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Author Topic: Help Forge!!! get better at this game  (Read 1666 times)

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Forge!!!

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Help Forge!!! get better at this game
« on: December 09, 2012, 04:17:07 pm »
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Tombolo stopped doing his daily thing, so I figured I would pick up the slack. There's a clear skill gap between myself and a large amount of the posters here and I'd love to be able to close it at least a little.

Let's start with: Is Margrave/BM really better than Oracle/Tunnel simply because it's a Colony game?

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/09/game-20121209-122616-ec69b30c.html

I know the Cities were a bad choice (though I'm not entirely sure what I would replace them with), and I know I should have picked up some Platinums at some point because the Golds simply weren't cutting it for getting Colonies. I still feel like my strategy should have won out though. I solitaired a couple Margrave/BM games and got similar results to what he got (ignoring my Oracle, though), so maybe he wasn't as lucky as I thought. Though I definitely didn't get any double Colony turns.
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SirPeebles

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Re: Help Forge!!! get better at this game
« Reply #1 on: December 09, 2012, 04:24:59 pm »
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Oracle doesn't strike me as a particularly strong Tunnel enabler.  Were you intending Tunnel to be a counter to Margrave?
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Forge!!!

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Re: Help Forge!!! get better at this game
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2012, 04:28:34 pm »
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I assumed the two of them combined would be enough. It certainly seemed to work out well enough, I had two turns in a row where I discarded 3 tunnels for golds.
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DWetzel

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Re: Help Forge!!! get better at this game
« Reply #3 on: December 09, 2012, 04:34:19 pm »
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I don't love Oracle/Tunnel too much (you have a pretty narrow search space to find tunnels to discard in the first place), but if you're going to do it you may as well open Oracle/Tunnel I think -- give yourself a chance to get lucky early.  I really don't understand the cities at all either.  You have two terminals in your deck, what do you need a village for?  Just buy a Margrave or two in their place and you can accumulate enough cash for the Colonies or at least Platinums.

If you are going to try the Oracle/Tunnel thing, maybe aim for a Province rush instead so that he can't build up to Platinums more efficiently?  I kind of doubt it would help though.

I'd probably try some sort of Margrave/City engine and see if I could get that going.  With enough Margrave attacks it should be a fairly long game.
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Forge!!!

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Re: Help Forge!!! get better at this game
« Reply #4 on: December 09, 2012, 04:44:37 pm »
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The idea behind the Cities was that the Tunnels were going to run out so they were going to be upgraded. It was a stupid plan, and Margraves would have been much better. I'm not entirely sure how much better I could have province rushed, I did buy one Colony, but other than that I think every time I had 8+ I bought a province.
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dondon151

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Re: Help Forge!!! get better at this game
« Reply #5 on: December 09, 2012, 06:18:33 pm »
+3

So let's quickly analyze how well Tunnel does at getting to Colonies.

First, if you're not buying Platinum at all, it does a pretty bad job. You need hands of 4 Gold, 3 Gold + 2 Copper, or 3 Gold + 1 Silver just to make $11. Given that you have 7 Copper and 3 Estate in your deck that you can't get rid of, plus however many Tunnels in your deck that you needed to get that Gold in the first place, chances are you're not going to get $11 for Colony very often. It's in fact impossible to make $11 after a Margrave (though even with Platinum, it's pretty hard to match 2 Gold + 1 Platinum).

So you want Platinums, except that by the time you hit $9 more than once, it's already time to hit the Colonies. This is because Tunnel delays gaining Gold by ~1 shuffle, so you're also getting the Platinum at least 1 shuffle later, and by then the game is quickly approaching its end.

Disregarding the strategy itself, how could you have done better? The first is getting your own Margraves. If you have lots of Golds, it's easier to match them up with +3 cards, and maybe the +buy would be nice for you. It hampers your opponent if you hit a good hand. It does sort of conflict with Oracle, but your Oracles only gained you 3 Gold over the course of the entire game, which probably hints that Oracle is not a good Tunnel enabler on its own. Certainly had you aimed for Margrave instead of City, you wouldn't have felt so compelled to grab all 8 Tunnels, which further impedes your ability to get to Colonies.
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Forge!!!

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Re: Help Forge!!! get better at this game
« Reply #6 on: December 10, 2012, 03:20:26 pm »
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Thanks Dondon, that's very insightful.


This is a game that I don't need help on so much as I just think it's strange...Moat as the power card? I just sort of skipped over it on turn 1 before I realized wait, +2 cards might be the best action you can do on this board. I did like my opponent's play of Mining Villages to get up to Platinum and I thought I had lost until they kept buying Menageries for some weird reason.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/10/game-20121210-121706-ef77354a.html
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SirPeebles

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Re: Help Forge!!! get better at this game
« Reply #7 on: December 10, 2012, 06:35:26 pm »
+2

I assumed the two of them combined would be enough.

You would think that... Forge!!!!
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