WanderingWinder advances to the Division finals 4-3 over FunkieMonk.
Videos can be found here:
Overall, I have to say that the level of play was very close between the two of us here, and I think I might have been outplayed overall real slightly. I think there were two games where he outplayed me pretty significantly, one where I bettered him fairly clearly, and the rest… I think there were one or two where I had a slight edge, but it was all really close. I definitely feel lucky to be here after getting down 3-1 for the second week in a row!
FunkieMonk was also just a real nice and pleasant guy to play against, and we had a nice conversation after the match.
Game 1:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/12/game-20130112-101755-06b81d1c.htmlFunkieMonk 37 – 13 WW
I want to go for a watchtower/Fishing Village engine into horn of plenty mega-turn. There’s throne room, trading post, caravan, wishing well to support. Potentially there’s some business with Mandarin, but it’s not so likely without provinces. I did consider using it to seed my next hand, but I would need two of them. He opens young witch/Fishing Village (wishing well was the bane) and transitions into herbalist/philosopher’s stone. I didn’t recognize this combo until some time after my first buy, and then I thought, well this mega-turn out to be able to overcome it. No. I defend really well against the curses with watchtowers pretty easily (at some point I take one), but the point is that even delayed as he was, it was just really strong. And the fishing villages let him REALLY load up on herbalists – he actually plays it a little non-standard, by getting a zillion herbalists, two potions, and only a couple p-stones, which he’s able to eventually just repeat and repeat and repeat. And some fishing villages to play all those herbalists. It’s interesting, though I think just one potion would work better, and probably you can go for it from the start, more classically, without the detour for young witches or fishing villages. In any case, my engine never really comes together on any kind of consistent basis, and some of that is luck, but mostly I think it’s just not that strong, and I probably also played it pretty wrong to boot. Anyway, he cleans my clocks, eventually piling out on fishing village, herbalist, and estate (don’t see that every day!)
Game 2:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/12/game-20130112-103320-618c28ac.htmlWW 37 – 55 FunkieMonk
Let me describe what he did first of all. Basically he goes for tactician+coppersmith+highway, one margrave and some crossroads. Simple, strong. I go for some very very convoluted think where I plan on play 4 highways, drawing stuff with shanty town and a margrave and mostly crossroads, and then upgrading junk into duchies and dukes. I can’t get it to go to plan, pretty much AT ALL. The killing thing here was that I eventually got to where my deck is full of 3-costs, and I had to keep upgrading them and getting… coppersmith, which absolutely killed everything that was going on. I somehow still actually don’t get killed THAT much, probably because duchy/duke is worth a zillion points, but I should point out that at almost no point was I actually in this game really. I think my plan would have been really interesting if you replace something (say watchtower, which was utterly irrelevant) with a 4-cost cantrip, particularly if it were a village (maybe not worker’s). Though I should point out that ‘interesting’ shouldn’t necessarily imply best here, just it’s something that might be competitive.
Game 3:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/12/game-20130112-104403-925f1d6e.htmlWW 0 – (-4) Funkiemonk
A young witch game where shanty town is the bane, mint and minion and salvager present, along with scheme. I we both go shanty town/young witch. I get a second young witch and more shanty towns. He gets silvers and a scheme (and more shanty towns later). We both get a salvager reasonably early. I am able to get to minion quick, and then a couple nice mints (one early, one after it didn’t matter). I do think his pearl divers are a mistake – yeah, they can be salvaged, but they are extra cards to not be shanty town in your deck, and you can potentially draws them dead. Well, I get a very nice engine roaring, and I am able to hit him with curses pretty repeatedly – the minions help dislodge banes, and of course once some come, they can really flood, lowering your bane density. I could have gained a bunch of points at the end, but I just took a couple turns to pile instead – he wasn’t going anywhere.
Game 4:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/12/game-20130112-105051-ba3bbe76.htmlFunkiemonk 50 – 38 WW
Chapel with absolutely no +actions. There’s warehouse to sift, and decent enough terminals – monument, haggler, margrave. There’s also cartographer to sift if you want. I go for chapel into monument and money. He goes for chapel into margraves. His second margrave is too much, I think, though he puts it to decent use in a protracted greening battle – the big thing here is that he gets a good amount of treasure before greening. I figure a long enough game should favor my chips, but I can never QUITE get there. I am not sure whether something else, particularly without chapel, might have been better. But the margrave thing looks pretty good to me.
Game 5:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/12/game-20130112-105536-d05ea451.html13 WW – 9 Funkiemonk
Yeah, not a ton to say here. We both open Embargo/IGG. There’s duchy and duke on the board. I get another IGG turn 3, he embargoes duchies, and I basically stroll, getting a few cutpurses and a bunch of IGGs and well, first player basically won the game here. He plays for the short game by greening on estates pretty early, and I end up actually piling them out, and I think it would have been better to go for something longer-term, but you know with the turn disadvantage on this board, and me not drawing terribly, he didn’t have much chance in any case.
Game 6:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/12/game-20130112-110231-2d78fbed.htmlFunkieMonk 40 – 43 WW
A hunting party board with Horse traders. He opens masquerade and gets HT later; actually quite a few of them eventually. I just go straight for HPs, and unfortunately can’t ever get the double buy I look for, though I prioritize them over gold until they’re gone (I’m not sure about that). Anyway, we get into a protracted greening war, and this helps me quite a bit, because I already have 3 estates to deal with, I did get the 6-4 split on HPs, and most importantly he is faster to start than me. It gets down to a point on the last turn where he is down by 3, and gets a big hand with 2 buys, but there are 2 provinces left and 2 estates left, and 2 piles empty. He goes province and estate, which gives him a lead and if I can’t muster a province, he wins by buying out the last estate. Unfortunately for him, I am holding 8 to start with, and it’s just over. I end up actually winning on the back of 3 estates – the number he trashed. But I would be remiss to not also mention that I was super lucky on the first reshuffle – he passed me a copper turn 3, and I gave him an estate, which cut him off from HP there and got me to 5/5. (He also had collision with HT, though this happens fairly often with double terminal openings where one of them is a drawer).
Game 7:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/12/game-20130112-111059-a5e30371.htmlFunkieMonk 26 – 41 WW
I feel good about this one, at least. I open steward/smugglers to his steward/steward. The smugglers just sort of sits for a while. But we’re both going with big trashing off multiple stewards into big engines. Okay, steward is the only card that draws more than to replace itself, but with market and festival and worker’s village along, it was good. So as I am getting really close to being pared down, the smugglers starts kicking in, and since we’re playing similar strategies, it always gives me something really useful. I can do the gain-and-play a card the same turn trick a couple times. I think he was a little too hot on markets, but it’s not a very big thing at all. Anyway, he gets a hoard, I smuggle it and we start greening – lots of duchy and estate, which, well, may hurt our engines, but they are decent enough, and the big cash is really nice, and we need the points because the game is ending, and… well, anyway, it’s good. I have a pretty good feeling lead, and I nurse it home. Smugglers was good down the stretch, too – when he province+estate bought, I could smuggle his hoard-gained golds, and of course I can smuggle green in certain spots too.
Overall, a very tense, very good match.
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Topic: Witch Division: Bracket and Results (Read 93673 times)