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Author Topic: Act 1, Game 10 - Help!  (Read 2927 times)

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farsen

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Act 1, Game 10 - Help!
« on: June 12, 2013, 12:49:15 pm »
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Hi.

I am new to this great game, and I´m having a very hard time beating Squire Clayton in Act 1, Game 10, in the Goko Online Dominion game.
Problem is, that he is very aggressive, and buys alot of witches and militia early on. And to my big suprise, he still has the economy to buy plenty of gold cards. I´ve tried several times to copy his strategy, but i fail miserably :)
I also tried going with smithy/village, but that doesent help either. Can some of you please enlighten me, if I am overlooking a good strategy in this situation?

Thanks alot :)
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Grujah

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Re: Act 1, Game 10 - Help!
« Reply #1 on: June 12, 2013, 12:51:24 pm »
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Post the kingdom, please.

Village + Smithy is usually not that good.
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Drab Emordnilap

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Re: Act 1, Game 10 - Help!
« Reply #2 on: June 12, 2013, 12:53:19 pm »
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Kingdom cards: Smithy, Throne Room, Laboratory, Market, Witch, Chancellor, Village, Workshop, Feast, Militia
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DStu

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Re: Act 1, Game 10 - Help!
« Reply #3 on: June 12, 2013, 01:09:58 pm »
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OK, there are basically 2 routes here.
a) Big Money-Witch.  Buy nothing except money and 2 Witches, until you can afford Provinces. 
Variants here are:
- Open Feast to get to the Witch, but I think that is a bit weaker than just open Silver/Silver
- Open Militia/Silver to prevent your opponent from getting Witches. I don't know the starting decks here, but assuming 7 Coppers and 3 Estates, that might work. Problem here is that the Militia might collide later with your Witches, and with all the Curses flying aroung it's attack is not that strong, and often does nothing.

b) engine.  As there is no trashing and no sifting against a Witch, that will get pretty hard.  Probably not worth it, at least requires a lot of skill in engine-building.
You need lots of pieces to draw your deck, so Workshop seems key here. Anyway, you also must get to Witches because you don't want to eat all 10 Curses, you would prefer to win the split.  That means build up engine fast, and try to play the Witch(es).  Probably open Workshop/Feast, hope they don't collide, use Workshop to get Villages/Smithies, Feast for the Witch. Get a second WS, maybe a second Witch if enough Curses are left.
You probably will fall behind anyway, so go for the Duchies before getting the Provinces, a BigMoney deck filled with some Curses will have problems to get more than 5 Provinces, so you "just" need a better deck that can handle some Duchies (maybe WS->Feast->Duchy). Probably you want to build up as long as you can get away with it, TR, Lab, Market are all cards that will help you, but there are so many non-engine cards flying around without trashing and with Cursing, the longer I write about it the less I'm confident that an engine will do anything here if it's not played by some really experienced player. Dont' buy any Silver if you can get away with it, use Markets and one or two Golds for your income and rely on Workshop to get you your pieces for the engine.
Edit: Also Throne Room-Feast is a thing if you build an engine and can draw them together...
« Last Edit: June 12, 2013, 01:20:02 pm by DStu »
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ftl

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Re: Act 1, Game 10 - Help!
« Reply #4 on: June 12, 2013, 01:36:59 pm »
+1

OK, there are basically 2 routes here.
a) Big Money-Witch.  Buy nothing except money and 2 Witches, until you can afford Provinces. 
Variants here are:
- Open Feast to get to the Witch, but I think that is a bit weaker than just open Silver/Silver
- Open Militia/Silver to prevent your opponent from getting Witches. I don't know the starting decks here, but assuming 7 Coppers and 3 Estates, that might work. Problem here is that the Militia might collide later with your Witches, and with all the Curses flying aroung it's attack is not that strong, and often does nothing.

I've checked on the simulations at one point, opening Militia-Silver is better than silver-silver for Witch-Big-Money. At the very least, because there's a decent chance that your militia prevents your opponent from hitting $5 on turns 3 or 4, and that just decides the game right there.

That's the simple strategy here. Start with a single militia. Get a witch as soon as you can, even if you have $6 and can afford a Gold. Get a second Witch next time you have $5 after that, but don't prioritize the second Witch over Gold like the first one. Other than that, buy Silver and Gold. Maybe get a second Militia after all the curses are gone. Get Provinces whenever you hit $8 and have at least one Gold already. Get Duchies when the game is nearing the end - when you don't expect to draw those cards because the game will end before you do, so probably when there are about 3-4 provinces remaining, but that's a judgement call you'll have to make for when that's appropriate.

There's more advanced stuff available, you can maybe build a village/smithy/Throne Room/Market/Lab engine that draws past the curses, but trying that just seems like an exercise in futility against witch cursing and with no way of dealing with the curses.
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DG

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Re: Act 1, Game 10 - Help!
« Reply #5 on: June 12, 2013, 01:51:05 pm »
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I've put this through the simulator and a lot of the strategies come out pretty even. So if you start feast/militia/smithy, buy a witch or two, then take treasure and provinces, it's all much the same. Add some later markets and labs and it is still much the same. Smithy is usually good against militia, and feast can be good for getting an early 5 cost card, but since it there are labs and markets in the kingdom this probably balances it out for the militia. Sometimes cellars, villages and thrones can make something happen in witch games but the militia probably stamps down on all that here.

If you're having trouble beating the bot you might be getting the end game wrong. Quite often in curse heavy games you need to rush for duchies early but with smithy and witch to draw up treasures you can try to get majority of provinces as per usual.
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farsen

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Re: Act 1, Game 10 - Help!
« Reply #6 on: June 12, 2013, 03:30:48 pm »
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Thanks alot guys!

I´ve tried militia/money in the first rounds, and then the 2-witch and money strategy. I supplied with more militia/village/lab, and it worked the first time :)
I guess it works because you curse the opponent alot, and stops him from buying his cards with milita? Anyways, thanks for the help!
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Drab Emordnilap

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Re: Act 1, Game 10 - Help!
« Reply #7 on: June 12, 2013, 03:55:20 pm »
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Especially on a board with no way to get rid of Curses, getting Witch sooner than the other player is very important, because every Curse you give him not only hurts him, but also stops him from giving you that Curse later on.
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