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Author Topic: Ranking the opening terminals (for 4/3 splits)  (Read 40934 times)

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greatexpectations

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Re: Ranking the opening terminals (for 4/3 splits)
« Reply #100 on: November 01, 2011, 11:33:24 pm »
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Hmm, this could be an interesting discussion in its own right: under what circumstances is it correct to ignore Sea Hag? Other than Masquerade and Trader, I think I might prefer to open Ambassador/Ambassador when Sea Hag is on the table (at least, if my opponent buys a Sea Hag). And I won a game recently by ignoring Sea Hag and opening Fishing Village / Jack of All Trades.

ambassador was my first thought, but id probably pass on it for young witch most boards as well. if i opened 5/2 id consider upgrade as well.

im not sure if this is optimal or not, but i will usually ignore it and open silver/silver if witch or mountebank are around. i would prefer the early buying power and later usefulness of +2$ or +2 cards even if it means a 6/4 split against me.
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dondon151

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Re: Ranking the opening terminals (for 4/3 splits)
« Reply #101 on: November 01, 2011, 11:52:46 pm »
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Hmm, this could be an interesting discussion in its own right: under what circumstances is it correct to ignore Sea Hag? Other than Masquerade and Trader, I think I might prefer to open Ambassador/Ambassador when Sea Hag is on the table (at least, if my opponent buys a Sea Hag). And I won a game recently by ignoring Sea Hag and opening Fishing Village / Jack of All Trades.

I had completely forgotten about Ambassador but quickly ran a rough simulation (1 Ambassador vs. 2 Sea Hags) and 1 Ambassador would take just over half of the games. I'm not sure how Amb/Hag matches up to Amb/Amb and Amb/Silver, though. And I had also completely forgotten about JoAT, but that's another card that Sea Hag is rather ineffective against.

But, back to the original point, against Masquerade, Ambassador, and JoAT, Moneylender loses as well, so I still can't think of very many cases at all where Moneylender would be a preferable opening buy to Sea Hag.
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DStu

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Re: Ranking the opening terminals (for 4/3 splits)
« Reply #102 on: November 02, 2011, 06:15:44 am »
+1

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most people who are bothering to read a dominion strategy forum on the internet have played enough to understand basic concepts like the power of putting curses in to their opponents decks; the rote beginner is probably not ever going to read any of these articles.

And I would even go so far that people who are bothering to read a dominion strategy forum on the internet have played enough to understand basic concepts like changing power of cards induced by the kingdom.

Strongest openings then helps in giving hints on which cards you should look in the beginning and show if the kingdom supports or counters them.  Of course you could check all 720 3-card interactions on the board and rate their strength, but I think most people would prefer a heuristic which card are important to check them first.
« Last Edit: November 02, 2011, 07:27:54 am by DStu »
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Elyv

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Re: Ranking the opening terminals (for 4/3 splits)
« Reply #103 on: November 02, 2011, 10:47:44 am »
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I can only think of maybe 5 cards off the top of my head that would counter Sea Hag to an appreciable extent, and even with those cards in the kingdom I would still open with Sea Hag just to slow down the opponent. Masquerade and Trader are probably the 2 cards against which I definitely don't want to open Sea Hag.
I think I might prefer to open Ambassador/Ambassador when Sea Hag is on the table (at least, if my opponent buys a Sea Hag).
Ambassador is basically just a better card than hag, since the cards you're putting into your opponents deck still suck, but you're also getting those bad cards out of your deck. Cursers are fairly mediocre in an ambassador game, unless you've already won the ambassador war. I've actually ignored mountebank with ambassador on the table before, because I was in a position where I could fairly consistently ambassador all the curses/copper being sent my way.
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chwhite

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Re: Ranking the opening terminals (for 4/3 splits)
« Reply #104 on: November 02, 2011, 12:22:46 pm »
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Mountebank is the one card that comes to mind as a possible reason to go Moneylender instead of Hag.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Ranking the opening terminals (for 4/3 splits)
« Reply #105 on: November 07, 2011, 05:27:27 pm »
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Cards I generally skip sea hag for: masquerade, ambassador, young witch, jack.

I don't think skipping sea hag to go for moneylender into mountebank is good. Sea hag's attack is better, and hits sooner (they are drawing curses before they even buy a mountebank). And if there's no way to trash curses, you probably don't want to trash your coppers in a curse game, so moneylender loses a lot of appeal.

--------

On another topic, I guess I should update this to include hinterlands cards. Here are my initial thoughts:

 - Jack is obviously quite good. Maybe it belongs with Masquerade and Ambassador, but probably at least with salvager.

 - Trader might fit in with the last tier since trashing estates into multiple silvers can be nice, but then it falls into the remodel problem, where you can't really buy anything on the trader turn, so you're slow to get to the big stuff, and you're expanding rather than trimming your deck, so you're not even going to get your late good cards more often (the way you would with chapel/remake/steward). I think it's probably more situational and depends on if you think you can get something good out of the reaction portion of the card.

 - At first blush, both Oracle's effects seem slightly weak, so it doesn't seem like a generally good opening, but I don't know. Since you spy before drawing, you're pretty likely to be able to fetch $2 out of it (the usual bonus for a sub-$5 terminal attack) plus you get the cycling benefit. And the attack can really mess your opponent up if you skip one of their opening buys (30% chance), and at the least, it's about like fortune teller. So it's at least not a *bad* opening, but is it good enough to be on this list? I'm not sure. Early returns don't have it doing well on CR.com, and I haven't used it enough to make a strong opinion.

 - Develop seems too situational, more like remodel than salvager. I'm pretty sure it won't be on the list.

 - Nomad camp is situational because it depends on how useful that +buy is going to be early on and/or how much risk you're willing to take to go for $5 on turn 2 (given that you draw $4 on turn 1). It's cute, but not generally strong, I think. It also won't likely make the list.

 - There may be something cute with Noble Brigand's ability to cause a shuffle before your opponent's second buy, but it seems unlikely that it's a generally good opening.

 - And finally, Duchess is obviously not worth opening.

« Last Edit: November 07, 2011, 05:36:52 pm by HiveMindEmulator »
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