I have more Fishing Village. I finally get it going and the Haggler gets put to good use. I sneak in a victory.

I think I screw up here by buying a couple of golds early on. I should've hit the ghost ships harder, instead I let him catch back up and we end up splitting the ghost ships after I bough the first two or three. Also, probably shouldn't have bought the penultimate duchy with two piles gone, but I don't know what else I should've done there.

Game 4: Governors/Margrave. I was way ahead (Horse Trader open helped) and then couldn't finish it off. I should have picked up a little bit of gold earlier.

The ending here was kind of intense. With three provinces left, I remodel a gold and try to blind draw up to 16 w/ 2 buys, but only draw up to fifteen, buying a province and a duchy, putting me up 10. Ed then isn't able to draw up to $13, and I win by the next turn. A rare game where I win even though I lose a governor rush.

Game 5: Best game of the bunch. If you want to read a log, this is the one. It's a fantastic weird kingdom.
Bishop, Colony, Governor, Island, Market, Masquerade, Militia, Minion, Pawn, Platinum, Shanty Town, and Tournament

I would love to hear how some of the top-ranked players would've played this one. I clearly made some mistakes, with a bishop buy that never really did me any good (I was hoping to trash some golds late for extra vp), and I got so caught up in the governor rush early that I didn't get a tournament, and being able to snag an early prize would been huge.

Anyway, a lot of close games, it was really exciting at the end of those last two, lots of fun.

[Grujah]

Grujah 2 - 3 Wizard of Woz

Grujah 43 - 28 Wizard of Woz Ok, this was Develop HEAVEN. Almost every card went into its favor. I saw it, my opponent didn't.

Wizard of Woz 47 - 24 Grujah Ambassador and other things going on. I suck with Ambassadors, I sucked here way more than usually, played terribly. My opponent played good, I was dead half-way into the game.

Grujah 41 - 76 Wizard of Woz Colony game. My opponent went for BM Salvager, which proved powerful. Few turns into game I get this great idea of KC-KC-Bishop-Explorer-Province Golden Deck worth 12VP per turn. Was too slow, had some awful draws, I've never realized it.

Grujah 34 - 28 Wizard of Woz Weird Vineyards game with lots of enablers (Workshop, Uni, Quarry), decent + buys (Baron, Margrave) but no cantrips and poor + Actions (Uni). I won Vineyard split (Mandarin helped, there you go underrated card!), which won me the game.

Wizard of Woz 38 - 21 Wizard won Sea Hag war (6-4), I was too afraid of getting terminals so went for stashes, he didn't make the mistake and played better, won the Province split.


Well played, fun games, I underestimated my opponent for being lower level and got beaten heavily. GG.

[Wizard of Woz]

Thanks for the great games, Grujah.  I won much by luck, and got to see how develop can be valuable.  Any other input on game logs would be appreciated.

[-Stef-]

I would love to hear how some of the top-ranked players would've played this one. I clearly made some mistakes, with a bishop buy that never really did me any good (I was hoping to trash some golds late for extra vp), and I got so caught up in the governor rush early that I didn't get a tournament, and being able to snag an early prize would been huge.

This set is clearly too complex to "solve". A lot depends on how things develop during the game. I'll just add my 52 cents of intuition.

first thoughts on the set: WHOWA
1) I see minions supported by tournaments, pawns, shanty towns, markets
2) I see governors with militia, also with tournaments and markets.
plan 2) is stronger then 1) and the combination is a bit awkward. So my plan is to get lots of governors and skip the minions.

* I'd open silver/masquerade. That's what I almost always do when I see masq, and I think it's good here as well. I like the way I can slowly start trashing and have the safe route to money in the process to get good cards.
* The next round almost always includes destroying an estate and buying for 4 & 5. That will be governor - militia. If I hit 3/6 it'll be shanty town - governor. If opponent militia blocks that I'll get some tournaments. No way I'm buying any money the rest of the game.

From this point on a lot depends on shuffle luck and what my opponent does. I want to load up on governors, but the real focus is on getting rid of the bad cards. 
I want to go "governors - shanty town - militia - more stuff" asap. This "more stuff" after the discard will get more and more important as the game builds up. It will be problematic for my opponent, because he needs to keep cards to 1) profit from my remodelling after militia 2) give me something bad in case of a masq 3) start up his own turn. 4) profit from a possible bishop 5) keep a province to block my tournaments. Thats a lot with 3 cards!

Off course winning the tournaments can have a huge impact. followers is not as strong as usual, because you already have the militia and the curse is not that much worse then the estate. At that point you should be drawing your deck or at least close to, and masq destroys a curse for the same price it destroys an estate. Princess feels important, and trusty steed is also very nice of course. Bag of gold combines nicely with bishop.

Soooo many options... it just hurts. But if you get to the point that you remodel with a governor and your opponent doesn't have the cards to join in, I think you're winning. Don't dive into greening too soon, because an engine around bishop can *really* start scoring after a while. If you try to go for a long game, make sure not to get more then one province, or it just becomes too easy for him to end on provinces before your engine really kicks in. This is only important if he tries to ignore the engine potential of this set, not very likely.

[WanderingWinder]

Well, I got beaten to a pulp. Only really had a shot in the first game, the second and third were blowouts. I even got to go first in games 2 and 3 and still got heavily beaten.

Game 1
IGG ran two piles out really early, so I thought it would be a good game for City, since I would be quickly getting to level 3 on it. There were so many Coppers, Curses, and IGGs in my deck that a big engine was probably not a great idea.
Game 2
I think we both had a similar idea here, to go for Tunnels and cards that would discard to gain Golds. I underestimated the power of Venture in this, opting to try to parlay those Golds into Provinces through Governor.
Game 3
This might have been my favorite game of the bunch, even though I lost by 24 points, because there was so much scoring and each turn could be a ten or twelve point turn if the cards landed right. I'm interested to see what people thought of this one, I'm not sure what my mistake was here.

1: the problem here is what are you doing with those cities - answer is that labs aren't great in IGG rush, markets are okay but not great, and there's like NO actions that are all that nice.
2: I don't understand why you'd open tunnel here. But you both did it.

[WanderingWinder]

Teproc 2  b33 2   1 draw

game 1: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-061314-4d47eebc.html
     this game university,city, mining village, oasis.   His winning strategy was going university city, I figured I could get to provinces sooner and opened oasis MV to get to quick gold, then I believe I
bought too many MV's which helped him get to 2 empty piles faster  for his cities. Do you guys think if i avoided the MVs that BM might have worked?

2:  http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-062158-ceb2452f.html
IGG game we tie

3: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-064355-be1a3a3c.html

best comeback i ever had especially in tournament game; not a shocker Kc and goons were involved though apprentice was key in there to getting me plus actions when KC'd.

4: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-065805-e8f9b127.html
double ambassador game  I undertrashed and he got to the big money sooner.

5: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-071504-3479c1f4.html
   Tep had some bad luck this game, accidentally trade routing a province, and he said he missed the duke/hoard.

Enjoyed the games. Teproc was a great opponent.

1:I really don't understand oasis here. Why is it better than silver? And opening mining village for quick gold, I think is generally not a great proposition, at least for a money deck I know it isn't. I think he's just going to win anyway here, because your BM strategy just has like zero support, and once he gets rolling, he can do LOTS of damage to you, or rather to the VP stacks.
2: I like Haggler here. I REALLY like apprentice here at some point.

[WanderingWinder]

O - 3 Kenuru - 0

I'm sorry to Kenuru that I was such a spacey and disrespectful opponent.

I didn't notice the time and just assumed that someone was randomly playing me a match set, so when he said "wow I'm off my game today" I agreed , which is totally not OK in a tournament atmosphere. 

Then I checked my laptop time and it was 9:10 and I was like "holy crap I'm late for my tournament match".... and then I realized I had just won my tournament match.

I outplayed Kenuru twice and eeked by in a mostly-mirror Hag/FG game, mostly by luck.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120613-210206-a23b8a8f.html

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120613-210621-f82d1f21.html

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120613-211324-8f699072.html

1: I don't understand the turn 4 smithy. And I'm a bit shocked to see the lone silver in BM's deck at the end. But the big thing is, I think mr. chapel probably wants scrying pools?
3: I am less sure that you clearly outplayed him here. Well, at least that was my impression from when I first looked at it yesterday. Now I think you did.

[WanderingWinder]

MrEevee 1
Rabid 3

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-095646-3317462b.html

HP Cutpurse mirror match
I win due to P1 advantage.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-100353-9701d9a4.html

A more interesting game, Islands, into city / noble brigands.
I'm not sure how or why I won this game?

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-101132-0db51a8f.html

Young witch / Loan (bane) mirror.
Mr Eevee correctly adds a second YW, for an easy win.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-101846-27180044.html

Best board of the match, Young witch / tunnel / Scheme (bane) / tactician.
Even though my YW were mostly blocked by scheme, tunnel + discarder is still really good.

1: Don't know that you can put this down to first turn. You end up with 14 points more, meaning even if you flip a province from you to him, you win. Also, I don't think I like the pawn here.
2: I'm not sure how you won either. I like more NB than either of you got here.

[WanderingWinder]

dghunter79 vs -Stef-    2-3

1 - 0 (40-37) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-122117-e5bd90d0.html
1 - 1 (31-41) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-123447-5f27c7f6.html
1 - 2 (27-42) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-124727-0409e764.html
2 - 2 (51-21) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-125921-e8d31672.html
2 - 3 (resign) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-131428-eae1b86e.html

I started out on this tournament really nervous. As a result, I didn't really look at the set & make a plan, but just started buying some cards. Oh Boy. Dominion is not the game for that.

1 - 0 (40-37) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-122117-e5bd90d0.html
We start on a board with a Vault that says BigMoney and a black market and a embargo that say engine. Now I should know the vault has a bigger mouth, but find myself back trying to build an engine anyway. This happends to me from time to time, and more if I'm not thinking. With no +actions in the regular kingdom, I quickly feel sorry for this decision. Can't go back though. Embargo gold, then provinces, and just hope to get some good stuff from the Black Market. Somewhere in there I accidentally buy a vault in stead of another Stables (yes I'm really nervous) and dghunter justly wins the first game.

1 - 1 (31-41) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-123447-5f27c7f6.html
Game number two I'm still a bit shocked by my silliness diving into an engine, and hey, with this nice article on the front page of DominionStrategy I decide to give silver/smithy a try. Somewhere in turn 5 I notice he tries to build an engine and I'm somewhat scared that he can do it. Under normal circumstances, on a board like this, I'd almost certainly be building an engine. If he somehow finds time to squeeze in some golems, I'm afraid he'll make it. Fortunately he doesn't, and hey, smithy/silver isn't that bad a plan (espescially with vault as backup) and it ends favorably. At some turns he's only 1 or 2 points short of being able to buy the last prov and win though.

1 - 2 (27-42) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-124727-0409e764.html
Game 3 has a really fascinating board. It has tournament, that usually terminates all other plans, but here are some interesting options. Workers village, throne room, embassy to draw it all. Forge and salvager to get rid of the lesser cards. And with Black Market, Fairgrounds and Vineyard there's a *huge* amount of alternate VP available. KC and goons are somewhere in the BM deck.
One of the best boards I've seen to completely ignore the tournament and all provinces, and just start building a nice and all powerful engine. Not for me though, not today. I just keep grabbing tournaments and provinces like a mad man. I even start buying duchies real soon to get some points. Exactly the kind of thing I usually hope my opponent does. Right before a critical reshuffle I come back to my senses though and realize I need to end this game. So I buy my second salvager for 6. I'm a bit lucky, they line up with my provinces, so even though he goons a lot I can still trade my provinces for new ones and end it. Salvager is a very nasty card for engines, because you can't really stall your opponent. One to remember.

2 - 2 (51-21) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-125921-e8d31672.html
We play a colony board and this is the first one I really look at before starting to play. Basically I only see Witch and Mountebank and maybe maybe expand. There's also a golem that is really nice but with this ugly price to buy one. I'm pretty confident on my silver/silver opening, but dghunter79 buys potion/silver. At this point I feel as though the match is over. Whew, played not too well, but managed to get away with a win anyway. *reallity check*. He hits 4P *AND* 5 in his first reshuffle. In stead of winning, I already lost.

2 - 3 (resign) http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/14/game-20120614-131428-eae1b86e.html
The final game is this first one I'm really happy with my own play. I look at the board for a while and decide I want to build up some options with a thinner deck, so I open Spice Merchant/Silver. He gets a Ghost Ship, and appears to go Ships-money-points. At that point I decide I don't want to buy a single green card, but just alchemists, monuments and a ghost ship every turn. It worked even better then I hoped.

1: Really don't like the black market play here. Not sure why it's this close even. The interesting thing is that vault really hates militia, so there's some interplay there...
2: Well, I'd call it vault/big money with a smithy jump-start, but more or less my question here is what do you see that tells you engine?
3: His big issue here is that his deck is very unfocused. The big engine really ought to come out ahead, I think, but look at all these singletons that aren't doing much for him. Sure, they get his fairgrounds bumped a little bit, but I don't think you want to try to win on fairgrounds; you want to win on goons chips. But the bigger thing is, why did he buy two provinces. I think none is optimal, but certainly one must be much much better than two. Having said that, salvager, as most T4B, is a big front-running card.
4: You have to include university as a card here! Otherwise, the potion open is DREADFUL. Here it's much more reasonable. Certainly I also think it's not so clear as you say - certainly not game over on turn 2 or turn 4... Indeed, I'm not sure whether I buy golem there turn 3 - probably not.
5: Well played. Money is going to stall out badly here, every time.

[Kirian]

WW, I feel like you're one of the commentators from Iron Chef.  Can I call you "Fukui-san"?

[WanderingWinder]

WW, I feel like you're one of the commentators from Iron Chef.  Can I call you "Fukui-san"?

Haha, I really appreciate the reference!





...but no. Please don't.

[Lekkit]

WanderingWinder strikes me more like Doc.

[ednever]

I would love to hear how some of the top-ranked players would've played this one. I clearly made some mistakes, with a bishop buy that never really did me any good (I was hoping to trash some golds late for extra vp), and I got so caught up in the governor rush early that I didn't get a tournament, and being able to snag an early prize would been huge.

This set is clearly too complex to "solve". A lot depends on how things develop during the game. I'll just add my 52 cents of intuition.

first thoughts on the set: WHOWA
1) I see minions supported by tournaments, pawns, shanty towns, markets
2) I see governors with militia, also with tournaments and markets.
plan 2) is stronger then 1) and the combination is a bit awkward. So my plan is to get lots of governors and skip the minions.

* I'd open silver/masquerade. That's what I almost always do when I see masq, and I think it's good here as well. I like the way I can slowly start trashing and have the safe route to money in the process to get good cards.
* The next round almost always includes destroying an estate and buying for 4 & 5. That will be governor - militia. If I hit 3/6 it'll be shanty town - governor. If opponent militia blocks that I'll get some tournaments. No way I'm buying any money the rest of the game.

From this point on a lot depends on shuffle luck and what my opponent does. I want to load up on governors, but the real focus is on getting rid of the bad cards. 
I want to go "governors - shanty town - militia - more stuff" asap. This "more stuff" after the discard will get more and more important as the game builds up. It will be problematic for my opponent, because he needs to keep cards to 1) profit from my remodelling after militia 2) give me something bad in case of a masq 3) start up his own turn. 4) profit from a possible bishop 5) keep a province to block my tournaments. Thats a lot with 3 cards!

Off course winning the tournaments can have a huge impact. followers is not as strong as usual, because you already have the militia and the curse is not that much worse then the estate. At that point you should be drawing your deck or at least close to, and masq destroys a curse for the same price it destroys an estate. Princess feels important, and trusty steed is also very nice of course. Bag of gold combines nicely with bishop.

Soooo many options... it just hurts. But if you get to the point that you remodel with a governor and your opponent doesn't have the cards to join in, I think you're winning. Don't dive into greening too soon, because an engine around bishop can *really* start scoring after a while. If you try to go for a long game, make sure not to get more then one province, or it just becomes too easy for him to end on provinces before your engine really kicks in. This is only important if he tries to ignore the engine potential of this set, not very likely.

Thanks for the commentary Stef.

I thought about going masc+silver, but figured trashing would not be so important if I could draw my deck (and was getting hit by militias) with governor. I knew I would end up with more silvers than I wanted, and I knew I wanted shanty towns and tournaments and militias. If I was going to pick up a shanty town I wanted my second purchase to be a cantrip to guarentee full use out of it.

As it happened, my shanty town ended up being my bottom card (1/12 chance!), and it ended up colliding with my militia anyway. AND I didn't hit $5 on my first reshuffle (I think that's the only way that could have happened - a 1/12 chance. Even two silvers has a better chance of missing $5 I think, right? Your masc+silver has slightly better odds though)

After the open, I like the gov for cards followed by militia in theory. I think I should have picked up an extra militia over a tournament on turn 7. That would have let me play my governor for cards instead of gold on turn 8. On turn 10 I likely could have played for cards too - but I didn't have a militia in hand and I did have a shanty town. Playing the governor got me an effective 6 card hand (useless st likely). Taking the hold followed by st got me a 5 card hand (plus that gold)

I think the biggest point is that if you can have a masc in your deck it makes the militia discard pretty scary of you are sitting on an extra action.

That's a combo I've seen once or twice, but completely missed in on this kingdom with everything else going on- and I think it's the way to play this.

G-g-st-militia-tournament-masc

Pretty scary.

I'll watch for it next time. (someone should write a combo article on masc+discard sometime... Sure there is the pin, but there is a lot of power in a poor man's version of it...)
Ed

[ycz6]

ycz6 3 - 1 michaeljb

michaeljb and I just played a really, really strange set. Here are the logs:

michaeljb 6 -2 ycz6
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/15/game-20120615-164027-f47a0098.html

In play are the three best opening trashers in the game, and also Familiar. Both of us open Remake/Ambassador, and start working towards Village/Envoy engines with Horn of Plenty. He slims down faster than me, and is able to draw his entire deck on turn 10. He picks up a Familiar for kicks, and empties the Village and Envoy piles for the win on turn 14.

ycz6 43 32 michaeljb
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/15/game-20120615-164724-9e15b544.html

My first game with Tunnel as bane! I thought about skipping YW and opening Oracle/Tunnel, but wimped out. We play basically the same game, where he hits 5 a few times early for Upgrades and I take a quick Tunnel lead. There were 8 Golds left in the supply at the end of the game.

michaeljb 16 21 ycz6
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/15/game-20120615-165204-728ada5b.html

Ironworks/Island is here, as is Festival/Warehouse/Library. I open Chancellor, thinking this isn't going to be a rush game and Warehouse won't get me up to 5 quicky enough. He ignores Festival, which I think is a pretty big error with Vineyards in play, and I am able to end the game with the lead by buying two Warehouses on turn 12. Note that I never shuffled in the middle of my turn, and only twice shuffled without having played Chancellor that turn.

michaeljb 29 40 ycz6
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/15/game-20120615-170549-60614ab8.html

Apprentice/Possession, and that is perhaps all that needs to be said. Tactician and Torturer and Courtyard all play supporting roles, as we trade lucky Possession hits as our main source of buys. michaeljb pulls a pretty tricky maneuver on turn 20 (which I should've caught ). Eventually all the Duchies and Estates are out and I am down by one with only two Provinces remaining, making me very sad. Then I get lucky and win. Well, okay.

Good games michaeljb! Hope your matches next round are more normal.

[michaeljb]

He ignores Festival, which I think is a pretty big error with Vineyards in play, and I am able to end the game with the lead by buying two Warehouses on turn 12.

This was really a side effect of my opening Ironworks/Warehouse instead of Ironworks/Chancellor; I made a huge mistake by not building my economy--I never actually drew $5 
So yeah, that game I'd say was the one where it was most obvious that one of us had a superior strategy.

But yeah, a weird set of games, but they were quite fun 

[-Stef-]

but I had a better than even shot at hitting my 5¢ on turn 4 for a Witch/Mountebank.

...

What am I missing?

At that point, your deck still contained 7 cards: 3 * estate, 3 * copper, silver. You would only hit 5$ if 2 estates were on the bottom. Thats a 3/7 * 2/6 = 6 / 42 = 14% chance. The problem is that you sort of need to buy an action now (or your golem is a dead card) and all actions below $5 are ugly / non-helping.

Thats assuming t3 already happened. Before t3, putting 2 estates on the bottom is 3/12 * 2/11 = 1/22, but then you still need to end up with 4P & 5, not 3P & 6 or 5P & 4. That's 32/72 vs 20/72 and 20/72. So the likelihood of these two purchases is 1/22 * 32 / 72 = 2.02%. And if you only go for it if you hit 5 first (because you don't accept the 14% chance from above) then you should still cut this in half.

Not saying that I really mind, because it's all part of the game, and to be fair I don't think I deserved to win game 3. I really liked playing the matches altogether. Just saying hey, you got pretty pretty lucky here.

[jsh357]

Glengarry wins 3-1


http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-074245-d259ea54.html

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-075558-9d9b4322.html

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-080532-80dab78e.html

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-082209-0f534c20.html

[Lekkit]

Just finished my games agains ddubois. It didn't really feel like it was truly skill-decided, but rather luck-decided. I'll comment the games later.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-101350-d69b247f.html

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-102415-26e78d24.html

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-103153-d3d98ec0.html

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-104003-955cc5ad.html

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-104541-e704305b.html

Oh, and Lekkit won 3-2.

[Kirian]

Kirian 3-2 over Watno

Watno 16-8 Kirian http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-121244-63423014.html
Kirian 62-57 Watno http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-122627-eb9c1e32.html
Kirian 33-29 Watno http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-123159-d3b78efb.html
Watno 42-res Kirian http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-123901-18e3304c.html
Kirian 27-15 Watno http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-124928-aa1e984c.html

Game 1:  Watno sees XR/GH, and I miss it and lag on it.  Meanwhile, Highway was a poor choice with bloated decks.  With Woodcutter aboard, Watno could three-pile quickly.
Game 2:  I get the golden Nomad-Chapel-Silver opening, but a few clashes early and some good luck on Watno's part brings us about even with our Wharves.  He greens early, and I work on catching up with Fairgrounds and later Vineyards, which together make the difference.
Game 3:  Neither of us was actually sure, after the fact, that Cache was a great buy with Apothecary... it seems nice, but without the time to build up 4-5 Apothecaries, and without +Buy on the table, greening hard worked out better.  Fun note:  two Minions purchased, but never used for attacks.
Game 4:  Close-fought Jack/Minion match.  Watno's extra gold gives him a 4-2 Province edge, and I never get the chance to catch up.  I resign when I'm mathematically locked out.
Game 5:  I draw 3P on 4 and 5.  He draws 2P on 4 and 3P on 6.  If either of us had ever had WT in hand when Familiars hit, there was a chance of him catching up, but beating a 7-3 Curse split is tough.

Great match Watno!

[Watno]

Yeah, good match.
I'm interested in hearing what others have to say about cache - apothecary. Also in the last game I opened watchtower potion, but never really got good use of the watchtower, so out probably wasn't a good idea.

[-Stef-]

Yeah, good match.
I'm interested in hearing what others have to say about cache - apothecary. Also in the last game I opened watchtower potion, but never really got good use of the watchtower, so out probably wasn't a good idea.

about game 3 - Given the fact that you (both) invest heavily in apothecaries, I'd say Cache is a logical and good supplement. Not entirely sure apothecary is the right way to go here though. I see possible 3 plans:
A) apothecaries and cache (haven/potion)
B) silk roads and estates (silver/silver, cache very welcome here too)
C) minions and cities/saboteur (silver/haven or silver/silver)

In A vs B, A can't really get too many green cards or the apothecaries will stall too much. So B gets a lot of the silk roads & estates. A can't compete with this amount of points, and B wins.
In B vs C, B will be a toy of player C. C can probably take the cities to level 2 fast (get 1-2 silk roads too to scare B) and maybe even keep them at level 3 for a while.
In A vs C, C can't really get the cities up because A can get cities too easily as well, and A just buys provinces faster.

This just sounds way too complex. Am I dreaming here? Is either one of these plans superior no matter what?

---

In the apothecary game, you need some cards that take care of the non-coppers on your deck. That's why I'd open haven/potion here if I go for this plan, and also prefer haven over silver later on. Apothecary decks without buys tend to have either not enough or a huge amount of money, and haven also helps out there.

---

In game 5, I think you got the best opening with watchtower/potion. I fact, I would have bought another watchtower on t3 (not so sure about this). But t4 I'm pretty sure you make a mistake. A university on your deck is nice, but what you really need now is familiars. You can't get it on your deck, but you can get it in your deck by playing the watchtower (+2 money, no reshuffle). The university is long term itself, and the actions it gets in this game (mainly drawing) are also long term. Leaving the two coppers on your deck is annoying in the short term. No time for all that now, first take care of the curse split.

[dghunter79]

but I had a better than even shot at hitting my 5¢ on turn 4 for a Witch/Mountebank.

...

What am I missing?

Thats assuming t3 already happened.

Right, assuming you get the draw of 4p, I'm saying.  It seems like you would want the Golem over the University, even with an 86% chance of missing 5 and having to buy a Silver.  The upside is huge, and the downside is mitigated by Golem's cycling.  Golem's actually never going to be a dead card -- it's at worst a Chancellor minus the coin.

[yudantaiteki]

chriskern over clb, 3-2  All close ones except for game 2.

Game 1: chriskern 37-clb 37
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-210826-9c4557fb.html
Won off the tie; I wasn't sure the bishop strategy would work but I thought with extra estates I would be getting from Ambassador it was worth a shot.

Game 2: clb 72-chriskern 28
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-211821-a24452b4.html
I just can't resist buying Black Market, and I really need to learn to resist it because it does me no good.  Even getting a torturer didn't help. Total domination by clb.

Game 3: chriskern 32-clb 30
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-212426-31f5aef5.html
I had 2 festivals and a masquerade and the rest was money.  PPR won me the game; I'm glad I read about that here.

Game 4: clb 77-chriskern 59
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-213546-dd1357fa.html
Both of us had similar strategies, but it was hard to think of what to do here -- the actions weren't very exciting and KC only really mixed well with Masquerade.  I guess maybe KC-Thief could have done OK on the money heavy board.  I got a Platinum stolen but then clb passed me his Thief and I stole a platinum right back.

Game 5: chriskern 42-clb 36
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-214340-3210fcc6.html
I guess Scheme-Rabble was the obvious combo here (at least for two level 12 guys).  I made a huge mistake that almost lost me the game -- initially I used PPR on turn 17 correctly, but then for some reason on turn 18 I was thinking that if I bought the province it would end the game on a tie and clb would win on turns; of course there were 2 provinces left, not one.  But clb had unlucky draws and I managed to squeak it out.

GG clb; the match could easily have gone either way.

[clb]

It was fun playing with you, yudantaiteki. Thanks for the good games (all platitudes aside)!
I have a hard time in the mirror-type matches - I am never quite sure what to do to differentiate my deck from the other guy's.
I feel like we ended up playing a lot of BM variants with not a lot of engine potential on most of the decks. There did seem to be some opportunity in game 3 (festival, smithy, village, and apprentice available), but just when I was getting ready to trim down and go for it, I remembered that I would probably be left passing engine pieces with the masquerade, so I grabbed a second masq, but probably would have been better with a smithy. I deliberately broke PPR as I felt that I would lose the long drag, so I gambled that he wouldn't get $8 his next turn, since he had just had such a money-rich hand the previous turn. I guess I wasn't paying quite enough attention to know that his next hand would also be enough to take me out.
If any of the people who have been commenting on the other games would like to chime in, I am pretty sure we would both love to hear what advice you have to offer.

[Lekkit]

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-101350-d69b247f.html

This is basically Trader vs non-trader. Nothing fancy going on. I feel like the game is over when ddubois has 3 Golds turn 6 to my 0. I think I might have faired better if I had gone for Duchies earlier, as I had a lot of Silvers, but I'm not really sure.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-102415-26e78d24.html

I think my two early Courtyards are stronger than his single, and I establish an early lead. On turn 18 I start with 2 Golds, a Copper and a Courtyard, so I'm hoping for treasure (anyone) to win the game. I don't get one, so I put one of the Golds back with my Courtyard but my next hand can't buy the last Province either. I hit 7 again a few turns later, but in the end ddubois has time to catch up with Dukes, and gets the last Province to end the game.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-103153-d3d98ec0.html

We both go for the same strategy here. Steward into Festival+Library with Conspirator. ddubois gets a Gold, while I go for a more action packed deck, even skipping a Silver at one point. He draws his Library naked two times, while my engine fires off nicely and I can start to double Province. ddubois is $1 short of a draw on his last turn.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-104003-955cc5ad.html

This game I play terribly so I have to start buying a lot of Duchies and relying on luck to be able to catch up to his early lead. I get some good hands, and at one point I hatch the clever plan to Develop a Silver into a Remodel to hopefully be able to sneak some VPs from that. ddubois obviously allready thought of it, and at the time I draw mine, he's allready one turn ahead. He doesn't draw a Gold with his Remodel, while I luck out and do.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-104541-e704305b.html

ddubois goes for a kind of Village/Smithy engine, while I play pretty straight with a couple of terminals. Baron for extra cash early on, and a Bishop for additional VPs later. I'm not sure my strategy was better, but I'd still like to think it was. This game was really close though and I'm happy that I'm lucky enough to buy the last Province, even though I probably would've faired better the longer the game would've gone. I'm thinking it might actually have benefited me to not buy Provinces early and just churned away with my Bishop, killing Golds and gaining VP chips, but I'm not really good with Bishop, so I'm not sure.

Anyways, thanks a lot to ddubois for the games, and good luck in the rest of the tournament!

[Insomniac]

played against angrybirds, we draw (2-2-1)

Game 1: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/17/game-20120617-065845-e67240c2.html

Game 2: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/17/game-20120617-071935-ba049634.html

Game 3: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/17/game-20120617-072553-2b2ae3f6.html

Game 4: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/17/game-20120617-072953-c3cb6943.html

Game 5: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/17/game-20120617-073347-0874fbc7.html

[ArjanB]

ArjanB vs Farb 3-1

Game 1: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120617-060539-8c155027.html
Game 2: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120617-062055-8b065c23.html
Game 3: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120617-063232-3e9e7486.html
Game 4: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120617-064100-a3301cc4.html

Both played not very well.

[PerdHapley]

Perdhapley beats Rhombus 3-2. Logs are coming, I'm rushing around doing Father's Day stuff. It was a great match that came down to the wire - two turns before the end we were tied in points, in a game with some tricky Goons/Vineyard play. Thanks for the match, Rhombus!

[Kirian]

Round 2 pairings are now posted, so this topic has been un-stickied.  I'll leave it open for a while so people can discuss the games if they wish.

[Jorbles]

...
Kirian 33-29 Watno http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/16/game-20120616-123159-d3b78efb.html
...

Game 3:  Neither of us was actually sure, after the fact, that Cache was a great buy with Apothecary... it seems nice, but without the time to build up 4-5 Apothecaries, and without +Buy on the table, greening hard worked out better.  Fun note:  two Minions purchased, but never used for attacks.

Yeah, good match.
I'm interested in hearing what others have to say about cache - apothecary. Also in the last game I opened watchtower potion, but never really got good use of the watchtower, so out probably wasn't a good idea.

I think Caches are great on this board, but I think I would have skipped the Silver(s). In an Apothecary deck you usually want a couple Golds and then just lots of Copper and Apothecaries with some Cantrips thrown in to pick up the Gold and Green. Cache is a superior replacement to Gold in this formula. Silvers just slow you down.

On this board I would have probably opened Potion/Haven and then bought only Caches, Apothecaries, and Havens. It's a shame the only +Buy is in Cities, which will likely never activate in this kingdom. Everything else on this board looks too slow. You could get Harems to beef up Silk Roads, but with no draw and no +Buy it seems really slow. Minions can be countered quite handily by Menageries. Everything else seems useless.