Print

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

[Jack Rudd]

City is a powerful yet frustrating card. With no piles empty, it's a 5-Cost Village, but with at least one empty, it's strictly superior to a Laboratory. So if you're pursuing a City-heavy strategy, you really want to empty a pile quickly. The trouble is that grabbing that last City with your turn's buy means that the first person to get the benefit of the souped-up Cities is your left-hand opponent.

University provides a good way out of this dilemma. If you have a University and a City in your hand when there's just one City left in the supply, you can gain the last City before playing your City from hand, and gain a potentially vital head-start in the monster turn race. This benefit is even greater if there's another useful 5-cost action that your Universities can gain: either Wharf/Council Room/Torturer/Rabble to run a massive +Action/+Card chain, or Bazaar/Treasury/Minion/Market to ramp up your buying power. Once that second pile is empty, your Cities are huge Village-Laboratory-Market behemoths that may be able to give you enough power to end the game on their own.

Example game with Minion
Example game with Wharf
Example game with Bazaar

[rrenaud]

Despite the lack of commentary, I think this is solid.  The combo is decent, and there is interesting, possibly non-obvious tactical advice (use university on your turn to empty the pile so you get the first big city turn).

On the other hand, the tactical advice is basically already in the City article.

Likewise, if you’re in a City race with your opponent, and the Cities are split somewhat evenly, it is absolutely critical not to be the one to empty the first pile (unless it is the City pile itself), as it gives your opponent first crack at a mega-turn.  The difference between drawing 1 and 2 cards is huge. Ideally, you’d like to use Ironworks, Remodel, or Upgrade to empty a pile during your turn so you can be the first to make use of the UCS.

Unfortunately, theory has his characteristic Alchemy blindness, and doesn't mention University in that whole article.

I guess this might be a bit short even for a combo article.

My advice:

Maybe add a paragraph, then we accept it as a top level combo article, or at very least, we update the City article to include mention of University.

[ARTjoMS]

IMO not very good game examples. In first 2 games you play noob opponents that even help you to empty critical piles. In 3rd game opponents does same tactics and makes some mistakes and gets his deserved loss.

Also i think it is neccessary to mention that there was a chapel in games 1/3 and goons in game 3 that also plays a big role in universities success.

It is a very solid combo though.

P.S. Warf+copper opening by your opponent in 2nd game was very interesting.

[Amaranth]

IMO not very good game examples. In first 2 games you play noob opponents that even help you to empty critical piles. In 3rd game opponents does same tactics and makes some mistakes and gets his deserved loss.

I'll grant you noob opponents, but, looking at game #1, how do you blame someone for buying Minion, or for grabbing some Cities when a pile has emptied? I guess he could have bought Duchies or something, but the fact is that it's the guy with the Universities who controls when the game ends.

[Jack Rudd]

And I end up on the receiving end, this time with Torturer in play.

[mischiefmaker]

I would be curious to hear a critique of this game -- looking it over, I was surprised to find that both players bought a conspirator during the second shuffle when they hit $4. If it were me, I'd have picked up a second potion there, looking to get 3-4 universities and using them mostly for torturers, then switching to cities once my engine got going.

I'd avoid bishop completely, since a city/torturer/university engine is going to to work just fine without trashing, and I don't want to give my opponent free trashing to get his engine going.

Finally, I'd probably avoid getting province on turn 9, as the winner did, since at that point I'd want to make sure I win the engine war; if I end up being able to torturer/ghost ship pin my opponent, I'm going to be able to make up 6 points at my leisure.

All of which comes with a big caveat: I'm really not very good at this game, and would like to hear whether good players agree or if I'm totally off base.

[DG]

When you look through game logs you always see surprising plays, even in games you'd played yourself and forgotten. If only perfect games were posted I'm afraid we'd never have any to look at.

As to the bishop and early province: it's vital in university games to get ahead on points. Universities can run three piles out very quickly and the torturers can run out another pile too. With no extra buys in the kingdom (at the start) any extra bishop points could be decisive. A big city turn for one of the players is likely but not guaranteed. There's also the opportunity to play a bishop after the opponent has discarded some/all of their cards, usually keeping no poor cards in hand to trash.

[ARTjoMS]

IMO not very good game examples. In first 2 games you play noob opponents that even help you to empty critical piles. In 3rd game opponents does same tactics and makes some mistakes and gets his deserved loss.

I'll grant you noob opponents, but, looking at game #1, how do you blame someone for buying Minion, or for grabbing some Cities when a pile has emptied? I guess he could have bought Duchies or something, but the fact is that it's the guy with the Universities who controls when the game ends.

Thanks, but I do not noobbash.
In game 1 player numer 2 goes envoy silver start, while chapels presence makes university-city-minion como dominant.
At turn:
4 - he played silver and 6 coppers and bough a minion(!!!), (in the end he ended up with (0!!!) provinces).
6 - he had another chance to buy his 1st province, but he bought another minion...
7- again buys a minion while it is obvious what opponent is doing.
8 - 3rd chance to buy his 1st proince, guess what he buys?
9 - switches from minions to cities buying one.
[btw, at the end  of 8th turn it says that he draws an Estate 2 Coppersand a Minion, while his 9th turn is:plays 3 coppers and a silver:buys a city. I don't get something from these game logs]
10-he again hand chance to buy his 1st province, but he is on city track, and you think it fine. Oh well.
11-he buys a  CHAPEL! wow.

 
 

[Thisisnotasmile]

[btw, at the end  of 8th turn it says that he draws an Estate 2 Coppersand a Minion, while his 9th turn is:plays 3 coppers and a silver:buys a city. I don't get something from these game logs]

Jack Rudd plays minion's attack option after the time this hand was drawn and before it was played.

[Diving Pikachu]

The city pile is definitely something to watch whenever there's any gaining cards like University, Talisman, Horn of Plenty, or Smugglers. Or a good $2 and a source of buys. Or any highly contested pile like Minion.

[dan11295]

Another one to watch is the curse pile. Whenever curses are in play I have caught lesser opponents in particular by suprise by going for cities then running off a big turn when the curse pile empties. Even more advantageous when you can play the curse-given to empty the pile to activate them. I think people forget the curse pile in general because it is not a card they are trying to put in their deck.