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[Epoch]

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/29/game-20110929-083204-f1401765.html

A game against NinjaBus, clearly generally a greatly superior player to me, which I won, I think, not through incredible luck.

And this is sort of a comment to people who think that Scrying Pools are only useful in very narrow situations.  This is a board with no trashing and kind of awkward money-gaining Actions (Monument (terminal, obviously), and Market (too expensive to get a lot of early, low buying power)).  But Scrying Pool --> Hamlet --> Monument wins the game handily.

A lot of the credit for that actually goes to Monument itself, which amassed me 15 VP at the end of the game, and, I think, made the end-game impossibly awkward for NinjaBus.  He can't rush Provinces due to a deficit of more than 2 Provinces, and his deck will stall out if he tries to amass enough Duchies to counteract the VPs.  I suspect that the best bet would have been to swap into Monuments and tried to spam them (he had a mini-drawing-deck with Hamlets and Ghost Ships, not enough to cycle his deck consistently, but enough to draw the Monuments much more frequently than they would have "naturally" come up), but I don't think it's a very high-percentage play.

[ackack]

I wouldn't say it was luck, but there are a few things going on here.

- A big ol' pile of Monuments is indeed a pretty good result for Pool, and doesn't really suggest to me "wow, gotta get Pool all the time!"

- NinjaBus forgoes Gold on several early turns to buy things like: Ghost Ship, Market/Hamlet, Hamlet*4. Early on Ghost Ship may do something, but it's going to be drastically less effective against a Scrying Pool deck which can basically negate it for free. And it's not really clear why he's loading up on actions at all. If he has a lot of money in his deck and starts picking up Provinces earlier, there's no reason he can't have a good shot at 5/3 and then the game is a nailbiter. edit: my best guess for why he's picking things up that way is that his plan is based on cycling around to see the Ghost Ship often and maybe still play Horse Traders. So if it's a Ghost Ship based strategy, I think the main punchline is "Ghost Ship sucks against Pool."

[Epoch]

- NinjaBus forgoes Gold on several early turns to buy things like: Ghost Ship, Market/Hamlet, Hamlet*4.

I assume that the "Hamlet x 4" buy was an attempt to shut down my deck by denying me easy access to cantrips and the additional actions I'd need for Monuments.

Early on Ghost Ship may do something, but it's going to be drastically less effective against a Scrying Pool deck which can basically negate it for free.

Though I only ever did once, out of all the times that he Ghost Shipped me, get a situation where I could put back two Actions that I'd immediately redraw with Scrying Pool.  I agree that Scrying Pools have the potential to negate Ghost Ships, but in this game as played, almost every Ghost Ship he played hurt me pretty bad.

[Fangz]

I think his strategy was just too slow. (I suspect even a BM strategy would have done better vs you than what he did) What he should have done is load up on horse traders. Then since your strategy requires you to play an attack, he would have been able to draw lots of his cards each turn. I'll note it took you a long, long time to acquire your scrying pools.

[Epoch]

I think his strategy was just too slow. (I suspect even a BM strategy would have done better vs you than what he did) What he should have done is load up on horse traders. Then since your strategy requires you to play an attack, he would have been able to draw lots of his cards each turn. I'll note it took you a long, long time to acquire your scrying pools.

Perhaps, but the problem with "loading up on Horse Traders" is that they are still, at the end of the day, clashing terminals that trade two cards for $3.  You just don't want a ton of them in your hand.

The game ended on turn 19, with attacks from both sides.  I'm not super-convinced that that constitutes a painfully slow game.  My deck would have been faster if he hadn't gone Ghost Ship, and I would definitely have considered going Ghost Ship if it seemed like what I needed was to delay his deck a few turns.


EDIT:  PS, this bot (which is by no means precisely my strategy, but at least uses a broadly similar approach) crushes BMU, _Ghost Ship, and _Monument.

Code: [Select]

<player name="Epoch's Scrying Pool">
   <buy name="Potion">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Potion"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Scrying_Pool"/>
   <buy name="Ghost_Ship">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Ghost_Ship"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Market">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Market"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Monument">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Monument"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Monument">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Monument"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Hamlet"/>
         <extra_operation type="minus" attribute="1.0" />
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Silver"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
</player>

Though, of course, I have no idea how adept the simulator is at playing these cards.

[HiveMindEmulator]

^Your bot has no buy rule for hamlet...

[Epoch]

^Your bot has no buy rule for hamlet...

...That's true!  I completely intended to add one.

Well, here you go.  Now it crushes BMU and _Ghost Ship and _Monument even more thoroughly.

Code: [Select]

<player name="Epoch's Scrying Pool">
   <buy name="Potion">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Potion"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Scrying_Pool"/>
   <buy name="Ghost_Ship">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Ghost_Ship"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Market">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Market"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Monument">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Monument"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Monument">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Monument"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Hamlet"/>
         <extra_operation type="minus" attribute="1.0" />
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Silver"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Hamlet"/>
</player>

It, in fact, does so well against them that I suspect strongly that the simulator makes really bad decisions about how to play when hit by a Ghost Ship.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I think the interesting thing to take away from this is that even without the hamlets, it still beats BM ghost ship. In that version, only at most 5 non-scrying pool actions got purchased, and without any villages. This suggests that scrying pool can be good even if you don't trash OR get a ton of actions. Even just a few can be good enough in game where your opponent can't get a rush win, even without trashing.

Getting scrying pool sacrifices a bit of early tempo to buy the potion, but in no time -- even with only 5-6 actions -- scrying pool quickly becomes better than lab. It's generally at least as good as lab as long as your top card is not a treasure (even if it's estate then copper, discarding estate and drawing copper is in most cases (when you have no discard-for-benefit cards) just as good as drawing both). If you have a measly 5 actions, 3 estates, 7 copper, and a potion you still have 50% chance of being better than lab, and a reasonable chance of being double-lab or better, plus the attack...

[Epoch]

I think the interesting thing to take away from this is that even without the hamlets, it still beats BM ghost ship. In that version, only at most 5 non-scrying pool actions got purchased, and without any villages. This suggests that scrying pool can be good even if you don't trash OR get a ton of actions. Even just a few can be good enough in game where your opponent can't get a rush win, even without trashing.

In fairness, the Ghost Ship is a really big deal in terms of those results -- the bot can beat _Ghost Ship without either the Ghost Ship or the Hamlets, but with neither GS nor Hamlets, it loses badly to _Ghost Ship.

But, yeah, Scrying Pool is good.