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[ChaosRed]

I posted a few weeks back about how my wife and I have started playing Dominion and love it. I read the strategy here on this site about the base set and found the advice excellent. I then posted a thread on this forum about additional advice and got a superb set of insight on how to play, where to play online and how to practice. I then taught my wife some of the tricks I learned...and we're both pretty good at base set now.

Now, this weekend, I make the purchase of Intrigue. I've been playing  Base+Intrigue online a little this week to try and learn the set.

What an exciting time to be discovering a brand new game, one expansion at a time!

I read all the "card recaps" for Intrigue and found them interesting. One of them, I could not get to work well. The "Minion chain" that is preached in one of the articles, did not work for me. In particular, the Saboteur was ruining my chain and then I couldn't get the draw to keep the chain going. It was also really hard to judge how much money to buy and when with the strategy.

Is Minion really the strongest card in the set? Is there a more in-depth article on how to make Minion work?

The card article on Saboteur makes it seems like the card is pretty random and only useful early, but the card was killing me and seems like the Witch, as in, if it is on the board, you better buy two and try to attack more often than your opponent. Torturer of course, is the same way right? I won an online game by spamming Torturer a lot. It seems like the best defense against Torturer is to do it against your opponent too? Then maybe Library? Any advice on when Torturer is a "must by"?

Are there more in-depth articles about Intrigue+Base Set games?

My thanks in advance for any advice here you care to share about Intrigue. It looks like a great expansion!

[Mean Mr Mustard]

Saboteur is just a really good counter to Minions.  And yes, Minions is one of the more powerful cards in all the expansions.  Saboteur is one of the weaker.

[philosophyguy]

I read all the "card recaps" for Intrigue and found them interesting. One of them, I could not get to work well. The "Minion chain" that is preached in one of the articles, did not work for me. In particular, the Saboteur was ruining my chain and then I couldn't get the draw to keep the chain going. It was also really hard to judge how much money to buy and when with the strategy.

The answer to "how much money" is "your opening silver or two." Then you buy Minions until you can consistently use the Minion chains to get to $8. Minion decks are unusual because you don't actually want treasure; your goal is to get most of your money from the Minions.

The card article on Saboteur makes it seems like the card is pretty random and only useful early, but the card was killing me and seems like the Witch, as in, if it is on the board, you better buy two and try to attack more often than your opponent.

The problem with Saboteur is that the person who plays Sab doesn't benefit from it; it's strictly an attack on your opponent's deck. Without +$ or +card, a Sab-heavy deck will struggle to increase its own buying power. It can definitely be frustrating to play against a Sab, but unless your opponent is consistently playing it once or more each turn (e.g., King's Court), you are probably better off trying to weather the storm. Occasionally you may need to change strategies if the Sab destroys a key engine card, but it's less often than you'd think.

Torturer of course, is the same way right? I won an online game by spamming Torturer a lot. It seems like the best defense against Torturer is to do it against your opponent too? Then maybe Library? Any advice on when Torturer is a "must by"?

Torturer is a must-buy in almost all sets that have Village-type cards. The first person to get off a Village-Torturer-(Village)-Torturer combo is at a huge advantage. The best defense is a good offense, but Library can help mitigate the impact. When you expand to Prosperity, Watchtower is golden for defusing the Torturer's attack.

[WanderingWinder]

If you search the forum for torturer, you'll find a lot of stuff about torturer chains is already out there.
Minion decks are really really strong. Probably a bit overrated IMO, but still really strong. Saboteur is not very strong, but can be disruptive to something like a minion deck. Against an opponent who's hitting you with saboteurs, you may want to go with the little-used minion+money. But also, you probably want to use minion's attack more often than you'd think, as knocking your opponent down from 5 to 4 is very good - probably roughly as good as a militia attack.

[jsh357]

I've found Minion works better against people who haven't dealt with the chain in the past.  More experienced players seem to know exactly how to deal with it.  It can be a luck-based strategy at times, especially with poor trashing options.  Playing Minions when Saboteur is around is pretty risky, but it's one of the few environments where I'd consider it an altogether bad idea.

[Davio]

For Minions to work well, you need to have as little excess junk as possible, since every hand with only 1 Minion is wasted drawing another hand. You need multiple Minions in hand to use some for the +$2 and the last for either $2 or a new hand.

Trashing cards like Chapel will work, also Loan which you haven't come across yet.
From the basic set maybe Moneylender will do the trick.

A nifty card which works well with Minion is Conspirator, I'll let you discover why (it's not hard).

[Kuildeous]

The card article on Saboteur makes it seems like the card is pretty random and only useful early, but the card was killing me

When you are hit by Saboteur, you tend to remember it. What tends to get remembered less often is how much the Saboteur player is struggling because he is relying on a card that has no direct benefit to him. From your viewpoint, it's a devastating card, but it's a dead card from his viewpoint.

The experience and skill of the players can make a difference. Most experienced players can shrug off the Saboteur attacks. They play through as if nothing is going on, adjusting their deck compositions somewhat as the Saboteur hits. If the opponent is not able to play multiple Saboteurs, then he needs to cycle through his deck. If he doesn't have that, then he isn't hitting you that hard.

And sure, you might lose a Province to the Saboteur. If it's late in the game, take the Duchy and accept the 3-point loss. You probably will still win. If it's early in the game, take the Gold and use it to buy the Province back. But, if you're not experienced with the cards enough to end the game quickly, you'll find your hard work ground down. Time is not your ally when facing a Saboteur.

On the other end is when an experienced player does take Saboteur. He knows that he can cycle his deck enough or play enough cards to get Saboteur out routinely. Most of the time, you can ignore Saboteur, but if you are able to spot when it is a viable strategy, you can unleash unholy hell on your opponents.

[DG]

If you're experienced how to play the base set then you're probably well placed to learn the intrigue set just through play. The cards are generally more complicated though and if someone gave you advice on how to play a scout it wouldn't really help you play a trading post. It's also fun going through the "Hey, scouts are going to be fantastic", "these scouts are awful", "ah, that's a clever use for a scout" phases.

[ChaosRed]

Thanks for the feedback!

Seems like I didn't keep my deck dense enough for the Minion chain I tried. There were no trashers in the game...and I was buying money too, which I think ruins the whole strategy. I'll know better next time.

Thanks for the advice on Saboteur...in the game I played, Lab and Throne were on the board...so he was drawing lots and playing them twice...and I was losing Minions left and right. Look forward to learning the set more!

[Epoch]

When you are hit by Saboteur, you tend to remember it. What tends to get remembered less often is how much the Saboteur player is struggling because he is relying on a card that has no direct benefit to him. From your viewpoint, it's a devastating card, but it's a dead card from his viewpoint.

Saboteur is a bad card if your opponent buys 1 and plays 5 card hands and plays the Saboteur every 4-5 turns or so, and so it kills like two of your cards in the whole game and they're playing 4 card hands on those turns.

It's also bad if your opponent buys a ton of them and draws them dead all the time and diminishes their buying power more.

It's a pretty good card if your opponent plays it every 1-2 turns because they're drawing a ton of cards and having 1 dead card out of 10 isn't a huge deal for them.

It's an unbelievably devastating card if your opponent plays it twice or more per turn.  Your deck just withers.  It's one of the most annoying pins in the game.  It's kind of like Torturer, and unlike Militia, in being an attack that really does improve with multiple plays.  Unlike Torturer, of course, it doesn't contribute to the kind of engine which allows you to play it multiple times per turn.

EDIT:  That probably also means that Saboteur is a lot more dangerous in a 3p+ game rather than a 2p game.