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Author Topic: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House  (Read 5445 times)

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ehunt

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Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« on: November 07, 2011, 04:38:17 pm »
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Normally, this is a bad idea, because the IGG and curse piles run out simultaneously, and you don't want to be messing around with bad cards like counting house when you're supposed to be winning the race to eight duchies.

However, occasionally there is asymmetrical cursing, e.g. if your opponent opens sea hag and you decide to buy IGGs, or due to watchtower. Then the curse pile will empty, but, if there are, say, 3 IGGs left, that second pile is very unlikely to empty, and the probability of a quick three-pile is the same as in an ordinary sea hag game. In this event, counting house goes really well with the IGGs after the curse pile is gone, the point being that you can have your cake and eat it too with the extra coppers. Agree/disagree?

Related question: I don't think there's consensus yet on which cursers can be skipped for IGG (my wild guesses: skip sea hag, don't skip mountebank and familiar, otherwise ??).

Basically, I don't understand IGG at all. Say anything helpful.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #1 on: November 07, 2011, 04:51:07 pm »
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After IGGs, I don't think the race is just over the 8 duchies. Provinces still exist. If you can squeeze in one more province than your opponent, you should be able to win. I don't have any good answers yet, but I suspect that adding in a good $5 card before going duchy could be useful, depending on the card. Most likely council room or wharf or rabble, probably counting house too...
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olneyce

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #2 on: November 07, 2011, 05:10:08 pm »
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Rushing Ill Gotten Gains produces a weird situation where it's actually pretty easy to get a Province in the early/mid game, and very difficult to get one later.  Before you blow them up to get coppers, you have a decent chance of drawing two or three of them together.  In which case, you can treat them as silvers and get to $8.  Once you dilute your hand with coppers (and curses from the other player), it's very difficult to make it to 8.

Counting House might actually be pretty useful in those circumstances.  Unless it's at the very top of your stack, every time you draw it, you're likely to get a Province.  That's worth two Duchies.  So if the opportunity cost is losing a Duchy to buy a Counting House, if you can successfully play it twice you're way ahead. 

The question is whether you'll actually get to it twice, I guess. 
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popsofctown

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #3 on: November 07, 2011, 05:40:21 pm »
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I'm not sure how often counting house will be there to synergize with the copper gaining effect, but apprentice/salvager/bishop/.... won't to work with it's trash by value.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #4 on: November 07, 2011, 05:45:21 pm »
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^Apprentice is good. Salvager/bishop cost < $5, so you can buy them before the IGGs are gone. Of course, I'm not really sure if the synergy with bishop is quite there, since it lets them trash the curses...
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popsofctown

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #5 on: November 07, 2011, 06:50:21 pm »
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If bishop's on the board, keeping the -1 vp to the end of the game is probably unrealistic.  The tempo of IGG could still be worth it, especially if your opponent is trying to build an engine.
If they're playing big money, eh, not so much I guess
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kn1tt3r

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #6 on: November 08, 2011, 10:31:07 am »
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How are you playing this IGG/Duchy rush at all?

First rush IGG, then Duchy?
Hands like 3 IGG / 2 Copper => Buy Province or Duchy?
What trash-for-benefit are good supports? I suppose primarily Salvager and Remodel ($4 Costs, and IGG=>Duchy potential)... Apprentice has the $5 cost problem, and Bishop is nice but somewhat conflicts with the cursing idea...
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Epoch

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #7 on: November 08, 2011, 02:34:12 pm »
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What trash-for-benefit are good supports? I suppose primarily Salvager and Remodel ($4 Costs, and IGG=>Duchy potential)... Apprentice has the $5 cost problem, and Bishop is nice but somewhat conflicts with the cursing idea...

Trader!  Trader is good support for IGG with both its defensive abilities against your opponent and your ability to turn one IGG into 5 Silver.
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popsofctown

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #8 on: November 08, 2011, 02:48:01 pm »
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What trash-for-benefit are good supports? I suppose primarily Salvager and Remodel ($4 Costs, and IGG=>Duchy potential)... Apprentice has the $5 cost problem, and Bishop is nice but somewhat conflicts with the cursing idea...

Trader!  Trader is good support for IGG with both its defensive abilities against your opponent and your ability to turn one IGG into 5 Silver.

There's also the versatility that if you happen to need 1$ out of the IGG when you draw it with the trader, you can play it for money and get an extra silver
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #9 on: November 08, 2011, 04:08:38 pm »
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What trash-for-benefit are good supports? I suppose primarily Salvager and Remodel ($4 Costs, and IGG=>Duchy potential)... Apprentice has the $5 cost problem, and Bishop is nice but somewhat conflicts with the cursing idea...

Trader!  Trader is good support for IGG with both its defensive abilities against your opponent and your ability to turn one IGG into 5 Silver.

I would venture to guess that the presence of trader could make IGG rushing bad. IGGs alone will not deplete the curses, and may often hand out silvers, making it a pretty risky $5 buy. So the game is going to be more likely to end on provinces than piles.
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jonts26

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #10 on: November 08, 2011, 04:15:26 pm »
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How are you playing this IGG/Duchy rush at all?

My strategy for IGG rushing with no trashing, for benefit or otherwise, is pretty rote. My buy rules:

Buy Province
Buy IGG
Buy Duchy if IGG pile is empty
Buy Silver
Buy Estates when the game is close to over.

I use the IGG's to add coppers pretty much whenever it can get me to the next Buy level. For example, if I draw IGGx3 Copperx2, I will buy a province, even it it's early.
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Thisisnotasmile

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #11 on: November 08, 2011, 05:07:12 pm »
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How are you playing this IGG/Duchy rush at all?

My strategy for IGG rushing with no trashing, for benefit or otherwise, is pretty rote. My buy rules:

Buy Province
Buy IGG
Buy Duchy if IGG pile is empty
Buy Silver
Buy Estates when the game is close to over.

I use the IGG's to add coppers pretty much whenever it can get me to the next Buy level. For example, if I draw IGGx3 Copperx2, I will buy a province, even it it's early.

Should probably pick up a $3-4 terminal in there just for the sake of it. If it's a terminal silver there's no reason not to.
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Epoch

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #12 on: November 08, 2011, 05:56:38 pm »
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I would venture to guess that the presence of trader could make IGG rushing bad. IGGs alone will not deplete the curses, and may often hand out silvers, making it a pretty risky $5 buy. So the game is going to be more likely to end on provinces than piles.

Well...  what's the alternative?  You're right, of course, that with Trader in play, it's deeply unlikely that the curse pile will deplete along with the IGG pile.

But you can't ignore IGG, because a Trader or two won't erase the destruction you'll face if your opponent buys out the IGG pile himself and saddles you with, say, 7 Curses and 3 Silver.  So you'll both end up buying IGG, and if one of you ignores Trader, he'll almost certainly be worse off than the other.

It may not be a RUSH, but it'll still be a game where IGG gets bought out.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #13 on: November 08, 2011, 06:45:12 pm »
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^Obviously it depends on what the other cards are. I'm not saying trader+money will beat IGGs (though it's possible that it will). What I'm saying is the presence of a decent reaction makes IGG *much* weaker, to the point where pure IGG is very unlikely to be a dominant strategy. When there are no reactions and no other cursers, you have the assurance that you only have to kill one more pile to end it once the IGGs are gone. But when you put in something like traders, you run into the problem  that once the IGGs are gone, you have a deck that isn't that great at buying provinces, and has no source of +buy to help empty 2 more piles. So you're going to have a hard time ending the game while still in the lead.
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mDuo13

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #14 on: November 10, 2011, 06:31:48 pm »
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I had a pretty infuriating game recently where I attempted an IGG rush buying Provinces whenever possible, adding a couple Counting Houses late in the game when I had a massive deck of Coppers, but I drew the CH's at the top of a reshuffle more often than not (and my opponent's attacks discarded them at least twice as well) so that even with 40+ cards in deck I was only able to CH into Province once or twice. (I did one time get to pick up 20 Coppers, but it didn't matter without +buy on the board.) Ultimately despite my buying 6 or so Provinces, my opponent was able to Develop away his curses and beat me with a much slowed-down Ironworks + Vineyard deck.

So long story short, the strategy is viable, but Counting House is still very vulnerable to shuffle luck.
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DG

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Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House
« Reply #15 on: November 10, 2011, 06:57:10 pm »
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Throw in a third card, like a watchtower, and you might have an igg/counting house/watchtower strategy.
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