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[shark_bait]

It is known that Native Village/Bridge is a very powerful combo that unless your opponent goes for the mirror, you will win eventually with a 3-pile win when you clear out your Native Village mat.  Saboteur, a card that consistently gets flack for being underpowered, is the perfect counter to this powerhouse combo.  First, to pull off the combo, the only cards $3 or greater, are bridges.  This guarantees the Saboteur to hit a Bridge.  Additionally, if your opponent tries to react by purchasing $3-cost cards, you can simply play a Native Village/Bridge before playing the Saboteur, causing you to skip ahead to Bridges which then cost $3.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/05/game-20120705-190611-96f3d399.html

Also, I'd love to here comments about what others would have done in this game.  With 1st player, I had a lot of decisions which I'll list below.  I spent a good couple minutes pondering my options.

1.)  Native Village/Bridge
2.)  Young Witch/Saboteur
3.)  Masquerade/BM

The way I see this is that NV/Bridge > Masquerade/BM > Young Witch/Saboteur > Native Village/Bridge.  Opening first with $3, I decide to open Silver.  This allows me to either go Masquerade/BM if it looks like he is going YW or Young Witch if he is going for the NV/Bridge Combo.

*EDIT*  After some testing with WW, the star of the show here is not Saboteur, but Scheme.  Without scheme, the Saboteur could not be played often enough to halt the NV/Bridge player.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I don't think this is an RPS situation. Seems like Masq/BM mirror is a Nash Equilibrium strategy. Neither player can go NV/Bridge, or else the other player can simply add Sabs to the Masq/BM deck and shut the NV/Bridge player down completely.

[shark_bait]

I don't think this is an RPS situation. Seems like Masq/BM mirror is a Nash Equilibrium strategy. Neither player can go NV/Bridge, or else the other player can simply add Sabs to the Masq/BM deck and shut the NV/Bridge player down completely.

That is a very good point.  I hadn't thought about it in that way.

[WanderingWinder]

Are we sure that Mr. NV bridge can't aggressively pile out on NV, Bridge, estate?

[shark_bait]

Are we sure that Mr. NV bridge can't aggressively pile out on NV, Bridge, estate?

I guess it's possible.  I just don't like it's chances against a sab that will ALWAYS hit a Bridge.  Either you replace it with a NV or an Estate.  If you go NV to fill up your mat, you need to get Bridges on your mat to protect them from the sab.  But when you do that, you now have very littler purchasing power in your deck.

[WanderingWinder]

So we tested:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/06/game-20120706-062614-efbac58e.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/06/game-20120706-062153-e9bbf9c2.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/06/game-20120706-060852-82c21fa5.html

[rrenaud]

[meow]

So we tested:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/06/game-20120706-062614-efbac58e.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/06/game-20120706-062153-e9bbf9c2.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/06/game-20120706-060852-82c21fa5.html

And decided???

At a glance it looks like those 3 games indicate NV+Bridge can hold up against Saboteur without Scheme, but what about with?

[WanderingWinder]

So we tested:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/06/game-20120706-062614-efbac58e.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/06/game-20120706-062153-e9bbf9c2.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/06/game-20120706-060852-82c21fa5.html

And decided???

At a glance it looks like those 3 games indicate NV+Bridge can hold up against Saboteur without Scheme, but what about with?

With, it's a 4-card set-up. Sure, for the tenth of a game you get it in your life, it's probably decent. But you know, there, other cards are probably going to be rather important too.

[Ozle]

Surely for pure scientific research you should also play it the other way round?
What if WW is an exponentially better player than Shark Bait?

If I play Eric Bristow at dars and he plays one legged and with one eye shut he would probably still beat my conventional method (And I have actually done this, and he did)

[jayarsea]

If they both play algorithmically, it shouldn't matter, but I don't believe they did...

[shark_bait]

If they both play algorithmically, it shouldn't matter, but I don't believe they did...

I most certainly did not play algorithmically.  I really don't know how easy it is to play the Saboteur strategy to an algorithm.  Do you have any thoughts?  I think I played 2 of them semi decent (certainly not optimal though).  And I know that 1 of them I got the worst shuffle luck in the world making it impossible to play.

[WanderingWinder]

I think that I played significantly better than shark_bait there, but only insofar as I went native village/bridge instead of the saboteur thing. He asked me for ideas on how to play his thing better, but it's very hard for me - I just don't have a lot of faith in that deck, that strategy, so I don't know how to play it. I don't think he particularly played badly. The thing is, NV/Bridge is not all about making a mega-turn. You want to end the game quick, and against an opponent who isn't getting big points, this means slamming off the three piles - probably estates - fast. It's really important to not play algorithmically here, in fact - whether I go for duchies, when to pop, how much I go to estates, whether to buy silvers and/or coppers, when to do that, it's all necessary to adjust based very closely on what your opponent is doing. I felt quite comfortable in all the games, but I had to play close attention to what he is doing, block him where necessary, and be ready to race/grab points where necessary.

[dondon151]

I feel like opening Masq/Masq might be a good idea for the Sab player here.