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Author Topic: How do you play this board?  (Read 2770 times)

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SCSN

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How do you play this board?
« on: August 26, 2013, 07:01:09 pm »
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Kingdom: Wishing Well, Baron, Bishop, Farming Village, Ironworks, Baker, Duke, Haggler, Mint, Rabble

I just faced this board in a Gokodom game against Eevee and wasn't quite sure how to play it. At first glance anything seems possible. We have Baker for the 5/3 open and coin tokens, Mint and Bishop for trashing, Wishing Well and Rabble for draw, Farming Village for the actions and as a counter to Rabble, Ironworks and Haggler for gaining, Baron for the +buy and Duke and Bishop for alt-vp.

The Baker token and Haggler are going to speed things up alot. Haggler/Wishing Well seems the obvious open, though does anyone like Haggler/Silver or Ironworks/Baron? And what's your game plan after that? How does it depend on your draws?
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liopoil

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Re: How do you play this board?
« Reply #1 on: August 26, 2013, 07:52:08 pm »
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not sure if it's good enough here, but what about mint/silver and go for golden deck?
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: How do you play this board?
« Reply #2 on: August 26, 2013, 08:38:54 pm »
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not sure if it's good enough here, but what about mint/silver and go for golden deck?

5 card Golden Deck won't work here as it will just take too long to trash all the other cards Mint misses.

Farming Village looks like the most important card on this board, winning the split here will give your deck a lot more options than your opponent (more Rabble attacks, better odds of pulling off big Bishop points etc.) I probably wouldn't have done this in the game because I wouldn't have thought about it much, but I think I'd open Ironworks/Wishing Well. Then I'd look to get Haggler next, using my coin token if necessary. Rush the Farming Villages aggressively. Build up a Rabble engine and take a big Mint turn if it presents itself. Bakers are nice, but not essential. If I win the village split then I like my chances in the long game. Now is when you can add Bishops and possibly Baron (not sure on Baron, probably okay but your terminal plays are limited). The deck hopefully can crank out a lot of VP chips every turn and gain Bishop fuel with Mint/Haggler. This approach is invulnerable to Rabble because you try to avoid green until the end.

The other path requires fewer Villages (and what I would probably aim for if I lost that split). Here you want to race down Provinces by playing a pseudo Golden Deck, hopefully buying/trashing a Province each turn to end the game before your opponent can catch up. This only works if you take a tempo lead though so it's a little iffy.

I guess another option is just to ignore Bishop and attempt to piledrive Provinces (keeping all of them), counting on Farming Villages to counter Rabble, but I don't trust this so much. I'd think you want at least some Bishop. Holding Provinces is more viable if you win the Farming Village split.

Duke looks pretty bad here due to Rabble. Mainly Duke just looks slow.
« Last Edit: August 26, 2013, 08:40:35 pm by Mic Qsenoch »
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Eevee

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Re: How do you play this board?
« Reply #3 on: August 26, 2013, 08:46:25 pm »
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Farming village counters rabble's attack quite nice for the engine and I doubt anyone is suggesting a duke thing.

I was surprised you didn't want an ironworks, SCSN. I would thought it would be essential to grab farming villages (and after they'd ran out, there'd be other great targets too).
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WanderingWinder

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Re: How do you play this board?
« Reply #4 on: August 26, 2013, 09:05:06 pm »
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Duke looks weak here to both Rabble and Bishop. I also had the idea of getting up a big engine with minting and trashing a gold (more likely two, possibly more) every turn. I guess haggler works there, too. The question is, is it fast enough?
Wishing Well counters Rabble sort of, but man, if you are in the situation where you are actually doing that, you are either right about to end the game in a win, or you're probably in very bad shape.

So, I think you have to go for this bishop kind of thing, eventually at least, and probably at least in the mirror you'll want a haggler, as you'll need/want to go for provinces, and even keeping at least some of them, though this gets highly into the exact game state of the endgame you get into, and you can't totally plan it from the start. So how do you get there? I think you want Ironworks and... maybe wishing well? Try to spike an early mint. Grab a bishop to clear estates, silvers if/when you need them, and farming villages. Haggler with the next 5, looking to get golds and rabbles until you have enough, then transition for bakers. Bakers help you keep more green back. A LOT of how you build depends on how the game goes. And probably you open silver > wishing well. I love the early wishing well so much, but...


Baron, I don't think you particularly want most of the time, though maybe if it gets to the point where you really really need +buy, you go there.

markusin

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Re: How do you play this board?
« Reply #5 on: August 26, 2013, 09:06:22 pm »
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Are you sure about Wishing Well/Ironworks over Silver/Ironworks? Winning the Farming Village split gives a big advantage, and opening silver gives you the chance to get a Haggler and an extra Farming village before the second reshuffle. The issue I see with Wishing Well is that you'll probably end up using a lot of different cards in your deck and it will be hard to guess correctly (though it can partially defend against Rabble), whereas Farming village can still cycle when it skips a victory card.

I'd think about picking up Baron or Bishop later in the game, as it will depend on how many villages are in your deck. If you're on the losing end of the village split, you can try blitzing for Provinces with some sort of Haggler/Baker/Gold thing while using Bishop trashing wherever possible.
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: How do you play this board?
« Reply #6 on: August 26, 2013, 09:53:34 pm »
+2

Are you sure about Wishing Well/Ironworks over Silver/Ironworks? Winning the Farming Village split gives a big advantage, and opening silver gives you the chance to get a Haggler and an extra Farming village before the second reshuffle. The issue I see with Wishing Well is that you'll probably end up using a lot of different cards in your deck and it will be hard to guess correctly (though it can partially defend against Rabble), whereas Farming village can still cycle when it skips a victory card.

It's not clear which opening is better at all. They should all be pretty close (including the Haggler openings). The reason I favor Ironworks/Wishing Well is because the early cycling is very nice and the Baker token should make the risk of not getting a Haggler in the first reshuffle much less. Silver is a safer bet in this respect, but it will slow down your cycling, and more importantly, doesn't really do all that much for you because your key price points are $4,5,6 and with a Haggler and a few Farming Villages/Rabbles you shouldn't have too much trouble hitting these points.  With perfect luck you don't get any Silvers in this game, though one or two is fine. In the Mid/Late game Silver is just a dead card for drawing and gums up your engine. If you look at the log, I think the worst thing Eevee does is Mint Silvers.
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Eevee

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Re: How do you play this board?
« Reply #7 on: August 26, 2013, 10:07:21 pm »
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Yeah, I for some reason thought that I could start drawing my deck quite reliably (never happened, didn't have enough time which in hindsight should maybe be obvious). That's also why I wanted the baron, so I'd have use for my big hands.
I guess that's the biggest reasons I lost, so convincingly too?
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markusin

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Re: How do you play this board?
« Reply #8 on: August 26, 2013, 10:29:41 pm »
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Are you sure about Wishing Well/Ironworks over Silver/Ironworks? Winning the Farming Village split gives a big advantage, and opening silver gives you the chance to get a Haggler and an extra Farming village before the second reshuffle. The issue I see with Wishing Well is that you'll probably end up using a lot of different cards in your deck and it will be hard to guess correctly (though it can partially defend against Rabble), whereas Farming village can still cycle when it skips a victory card.

It's not clear which opening is better at all. They should all be pretty close (including the Haggler openings). The reason I favor Ironworks/Wishing Well is because the early cycling is very nice and the Baker token should make the risk of not getting a Haggler in the first reshuffle much less. Silver is a safer bet in this respect, but it will slow down your cycling, and more importantly, doesn't really do all that much for you because your key price points are $4,5,6 and with a Haggler and a few Farming Villages/Rabbles you shouldn't have too much trouble hitting these points.  With perfect luck you don't get any Silvers in this game, though one or two is fine. In the Mid/Late game Silver is just a dead card for drawing and gums up your engine. If you look at the log, I think the worst thing Eevee does is Mint Silvers.
Right, but I'd get at least one Silver at some point here and I'd probably open with it here even though a Wishing Well opening is an effective at cycling in the early game. Here, I would look to hit the mid-price point ($4,5,6) as often as possible early on rather than trying to play a key card as much as possible.
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: How do you play this board?
« Reply #9 on: August 26, 2013, 10:32:54 pm »
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Yeah, I for some reason thought that I could start drawing my deck quite reliably (never happened, didn't have enough time which in hindsight should maybe be obvious). That's also why I wanted the baron, so I'd have use for my big hands.
I guess that's the biggest reasons I lost, so convincingly too?

Well, I believe SCSN was somewhat lucky to end the game that quickly, but I actually think you could have won if you hadn't bought any Provinces, and had cleaned up your deck with Bishop. With 7 Farming Villages, I don't think you'd have any trouble at all getting to 8 VP chips a turn, you just needed to add another Rabble, and trash more of your junk. I think the Baron isn't the strongest use of a terminal slot here.
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SCSN

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Re: How do you play this board?
« Reply #10 on: August 27, 2013, 05:19:32 pm »
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Farming village counters rabble's attack quite nice for the engine and I doubt anyone is suggesting a duke thing.

I was surprised you didn't want an ironworks, SCSN. I would thought it would be essential to grab farming villages (and after they'd ran out, there'd be other great targets too).

I planned to initially, but I didn't hit 4 until T8, at which point the villages were running out fast so I decided to skip it. For my two 5s with Haggler I preferred Rabble + Farming Village as I really didn't like the idea of having more Rabbles than Villages in my deck. That might be a bit irrational as you're not guaranteed to connect them anyway, and Ironworks will give you more Villages over time, and Baker/Ironworks instead of Rabble/FV might also have been good, but I felt a bit off balance due to playing too fancy in the previous game, so I found myself driven to avoid anything that might be bad, which led to a safe if somewhat suboptimal strategy that fortunately paid off.
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