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Author Topic: Risky Combo: Minion + Golem  (Read 7631 times)

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Davio

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Risky Combo: Minion + Golem
« on: August 18, 2011, 03:43:27 am »
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I ran into a setup which featured both Minions and Golems today.

While Minions alone are certainly enough to do the job most of the time, they can sure be helped by Golems.
This is because Minions work best if you have at least 2 of them in your hand (one for the $2 and one for the redraw) and Golem makes sure you dig up 2.
You need to buy only Minions and Golems for this to work obviously.

The only drawback is that you can often swing and miss with your Potion and not be able to buy a Golem until late.

I am calling this a "risky" combo, because the simulator doesn't like it, it's only 33%-66% against BMU!
This is probably due to the fact that you are wasting time with your Potion and Golems when you could have bought another Minion with a Silver instead of a Potion. And perhaps the simulator has some trouble with how to play Minion as with any other choice card.

The payoff is only possible if you get the Golem and some Minions early to start reaping the benefits as soon as possible.
The upside is that you are continuously cycling your deck (which Minions are able to do on their own, granted) , so any Golems and Minions you buy are ready to get into play.

I will dig up the game log from councilroom later to show an example.

For now be warned, but try it yourself and let me know if your experiences are good or bad.
Obviously, just my one game is way too small of a sample size to say anything about this possible combo.
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Geronimoo

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Re: Risky Combo: Minion + Golem
« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2011, 05:25:51 am »
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First off, the simulator doesn't have a clue what you are trying to achieve and will play the cards in the wrong order (Golem before Minion) and often make the wrong choice for Minion.
Second, I don't think the combo is very useful because you're replacing X Minion purchases with a Potion and X-1 Golem purchases. If we assume a Golem is worth 2 Minions you'd need the following to be true to get any kind of advantage:

(X-1)*2 > X
so 2X-2>X
so X>2

this means you'd need to get 2 Golems before you "might" get an advantage. The reason I say "might" is because the Potion will get in the way when you start buying Provinces.

I just don't think it's worth all the trouble (at least not in a Province game).
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DG

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Re: Risky Combo: Minion + Golem
« Reply #2 on: August 18, 2011, 09:07:32 am »
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A golem/minion combination would be good but it suffers from a few problems

1) if there's any trashing in the set you can do it with just minions
2) getting potions and golems when you could be getting minions might surrender minions to your opponent
3) getting potions and golems after you get minions is usually too late

We're probably looking at a game with a combination of attack cards for golems+minions to prosper. Cursing attacks, saboteur, swindler, jester, or perhaps a fortune teller might make it interesting, although those are all situations where the minions might be weak and a golem is needed to make them productive.
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Silk

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Re: Risky Combo: Minion + Golem
« Reply #3 on: August 24, 2011, 04:11:20 am »
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Also, it is very likely that there is a better combo with Minion lying on the table. Haven and Native Village (from the top of my head) provide much smoother combos.
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