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Author Topic: Dark Ages Combos: Altar+Highway  (Read 8653 times)

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Insomniac

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Dark Ages Combos: Altar+Highway
« on: August 22, 2012, 11:33:37 pm »
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I played the preset kingdom from dark ages mixed with hinterlands that was the following board.
Altar, Catacombs, Ironmonger, Poor House, Storeroom, Crossroads, Farmland, Highway, Spice Merchant, Tunnel.

I will preface the combo with how the game looked like for me.
I had the 5/2 opening but Im confident this strategy would have been dominant with a 4/3 as well. We started with shelters instead of estates.

Buy Highway, Crossroads.
Buy Estate trashing hovel, Buy Highway, Buy Spice Merchant.

Since Crossroads gives 3 actions I bought 3 altars the first one off of a highway buy and later ones off of play highway play alter trash a card gain altar.

Now Spice Merchant is eating my copper, so my highways are consistently hitting and altars are gaining me additional highways. Later on I play at least 3 highways a turn and play altar to trash 3 cards from my hand into provinces. Because Provinces now cost 5 and unlike other TFB cards none of them have a set value until now.


So the idea of the combo is to use Altar to get highways and highways to get altars, play at least 3 highways and you can altar cards into provinces. You will obviously want some form of +actions and some form of draw once you start greening (luckily crossroads did both for me). But if I had a village catacombs would have worked as well.

In a colony game I think this is still viable but will be more dependant on having actions and draw because you'll need to play 6 highways in order for altar to do its thing which also means you'll need to win the highway split.


This is very much a work in progress article but I wanted to get the rough idea down while coming fresh off of playing this game (all input is welcome)
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"It is one of [Insomniacs] badges of pride that he will bus anyone, at any time, and he has done it over and over on day 1. I am completely serious, it is like the biggest part of his meta." - Dsell

eHalcyon

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Re: Dark Ages Combos: Altar+Highway
« Reply #1 on: August 22, 2012, 11:49:32 pm »
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I wonder if it's faster than Tunnel with Catacombs and Storeroom.
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Insomniac

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Re: Dark Ages Combos: Altar+Highway
« Reply #2 on: August 22, 2012, 11:55:19 pm »
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I wonder if it's faster than Tunnel with Catacombs and Storeroom.

This is what my opponent played, I beat her. She is on a skill level very similar to mine.

The final score was

33 for me, 17 for her I trashed 2 provinces.
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"It is one of [Insomniacs] badges of pride that he will bus anyone, at any time, and he has done it over and over on day 1. I am completely serious, it is like the biggest part of his meta." - Dsell

eHalcyon

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Re: Dark Ages Combos: Altar+Highway
« Reply #3 on: August 23, 2012, 12:00:30 am »
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I wonder if it's faster than Tunnel with Catacombs and Storeroom.

This is what my opponent played, I beat her. She is on a skill level very similar to mine.

The final score was

33 for me, 17 for her I trashed 2 provinces.

Hmm.  How fast did it take you to start triple-Provincing?  Or double, I suppose?  Maybe the Tunnel route needs Crossroads and Spice Merchant to play it as an engine?  I wouldn't have thought SM was fast enough trashing to set up Crossroads-Highway-Altar x3 quickly.

That must have been one of those "awesome combo" moments for you though!
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Insomniac

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Re: Dark Ages Combos: Altar+Highway
« Reply #4 on: August 23, 2012, 02:44:52 am »
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I wonder if it's faster than Tunnel with Catacombs and Storeroom.

This is what my opponent played, I beat her. She is on a skill level very similar to mine.

The final score was

33 for me, 17 for her I trashed 2 provinces.

Hmm.  How fast did it take you to start triple-Provincing?  Or double, I suppose?  Maybe the Tunnel route needs Crossroads and Spice Merchant to play it as an engine?  I wouldn't have thought SM was fast enough trashing to set up Crossroads-Highway-Altar x3 quickly.

That must have been one of those "awesome combo" moments for you though!

Triple only happened once then I had to double on an altar. It happened on my 4th reshuffle or like my 8th turn. You have to realize that Altar is trashing TOO, and when you have shelters you can trash overgrown estate for extra value. Totally an awesome combo moment, and I'm looking forward to seeing what else dark ages has in store for me.
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"It is one of [Insomniacs] badges of pride that he will bus anyone, at any time, and he has done it over and over on day 1. I am completely serious, it is like the biggest part of his meta." - Dsell

hamcannon

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Re: Dark Ages Combos: Altar+Highway
« Reply #5 on: August 24, 2012, 12:29:03 pm »
+1

In a colony game I think this is still viable but will be more dependant on having actions and draw because you'll need to play 6 highways in order for altar to do its thing which also means you'll need to win the highway split.

You can win Colony games by driving the Province pile before opponent(s) ramp up through plats into colonies. Assuming your deck is fast enough at driving Province piles, and 3+/turn is plenty fast.
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microman

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Re: Dark Ages Combos: Altar+Highway
« Reply #6 on: August 25, 2012, 04:12:20 am »
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In a colony game I think this is still viable but will be more dependant on having actions and draw because you'll need to play 6 highways in order for altar to do its thing which also means you'll need to win the highway split.

You can win Colony games by driving the Province pile before opponent(s) ramp up through plats into colonies. Assuming your deck is fast enough at driving Province piles, and 3+/turn is plenty fast.
Man that sounds like a sick combo! :o  Not enough people are giving altar enough credit. :'(  It is a good card, and in the right scenario, amazing! :)
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zahlman

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Re: Dark Ages Combos: Altar+Highway
« Reply #7 on: August 30, 2012, 09:53:20 pm »
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I assume highway > bridge here because you need actions, and +buy synergy doesn't help so much when you're already gaining cards?
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qmech

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Re: Dark Ages Combos: Altar+Highway
« Reply #8 on: August 31, 2012, 04:25:56 am »
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The +1 Card is pretty important too when you haven't any reliable way to draw your deck.
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clb

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Re: Dark Ages Combos: Altar+Highway
« Reply #9 on: August 31, 2012, 12:46:25 pm »
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We played that deck last night, too, though in a 3-player game. Two of us went the route of Storeroom/Tunnel with Crossroads support. I don't think that we balanced the decks quite right (needed more Crossroads, I think) because we spent a lot of turns buying Duchies and not quite making it to 8 (lots of 7 hands - one gold, 4 discarded cards). We had also assumed that all those Golds would mean we didn't have to buy Silver. The way we played, it was pretty slow, and I can see how Insomniac's strategy could be faster. The third player didn't really know what he was doing, grabbed some Ironmonger, then copied our approach. As it turned out, either our coaching of him or the Ironmongers made the difference as he won that game.
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RD

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Re: Dark Ages Combos: Altar+Highway
« Reply #10 on: August 31, 2012, 07:36:19 pm »
+1

I assume highway > bridge here because you need actions, and +buy synergy doesn't help so much when you're already gaining cards?

I haven't played this at all but I have a hard time imagining Altar/Bridge would be much better than Workshop/Bridge. The Altar trashing is nice (maybe not as critical as for Highway chains; depends on the board whether this is necessary or sufficient). And if there's a critical $5 engine piece then I guess that's well and good. On the other hand, having to hit $6 might be distraction from the necessary engine building?

I don't know. Anyway my point is, you probably have an opinion about workshop/bridge so I suspect that gives a pretty decent idea how strong altar/bridge would be.
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Warrior

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Re: Dark Ages Combos: Altar+Highway
« Reply #11 on: December 30, 2012, 03:24:10 pm »
+1

I tried this out. I ran out of cards to trash with altar so I had to trash other altars and Provinces! Probably would have looked better with +buy. Also, it was a colony game where I was 1 highway short of getting colonies. Any suggestions?

warrior297
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