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Dominion => Dominion Articles => Topic started by: Will(ow|iam) on July 11, 2023, 02:54:55 am

Title: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: Will(ow|iam) on July 11, 2023, 02:54:55 am
Battle Plan is "I get to control whether my opponents can gain Warlord"

Archer is a rather strong attack. A bit stronger than Militia.

Warlord is centralizing. Games are often decided by who can play Warlord on more turns. A deck that has to work around a warlord attack is much weaker than one that doesn't. If you can gain a warlord and rotate the pile in the same turn (e.g. Remodel, Altar), then that's often a really good idea.

Territory is Duchy.
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: Nukatha on July 11, 2023, 03:35:18 pm
Alternatively, if playing with AlliesXCornucopia, (especially with Fairgrounds), Warlord can up neutered as people build diverse decks (with the clash stack itself contributing greatly).
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: segura on July 11, 2023, 04:16:13 pm
The notion that Territory is Duchy is beyond wrong as the strength of the card is highly sensitive to the game-state and Kingdom.

Same with Warlord. It can be highly centralizing in some Kingdoms (Caravan totally sucks with Warlord) and it can be pretty weak.

Ironically Battle Plan is the only robust card, you always want two copies. It is above all a conditional Lab, that it can rarely manipulate the pile in your favor is mostly irrelevant.
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: Awaclus on July 11, 2023, 06:46:51 pm
The notion that Territory is Duchy is beyond wrong as the strength of the card is highly sensitive to the game-state and Kingdom.

The main thing the strength of the card is sensitive to is whether you want to pay $6 for a Duchy that may or may not come with a Gold or two (that you may or may not want).

Same with Warlord. It can be highly centralizing in some Kingdoms (Caravan totally sucks with Warlord) and it can be pretty weak.

It's highly centralizing in 90-93% of kingdoms. It's not super impressive in a big money kingdom where you probably aren't playing more than one copy of an Action card per turn anyway, but those kingdoms are rare, and even in those games, two Warlords just for the non-terminal draw is decent because what else are you going to do with your $5 turns.

Ironically Battle Plan is the only robust card, you always want two copies. It is above all a conditional Lab, that it can rarely manipulate the pile in your favor is mostly irrelevant.

The fact that it manipulates the pile in your favor is extremely relevant. Gaining a third Warlord, or gaining two and preventing your opponent from gaining the last one by manipulating the pile gives you like a 70% winrate. If you gain all four, that's like an 87% winrate — in the average kingdom, including the ones where it's unimpressive. (There's causality in both directions obviously; if you're winning anyway, you can more easily win the split. However, the fact that top players will often actually spend their early game advantage on winning the Warlord split still goes to show that it is important to do so.)
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: segura on July 12, 2023, 02:18:42 am
Nah. Territory can range between 2 and 5VPs and $3 for a Lab is more of a bargain than $5 for a delayed Lab whose Attack is irrelevant in many Kingdoms and player counts.
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: heron on July 12, 2023, 02:49:27 am
Nah. Territory can range between 2 and 5VPs and $3 for a Lab is more of a bargain than $5 for a delayed Lab whose Attack is irrelevant in many Kingdoms and player counts.

I feel like 5vp territory is still not particularly exciting (e.g., it's still less interesting than fairgrounds on an average kingdom).
Battle plan is good, but it's kind of a more delayed lab than warlord (there's a pretty big delay between when you buy the card and when it is reliably lab).

In two player games, gaining more warlords than your opponent gives a winrate of >70%, so your point about the attack being irrelevant in many kingdoms is factually wrong. I'm not an expert at 3p, but I don't see why the attack wouldn't be strong there.
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: segura on July 12, 2023, 12:00:27 pm
Nah. Territory can range between 2 and 5VPs and $3 for a Lab is more of a bargain than $5 for a delayed Lab whose Attack is irrelevant in many Kingdoms and player counts.

I feel like 5vp territory is still not particularly exciting (e.g., it's still less interesting than fairgrounds on an average kingdom).
Sure, Territory is only more than 4VPs if there is other green. Just like Fairgrounds is only more than 4VPs if you really work hard to get those 15 cards. But there is sometimes that extra Gold ...



Quote
In two player games, gaining more warlords than your opponent gives a winrate of >70%, so your point about the attack being irrelevant in many kingdoms is factually wrong. I'm not an expert at 3p, but I don't see why the attack wouldn't be strong there.
No idea about where the number is coming from. If there are some stats, well, correlation ain't causation. I still consider Battle Plan to be the far more important card. There is little competition at the $3 price point and I want my Lab now, not delayed.
Obviously Warlord is far weaker in 3P because you get on average fewer cards of a pile than in 2P.

Again, my point is not so much about strength but about how Kingdom-sensitive Warlord and Territory are and how little Battle Plan is.
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: Awaclus on July 12, 2023, 04:20:24 pm
Again, my point is not so much about strength but about how Kingdom-sensitive Warlord and Territory are and how little Battle Plan is.

Warlord is hardly kingdom-sensitive when the majority of the time, the game is mostly about who wins the Warlord split.
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: segura on July 12, 2023, 05:08:33 pm
Repeating nonsense does not make it true.

As I already pointed out, the card is sensitive to player count as you get on average less cards per pile the more other players there are so the attack becomes weaker.

Also, to use a simple example, a Kingdom with Black Market would significantly weaken the attack of a card that is vanilla-wise just a hyperdelayed Caravan.
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: Awaclus on July 12, 2023, 05:30:34 pm
Repeating nonsense does not make it true.

As I already pointed out

I rest my case.
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: segura on July 12, 2023, 06:00:22 pm
Repeating nonsense does not make it true.

As I already pointed out

I rest my case.
Your usual content-less troll post.
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: AJD on July 12, 2023, 09:03:43 pm
I've never really felt my gameplay to be substantially hampered by the Warlord attack—sure, once in a while I'd have a third copy of a card I couldn't play, but usually my engine would be based on enough differently-named cards, or Archer attacks would prevent me from having three of the same card anyway. I've usually found Warlord's duration draw effect to be more impactful.
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: faust on July 13, 2023, 05:56:37 am
A question I' don't have a good handle on yet is this: if you have 2 Warlords and your opponent one, should you get the last one?

On one hand, it makes it so you'll only be attacked half of the time. On the other, playing two Warlords on a turn is dangerous as it can prevent you from playing one on the next turn, so the third Warlord may end up as a dead card in your deck. And if your opponent already has a Warlord, you have to build a deck that can deal with that anyways.
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: Awaclus on July 13, 2023, 09:48:02 am
A question I' don't have a good handle on yet is this: if you have 2 Warlords and your opponent one, should you get the last one?

On one hand, it makes it so you'll only be attacked half of the time. On the other, playing two Warlords on a turn is dangerous as it can prevent you from playing one on the next turn, so the third Warlord may end up as a dead card in your deck. And if your opponent already has a Warlord, you have to build a deck that can deal with that anyways.

Yes, winning the Warlord split is associated with a ~70% winrate according to the DomBot stats (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/934537314858852413/1128453151884841170/card-stats.png). A 2-1 split is slightly better than 3-1, so in principle if you could 100% reliably rotate the pile to always keep the last Warlord inaccessible to the opponent, you should do that instead, but I feel like in practice, you probably can't actually be that confident that it'll work and I wouldn't take the risk if I can just guarantee denying the last Warlord by buying it.
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: silverspawn on July 13, 2023, 05:02:39 pm
Personally, I've never bought a Warlord, and I have a 100% winrate in Warlord games.
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: faust on July 14, 2023, 01:21:27 am
Personally, I've never bought a Warlord, and I have a 100% winrate in Warlord games.
But you also have a 100% loss rate in Warlord games.
Title: Re: The Clashes - A Summary
Post by: Titandrake on October 05, 2023, 12:42:15 pm
How has no one mentioned the "reveal an attack" part of Battle Plan yet? It's a pretty relevant part of the card, if you're going for Clashes and pick up Archer and Warlord it can be a Lab fairly often. When you're under Warlord attack you want draw from all the different places you can manage.