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[Davio]

Let the kingdom be: Ambassador, Courtyard, Fairgrounds, Familiar, Mandarin, Philosopher's Stone, Potion, Rabble, Talisman, Venture, and Watchtower

Ambassador is a dominant card, but sometimes I like to go out of my way to try something different even when it horribly fails. Trying and failing is almost as fun as trying and winning.

My opponent opened with the default move: Ambassador, snore.
Hmmmm, what to do, what to do? There isn't some kind of mega engine to transition into, I mean he could go with Familiar later once he sees that I'm not following him or he could get a Rabble to put those pesky Estates on my deck.

I opened Potion, not to get Familiar, but to get.... Philosopher's Stones!
I figured that with the incoming crap from his Ambassador-Ambassador opening I could reach $3 pretty quickly and would ramp up to $4/$5 soon enough.

He got Ventures and was hitting the Provinces hard. Luckily I had started early on the Duchies figuring they wouldn't hurt me much and I needed the points fast.

I was relieved to tie him on T17 with the last Province due to the Estates he sent me, here is the full report.

I'm sure I made some small mistakes - Ambassadoring the Estate probably wasn't necessary and may have cost me the win, but I didn't figure the game would be over THAT quickly - , but it was a lot of fun straying from the hated and loved Ambassador opening and using a card which doesn't see a lot of play to soft-counter it. 

[Robz888]

I have also used Philosopher's Stone to beat Ambassador. I would definitely put it in the "counter-ish" category.

[dondon151]

PStone is definitely a hard counter to Ambassador a lot of the time, but it really needs a +buy. Goons is probably better for the Amb player than the PStone player, though.

[Davio]

Let me just add that it was a veto game and after he vetoed Ghost Ship I vetoed Goons (instead of Ambassador or Familiar) thinking I could whether the Ambassador storm with PStone.

And one of the reasons I try these silly counters is because I can imagine the look on the other guy's face when his tried and tested obvious strategy gets beat by something funky.

You can pick any 1- or 2-card combo and there will always be something that beats it, that's why I love Dominion.

[DG]

You'd probably have beaten him if you'd bought more courtyards, or fairgrounds.

[Davio]

You'd probably have beaten him if you'd bought more courtyards, or fairgrounds.

Perchance, but I didn't quite hit the 10 uniques mark yet and I wasn't sure I wanted to divert to get the missing cards.

[Lekkit]

You got my upvote when I saw that Philosopher's Stone was in the kingdom. Almost, anyway.

[Qvist]

I think Philosopher's Stone is a little bit underrated. It's great in slow games. Well played.
But in turn 13 you bought a Silver just after the reshuffle. You didn't see it again. That should have been an Estate for the win.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Amb/amb figures to be pretty bad here with no engine to build. I wouldn't be surprised if some form of Courtyard BM was the winning strategy on this board -- probably adding PStones if it becomes clear your opponent isn't planning on competing for provinces, but rather dragging it out for Fairgrounds.