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[bkdominion]

[Apologies if this topic exists somewhere on the forum, but a quick search didn't yield a clean topic match and this is a topic I feel I need a broader understanding of to improve as a player.]

Reviewing my ispotropic logs, I noticed a common theme in games where I snuck a victory away from someone who was +20 over me: I went after alternate VP cards while they were beating a more conventional path along the Province/Colony route.  Notice I didn't say alternate VP *strategies* - I feel the efficacy of Goons/Bishop/Monument is widely accepted and established.  Also, I know that the blended VP cards (Harem/Tunnel/Island, etc.) don't get  a short-shrift of opinion.  I'm talking about the kingdom's pure VP cards (Gardens, Vineyard, Silk Road, Duke, Fairgounds & Farmland (I think that's all of them, right?)) and the effect they have on the game.  I have come to like these cards a lot more than I think most players do and I wanted to lay out the way I think of them and gauge other players' opinions of them.

Overall indicators:  I may be wrong about this, but I feel that most of the really feared attacks in the game are aimed at disrupting the path to Provinces and Colonies, while the victory path for these alternate VP cards is somewhat inured against them.  Militia?  Discard Silk Road, Gardens - no big.  Double torture?  Discard garden, garden and take the curse to water them.  Possession?  Have fun with that silver you bought, buddy.  Am I wrong about this?  What attacks are going to muck with these the most?  Based on your observation, do you think these cards get their due or are they over/under-rated?

Gardens and Silk Road - Usually all I need to get me aiming at these is one card in the Kingdom with +buy or a workshop/ironworks.  Sometimes I'll even pick up gardens in heavy curse/attack games without +buy on the table.  Based on anecdotal observation on isotropic, I feel that a lot of otherwise good players that "get" gardens for some reason don't "get" silk road the same way and let me soak up the whole pile along with great halls or some other mixed-VP and then scratch their head when they piledrive the provinces but still lose.  I feel pretty comfortable with these cards, but I am looking for answers to a few deeper statistical/strategic questions around them.
How many silvers should you get before you start soaking these up?  As a general rule-of-thumb, I tend to open +buy/silver, pick up 2-3 more silvers, 1 attack if there's a strong enough one available, another +buy and then turn to these, picking up extra silvers when I draw 3, the odd Duchy when I get a 5 and estates when I only get 2.  After I pile these down, I roll up the rest of the estates/(cantrips for gardens).  Is that the right way to play these?  Are there any other broader indicators or strategic advice for these cards?  Should I take Golds at all when I'm going for these cards?

Vineyard - I love this card, too.  I will go after it exclusivley when there's a hamlet, pawn, crossroads or other cheap potion card (even transmute) on the board with it.  I'll give it a serious look even when one of those cards isn't there, but there's some other +buy or mixed action/VP on the table.
How many silvers/potions should you pick up when you are going after Vines?  I usually take a +buy, 2/3 silvers, an optional attack and 2 potions in that order.  Should I skip golds or grab a couple before I dive back down on the Vines?

Fairgrounds - I love the strategy space this creates in most games, but I'm not as comfortable with it is as I am with the previous cards.  Along with what seems to be the over-riding concern with most Cornucpoia cards, it effectiveness seems to be a function of the Kingdom-at-large for the most part.  The rubric I generally use with this card is to see if there are 4 kingdom cards that will help get me to provinces in combination with each other.  If there are, I pick up those 4 and at least one duchy and play the rest of the game like I would a normal province game, alternating between fairgounds and golds on $6-$7 midgame and all fairgrounds at the end.  Am I playing this card the right way?

Duke -  I've read a few good posts on Duke here.  For the most part it seems to be something you do if there is some kind of +buy on the table, right?  The interesting thing is how many Duchies to get before you take a stab at the Dukes.  The first thing I read said 3 (sorry, forgot the link).  The next thing I read said that strategy only works in a bubble and that you should try to get all 8 to "deny" them to the other guy (also lost the link for tat article, too).  I think I tend to agree with the second method.

Farmland - People were kind enough to answer my question about this one in another thread. ( http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=3292.0 )  In general, I don't like it as much as the other pure kingdom VP cards - In my other thread I got two suggestions for this card - A) Use it to trash an early estate into a silver  $4 B) Endgame, when you draw Gold-Gold-Gold-Silver-Estate, play Gold-Gold-Silver and by a farmland to Remodel the gold into a Province - netting you a total of 8VP (Or Gold-Gold-Gold, Remodel Silver to Duchy for 9VP...or various other combos of that flavor).  B) I "get", now - it might lead me to pick up an extra gold or two beyond the point where I would normally start greening...still, it seems kind of "meh" and something that I do on the way to Provinces rather than aiming at itself like the other pure VP cards.  A) I think I don't completely agree with - You are turning a green into a green-and-a-silver?  That seems like a net gain of 1 copper's worth of average draw value...that you spent $6 on.     

[shMerker]

A) Use it to trash an early estate into a silver

You can't get Silver from buying a Farmland under most circumstances, since it would require either that you have a card that costs $1 (none have been printed) or that you have reduced the price of Silver to $2 (and you would still be getting the Silver from trashing a copper or a curse, not an estate). So uh...who gives this advice?

[eHalcyon]

I'm pretty sure there are individual articles on each of the alt VP cards.  Definitely Gardens and Duke.

Duke -- I think the biggest thing for Duke is a way to consistently hit $5.  Arguably the best card for that is Horse Traders.

Farmland -- You can't remodel Estate into Silver... Farmland requires you to remodel into a card costing exactly $2 more, not up to $2 more.  Farmland is nice if there's a reason for you to want to remodel things.  Also keep in mind that Farmland is a mere 2 VP but costs $6, which means it is a good candidate for trash-for-benefit.  Apprentice it, or Salvage it, or Expand it... or even Farmland that Farmland into a Province.

[ftl]

The other big thing for Duke is a lack of a quick way to get 8 provinces. In a drawn-out money game, Dukes will be worth more points than provinces; I think it takes 11 buys of value 5 (duke/duchy) to be worth more than all 8 provinces (8 buys of value 8 ).

So really, if Duke is around, aiming for Duke/Duchy should probably be the default - UNLESS you have some way to speed from the 4-province mark, where a lot of decks tend to start stalling out a little, over to the 8-province mark. So stuff like Salvager, Expand, Remodel, are all counter-indicators against going Duke. Powerful engines that won't stall after a little bit of greening. Colony games with a good enough set to get a bunch of colonies that won't turn into curse-filled slogs.  Cheap ways to get to 5 reliably are obviously going to favor Duke. Horse Traders, Feast.

If you're playing solitaire and your opponent won't deny you duchies, then the way to maximize points at any given time is to get 3 duchies and then alternate duchy/duke. However, if both of you are getting duchies and dukes, the most important thing is to win the duchy split - if you get 5 duchies and 3 dukes, that's 30 points, whereas 3 duchies and 5 dukes is only 24 points - an entire province worth of a difference! So then you just buy duchies until there aren't any left, and then switch to dukes.

I believe those things are standard wisdom and I'm not saying anything controversial there, yes?

[sitnaltax]

The cards I really think of as "alt VP" are Duke, Gardens, Silk Road, and Vineyard.

Fairgrounds is usually a $6 for 4 VP, which is nice but not game-shaking. If it's useful and feasible to build up the variety to get it up to 6 VP, hey you will, but the push for that doesn't usually really change the game's strategy.

Farmlands (hey, I didn't confuse them!) let you parlay decent money hands into more VP than you would otherwise get. It changes the tempo of the endgame a little but again, doesn't really change the game's strategy.

Of the "real" alt VP cards, Gardens and Silk Road (more so Gardens) benefit from a rush strategy. (Both, but especially Silk Road, can also be important near the end of an engine game if buys or cost reduction are around.) Duke competes with a Province strategy because slogging to 8 provinces by yourself is just so slow in most cases. And Vineyards is the most different of all; of course it likes big engines, buys, and cheap action cards. Unless there's other Potion-cost cards (University?!) around, I don't like to pick up the Potions too soon.

Attacks: Rabble is not super-scary against most decks unless crazy chained, but it's quite destructive to alt-VP. (And often worth buying anyway just for the cards.) I don't love Bureaucrat in any case, but it's better against alt VP than against a standard deck. Ghost Ship is every bit as nasty as it is against ordinary decks; Minion increases the chance that you'll hit only $3 and not $4 or $5. Jester is likely to hand out curses. Also, this is probably a good time to remind you that Possession is not technically an attack, so don't make the mistake I once did of thinking Moat will help.

[Jedit]

The interesting thing is how many Duchies to get before you take a stab at the Dukes.  The first thing I read said 3 (sorry, forgot the link). 

That's a fairly simple formula.  Duchies are each worth 3+y, where y is the number of Dukes you have.  Dukes are each worth x, where x is the number of Duchies you have.  So if x > 3+y, you buy a Duke; otherwise, you buy a Duchy.

[ftl]

That is relevant only if you're aiming to maximize the points you get with one purchase. You shouldn't be doing that, you're aiming to maximize your points at the end of the game.

[Titandrake]

In Duke/Duchy you want as many Duchies as you can, then you switch to Duke. I like to think of it this way: there are 2 scenarios.

1. You go Duke/Duchy and your opponent doesn't. You want to pick up Duchies fast, so you go for a strategy that reliably gets $5. Your strategy will give you more Duchies than your opponent, so Dukes will become less useful as a "consolation prize" in the late game for your opponent. And because you probably ran out the Duchy pile, your opponent won't be able to pick up a Duchy instead.

2. It's a Duke/Duchy mirror. If one person gets more Duchies than the other, then they essentially win because their Dukes are worth much more VP. So you need Duchies asap.

[Markov Chain]

Fairgrounds - I love the strategy space this creates in most games, but I'm not as comfortable with it is as I am with the previous cards.  Along with what seems to be the over-riding concern with most Cornucpoia cards, it effectiveness seems to be a function of the Kingdom-at-large for the most part.  The rubric I generally use with this card is to see if there are 4 kingdom cards that will help get me to provinces in combination with each other.  If there are, I pick up those 4 and at least one duchy and play the rest of the game like I would a normal province game, alternating between fairgounds and golds on $6-$7 midgame and all fairgrounds at the end.  Am I playing this card the right way?

If Fairgrounds will be worth 4 (as it usually is), then it doesn't change the game much; you buy Fairgrounds late for $6 much the same as you would buy Duchy late for $5.

But there are some kingdoms in which making Fairgrounds worth 6 is viable because you can use amost all the kingdom cards: Jester (particularly in multi-player games), Menagerie, mostly non-terminal cards, or terminals with villages.  Then you want to play a different strategy: get a diverse set of useful cards, load up on Fairgrounds, and try to get one province so that you don't need a curse or useless card to get to 15 different ones. 

[ycz6]

(Or Gold-Gold-Gold, Remodel Silver to Duchy for 9VP...or various other combos of that flavor).

This doesn't work.

[Grujah]

(Or Gold-Gold-Gold, Remodel Silver to Duchy for 9VP...or various other combos of that flavor).

This doesn't work.

It does. As he said, you have Gold Gold Gold, Remodel, Silver.

[brokoli]

Duke : the +buy is not mandatory. Workshop - Duke can works (gain a silver each time with your workshop). Cache works too.

[WheresMyElephant]

That is relevant only if you're aiming to maximize the points you get with one purchase. You shouldn't be doing that, you're aiming to maximize your points at the end of the game.

This is true.

Due to those formulae, your points are maximized when you have 2-4 more Duchies than you  have Dukes. (2 and 4 wind up exactly the same, 3 just means you have an odd number of Duchies+Dukes instead of an even total.)

But what this means in practice is Duchies are in much more demand than Dukes, for Duke players as well as for Province players, and hence more likely to run out. Thus you should always buy at least four Duchies before your first Duke (at this point you're maximizing immediate points AND prioritizing Duchies) but probably more like 6 or even more. As long as you're confident the game won't end before your Dukes can "catch up" to your Duchies then you may as well keep getting Duchies so your opponent can't. (And really if the game is going to end when you have 6 Duchies and 1 Duke then you probably would have lost anyway; 5 Duchies and 2 Dukes is not much better). Then later you can buy tons of Dukes before you start to disrupt the balance, whereas if you just maximized your points on every turn, later there might not be a Duke when you want one. It also means if your opponent wants to disrupt you in a meaningful way by buying Duchies, which is probably a bad idea but sometimes people do it, he has to do it earlier than he would like.

Edit: it is really really hard to think of an exception to this guideline. Edge cases pertaining to specific cards hardly even exist because how many cards specify Duchy beyond its cost or type? Unless you have some wild plan to get all your Duchies through Transmute I'd say stick to the rules.

[DStu]

The cards I really think of as "alt VP" are Duke, Gardens, Silk Road, and Vineyard.

I think of all of them (including Fairgrounds, except Farmlands) as additional VPs more often. It's right, Duke, Gardens, SR are "alt" as you can rush them, and Vineyard is kind of special too. But all of them are worth at least 4VPs without too much work, and give you at least 32more VPs on the table. Which means, you can ignore Provinces for a very long time (7Provinces=42VPs), (32VPs+1Province+2Duchies=44VPs), and to win against you with conventional means you have to either 3pile (which is not very BigMoney compatible), or get all the Provinces (which is also not BigMoney compatible for most instances of BigMoney).  And that all with a conservative estimate of 4VPs/card.
And that means either you got for this alt VPs in alternative ways, or, if not, nearly any engine that is on the board is worth building. If only it can get you enough cards in the end.

[WheresMyElephant]

It's not very safe to assume your BM opponent is going to favor Provinces on a Duke board, though.

[rinkworks]

Duke -  I've read a few good posts on Duke here.  For the most part it seems to be something you do if there is some kind of +buy on the table, right?  The interesting thing is how many Duchies to get before you take a stab at the Dukes.  The first thing I read said 3 (sorry, forgot the link).  The next thing I read said that strategy only works in a bubble and that you should try to get all 8 to "deny" them to the other guy (also lost the link for tat article, too).  I think I tend to agree with the second method.

+Buy isn't necessarily a big deal here.  With Gardens, Silk Road, and Vineyard, +Buy helps you beef those up.  With Duke, sometimes extra Coppers are okay to keep you from choking on green too much, but it's a stopgap only and not directly tied to the value of the green cards.

Concerning whether to buy Duchies or Dukes, both of those answers are correct.  At the very end of the game, if you have 3 more Duchies than Dukes, you have the balance of Duchies and Dukes that will yield the greatest number of points.  So you want to end up around there.  However, just because that's where you want to end up doesn't mean that's the balance you should maintain throughout the game.  Staying on Duchies until the pile is gone is the best way to keep your opponent from reaching that ideal balance by the end.

So basically buy Duchies until they're gone unless the game is about to end, in which case buy whichever one you need to wind up at a balance of 3 more Duchies than Dukes when the game ends.

Edit: Wow, I should have read to the end of the thread before posting.

[rinkworks]

Vineyard - I love this card, too.  I will go after it exclusivley when there's a hamlet, pawn, crossroads or other cheap potion card (even transmute) on the board with it.  I'll give it a serious look even when one of those cards isn't there, but there's some other +buy or mixed action/VP on the table.
How many silvers/potions should you pick up when you are going after Vines?  I usually take a +buy, 2/3 silvers, an optional attack and 2 potions in that order.  Should I skip golds or grab a couple before I dive back down on the Vines?

I'm not an expert on Vineyard, but my understanding is that you usually want more Potions than that, especially when +Buy is around, which is when Vineyard really shines anyway.  Extra Potions don't hurt a deck that only cares about Vineyards, Pawns, and Hamlets (for example), but every hand without a Potion in the mid- or late-game is an opportunity for your opponent to catch up.

[DStu]

Vineyard - I love this card, too.  I will go after it exclusivley when there's a hamlet, pawn, crossroads or other cheap potion card (even transmute) on the board with it.  I'll give it a serious look even when one of those cards isn't there, but there's some other +buy or mixed action/VP on the table.
How many silvers/potions should you pick up when you are going after Vines?  I usually take a +buy, 2/3 silvers, an optional attack and 2 potions in that order.  Should I skip golds or grab a couple before I dive back down on the Vines?

I'm not an expert on Vineyard, but my understanding is that you usually want more Potions than that, especially when +Buy is around, which is when Vineyard really shines anyway.  Extra Potions don't hurt a deck that only cares about Vineyards, Pawns, and Hamlets (for example), but every hand without a Potion in the mid- or late-game is an opportunity for your opponent to catch up.

I'm also not an expert on Vineyards, but I think you are correct. I had a game this week with 3 Potions for Vineyards, and they didn't felt as being to much. The thing is, even when you build an engine, the VY are your primary source of VPs and worth about as much as a Province. Every engine would be happy to pick up treasures that gives +8$, especially for the cost of $4. So you should also be happy to pick up Potions.
You basically don't need (much) Gold often, because your target are the low-costing actions anyway, some of these actions sometimes also give money, and you often don't want to spend more than $10(+some Potions) anyway. Of course, look at the board, if there are GMs and Markets that you want you maybe want some more coins in the beginning, but if you target for Hamlet, Schemes and Oasis maybe you don't want any Gold at all.
Maybe you also want to be able to reach for Provinces to end the game when it's in your favour, so some money is ok, but usually you don't need that much of it.

[bkdominion]

Vineyard - I love this card, too.  I will go after it exclusivley when there's a hamlet, pawn, crossroads or other cheap potion card (even transmute) on the board with it.  I'll give it a serious look even when one of those cards isn't there, but there's some other +buy or mixed action/VP on the table.
How many silvers/potions should you pick up when you are going after Vines?  I usually take a +buy, 2/3 silvers, an optional attack and 2 potions in that order.  Should I skip golds or grab a couple before I dive back down on the Vines?

I'm not an expert on Vineyard, but my understanding is that you usually want more Potions than that, especially when +Buy is around, which is when Vineyard really shines anyway.  Extra Potions don't hurt a deck that only cares about Vineyards, Pawns, and Hamlets (for example), but every hand without a Potion in the mid- or late-game is an opportunity for your opponent to catch up.

I'm also not an expert on Vineyards, but I think you are correct. I had a game this week with 3 Potions for Vineyards, and they didn't felt as being to much. The thing is, even when you build an engine, the VY are your primary source of VPs and worth about as much as a Province. Every engine would be happy to pick up treasures that gives +8$, especially for the cost of $4. So you should also be happy to pick up Potions.
You basically don't need (much) Gold often, because your target are the low-costing actions anyway, some of these actions sometimes also give money, and you often don't want to spend more than $10(+some Potions) anyway. Of course, look at the board, if there are GMs and Markets that you want you maybe want some more coins in the beginning, but if you target for Hamlet, Schemes and Oasis maybe you don't want any Gold at all.
Maybe you also want to be able to reach for Provinces to end the game when it's in your favour, so some money is ok, but usually you don't need that much of it.

Food for thought - Thanks for the advice, guys.

[paulbaxter]

Just a quiet reminder that, awful as they generally are, Great Halls are also alternate VP cards. (Since Farmland has been brought into things, I figure all green cards over on the left side should get a mention).

[jomini]

Alt-VP runs into the problem that once you stock up on your points, you still haven't ended the game. While it is possible for alt-VP to reach values above 50 VP (or 90 in a colony game), it is pretty hard. If you won't be able to pile out, then going into alt-VP alone can be very dangerous. Gardens and silk roads can potentially get higher than all the provinces (and a duchy or two in padding), but that is fairly rare. More often you need to deplete estates, gardens and something else in a hurry. Sometimes your opponent will help (e.g. buying lots of havens for an engine, giving out curses), other times you are on your own and doing it the hard way (paying cash to pile out a 4 coin kingdom pile) and that just gives the opponent more time.

While alt-vp are not as hard hit by some attacks, you also normally forgo the ability to play attacks. For instance, gardens don't mind the curses as much as BM, but you also aren't going to give out all that many curses as a gardens player (hag makes it much slower for you to get to gardens, witch is expensive and a 6 card hand may well not have 4 coin in it). Likewise, militia means you can discard, play a workshop and get silk road/estate; however your BM opponent is not going to be hit by militia as well, so he won't lose early gold hands.

In addition, a number of attacks tend to hurt alt-vp clogged decks more:
Rabble
Fortune teller (still weak, just not as much beneficial early cycling)
Oracle (cycling is bad in alt-vp heavy decks)
Sab (you have fewer treasures & actions to protect your VP cards, your VP cards get dropped to estate without being able to skip through gold or duchy, you can lose diversity fast with multiple sab hits for fairgrounds)
Jester (more curses)

Thief and Pirate ship are both better against Alt-VP decks where you actively buy copper and where copper is more valuable to you (either directly for gardens & fairgrounds or indirectly for dukes and silk roads). They can also be quite harsh if you can set up deck inspection -> kill potions for vineyards decks.

Swindler is the king of the anti-Alt-VP attacks. Fairgrounds -> gold, gardens/SR -> potion, duchy -> duke (terminal 5, useless cache, etc.). In addition, swindler can kill enabling cards (workshop -> village) or destroy payload (actions -> treasure/normal VP in a vineyards deck, everything -> silver/duchy/gold in a fairgrounds deck). One really nasty thing is if you run out of replacement cards at that price point (e.g. 2 for estates, 0P for vineyards), then swindler can just destroy the card.

Discard/masq can be pretty harsh as you may be forced to choose between sending over your key enabling cards or sending over VP directly.

Also, a number of cards that offer benefits to the opponent when played (e.g. Bishop, Council Room) have this penalty very effectively mitigated against some alt-VP decks. Bishop just destroys gardens as the bishop play can buy gardens, crunch them, and the garden player never gets the free deck thinning.

Special mention should also be made of tournament. Alt-VP doesn't stop tournament engines and even if you have a province and win a prize, the alt-VP lowers the odds of pairing your tournaments with provinces and blocking your opponents.
 
So my basic shots are:
1. Can I make this alt-VP more valuable than the provinces our three pile before all 8 are gone? (the latter is far easier against folks who just play simple BM type games)
2. Do the attacks look better at slowing a province player or an alt-VP player?
3. Are there chip engines possible?
4. Would I be better served by snagging some provinces and then dipping into alt-VP (fairgrounds is classic here, often I'll grab provinces even after I've reached 6 VP per fairground - it limits my opponent's options and gives me more control of game end)? Transition games are tricky but can be strong (e.g. BM-Margrave and then snagging gardens instead of duchies when you miss province; eventually adding copper buys).
5. If it's 3er or 4er - can I count on my opponent's to attack each other and let me get the game slowing of attacks without paying the opportunity cost of going hag or whatever myself?

[Copernicus]

But there are some kingdoms in which making Fairgrounds worth 6 is viable because you can use amost all the kingdom cards: Jester (particularly in multi-player games), Menagerie, mostly non-terminal cards, or terminals with villages.  Then you want to play a different strategy: get a diverse set of useful cards, load up on Fairgrounds, and try to get one province so that you don't need a curse or useless card to get to 15 different ones.

Black Market also makes Fairgrounds a very powerful option.

I also find Fairgrounds to be useful in Familiar or Young Witch games, because the additional card and the likely curse make them much easier to get up to 15.