Just saw the game log, and the 10th card is Worker's Village, which is far from being unimportant here.
Haha, my bad. My memory's terrible. So since people are looking are looking at the gamelog anyways, here it is:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110725-180247-caf7e5ee.html.
As you can see, how the game itself played out was heavily in my favor. I believe this is largely due to my shuffle-luck allowing me to short-circuit his/her Tournaments 3 times in a row following my first Province. While this is certainly part of any Tournament game, I felt it was certainly fortuitous and I wonder if our divergent strategies would've produced a different outcome had he gotten the first Province.
So what I'd like to discuss here is the expected case scenario (or at least the community's opinions of it) for the divergent mentalities for approaching the Tournament battle.
In my opinion, Remake is a no-brainer opener here. Especially with the multitude of very potent $3 kingdom cards to turn Estates (and Coppers w/ Princess) into. And who doesn't like a razor thin deck that is easy to track (says the guy who forgot about Worker's Villages), usually draws consistent starting hands and is perfect for Tournament/Province collisions.
My opponent however disagreed. While I can't speak for him/her beyond that, I believe this was the reasoning. He/she identified this as a Tournament game from the start and concluded that the first Province owner would put himself/herself in a good position to win. Aware of the power of Remake but feeling like it tends to lose a tempo by spending early turns to trash, a big money with fast cycling approach was taken to rush to some Provinces counting on leveraging the advantage of Provinces and prizes to make up for the opportunity cost of foregoing trashing.
Reading the comments, it seems like most people would be thinking like I would. I too realized a sick Conspirator chain would be easy to build, but by the time we reached that point in the game the scales were already tipped so far in my favor that there was no need to power up any more. Again, I don't think this instance of the game was particularly exciting, interesting or requiring hard decisions once the results were coming in. What I'm really curious about is how to optimally play Tournament (if there even is an optimal way given how much variance is involved with the card) because I find myself on the butt-end of the race many times too. What I liked about my opening too was that the board seemed strong enough for non-Tournament play that I could withdraw myself from ever buying a single Tournament if my opponent's Chancellor/Tournament/Gold/etc. engine managed to buy a few Provinces absurdly early. I imagine a pure Conspirator/Worker's Village/Menagerie engine could win the game with Duchies/Dukes and without buying a single Province.
Would anybody like to make a case for my opponent's opening or any other non-Remake opening? What about openings that forego other typically strong-buys (i.e. skipping Sea Hag, Potion play, etc.) for the express purpose of Tournament/Province rushing? Basically, my intent with this thread was to pick people's brains about how to play Tournament boards.
