How game 1 went.Game 1: Vineyard, Herbalist, Fortune Teller, Develop, Village, Masquerade, Apprentice, Goons, Possession, Canal (with Platinum and Colony, too)
Bella Cullen went first, I went second, pirate ship economist (PSE) went third. Early, we did see Village-Goons as being most important. Bella opened Village-Masquerade, I opened Silver-Masquerade, and PSE, trying to be clever from the third seat, opened Develop-Masquerade. Bella and I pretty much went directly for Village-Goons. PSE tried to use Develop to beat us to the punch; he did have one successful Develop turn early, turning a Potion into an Apprentice and a Silver.
I was able to buy and play a Goons first, playing $6, and buying two Villages and getting +2VP. I was paring my deck down with two Masquerades (I never really got a good chance at picking up an Apprentice early, so I felt like 2 Masques would do the job), so I felt like it was only a matter of time before I double Goons-ed a few times. Develop did not quite pay off for the PSE; he was almost shut out of Villages, getting only 1, and Bella and I split the rest, with me winning the split (Village pile out). I also was doing well with number of Goons bought and paring my deck down, so I felt like I was in a very good position. Also, at this point, my deck was pretty consistently hitting $6 and $7, but for some infuriating reason, even with 5 Villages, they refused to nestle near my Goons when I shuffled. Because of this I kept buying Goons over Gold so my deck never really got to $8. PSE bought 2 Goons, but then started buying Gold over Goons. He top decked two Silvers with Develop and was able to Apprentice two Silvers midgame in order to land a couple of Provinces. Bella was supplementing her Village-Masquerade-Goons-lite strategy with money. Even so, I was in the lead at the midpoint of the game even though PSE and Bella were able to pick up 3 Provinces between them. Also, with all three of us buying Goons, the Goons pile ran out about this time (making Canal cheap).
I realized my deck was not hitting $8, and I had to make a decision on whether to correct that or go for piles and hope to end the game in the lead. The Masquerade pile was down to 5 (Bella had also bought a second Masquerade), so that was the only realistic option. I decided against that because Bella and PSE were starting to buy too many Provinces and I felt it would have taken too long, and I didn’t have that big of a lead. In addition, my deck was thick enough I thought it would take too long to increase its buying power to $8 or greater. Instead, I decided I would try to get a Possession to take advantage of PSE’s buying power in his deck, so I bought a Potion. In addition, I would buy Canals cheap when I didn’t have a better buy in order to hedge against my opponents running Provinces on me too soon. Sadly, on the next two shuffles through my deck, I had to settle for Vineyards when I drew my Potion even though my deck had been so reliable on getting to $7. I also picked up an Apprentice around this time, but I never got an opportunity to play it.
At this point in the game, Canal became a surprisingly attractive target for purchase after a Goons play. Buying 2 Canals and getting +2VP as well was kind of hard to resist for all three of us when we had the chance.
Even with my change in tactic (and failing to land a Province or Possession), and Bella hitting double Goons a couple of times during the game (but deciding to clog her deck too early with Coppers), I felt like I was in good shape. I finally drew Villages and Goons together. My hand was 3 Villages and 2 Goons. Then disaster struck. Bella played Village-Village-Masquerade-Masquerade-Goons. I passed PSE his second and desperately needed Village and a Silver that was passed to me. I discarded down to Village-Goons-Goons. I did get a double Goons turn, but a couple of turns later that Village pass came back to bite me.
PSE played Apprentice, trashing his own Province! He drew 8 cards, resulting in the only two Villages in his deck ending up in his hand. Playing double Village, Goons, Masquerade, Goons, and a lot of Gold, he purchased 2 Provinces and a Canal (getting +6VP). On my turn I decided I was still ahead but things were getting dangerous, so I went to try to end it on Canals. I had a bad draw and left one Canal in the pile, which PSE promptly bought ending the game (Canals empty – became 2 VP each). There were 4 Provinces left in the supply.
The final score was 48-42-30; the PSE had overtaken me! My internal point counter was biased by all the shiny VP tokens on my mat!
This board looked really bad for Canal when we started to play it, but as we kept playing, even though Canal was only briefly in the sweet spot of being $3 and possibly worth 4VP, it added a lot of fun to the middle and endgame that we didn’t see coming. The fact that it was $3, even when we knew it was probably going to be worth only 2VP, made it a very attractive target to buy two of when we had Goons in play and were trying to pick up some extra VP. Afterward, we concluded that Canal was the better alt VP on this board (over Vineyards).
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Topic: Playtesting: Canal (Challenge #3) (Read 7650 times)