These are comments to both of you:
First game:
The turn 3 militia does the damage! If you can guarantee it hits denies the only 5-coin hand from turn 3-4 every game, it is probably worth it. Or, maybe just maybe worth it. Regardless, it makes it at least very playable - the problem is that this won't happen *that* often (what, 40% of the time or something?), and the potential advantage of when it hits isn't as big as the potential advantage the other way when it doesn't.
Adam goes Highway before Wharf. This has bot to be a pretty big mistake. Just in general in engine-building, you build the engine up before looking for economic effects. Of course, this lets you IW into 5s, which is quite nice, BUT A) You need some draw (and better to get it early); B) You actually have to connect Highway and Ironworks in the same hand for this to work, and that's unlikely without draw; C) you want a pretty good number of WM anyway, so hitting this combo right out of the gate isn't so huge.
At 3:30, Qvist puts the cards back in what I believe to be a bad order. Generally, you want to get the Wandering Minstrel next, so that you can draw whatever it leaves behind with your Highway *this turn*.
At some point a little after this, Adam says "They would have told me to get a highway." Well, I don't know about others, but I (and at least some of them) would have said Wharf before this, and wharf here. You need the draw.
4:40 There is a key mistake from Adam. He puts the Ironworks below the Wandering Minstrel. So, why is that bad here? Well, it triggers that bad reshuffle you talk about a few seconds later, which led to the ironworksing of an estate just for draw, which isn't something you want to be doing. It also does very little for you now - the wandering minstrel isn't letting you have the actions you need to play more terminals or anything. And it makes your next turn worse. So this is a pretty clear and significant mis-step.
Then towards the end of the game, or maybe after it was over, Adam says "I don't think I could've done better at all." I assume you mean, apart from IW a duchy instead of estate?
I've covered what I think some of your other problems were, and I think you did get a little bit of bad luck. BUT probably the biggest thing from this is that mindset; this is a very complex and complicated board, and definitely one which is fluid and dynamic and in which you need to adjust to things as they are happening. On such a board, I would never feel confident that I have played perfectly. Indeed, I don't feel very confident that I've played perfect, really ever, and approximately perfect, not unless it is an extremely simple board where there just aren't many options at all, and one of them is clearly standing out - and is also highly simple. Now, there are some situations where I recognize I couldn't have won no matter what (I once played a dry sea hag board where my hag got hagged on the first three shuffles... I don't think I played it perfect, but it would be very hard to come back from that), but these are just very rare things. Stef has said this before, and while maybe I am not quite so far as him there, it's really not a good mindset to have. Okay, during and right after a game, though, it is quite natural to *feel* this way, just as long as some part of you rationally understands it's unlikely.
By the way, this actually does end up being pretty close, and I am not entirely convinced you needed to blow things up like that. Okay, probably you are just lost anyway, but even with these errors, it's really not *that* far off...
Incidentally, I suspect you would optimally like something like 2-3 silver, though it is a bit tricky to tell. Certainly you don't want to buy really any for more than $3.
Game 2:
Very early, Adam says "If you get an Ironworks, I would get an Ironworks." This strikes me as illogical. It seems to imply that you think in the IW vs militia cross-match-up, you would rather have ironworks (else you'd get militia here). But if that were the case, wouldn't you get ironworks against the opposing militia? The only thing I can think of is that you think that there is somehow a first player effect that means it is better for p2 to mirror because he needs to be able to hit 5 or something. Not only do I think that is wrong on this board (especially that makes you always want to mirror), and in general, but if this *were* the case, it seems to be a 1st-player advantage that would go against your comment that 'this is nice' - indeed, if you are being driven into mirroring, then it's not nice at all - you aren't taking 2nd player's only advantage of reacting/adapting, but you are following and being dictated to.
10:30 So here, IW would have been much better than militia. Okay, this is a rather dramatic example, and just because it happened here doesn't necessarily prove anything, BUT the point I want to make here is not so much that it is the $2 you aren't really needing here (though in this case they are indeed wasted), but the terminal in your deck, which dissuades you from going wharf (which I nevertheless would have done), and which puts you behind on WM to support these terminals as well. It's actually pretty significant.
Shortly after this, Adam makes a comment about not complaining about his militia sliding to turn 3 as P2. Well, of course it is possible that this can be a disadvantage, as early denial is more impactful than later denial, on the other hand, you are more likely here to hit something that he doesn't want to discard. So in a good number of ways, you have more potential to be damaging. Is that worth it? I have found that in general, this attack is about the closest you're going to find to average first-player advantage as you will get, so I don't think that's something particularly complainable-about anyhow.
At some point a bit after this, Qvist counterfeits a silver and ends up with $9 "I can't count, I thought I have 10(!)" Here, you could possibly have counterfeited counterfeit and the silver to get to 10, though to be fair this is not likely to be worth it.
13:50 You are going crazy on the wharves here, Adam. Look how many terminals you have for your villages. It's not so surprising that this causes you problems. I would make one, quite possibly two, of these highways instead.
15:30 I was going to say something here, then you worked it out and made the right play. Nice!
17:55 I'm pretty sure you want to ironworks something here before pitching the hand - it's not so likely that this will come back in the reshuffle meaningfully for you, and you basically just toss a nice card.
18:45 No! You have enough highways to ironworks a province here, and that is what you want to do! This will also shuffle you towards your next reshuffle faster, which is good in the short term, too. But most importantly, the game isn't going to last long enough for that wharf to be meaningful. Here is where you need some of that tactical vision to know that, even though the piles don't look all that low at the moment, you are both playing such explosive decks that they really could dwindle. Indeed, I am not sure, but I would at least have considered going heavy into duchies after IW the provinces. Well, would have had to see what was drawn and take stock.
20:30 Qvist 'should' have counterfeited the counterfeit here - it gives $1 more, which is irrelevant, but it also gives 1 more buy, which... is also irrelevant as he wins anyway, but could have been another duchy. Well, can't really fault a play that forces win on turn with total assurance.
Adam, you absolutely *can* get lucky/unlucky twice in a row. However, you are just being outplayed here. You aren't building quite optimally. But mostly it is a tactical thing. You are making subtle but important play errors, and you are not adjusting to what is happening. Let's be frank here - this stuff ain't easy. It's what makes Stef really great, in large part. The tactics, the adjustments.
It's why you shouldn't really trust the simulator here - there are too many intricate play decisions it is going to get wrong, potentially with ironworks gains, play orders, and especially WM put-backs, as well as being able to adjust the buys based on how well you're deck is coming together and what the other player is doing, as well as how his deck is coming together. Timing in such games is really complicated, and it's not so easy to write a script for it.
Oh, also counterfeit and minion have some non-programmatic decisions here. Let's look at what Qvist is doing. He is going for counterfeit thinning into a highway-based deck which abuses the ironworks interaction, uses Wandering minstrel to grease it along, and knocks some minions to help it reload. Since treasures aren't really key cards, this all actually comes together quite nicely. And militia fits more or less quite well in this game plan, much more so than yours. I think that it is a little worse than the wharf-based play, but you know, it is much more creative, in my view, and I am not sure that it's worse. And most important, Qvist is playing it pretty well tactically, which in such games covers for strategic shortcomings rather a lot - and I don't think the strategic gap is actually all *that* great here.
