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[Graystripe77]

Hey!  This is the first in a series of game reports for all to critique my strategies.  Please don't be hesitant to give any advice that may improve my play.


http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110806-185921-3f246ee2.html

A game with sab, very crazy.

[Mean Mr Mustard]

I am not too experienced with three player, but what I see is an ugly kingdom with little synergy.  In a case like this I would usually try to play fluidly, taking mostly coin and maybe a couple of actions when it is convenient to do so.

Menagerie, KC ans Peddler are the "stars" of this set, but they really don't have much going for them in the way of support.  Smugglers is an okay card if there are certain piles that you know are going to be rushed, like Laboratory or Grand Market, but i don't see any reason to buy one here.  Merchant Ship and Saboteur are usually sub-par choices and I will only buy them if I see a great reason to do so.  Fortune Teller is not horrible, but it is not a swing card.  Mint.  Well, Mint I would buy in this setup IF I drew five coppers, but otherwise, no.

In the end I would probably buy one Merchant Ship, one Fortune Teller, two or so Silver before switching to Menagerie on hands of less than six coin and Gold.  Might consider Duke rush depending on how the tempo goes.

The reason JoAT won this game, in my opinion, is that his early buys were focused more on improving his own deck, while the two of you putzed around buying cards like Saboteur, Village and Smugglers.  Don't get me wrong, these are good buys sometimes.  Not on this Kingdom.  I would have skipped the KC altogether and gone more Big Money, but it worked for him.

IMHO

--- Japofalltrades's turn 16 ---
Japofalltrades plays a King's Court.
... and plays a King's Court.
... ... but plays no action with it.
... and plays the King's Court again.
... ... but plays no action with it.
... and plays the King's Court a third time.
... ... but plays no action with it.
Japofalltrades plays a Gold.
Japofalltrades buys a Village.
(Japofalltrades draws: a Fortune Teller, 3 Coppers, and a Merchant Ship.)

[DG]

I can see two ways of going about this. Either you can either go for an untidy deck with duchy/duke or you can go for a king's court and the try to get big action plays. The duchy duke isn't too complicated but is only really supported well by the smugglers and maybe a merchant ship, and the smuggler can still strike out when an opponent buys mints, pedlars, or king's courts. It's not great but might catch opponents unaware if they try something complicated, or might fall apart under sabotage.

The way into a king's court deck is through the merchant ship and gold, then drop down to a saboteur if you feel you've the right sort of deck to support it. This is pretty much the way that Japofalltrades did it and that's probably why he won. It's still a difficult king's court deck without trashing out the starting cards. The mint seemed to help you there, however, and it's a big however, you lost a lot of unimportant looking treasure that was actually quite important to your deck. You needed to fill that void by minting gold or buying pedlars, hoping the pedlars took the sabotage. The deck wasn't ready to take on green cards and they clogged it immediately.

[DStu]

So just from the setup I also would hesitate to go for the KC. There is no good support here, no trashing (except Mint), no card draw (except Menagerie which is hindered by no trashing). Then there is no +buy, so there really is no reason for constructively go for KC, as you can not buy more than one Province with your nice turns. So the only target is the Sab, which of course is quite devastating when KCed, but than again I would assume that the chain is too instable to reliably get something like KCKCSabSabSab, especially under attack of Sabs yourself. I don't think this way would be good for my nerves.
So just BM+X+Cantrips+Peddler -> Provinces and maybe fall back to Duchy/Duke if the Provinces get hit too often or the economy gets destroyed.

[Superdad]

There is no way I'd go Sab on a board with peddler That's such a straight up disinsentive to Sab. Then again, it's hard to pick them up without wasting your money, as there are no +buys on the board.

[Captain_Frisk]

I'm with mustard - although I wouldn't buy fortune teller.  I'd go silver / silver opening, no more than 2 merchant ships, menageries for all buys < 6 going forward.

If I managed to get 4 coppers in a hand, I might be tempted to try to mint it up and switch to a hand that could do this:
KC -> Menagerie -> Fortune Teller -> Saboteur - hopefully targeting opponent duchies and provinces... but I know better than to try for 4 card combos.