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Author Topic: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?  (Read 6550 times)

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dondon151

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Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« on: August 19, 2012, 10:14:54 pm »
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So I figured that there should be a thread here discussing these instead of in the Dark Ages Previews forum, since Dark Ages is officially a set now... I played many, many hours of partial Dark Ages games (courtesy of Axiom/Turambar & friends and the Austrian champion, whose Iso username I don't remember) and thought that maybe we could start discussing some of these cards more in-depth.

But of course, Dark Ages is never going to be public on Iso, Goko probably won't have all of the cards implemented at time of launch, and a vast majority of users here probably don't have a copy of Dark Ages, so I'm wondering if this sort of topic is too premature. Thoughts?
« Last Edit: August 19, 2012, 10:22:09 pm by dondon151 »
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Robz888

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Re: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #1 on: August 19, 2012, 10:17:34 pm »
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I've played a couple Dark Ages games, and one thing that stuck out to me was Haven/Hermit (Madman). Because you can't buy anything the turn you gain Madman, it's nice to tuck some Treasure away with Haven.
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dondon151

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Re: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #2 on: August 19, 2012, 11:01:00 pm »
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I suppose I'll make some suggestions as well since players who want to discover combos for themselves can just opt to not read new posts in the thread.



Procession/Fortress is a strong combo if there are power 5s in the kingdom, especially terminal draw. Procession-Fortress gives you +2 cards, +4 actions, lets you gain a $5 card, and the Fortress returns to your hand. With terminal draw, you can end up playing several Processions on the same Fortress in a single turn.

Procession is also a somewhat amusingly effective trasher for Ruins, since you get to play them twice and trash them ;D But unless it's worth trashing those Ruins, it's probably not a good idea to get a Procession just to trash one...

In general, Procession works decently with Attack cards that end up losing their ammunition (Cursers and Looters), though I guess matching them up in a junked deck is kind of a crapshoot? Still, Procession-Marauder gives you a $5 card and 2 Spoils, and Procession-Cultist yields a juicy +7 cards. I have a hunch that it's good in conjunction with cheap card gainers (such as Ironworks) given the presence of halfway decent kingdom cards at $3 and $4 because it gains $5 cards, gets the $4 card out of your deck, and also plays the $4 card twice for a nice benefit. I actually think that it's much more adequate to view this card as a trash for benefit card instead of a Throne Room variant.

In a similar vein, Develop/Fortress may be a somewhat legitimate combo, but you really do want a terminal drawing $5 in the kingdom, or maybe a good non-terminal $5 and a terminal drawing $3, otherwise you just end up spinning your wheels. Fortress returns to your hand and can pick up one of your newly topdecked cards.



I tried a game today with Rebuild/Feodum and it absolutely dominated, although I am very slightly skeptical as to its actual effectiveness, because that was a 3-player game where I ended up gaining 11 of the Feodums in some fashion and trashed 5 of them for 15 Silvers. The goal is to Rebuild starting Victory cards to Feodum and Rebuild Feodums to Feodums until the pile is out. Once Feodums are out, name Feodum on Rebuild plays and trash Duchies to Provinces.

So my personal opinion on Feodum is that it really wants to trash itself, because it's otherwise difficult for it to become a high-scoring card; obviously the problem is that you'll have fewer Feodums to score with. (And also obviously, you'd ideally want to have # of Feodums and # of Silvers / 3 as close as possible). In a 2-player game, assuming that one player is uncontested on the Feodums, he's only going to have maybe 4 Feodums scoring ~5 points each? The good thing is that denying Feodums is a rather weak move because most decks won't even have 6 Silver by the end of the game.

I'm hypothesizing that Feodum is really not a viable alt VP strategy in and of itself: the Feodum player must go for Duchies and steal Provinces as well. Except for a very long, drawn-out game, I don't think that Silver-gainers in and of themselves are adequate support for a pure Feodum alt-VP strategy (assuming Duchy buys, of course). Perhaps something like Hermit/Feodum is stronger than Workshop/Feodum or Ironworks/Feodum by comparison.

Rebuild/Tunnel is a neat combo, but probably wants some sort of handsize increasing card or sifter as well. Rebuild starting VP to Tunnels and name Tunnel when playing Rebuild to gain Golds.

Trader/Feodum is pretty self-explanatory...



I'm hesitantly going to suggest Counterfeit/Marauder, but I don't suspect that it's particularly effective. Marauder will junk up decks (making Provinces hard to buy) and hand out Spoils; Counterfeit-Spoils automatically nets $7 and doesn't present any drawback that playing Spoils will normally incur. Getting the Counterfeit is probably difficult in the first place with a 4/3 Marauder opening, though. On the other hand, Bandit Camp/Marauder gets you those Spoils and doesn't encourage a junked up game. You can actually probably build an engine that relies on consistently hitting Counterfeit-Spoils for a huge amount of coin.

I suppose in a similar vein, Counterfeit/Market Square is a weaker variation of that combo: Market Square reacts on Counterfeit's trash to gain Gold, and Counterfeit double-plays Gold. You'll want an engine to do this one, though. For engine decks, Counterfeit/(Spoils/Gold) is a quick way to get a lot of coin when you need to, for example, be reaching $16 for double-Province turns.



Wandering Minstrel is a nombo with Looters. Wandering Minstrel may be actively bad for your deck in these games because they discard Treasures and leave Ruins on top.



These are combos that I haven't tried out but may work in theory:

Scavenger/Stash is something that we didn't play with, but Turambar and I talked about it and it seems super-strong. Get 2 Scavengers and 3 Stashes and you can Province every turn regardless of cursing, looting, trashing, or deck-mucking attacks. Honestly, probably way better than Chancellor/Stash, which was good already. The only failure mode is if your 2nd Scavenger ends up being the 5th card of your deck, which has a miniscule probability of happening.

Beggar/Gardens looks like it can be amazing. Beggar gives +$3 and gains 3 cards that maintain the desired average quality of the deck. Probably hugely dominant with some +buy to get multiple Beggars to start out.

Beggar/Duke, on the other hand... Looks good on paper because Beggar gives +$3, but honestly, Duke rushes want something better than tons of Copper. I don't think Beggar will be a particularly good duke enabler.

Apparently Death Cart/Rats may be good; I feel like straight Death Cart isn't that much weaker, though... Probably an easy way to get coin and slim down a deck for an engine?

Storeroom/Tunnel looks to me like a power combo when it appears. It has huge discarding reach (discard aggressively and you go through 8 cards per turn, including the 4 that start out in your hand), it sifts on the first discard, it discards Tunnels for +$1, and it gives +buy for when you have a lot of Golds. Might be improved significantly with non-terminal draw.

Hamlet/Poor House looks like it could be hilariously strong. Will probably really like some kind of draw.

Looters are probably a nombo with Scrying Pool. Seriously, Ruins won't hurt SP at all, almost. It just decreases the chance of starting the turn with SP in hand, but the guy will draw all of the Ruins anyway.
« Last Edit: August 20, 2012, 12:18:07 am by dondon151 »
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Robz888

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Re: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #3 on: August 19, 2012, 11:30:24 pm »
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I agree with your suggestions. I saw Feodum/Rebuild, that was definitely semi strong at least.

You are absolutely right about Procession. In my Procession game, well, my opponent Cultisted me to death, so I had 7 Ruins. Procession was one way to get rid of them. I had also trashed like all my treasure to mint. I did Procession a Poorhouse for an automatic Province. So that's something of a combo (Procession/Poorhouse) if you trash your money.
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jsh357

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Re: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #4 on: August 20, 2012, 12:16:46 am »
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Quote
Beggar/Gardens looks like it can be amazing. Beggar gives +$3 and gains 3 cards that maintain the desired average quality of the deck. Probably hugely dominant with some +buy to get multiple Beggars to start out.

I played a game with Beggar, Gardens, Stables and Scheme a few days ago.  Made it to a 60 card deck pretty easily.  (On that note Beggar seems like it wouldn't even be all that horrible in some BM type games; $3 this turn can sometimes be worth it I guess?  I'm not saying it's a power $2 card, but some games...)
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yog-sothothry

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Re: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #5 on: August 20, 2012, 02:53:35 pm »
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Here's a couple of possible combos between Dark Ages cards that I came up with, reposted from a thread in the Dark Ages preview thread.

Hunting ground/Bandit camp:

The big draw back of hunting ground as the basis for a draw engine is that, at a cost of 6$, it competes with the gold you need for to be drawing to buy provinces. Bandit camp solves this problem by providing a one shot gold everytime you play it, allowing you to build your draw engine without spending as many buys on money. I played this combo once and it worked quite well, but since the two cards are both expensive, it might turn out to be too slow on most boards. Still, might be worth looking out for.

Cultist/Urchin:

Urchin is already being slammed as a weak card (along with its grown up version mercenary) but it seems to fit in well with a cultist chain deck. The cultists make it easy to turn the Urchin into a Mercenary, and the Mercenary can thin your deck out to help make sure your cultists find each other and keep the chain going. Late game, the Mercenary can trash cultists for mega turns.

Death cart/ Squire:

This is more of an opening, I guess, then a combo per se. Opening Death cart and then Squire allows you to quickly get up to gold, grab some silvers, and if the death cart and squire collide then you get yourself an attack card. Of course, if you draw the death cart with none of your actions you are probably in trouble. I am interesting in seeing if Death Cart openings will end up being strong, but at first glance squire seems like nice support for it.
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zahlman

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Re: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #6 on: August 20, 2012, 05:12:30 pm »
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Seems to me that any board that's good for Procession is going to be at least decent for Develop as well, since you can use it to get back the card that you originally Procession'd. Alternately: they both like boards where there's at least one good card at several adjacent price points.
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Tdog

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Re: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #7 on: August 20, 2012, 06:53:15 pm »
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What about Junk Dealer/Rats? Rats away your junk, buy a few junk dealers, and then use the junk dealers to trash all of your rats. This turns your junk dealers into a lab+peddler.
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Insomniac

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Re: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #8 on: August 30, 2012, 11:18:36 am »
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Storeroom/Tunnel looks to me like a power combo when it appears. It has huge discarding reach (discard aggressively and you go through 8 cards per turn, including the 4 that start out in your hand), it sifts on the first discard, it discards Tunnels for +$1, and it gives +buy for when you have a lot of Golds. Might be improved significantly with non-terminal draw.

As described in a post I already made here this was actually weaker than Altar/Highway in the game I played.
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WheresMyElephant

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Re: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #9 on: August 30, 2012, 02:10:16 pm »
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Storeroom/Tunnel looks to me like a power combo when it appears. It has huge discarding reach (discard aggressively and you go through 8 cards per turn, including the 4 that start out in your hand), it sifts on the first discard, it discards Tunnels for +$1, and it gives +buy for when you have a lot of Golds. Might be improved significantly with non-terminal draw.

As described in a post I already made here this was actually weaker than Altar/Highway in the game I played.

I dont see that post so apologies if I'm asking you to repeat yourself, but are you saying Altar/Highway is bad? Even when Highways are uncontested? The combination of free $5 Actions and deck thinning looks great for Highways.
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Insomniac

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Re: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #10 on: August 30, 2012, 02:26:44 pm »
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No I'm saying not only is it good its ridiculous quick.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=4302.0
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jmieden

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Re: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #11 on: August 30, 2012, 03:55:40 pm »
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I played a few games today and think there may be opportunity for Cultist to combo well with Urchin or Death Cart late in the game. The Mercenary or Death Cart trashing Cultists after all the ruins are out seems like it would be super strong.

Anybody tried this out in a legit game? (we were mostly just trying out all the new cards)
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dondon151

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Re: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #12 on: August 30, 2012, 05:23:56 pm »
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As described in a post I already made here this was actually weaker than Altar/Highway in the game I played.

Yes, I did not say that it was stronger than Altar/Highway...
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Insomniac

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Re: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #13 on: August 30, 2012, 05:44:37 pm »
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As described in a post I already made here this was actually weaker than Altar/Highway in the game I played.

Yes, I did not say that it was stronger than Altar/Highway...

My appologies I just think of it whenever I see Tunnel/Storeroom because that was the board I first saw Tunnel/Storeroom.
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philosophyguy

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Re: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #14 on: August 30, 2012, 06:12:11 pm »
+1

Old combo that is uber-enabled by DA: Wharf+Bank+Bandit Camp. Villages for your Wharves plus money for your Banks. It's crazy powerful.
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Re: Yes/No: Discussion on Dark Ages combos...?
« Reply #15 on: August 30, 2012, 10:15:02 pm »
+1

Old combo that is uber-enabled by DA: Wharf+Bank+Bandit Camp. Villages for your Wharves plus money for your Banks. It's crazy powerful.

If I'm not mistaken, Spoils can't feed Bank.

(You could make an amusing thematic story about this—some rough-looking bandits and marauders show up in a bank with some of the spoils they've pillaged and they're like 'Yo, we'd like to deposit this,' and the banker are all like 'Hmph!' and turn them away.)
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