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Author Topic: Gardens and Embargo  (Read 14177 times)

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jimjam

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Gardens and Embargo
« on: October 03, 2011, 09:07:13 pm »
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Let's say you have gardens and embargo in the set. The four plausible enablers of a gardens rush (I would put Market, Hoard as mid or late game gardens, and card such as hamlet and pawn are not enough for rushing) would be Workshop, Ironworks, Woodcutter, and Baron. It's debatable whether the $4s can actually be used effectively on their own.
Anyways, if it is the case that you are gardens rushing with the first two, then embargo may work to your benefit:
Obviously one may choose to embargo $5-8 kingdom cards (and gold and province), but perhaps the most important to embargo may be gardens.
Because your opponent will presumably get less gardens, and is aiming for a cleaner deck, they will be slowed down by garden buys much more than you will, especially if you are using workshops or ironworks as the primary way to get gardens. Moreover if you (or they) have played more than one embargo you may be able to count on curses being emptied if they do choose to buy gardens.
The opponent's usage of embargo might be workshops, coppers, or estates.
The first is not too effective, since you can just gain them with workshops.
The second one is more problematic, since you may not want to take on a large amount of curses early on. In that case it is probably best to not buy coppers, and count cards near the end.
The third is also not so effective. If the opponent does it late game you may have bought enough estates that a couple of curses will not affect much; if they do it early game then you might switch to buying embargoes, which should lead to a fast three pile ending (gardens, embargoes, curses). Of course, they could embargo the embargoes...

I haven't tested this out, unfortunately. Thoughts?
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ftl

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2011, 09:34:53 pm »
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How is ironworks 'debatable'? It's an awesome gardens enabler.

I would guess that an embargo on the gardens would suck for a gardener IF you're buying them with woodcutter or baron, but it would have no effect at all with either workshop or ironworks around (since you can just gain them).

An embargo on the coppers might be ...interesting. Not sure how it would play out. It would be annoying for sure, copper is an easy way to inflate a deck and you need zero-cost buys around and you need to keep buying some coins to stay up at the 2-4 range. With Pawn around, embargo on coppers is probably workable. Without pawn around, maybe not. Baron might be pretty good at getting around an embargo on coppers, because you'll be ending up at 4 whenever you get an estate-baron collision.

I'm pretty sure it would depend on what enablers are around.  With Ironworks, you can spam a lot of ironworks and then end up inflating your deck not with coppers, but with 2-4 cost actions. Depending on which ones are around, it might help get around an embargo-on-coppers or it might not.
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jimjam

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #2 on: October 03, 2011, 09:47:59 pm »
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I rather like ironworks for garden myself, though I've never been able to test it against somebody who actually tried to counter the gardens rush. One of theory's articles puts down baron and ironworks, since you can't double open them or buy them as easily. Ironworks/Embargo may be a good opening in that case.

I'm not too sure about Pawn. Presumably if you are buying Pawns or Hamlets you will be trying to get multiple buys with them, and that means copper.
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Empathy

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #3 on: October 03, 2011, 10:03:11 pm »
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A point in favor of embargoing your own gardens: you empty 2 piles in one, and prevent the other person from stealing your gardens. That, and buying a garden gives you 2 cards.

Downside is that you start with a bit less than10 point malus.

Soo, if your deck is say, 6ish gardens, 8ish curses, 10ish coppers, 5ish estates and 4ish random garden enabler (probably horse trader), that puts you almost at 40 cards and hence around 20ish points. Is that quick enough to steal a game?
Now having an indirect gainer like workshop/ironworks completely protects you from the curses, and prevents the other player from stealing you gardens if he's not gardening. But that's a completely different story, as then the problem is more finishing the piles quickly enough only with the gainer.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #4 on: October 03, 2011, 10:40:48 pm »
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Any talk of ironworks not being a good enabler of gardens is simply wrong. It's so powerful that there are EXTREMELY few boards (I've never actually played one) where it's not simply the dominant strategy.

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #5 on: October 03, 2011, 11:20:39 pm »
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Yes, Ironworks is the absolute best 2-card Gardens combo in Dominion.

I would doubt Embargo would be usefully incorporated into a typical Gardens strategy, since they rely on relentless tempo that generally leaves no time to dicker around with piles you don't plan to empty or play extra terminal actions.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2011, 12:17:46 am »
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In fact, I would say ironworks/gardens is just straight-up the best 2-card combo in dominion.
And on the embargo thing... it's slow, it slows you down, it hurts your vp, and you have to trash it to get use. Very bad to embargo gardens and go for them. Also not a great card to combat gardens though. And I guess embargoing province or something like that is good for a gardens deck sometimes, this would generally need to be in the mid to long-term gardens strategy, like in bureaucrat-gardens.

Davio

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #7 on: October 04, 2011, 03:26:52 am »
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Actually, the VP difference is minimal if the game lasts long enough since 8 Gardens and 10 Curses will net you just -2 VP, but there is one other key issue: the 3rd pile!

If you get all 10 Curses (8 off Gardens, 2 yourself) and the Estates, you don't even need the Workshops/Ironworks as 3rd pile, but I wonder if this is optimal or whether you want the game to end faster, possibly with less VP.
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Fangz

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #8 on: October 04, 2011, 08:49:42 am »
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I can't really see it as working. You can only embargo-deplete curses if you are buying the gardens, and if there are curses in your deck (plus estates, gardens, ironworks and all that guff, it can be very hard for you to reach $4.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2011, 01:09:04 pm by Fangz »
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Davio

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #9 on: October 04, 2011, 09:00:36 am »
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Ah yes, you only get a Curse when you buy, not when you gain.
My brain froze on that one.
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Empathy

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #10 on: October 04, 2011, 09:07:47 am »
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I agree, which is why I put that idea with lots of question marks. Most garden enablers (horse trader, baron) don't care about your deck having junk, however. Baron+gardens+embargo might actually work.

The point that buying embargo costs you a turn, and that it trashes itself is completely moot. The gain in cards in provides, and the fact that, without a garden enablers at 3, you would have gone for a crappy silver anyway, tells you that all you care about is finishing the piles as quickly as possible.

And as someone pointed out, if it prevents the other player from grabbing gardens, that means you'll have the full set of 8 gardens. That puts you with a huge headstart, given that you have all the "early" points, and two empty piles. Problem is emptying the third one, as someone pointed out.

Again, it's unclear to me how good or bad this would be. I'm pretty sure everybody's metrics are pretty off on this point, given that they keep comparing it to ironworks/garden, which is a trivially different strategy. Embargoing gardens with a gainer on board just means you want to prevent a BMX to steal your gardens, nothing more. It makes no sense to embargo gardens if two people are gardening, as it results in tempo-loss and otherwise a completely symmetric situation.

Obviously, the safer strategy for the gardener is just to embargo gold, the card BMX will buy most of.


edit: also, ironworks/island might beat ironworks/gardens. Goons/gardens should probably too, if you happen to get an early 6 (baron, or just lucky silver + 4 copper hand). ironworks/vineyard vs ironworks/gardens seems unclear to me.  So yes, ironworks/gardens is probably the best 2-card gardens combo, and it will often be dominant, but it's a bit more complicated than that.

edit(2): other interesting take: empty out the gardens pile and the embargo pile, and put all ten embargoes on green cards. Then just keep growing your deck. There is no way any other deck can outgrow gardens in points with only duchies (exclude duke/vineyard/goons etc... scenarios). Note that again, this only works if the other player is clearly avoiding gardens, which might be the case if there are none of the really powerful enablers.

edit(3): I guess I should post specific scenarios:
imagine a pool with a very mild garden enabler  (preferably a cantrip like worker's village or market, for example). Open embargo and that enabler. Assume the other player goes for BMX (say, BM smithy) because gardens doesn't seem powerful enough. Now  embargo gold on T3, and buy two embargoes. Next embargo provinces twice. Keep getting enablers and embargoing green cards. Next, go for gardens. The other player is probably going to stall, and you will have plenty of time to grow. Or he will bite in the sour apple, take the cursed provinces (maybe in the hope of trashing the curses away with a mild trasher). This should enable you to finish the game quickly. Regardless of whether the game lasts long or is quick, you could have an edge.

For baron+gardens+embargo:
Open barons+embargo. Embargo gardens. Even if the other player opened baron, he will probably switch to BMX (especially if he gets a lucky 6). Next, just load up on barons and estates, emptying the estate pile, while putting 1-2 embargoes on gold or province. Once the estate pile is empty (which shouldn't take long), you probably have a huge deck filled with 6ish barons and  lots of estates. Just methodically go through each of your barons and buy a garden.

Again, not claiming these strategies necessarily dominate. But they do go in the direction of the initial poster, and are actually on topic.


I am unsure why every gardens strategy has to be a rush. Again, I might be wrong on this point, but I do recognize a bias in this direction. What is true, however, is that a gardens strategy tries to end the game on 3 piles empty. This is not at all the same thing as rushing when embargo is on the board.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2011, 10:01:23 am by Empathy »
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #11 on: October 04, 2011, 12:19:35 pm »
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I agree, which is why I put that idea with lots of question marks. Most garden enablers (horse trader, baron) don't care about your deck having junk, however. Baron+gardens+embargo might actually work.

The point that buying embargo costs you a turn, and that it trashes itself is completely moot. The gain in cards in provides, and the fact that, without a garden enablers at 3, you would have gone for a crappy silver anyway, tells you that all you care about is finishing the piles as quickly as possible.

And as someone pointed out, if it prevents the other player from grabbing gardens, that means you'll have the full set of 8 gardens. That puts you with a huge headstart, given that you have all the "early" points, and two empty piles. Problem is emptying the third one, as someone pointed out.

Again, it's unclear to me how good or bad this would be. I'm pretty sure everybody's metrics are pretty off on this point, given that they keep comparing it to ironworks/garden, which is a trivially different strategy. Embargoing gardens with a gainer on board just means you want to prevent a BMX to steal your gardens, nothing more. It makes no sense to embargo gardens if two people are gardening, as it results in tempo-loss and otherwise a completely symmetric situation.

Obviously, the safer strategy for the gardener is just to embargo gold, the card BMX will buy most of.


edit: also, ironworks/island might beat ironworks/gardens. Goons/gardens should probably too, if you happen to get an early 6 (baron, or just lucky silver + 4 copper hand). ironworks/vineyard vs ironworks/gardens seems unclear to me.  So yes, ironworks/gardens is probably the best 2-card gardens combo, and it will often be dominant, but it's a bit more complicated than that.

edit(2): other interesting take: empty out the gardens pile and the embargo pile, and put all ten embargoes on green cards. Then just keep growing your deck. There is no way any other deck can outgrow gardens in points with only duchies (exclude duke/vineyard/goons etc... scenarios). Note that again, this only works if the other player is clearly avoiding gardens, which might be the case if there are none of the really powerful enablers.

edit(3): I guess I should post specific scenarios:
imagine a pool with a very mild garden enabler  (preferably a cantrip like worker's village or market, for example). Open embargo and that enabler. Assume the other player goes for BMX (say, BM smithy) because gardens doesn't seem powerful enough. Now  embargo gold on T3, and buy two embargoes. Next embargo provinces twice. Keep getting enablers and embargoing green cards. Next, go for gardens. The other player is probably going to stall, and you will have plenty of time to grow. Or he will bite in the sour apple, take the cursed provinces (maybe in the hope of trashing the curses away with a mild trasher). This should enable you to finish the game quickly. Regardless of whether the game lasts long or is quick, you could have an edge.

For baron+gardens+embargo:
Open barons+embargo. Embargo gardens. Even if the other player opened baron, he will probably switch to BMX (especially if he gets a lucky 6). Next, just load up on barons and estates, emptying the estate pile, while putting 1-2 embargoes on gold or province. Once the estate pile is empty (which shouldn't take long), you probably have a huge deck filled with 6ish barons and  lots of estates. Just methodically go through each of your barons and buy a garden.

Again, not claiming these strategies necessarily dominate. But they do go in the direction of the initial poster, and are actually on topic.


I am unsure why every gardens strategy has to be a rush. Again, I might be wrong on this point, but I do recognize a bias in this direction. What is true, however, is that a gardens strategy tries to end the game on 3 piles empty. This is not at all the same thing as rushing when embargo is on the board.


Not only are these strategies not dominant, they're not even good. I'm not comparing embargo/gardens to ironworks/gardens - there's no comparison. One is the strongest 2 card combo in the game, the other is worse than BM on almost every board. The point is that the embargo slows you down a LOT, exactly because you trash it, and of course the curses slow you down too if you're embargoing gardens. And without good enablers, gardens is too slow/weak anyway. With most enablers, you should be doing other things with your important time. Also, basically every enabler does care about you having junk in your deck, as you want to play those enablers often.
Okay, let's break down your specific strategies. Ironworks/islands I'm fairly sure would lose to ironworks/gardens, but at any rate it's totally irrelevant, because on any board you could choose between those strategies, you should be going for ironworks/island/gardens. Goons/Gardens will be far too slow to do anything against ironworks/gardens, even if you do get the goons on turn 3. Vineyards/ironworks is even slower - you'll never get nearly enough vineyards before the game is over.
Your strategy from edit2: by the time you empty the embargo pile and the gardens pile, the game is probably over and you've lost.
First strategy from edit3: I'm not sure, but they may still be able to just go big money and win. You'll be extremely slow to get the gardens, and they won't be that strong when you do. What I am sure of is that they can just cut you off from gardens by buying 5+ themselves and/or getting at least a significant number of them and scarfing up duchies, which they'll be much better at doing than you, 'cause you've wasted all this time with embargo.
Finally baron/gardens/embargo. In fact it does take quite a long time to get all the gardens, estates, curses, and 6ish barons. Long enough that the opponent would have all the provinces just playing BMX before you get there. They could even wait quite a long time and still win.
And certainly not every gardens strategy needs to be a rush, but games of dominion are fast generally, so usually you need to be fast to win.  But something like bureaucrat with gardens and being able to grab a couple provinces too is quite strong. But these are all more mixed strategies than straight-up gardens decks.

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #12 on: October 04, 2011, 02:06:40 pm »
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I am unsure why every gardens strategy has to be a rush. Again, I might be wrong on this point, but I do recognize a bias in this direction. What is true, however, is that a gardens strategy tries to end the game on 3 piles empty. This is not at all the same thing as rushing when embargo is on the board.

gardens is not at all about rushing.  it is about having full control over the ending of the game.  sometimes this will mean rushing piles, yes. but sometimes it will be about stalling the game and forcing your opponent to end it or sometimes it will be a delayed rush.  it depends heavily not only on the set but what your opponents strategy seems to be.
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guided

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #13 on: October 04, 2011, 03:32:29 pm »
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Gardens strategies tend to rush because if you give away 2 or 3 extra turns, oops, your opponent playing straight Big Money outscored you on Provinces alone.
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Empathy

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #14 on: October 04, 2011, 05:10:54 pm »
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Not only are these strategies not dominant, they're not even good. I'm not comparing embargo/gardens to ironworks/gardens - there's no comparison. One is the strongest 2 card combo in the game, the other is worse than BM on almost every board. The point is that the embargo slows you down a LOT, exactly because you trash it, and of course the curses slow you down too if you're embargoing gardens. And without good enablers, gardens is too slow/weak anyway. With most enablers, you should be doing other things with your important time. Also, basically every enabler does care about you having junk in your deck, as you want to play those enablers often.
Okay, let's break down your specific strategies. Ironworks/islands I'm fairly sure would lose to ironworks/gardens, but at any rate it's totally irrelevant, because on any board you could choose between those strategies, you should be going for ironworks/island/gardens. Goons/Gardens will be far too slow to do anything against ironworks/gardens, even if you do get the goons on turn 3. Vineyards/ironworks is even slower - you'll never get nearly enough vineyards before the game is over.
Your strategy from edit2: by the time you empty the embargo pile and the gardens pile, the game is probably over and you've lost.
First strategy from edit3: I'm not sure, but they may still be able to just go big money and win. You'll be extremely slow to get the gardens, and they won't be that strong when you do. What I am sure of is that they can just cut you off from gardens by buying 5+ themselves and/or getting at least a significant number of them and scarfing up duchies, which they'll be much better at doing than you, 'cause you've wasted all this time with embargo.
Finally baron/gardens/embargo. In fact it does take quite a long time to get all the gardens, estates, curses, and 6ish barons. Long enough that the opponent would have all the provinces just playing BMX before you get there. They could even wait quite a long time and still win.
And certainly not every gardens strategy needs to be a rush, but games of dominion are fast generally, so usually you need to be fast to win.  But something like bureaucrat with gardens and being able to grab a couple provinces too is quite strong. But these are all more mixed strategies than straight-up gardens decks.

My point about ironworks/garden was that people kept throwing that into the discussion as if it were vaguely relevant (basically the i/g discussion stemmed from an anecdote of the original poster and somehow dominated some people's posts). It's clear that if these two cards are present, the embargo essentially is useless besides annoying big money. Now you seem to argue that even that is not true. I can assure you that if you open 5/2, you will want to buy ironworks/embargo, not ironworks/estate or Ironworks/copper if you know you are going against BM. And I'm pretty sure you'll want to embargo gold or gardens in that case. It may sound trivial, but is actually relevant to the topic.

Now the initial discussion was about the interactions between gardens and embargo: trying to figure out when they could potentially interact. As I argued (and you agreed on this part, though you make it sound like it's your idea, when all you said was "omg, gardens/ironworks pawns"),  is that in the presence of gainers, you will not go for embargo, except maybe to annoy BM.

The point I was making is that, in the presence of low quality enablers, typically market/embargo or worker village/embargo, you can double buy/double play embargoes very early, on, severely embargoing the provinces before a standard BM strategy has had the chance to get one. Start embargoing gold. To get it's first province, BM usually needs 2 gold. That means two curses. That'll slow it down a bit. I'm pretty sure you should be able to distribute a curse on gold and 3 curses on provinces before BM gets it's first province. If that doesn't handicap your BM strategy, then I want your shuffling skills please. The point being that any tempo loss you have at the beginning will easily be compensated by the fact that you are slowing down the game a lot, and have the right deck shape to win a gardens race if he decides to switch. If he doesn't, you could win anyway. Again, needs to be tested, but trying to impose your "ironworks/gardens" metric on a game that plays completely different might be off. You might be right, but for the wrong reasons.

Now the the specific points:
- I insist. If you already have the points to win and just need to finish, whether the junk in your deck is curses or estates does not matter to you. Curses empty a lot faster than estates when something is embargoed. And horse trader doesn't care if the k crap cards in your deck are estates or curses. Now the question is whether finishing 3-4 turns earlier is worth the (quite significant) point difference. That depends on a lot of things. Saying curses are more trash than estate for the functioning of your (non baron) deck shows a serious lack of understanding of dominion mechanics. Sure, you want to hit your enablers more often. But you want to empty 3 piles. Assuming you finish on gardens, that means you will actually only have to empty 2 piles: whatever your first pile is, and the gardens/curse pile. So we essentially want to compare emptying 1 pile + estate + garden or 1 pile + garden/curses. Regardless of how you put it, if you don't care about the points given by estate (assume the other guy is building some kind of engine), the second scenario will end before the first (with enablers that don't gain nor interact with estates). Now whether that wins or not depends on the board. It probably doesn't but for a completely different reason than the one you gave: not because you hit your enablers less often.

-I think the island is the critical decision in a garden/ironworks/island pool. You have clearly not put an awful lot of thought into that one, just assuming that it, again, fits one of your preconceived schemes. Obviously both players will rush the ironworks pile, trying to get an edge on those. Assuming a 5-5 split, however, the next important strategic decision is whether to get more islands or more gardens. I am unsure what the answer is, though I would suspect the player that biases his selection a bit more towards islands might have an edge. Again, needs to be tested, but declaring this decision to be trivial seems like you rely on preconceptions a lot. They might happen to be true, but you certainly have not proved/thought about it.

-Goons/gardens with goons T3 means at least 6vp from goons. It takes 3 full deck cycles for ironworks T3 onwards to empty gardens. Goons can splash an iron work, or just steal gardens early on and should get a 3-5 split (at least every time he plays a goon he can grab a garden, so 3 cycles means 3 gardens). Depending on what else is on the board, he might very well win.

-ironworks/vineyard means a 5-5 split in terms of ironworks. If there is a good 3- action (ware house/cellar/pawn/hamlet) vineyards could play both on the gardens and vineyard front, but the vineyards will yield more points than estates. He might get a 3-5 or even 2-6 split on gardens, but the vineyards might overcome that deficit. The thing is, all these strategies can steal gardens from the gardener, because they fit their strategy too.

-Refer to the market/embargo opening. You don't need to empty the embargo pile to cripple BM. if you embargo gold on T3 and provinces from T5-T7 on, BM is not going to finish any time soon.

-Barons/embargo/gardens sounds too slow indeed if they get their early gold, as I assumed.

Gardens strategies tend to rush because if you give away 2 or 3 extra turns, oops, your opponent playing straight Big Money outscored you on Provinces alone.
I have yet to win a game with BM, and my ranking is OK. I would even go as far as saying that I win more games playing bridge-combo (usually against BMX) than with BM. Not that I disregard the strategy. It's a good baseline. But please, don't stifle creativity just because bots can't handle it. Sometimes you need to go a bit further than just \epsilon away from the equilibrium to find a new, potentially better one. Often you fail. But if you never try because of preconceptions, then you become a bot.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2011, 05:15:06 pm by Empathy »
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guided

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #15 on: October 04, 2011, 05:22:48 pm »
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Gardens strategies tend to rush because if you give away 2 or 3 extra turns, oops, your opponent playing straight Big Money outscored you on Provinces alone.
I have yet to win a game with BM, and my ranking is OK. I would even go as far as saying that I win more games playing bridge-combo (usually against BMX) than with BM. Not that I disregard the strategy. It's a good baseline. But please, don't stifle creativity just because bots can't handle it. Sometimes you need to go a bit further than just \epsilon away from the equilibrium to find a new, potentially better one. Often you fail. But if you never try because of preconceptions, then you become a bot.
You might consider adopting a different tone. I mentioned Big Money only as a baseline strategy that can potentially beat a lackadaisical Gardens deck. Many other real non-Gardens strategies that are better than Big Money will of course do even better.


If you feel Embargo can be a strong adjunct to Gardens, simulate or playtest your strategies. I am not sanguine that it will be an improvement, but maybe you can prove me wrong. In all your testing please do account for the possibility of the other player buying Gardens (which you are obviously aware of since you cite it as one possible benefit of buying Embargo).
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Empathy

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #16 on: October 04, 2011, 05:32:50 pm »
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Hi sorry about the tone. Maybe I should clarify something in that respect: I think people here are very smart and now how to play well, but really don't put a much of effort into their posts. Off topic comments, incomplete analysis and so on pollute some legitimate questions. Chances are, you guys are right: you have definitely have the better experience and intuition. I'm just not exactly sure why sometimes you use certain lazy arguments that cannot be true.

Back on topic. I agree that the other player can use gardens too. As stated in my first post, if both players go for a pure garden strategy, going for embargoes is a waste of time. If the other player does not go gardening however, embargo might be a useful addition. In the example of the market/embargo opening, if the other player, seeing the other green cards swamped with curses, decides to witch with a garden strategy, the gardener should have a head start: sure he wasted a lot of buys on embargoes. But he probably has 3-4 times the number of markets (and potentially other enablers) of the other player (embargoes do give $).

edit, @guided: Yes Sir! Will be careful to include that.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2011, 06:05:08 pm by Empathy »
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guided

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #17 on: October 04, 2011, 05:40:13 pm »
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I am just emphasizing that when you playtest your strategies, you should not (for any possible strategy you test) fail to note that the other player can snipe a few Gardens even if they aren't playing a Gardens deck.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #18 on: October 05, 2011, 02:33:54 pm »
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Not only are these strategies not dominant, they're not even good. I'm not comparing embargo/gardens to ironworks/gardens - there's no comparison. One is the strongest 2 card combo in the game, the other is worse than BM on almost every board. The point is that the embargo slows you down a LOT, exactly because you trash it, and of course the curses slow you down too if you're embargoing gardens. And without good enablers, gardens is too slow/weak anyway. With most enablers, you should be doing other things with your important time. Also, basically every enabler does care about you having junk in your deck, as you want to play those enablers often.
Okay, let's break down your specific strategies. Ironworks/islands I'm fairly sure would lose to ironworks/gardens, but at any rate it's totally irrelevant, because on any board you could choose between those strategies, you should be going for ironworks/island/gardens. Goons/Gardens will be far too slow to do anything against ironworks/gardens, even if you do get the goons on turn 3. Vineyards/ironworks is even slower - you'll never get nearly enough vineyards before the game is over.
Your strategy from edit2: by the time you empty the embargo pile and the gardens pile, the game is probably over and you've lost.
First strategy from edit3: I'm not sure, but they may still be able to just go big money and win. You'll be extremely slow to get the gardens, and they won't be that strong when you do. What I am sure of is that they can just cut you off from gardens by buying 5+ themselves and/or getting at least a significant number of them and scarfing up duchies, which they'll be much better at doing than you, 'cause you've wasted all this time with embargo.
Finally baron/gardens/embargo. In fact it does take quite a long time to get all the gardens, estates, curses, and 6ish barons. Long enough that the opponent would have all the provinces just playing BMX before you get there. They could even wait quite a long time and still win.
And certainly not every gardens strategy needs to be a rush, but games of dominion are fast generally, so usually you need to be fast to win.  But something like bureaucrat with gardens and being able to grab a couple provinces too is quite strong. But these are all more mixed strategies than straight-up gardens decks.

My point about ironworks/garden was that people kept throwing that into the discussion as if it were vaguely relevant (basically the i/g discussion stemmed from an anecdote of the original poster and somehow dominated some people's posts). It's clear that if these two cards are present, the embargo essentially is useless besides annoying big money. Now you seem to argue that even that is not true. I can assure you that if you open 5/2, you will want to buy ironworks/embargo, not ironworks/estate or Ironworks/copper if you know you are going against BM. And I'm pretty sure you'll want to embargo gold or gardens in that case. It may sound trivial, but is actually relevant to the topic.
It is trivial, because you're winning in this situation against big money 100% of the time anyway. Not that this is really where our disagreement is.

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Now the initial discussion was about the interactions between gardens and embargo: trying to figure out when they could potentially interact. As I argued (and you agreed on this part, though you make it sound like it's your idea, when all you said was "omg, gardens/ironworks pawns"),  is that in the presence of gainers, you will not go for embargo, except maybe to annoy BM.

The point I was making is that, in the presence of low quality enablers, typically market/embargo or worker village/embargo, you can double buy/double play embargoes very early, on, severely embargoing the provinces before a standard BM strategy has had the chance to get one. Start embargoing gold. To get it's first province, BM usually needs 2 gold. That means two curses. That'll slow it down a bit. I'm pretty sure you should be able to distribute a curse on gold and 3 curses on provinces before BM gets it's first province. If that doesn't handicap your BM strategy, then I want your shuffling skills please. The point being that any tempo loss you have at the beginning will easily be compensated by the fact that you are slowing down the game a lot, and have the right deck shape to win a gardens race if he decides to switch. If he doesn't, you could win anyway. Again, needs to be tested, but trying to impose your "ironworks/gardens" metric on a game that plays completely different might be off. You might be right, but for the wrong reasons.
I'm NOT trying to impose any kind of ironworks/gardens metric. I'm speaking from experience; I've played more games of dominion in general than maybe a dozen people in the world, methinks. And I play gardens all the time, when it's even halfway viable. I've lost to a gardening opponent when not going gardens myself I think once. So I have actually given it a lot of thought and tests.
First off, big money is usually not so good to start with. The tempo loss you have at the beginning is bigger than the tempo loss they have. If you really block up the money path to province (which you can do on maybe half the boards out there, maybe a little more since you've already specified three cards), then they can just buy gardens and win. They'll have more gardens than you, since you're really not in a good position to buy many of them very quickly (not having the money in your deck because you wasted time on embargoes). They'll actually also have like at least as many cards as you, having not trashed embargoes. You're seriously underestimating the time it takes to get all these embargoes out. Let's see, it takes 4 buys, and then you have to wait for them to come in the reshuffle, and then actually play them. So realistically, you set this up at earliest turn 8, probably later. And at that point, what do you have to show for yourself? A couple of weak enablers and your opponent is slowed. And you've got a deck that isn't in great shape to start buying gardens anytime soon yourself.
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Now the the specific points:
- I insist. If you already have the points to win and just need to finish, whether the junk in your deck is curses or estates does not matter to you. Curses empty a lot faster than estates when something is embargoed. And horse trader doesn't care if the k crap cards in your deck are estates or curses. Now the question is whether finishing 3-4 turns earlier is worth the (quite significant) point difference. That depends on a lot of things. Saying curses are more trash than estate for the functioning of your (non baron) deck shows a serious lack of understanding of dominion mechanics. Sure, you want to hit your enablers more often. But you want to empty 3 piles. Assuming you finish on gardens, that means you will actually only have to empty 2 piles: whatever your first pile is, and the gardens/curse pile. So we essentially want to compare emptying 1 pile + estate + garden or 1 pile + garden/curses. Regardless of how you put it, if you don't care about the points given by estate (assume the other guy is building some kind of engine), the second scenario will end before the first (with enablers that don't gain nor interact with estates). Now whether that wins or not depends on the board. It probably doesn't but for a completely different reason than the one you gave: not because you hit your enablers less often.
Once again, embargoes to empty curses is not actually faster than grabbing estates, because you're wasting time buying the embargoes, playing the embargoes, and not buying other things. Also, your first assumption is that you have the points you need to win, which you only will if your opponent is, well, an idiot and ignoring you. That 18 VP of difference is HUGE. That's three provinces different. So it's a mistake on BOTH the speed and points front.

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-I think the island is the critical decision in a garden/ironworks/island pool. You have clearly not put an awful lot of thought into that one, just assuming that it, again, fits one of your preconceived schemes. Obviously both players will rush the ironworks pile, trying to get an edge on those. Assuming a 5-5 split, however, the next important strategic decision is whether to get more islands or more gardens. I am unsure what the answer is, though I would suspect the player that biases his selection a bit more towards islands might have an edge. Again, needs to be tested, but declaring this decision to be trivial seems like you rely on preconceptions a lot. They might happen to be true, but you certainly have not proved/thought about it.
Maybe you should know what you're talking about before telling someone they haven't put thought into things. Are you really trying to say that I was wrong to say that Ironworks/Island/Garden is the dominant strategy? REALLY? (I've actually got 5 games in the council room DB with these three cards, and have spent a lot of time simming this actual set of three cards besides). It's actually quite a nuanced tactical thing. Whether you want more gardens or islands depends on what your opponent is doing. Generally you don't actually have the time to play the islands so much, and you can often get the gardens up to 3 points, so that's usually what you want to go with. But with multiple ironworks in hand, obviously grab islands. And yeah, it's pretty trivial in that case. And I certainly have thought about it.
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-Goons/gardens with goons T3 means at least 6vp from goons. It takes 3 full deck cycles for ironworks T3 onwards to empty gardens. Goons can splash an iron work, or just steal gardens early on and should get a 3-5 split (at least every time he plays a goon he can grab a garden, so 3 cycles means 3 gardens). Depending on what else is on the board, he might very well win.
Except he has no chance. Seriously, play it (again I have); it's not even close. You don't get a 3-5 split. You might get a 2-6 split but it's lucky if you do. Ironworks/Gardens player just has to know what he's doing and not wait too long to get gardens.

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-ironworks/vineyard means a 5-5 split in terms of ironworks. If there is a good 3- action (ware house/cellar/pawn/hamlet) vineyards could play both on the gardens and vineyard front, but the vineyards will yield more points than estates. He might get a 3-5 or even 2-6 split on gardens, but the vineyards might overcome that deficit. The thing is, all these strategies can steal gardens from the gardener, because they fit their strategy too.
You really don't have the time to get 5 ironworks and other good 3 actions and potions and vineyards and gardens and enough actions to make it even close to worth it before the game ends on turn 13 or so.

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-Refer to the market/embargo opening. You don't need to empty the embargo pile to cripple BM. if you embargo gold on T3 and provinces from T5-T7 on, BM is not going to finish any time soon.
I don't know why you think market is a good enabler of gardens. I mean, it's not bad, but it's not so great. First off, those are two pretty huge assumptions about being able to get those embargoes down. Again, there are many other ways of getting a deck to provinces other than gold, even with big money variants. And you're wasting at least as much time as they are. And, again, importantly, you are leaving yourself open to your opponent grabbing the gardens out from under you.

Empathy

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #19 on: October 05, 2011, 05:40:31 pm »
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It is trivial, because you're winning in this situation against big money 100% of the time anyway. Not that this is really where our disagreement is.
Agreed ^^. As said, it just seemed to distract people.

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I'm NOT trying to impose any kind of ironworks/gardens metric. I'm speaking from experience; I've played more games of dominion in general than maybe a dozen people in the world, methinks. And I play gardens all the time, when it's even halfway viable. I've lost to a gardening opponent when not going gardens myself I think once. So I have actually given it a lot of thought and tests.
First off, big money is usually not so good to start with. The tempo loss you have at the beginning is bigger than the tempo loss they have. If you really block up the money path to province (which you can do on maybe half the boards out there, maybe a little more since you've already specified three cards), then they can just buy gardens and win. They'll have more gardens than you, since you're really not in a good position to buy many of them very quickly (not having the money in your deck because you wasted time on embargoes). They'll actually also have like at least as many cards as you, having not trashed embargoes. You're seriously underestimating the time it takes to get all these embargoes out. Let's see, it takes 4 buys, and then you have to wait for them to come in the reshuffle, and then actually play them. So realistically, you set this up at earliest turn 8, probably later. And at that point, what do you have to show for yourself? A couple of weak enablers and your opponent is slowed. And you've got a deck that isn't in great shape to start buying gardens anytime soon yourself.
Again, I am not criticizing anybodies skills or analysis, just the laziness of the responses. Maybe I got lazy myself in my criticism, always invoking the ironworks/garden metric. Your answer is already a lot more detailed, enjoyable and instructive to read to me. I still disagree on some points, but start converging to your view. On a market/embargo split, you should get 4 embargoes by turn...5 (embargo t1, t3+t4(market +1buy), t5), as well as played 1 by t5 (on gold, before the other player had a chance to get gold) and most of the others within the next 3 turns (minus collision). In the mean time, you are 3 cards behind on the other player assuming he didn't go for a +buy strategy (again, we are assuming he isn't going for gardens to start off with). You probably have 3-4 markets by the time you played your embargoes (they do give +2$). So you are 3 cards behind but have 2-3 more markets than him. So your growth rate is much higher (2n > n+3 very quickly). The moment the other player goes for gardens, you should be able to react. Then it gets more complicated to explicitly think of the strategy, given that it depends on money outcomes and how much the other guy tries to steal gardens. If he switches to full garden, you should win, because his deck will clog, and even with a 3-5 split in your disfavor, you should grab more estates and grow faster, as well as have better control over when the game ends (which is crucial due to the roundup effect).

In essence, my point is that an initial investment of 2-3 buys is not much if you are going the buy route much earlier than your opponent, if it gives you control over the direction the game is heading. This depends on how flexible your opponent is, but I still think it's an interesting enough concept to think about, even if not many boards permit it.

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Once again, embargoes to empty curses is not actually faster than grabbing estates, because you're wasting time buying the embargoes, playing the embargoes, and not buying other things. Also, your first assumption is that you have the points you need to win, which you only will if your opponent is, well, an idiot and ignoring you. That 18 VP of difference is HUGE. That's three provinces different. So it's a mistake on BOTH the speed and points front.
Again, I agree on the point side. The difference is high. Speed is not an issue. You only need to play 1 embargo, and play 1 embargo to get 8 curses attached to the 8 gardens. If you measure purely pile emptying speed, I cannot see horse trader/embargo go slower than just horse trader (assuming no conflict on the first cycle, or that the next best strategy would have had a conflict too).


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Maybe you should know what you're talking about before telling someone they haven't put thought into things. Are you really trying to say that I was wrong to say that Ironworks/Island/Garden is the dominant strategy? REALLY? (I've actually got 5 games in the council room DB with these three cards, and have spent a lot of time simming this actual set of three cards besides). It's actually quite a nuanced tactical thing. Whether you want more gardens or islands depends on what your opponent is doing. Generally you don't actually have the time to play the islands so much, and you can often get the gardens up to 3 points, so that's usually what you want to go with. But with multiple ironworks in hand, obviously grab islands. And yeah, it's pretty trivial in that case. And I certainly have thought about it.
Ok, so the information I was missing was that the game would end with both players having roughly 30 cards. To me, ironworks=>island had more synergy, because once you have a certain mass of islands/ironworks in your deck, you have a high chance of drawing an action on your ironworks draw, and missing an ironworks or island on such a draw would nasty. But I guess the game is fast enough and the point difference between island and gardens big enough to incur that risk. Again, that seems unclear at first to me: a full cycle of 3-4 islands effects should make your next deck cycle much faster by decreasing your deck count and increasing moneyness. But if the increase in ironworks plays (because of not fizzling on drawing one on another ironworks and because of deck thinning) doesn't have time to kick in, my point is moot. 

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Except he has no chance. Seriously, play it (again I have); it's not even close. You don't get a 3-5 split. You might get a 2-6 split but it's lucky if you do. Ironworks/Gardens player just has to know what he's doing and not wait too long to get gardens.
If you get gardens too early (rather than maximizing growth by getting ironworks), the game will last longer, which helps the goons player vp wise while the IW player gets estates. I am still unconvinced this is trivial. You might be right, but ironworks needs to get ironworks before greening, and goons should be able to grab what it needs to grab in that time.


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You really don't have the time to get 5 ironworks and other good 3 actions and potions and vineyards and gardens and enough actions to make it even close to worth it before the game ends on turn 13 or so.
It depends on the 3-drop. Warehouse for example, would make it so you could entirely skip the estate buying phase and just go to vineyards. the gardens deck then has to empy the estate pile on his own, which will go slower. You can have 3-4 warehouses just because they are a better way to use 3$ then silver.

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I don't know why you think market is a good enabler of gardens. I mean, it's not bad, but it's not so great. First off, those are two pretty huge assumptions about being able to get those embargoes down. Again, there are many other ways of getting a deck to provinces other than gold, even with big money variants. And you're wasting at least as much time as they are. And, again, importantly, you are leaving yourself open to your opponent grabbing the gardens out from under you.
Hm, I was trying to argue that embargo could turn a decent enabler into a better ones if the other dominant strategy has enough choke points. The point is that the +buy both helps the embargo buying phase, and make sure you are set up correctly to grow faster during the gardening phase. I agree that it is far from easy. But I think that while both players will lose a lot of time, the other player will end up with more moneyness, and you with more of a buy engine.  Now it is true that you have to both grow and consistently get 4, but +buy helps both in growing and in controlling more finely the end of the game, which is crucial (ending at the right turn can make for a 4-5 point swing).


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rrenaud

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #20 on: October 06, 2011, 03:08:01 pm »
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Even though the OP got a lot of flak, I think the addition of embargo to a gardens/workhop set makes gardens/workshop more viable, and it's not something I thought about a priori.

OTOH, it might even hinder a woodcutter/gardens strategy.
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jimjam

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #21 on: October 08, 2011, 02:46:59 am »
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It's all good, it was a lengthy discussion for just a little speculation on my part.

I think emptying embargoes is definitely not a go-to strategy.
But open 1 embargo, block gardens. Lose one turn, one card, to probably keep all of the gardens. Seems like a good deal to me.
2-3 to also hit gold/province? Maybe, maybe not.
If your opponent reacts emotionally and starts raining embargoes on estate, copper, enablers, THEN emptying embargoes is a solid choice.
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ftl

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #22 on: October 08, 2011, 04:39:51 am »
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But open 1 embargo, block gardens. Lose one turn, one card, to probably keep all of the gardens. Seems like a good deal to me.
2-3 to also hit gold/province? Maybe, maybe not.
If your opponent reacts emotionally and starts raining embargoes on estate, copper, enablers, THEN emptying embargoes is a solid choice.

Isn't there a problem with this? If you embargo gold, or gardens, or anything... the opponent has the option to just go for gardens themselves, and they'll be ahead because they didn't waste time getting an embargo. Especially if you *open* embargo.
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Empathy

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #23 on: October 08, 2011, 09:08:41 am »
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But open 1 embargo, block gardens. Lose one turn, one card, to probably keep all of the gardens. Seems like a good deal to me.
2-3 to also hit gold/province? Maybe, maybe not.
If your opponent reacts emotionally and starts raining embargoes on estate, copper, enablers, THEN emptying embargoes is a solid choice.

Isn't there a problem with this? If you embargo gold, or gardens, or anything... the opponent has the option to just go for gardens themselves, and they'll be ahead because they didn't waste time getting an embargo. Especially if you *open* embargo.

Agreed, embargo in a mirror match is a waste of time. If you are the second player however, and buy embargo on T2 for example, you could be in the interesting situation where the other player picked the wrong card to go for gardens. He could have either gone for a non-garden strategy, or a +buy one when you went for workshop, as rrenaud pointed out. Then you will have wasted one turn and he one or two. The main point is, you have control over the direction the game is heading, and this seems to be an important point in garden games: who fixes the tempo/rules of the race. The more inflexible the other player, the better.

I could also imagine embargo on estate to be a good way to make a bureaucrat-gardens deck eventually have an edge on a baron/woodcutter one. You'd have to embargo embargo however, or he will try to empty the other cheap pile. The basic intuition behind this claim being that bureaucrat seems to have better long-term chances of grabbing duchies, and does not want the game to end on estates. Not sure what the initial winning probabilities are, and how much this would affect them however. If the other player bites the sour apple and is confident to have more points despite estates being worth  0 points (but 2 cards!), then consider embargoing it twice later on (when there are 5ish estates left?). This probably needs to be refined.

Which makes me think: how does embargo work on the simulator?
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DG

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Re: Gardens and Embargo
« Reply #24 on: October 08, 2011, 09:09:38 am »
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If there's one card which is rather pointless to discuss in pre-prepared strategies, isn't it embargo?
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