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[Davio]

If your opponent goes Pirate Ship and you don't, do you actively dilute your deck to decrease his hit chances or do you just don't care and think: "If he hits, he hits.".

Take a look at this log and tell me what you think: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/19/game-20110919-004006-4b323810.html

The diluters I used were Labs, Nobles and a Great Hall I picked up.

I had exactly 2 Golds and a Steward to provide enough $ for the Provinces and I bought all Provinces in turn 16 - 23.
My good deck cycling (small deck, lots of drawers and a little luck) made it possible to play my Witch every turn, doing even more damage.

If he'd had trashed one of the Golds, I'd have to spend 2 Turns getting it back, so I left myself a little vulnerable, but I hoped my strategy would deter him and his Pirate Mat already had 4 coins, so he was less inclined to attack.

[Empathy]

I never aim to dilute ship targets. Either out-rush it, trash your targets yourself and make money through actions or dilute his ship engine. You went for the third option in your game.

And I think that it's really the witch that won you the game. Silver+steward was definitely the right opening. You could have possibly opened with silver/embargo, because you saw him open with pirate ship, and embargoing the ship would have seriously diluted his engine while also helping with getting an early witch. That being said, steward is the overall better card.

Also, I don't think that game log tells you much about pirate ship.

The only improvement point I could propose in terms of ship management is that you would probably have preferred to have a second steward, in case he hits one of your gold. The likelyhood is very small, so actually getting 8$ with actions is not that important. But you don't want to get stuck with 5$ the turn after he hits your gold: you want to be able to buy a gold and return to provincing asap. Not to mention steward is just a plainly awesome card anyway. Did you have an empty turn to buy an extra gold or steward for security?

[Davio]

I could've bought an extra Steward on turn 5 where I bought a Great Hall.

I must say that in this game I wasn't trying to only dilute my deck, but employed other strategies like Witch (which he didn't buy) to dilute his deck, and of course used the coin from steward.


I guess the main question is just: How much do you worry about and build your strategy around an opponent with Pirate Ship?

[Empathy]

Short answer:

-in 2p games, not much. It rarely outraces a well-built other strategy unless it's some big-money low-card count one. Just quickly figure out if it hampers you. If on the contrary, it helps you, your tempo should make you win (and you'll figure out other counters as the game progresses).

-in 3p+ games: a lot. Thief and pirate ship are both powerful in 3p+ games. thief is the best gardens enabler out there, able to grow your gardens while shrinking other people's gardens. Pirate ship in 3p can build up consistently a +4$ by turn 7-8. Then you stop helping other people out and start having a lot of gold.

Long answer:
meh, that would be a whole article on pirate ship/thief and the rare situations where they are good, as well as the ways to counter them when they are bad (but need to be taken care of).

[guided]

I think my favorite thing I've ever done against Pirate Ship is to open Lookout/Steward and empty my draw pile by turn 5: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110411-134052-34815439.html

[pooka]

I tried to use pirate ship today and they outran me with great hall.  Hopefully I'll remember to bring the log tomorrow.  I'm not too flash at this yet, just so you're warned. 

[Empathy]

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110920-192831-7c2c7efd.html

If you mean this game, it's mostly the mint (trashing half his coppers and leaving him with virtually no treasure cards for most of the game) that countered your pirate ship. You just cleaned up his last few coppers. The thinning out with great hall helped, but I think he did that mainly for the peddlers, not the ship.

The peddler strategy then gave him a nice un-piratable source of $. He got gold again towards  the end (that he minted nicely) and your pirate ships could have hurt him at that point, except it was already too late (you should be greening and hence getting $ out of your ship at this point).

Don't go for pirate ship unless there is not much else on the board, or when the dominant strategy is very gold-intensive.

On a completely unrelated note, I really like his opening. I wonder though if horse trader + great hall would not have been better considering you opened with an attack. It avoids the 10% conflict chance and still puts you way ahead in the peddler race (especially if you happen to be able to use the horse trader as a reaction). Still, nice use of chancellor imo.

[kn1tt3r]

On a completely unrelated note, I really like his opening. I wonder though if horse trader + great hall would not have been better considering you opened with an attack. It avoids the 10% conflict chance and still puts you way ahead in the peddler race (especially if you happen to be able to use the horse trader as a reaction). Still, nice use of chancellor imo.

After his Pirate Ship opening I would have most certainly gone for Horse Traders, because it profits from Ship plays (regardless if he attacks or not) and gives +$ AND +buy (making Council Room unnecessary). And I agree, Great Hall would have been a nice partner in order to rush Peddlers, though I don't know if I'd noticed it at that time.

[pooka]

Ah, I missed the significance of the mint.  Yeah, I bought into Pirate Ship the first several turns.  I thought I was lucky to get $4 over and over like that, but I kept attacking and getting zilch.