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[timchen]

In this game today, I am surprised that WW's more-or-less straightforward Jester/Duke deck did not beat my strange, half minded Province deck.

Relevant Kingdom cards: Jester, Masquerade, Duke, Hoard, Inn, Spice Merchant

In the game I thought my draw was not as good as WW's early on. For example, my turn 4 masquerade missed the shuffle because he jestered me; and I cannot make it to $6 until turn 8, where he already had 2 jesters and a hoard and started on Duchies. I played a somewhat weird denial game, getting some duchies and dukes myself and hoped to come up later with the Provinces and it somehow worked.

Questions:
1. Will a straight Province-only strategy here beat Duke? Or say more precisely, can a strategy getting Provinces whenever it can, instead of getting duchies/dukes to block win out?

2. Can the Duke strategy be enhanced on this board, by NOT taking so many coppers with the Jester? With the hoard, one might still have a shot at Provinces without those coppers.

[DG]

1. I think it depends on the draws. You played to your draws.
2. You've got two conflicting strategies in operation here. A big treasure deck expanded with coppers can sustain a duke buying deck. Alternatively a trashed down deck can play hoards frequently and sustain itself by gaining gold. You've shown that the hoards win out in this kingdom.

I wonder if WW wins if he doesn't buy the secret chamber.

[WanderingWinder]

Secret chamber got passed around a bit.

[WanderingWinder]

Oh, I should point out that Jester did me very little favours here - a Merchant Ship on 13 was sorta nice, inn on 14 with no actions to return, and hit a province on 23. Every other time it pinged copper. Silver might almost have served me better. Merchant ship certainly would have. And I ended up only one great hall away from the win. Well, anyway, timchen didn't play so poorly either, though with 3 duchies and 4 dukes, I wouldn't really say he 'beat duke' so much as won after losing the duchy/duke split.

[timchen]

I don't know-- that's part of my question here: is it likely on this board for me to win even more handily if I had not tried to block so hard? I bought two early Duchies which could have been Provinces. And I hit 3 $7s when we were on the Dukes. Maybe I can just do the math... it certainly feels a lot riskier that way, but on the other hand it's conceptually harder to understand how a Province strategy can recover from getting so many lower VPs. 

One thing I think should be the case though; WW could have won if he had handed me a few coppers by his jester.