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Author Topic: Apothecary/Worker's Village  (Read 2554 times)

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manda2014

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Apothecary/Worker's Village
« on: June 20, 2012, 02:20:55 am »
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http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/19/game-20120619-231836-e9c533dc.html

I also tried to hand him some curses with ambassador, but it only worked a couple of times. How could I have played this better?
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Obi Wan Bonogi

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Re: Apothecary/Worker's Village
« Reply #1 on: June 20, 2012, 02:36:05 am »
+3

You don't buy curses until your deck is completely clean.  You have 6 workers villages with just one terminal action, what is the point of that?  Win the ambassador war.  Cutpurse is decent.  Figure out a ramp to grand market.  Buy scrying pools.
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carstimon

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Re: Apothecary/Worker's Village
« Reply #2 on: June 20, 2012, 10:46:59 am »
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I'll expand on Obi's post.

Indeed, you buy a curse turn 8.  At this point, you haven't gotten rid of any estates.  That curse is just going to make it a bit harder to have a smooth deck.  You should really only do that trick if you can draw your deck most of the time.

What do worker's villages do for you?  Give you buy.  Why do you need buy?  Well, buy is nice with apothecary, because apothecary is cheap and costs a potion, so if you hit 7p you can buy apothecary/$5 card.  Also, in some decks you'll want to buy coppers for your apothecary.
But really, your worker's villages hurt you.  Every time your apothecary "sees" a worker's village, that's one less chance to pull a copper.

Apothecary/ambassador, in general, is not going to be that useful.  Apothecary wants coppers.  Ambassador is for getting rid of your  estates+coppers out of your deck and giving them to your opponent. It's feasible to try to use apothecary against your opponent's ambassador, since he is giving you coppers to draw.


Obi mentions scrying pools.  Scrying pool is very strong with ambassador.  If you win the ambassador war (and your opponent didn't buy ambassador, so you win) you can get your deck down to a couple of gold, some scrying pools, some actions.  (Here, worker's village would actually help a lot.)  With grand market as a great source of +$ action, you can draw your whole deck and have lots of $.  See http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120605-143653-97f389ac.html
« Last Edit: June 20, 2012, 10:52:01 am by carstimon »
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chwhite

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Re: Apothecary/Worker's Village
« Reply #3 on: June 20, 2012, 03:53:00 pm »
+1

Apothecary/ambassador, in general, is not going to be that useful.

Untrue.  Apothecary/Ambassador is REALLY REALLY STRONG.  But you have to singlemindedly prioritize eliminating your Estates.
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RisingJaguar

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Re: Apothecary/Worker's Village
« Reply #4 on: June 20, 2012, 04:06:12 pm »
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Apothecary/ambassador, in general, is not going to be that useful.

Untrue.  Apothecary/Ambassador is REALLY REALLY STRONG.  But you have to singlemindedly prioritize eliminating your Estates.
I agree this is really really REALLY REALLY strong.  Although with grand markets here, scrying pools have to become priority after the... 3rd apothecary. 

Also whenever you have a +buy and potion in hand.  REALLY try to buy a potion card and a normal if possible or it is a terrible waste.  I'm looking at T8 should be scrying pool/cutpurse. 

At the very basic level, ambassadors wars are won at the very start (ie. opening ambassador).  The point of this deck is to get it down to essentially nil junk in your deck.  You can do this by buying cantrips (actions that replace itself with the +card/+action) that provide some sort of benefit.  A lot of the $5 cards work like bazaar, market, treasury.  Here you have the best one in Grand Market, that should be the end goal of ambassadors, not the curse.  The curse is something you use when you are at essentially nil junk.
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Jorbles

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Re: Apothecary/Worker's Village
« Reply #5 on: June 20, 2012, 04:19:20 pm »
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Apothecary/ambassador, in general, is not going to be that useful.

Untrue.  Apothecary/Ambassador is REALLY REALLY STRONG.  But you have to singlemindedly prioritize eliminating your Estates.

I have to agree with chwhite. It's a great engine, but it's hard to set up.
In addition to getting rid of your Estates (top priority) you're going to need +Buy (1 or 2 Worker's Village is probably all you need), you need to get more Coppers to draw with all your Apothecaries, and you might want a second Potion (to double Apothecary buys when you're ramping up, you can always shove it in your opponents deck when it's no longer needed). If you get rid of all your Estates you'll be able to draw your deck pretty quickly. You'll want to have at least $10P which should be 10 Coppers and a Potion, so you can buy Province/Apothecary. This'll keep you from clogging up too much when you start greening. Ambassador is especially useful if your opponent is trying to build up to Grand Markets. If you don't have Estates to throw at your opponent it'll hurt them just almost as much to throw Coppers or Potions at them. Just make sure you don't actually give up your Coppers you need them!

This is definitely dependent on winning the Ambassador war though. This engine would lose if your opponent was able to keep sending you Estates reliably (or worse Curses). Coppers won't hurt you though, which is why I think this engine is better than a Scrying Pool ramp up to a Grand Market engine.
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DrFlux

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Re: Apothecary/Worker's Village
« Reply #6 on: June 20, 2012, 04:56:36 pm »
+1

I wouldn't think of Apothecary as your end game here, as scrying pool + grand market seems too good. If you trim your deck, with scrying pool, you will be able to ambassador multiple times a turn, which I'm pretty sure will beat someone trying to just use apothecary. Apothecary is useful with scrying pool later on to stack your deck even without many copper.

What apothecary DOES do is it helps avoid the problem with ambassador where you have no economy early game. Grabbing a couple copper/potions with it allows you to ambassador AND buy something useful in the same turn. This is huge.

I would open potion/ambassador, and buy one or two apothecary, and then focus on trimming your deck and winning the ambassador war, probably by buying at least one more ambassador. Ideally I'd buy just enough money to start buying GMs (probably just two gold).

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carstimon

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Re: Apothecary/Worker's Village
« Reply #7 on: June 20, 2012, 05:02:15 pm »
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What apothecary DOES do is it helps avoid the problem with ambassador where you have no economy early game. Grabbing a couple copper/potions with it allows you to ambassador AND buy something useful in the same turn. This is huge.

Huh, that makes sense.  Thanks for point this out folks.
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