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Author Topic: Bishop's tiebreaker points  (Read 3969 times)

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theory

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Bishop's tiebreaker points
« on: June 12, 2011, 10:37:40 pm »
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I think this game is a good example of how Bishop's drawback is meaningless in heavy trashing games, and how the VP gained from the Bishop makes for an near-insurmountable tiebreaker.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110527-095859-c4c4429c.html

The Saboteur was sort of a last-minute desperate gamble, which did not succeed.  I think this is the most difficult type of situation to recover from: when you know you can't split the Provinces 4-4, but there's no real easy way to get to 5 Provinces and there aren't viable non-Province source of VPs.
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Anon79

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Re: Bishop's tiebreaker points
« Reply #1 on: June 13, 2011, 03:03:41 am »
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I'm not sure whether this makes a difference. At the start of your Turn 9, your hand was Tactician, Gold, Silver, Copper (4 cards), your discard pile is empty, and your deck has a Gold and a Silver. You played the Tactician, discarding everything; on Turn 10 you then purchased a Province and a Silver.

If you had not played the Tactician Turn 9 with such a small deck, you could have bought a Gold; your discard pile would now be 2 Golds, Silver, Copper, Tactician. You then draw a Gold and Silver, shuffle your discards and draw 3 cards to end Turn 9. The crux is, you will definitely reach 8 coin and can buy a Province Turn 10. So, by not playing the Tactician, you now have a Gold instead of a Silver, with slightly different shuffling timings.

To bring things back in line, let's say Tactician gets played again on Turn 11. Turn 12 you now have 14 coin, so can buy Gold + Province instead of Saboteur + Province (so where you drew Saboteur, you will now hypothetically draw Gold.) Turn 13 then becomes Province buy instead of Fairgrounds. After that it becomes murky, because your Saboteur milled your opponent's Gold from the top of his deck and it's not clear whether he also speeds up, instead of having to buy Gold on Turns 14 & 15.
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theory

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Re: Bishop's tiebreaker points
« Reply #2 on: June 13, 2011, 09:25:33 am »
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I think you're right.  I think I was hoping to really purge my deck with a big Tactician draw and subsequent Chapel, but didn't realize how fast the game was going to accelerate.  I didn't really have time to do what I was hoping, which was build up to a double Province Tactician turn.
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Arya Stark

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Re: Bishop's tiebreaker points
« Reply #3 on: June 13, 2011, 03:19:11 pm »
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im not that crazy about tactician, seems like most of the time you waste 2 turns to get 1 prov and duchy or 1 prov and a gold 
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Stoc

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Re: Bishop's tiebreaker points
« Reply #4 on: June 13, 2011, 04:23:06 pm »
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im not that crazy about tactician, seems like most of the time you waste 2 turns to get 1 prov and duchy or 1 prov and a gold
I love Tactician (possibly too much). Besides being a great way to draw your 'game breaker' combos, it just feels like it accelerates almost any deck.

Here's a game I played over the weekend where Tactician + Bank gets 4 Provinces by the 10th turn.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110611-100509-9214fbae.html
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drg

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Re: Bishop's tiebreaker points
« Reply #5 on: June 14, 2011, 07:22:09 pm »
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Bishop isn't always just a tiebreaker... throw in ironworks/workshop with some village and some draw power and all of a sudden you can make a deck that is creating it's own stuff to trash every time, and they're worth 2+1 each, which adds up very quickly if you are playing multiple bishops.  I won a game doing this the other day while letting my opponent get all 8 provinces pretty much just to see if it would work.  Being able to play them after you've played all your other cards can give a bunch of free vps too.  Trashing your golds near the end of the game also can overcome a province disadvantage.
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DG

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Re: Bishop's tiebreaker points
« Reply #6 on: June 14, 2011, 10:02:38 pm »
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I'd hate to disagree with Theory of course, but if you play with the knowledge of your opponent's bishop you can still let the trashing work in your favour. So in this kingdom, assuming you buy a chapel turn 3, I'd suggest that chapel/coppersmith + tactician would beat chapel/bishop on reasonable draws. The bishop might only remove an extra estate or the chapel, but that will reduce the risks of a poor coppersmith draw. You should be able to take the provinces 5/3 which will win the game.

Alternatively, if you take Theory's draws and just pursue a rabble (instead of tactician) and treasure from turn 4, without trashing any more copper, it should still be possible to buy 5 provinces by turn 15. Merchant ship and treasure probably isn't good enough.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2011, 10:04:20 pm by DG »
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danw132

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Re: Bishop's tiebreaker points
« Reply #7 on: June 20, 2011, 09:22:30 am »
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This is of course a province game, where the advantage of the Bishop points are even more magnified in my opinion, as the marginal +VP is better when 6 is the highest denomination of VP you can buy.
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