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[philosophyguy]

I lost an ugly game earlier today: Bank, Bishop, Fairgrounds, Goons, Harem, Mountebank, Nobles, Pearl Diver, Sea Hag, and Thief.

My initial strategy was to buy 2 cursers (Sea Hag and then Montebank when I had $5) and otherwise go for Silver to get up to $6 and Nobles. Because my deck was going to be horribly bloated and since there was a Goons on the table, I wanted a Bishop to do some moderate thinning, build a slight VP lead before my opponent could start Goons-ing, and to convert my Sea Hags into VP once the curses ran out.

However, despite buying a lot of Silver (11 by turn 16!), I still never drew $6 until my opponent had already bought 4 (!) Nobles. Did I just suffer from awful shuffle luck, or did I do something terribly wrong to fall behind in the Nobles race?

[Davio]

Ugh, the Noble race?

I tend to think that Nobles are somewhat overvalued.

If you play 1 for 2 Actions and the other for +3 cards, you still only have 1 card more than you started with, having effectively played a Laboratory. The drawback is that you have to draw them together, otherwise they're useless. Yeah, the VPs are nice, but I often look at usability first and VP later (not so with Harem hehe).

Bishop is a very slow trasher and with some crucial cards like Goons and Mountebank, I'd probably skip it and buy a Silver instead.

My strategy would be to get Mountebank and Goons asap with Silver and from that point just focus on Harems, picking up some Pearl Divers with extra buys from Goons.

I have tried to map your opponent's strategy based on what he ended up with:

Code: [Select]

<player name="Beef Jelly">
   <buy name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Goons">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Goons"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Nobles"/>
   <buy name="Harem"/>
   <buy name="Mountebank">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Mountebank"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Sea_Hag">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Sea_Hag"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Bishop">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Bishop"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
   <buy name="Pearl_Diver"/>
</player>

This would be my strategy against him:

Code: [Select]

<player name="Davio">
   <buy name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Goons">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Goons"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Harem"/>
   <buy name="Mountebank">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Mountebank"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
   <buy name="Pearl_Diver"/>
</player>

I am skipping Sea Hag, Bishop and Nobles entirely and try to get up to 3 Goons and up to 2 Mountebanks.

This strategy gets 84% against the one I mapped for your opponent.

[ARTjoMS]

Sea hag-silver opening stands out.

Turn 4&6 bishops were really big mistakes.

You should ignore bishop, goons and nobles entirely unless very late in the game

[DG]

You bought too many terminals at the start. The sea hag and mountebank didn't mix well. There was no nobles race ... until you used bishops to trash down your opponent's deck and facilitate a compact drawing engine.

The silver problem is easily explained. Every time that you played a bishop and your opponent played a mountebank you ended up 1 vp; your opponent ended up 1 coin more to spend and down one card. By the end of the game this gave you 26vp and a deck full of copper and silver, but gave your opponent a deck full of nobles, provinces, and hardly any bad cards at all. Sometimes a bishop player can get lucky and buy upwards with good draws. In this game you got very average draws and had an average result, imho.

Fairgrounds seem like a reasonable option here. You can reach the fifteen different card types and empty out piles like fairgrounds, curses, and harems/nobles without ever needing a great deck.

[philosophyguy]

I thought Nobles were important in this set because they were the only options for either drawing or +actions. While using them as a Village/Smithy substitute is obviously dumb, they could facilitate either an action strategy (playing some combo of Mountebank, Bishop, and Goons) or a drawing strategy for BM). Because I knew my deck was going to be bloated, I hoped to make up for the lack of coin density with additional cards.

DG: would you have started Silver/Silver and gone for Mountebank only? That seems like a losing strategy against an opponent that opens Sea Hag and adds in a Mountebank. Also, I can't understand what you're trying to say here:

Every time that you played a bishop and your opponent played a mountebank you ended up 1 vp; your opponent ended up 1 coin more to spend and down one card.

I never had a conflict between Bishop and Mountebank until turn 22, and the only time early on that I bought a Bishop over a Mountebank was in turn 6, when I already had two cursers in my deck. Are you trying to say I should have bought an additional Mountebank?

[WanderingWinder]

Bishop is a clear mistake here, at least before late game and probably ever. It simply trashes your opponents deck basically even more effectively than yours, plus there's lots of other terminals you want. Sea hag into mountebank isn't so bad in general (roughly comparable to going money for mountebank), but here, since you want to get to goons, the money route gets the edge. I think your gameplan here should be to buy silver on $3-4, mountebank on the first $5+ and the next $5, Goons at basically every opportunity, actually starting to grab coppers with the extra buys pretty early. Probably with 8 exactly and only one mountebank in your deck and a goons in play, I'd buy mountebank/silver. And watch for three pile endings on something like curse, copper, estate or curse/copper/goons or curse/estate/goons. Basically I think there's a great chance copper is going to run with all the mountebanking and goons-buying-copper going on.

[DG]

I never had a conflict between Bishop and Mountebank until turn 22, and the only time early on that I bought a Bishop over a Mountebank was in turn 6, when I already had two cursers in my deck. Are you trying to say I should have bought an additional Mountebank?

[/size]
[/size]Let's suppose that you have bishop, silver, copper, copper, curse in hand, and your opponent has mountebank, silver, copper, copper, curse in hand. You play the bishop and the two curses are trashed, you get a vp and buy a silver. Your opponent plays the mountebank, buys a noble, and you gain a copper. This isn't just hypothetical, it happened in your game. We can see that by the end of that game you had a deck full of coppers and silvers and some vp, but the opponent had very few bad cards and many nobles.

[drg]

Ugh, the Noble race?

I tend to think that Nobles are somewhat overvalued.

Nobles is worth a lot more when there are no other +2 action cards and stuff like goons and mountebank are in play.  On this specific board, with all the cursing, limited trashing and no cards other than nobles itself to increase your handsize (imagine nobles as the only +2 actions on a board with goons, chapel and scrying pool for example), the +2 actions isn't as likely to be useful as it could be on other setups, but they can still be useful, you just have to keep an eye on the terminal density of your deck.

That being said, there are too many attacking terminals to go with bishop here (or worry about nobles early) - it's too big a swing being helpful to your opponent as opposed to hurting them.  I would even probably open silver silver trying to get to mountebanks then goons before my opponent does, as the sea hag itself consumes your turn's action and doesn't provide any benefit, and with 4 or less, all you can really buy here is silver.