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Author Topic: Critique of a Duke game  (Read 2880 times)

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philosophyguy

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Critique of a Duke game
« on: November 27, 2012, 02:09:03 pm »
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I'm very bad at alt-VP, so I was glad that this board provided an opportunity to practice my Duke game.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/27/game-20121127-110709-7f36ed0d.html

I managed to win the game, but I would appreciate comments for how to play this board more effectively. Obviously it made a big difference that my opponent did not contest Duchies, but are there specific plays that could have been more effective on my part?
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D Bo

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Re: Critique of a Duke game
« Reply #1 on: November 27, 2012, 02:15:48 pm »
+1

I recently lost a Duchy-Duke game where my opponent threw Tactician in there too. I don't know that it's a definite, but if you were able to pull up both trade routes in your 10 card hand, it could be pretty beneficial.
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Robz888

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Re: Critique of a Duke game
« Reply #2 on: November 27, 2012, 02:17:39 pm »
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I don't really care for your Turn 3 Trade Route. You don't need to trash in a Duke game, so the only purpose of Trade Route is for $ and buy. And Trade Route isn't giving you any money at the time you buy it, so I would hold off on that purchase.

I might have considered a Mine instead of a Jester. I know I just said you don't want to trash, but Mine into Venture is available here, and that would work nicely for Dukes.

Your opponent certainly should have purchased a Jester, to give you Curses.
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shark_bait

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Re: Critique of a Duke game
« Reply #3 on: November 27, 2012, 02:30:04 pm »
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Well, late game the TR is worth $4, so getting it with either 2 copper or a silver is a Duke.  But you don't want the trade route early, it would make a better mid-game buy.

That being said, I'm pretty sure that you can beat a Duchy/Duke strategy in this set though.  Venture provides extreme resilience to greening.  Spice Merchant and Trade Route provide good trashing and good cycling to quickly rid deck of starting cards.  Meanwhile, Mine can be used to upgrade any bought Silvers into Venture/Gold.  Tactician is also present as a great card to ensure having enough funds to get those last few Provinces.  I don't know how many turns this would take to empty the Province pile, but I would be willing to play this strategy over a Duchy/Duke strategy that really doesn't have much support.
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RisingJaguar

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Re: Critique of a Duke game
« Reply #4 on: November 27, 2012, 03:34:14 pm »
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Totally not the point of your post, but that is pretty easily designed to go double tactician.  There are villages and terminals to play for money.  Only real way to draw cards is tactician (spice merchant/stables don't work together).  I think a combination of 2/3 Jester/cutpurses a turn would make it much more difficult to pull off duchy/duke. 

Trade route doesn't make so much sense early.  Even your play on T11 doesn't make much sense.  You chose to play trade route to kill a cutpurse and buy duchy/copper vs. cutpurse (same dollar) and buy a duchy.  You trade cutpurse+attack for a copper?  So the idea of trade route being useful any time before that is pretty hard to imagine. 
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Robz888

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Re: Critique of a Duke game
« Reply #5 on: November 27, 2012, 03:40:19 pm »
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Totally not the point of your post, but that is pretty easily designed to go double tactician.  There are villages and terminals to play for money.  Only real way to draw cards is tactician (spice merchant/stables don't work together).  I think a combination of 2/3 Jester/cutpurses a turn would make it much more difficult to pull off duchy/duke. 

Trade route doesn't make so much sense early.  Even your play on T11 doesn't make much sense.  You chose to play trade route to kill a cutpurse and buy duchy/copper vs. cutpurse (same dollar) and buy a duchy.  You trade cutpurse+attack for a copper?  So the idea of trade route being useful any time before that is pretty hard to imagine.

I'm far from convinced Double tac is the right play here. There are no cantrips! You need so many Cutpurses and Jesters to make any cash. In the meanwhile, Spice Merchant into Mine into Venture, as Sharky recommended, is going to be pretty fast here I think.
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shark_bait

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Re: Critique of a Duke game
« Reply #6 on: November 27, 2012, 04:14:43 pm »
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http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/27/game-20121127-131310-e6b0f252.html

19 Turns is my best so far.  Going double spice merchant seems to help immensely.
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philosophyguy

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Re: Critique of a Duke game
« Reply #7 on: November 27, 2012, 06:11:04 pm »
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First, let me say thank you for all the excellent comments so far! Let me explain what I was thinking tactically on some of the turns in question, and folks can tell me where my thinking went wrong.

Turn 3: I know that later I will want a Trade Route, and since I hit neither of my opening purchases on turn 3 I expected to have very few turns below $5 after turn 3. Hence the Trade Route. With Duke, Spice Merchant would have been a worse choice, and I didn't think another Cutpurse was necessary. The other option was Silver, but like I said, I was not expecting to be below $5 again for a while and wanted to get the Trade Route into my deck.

Turn 11: By this point, I know that my opponent is going for Provinces rather than Duchy/Duke. So, the loss of a Copper does not hurt him that much. Playing the Trade Route allows me to get the green and a Copper, mitigating the effect of the trashing. On reflection it probably was the wrong play, but that was my thinking.

Jester: I didn't think about Mine as an option; that may have been better. My thinking with Jester was that it's a Silver and it is almost guaranteed to give me cards I want, since even Coppers are good. I don't know how my deck would have held up if my opponent went Jester, though.
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DG

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Re: Critique of a Duke game
« Reply #8 on: November 27, 2012, 06:29:28 pm »
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I think is quite a difficult kingdom. A slightly different approach by an opponent could persuade me to adjust my strategy here. A key card in this is the jester. It has quite different results depending upon whether your opponent uses a spice merchant, mine, trade route, or extra buys for more copper.

For the game as played, you don't want the trade route on turn 3 since you want the option of a jester on turn 4 (assuming a five coin hand that you don't actually get). I don't think you want an early tactician and the game will naturally move on too fast for you to get the tactician later. On turn 11 I think you underestimate the niggling attack from the cutpurse and trash it with the trade route, buying an extra copper as compensation. When an opponent is low on copper the cutpurse will often dislodge the only copper in the hand, leaving an action card like mine, stables, or spice merchant without an obvious target.

Edit - oops simultaneous post - and yes I agree with a jester ahead of the mine.
« Last Edit: November 27, 2012, 06:31:22 pm by DG »
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RisingJaguar

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Re: Critique of a Duke game
« Reply #9 on: November 28, 2012, 09:53:06 am »
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Totally not the point of your post, but that is pretty easily designed to go double tactician.  There are villages and terminals to play for money.  Only real way to draw cards is tactician (spice merchant/stables don't work together).  I think a combination of 2/3 Jester/cutpurses a turn would make it much more difficult to pull off duchy/duke. 

Trade route doesn't make so much sense early.  Even your play on T11 doesn't make much sense.  You chose to play trade route to kill a cutpurse and buy duchy/copper vs. cutpurse (same dollar) and buy a duchy.  You trade cutpurse+attack for a copper?  So the idea of trade route being useful any time before that is pretty hard to imagine.

I'm far from convinced Double tac is the right play here. There are no cantrips! You need so many Cutpurses and Jesters to make any cash. In the meanwhile, Spice Merchant into Mine into Venture, as Sharky recommended, is going to be pretty fast here I think.
I'm pretty convinced that 2/3 of those attacks hurt Duke/Duchy because of the coppers being taken away and the eventual mass cursing jester is gonna lend to a Alt-VP deck. 

If that strategy were to face a streamlined venture deck, I do think it loses though.  I don't think the jesters constant attack makes up for it. 
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shark_bait

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Re: Critique of a Duke game
« Reply #10 on: November 28, 2012, 11:28:43 am »
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I'm interested how a double Tactician/Cutpurse  would work against the Venture deck, if multiple Cutpurses can be played before all the Coppers are trashed, that completely destroys the effectiveness of Mine/Spice Merchant.  It could be enough for Double Tactician win, but I don't know.  The Venture player might need to pick up a Tactician at some point to get draw and clear out the rest of the sub-par treasure. 
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RisingJaguar

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Re: Critique of a Duke game
« Reply #11 on: November 28, 2012, 12:35:05 pm »
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I'm interested how a double Tactician/Cutpurse  would work against the Venture deck, if multiple Cutpurses can be played before all the Coppers are trashed, that completely destroys the effectiveness of Mine/Spice Merchant.  It could be enough for Double Tactician win, but I don't know.  The Venture player might need to pick up a Tactician at some point to get draw and clear out the rest of the sub-par treasure.
I also have tried this in Solo, and double tact doesn't really set up until T7-T10 when the 2/3 attacks a turn hit.  Any solo game isn't really going to be representative though as jester/cutpurse interactions aren't really shown. 

I doubt the attacks would come out fast enough to have any serious effect on you.  Worst possible outcome would be if I hit early estate for a curse and it snowballs. 
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