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[Mean Mr Mustard]

Ok, I would like some feedback on an area of Dominion that I am struggling with.  Managing game flow is a skill that makes or breaks players and is really the core, in my opinion, of Dominion strategy.  This can mean anything from managing income, coin vs victory, terminal action density or many other things, but for the purpose of this post I would like to limit the definition to one area.

After looking over the kingdom cards and deciding a path to victory the game starts and you must try to implement your plan.  If you are lucky each buy comes at the correct pace and in a good order.  Turn 3, say, you have the $5 to buy that first Wharf or Minion, and further actions and buys seem naturally to build the perfect VP Engine and you cruise to victory.  Or if your luck is bad you hit $4 for too many early turns and fail miserably.  Or, and this is where I am struggling with my game, the luck mocks your plan and you have early $6 hands and must choose whether to build your engine or buy Gold, forestalling good engine cards to improve your coin density.  If this happens a lot in a game you are basically tossing your subtle or unsubtle strategy for a lame big money strategy; on the other hand, the early Gold can be a great boon.

I am not asking for card-specific advise or VP buying tips but rather strategy for mitigating the luck part of buying and building engines.  If what I am describing is not clear I will try to clarify it.

Jake

[theory]

Hmm.  I know what you're talking about: when all you really want is to hit $3/$5 for Fishing Village/Wharf and you keep running into $2/$6 and you don't know if you should be buying Courtyard/Gold or continuing with your engine.

The answer, I think, is to play along with your draws.  Usually, I tend to shape my strategy around what I end up buying, so that I make the most of what I have.  In other words, I identify cards that I want to prioritize, and then as the game goes on see how I can use what I've been buying to form a coherent deck.  If I get too much money, maybe I'll modify my deck into a Smithy-Big-Money type deal.

The problem, of course, is that sometimes the engine cards are more important than what you're doing, and you need to be underbuying and accepting the fact that you will have suboptimal engine buildup.  This is the cause of many of my losses.  Sometimes it's pretty obvious: you hit $6 on Turn 3, you need to buy Mountebank instead of Gold.  But it's usually more subtle, like, oh, all of a sudden, my opponent's Fishing Village/Wharf combo has caught up and decimated me and my Golds.  (It's like the Beyond Silver article, except applied to Golds...) 

My solution -- that I've been trying out for now -- is to stick to my guns (refuse to underbuy and just adapt my deck instead), but with a few exceptions for auto-win engines, engines that have no real competition because they are so good.  Torturer engines, Wharf engines, stuff like that, I will underbuy in order to make sure I can get into that engine.

Does that make sense?

[Mean Mr Mustard]

Yes, it does.  In fact, I move between these two strategies all the time.  Maybe it is just bad luck, but sometimes it seems like either way I lose.  Under buy and lose to a better economy or go with the flow of the cards and lose to a better tuned deck.  Generally I do stick to the latter.  Anyway, thanks Theory.  If you don't have a better answer I will just accept this as an aspect of the game I can't mitigate much and look to other areas for improvement.

[timchen]

I think one key point which have not yet been mentioned in making decisions in these scenarios is to watch out what your opponent is doing, and how is his/her draw. Watching the opponent is important, as you can from there decide whether you can afford to accept the unwanted draw as a slight delay of your original plan or that you must do something else.

I am usually more inclined to stick to my own plan, but one single early gold is actually not so bad. I will definitely start underbuying at the second $6 draw though. If what you can buy in the 3 in 5-3 split in the second shuffle is just a silver, the 6-2 split is actually not so bad since you can always either underbuy or get a gold.

[adf]

I haven't tried this, but I just thought of it. In the 2/6 scenarios that theory mentions, one can look at the log and do a sort of substitution: what would my turn have looked like if I'd gone Wharf instead of Gold with that 6? It's difficult to speculate beyond a single turn, and it's nearly impossible to speculate beyond that shuffle, but it could be a useful tool for getting a better sense of when one should underbuy.

[Stoc]

This choice is also very dependent on how helpful the out-of-band cards will or won't be for your deck. An early gold in a Fishing Village / Torturer deck will ultimately see some use and give you more buying power once you're drawing your deck. However, taking a Gold in a Minion deck will often hurt more than it helps in the long run.

I will say that I've had pretty bad luck abandoning/changing my strategy after a string of bad draws, but I ultimately feel like I would've lost even sticking to my guns (that's pretty much the nature of bad draws).

[WanderingWinder]

I'll usually go for the gold, but then again, gold is usually part of my strategy
I tend to play closer to big money more often than the other top players, so this isn't so much a big choice for me, but I do find that I am more comfortable "buying for less" the more I play.

[painted_cow]

The scenario Gold vs. insert important-5$-engine-card happens quite often. In my opinion it isnt that difficult to make the right choice. Basically you have to ask yourself, whether the engine is better than BigMoney-like Decks as a whole or not.

If you take the Gold then you will draw similar hands later on, when overbuying good 5$ cards will even do less sense and you end up with BigMoney, even if there isnt any Smithy-effect.

I think if you adapt too much for the given coins you maybe end up with the best buy for each turn individually, but not for the whole deckbuilding process.

[papaHav]

"perfect drawing" big money ain't so bad guys...

=]
i.e. never drawing $5

[The Archon]

I have generally played for the draw, in that I've bought gold instead of the $5 engine card (with the unanimous exception of Mountebank).  However, I'm beginning to see that this is often not wise. 

As painted_cow pointed out, the more early golds you buy, the more $6 hands you end up getting, and if you keep the pattern going, you end up with pretty much a big money deck.  This might be fine, except what I have been burned on more than once is missing out on an early and very crucial +buy card that I either have to spend way too much money on later (often too late), or just have to forgo and hope to beat my opponent on Provinces.  Usually, this causes me to lose. 

[DG]

When I read Mr Mustard's post I immediately thought of islands. They can really annoy me. I'll typically buy them when I want a thinner deck and there aren't any other useful 3 or 4 cost cards that I want to keep long term. When the bad draw inevitably comes along I'll get a series of hands giving me another 4 coins to spend. I already know I don't want any of the 4 cost kingdom cards. I already know I don't really want a silver as it'll thicken my deck. I probably don't want another island either as they could draw doubly badly, but I tend to get one anyway and the game is lost before they are out of my deck.

Anyway in answer to the general question you just have to make judgement calls at the time. I think it's a difficult part of Dominion. Don't let your opponents amass key cards. Focus on the attack cards and defences. Make sure you don't buy something that is actually detrimental to your deck. Have a think about the hand you're likely to draw next turn or the turn after and whether those draws will support a rethink or the original plan. Ideally you'd have thought about the unusual draws before starting play but sometimes, as with the island example, you don't actually get much choice.