Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[HiveMindEmulator]

There seem to be a lot of Rebuild games going up here, so I thought I'd post an interesting and educational one of my own. The kingdom cards are:
Crossroads, Scrying Pool, Fishing Village, Oasis, Wishing Well, Caravan, Coppersmith, Inn, Rebuild, Vault

There are a couple cards here that you might look at and think "power card": Rebuild and Scrying Pool (and maybe Vault). Scrying Pool + Vault is a great combo, but there's no +buy, and perhaps more importantly, Rebuild can probably drain enough VPs off the board that that type of engine won't have time to set up. So it looks like Rebuild has to be the "key" card to the kingdom. But how do you go about using the power of Rebuild?

I think there is some confusion about the strength of Rebuild. It is not good at scoring. It's strengh lies in its ability to shorten the game. So when you're going with Rebuilds, you want a strategy that scores fast. Sometimes this is Duchy rushing, but this not always the case!

Here, I see that Caravan, Wishing Well, and Crossroads are all good for Coppersmith, and with that assistance, Coppersmith can score pretty fast. Vault is also pretty fast, but doesn't go too well with Rebuild because the cost conflicts, and because the Rebuild decreases your hand size. So I go with Coppersmith.

Here's the log: http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130715/log.5135b68ce4b07f4f52107e0e.1373903603213.txt

My opponent goes for a "standard" Rebuild+Duchy rush. After 10 turns, the Duchies are gone, and I've lost the split 6-2, but I don't care! After turn 11, the game is effectively over, and I've won. I'm up 10 points with only 3 Provinces left (I have already trashed one with Rebuild), and basically no economy in my opponent's deck. Even if he Rebuilds into the last 3 Provinces, that's only 9 points, and there's no +buy to out-Estate me. The only way for him to win is to buy a Province and gain the other two before I drain one, which can't realistically happen.

The moral of the story is that (I think) it's better to think of Rebuild as a game-accelerator, and not as a scoring card. It's non-terminal, so you can tack one on to nearly any other fast-scoring strategy and use it to close out the game before your slower-scoring opponent can catch up.

[ragingduckd]

I think there is some confusion about the strength of Rebuild. It is not good at scoring. It's strengh lies in its ability to shorten the game. So when you're going with Rebuilds, you want a strategy that scores fast. Sometimes this is Duchy rushing, but this not always the case!

If I understand correctly, you're suggesting that there are kingdoms where you'd prefer a hybrid Rebuild-X strategy to either Rebuild or X alone?

That's an interesting idea, but no examples comes immediately to my mind. You need an X strategy that doesn't mind having its early $5 hands spent on Rebuild, doesn't interfere with Rebuild, gains VP faster than more Rebuilds/Duchies/support cards do, and yet isn't strong enough to just beat Rebuild on its own. Edit: Maybe something that gains a bunch of VP fast and then stalls out, say Rebuild-Apothecary?

Coppersmith isn't a terrible Rebuild enabler. I'd certainly consider opening with it here. But I wouldn't diverge from my usual Rebuild mirror game afterwards. I think it would be a mistake to pass on a Duchy or Rebuild to buy another Coppersmith or cantrip draw.

The game that was actually played isn't really a triumph for the hybrid Rebuild-X idea. Well, maybe you could call it hybrid Rebuild-Shuffleluck.

Your single Coppersmith bought 3 Provinces by T11, twice by just drawing CCCC + Smith. If that's a typical outcome, then we all need to start taking Coppersmith a lot more seriously. You also managed to play your single Rebuild five times, while your poor opponent had to buy three Rebuilds to achieve the same result. I could conceivably be persuaded that Rebuild-Coppersmith is strong here, but I'd have to see some games with more reasonable outcomes.

More importantly for the theoretical discussion, where do you feel that you diverged from the "standard Rebuild-Duchy rush?" You bought a Rebuild with your first $5 hand, bought reasonable Rebuild support cards, and rebuilt Estates into Duchies every time you could. It's true that you never bought additional Rebuilds or Duchies, but that's because your only other $5+ hands were all $8 and you bought Provinces instead.  What would you have done if you'd drawn your T9 Coppersmith with CCCE instead of CCCC?

[HiveMindEmulator]

Thanks for the comments. Good to hear from our resident Rebuild expert.

The game that was actually played isn't really a triumph for the hybrid Rebuild-X strategy. Well, maybe you could call it Rebuild-Shuffleluck.

I would call it a Coppersmith strategy where I added a rebuild. And I don't think I had abnormally good shuffle luck. I guess his was poor?

Your single Coppersmith bought 3 Provinces by T11, twice by just drawing CCCC + Smith. If that's a typical outcome, then we all need to start taking Coppersmith a lot more seriously.

I didn't just draw CS+4 Coppers on turn 7. It was Caravan, WW, and 3 Coppers. The first 2 cards I draw happen to be Copper and CS, but I can also Wish for Copper or CS if it's not quite as fortunate. Turn 9 looks nice, yes, but it's not that important what the actual hands that buy Provinces look like. If you go Caravan + Wishing + Copper, those hands will be there. It might be the big hands, but it might also be the small ones. Buying 3 Provinces in a 13 turn game is by no means outlandish. The game was over early because I got them on turn 7, 9, 11. But what difference would it have made if they were instead 8, 10, and 13?

More importantly for the theoretical discussion, where do you feel that you diverged from the "standard Rebuild-Duchy rush?"

Unless you typically open Caravan/Wishing Well for your Rebuild strategies, I'd say I diverged from the start, though maybe Coppersmith/Wishing Well is actually better...

It's true that you never bought additional Rebuilds or Duchies, but that's because your only other $5+ hands were all $8 and you bought Provinces instead.  What would you have done if you'd drawn your T9 Coppersmith with CCCE instead of CCCC?

Buy Inn. My draw pile was empty.

Rushing Duchies is probably a good fast-scoring strategy a lot of the time, but I don't think its always the only one.

[Robz888]

Yeah, I'm not very enthusiastic about HME's strategy here, either. I really dislike the Caravan/Wishing Well opening. Well, maybe it fits what you want to do, but it's pretty bad for Rebuild. That's not a great opening for hitting $5 and Caravan should be a pretty poor Rebuild helper throughout the game.

Now, Rebuild does have some good support here, in the form of Oasis and Inn and Crossroads. I'm totally fine with Coppersmith since you can afford a terminal, and you have the chance to spike a Province, and it's probably really bad in the late game but by then you don't even need purchasing power in Rebuild games.

So I'm probably opening Oasis/Coppersmith or Oasis/Silver or even Oasis/Crossroads. The danger of Crossroads is that you actually don't want to have so much Green in hand that you don't have green left in your deck to Rebuild, but Oasis and Inn really help mitigate that, since you can discard from your hand at will. Of course you always want Rebuild over Inn for a while, but I've found that sometimes a mid or late game Inn is nice to shuffle like several Rebuilds out of your discard and into your deck. Depending on the situation, that will be better than another Rebuild.

So that would be my strategy here.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Yeah, I'm not very enthusiastic about HME's strategy here, either. I really dislike the Caravan/Wishing Well opening. Well, maybe it fits what you want to do, but it's pretty bad for Rebuild. That's not a great opening for hitting $5 and Caravan should be a pretty poor Rebuild helper throughout the game.

Well I think the opening is probably bad because if you draw Caravan on turn 3 and WW on turn 4, you're forced to shuffle before the turn 4 buy (which happens to me in this game), but I don't think the thing about hitting $5 matters. The point is that I don't care about hitting $5.

[Polk5440]

The point is that I don't care about hitting $5.

I think this is what defines a hybrid-Rebuild strategy. You're intermediate goal isn't necessarily to get to $5 as fast and as often as possible.

I think the straight Rebuild strategy on this board would look like this: open Coppersmith-Silver; then go Silver on 4 or less.

I'm with HME. I would not have gone straight Rebuild. I am thinking Coppersmith-Wishing Well to open, then Caravan on 4, WW on 3, Rebuild on first 5-7, and Inn a very strong contender on 5-7 when deck is near empty. I think the Hybrid works here because on 5, a non-Rebuild player is not going to always go Inn; and Vault helps the Rebuild player too much for my taste. Here, Rebuild is sometimes the best card at $5 even for the non-Rebuild player: Coppersmith decks can get clogged pretty quick during greening, so it's nice when the end of the game comes quicker.

Crossroads is not as good as usual here. I would really hope never to get $2, I think.

[HiveMindEmulator]

^I don't think Crossroads is too bad, since you're greening early.

[Warfreak2]

The problem with Rebuild + draw is, bigger hands are more likely to contain the cards you want to Rebuild. It's no fun drawing Rebuild+Estate+Estate when you've already Rebuilt the other Estate; Crossroads is more likely to do that than any other drawing card, because it only draws when you already have green cards in your hand.