I had hoped for more illuminating responses, but I guess that's party due to me not asking any specific questions, which I deliberately refrained from doing because I think this loss is indicative of a huge blind spot in my dominion understanding, and I can only ask questions in terms of things I
do understand. Ah well, here's my attempt to probe a bit further:
First, Fool's Gold: I really really really find this the most complex and perplexing card in the entire game. Whenever I pursue it, I lose to something ignoring it. When I ignore it in favor of something else, I get beaten handily by a FG strategy. The best solution I can think of is to just resign when it shows up to save some time and frustration, but the problem with that is that it won't make me a better player. I have read the
Fool's Gold article, but it only mentions obvious stuff that anyone can figure out on his own, and reduces the meat of the matter to a mere afterthought:
Doesn’t work with:
...
Fancy engines
My whole problem is that I consistently misjudge what engine is fancy enough to beat FG.
On to the actual game: is Remodel/FG better or worse than Storeroom/FG? And was his strategy really the best one? It still seems slow to me, and if I had had my Remodel in hand together with a Province at any point in the game (and in particular, if he hadn't been able to discard it on T17), I would have trashed Province-Province and he couldn't have won anymore.
Scrying Pool/Candlestick Maker is very powerful, particularly with some trashing.
Ten Fool's Golds in a deck slightly trimmed by Remodel seems very powerful too. Should it have been obvious that Scrying Pool/Candlestick is stronger? If so, why? Up til the penultimate turn I thought this was going to be an easy win...
And you didn't even contest the Candlestick Makers.
Why should I contest the Candlestick Makers? And your wording ("didn't even") implies that it should have been the obvious play. Really? Why? Adding any non-FG card to my deck dilutes the density of FGs which I think is very bad, whereas I don't think denying him a few CM's will hurt him that much.
Silly old Remodel/Fool's Gold.
Why is Remodel/Fool's Gold silly?
I'm surprised it took 18 turns. That's a serious scrying pool engine.
Are you saying that he got unlucky, he played it badly, or that the strategy is less strong than you expected it to be?