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jomini

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A novel Pin
« on: September 14, 2012, 03:23:48 pm »
+12

This article is mostly theory at this point, I’ve only beat up a couple of Goko bots using this, but it seems solid enough to post for feedback.

So the classic pin relies on playing dead masqs. Dead masqs are masqs played when you have no other cards in hand, discard, or on deck to pass; if you trash cards as you receive them you can then play additional dead masqs (i.e. using Kc/Tr/Golem/Opst). The most commonly described pin would be Kc/Kc/Goons/Masq where the goons drop the opponent to 3 cards and the masq is played dead thrice. A related pin is Kc/Kc/Mntbk/Ctpur/Masq. In this pin the Mntbk is used to load up the victim with curses and coppers so that they eventually will have to discard coppers to triple play of Ctpur; once they have enough copper in their deck this will happen every turn. After they discard 2 or 3 coppers, the three dead masq plays leave them without a hand.

A new downside to either of these pins is the need to trash incoming cards. With Dark Ages a lot of cards can now break the pin when you pass them over: feodum (gains silvers and you can protect your other cards and force them to pass a silver first next turn), squire (revive one masq that has to pass an attack), fortress (revive up to two masqs), and catacombs all break the traditional pin varieties.

Thinking about this and looking over beggar’s strategy space, I started thinking if there was, perhaps an alternative pin that didn’t require the masqs to be played dead. My idea was simple – use masq to pass my opponent a copper, ctpur it out of his hand, pass another copper, ctpur, etc. After 5 cycles of that, the opponent has no cards left and plays an empty hand.  So say you play your deck (it’s an engine) and you come out with +13 actions and the following hand:
Masq x5, Ctpur x5, Bggr x2

Play the Bggr’s to gain 6 C. Then play the following sequence 5 times Masq (pass C) -> Ctpur (opponent discards a C). This leaves you with your opponent’s hand to play (or trash). As long as your engine keeps hitting, you can keep giving your opponent unplayable copper and stealing ever more of his deck. Worst case scenario is that you add one copper to your deck (you can’t keep any of your opponent’s cards and can’t trash the last copper gained from the beggars). Eventually, you will run out of copper, but by then your opponent has nothing but copper in their deck (usually), which you can just ctpur out.

The question then became - do you really need the beggars? Sure they make it easier and cleaner, but, in theory, you could just use 5 buys and a strong, reliable engine to still draw everything and play the 5 masqs. Playing on Goko with strong boards for it (masq, tr, nobles, wv, quarry, nv, courtyard), it took me around 15-18 turns to setup and was reasonably reliable with a Tr/Wv/Nobles/Courtyard/Nv engine. From there are on out, it seemed like it would work most of the time with careful play. This suggests that the minimum needed to make this work is: a strong engine, lots of +actions, a source of copper (beggars or +buys), cutpurse, and masq.

I’m not sure how this will play in real matchups and I don’t have time to try it myself heavily on Isotropic. So I’m posting this article in the hopes of getting feedback about viability and strategic implications.

Implications already known include:
1.   Moat and lighthouse can completely hose the strategy. Without the ctpur’s hitting, you just get one card swap (often a C for a C).
2.   Duration cards can break the pin a bit. E.g. tactician gives you a chance to muck up my deck. However, unlike the classic ultra-lean deck pin deck, I can still hand over a lot of cards from deck because I can either buy replacements or gain them back from your deck later so key masq play won’t save you. Likewise, I can likely afford getting hit with militia.
3.   Discard attacks, like militia, make this far easier to pull off. Right now you need 10 cheapish cards and an engine strong enough to keep hitting them. With militia (or any other discard attack) that number falls down to 7. Discard attacks also let the game last longer so you have more time to setup.
4.   Even if the pin misses for a turn, you really have to end the game quickly, because instead of burning VP cards, the victim is giving them away. Lead’s evaporate 2x as quickly and as noted this is not an easy pin to disrupt.
5.   Haven, Scrying pool, Scheme, Count, and any other engine reliability boosts are extremely useful for making the pin more reliable.
6.   Cards that let you mass cheap things easily are quite useful – talisman, quarry, haggler, etc. can very quickly let you transition from a strong engine to the full pin in just a couple of turns.
7.     Secret chamber makes the pin more difficult and can require an additional 2 plays masq (pass a C) to hit the pin. (Thanks to Young Nick).
8.     Currently the only reactions that have any effect on this pin are: moat (stops it cold), secret chamber (can hide 2 coppers on top deck), and horse traders (can give you a card to play to break the pin).
« Last Edit: September 26, 2012, 10:13:05 am by jomini »
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sffc

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Re: A novel Pin
« Reply #1 on: September 17, 2012, 03:47:25 am »
+1

Very clever.  Cutpurse and Torturer are the only cards that can normally can force a player to discard below 3 cards in hand (barring a traditional Masquerade pin), but of course Torturer is useless for that purpose once the curses run out.

There's little doubt that Cutpurse/Masquerade/CopperGainer will need a lot of assistance: namely, plenty of +actions and +buy.  Masquerade has +Cards built in, but a sifter like Warehouse will probably be needed since you are in effect making your deck the size of two decks.  Scrying Pool will fit nicely for obvious reasons.  A Rabble or two could help you draw through dead hands and also enable you to steal your opponent's green cards more efficiently.

One nice thing about this pin as opposed to the traditional pin (and you mentioned this in your OP) is that it doesn't break if you can't pull it off one turn.  You will be stealing your opponent's VPs, and better yet, if you get hit by a discard attack, you have a "real" deck rather than a 5-card hand, so you can absorb the hit.  I would say that it would be wise to not buy any green, wait for your opponent to have 4 Provinces, and then set off the pin.  Fortunately, with the amount of action cards required for Cutpurse/Masquerade, it will probably take this many turns to develop your deck to the critical point anyway.

I'll have to try this out a few times to get the tactics down right.
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theory

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Re: A novel Pin
« Reply #2 on: September 25, 2012, 08:27:57 pm »
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Always a pleasure to read jomini's posts in this forum :)
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Young Nick

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Re: A novel Pin
« Reply #3 on: September 25, 2012, 09:15:00 pm »
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Not a big deal, but SC deserves a mention as well.

I play a Masquerade, passing jomini a Copper.
I play a Cutpurse. He reveals a Secret Chamber, drawing two cards and putting two cards on top of his deck, one of which is a Copper.
He reveals a hand with no Copper.

Of course, this just means you have to do 7 iterations instead of 5. The two extra are to make sure the top of his deck has Copper, too.
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jotheonah

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Re: A novel Pin
« Reply #4 on: September 26, 2012, 02:09:19 am »
+1

Haven might make the pin more reliable, but it's also a defense against it.
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jomini

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Re: A novel Pin
« Reply #5 on: September 26, 2012, 10:23:02 am »
0

Haven might make the pin more reliable, but it's also a defense against it.

True, but it is a fairly weak defense. Suppose you haven your VP to keep from handing them over. Okay so I give you 5 coppers into your discard and you draw a dead hand of VP. Next turn, the pin hits and you lose them anyways. So say you keep some cards of your own to hit back - what will they be? Masq - I just pass over VP, a village, a beggar or somesuch. Militia? I need a a strong engine so the odds that I can't fire off said engine with my best 3 of 5 are fairly low.

A few heavy non-terminal draws - like minion, menage, and Sp can give you a chance to do a good bit, but again what exactly are you going to do with your turn? Your attacks are fairly weak here (I have plenty of cards to deal with junk, I have great odds of drawing my entire deck with engine if this is a viable strat). Also, because you are giving me VP, you can't just run for a quick 3-pile. Unlike a dead masq pin, long before your deck is good and dead, I've sucked out a majority of its VP and all that hard work you put into 3-piling makes it an easier win for me once I get on top in VP. I could see some sort of big turn approach to run out the game before I can steal all your VP, but strategies that can do that would likely work before I could get the pin setup anyways.
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DrFlux

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Re: A novel Pin
« Reply #6 on: October 03, 2012, 10:59:32 am »
0

Very interesting post.

The one challenge I have to this is that you don't need to "pin" your opponent to attack them. Discard + masq is a well known way to steal good cards from your opponent while feeding them garbage. Like all pins, the challenge is that your opponent is probably trying to attack you as well. In practice you'd have to feel out when/whether it was worth it to get a beggar to be able to have garbage to pass.

On the other hand, the capacity of this pin to steal all of the opponents cards seems very relevant against opponents who try to ignore the engine and "power through". On the other hand, I'm pretty sure opening masq, into courtyards+money gets 4 provinces in about 12 turns. You could probably get the lock before they get 8, but its a little close.
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enquerencia

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Re: A novel Pin
« Reply #7 on: October 03, 2012, 11:29:31 am »
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This is all great theory, but god help me if I let you get 13 actions and 5 masqs, 5 cutprs and 2 bggrs.  I mean, fool me once...

I've always been kind of intrigued by these pin ideas, but i find that if you really want to pull one off, you better have a pet chimp. 

Or play me on Iso when I'm really wasted.
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jomini

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Re: A novel Pin
« Reply #8 on: October 03, 2012, 02:48:58 pm »
+1

Some game logs:

I started off with requiring City, Iw, Masq, Ctpur, and Tr. This gives me a way to get coppers in mid-turn, plenty of +action and strong engine potential.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201210/03/game-20121003-091921-24ef61c2.html

Agiel goes for a thin money/witch deck. I pile out the cities & use Iw, Tr, City, Masq to setup the pin. On T14 I start springing the Pin. Agiel is left with 2 golds to play. On T15 the pin is almost complete and I leave Agiel with only a witch to play. T16 is a completed pin and the game is pretty much in the bag.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201210/03/game-20121003-095003-9abcd303.html
Mprage was planning “masq+city+money, hoping to slow you down with CP and beat you on the city/grand market race”. This was a colony board so the pin had lots of time develop. Mprage did use both of the key pin components against me, but on turn 16 I get the pin to hit fully leaving Mprage with a 0 card turn 17. The pin whiffs the next turn, but I’ve already loaded mprage up with lots of copper so he can only buy a Tr. The following turn I steal 4 cards and then the next turn I get the full pin and end the game.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201210/03/game-20121003-102255-2da95981.html
Here I wanted to see if I could manage without city. I replaced city with Fishing Village and Lab. I think wharf has the potential to be too quick here, but thought I’d give a go anyways. It took until T14 for me to really start pinning (I take 3 of his cards, make him discard 2, and leave him with a copper in hand). Just prior to this my opponent buys his sixth province and chides me, “Ok, it's fun to play endless truns, but you should do something out of them....like buying green cards....”; clearly he doesn’t see the pin at all.  T15 and T16 see the pin hit hard – I steal 4 and 5 cards respectively.  On T16 I steal two provinces and am setup well to hit the full pin next turn as well (my opponent has no durations out now and I start next hand with 2 labs). I give it about 75% odds of winning from here on out – I just have to steal 2 more provinces and then my fiendishly strong engine let’s me 3 pile whenever I want – and buy a province or two on my final turn; my opponent cannot force game end any time soon.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201210/03/game-20121003-110343-4e8c18f7.html
I asked for some high level players to test against, this one said he regularly beat such, but had no rankings.  I set the pin on T14 (it is slightly broken by 2 havens & a fishing village out), but the opponent resigns immediately. Preset cards were City, Masq, Ctpur, Fv, and Iw.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201210/03/game-20121003-112011-5bf20bcf.html
I get this one setup on T16. There isn’t much here, I play pretty badly (even trashing a city of a masq by accident)! But the opponent is demoralized and resigns.

Potential future testing:
A.   Get rid of Iw. I’d like to see how things would play it with something like armory, count, or some less versatile card gainer (maybe even workshop?) to get the copper, but not the pin components.
B.   No card gainers. I think it will be MUCH harder (and goko bot bashing looked that way) to just use +buy to have 5 coppers in deck. That went out to T18 to set up the pin and was less reliable. I think it could work well against unskilled opponents, unaware skilled opponents, and with very strong & reliable engines (e.g. alchemist)
C.   Have opponents who know the pin try to counter it. So far, people just don’t see the pin, even with a name like “PinTesting”.

Lessons learned:
1.   It is fiendishly hard to get folks to play non-random games on Iso, particularly high level players =P
2.   Even against things that can counter this, like a quick Fv/Wharf deck, the pin is just a beast at wearing decks down.
3.   Flubbed pin hands aren’t so bad. Because the copper is going into the deck, the odds of the other guy having a province buying hand keep going down with every flub. Between the copper spam, loss of intermediate to good cards, and the need to end the game ASAP, it seemed like there were few options to turn the game around once the pin started hitting.
4.   It is really hard to get people to explain their thoughts, those opponents who would chat about it, didn’t see the pin and most just resigned and walked away.
5.   Iw is a very strong replacement option for beggar, being able to quickly transition to the pin is very useful. Gaining the coppers in hand is less useful than you might think while having +coin from the Iw is very nice for picking up engine action/draw components (like city/Tr/Lab).
6.   I’m not sure that any of these games really required me to go for the pin or if the pin was dominant. I know I could have done better playing a traditional strategy in a lot of these than my opponents managed. Still, even with competition for Masq & Cutpur the pin never hit later than turn 16.





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Captain_Frisk

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Re: A novel Pin
« Reply #9 on: October 03, 2012, 02:54:47 pm »
0

Sorry Jomini - i got angry when you kept proposing without explaining what you were doing.  After I rejected once, don't propose again without explaining yourself.
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jsh357

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Re: A novel Pin
« Reply #10 on: October 03, 2012, 02:59:02 pm »
0

Some game logs:

I started off with requiring City, Iw, Masq, Ctpur, and Tr. This gives me a way to get coppers in mid-turn, plenty of +action and strong engine potential.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201210/03/game-20121003-091921-24ef61c2.html

Agiel goes for a thin money/witch deck. I pile out the cities & use Iw, Tr, City, Masq to setup the pin. On T14 I start springing the Pin. Agiel is left with 2 golds to play. On T15 the pin is almost complete and I leave Agiel with only a witch to play. T16 is a completed pin and the game is pretty much in the bag.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201210/03/game-20121003-095003-9abcd303.html
Mprage was planning “masq+city+money, hoping to slow you down with CP and beat you on the city/grand market race”. This was a colony board so the pin had lots of time develop. Mprage did use both of the key pin components against me, but on turn 16 I get the pin to hit fully leaving Mprage with a 0 card turn 17. The pin whiffs the next turn, but I’ve already loaded mprage up with lots of copper so he can only buy a Tr. The following turn I steal 4 cards and then the next turn I get the full pin and end the game.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201210/03/game-20121003-102255-2da95981.html
Here I wanted to see if I could manage without city. I replaced city with Fishing Village and Lab. I think wharf has the potential to be too quick here, but thought I’d give a go anyways. It took until T14 for me to really start pinning (I take 3 of his cards, make him discard 2, and leave him with a copper in hand). Just prior to this my opponent buys his sixth province and chides me, “Ok, it's fun to play endless truns, but you should do something out of them....like buying green cards....”; clearly he doesn’t see the pin at all.  T15 and T16 see the pin hit hard – I steal 4 and 5 cards respectively.  On T16 I steal two provinces and am setup well to hit the full pin next turn as well (my opponent has no durations out now and I start next hand with 2 labs). I give it about 75% odds of winning from here on out – I just have to steal 2 more provinces and then my fiendishly strong engine let’s me 3 pile whenever I want – and buy a province or two on my final turn; my opponent cannot force game end any time soon.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201210/03/game-20121003-110343-4e8c18f7.html
I asked for some high level players to test against, this one said he regularly beat such, but had no rankings.  I set the pin on T14 (it is slightly broken by 2 havens & a fishing village out), but the opponent resigns immediately. Preset cards were City, Masq, Ctpur, Fv, and Iw.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201210/03/game-20121003-112011-5bf20bcf.html
I get this one setup on T16. There isn’t much here, I play pretty badly (even trashing a city of a masq by accident)! But the opponent is demoralized and resigns.

Potential future testing:
A.   Get rid of Iw. I’d like to see how things would play it with something like armory, count, or some less versatile card gainer (maybe even workshop?) to get the copper, but not the pin components.
B.   No card gainers. I think it will be MUCH harder (and goko bot bashing looked that way) to just use +buy to have 5 coppers in deck. That went out to T18 to set up the pin and was less reliable. I think it could work well against unskilled opponents, unaware skilled opponents, and with very strong & reliable engines (e.g. alchemist)
C.   Have opponents who know the pin try to counter it. So far, people just don’t see the pin, even with a name like “PinTesting”.

Lessons learned:
1.   It is fiendishly hard to get folks to play non-random games on Iso, particularly high level players =P
2.   Even against things that can counter this, like a quick Fv/Wharf deck, the pin is just a beast at wearing decks down.
3.   Flubbed pin hands aren’t so bad. Because the copper is going into the deck, the odds of the other guy having a province buying hand keep going down with every flub. Between the copper spam, loss of intermediate to good cards, and the need to end the game ASAP, it seemed like there were few options to turn the game around once the pin started hitting.
4.   It is really hard to get people to explain their thoughts, those opponents who would chat about it, didn’t see the pin and most just resigned and walked away.
5.   Iw is a very strong replacement option for beggar, being able to quickly transition to the pin is very useful. Gaining the coppers in hand is less useful than you might think while having +coin from the Iw is very nice for picking up engine action/draw components (like city/Tr/Lab).
6.   I’m not sure that any of these games really required me to go for the pin or if the pin was dominant. I know I could have done better playing a traditional strategy in a lot of these than my opponents managed. Still, even with competition for Masq & Cutpur the pin never hit later than turn 16.

I wasn't demoralized.  You were playing agonizingly slowly and I had to get back to work.  :P

Also, I am pretty sure some form of Ironworks rush would destroy this pin.  Not that I have tested.
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jomini

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Re: A novel Pin
« Reply #11 on: October 03, 2012, 03:16:11 pm »
0

Very interesting post.

The one challenge I have to this is that you don't need to "pin" your opponent to attack them. Discard + masq is a well known way to steal good cards from your opponent while feeding them garbage. Like all pins, the challenge is that your opponent is probably trying to attack you as well. In practice you'd have to feel out when/whether it was worth it to get a beggar to be able to have garbage to pass.

On the other hand, the capacity of this pin to steal all of the opponents cards seems very relevant against opponents who try to ignore the engine and "power through". On the other hand, I'm pretty sure opening masq, into courtyards+money gets 4 provinces in about 12 turns. You could probably get the lock before they get 8, but its a little close.


Jsh: Sorry, did not mean to besmirch. I'm playing slowly because I don't play much on Isotropic, the engine requires a LOT of clicking, and it also requires fairly careful play (do I blind draw with this masq or not, what do I gain with this Iw). I'm not sure what you'd Iw rush, so it would be very interesting to see an opponent try that.

Captain_Frisk: No worries, I just was auto-offering to anyone at 30+. I had hoped the name would make things clear enough and thought I'd give it two tries per round with everyone (in case the first set hits something randomly that someone hates to play like Possession, Swindler, or whatever) and most everyone else was letting offers time out so I didn't think the time thing was a big waste. What would be proper etiquette as I'm not on Iso much?

I think this pin, in a lot of forms, should completely dominate any Big Money strategy. It just takes too long to grab 8 provinces. This is a LOT stronger than discard/masq for several reasons. First, this way let's you swipe up to 5 cards a turn; normal discard/masq can only get one card. Even if I just take the 3 worst cards in their hand and leave them a copper, that is much more likely to contain very useful cards like villages, draw, or silvers. Additionally, this leaves the opponent with 0 card hands - they can't just get some libraries, pass you a silver (on the bad hands) & draw for a provinces, 0 Card hands are just nastily harsh to counter. Lastly, you are also spamming them with copper. Play the full pin twice, and almost half their deck is copper.

Even if my opponent attacks, I'm not that vulnerable to anything but a mirror. I don't have coppers in hand so Cutpurse is worthless unless they mirror. If I get hit with a discard, I'm going to likely still be able to draw my entire deck. If I get a curse, I can trash it off the masq (or pass it over in lieu of the 5th copper). If I get mass rabbled, I might miss for exactly one turn and then have decent odds of pinning them all the way back. Not needing to hit 6 coin (or higher) also makes it much easier for me to build up even with some early attacks.

This is all great theory, but god help me if I let you get 13 actions and 5 masqs, 5 cutprs and 2 bggrs.  I mean, fool me once...

I've always been kind of intrigued by these pin ideas, but i find that if you really want to pull one off, you better have a pet chimp. 

Or play me on Iso when I'm really wasted.

How are you going to stop me? I mean that seriously. 13 actions is a lot, but not if you have Tr, Kc, or multiple villages out. If there is engine potential, then I WILL be able to start getting 2 and more components a turn; you just do not have that long to end the game so I will have them at some point. You could buy them yourself, except of course for the fact that this strategy steals your cards so you may well make it easier for me by getting a few hands of say village x2/Ctpur x2/E where I can lift a component or two off of you while I setup the pin.

Swindler and oddly enough Saboteur can stop the pin by killing off enough cards, but now it becomes a race - how many masqs can you swindle before I steal your swindlers? Likewise, say you stop me at 3 Ctpur, 3 Masq, 1 Beggar, +7 action ... so I only steal 3 cards a turn and leave you with 2 card hands. That isn't exactly a poor trade for  me.

I could be wrong, but this pin seems to be extremely robust - it doesn't need expensive cards, it can deal with incoming junk, and it can win a nearly lost game. I really don't see any glaring weaknesses like with a traditional pin.
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jomini

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Re: A novel Pin
« Reply #12 on: October 03, 2012, 03:24:34 pm »
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Sorry Jomini - i got angry when you kept proposing without explaining what you were doing.  After I rejected once, don't propose again without explaining yourself.

No worries. I was just auto proposing anyone 30+ twice per cycle. The second proposal was in case the first randomly had some card or combo you hate in it (e.g. possession/masq, swindler, torturer/rabble). What is proper etiquette beyond having a name that indicates game testing? I don't want to offend, but I dislike Isotropic and don't play there much.

Jsh: Sorry, didn't mean to imply anything untoward. Slow play is due to me not being on Iso too much (so I'm slow at the controls), a lot of clicking per turn, and a good bit of analysis was needed during play (do I blind draw off this Masq, do I take a Ctpur or a Tr off this Iw).

I'm not sure how an Iw rush would beat this. What are you piling? Duchies, Iw and ....? Rushes would seem to be very vulnerable because you have more green cards to protect so I get more of the cards that are useful to me (like Iw). Sure, something that really is fast enough would do it, but I'm not sure if even Iw/Gardens is that fast.
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jsh357

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Re: A novel Pin
« Reply #13 on: October 03, 2012, 03:32:00 pm »
0

It's not a problem or anything.  I realized you were testing the pin and probably had to play carefully.  But at that point I had already lost, so I don't think you would have gained anything valuable from me sitting there waiting on your turns.

As for the IW counter: I imagine I could have gotten 2/3 IW and gained some combination of cards that would counter the pin.  I don't know precisely what would work, and it's a rare enough combo that I'm not especially worried.
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Re: A novel Pin
« Reply #14 on: October 03, 2012, 03:59:24 pm »
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It's not a problem or anything.  I realized you were testing the pin and probably had to play carefully.  But at that point I had already lost, so I don't think you would have gained anything valuable from me sitting there waiting on your turns.

As for the IW counter: I imagine I could have gotten 2/3 IW and gained some combination of cards that would counter the pin.  I don't know precisely what would work, and it's a rare enough combo that I'm not especially worried.

Well, the pin is not absolute, if I draw a hand of 5 Ctpur (or whatever); I am wondering how often a good player can pile out before I can swipe a VP lead. I also like doing a bit of AAR with the opponent to know their strategy to make sure they didn't just get crappy luck.

I'm not sure what you could possibly gain that would counter this, aside from those counters already mentioned (moat, secret chamber, maybe possession) - you either end the game before I steal your deck or I just end up eventually taking every card you gained. Ending the game via Iw rush suggests 3 - piling, but you can't slow down the pin build-up too much.
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