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[Davio]

...you never go back?

Cards in supply: Chancellor, Coppersmith, Counting House, Fairgrounds, Hamlet, Potion, Stash, Tactician, University, Village, and Worker's Village
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/28/game-20110928-013103-b19e308f.html

I played this interesting game against an equally skilled (30+) player and we both immediately noticed the funky Tactician/Coppersmith(/Counting House) combo.

Wanting to get that Tactician asap, I opened Silver/Coppersmith. I think my opponent made a mistake by opening Village/Coppersmith.
Opening a plain Village seems so unnecessary to me, since it's essentially a useless cantrip in the beginning and the opportunity cost is too great at that point.

I get my Tactician one turn faster, but he gets to play it first. He chooses another Coppersmith and a Worker's Village with $16 to spend! He is looking to expand his combo. I get my first Tactician draw on turn 8 and decide to keep things simple with a Province and a Gold. I double Province on turn 10, he does likewise on turn 12.

From this point on, I realize it's going to be a shutout race. I needed to grab as many green as I could before his better engine would totally dominate me. In a game with no VP tokens, the Greens are the only source of VP and their number is limited.

I think this game demonstrates well the importance of fully committing to Green. By my switching to Green only mode, my opponent is almost always behind and while the number of Greens for him to grab and overtake me is dwindling, I just try to hold him off until there are no more Greens left. Because my opponent is behind, he can't snag the 2nd to last Province and allow me to end the game, he needs a lot more because of my shutout game plan.
On his turn 16, I already have 36 points to his 12 and he goes into double Duchy mode.

This game also stresses the importance of adjusting to the tempo of the game and adjusting the tempo yourself. As he expanded his combo, I decided to speed up my game and get some Greens so that when his combo got into gear, it would be too late. That's exactly what happened. I spotted an opportunity and seized it. This, I think, is what high level Dominion is about. You could always play a mirror match and let fate decide whoever wins, but reacting to an opponent and thwarting his plan is what makes Dominion fun for me. I'm always looking for sneaky ways to win, like piledriving the Estates in Grand Market games, those are the most fulfilling to me.

I finally get my much needed 5th Province in turn 25 and he commits Harakiri by buying the last one with some Estates.

[DG]

To be honest I think you just played it better. To my mind, the rest of the kingdom cards don't support the Tactician/coppersmith so it will have a first great hit and then tail off. Switching to gold seems a sensible move.

The opening village made it more likely that your opponent would play a tactician earlier, and more likely that the coppersmith would be in the tactician hand, so that wasn't luck. I'm not sure that I'd want to build a counting house, coppersmith, chancellor combination in any kingdom even with a tactician but if I was then the village would be a reasonable opening, or even better a hamlet.

[tko]

Well played, Davio.  I like seeing Chancellor getting some love.

I have never been able beat WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE (your opponent in that match).  I'm not a high level or anything and struggle competing against that level.  Just recently, I thought I had a chance... I used Familiar to dish out 7 of the 10 Curses, while he used Mountebank to give me 3 Curses and 6 Coppers.  It was a close match but I still couldn't get there, and what hurts is I likely would have bought the remaining Province for the win if he didn't.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110926-202253-5b537758.html

[Geronimoo]

You bring up a good point, but their might be better examples. Your opponent just went for a way too convoluted strategy while you just bought green at the right time realizing the mega-engine was going to be too slow.
(And Chancellor/Stash is probably the best bet for this board)

[HiveMindEmulator]

(And Chancellor/Stash is probably the best bet for this board)

Are you sure? This looks like a good setup for fairgrounds if you ask me (university, a bunch of villages, and a couple sources of +buy)... I'd probably go chancellor potion into university, get all the kinds of villages with coppersmiths, chancellors, counting houses, and tactician and go for triple 6VP fairgrounds turns. I imagine it would be able to work out ok.

With regards to the OP, I think the statement "the Greens are the only source of VP and their number is limited" is wrong. Fairgrounds are a significant source of VPs that can easily become cheap provinces as long as there are a lot of cantrips or villages and synergistic cards. As a result, I think this is not a good example of a board in which you want to go green fast.

[dan11295]

Well played, Davio.  I like seeing Chancellor getting some love.

I have never been able beat WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE (your opponent in that match).  I'm not a high level or anything and struggle competing against that level.  Just recently, I thought I had a chance... I used Familiar to dish out 7 of the 10 Curses, while he used Mountebank to give me 3 Curses and 6 Coppers.  It was a close match but I still couldn't get there, and what hurts is I likely would have bought the remaining Province for the win if he didn't.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110926-202253-5b537758.html

Played him to a draw a few days ago in http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110926-152839-19265ff5.html.

Deck was Alchemist, Chancellor, Embargo, Ironworks, Loan, Potion, Scout, Secret Chamber, Treasure Map, Treasury, and Wishing Well

I opened 5-2 vs his 4-3 going first however the only $5 was Treasury. I opened Treasury-Embargo vs Potion-Chancellor. As soon as he opened potion I decided to embargo the Alchemists which I did on turn 4 after he had purchased one. At that point was a fairly basic Treasury race.

[Geronimoo]

(And Chancellor/Stash is probably the best bet for this board)

Are you sure? This looks like a good setup for fairgrounds if you ask me (university, a bunch of villages, and a couple sources of +buy)... I'd probably go chancellor potion into university, get all the kinds of villages with coppersmiths, chancellors, counting houses, and tactician and go for triple 6VP fairgrounds turns. I imagine it would be able to work out ok.

You won't be able to pull that off without some kind of Smithy.

[HiveMindEmulator]

^I think you might be able to do it with the tacticians... The thing about fairgrounds is that if you're going fairgrounds, you don't get any provinces, so your opponent has to buy them *all*, which is going to take a long time. So it's okay to take over 20 turns to get the job done. Chancellor+stash is be better at finishing off provinces than other strategies, since it can keep drawing the stashes together, so it's questionable, but I think it might be possible to make fairgrounds work...

[Epoch]

How good IS Chancellor/Stash?  Is it really good?  It seems like it might be really good.  Is this something that can be simulated, Geronimoo, or does the simulator not know how to do it?

I presume that for Chancellor/Stash, you open Chancellor/Silver, and as soon as you have 2+ Stashes, you just get as many Chancellors as you can?  The goal is to make sure that you can cycle your deck as often as possible, and you don't care about collisions since your first hand won't collide and after that all you want to do is get a cycle?

[DG]

Interestingly, the stash is helpful to the tactician/coppersmith combo. By placing the stash outside the tactician turn you can increase the chance of getting copper + coppersmith in those 10 cards, and the stash is no better or worse elsewhere. The simulator won't get that right but it will put the stashes on top of the deck to support the basic stash strategy and there is even a simple stash/chancellor combo already listed. You can tweak and improve it yourself.

[Epoch]

Interestingly, the stash is helpful to the tactician/coppersmith combo. By placing the stash outside the tactician turn you can increase the chance of getting copper + coppersmith in those 10 cards, and the stash is no better or worse elsewhere. The simulator won't get that right but it will put the stashes on top of the deck to support the basic stash strategy and there is even a simple stash/chancellor combo already listed. You can tweak and improve it yourself.

Huh.  Yes, it is indeed pretty good.

And my strategy improves it a little (not a ton):

Code: [Select]

<player name="COMBO - Chancellor/Stash Epoch">
   <buy name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="5.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Stash"/>
   <buy name="Chancellor">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Chancellor"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Chancellor">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Stash"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>


[HiveMindEmulator]

^I think you can improve it further by stopping at 4 stashes. At that point, getting more chancellors is more important than getting more stashes.

The built-in chancellor/stash needs to be fixed. It buys only 1 chancellor and buys gold over stash...

[WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE]

This game really stood out to me too. I definitely showed it to a couple other people myself. I'm only half surprised to see a forum thread about it.

I'm really bad on boards like this, where the potential for a big turn or two could potentially be faster than a big money strategy. I don't have a good grip on which cards to prioritize. I think you made better decisions than me and that's why you won, but it probably isn't hard to do that on a board where there's a ton of combo pieces and I don't really have any kind of benchmark for which ones to get in which order and I'm just buying whatever feels useful (which hopefully explains the $16 Village Coppersmith turn).

I still stand by my opening though. On a board where I really only want to combo, I don't want any silvers getting in the way and having a $3 combo piece makes that decision easy. If the combo deck is unplayable (or not as good as a more straightforward strategy), then my opening is bad. Actually I didn't even realize that Chancellor was on that board and was another good combo piece until the middle of the game, so maybe opening Chancellor/Coppersmith is better for the combo deck. I still don't know what the actual best strategy for that board is. Either way, that was a really interesting board and it was one of the most fun games of Dominion I've played on isotropic (even if I did lose).

Oh and to the guy who embargoed the alchemists before I could get more than one: f u

[Davio]

Hey, WHARF, nice to see your point of view on this.

When I am presented with a complex board, my instinct usually is to just keep it simple. I'm sure this fails just as many times as it succeeds,but I try not to out think myself too much.

I picked up the Chancellor because I knew I wasn't going to have that many Terminals and I wanted to play my Tactician/Coppersmith as often as I could. I think I used it wrong at least one time when I discarded before running into Tactician, therefore decreasing my chance of drawing it the next turn and possible delaying it by an extra turn.

The Chancellor/Stash combo is indeed also an option, but because I normally don't buy Coppersmiths (also due to not having too much good supplies for it) I wanted to give this a try.

I wonder if, in this kingdom with no trashing it becomes increasingly hard for Wharf's strategy to combine the key components of his engine or if it starts to sputter as much (or maybe even more and maybe even less) as my simple enhanced BMU. I think I made the right choice with the Golds, because it gave me something decent to fall back on.

That's what I like about simple Treasure, no funky stuff, you get what you need.

[Davio]

Gotta love the old mathematical win.

In a game with no funky VP cards, just Estates, Duchies and Provinces, it's imperative to get your fair share of them. Otherwise, you could lose by mathematics, meaning there's no possible way to win anymore, no matter how long the game will continue.

With no trashing and no cursers there are 80 points in the supply. This means that you will win by default if you get 41 points, netting you 44 total if we're counting the original 3 Estates.

This makes grabbing those Provinces asap even more important. Not only are you scoring points, you're making it harder for your opponent to overtake you. With a 5-X Province lead, you only need 4 Duchies for the win.  If you manage to get 6 Provinces, it becomes almost impossible for your opponent to win, since he will be needing almost all of the other cards.

This is a nice example: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/20/game-20111020-055644-6a83abc1.html
My opponent spends the entire game getting his engine together: A basic +$ cantrip engine comprised of Markets, Bazaars, Cities and Conspirators. But by the time it gets into full gear, not enough VP cards are left.