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[Deadlock39]

There is clearly more analysis to be done, but I don't think it justifies too much over thinking.  If you aren't in the lead, you should pass on the APR unless you are pretty sure one player can't make $8.  If your Duchy puts you in the lead, your opponent should follow suit.  If he doesn't, and everyone has $8, you will beat him with the last province on your turn.  If the player to your right breaks the rule when you are behind, you are just screwed, and can't do anything about it, but that is just the nature of 3 player.

What you really need to watch out for is the Preantepenultimate Province Rule when you are playing 4 player games. ;-)

http://www.wordnik.com/words/preantepenultimate

[Davio]

Tournament thoughts: Advance all tied players from one round to the next. Odd-size games could either be 2p or 4p, or volunteers could fill in spoiler seats to make 3p games. If players are tied for the overall championship, play another game.

When winnowing from 48 straight down to 9, tiebreakers will matter and I expect one or more tables will have souring experiences due to VP-based tiebreaker metagaming. I'm of a mind that cutting more than 80% of the field in one 3-game round is probably a bad idea. I'd suggest either playing a longer round or having an additional round before the semis.

I received an email from the organization today.

I had proposed the Buchholz system to them which in my view is more fair than anything having to do with VPs.
I don't think they will implement it, but I had other good news.

They wanted to draw random sets per table for every round, which in my view was absurd with the tiebreaking system based on scoring as Curse games will generally have lower scores and thus higher percentage swings. They have changed it so now they will draw a supply which will be played by each table.

I think it's more fair this way and as I am going with 2 friends we can maybe talk about the same setup afterwards instead of everyone talking about their own kingdom, which may be confusing.

I am looking forward to it however.


This APR is hard to follow in a tournament structure. Sure, if you're playing in your home game and winning (and gloating) is everything, passing up that Province may be the right choice. In a tournament, 2nd place may be something worth going for, even if it means sacrificing the win. It's better than 3rd.

Our tournament which goes from 48 to 9 in 3 rounds differs, because the jump is so great. 1st places are worth a lot more than 2nds, since getting 3 1sts doesn't even guarantee going through, let alone some sloppy 2nds.

[guided]

Yeah, with that 48/9 tournament format, if tables are playing different boards but VP differentials count for tiebreakers, I would simply not enter. Anything but duplicate boards should be an absolute non-starter.

Bad tiebreakers can be OK if rarely used (though personally I would argue that coin flip is better than VP differentials if tiebreakers must be used), but they will not be a rarity when dumping the vast majority of the field after 3 games.

[Deadlock39]

You definitely need to know when to play for 2nd place in a tournament I suppose, but if you are winning, you should never pass up the province.  PPR and APR don't apply in that situation.  In that situation, the best case scenario is that the other two players empty out the pile and end the game, because you will still be winning, and the game will be over.

[rspeer]

Everyone's talking about the antepenultimate province rule here, but I don't believe it exists.

It would only apply if you think both of your opponents are very likely to buy a province, which I think is low enough probability already that it would almost never be worth giving up 3 VP for.

It only applies when the opponent to your right is ahead, as he would not buy the last province if it would cause him to lose.

It only applies when first place is the only thing that matters, which is not the case in TrueSkill rankings and some tournament situations.

It only applies when you are in last place but within 6 VP of first place. If you're in second place, you can buy the province and assume your left-hand opponent will apply the penultimate province rule.

Basically, there are vanishingly few situations where the APR would give you a positive expected value, and the value it would give you is so small that it's not worth the brainpower you spend on the APR instead of other things.

[Jimmmmm]

What about a 3-player PPR? If you're 1 or 2 points behind both players and you buy the PP, chances are at least one of the other two will hit 8 and buy the last one to win the game. But if you buy a Duchy, they both need to hit 8 to end the game, which is much less likely.

Of course, this will be even less common than the equivalent 2-player situation. However, it could be that it's far more important when you do find yourself in this situation to follow the PPR, as there are now twice as many chances for the last Province to be bought.

[Davio]

Okay, I played in the earlier mentioned tournament (try not to think about prizes) today and here is a short report.

Me and two friends arrived on time and got our seat assignments: We all sat close to each other, but at different tables and would stay at these tables for the other two rounds. So we already had a bit of good luck here, since we didn't want to play against each other (until the final of course).

The first round was an easy win for me and J. in a Chapel game. My left neighbor bought an Adventurer with his first $6 and my right Neighbor didn't trash his Coppers. S. was not so lucky and lost.

The second game had no Chapel and no Cellar, but had Moat and Witch (and Militia), so I went for a basic BMU+ strategy with a very nice 5/2 opening (Witch/Moat) and won this game fairly easily too, so did my friend J. S. was last yet again. He is the worst player of us three, so it wasn't a real surprise.

The third game I won with Smithy and some useful $5's like Lab and Market and was able to hold off some Remodelers by buying the last Province just in time after my neighbor had bought the 2nd to last one.


Now we were waiting for the announcement of who would be in the semis. I had three wins, so was pretty sure (although mathematically not 100%) that I would make it. My friend with two wins and one 2nd wasn't so sure, but he went through as the #8 seed. I was the #1 seed which was nice to hear, but I didn't feel any pressure since the semis is just one game and anything can happen.

And something did happen. My luck turned against me on a board with both Swindler and Saboteur after my opening buy of Swindler got Swindled into a useless Workshop immediately. GG me, I could not cope with this early blow against decent opponents and was chasing most of the game. I thought about some fancy Duke strategy and even some shenanigans with Estates, but there was nothing I could do, but sit back and play until the end.
I managed no more than 20 pts, lowest of all my games and not a single Province. Getting to $5 proved tricky, let alone making it to $8. Golds couldn't be Swindled, but I had to sacrifice them to Saboteur, so it didn't matter. I even bought some Coppers out of despair!

At least we at our table all had fun with those crappy decks and anytime someone played a useless Workshop to gain something like a Silver (which almost ran out!) or when someone couldn't buy anything we all had a good laugh.

J. didn't have much luck either and neither of us ended in the final, which was won by some Belgian unknown to us.

All in all it was a funny little gettogether and I even met a fellow Isotrooper (Akroma) and of course bought some other board games with a discount at the convention.

I was glad I did some homework beforehand, since buying Duchies with 7 Provinces left proved a good decision in almost every game and so was going Witch/Moat instead of Witch/Witch or Moat/Moat.

[ratxt1]

here are some other thoughts on playing 3player dominion.

-when one of the players is slightly weaker than the other two and you can tell that it will be a fight between you and the other player often times it is a good idea to go for a strategy that would not normally work in a two player game because its two slow but it has the advantage of beeing able to get to 5 or 6 provinces quicker.
ex. say ther is lab and chapel and +buy on the board instead of going for just a chapel strategy where you buy labs when you have $5 you might want to thin down to $13 dollars so you can buy lab and a province every turn. this will take a little longer to set up but will stall out later.

-this ties in with the one above. often times that tiebreaking estate is not as important as going for the better engine if someone gets bad luck and it looks like they wont be getting 4 provinces in time, that extra estate is going to be to your disadvantage.

-if its a attacking game you are going to want to be more defensive than normal if your the 3rd person as you are going to be hit with stuff first. the opposite goes with being first your going to want to be dishing off as much attacks as possible to keep your self at the advantage.

- remeber three pile endings are more common and it is often a good idea to race someone for a certain card (like cities) keeping in mind my first point above. one person will be on the bad end of the deal (usally the person who joins in last) and so it will be a fight between you and the other player and again who ever has the better engine (not necesarily faster engine) will probably win.

in conclusion three player is a slightly different game than two person and you should adjust accordinly. but remember (as shown in the post above) luck still plays a factor (and even more so the more players there are).