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Author Topic: SWAG #3  (Read 2945 times)

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WanderingWinder

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SWAG #3
« on: December 22, 2012, 08:58:21 am »
+1

Yeah, I took RisingJaguar's suggestion and am calling this Super WanderingWinder Annotated game #3. This one was against Stef, we had a nice discussion about it, and he kindly agreed to let me annotate, with no qualms.

The Set: Apothecary, Develop, Gardens, Horse Traders, Lighthouse, Militia, Scout, Smugglers, Stash, Thief, Wishing Well, and Worker's Village.

It was veto mode - I went first and vetoed smugglers; he vetoed stash.

Comment on and analyze the set now, and I will try to post my analysis say on the 26th of December. Also, will post a video at that time. I also stupidly forgot to grab the log, but thank goodness for CouncilRoom being back!

zahlman

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #1 on: December 22, 2012, 09:30:13 am »
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There's really amazing Gardens support here - HT and WV are +Buy; Apothecary can pick up decent economy without worrying about Gold (although just trying to grab a lot of Silvers might be better anyway?); and Develop can multiply cards (although the problem here is that there aren't any $5 cards - why'd you veto Stash :( ). So this is pretty clearly a Gardens game. Thing is I don't really know whether to try to rush or to slog here. :/

Militia is really tempting - I find it really really hard to ignore the only attack on a given board unless it really sucks or there's a superfast engine - but HT defends against it and is something that will be picked up anyway, so yeah. Thief probably isn't going to be worthwhile; it's net +2 cards in the decksize race (you probably usually want to keep stolen Coppers) but is it going to hit often enough to matter? Plus there's Lighthouse which is a great use for +Buy anyway.

I suspect Wishing Well doesn't really pass the Silver test here - you're going to have too many different types of cards in your deck to get good performance out of it.
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jonts26

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #2 on: December 22, 2012, 10:21:05 am »
+1

I am willing to bet WW went gardens here. The support is pretty good, but I wouldnt call it amazing. At least, rushing 3 piles is not going to be super fast.

There is one good province strategy here. Apothecary/Wishing Well with HT and WV and dare I say Scout support. It's not super fast, but it works decently well even when greening quite a bit, so it's probably not super fast to 4 provinces but it'll be good at getting 8, which should scare the gardens player.

Honestly, I'd probably mostly skip gardens here and go with the apothecary engine but this is the type of board you need to heavily adjust mid game depending on your opponent.


EDIT: Here's a sample game where I get 8 provinces in 16 turns. This was my first try and I know I can do it a little better, but it's actually faster than I thought it would be. http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/22/game-20121222-073108-40ad933d.html
« Last Edit: December 22, 2012, 10:32:39 am by jonts26 »
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Davio

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #3 on: December 22, 2012, 10:35:53 am »
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Apo/WW with HT for me, I'd probably skip WV as it's another "stop" for Apo.
Scout could even be helpful indeed! Main focus should be on getting $8's as consistent as possible and greening as late as possible.

So if you can get 8 Provinces in 16 turns, you should get the 1st no sooner than turn 9.
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jonts26

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #4 on: December 22, 2012, 10:39:09 am »
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Apo/WW with HT for me, I'd probably skip WV as it's another "stop" for Apo.
Scout could even be helpful indeed! Main focus should be on getting $8's as consistent as possible and greening as late as possible.

So if you can get 8 Provinces in 16 turns, you should get the 1st no sooner than turn 9.

The WV are another stop, but i think the extra buy is needed. You're going to want to keep buying both apothecary and WW as the game goes on. Also keep buying copper. For that you need more than 2 buys per turn. I think in my game, If I had done it better, my last turn or two could have been double provinces. So if it takes an extra turn of set up, you'll still be gaining time. However, if the gardens player is rushing, you might want to start on the provinces earlier. But in a mirror, I'd like the extra set up. So again, it's going to be up to what the other guy is doing.

EDIT: Actually, what I said about the mirror is stupid. You want to get your provinces in sooner, not later here as you won't have time to double province. OK, so you want the extra set up if you think you need 8 provinces. So a gardens slog. In that case, you probably don't even bother denying gardens to the opponent and just work on draining 8 provinces.
« Last Edit: December 22, 2012, 10:44:02 am by jonts26 »
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Davio

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #5 on: December 22, 2012, 10:41:17 am »
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I would go Apo/WW and lose, or Gardens and lose. :)

I can understand WV in this way. Also adding a few WVs adds a bit of flexibilty with regards to getting Gardens yourself.
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-Stef-

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #6 on: December 22, 2012, 11:25:46 am »
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Here are my thoughts on the set (not the game). But because I was also in the original game, I'll use the spoiler tags.

I really like the wishing well/apothecary combo. It can get strong very quickly, and can endure greening a lot better then the average apothecary deck. However, I don't like it in a real slog, so I'd still want to go provinces over gardens. I can see no serious use for Scout, wishing well is just better to clean up after apothecary removes coppers. In order to get the cards I want I'll need another buy, actions and some money, so probably a few workers villages and a horse trader or two. To start the engine up, I want to develop estates into wishing wells. I don't see much use for develop later on, but by then it was already worth the buy I think. This dot . is a sample log where I try this out. (Gotta love these spoiler tags :) ) In the actual game I make mistakes I avoid here, but I won't go into that any further until WW makes his post. Apart from the develop my plan is basically the same as what jonts26 posted
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Davio

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #7 on: December 22, 2012, 01:27:34 pm »
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Hadn't even noticed Develop, one of my most underrated and underused cards I think.
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Robz888

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #8 on: December 22, 2012, 01:34:10 pm »
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You know I join WanderingWinder in loving the alt-VP sets, but I've lost to Apothecary/Wishing Well one too many times to ignore that here. So I'm definitely betting the Farming Village on an Apoth/WW/Scout (?) engine.
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dondon151

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #9 on: December 22, 2012, 01:42:48 pm »
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I'm willing to suspect that one can execute the same engine even with Gardens, although it probably won't beat Provinces. -Stef- was bordering on 50 cards in his solitaire example and Gardens are cheaper than Provinces, so one can pick up Duchies as well.
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zahlman

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #10 on: December 22, 2012, 09:11:39 pm »
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Suppose a Gardens player goes up against a WW/Apo player here; will Militia put a meaningful dent in the WW/Apo player's speed?
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jonts26

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #11 on: December 22, 2012, 09:16:48 pm »
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Suppose a Gardens player goes up against a WW/Apo player here; will Militia put a meaningful dent in the WW/Apo player's speed?

Probably not. Apoth player can discard coppers and pick them up later no problem. And the gardens player will not be able to play the militia very often. It might have some use in an apothecary/ww mirror, but I'd probably skip it still. HT is a much better teerminal.
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dondon151

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #12 on: December 22, 2012, 09:42:00 pm »
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http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/22/game-20121222-183955-6e920d9b.html

Eh, doesn't hold up quite as well as expected, but this does prove that Apothecary/WW can snipe Gardens, make them worth more than a Gardens rush strat, and not care too much about having a handful of them.
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timchen

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #13 on: December 22, 2012, 11:09:17 pm »
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I don't see how a garden rush can work here... so if one wants to go gardens one probably still needs to grab a province or two.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #14 on: December 26, 2012, 09:49:49 am »
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I'm interested to see you guys think I would go for a gardens rush here. First of all, I don't think a true rush is even very close to being possible here. But let's say you mean what I would call a gardens slog - get a couple support cards, go straight for the green, and slam into copper every chance you get. So here, a couple horse traders and then slam gardens. Well, I am not sure how strong that is in general, but I don't think all that strong. You really need to get duchies to make that work, and then, do you get the duchies first, or the gardens first, because duchies are harder to get later, but gardens are more important for your strategy. And then, you are going to stall out, so you probably should be building up more, but then you have enough money to go for provinces, and pretty soon you're just playing a weird version of big money, where you always buy copper, get up to province a time or two, maybe don't buy them anyway, and then really slam the green. It can work, but generally only on a weak board.

I guess this is what timchen said, but in many more words.

Anyway, I didn't even consider it here - you HAVE to go for that apothecary/wishing well engine, it's just too strong...

So, in any case, annotations attached, video here:
Let me know what you think!

RisingJaguar

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Re: SWAG #3
« Reply #15 on: December 26, 2012, 12:10:41 pm »
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First off, the solo games here show off the speed of an un-mirrored engine here.  The game was a mirror match, so the speed of those solo games are not indicative of the game played here. 

My thoughts:
- I think stef's T3-T6 is rather unlucky at the start.  His first develop hand has no estate, isn't able to reach an early $4 (which in my first tester game I got two early ones).  Those two combined has him focusing on over-purchased apothecaries for awhile (which was the correct adjustment).  However, this slows him down as he was not able to purchase Apothecaries/wishing wells in the early turns, like both players planned. 
- Overall, I prefer the develop start, although that's with hindsight.  The estates in the deck are a problem.  The only problem is it takes a very forward thinking mind to utilize develop in future turns (say anything past T9/10).  Stef does this very well, but most are not like him.  Other then that, develop is the main difference in their decks.  The other minute differences are because of either stef's develop (ie. only one horse trader because of terminal spots) or because of stef's poor opening. 
- WW mentions scout, and for stef's deck (with the develop) it isn't such a great idea.  However, if scout could work in a deck, it would probably be WW's deck.  You kept your estates, go for gardens (more green than provinces), planned for duchies possibly.  With that said, it probably is a luxury you can't afford as that would mean providing more end-game control to Stef. 
- Very tempting to buy the 10th Wishing well, but not buying it is pretty strong tactically I think.  The game stalled out longer than i expected (ie. the 10th wishing well might've been good), but allows your opponent to have more immediate control.  Similar idea of control with purchasing the scout.
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